Viewing profile — bamfly

> I'm genuinely puzzled why so many people believe in collectivism The topic wasn't collectivism. You keep trying to make it about that, I suppose because that's what you wanted to…

Failure to embrace/invent capitalism sooner isn't the main reason basically all graphs measuring anything related to humans start to shoot up in 19th century. Lots of factors contr…

Fair. I don't find HN correctable when it veers off of tech topics—confidently-wrong and often ideologically-fixed while lacking basic education in a topic is a bad mix; some folks…

Free markets do a fine job of justifying their value with straight facts, no need to reach like that. Apply whatever you're considering free markets to other places & times, and it…

I'm finding the responses in this whole thread a strong argument for making STEM majors take more social science courses. Econ too, probably, especially behavioral. Way too many ar…

This is a fine position to hold, while excluding more-useful ones as "condoning bad behavior" or "excusing bad behavior" or whatever, if you want to judge people but not solve any …

A behavior being bad, and a system being arranged such that it selects for that bad behavior, are separate things. Observing that fixing the latter might eliminate most of the beha…

Move to New Zealand. It'll be kinda OK, the government's stable and democratic, and they aren't gonna be machine-gunning waves of climate refugees (or else getting overrun and seei…

True—it usually wasn't an amazing living. But it was a not-totally-implausible direction to go, if perhaps not the best move. Isn't even that, now. IDK what the equivalent poorly-p…

My (Boomer) parents made a bunch of serious and expensive mistakes, and my dad didn't properly start a career until he was almost 30. He had a high school diploma. He was literally…

For a time, you could make a living writing short stories for genre rags. A matter of a few decades, but still. Without needing to be a household name, even. They're still the only…

> We believe in abundance because of millennia of life experience incorrectly or not. It's only not been near-universal to experience at least one severe famine that kills many peo…

Oh thank god. These kids of mine were getting expensive.

The luddites lost, sure—but industrialization did make an absolute shit-ton of people miserable until the labor movement clawed back some of those productivity gains for the worker…

> Also specially in the US with all the school shootings, banning kids from having phones that allow them to call for help seems like a really bad idea. Run the numbers. This isn't…

Teachers want to treat cell phones like gameboys, but parents won't let them. They throw an absolute fit. Hell, parents call their kids in class just to chat .

Anyone downvoting: talk to some teachers. Maybe start with junior high teachers and see if you can even stand moving up the grades. Your skin'll be crawling in no time. If you don'…

Exactly. That's why I made my kids chain-smoke cigarettes for a month, then told them they couldn't have any more, but kept a pack in the open on the kitchen table. Gotta teach sel…

You'll need to move to a very few, probably-expensive places, or scout private schools. Probably not the cheap kind. :-(

Mine can have one when they can pay for the phone and the plan. I reckon if they can maintain enough income to cover that, they're ready for one. Still can't have it late at night,…

> The first capitalists hated rent. They wanted to replace the “passive income” that landowners got from taxing their serfs’ harvest with active income from enclosing those lands a…

> I would love a car that does not have a single display and just connects to my phone or pad for setting things up and streaming audio. You need a big screen for cameras and such,…

Sure, I'm just not assuming it's entirely accurate :-)

To be clear, I'm not complaining about FAANG/finance comp rates. Anyone taking a bigger paycheck instead of that money going to capital is doing god's work (plus, building a founda…

Are we expecting colder, or warmer weather in NY and New England from this? It's not clear to me from reading some of these articles. The expected effect for Northern Europe—that I…