Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive • Hacker News Board

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#311

Post by jes » Mon, Feb 20, 2012, 1:15 AM UTC

sshumaker wrote: post #245

jes wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think you have the right to something that someone else has to work to produce? That's what Rand was against. You don't have a right to use force to cause someone else to work for your benefit.

There is a pretty clear logical flaw here. Nothing is produced in a vacuum. Your ability to create, to generate wealth, is heavily reliant on the infrastructure and services provided by your society (electricity, defense, roads, education, etc). In other words, if Bill Gates had been born in Somalia, chances are he wouldn't be nearly as successful. Taxation is how you repay your debt to the society that enabled your…

Actually, Rand's view was that government wouldn't provide electricity, roads and education. These goods and services would be private and paid for by the people who wanted to use them.

Defense was a different matter, in that in her view, that was one of the legitimate functions of government -- protecting the individual rights of the citizens.

Rand acknowledged that every generation stands on the shoulders of the productive people who came before them.

Yes, if Bill Gates was born in Somalia he probably wouldn't have followed the path he did. If Somalia was a nation where individual rights were respected, as Rand advocated, everyone in Somalia would be much better off.

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#312

Post by teamonkey » Mon, Feb 20, 2012, 1:18 AM UTC

peregrine wrote: post #309

teamonkey wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They got a better grade in the end, didn't they? I would rather work with someone who can deliver, genius or not.

A better grade is more important than delivering in a reasonable time? I think you might have missed my point, you can get A an but the point of the education is not to get an A, its to learn the material. If they can learn the material, get a very reasonable grade, an AB and spend far far less time I want to work with that person. This person is more likely to be a hacker because they see that there is such a thing…

> A better grade is more important than delivering in a reasonable time?

Consider a business tender. The brief is to get the best result by a specific day. Multiple contractors have the same time to complete the brief. Those who can provide the best result on the final day will win the contract.

Using your memory is a great hacking tool, probably the best there is. Those students used any tool available to get the job done. That's the true hacker spirit.

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#313

Post by recoil » Mon, Feb 20, 2012, 2:23 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #252

OP's statement is a strong argument against libraries. We're spending good money on buildings full of books that inadvertently provide some really important social services. If you've got a bucket catching drips from your leaky roof, you need roof repairs, not a better bucket. Here in England, we have an organisation that does exactly what the OP is espousing - guiding people who don't know where to turn for help. It…

You are flat-out wrong about Americans and their willingness to give up their time for charitable causes [1].

Interestingly I am also British and my impression from American friends and acquaintances was generally the opposite to yours: many of them had volunteered in the past or were involved with volunteering, which is something I came across less frequently in the UK (I emigrated 4 years ago so this may have changed, I suppose). This impression is borne out by the report above.

While the social issues faced in every country differ greatly for any number of reasons governed by history, demographics, etc. etc., there are enough similarities between the two countries as to make you sound very insensitive to the issues faced by many inhabitants of the UK.

To use one small example, the Gini co-efficient measure of income inequality (after taxes) for the UK is closer to that of the US than it is for almost every other European country [2]. I don't think anybody would dispute that there are a lot of poor and disadvantaged people in the UK.

The main difference between the two countries has less to do with the willingness of citizens to donate time or money to charitable causes than it does to do with the "social safety net", provided by the government. That's a whole different subject though.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/sep/08/charitab... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equ...

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#314

Post by dgordon » Mon, Feb 20, 2012, 4:35 AM UTC

intended wrote: post #271

chc wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's essentially the thought process behind the downvotes: You: "the market organises to elevate the best and raise standards for all others" Everybody else: "And I'm the Queen of England." "The market" is not some intelligent, charitable entity. It's an abstraction employed to talk about how participating entities allocate their resources. It categorically does not help everyone. In fact, in many cases it can hurt…

Further, people don't curl up and die, they tend to do what it takes to survive. Which our op, with his subscription to police protection, believes he will be protected from. Course he has to assume that he and the others like him have paid sufficiently to keep his mercenaries/rent-a-cops armed and motivated enough to protect them.

Ah, the old "criminals will rob you if you don't consent to have the government take your money to hand out to them" argument. Often peddled by those who also believe criminals are not responsible for their actions, they're just oppressed/had a bad childhood/whatever.

I'm fine with universal (modulo pacifists and those not capable of handling a gun) individual gun ownership. Combined with anything resembling rule of law, in that case armed robbery quickly drops off the list of "what it takes to survive", because it no longer results in long survival. The criminals will always be outnumbered.

But let's get back to the real topic. Fact is, I like libraries. I think they're very positive for everyone in many ways, in particular for being an intellectually-oriented gathering place.

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#315

Post by dgordon » Mon, Feb 20, 2012, 4:40 AM UTC

moultano wrote: post #196

tptacek wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how you can look at one mostly-benign comment that just happens to bring up politics (and mostly as a tangent to the point it wants to make) and see how it drives the whole thread off the rails. Just eyeball the torrent of BS political posturing this set off. I'm not blaming the author or anything; it just seems like a miniaturized version of a problem that hurts the whole site.

s/whole site/whole world/ For whatever reason, all politics is now identity politics. Less important than the effectiveness of a policy is whether that policy is threatening to the ideology that accompanies a person's group identity. It makes me wish we didn't have names for these things for people to rally around. If you replace "I'm a libertarian" with "I'm skeptical of government solutions without sufficient suppo…

"It makes me wish we didn't have names for these things for people to rally around. If you replace "I'm a libertarian" with "I'm skeptical of government solutions without sufficient supporting evidence" notice how the lack of abstraction makes it impossible to avoid focusing on the issue at hand."

This is a good point. I'll keep it in mind for the future. On less civil sites, it also at least makes someone work to invoke a string of identity-politics nonsense like "LOL LIBERTARIAN MOAR LIKE STRAIGHT RICH WHITE MAN AMIRITE?"

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#316

Post by intended » Mon, Feb 20, 2012, 5:54 AM UTC

dgordon wrote: post #314

intended wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further, people don't curl up and die, they tend to do what it takes to survive. Which our op, with his subscription to police protection, believes he will be protected from. Course he has to assume that he and the others like him have paid sufficiently to keep his mercenaries/rent-a-cops armed and motivated enough to protect them.

Ah, the old "criminals will rob you if you don't consent to have the government take your money to hand out to them" argument. Often peddled by those who also believe criminals are not responsible for their actions, they're just oppressed/had a bad childhood/whatever. I'm fine with universal (modulo pacifists and those not capable of handling a gun) individual gun ownership. Combined with anything resembling rule of…

Hi!

New to these particular arguments, so your first sentence was perspective adding. Should have realized though that the strong libertarian bent to HN would make a lot of arguments old.

That said: In my defence, I'm neither for nor against the topic, and wasn't making the arguments you suggested I was. I was alluding to large groups of criminals overwhelming or out-gunning paid protection at some point of the scale.

As you said, lets get back to the real topic - libraries are great. Although it did seem like computer education and literacy was one of the major draws - perhaps people here could help by helping an NGO which provided volunteers to help people fill forms up or give them computer education?

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#317

Post by mquander » Mon, Feb 20, 2012, 8:21 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #288

DanBC wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firstly, the downvotes are a recent manifestation of creeping groupthink. Political discussion has, for a long time, been discouraged on HN. Down-voting is one way to encourage people to stop.

This whole discussion is political. Downvoting mickey7's comments for that is extremely hypocritical, unless you downvote all comments and flag the submission.

That really is not true. I appreciated the post because it gave me a perspective on what life is like for people who aren't like me; it has nothing to do with politics unless you want to start arguing about politics.

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#318

Post by tomkin » Mon, Feb 20, 2012, 9:25 AM UTC

kzrdude wrote: post #172

jonhohle wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I leans heavily toward the libertarian side, but I think libraries are one of the most important social services provided by local governments. Unlike other programs, absolutely everyone can get some direct benefit from the library - no matter what age or income level. Libraries, in my opinion, are a model of what social services should look like: universally beneficial, only practical at the community level, little…

One example of how unliberal our society has become today I think is "imagine libraries being invented today: media industry would scream piracy"! Those libraries that today experiment with e-books pay ridiculous prices per loan to do so. It's yet another angle where I think it's evident that the copyright lobby is losing perspective and society has lost the compromise struck once over copyright.

> media industry would scream piracy

That's actually a pretty great insight. If you think of the library as a potential piracy haven, you might even consider going as far as calling them a storefront of The Pirate Bay if libraries were invented today.

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#319

Post by frobozz » Mon, Feb 20, 2012, 10:30 AM UTC

mickey7 wrote: post #210

gergles wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>.. anyways. people who want and use the library should pay for it. people who don't should not pay. isn't this fair? People who want and use the roads should pay for them. People who don't shouldn't be allowed to drive or walk anywhere. Isn't that fair? People who want and use the police department should pay for it. People who don't should have no protection. Isn't that fair? People who want and use the fire depart…

neighbourhood watch and locally funded andor volunteer police, vigilanteesm & personal responsibility fire insurance includes fire department service. you can go cheap and risk burning down but it's more likely that decent friendly neighbours will gladly cover yours if you can't. or you can move to more affordable housing within your means health insurance with discounts for taking care of yourself competition betwee…

>fire insurance includes fire department service. you can go cheap and risk burning down

One of the reasons for a nationalised fire service was because Insurance-company funded firemen had a tendency to be arsonists.

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#320

Post by gaius » Mon, Feb 20, 2012, 10:30 AM UTC

drewcrawford wrote: post #125

tptacek wrote: post #121

Can I add to this one little point, which is a counterintuitive thing you can do to help your local library: Use your local library . During the year we started Matasano our Chicago team spent about 40%-50% of our time working from the Oak Park Public Library, sometimes in meeting rooms we booked, more often at study desks. It was great. The Internet access wasn't amazing but it was totally functional and we could VP…

I would LOVE to work out of my local library, unfortunately, here in Austin libraries have the policy that meeting rooms etc. are only for non-profit groups that are open to the public. No private meetings, no "open to the public meetings" that are run by for-profit companies. I suppose your garage startup could probably _get away with_ meeting there, but it's a big no-no.

Profits -> Taxes -> Funding. Don't bite the hand that feeds!