Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

david.newgas.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 457 posts

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#391

Post by irishcoffee »

cogman10 wrote: post #359
kingleopold wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inside non capitalist places, those solutions dont even get to EXIST. Nobody even cares about nasty disease solution and funding. They don't get invented or they are not allowed for your use, by design. This is a very narrow view and what a word salad. Now tell me name of the great "Communist countries" that exist today and they are big and have lots of great things to pursue humankind and human lifespan. I will wait…

> Nobody even cares about nasty disease solution and funding. This is just silly. The US has such a large lead in research output because of direct government intervention and funding since about the 1950s. That is a big part of why up until the Trump admin the US has been a powerhouse in medicine. China is very likely going to be the next world leader in medicine. They've been investing heavily in biomedical researc…

> China is very likely going to be the next world leader in medicine. They've been investing heavily in biomedical research and they are sucking up all the talent that the US is defunding.

They sure have. They created a global pandemic! And convinced the world it was from bat shit. Incredible.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#392

Post by bboygravity »

RandyRanderson wrote: post #272

In Canada this is a huge scam. The government advertizes that it's funding incubators. Great, right? The money doesn't go to the start ups - it all goes to large tech companies like IBM, etc, because, obviously, IBM knows about innovation. The cover is that the government doesn't know tech so it will give money to trusted partners and they will choose who to give the money to because they've been doing such a great j…

Canadian fraud is on another level. When I worked for a Dutch company my boss forced me to take a sales pitch from some Canadian startup. They claimed to have some new magic wireless electricity technology using new unreleased quantum physics principles or whatever and had actually managed to get a significant contract from some part of the Canadian government (that was the only part of the pitch that was not a lie). The website was screaming scam with: crypto AI quantum compute, etc. The sales pitch was an actual live videocall where they just told us a bunch of lies straight to our face.

First and last time I ran into something so blatant. We didn't fall for it btw.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#393

Post by michaelt »

tsimionescu wrote: post #379
bluGill wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to take away from your point, but the revolving door is also good because the experts should be the ones who make the rules. There are too many details about every niche that smart non-experts will get wrong and so we need experts. Good luck reconciling these two conflicting points.

I don't think that's hard to reconcile - that only involves people in industry moving to government, which is far less problematic.

What happens after the job they were hired to do is complete?

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#395

Post by Jensson »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #390
throwitaway222 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments should really get out of it's free money crap everywhere. Only people that care should be giving out money so that they can look at their investments and make sure they want to keep spending.

Why can't we, like, hire good people to oversee this stuff? Pay them competitive wages. If they're corrupt, prosecute the corruption. I feel like these discussions always devolve from "a government is doing a thing badly" → "governments always do things badly" → "governments should stop doing things". But governments are basically the only party that can act in the best interest of citizens rather than shareholders.…

> But governments are basically the only party that can act with the well being of citizens, as opposed to shareholders, in mind.

Founders that hasn't gone public yet and sold out are the only ones. The government has already sold out to shareholders, at least in USA.

And no its not just "hire good people", its not just "raise wages". What happens if you raise wages is that the useless people get more money, since the ones who decide who to hire are still bad at hiring, so them raising wages without hiring better people is also a form of corruption.

In the end you need to do a deep cleanse to fix it, there are no easy fixes. Root out all plants from all interest groups, everyone that has been bribed via lobbyism money etc, in the entire government...

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#396

Post by bit-anarchist »

b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #383
bit-anarchist wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That presumes that it's their responsibility to hold them accountable or, at least, that the other option is free. Given that you haven't shown either of those, and the statements point to the contrary, it's fair to say they are not complicit.

or, at least, that the other option is free So morals only matter depending on how easy a decision is to make and how it won't affect you personally? This is coming back full circle to "has no morals".

> So morals only matter depending on how easy a decision is to make and how it won't affect you personally?

I see you cut the first part, only to follow with a "only" qualitative. That's not an honest nor moral thing to do. Specially given you still have to prove their moral obligations about the matter. Saying that they've chosen the risk minimizing option is a non sequitur.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#397

Post by nekusar »

irishcoffee wrote: post #391
cogman10 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody even cares about nasty disease solution and funding. This is just silly. The US has such a large lead in research output because of direct government intervention and funding since about the 1950s. That is a big part of why up until the Trump admin the US has been a powerhouse in medicine. China is very likely going to be the next world leader in medicine. They've been investing heavily in biomedical researc…

> China is very likely going to be the next world leader in medicine. They've been investing heavily in biomedical research and they are sucking up all the talent that the US is defunding. They sure have. They created a global pandemic! And convinced the world it was from bat shit. Incredible.

So you're one of those conspiratorial gain-of-function Wuhan infection wonks.

Good to know.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#398

Post by stackghost »

lazide wrote: post #178
stackghost wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes they do but often they quit because the work life balance is much better.

If you’re enlisted (or even commissioned in most cases), you quite literally don’t get to quit.

Depends on your terms of service and their expiry date. The google term you're looking for is "voluntary separation". Despite what you see in media, nothing in the military bureaucracy is iron-clad. People can and do leave all the time. Usually they keep you for 6 months and then you're off, sometimes without certain benefits depending on circumstances.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#399

Post by Jensson »

Nevermark wrote: post #313
Xirdus wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a lot of left win Europeans who promote planned economy without realising it. So there's that. I think a better way to look at it is people demanding the government to intervene whenever intervention is beneficial to them personally, while demanding the government leave things alone whenever intervention is detrimental to them personally. Which is just a long winded way to describe the basics of democracy - pe…

> people voting in their own interest. There are some people who care about policy, care about a generally healthy environment. Which has a strong self-interest aspect, as it should, but not narrow. Few people manage to vote for their own narrow interests in a reliable coherent way. Even the rich and powerful reliably foot gun themselves. I believe the vast majority, the vast majority of the time, reliably and enthus…

> People vote for brands.

Right, so the government should be based on brands rather than people. USA trying to make a people centric system still ended up into a brand centric republican vs democrat, just that now those brands changes dramatically every 4 years just people still vote for the brand even after it changes.

Its much more stable when you have stable political party brands like in multi party system, then a person voting for the same brand for 40 years will vote for roughly the same politics instead of it changing all the time.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#400

Post by iririririr »

wavemode wrote: post #305
patkai wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Behind many, but I sincerely hope not "every". A trivial counterexample is Warren Buffet: he simply saved and invested. Or consider inventors with patents.

Might as well save your breath. You're not going to convince HackerNews commenters that there is any human being on Earth with net worth over a certain threshold who is not evil. It's just too comfortable of a worldview for people to let go of.

and vice-versa.

everyone holds to the old blanket to help them sleep.

Post reply on HN