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A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

latimes.com

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Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#231

Post by paulryanrogers »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #211
lostlogin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your housing comment is key - the grind of paying for rent or a mortgage with two incomes really stifles and ability people have to try something.

This is almost always due to a couple trying to settle in a neighbourhood or school district or home beyond their means, at least in the US. Even a tenured professor at Columbia, who won the Nobel prize and loves their work and has a wife earning a matching compensation, would have a pretty miserable life if they insisted on mortgaging a large Upper East Side townhouse. It's the same in Palo Alto from what I've heard…

It appears that areas where ownership are within reach of single income families is shrinking rapidly.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#232

Post by ChuckMcM »

jacquesm wrote: post #230
ChuckMcM wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good ideas are good ideas :-). Infocaster wins though for releasing a product, so far I haven't done that. Everyone I've talked to about it (and that has been quite a few people) have all nodded their heads and said "Wow, that is a really good idea, let me know when you kick it off!" But at the same time there is a chicken/egg problem of initial runway to initial payout. I've looked at a couple of lean ways to kick t…

The way we figured to best approach that is to simply create a set of tools that would allow others to use the core principles and then to see where they take it and adapt as requests come in. There is a potential legal issue that I have yet to find a good solution to: whether you call them points or stakes doesn't really matter, but what does matter is that they take on some properties of stock and that means that i…

Yes. They are absolutely securities. I explained them to a finance lawyer as basically a zero coupon bond without a fixed maturity date. So basically a variable yield. They quickly understood this and also understood why people would be somewhat reluctant to "invest" in something like that. My particular system had three types of points, one was investment points (weird zero coupon bonds), patent/inventor points (one revenue stream was licensing the portfolio of patents assigned to the company), and the third were service points.

Service points were for vendors, where a vendor contracts for say $100K of services and will be paid $200K for those services (so double their rate) but based on the payout of points vs monthly billed. Interestingly the lawyer I talked with thought this would be popular with law firms. The way that would work is that the vendor would invoice against the point up to the max value of the point. And annually they would receive a payout value of one point (what ever that happened to be) up to 2x what had been billed against the point so far.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#233

Post by uoaei »

astrange wrote: post #228
uoaei wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you'd be uncomfortable working on sewers when you could be sitting on your couch watching TV doesn't mean we will run out of sewer workers. Full employment comes with a whole host of other problems for the kind of economy we inhabit today -- a sure enough sign that things aren't working under the current paradigm. We need a change if something like 'full employment' is expected to be a positive thing.

We've only had near-full employment in the 90s and this year. (Japan also only just got there by improving employment of women.) I'm not seeing the problems.

Near-full employment and full employment are very different, in the same way that carrying a 95% full glass of water and a 100% full glass of water are very different.

The "cushion" of unemployed people, according to economists, is very important for staving off runaway effects that drive bad macroeconomic dynamics.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#234

Post by jacquesm »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #232
jacquesm wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way we figured to best approach that is to simply create a set of tools that would allow others to use the core principles and then to see where they take it and adapt as requests come in. There is a potential legal issue that I have yet to find a good solution to: whether you call them points or stakes doesn't really matter, but what does matter is that they take on some properties of stock and that means that i…

Yes. They are absolutely securities. I explained them to a finance lawyer as basically a zero coupon bond without a fixed maturity date. So basically a variable yield. They quickly understood this and also understood why people would be somewhat reluctant to "invest" in something like that. My particular system had three types of points, one was investment points (weird zero coupon bonds), patent/inventor points (one…

The problem here in NL with this scheme is that if they are stock and they are not traded on the open market (which would require an IPO) then all of the transactions would be required to be passed through a notary, the fees alone would wreck the plan.

There are no other ways to sell stock in an unlisted company. And yes, law firms would be a good candidate. As would almost any project based business. I wonder how the Mondragon company manages to work their way around such restrictions.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#235

Post by astrange »

uoaei wrote: post #233
astrange wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've only had near-full employment in the 90s and this year. (Japan also only just got there by improving employment of women.) I'm not seeing the problems.

Near-full employment and full employment are very different, in the same way that carrying a 95% full glass of water and a 100% full glass of water are very different. The "cushion" of unemployed people, according to economists, is very important for staving off runaway effects that drive bad macroeconomic dynamics.

100% employment is impossible to achieve since it means eg there are no full-time students and nobody on maternity leave, so it's not a problem.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#236

Post by uoaei »

astrange wrote: post #235
uoaei wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Near-full employment and full employment are very different, in the same way that carrying a 95% full glass of water and a 100% full glass of water are very different. The "cushion" of unemployed people, according to economists, is very important for staving off runaway effects that drive bad macroeconomic dynamics.

100% employment is impossible to achieve since it means eg there are no full-time students and nobody on maternity leave, so it's not a problem.

This thing you were advocating for is not actually the thing you were advocating for? I find this argument specious at best.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#237

Post by adastra22 »

badpun wrote: post #186
adastra22 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need to do any of that when you’re on top, either as an entrepreneur or head scientist with tenure.

By definiton, there's very few people on top. Way fewer than people attempting to climb there.

Not really. There's a long tail of self-employed people in various capacities, who are happy with the freedom that comes with being a contractor, sole proprietor, or fiscally responsible low expense individual. The petit bourgeoisie were a thing long before tech startups.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#238

Post by manjalyc »

Look I get it, he’s passionate and loves what he does. But there’s something about not even taking a day to step back on your 100th birthday that just doesn’t sit right with me.

Although from the sentiment in this thread I guess that makes me the minority. I’m also not a Nobel laureate, to each their own I guess.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#239

Post by mint2 »

Perhaps controversial, but after 65-70 continuing working is fine but the type and focus of work should change because if not, the work will be at the expense and harm of the next generation.

After a certain point the focus should no longer be on doing work first hand, but should be working to help, mentor and advise others to provide them a path instead of occupying the top.

Fostering the next generations should be the goal, not occupying career space until the grave.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#240

Post by MichaelZuo »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #231
MichaelZuo wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is almost always due to a couple trying to settle in a neighbourhood or school district or home beyond their means, at least in the US. Even a tenured professor at Columbia, who won the Nobel prize and loves their work and has a wife earning a matching compensation, would have a pretty miserable life if they insisted on mortgaging a large Upper East Side townhouse. It's the same in Palo Alto from what I've heard…

It appears that areas where ownership are within reach of single income families is shrinking rapidly.

Not according to the metrics I've seen. The total acreage of all desirable neighbourhoods in the US beyond the reasonable means of a couple with MANGA compensation is not even 1000 square miles.

Unless you know of some source?

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