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Some Rich Americans Are Getting Stimulus ‘Checks’ Averaging $1.7M

forbes.com

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Re: Some Rich Americans Are Getting Stimulus ‘Checks’ Averaging $1.7M

#101

Post by a_wild_dandan »

anm89 wrote: post #88
a_wild_dandan wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do any of these statements apply in particular to socialism? Seems to me you could find/replace "socialism" here with any political system and make the same argument.

A more hands off political system is less manipulatable. The more complicated systems that are created, the more there is to gamify. I'm advocating for more limited government. A simple clear rule set is much harder to gamify. This is an equalizer, not the reverse in my opinion.

1. It's not clear to me that system complexity always correlates with manipulability. One may easily construct circumstances where the inverse is true -- dead simple political systems which are neatly gamified or exploited, and sophisticated systems that are fairly robust. To me, what counts is how well the system is designed, not necessarily its complexity level. But suppose it's true that a more involved government always implies more manipulation.

2. Are we better off by optimizing for minimal political manipulation over anything else? For hyperbolic examples: in complete anarchy, we'd have zero system manipulation, and yet I would unhappily die in The Purge. Likewise, in some Roaring '20s capitalistic caricature, I might have my small business destroyed by a monopoly, or die a child laboring away in unsafe conditions. Optimizing for being manipulatable seems far less palatable than living in modern day Denmark or something.

Re: Some Rich Americans Are Getting Stimulus ‘Checks’ Averaging $1.7M

#102

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #100
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to game that is to just upvote random comments that you don't care about in stories that you don't care about, just to have made enough upvotes to enable you to downvote again.

I meant have comments that get upvoted, not upvote other comments.

Oh. That's harder, but not much. You just need two accounts. Make some innocuous comments on account 1, upvote them with account 2. Now you can downvote from account 1.

Re: Some Rich Americans Are Getting Stimulus ‘Checks’ Averaging $1.7M

#103

Post by maerF0x0 »

cultus wrote: post #43
maerF0x0 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You still owe all of that rent. Without interest?

Worse, with late fees. You can still get evicted legally as well, it's just that they can't remove you.

any chance of a reference?

Re: Some Rich Americans Are Getting Stimulus ‘Checks’ Averaging $1.7M

#104

Post by aianus »

einpoklum wrote: post #97
aianus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Giving money to the rich does not trickle down to people. All of my well-paying tech jobs have been funded by VC money from rich people and/or IPO money from rich people. Same goes (indirectly and partially) for all the people who have been selling me goods and services over those same years.

Yeah, paying a few programmers high salaries doesn't quite count as trickling down. Let's say it's extremely-limited trickle down. > Same goes ... for all the people who have been selling me goods and services over those same years. No, it doesn't. Unless you only buy services from VC-financed startups?

> No, it doesn't. Unless you only buy services from VC-financed startups?

I buy things using my salary which trickled down from the VCs and shareholders.

Re: Some Rich Americans Are Getting Stimulus ‘Checks’ Averaging $1.7M

#105

Post by clairity »

einpoklum wrote: post #92
clairity wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, please. sign me up for all of the above. let's get a fairer, more dynamic economy that discouraging rent-seeking and encourages risk-taking and innovation. wealth concentration is a symptom of a broken, plutocratic system, not a capitalistic one.

Concentration of wealth characterizes all Capitalist economies - limited concentration as a pre-condition, and an increasing degree of concentration as an ongoing phenomenon and consequence.

yes, i should have been more specific that i meant the excess levels of concentration we see in many so-called capitalistic economies.

edit: should also note that capitalism expects wealth concentration, but it's not a pre-condition.

Re: Some Rich Americans Are Getting Stimulus ‘Checks’ Averaging $1.7M

#106

Post by dang »

threatofrain wrote: post #93
dang wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because your account is rate-limited. We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or get involved in flamewars. We're happy to take the rate limit off (and often do) when people give us reason to believe that they'll use the site as intended in the future. Emailing hn@ycombinator.com is the best way to do that. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que…

What notifications do you see when your account has been restricted?

That depends on the nature of the restriction. One is:

  You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.

Re: Some Rich Americans Are Getting Stimulus ‘Checks’ Averaging $1.7M

#107

Post by anm89 »

einpoklum wrote: post #98
anm89 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more hands off political system is less manipulatable. The more complicated systems that are created, the more there is to gamify. I'm advocating for more limited government. A simple clear rule set is much harder to gamify. This is an equalizer, not the reverse in my opinion.

You're not advocating for more limited government. Your intended government enforces private ownership of the means of production, with police, courts, and a military when necessary. You're only advocating for a different representation of class interests in the state, i.e. it would do most of what capital is interested in, but little or none of what labor is interested in. Not that a more interventionist state is pr…

I mean, I very literally am advocating for a more limited government. I'm advocating for them to stop doing something they are currently doing.

Any definitional gymnastics here are yours

Re: Some Rich Americans Are Getting Stimulus ‘Checks’ Averaging $1.7M

#108

Post by anm89 »

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #101
anm89 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more hands off political system is less manipulatable. The more complicated systems that are created, the more there is to gamify. I'm advocating for more limited government. A simple clear rule set is much harder to gamify. This is an equalizer, not the reverse in my opinion.

1. It's not clear to me that system complexity always correlates with manipulability. One may easily construct circumstances where the inverse is true -- dead simple political systems which are neatly gamified or exploited, and sophisticated systems that are fairly robust. To me, what counts is how well the system is designed, not necessarily its complexity level. But suppose it's true that a more involved government…

Valid critiques.

1) Yes this could be true in some cases but a lot of the way in which the "haves" exploit these kind of systems is by throwing man hours of attorneys and accountants at them because the rules are super verbose and complicated and so you hire profesional loop hole finders. If I simple piece of legislation is obviously exploitable, that will be more obvious from the get go and will less heavily favor the peoe who can pay the loophole finders.

Also you cant exploit things that don't exist.

2) no, I agree you have to draw your line in the sand somewhere. I'm not an anarchist. I could take your argument in the same direction to absurdity as well. If redistribution solves all problems, let's create comittees to redistribute on a person to person basis until we reach a fair utopia.

We don't do that because we acknowledge that the cost benefit of doing that gets hyperbolically negative at a certain point. What I'm advocating is that the line where that happens is actually much earlier, and that the last 10 years have shown that we are already on the wrong side of that line and that our approach to legislating away complex issues can at best handout money to certain interest in a fairly dumb way, and those groups are always going to be the ones that have a say in the legislation process via lobbying or direct involvement.

So no, I'm not arguing against child labor laws, I'm arguing against complicated redistribution programs. Nothing less, nothing more

Re: Some Rich Americans Are Getting Stimulus ‘Checks’ Averaging $1.7M

#110

Post by ikt »

anm89 wrote: post #46

Edit for definitional clarity: My use of the term socialism here is exactly equivalent here to the term "systems that enable wealth redistribution through legislation" no more, no less. Im not commenting on anything like the ownership of the means of production in society or anything like that. It seems like the whole world is chomping at the bit to enact more socialism but do you think it's homeless people and cashi…

> Of course not, it's lawyers and politicians. So are you really naive enough to believe that they write perfectly fair legislation that doesn't favor their interests at all?

But not all politicians and lawyers are serving the financial elites, whenever there's a stereotype or claim made I would like to see how this compares to Nordic countries.

In addition almost every major first would country has a socialist healthcare system, just not the US.

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