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Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

david.newgas.net

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

#421

Post by irishcoffee »

cogman10 wrote: post #415
irishcoffee wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Occam’s razor is still a real thing.

> Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity It seems like occam's razor favors the official explanation of this being a natural mutation. We know that happens. Adding a government coverup with secret biological weapons testing and accidental lab leak on top of that is "multiplying entities". Particularly since the evidence of this theory is pretty scant.

International institute of virology. Doesn’t really sound like a secret.

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

#422

Post by N_Lens »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #224
N_Lens wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your faith in the criminal justice system amuses me.

Abuses happen. But they are the exception, not the rule. There's no need to be so cynical and mocking about it.

If a child rapist can become president with the support of the highest court in the country, and repeatedly abuse his position to indict his political enemies while enriching himself, truly all is well in the land of the free.

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

#423

Post by cogman10 »

irishcoffee wrote: post #421
cogman10 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity It seems like occam's razor favors the official explanation of this being a natural mutation. We know that happens. Adding a government coverup with secret biological weapons testing and accidental lab leak on top of that is "multiplying entities". Particularly since the evidence of this theory is pretty scant.

International institute of virology. Doesn’t really sound like a secret.

Do you also think the international agency for research of cancer is also the cause of the increase of cancer? It's in the name after all.

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

#424

Post by etc-hosts »

consensus1 wrote: post #417
fakedang wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that PG&E exists is a clear contradiction to your statement. In most countries, water, electricity, waste management and public transport are government controlled through and through, even if the government might sell shares to the public markets or induce competitive bidding. Except in dysfunctional countries of course.

It's the opposite of a contradiction. PG&E must have its pricing and capital expenditures approved by the government. It is a borderline government entity.

PG&E still exists to maximize returns for its investors.

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

#425

Post by irishcoffee »

cogman10 wrote: post #423
irishcoffee wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

International institute of virology. Doesn’t really sound like a secret.

Do you also think the international agency for research of cancer is also the cause of the increase of cancer? It's in the name after all.

Here’s a bar, it’s really low. You dug under it.

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

#426

Post by hyperadvanced »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #161
hyperadvanced wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normative determinism is the term for that

*Nominative Determinism. Named after John Nominative, who first proposed the effect.

My phone must have autocorrected. Ty and good joke :)

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

#427

Post by slyall »

pjc50 wrote: post #269
throwaway2037 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most large corporations treat these categories of employment as different budget line items with different rules and limitations: (1) full-time employees, (2) individual contractors, and (3) large contractor "body-shops" or outsourcing providers. Many times in my career, I have seen layoff a few from (1) then way over spend on (2) or (3). The mid-level manager who makes the decision gets to "claim" that expenses were…

Related to this, the massive advantage of AWS is that it allows staff to buy infrastructure without having to raise purchase orders. If you ask permission for spending, it's a very onerous and frustrating process. If you just deploy stuff and get billed for it, it's much easier! Even if that's more expensive than having your own cloud. Worse, if you have on-prem, you have to have staff . They might even be permanent.…

> massive overspend until someone notices and has to painstakingly go round checking what all your instances are for.

and when you reduce your companies AWS spend by 30% (which is usually easy) you get a good review/bonus/promotion. So not really much incentive to pay too much attention to cost until you can get recognition for doing so.

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

#428

Post by AngryData »

throwitaway222 wrote: post #381
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…

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.

Im perfectly fine with the government giving money to the people, not so much to existing businesses or organizations.

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

#429

Post by gottorf »

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 in the best interest of citizens rather than shareholders

The best interest of shareholders can at least be defined, because it's narrow in scope. What is in the best interests of citizens, especially in diverse countries where there is not a lot of things with overwhelmingly broad agreement?

> people tend to miss all the successful things governments fund, like science research

People also tend to miss opportunity cost in government funding (where else could that money have gone, with greater positive outcomes?) as well as alternative sources of funding (could research have been funded privately, especially with lesser tax burden?).

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

#430

Post by hollerith »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #341
rayiner wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: America got rich by being boring. America never went through periods of rapid GDP per capita growth like you see with China. Instead, it’s rich because it has grown at a consistent 2% almost continuously for 200 years, minus a couple of blips before/after the civil war and great depression: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/theres-one-thing-we-can-alway... Boring, high trust societies are conducive to risk tak…

I just showed above that "high trust societies are conductive to risk taking" is extremely wrong. Every high trust society on earth right now does the exact opposite. It's a lack of risk taking keeping Europe and even Singapore in a slump/relative slump. It's doubly that for Japan and Korea got lucky as hell with its control of the HBM memory industry but without that it'd also be fked for the same reason. You need L…

I'm guess you consider the US a low-trust society. I would disagree.
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