181–190 of 461 posts
If one person is profiting... or in our world a person is profiting more than the others it is inequality in action.
Progressive tax rates are the simplest solution.
The thinking that one persons work is more important than another's is a dangerous and slippery slope.
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I read a comment once that the steel industry collapsed in the US because they failed to innovate or continuously improve (much like the Big 3 automotive companies). Do you know of any concrete examples of this? or books about how US Steel lost?
I don't know about steel, but Rother's Toyota Kata makes this case for cars. There's one graph in particular that shows carmaker productivity per worker over several decades. Toyota, working in a Japan decimated by war, definitely came from behind when competing with Detroit's big 3. Toyota starts lower than the other 3, and all of them improve gradually together. But at some point US carmakers plateau. Toyota just k…
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Income inequality is not the problem, it's a shorthand for the real problem, which is the mutual reinforcement of wealth inequality and political corruption. Rich people use their disposable income to buy political influence which they then use to get laws passed that allow them to collect rents. The solution is to 1) roll back the corrupt laws (like the preferential tax treatment of carried interest and high-speed t…
"2) get rid of the absurd legal doctrine established by the Citizens United decision that money=speech and hence the First Amendment applies to bribery." Unfortunately it's not that simple. The immediate question at hand in Citizens United was about a group of private citizens being prevented from releasing a movie criticizing a Presidential candidate during an election. A movie costs money to produce and requires a…
Personally, I would have had no problem with CU if it had remained the narrow decision that John Roberts originally wanted it to be. Clearly, if the First Amendment protects Michael Moore's right to make and show a politically charged film close to an election then it protects Citizens United's right to do the same thing.
The problem came when this narrow decision was extended to a broader one that included for-profit corporations and labor unions. (For-profit) corporations and labor unions are legally "persons" in that they can act as legal entities in their own right (no pun intended) independent of any individual human. And they ultimately consist of groups of humans. But they are not humans. They are human constructs. They are technology. And treating them as if they were humans, entitled to human rights, leads to problems.
So personally, I would advocate retract CU protections (and Hobby-lobby protections for that matter) from for-profit corporations.
I'd also re-instate the historical lower limits on direct contributions to political campaigns.
Sure, maybe there are more airlines, but are there more airplane-making companies or car companies now then in the '60s?
Or consider this:
> Kids who went to private schools or wished they did started to dress "preppy," and kids who wanted to seem rebellious made a conscious effort to look disreputable
How didn't this happen in the 50s too? "Greasers" are _the epitome_ of rebellious kids.
Or consider politics: I have no idea what politicians said in the US at the time, but back in western europe we had a political spectrum that went from "fascism is okaish" to "praise lenin". At least, didn't the US had basically everyone on the same side regarding abortion and divorce, compared to now?
Looks to me the essay suffers from sampling bias, even if most likely unintentional. Sure a few things are examples of increased "refragmentation" but I am unconvinced this is a general, uniform, and strong trend.
This can't not have an impact on the social order. Perhaps he implies or assumes that this is an effect rather than a cause but to leave it unmentioned seems like a big omission.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Income inequality is not the problem, it's a shorthand for the real problem, which is the mutual reinforcement of wealth inequality and political corruption. Rich people use their disposable income to buy political influence which they then use to get laws passed that allow them to collect rents. The solution is to 1) roll back the corrupt laws (like the preferential tax treatment of carried interest and high-speed t…
"2) get rid of the absurd legal doctrine established by the Citizens United decision that money=speech and hence the First Amendment applies to bribery." Unfortunately it's not that simple. The immediate question at hand in Citizens United was about a group of private citizens being prevented from releasing a movie criticizing a Presidential candidate during an election. A movie costs money to produce and requires a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Startups either go Facebook or go bust, they're not created to stay stable at small scale. Nonsense. Plenty of companies start out as small companies and suddenly find themselves on the upwards slope of a hockey stick, others start out as aiming for that hockey stick and end up being 'just' sustainable businesses. This whole start-up naming thing denies 125 years of objective reality. You can't start a scalable com…
But wait, some people start a pizza place or a grocery store or something similar. Those kinds of businesses are definitely new businesses, and people who start these kinds of businesses is what was traditionally meant by the word "entrepreneur". But startups are qualitatively different - they are usually started with the express (and usually only ) purpose of growing very large, very fast. Call them startups or not,…
So unless you're willing to apply the start-up label only after the fact to the successful companies you're going to have to be a bit more inclusive than to just use it to describe Facebook, dropbox, google, Uber and AirBnB.
> But startups are qualitatively different - they are usually started with the express (and usually only) purpose of growing very large, very fast.
No, that's the exception. The rule is that start-ups were started to be companies like any other. At some point during their life span they found a groove that supported the property of very fast growth (almost always these are companies with some kind of network effect) and then retrospectively applying your criteria you can call those companies start-ups.
Anyway, no need to believe me, you can simply prove me wrong by deliberately starting a start-up that will scale. I'll bet you 1:50 that you won't make it.
The hard part then is this: your company has a fairly good chance (10% or so) to become just another company. Now supposing this is the case, will you then follow through on your 'go big or go home' slogan and go home and kill that company? Or will you do what everybody else does in that situation and just run it and milk the cow?
And even pizza places or grocery stores can end up scaling way beyond the original aim of the founders. McDonalds is a nice example.
If you want a single word that identifies companies that are growing very large, very fast I'd suggest this one: lucky.
Regarding income inequality, I recommend listening to some of the speeches/debates with Bernie Sanders. E.g. he argues that the greatest receiver of welfare in the US is the wal-Mart family, because they get even richer paying their workers so little that the workers have to live on welfare. (In other words the welfare is "paying" the workers so that Wal-Mart don't have to.) He proposes to rise the minimum wage. http…
Walmart employees are not compelled to work for Walmart; the employment contract is agreed upon voluntarily by both parties. The employees know how much they will be paid and agree to accept the terms. Walmart is operating within the legal employment framework set up by the government, including the welfare state and the minimum wage. That will not change by raising the minimum wage. Rather, Walmart will simply add a…
Interesting piece. It will take some time to digest. I wonder about the arrow of causation for conformity back in the 40's. This essay describes WWII as a spark of a generation of conformity (preceded by the New Deal for some). But it's really hard to imagine modern society signing on to a world war. What's to stop parents afraid of vaccinations from taking their draft-age children to New Zealand? Was there something…
Military service used to be seen as an obligation and an honorable thing to do, and wars were seen as being a necessary part of defending one's country and way of life or eradicating great evil.
That fell apart after Korea and especially Vietnam, which were perhaps unnecessary and certainly bungled by politicians. This forever changed the trust and confidence of the public in politicians who send young people into battle.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"2) get rid of the absurd legal doctrine established by the Citizens United decision that money=speech and hence the First Amendment applies to bribery." Unfortunately it's not that simple. The immediate question at hand in Citizens United was about a group of private citizens being prevented from releasing a movie criticizing a Presidential candidate during an election. A movie costs money to produce and requires a…
That's a fair question, and not one that can be easily answered in am HN comment. Personally, I would have had no problem with CU if it had remained the narrow decision that John Roberts originally wanted it to be. Clearly, if the First Amendment protects Michael Moore's right to make and show a politically charged film close to an election then it protects Citizens United's right to do the same thing. The problem ca…