121–130 of 406 posts
tldr: smartphones are a platform to learn skills, to facilitate a network of contractors, and to do work. Put that together for something powerful.
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> Over the last two days the major news sources have been pushing a blatantly false "truth" ("Muslim Ban"). Intention of this post is not to get into a political discussion of this! Well, if you're going to try to build a mechanism to hold the mainstream media accountable, you'll really need to create a standard on when a summarization is inaccurate. If the media was reporting on, "a ban on travelers from majority Mu…
>"a ban on travelers from majority Muslim countries by a president who has promised his supporters a ban on Muslims" would that still be misleading? That would be a very accurate summary. Not misleading in the slightest. >" And if opponents of the ban called it a "Muslim ban", would media outlets be allowed to report on that fact?" Absolutely, but it should not be presented as fact that "Donald Trump has enacted a Mu…
Are you sure? Here's the google search you're talking about: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22muslim+ban%22&safe=off&bi...
The only "muslim ban" usages are opinion articles or quotes.
The thing that is needed most is a laboratory of ideas for what will replace the neoliberal order. A corporate democracy that increases inequality and only panders to justice by gestures towards identity politics is seemingly over. What we're faced with now is either devolving into an Ethnic Nationalist state on par with Russia, or something entirely new that has yet to be described. What needs to be recaptured is a…
"democracy" makes the sentence an oxymoron.
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You don't have democracy in the workplace because democracy is inefficient . A company that expends great amount of money and resources on constant political shifting and backstabbing, and that can't present an unified vision on the market will soon get outcompeted by one that has its shit together. We can tolerate authoritarian regimes in companies, because they're small (relative to countries) and compete in a heav…
> A company that expends great amount of money and resources on constant political shifting and backstabbing, and that can't present an unified vision on the market will soon get outcompeted by one that has its shit together. That already happens anyway. You don't need to have a democratically governed workplace for constant political shifting and backstabbing to occur. > If you want to leave or they fire you, you ca…
> Can't you make the same argument at organization level? I'm sure many Amazon warehouse workers would agree.
Honestly, I think you could. Actually, this is something I was thinking about a lot in context of employee rights. Making workers happy - good office conditions, paid leaves, healthcare benefits, regular schedule, etc. - is a cost for a company, and creates inefficiencies that, if eliminated, would let the company do more while spending less[0]. So many companies are indeed happy to make employees as miserable as they can get away with[1]. Enforcing worker rights is purposefully introducing inefficiency, in order to avoid the market optimizing away all human values.
So let me rephrase my original point: you can get away with much more efficiency in companies than in countries without making a lot of people miserable.
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[0] - subject to dynamics of market competition, in which all the gains you earn by introducing a change are quickly cancelled out when competitors follow suit.
[1] - not a problem for companies that don't need specialized workers for which there's more demand that supply - i.e. not a problem for most companies and a huge problem for most people.
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Technology provides massive amounts of consumer surplus and deflation. What if we need less money and lower wages are actually fine? Edit: Do the people down-voting this actually think technology doesn't provide consumer surplus and deflation? Or do you have a problem with my question?
That's easy to say for someone with a good income. For a lot of people wages go down while cost of living goes up.
Technology and globalization have impacted food a lot. Education, and housing? Not nearly as much. Healthcare is more complicated, and I'm not an expert, so I'll refrain from speculating there.
One might argue globalization has hurt people, but so far, technology seems to be making just about everything it touches cheaper for everyone.
[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery...
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Having worked myself as a constituent contact in a Congressional office, I can tell you from experience that you are exactly right. Someone who's willing to hand-write a letter and pay for a stamp is seen as a more motivated constituent -- more likely to care enough about the issue to have it decide how they'll vote in November, in other words -- than someone who makes a call; and the caller is more motivated than so…
I asked this elsewhere, but does being a donor matter at all for calls/letters? If so they check the dollar amount?
I am a little ambivalent about this. On the one hand the intent is probably good but on the other hand companies like YC and Silicon Valley are drivers of a lot of developments that led to the current situation. - Silicon Valley is a great example of growing inequality. Most of the rewards go disproportionally to a select few at the top - A lot of VC companies are killing a lot of previously relatively stable jobs. U…
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It is nearly impossible to get the attention of politicians unless I'm willing to spend a vast amount of my time on the phone I almost hate to reveal this "secret" since I thought it was pretty well-known, but if you contribute to your Representative's campaign, there's a pretty good chance you can get a one-on-one or at least attendance to a dinner event. This is much easier with state politicians.
I wonder if they listen more to phone calls or letters if you're a donor. And if so, what kind of dollar amount makes your call 'matter'? I'd happily donate $5 to the local Republican congressman if he'd take my calls more seriously.
I'm happily engaged in a DevOps startup and won't pursue this idea, but I proposed a new kind of news format shortly after the election at https://joshpadnick.com/2016/11/25/a-proposal-for-a-new-type... . Personally, I'd love to be a consumer of something like this, or to know if there are startups working on this.
I mean, it's going to be a way more complicated dependency situation than with code - imagine a fact determined by a study which had to make decisions about categories - but the gist remains:
An interpretation of facts depends on those facts, some of which themselves are collections/transforms on facts, but ultimately, there's a physical reality from which they stem.