131–140 of 222 posts
The stereotypical right-wing position is, "This government program is poorly-run; let's get rid of it" The stereotypical left-wing position is, "This government program should be left alone, even if it's poorly-run" The stereotypical Gray Tribe position is, "This government program is poorly-run; let's debug it"
The stereotypical right-wing position is, "This government program is poorly-run; let's get rid of it" The stereotypical left-wing position is, "This government program should be left alone, even if it's poorly-run" The stereotypical Gray Tribe position is, "This government program is poorly-run; let's debug it"
Why would the left-wing not want to improve a poorly run program?
I think more simplistically: when you take this group of people and average them out what you get are beliefs that benefit the large companies they represent. That's the signal that is correlated with running a big tech company, and the rest is probably mostly noise. That's all really, they aren't for or against free trade in aggregate, they are for their company trading profitably, on average.
Why the higher support for socially liberal policies and wealth redistribution then?
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Did you delete that post yourself?
Yes, there's no funny business going on.
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More competition is also how we got Trump on the republican side because the number of candidates lowered the bar for receiving a plurality of the votes. Trump never would have beaten someone like Cruz, Rubio, or even Jeb in a primary straight up.
Maybe, but even at the end when it was Trump vs. Cruz vs. Kasich Trump polled well ahead. I don't think that quantity really was the determining factor -- I think Trump is just the natural end state for the way America seems to be at the moment with its massive political division and the inability for either side to treat the other with good intentions. Really agree with this post https://medium.com/@russroberts/the-…
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I quickly read your paper. The only way in which technology entrepreneurs deviate from what you would expect, is in their support for more redistribution. But all these people are not paying normal taxes, anyway. Why would they care? Also if you consider the risk of political or economic instability, then even redistribution might just be a self-interested policy stance.
Maybe tech companies know that they profit from redistribution, perhaps moreso than other companies? Tech products tend to be relatively expensive, but production is generally unlimited, because a significant proportion of the price reflects the fixed costs of development, which means that a larger market usually comes with profits. This is somewhat unlike e.g. agriculture or construction, where production quantities…
I also think that it would enable more people to take the risk of trying something new if they knew that failing didn't mean destitution, and I think that we'd see significant upside from that in terms of economic competitiveness. I think I should be paying more taxes than I am to fund that, especially on unearned income.
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So is the other playbook, where effectively every excuse always boils down to "we need more money" or "we're underfunded".
So why not perform studies and actually look into whether the inefficiencies and performance problems are caused by insufficient funds? Oh wait, studies require funding too, so we can't have those. I mean do you honestly believe that a Republican would propose increasing funding of a non-military, non-security agency if they were shown hard evidence that said agency's problems were in fact caused by lack of money? An…
More likely than not, an honest analysis would see the 80/20 rule show up, dozens of needless and redundant positions will be exposed, and when presented with the data the agency is most likely to scoff at the idea of cutting headcount and spending through efficiency as that means a smaller budget for next year. A fun example of this is Detroit Water and Sewer's egregious spending on asinine positions such as a farrier, despite having no horses.
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I strongly agree with your argument regarding economic-class determinism or whatever it's called. After all, some of the most progressive policies for the poor in this country were passed by the wealthiest presidents (FDR, Kennedy, Johnson). However, if you're suggesting that Silicon Valley CEOs are in favor of libertarian free trade, I think I agree more with the article and disagree with you. Silicon Valley CEOs lo…
>>After all, some of the most progressive policies for the poor in this country were passed by the wealthiest presidents (FDR, Kennedy, Johnson). You mean regressive policies that hurt the poor, right? The War on Poverty marked the end of the decline in the American poverty rate. The social welfare state gradually sapped American industrial vitality and the labour productivity growth that had been fueling wage gains…
https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-un...
There was a comment about the political influence and aspirations of certain big names in tech, but it has suddenly disappeared. It contained some criticism of Paul Graham and Sam Altman, but seemed totally reasonable to me -- can anyone say why it was deleted?
I wrote it, I don't feel like being an ass and I'm feeling overly aggressive today, not to mention I am a guest in someone else's house. ...but my overall point is that the tech elite is composed of a lot of rich white guys with connections, who naturally help each other out. Sam Altman runs YC now and as of last year was apparently seriously considering running for governor of California. That strikes me as grandios…
The bar is not terribly high and I think successful tech leaders are probably more qualified than anyone else that shows up.
I think the idea of having representatives and leaders is a bit old fashioned to begin with. But if we are going to have them, they should be the most competent intelligent people we can find from outside of politics.
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>>After all, some of the most progressive policies for the poor in this country were passed by the wealthiest presidents (FDR, Kennedy, Johnson). You mean regressive policies that hurt the poor, right? The War on Poverty marked the end of the decline in the American poverty rate. The social welfare state gradually sapped American industrial vitality and the labour productivity growth that had been fueling wage gains…
But labor productivity growth doesn't cause any wage gains anymore, hasn't for decades upon decades. Probably worth asking if you assert that American corporate taxes are the highest in the world: sometimes there are just major, major reality-based differences in the discourse and it's useless talking any further. I know I can't believe some of your axioms here, unfortunately.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_tax_in_the_United_St...
Excerpt: In 2014 the United States had the third highest general top marginal corporate income tax rate in the world at 39.1 percent (consisting of the 35% federal rate plus a combined state rate), exceeded only by Chad and the United Arab Emirates However, the average corporate tax rate in 2011 dipped to 12.1%, its lowest level since before World War I, largely due to the great recession and a bonus depreciation tax break.