r_smart

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271.
by r_smart 10y ago
>it's important to challenge all beliefs. I wholeheartedly agree. This is something that's been on my mind a lot lately, and so our conversation couldn't have come at a better time.
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by r_smart 10y ago
You're conception of it being a rebuttal is exactly wrong. My point was, my team would spend a lot of time talking about things that weren't related to work or my interests, so it was indistinguishable from any of the myriad other
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by r_smart 10y ago
>my most memorable and important conversations have started off with someone telling me I was wrong OT: I just had a conversation like this that was one of the most enjoyable conversations I or my partner had had in a long time. We sort
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by r_smart 10y ago
>When there is a conversation in the room, it's probably related to what you're doing so it's not necessarily distracting you. My rebuttal to this point is the amount of time my previous co-workers would spend discussing l
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by r_smart 10y ago
Ahh, the old 'Force reality to conform to my imperfect understanding of statistics' method. Never mind that in a small, unrepresentative sample it's entirely possible to have a team of people be all 5-star or all 1-star. Inde
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by r_smart 10y ago
I grew up poor. My father paints houses. He always used to tell me: "Work smarter, not harder." My roommate hired him to refinish his deck (He owns the house), and every time my father showed up for work and I was working from hom
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by r_smart 10y ago
Why would you possibly expect me to have evidence of actual crimes? Even were a crime committed? As I understand it, prosecutors typically look for patterns of behavior in cases like this since there's rarely a nice hand-written letter
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by r_smart 10y ago
Thank you for reading the story and completely missing the point while proving it. You seem to assume he would respond how you would respond. He didn't. He had never heard of the company because he had never looked. When I told him abo
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by r_smart 10y ago
Agreed. I did my best to come across as measured and non-accusatory in my post. I'm very specifically not saying there's anything wrong, but there's evidence that there's some pretty deep corruption here. The trouble is,
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by r_smart 10y ago
Then I suppose we disagree about what qualifies as compelling. If you're one of the people concerned about how cozy politicians are with moneyed interests, than I have a hard time seeing how the Clinton's relationship with such pe
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by r_smart 10y ago
Yeah sorry, you're evidence sounded like the thing people usually put out when they say it's a race thing, and it's also not an entirely accurate analysis (in my opinion), which is why I posted that link. I'm in agreemen
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by r_smart 10y ago
>That puts black at about 2.5 as likely as white. You are ignoring the representation of blacks in violent crimes, where they are disproportionately highly represented [0]. If a population represents between 30% and 50% of the violent cr
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by r_smart 10y ago
Not OP, and not sure I'd say 'held accountable', but I'll take a shot. I think there needs to be an honest investigation into the Clinton Foundation and whether or not there is a pay for play situation going on there.
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by r_smart 10y ago
I'm right there with you, missing this blog. I sometimes see it on my bookmarks bar and click it just to see if something has been added, but nothing ever is. I didn't find his blog until towards the end of its life, but it taught
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by r_smart 10y ago
Thanks for the compliment. I certainly wasn't trying to paint myself as the poster boy for anything, but I think my story can be interesting for people who haven't experienced poverty, especially because I bought into a lot of the
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by r_smart 10y ago
I agree with your statement. I just feel like a lot of times in the public discourse there is an underlying assumption that most, if not all, of the inequality comes from theft or foul play.
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by r_smart 10y ago
I feel like a lot of people here don't understand this because they've never been poor in America. I would never want to deny help to someone who needs it, but as most of these social programs are structured, they're a trap.
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by r_smart 10y ago
>Creating a playing field for private sector participants to compete I know a guy whose job is to negotiate contracts for supplies used by the Fire Dept. in his municipality (or state, I can't remember). We were on a Skype call once
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by r_smart 10y ago
Wouldn't it then be unfair to pay the best person the same as the worst person? The incentive there is clear: Be the worst person and save your energy for something else. If your outcome is the same regardless of your effort, then you
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by r_smart 10y ago
The top level comment was pointing out that privatization isn't necessarily the issue, it's that the government picks one company, and hands them a monopoly. That is what creates the situation you're describing. I have no ide
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by r_smart 10y ago
As a clarification: You mean in the absence of a negotiated contract that allows the price gouging the government often gets handed in the deals it negotiates, yes?
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by r_smart 10y ago
Yeah, this post seems to be addressing an annoying conversational experience, but ignores the other side: the reality, which you describe. I understand that just scaling out their platform is a ton of work that justifies having a lot of eng
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by r_smart 10y ago
While I kind of agree with the thrust of your comment overall, I think it makes sense in the case of Melinda Gates. Look how fabulously wealthy her family has become as a result of tech. You can see why, if she thinks women are at an unjust
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by r_smart 10y ago
And it's sitting on the table behind your screen...
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by r_smart 10y ago
I don't disagree with anything you said, but I think my main point might have been lost, so let me reiterate: The value saved is unlikely to outweigh the cost in morale. I feel like this is especially true when you're talking abou
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by r_smart 10y ago
Business speak for human centipede.
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by r_smart 10y ago
It's a good question. My thought would be this: If you give them a bunch of money, they are likely to enjoy it, but ultimately fritter it away. If you invest in / loan them a bunch of money, you've created an expectation in t
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by r_smart 10y ago
It might be sad, but I have a hard time thinking it's true. It certainly runs counter to my own experience.
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by r_smart 10y ago
I don't know about your experience, but in my own case, the opposite of this is true, and in a major way. The last company I worked at fired tons of people overseas and it managed to cripple an already withered morale. It may not have
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by r_smart 10y ago
We're talking about a company with just short of 4,000 employees. I can't possibly imagine dumping 20 of them lets them refocus the company in any meaningful way. Their overall impact has to have been relatively insignificant.

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