whakim

41 ms·

421.
by whakim 5y ago
I think this hits the nail on the head. It's not that Facebook or the many people who work there don't care about kids or a deleterious political climate. They do care. It's just about what happens when those concerns conflic
422.
by whakim 5y ago
I'm not sure this argument really holds. In the United States, third parties can have a significant influence on elections by siphoning off votes (see, Nader or maybe Perot), but they tend to have much more muted effects on policy. I
423.
by whakim 5y ago
I'm not sure the OECD is the right comparison point because many OECD members (the Latin American and Eastern European countries, mostly) collect far less in tax revenue than the "more developed" OECD nations like the United
424.
by whakim 5y ago
In many cases we could encourage/discourage the same behaviors by simply spending money on those things instead of using tax deductions. That's how most countries do it, and as a result their tax systems are much simpler.
425.
by whakim 5y ago
> Why is the point to tax the wealthy more? Why do we want to kill the incentive for starting companies and becoming wealthy? There isn't any evidence that tax rates much higher than those we currently have have been any obstacle to
426.
by whakim 5y ago
> But then you’ve removed a measure of privacy. I don't think such a system of accounts would need to be publically accessible. It could work similarly to income taxes - where the public is able to look at robust aggregate data, the
427.
by whakim 5y ago
> Great. Let's add more paperwork to the incorporation/reporting process. Many of the systems required to create a more complete accounting of assets already exist. For example, in the United States financial institutions alrea
428.
by whakim 5y ago
Sales taxes are logistically simple but also highly regressive, so the wealthy wouldn't even have to use loopholes to enjoy an ultra-regressive tax system :).
429.
by whakim 5y ago
People kind of are rioting, though. The election of Donald Trump (and the rise of populist parties across Europe); the January 6th capitol riot; the Black Lives Matter movement - whatever you think of these things, they're all connecte
430.
by whakim 5y ago
Meritocracy is a giant myth (often completely unconnected to the underlying data), but it's important to recognize that it's just the latest in a long line of myths that have been told to justify inequality. For centuries, the wea
431.
by whakim 5y ago
While I see what you're saying, I don't think that I completely agree with you because the wealthy using these techniques ( especially if they are politicians, but even if not) are undermining public confidence in the tax regime.
432.
by whakim 5y ago
I think this hits the nail on the head. Wealth is protected by a vast array of national and international laws and institutions - everything from protection of intellectual property to the technicalities of making sure that you and I can&#x
433.
by whakim 5y ago
> Free markets are when people are free to trade with whoever they want to, at the price they both freely agree to. Except the numerous exceptions where that isn't true. I can't engage in insider trading. I can't get a chi
434.
by whakim 5y ago
> I am arguing this. Enron and Microsoft are examples. What small company CEO is capable of directly blowing up billions of dollars? Or with Nadela, pulling off a turnaround worth multiple billions? These are larger effects that are inac
435.
by whakim 5y ago
> This is easily shown false by simply comparing Apple with a small accounting firm. The max effect a CEO in the latter can have is on the order of $1 million, which is about 4 or 5 orders of magnitude less than the negative consequences
436.
by whakim 5y ago
I'm not really sure what "economic freedom" means - and I'd be able to respond better if you defined it. Haiti wasn't a tyranny. In fact, it was a prime example of proprietarian capitalism run totally amok - a regim
437.
by whakim 5y ago
> However, looking at it as a percentage of GDP is flawed and leads to an understatement of the effect. We need to look at it after adjusting for inflation only, since all that matters is how big these companies are in the absolute after
438.
by whakim 5y ago
I couldn't quickly find data back to 1965, but I did find that the S&P500 market cap as a percentage of GDP has grown by 2.75x since the late 80s, whereas CEOs are paid ~5x more relative to the average worker in that time. Additio
439.
by whakim 5y ago
The question is really about what level of inequality is justifiable. For example, the average S&P500 CEO earns almost 300 times the salary of their average employee, compared with 20 times the salary of their average employee in 1965.
440.
by whakim 5y ago
I think it's prima facie clear that inequality itself isn't a prime driver of "innovation," whatever that means. Was Haiti circa 1780 (one of the most unequal societies to have ever existed) particularly innovative? Is t
441.
by whakim 5y ago
There are many different "rich economies" (as measured by National Income) with different levels of inequality. Consider, for example, the United States, Japan, Germany, and Sweden (in descending order of inequality). I think you&
442.
by whakim 5y ago
This is a really good insight - the trope of the "frustrated scholar-official" is extremely prominent in the Chinese literary tradition. That being said, the ideal of "becom[ing] hermits and enjoy[ing] their life happily afte
443.
by whakim 5y ago
The bike shop can't compete on price with the biggest online retailers/Amazon. I have my doubts about a tube costing $35. $10 or $15 rather than the $5 you'd get online, but I have been to a lot of bike shops and that 10x mar
444.
by whakim 5y ago
The dominant culture in the United States is one of "following your passion." This is the advice that college students get from college advisors and the way colleges advertise themselves to potential students. In light of that, I
445.
by whakim 5y ago
Asset values do rise with inflation, and that itself doesn't make the owners of capital any better or worse off. But in an extremely low inflation environment, owners of capital can collect rents on their capital which will generate a
446.
by whakim 5y ago
This is incorrect. Historically, periods of very low inflation (such as the 19th century during which currencies were pegged to the gold standard) were great creators of inequality, because they allow the wealthy to continuously expand th
447.
by whakim 5y ago
This is mostly orthogonal to the author's original point (with which I concur, having also implemented image similarity via hashing and hamming distance). There just aren't a lot of knobs to tune using these algorithms so it'
448.
by whakim 5y ago
Social networks aren't in the business of showing you what's "good for you." They're in the business of showing you what's good for them (e.g. things that will increase your engagement).
449.
by whakim 5y ago
I agree that the algorithms should be publicly reviewable. But I'm not sure that solves the central issue which is that there's a tension between what's financially good for social networks (algorithms that increase engagemen
450.
by whakim 5y ago
But the "news agency" also provides value. If you have a bunch of journalists working together (i.e., "a newspaper"), then those journalists are freer to take long term risks (e.g. work on big investigative stories). At

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