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Sacrificing everything for my dog. How I became a programmer

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Re: Sacrificing everything for my dog. How I became a programmer

#111

Post by flyinRyan »

cpursley wrote: post #102
flyinRyan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. If Libertarians ever got their paradise it would quickly devolve to exactly what you have now: a Corporatocracy.

The reason we have a corporatocracy now is due to the opposite of libertarianism: cronyism / crony-capitalism. When you have huge bureaucracy, you get a situation where corporations have to bribe (aka, lobby) for special rights, favors and bailouts. In a libertarian economy, a company would have to stand on it's ability to solve a marketplace demand. Are you against voluntary society?

>a company would have to stand on it's ability to solve a marketplace demand.

This is the libertarian hand waving I complain about.

As long as you have a group with guns, companies will be paying that group to use their guns to enforce the rights of those companies. That's the most rational thing for a company to do. You can't out-innovate your competitors forever, you can't undercut their price forever and you can't provide better quality forever. Doing any of these things is very hard work, can be very expensive and you will lose eventually. It's a safer approach, once you win in a market to use those winnings to buy government-created barriers to entry against you're biggest enemy: new competition.

>Are you against voluntary society?

No, I assume it's inevitable given a large enough timescale. I have simply read enough to know that such a society is incompatible with capitalism.

Re: Sacrificing everything for my dog. How I became a programmer

#112

Post by flyinRyan »

drrotmos wrote: post #107
flyinRyan wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Being in the EU has shown me the dangers of government meddling in the market. Oh ffs. What place has shown you the joys of a completely laissez faire market? I'd be interested to hear about it since no such thing actually exists at any reasonably large scale. It was tried in Chile once and failed so hard that Friedman's own "Chicago boys" had to back it off. >I'm more than willing to pay a decent amount money for e…

> Well, no actually. I'm not willing to spend a dollar on those services until I know those getting more value out of them (i.e. the rich) are paying their fair share. In reality, they'll probably be paying nothing so I will join them. Okay. That would be your right. Just don't start complaining once the underfunded justice system won't have the resources to handle burglaries in homes which cannot afford private secu…

I will complain because I wasn't paying because the rich weren't paying. What could my pennies do if they won't contribute? Seriously, this has to be the most naive nonsense I've ever read on HN.

Re: Sacrificing everything for my dog. How I became a programmer

#113

Post by ianstallings »

VladRussian2 wrote: post #13

> If you’ve ever owned a dog, you know just how intelligent they actually are (especially larger breeds) yes, some larger breeds rate higher on obedience scale, and we, humans, equate that to the intelligence in animals. There is another bias also is that large breeds are more frequently working breeds, thus a lot of specialized effort is invested into training them, and thus more of the obedience results achieved.

Because dogs simply will not sit down and take a written test. Unruly bastards.

Re: Sacrificing everything for my dog. How I became a programmer

#114

Post by cdjk »

cpursley wrote: post #86

Ping-pong tables, ha!! Part of the reason I won't take a higher paying job in an office environment is the satisfaction I get working from home and having my dog(s) by my side. Being able to step out of the house for fresh air and take them on a walk is worth it's weight in gold.

Or you could get a job where you can bring your dog to the office. That's what I do - he likes going to work more than I do, since he gets to see all of his friends at the office.

Re: Sacrificing everything for my dog. How I became a programmer

#115

Post by yummyfajitas »

michaelmior wrote: post #79
yummyfajitas wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A poor person should vote for issues that help them specifically and directly. Why? Your vote doesn't matter. The probability of your vote affecting the outcome is so small it can't be represented with a double precision floating point [1]. So why shouldn't the poor do the same thing everyone else does, namely vote for the guy who makes them feel good? (Incidentally, the idea that the poor vote R is statistical artif…

Perhaps individually your vote is unlikely to affect any particular outcome. But think about the consequences if every voter adopts this belief.

Why do you believe every voter has not already adopted this belief?

Political campaigns certainly behave as if they believe voters already do vote this way. That's why Bush is the regular guy who clears brush from his estate, for example, and why everyone who disagrees with Obama is racist.

Re: Sacrificing everything for my dog. How I became a programmer

#116

Post by yummyfajitas »

flyinRyan wrote: post #66
drrotmos wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. In my mind, the only way to vote is to vote your conscience, not what happens to give me the greatest personal gain. "The God Delusion" by Dawkins includes a great (and somewhat Rawlsian) rule, 'Always devise your rules as if you didn't know whether you were going be at the top or the bottom of the pecking order.' E.g., as a libertarian, I consider taxes to be unethical regardless of whether I ga…

>In my mind, the only way to vote is to vote your conscience, not what happens to give me the greatest personal gain. Then you should abstain from voting in the present US system because that's not how it works nor how it was designed to work. It's a combative system where compromise is achieved by basically averaging the desires of the interested parties. > 'Always devise your rules as if you didn't know whether you…

If you give a billionaire a tax break he is likely to invest in things that make people like myself happy. Examples include SpaceX, Netflix, Facebook or whatever.

If the government instead keeps taxes high, the money will simply pay people not to work. We are all poorer as a result.

Re: Sacrificing everything for my dog. How I became a programmer

#117

Post by michaelmior »

michaelmior wrote: post #79
yummyfajitas wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A poor person should vote for issues that help them specifically and directly. Why? Your vote doesn't matter. The probability of your vote affecting the outcome is so small it can't be represented with a double precision floating point [1]. So why shouldn't the poor do the same thing everyone else does, namely vote for the guy who makes them feel good? (Incidentally, the idea that the poor vote R is statistical artif…

Perhaps individually your vote is unlikely to affect any particular outcome. But think about the consequences if every voter adopts this belief.

I am admittedly an idealist. But theoretically speaking, this sort of behaviour seems highly suboptimal.

Re: Sacrificing everything for my dog. How I became a programmer

#118

Post by Falling3 »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #116
flyinRyan wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In my mind, the only way to vote is to vote your conscience, not what happens to give me the greatest personal gain. Then you should abstain from voting in the present US system because that's not how it works nor how it was designed to work. It's a combative system where compromise is achieved by basically averaging the desires of the interested parties. > 'Always devise your rules as if you didn't know whether you…

If you give a billionaire a tax break he is likely to invest in things that make people like myself happy. Examples include SpaceX, Netflix, Facebook or whatever. If the government instead keeps taxes high, the money will simply pay people not to work. We are all poorer as a result.

>If you give a billionaire a tax break he is likely to invest in things that make people like myself happy.

People often make this claim and similar claims - ie tax cuts for the rich create jobs and growth. These are empirical claims; you need evidence for them. I don't know about you, but I can't imagine being a billionaire and not deciding to invest in cool stuff because my tax rate went up 5 or 10 percentage points.

http://www.businessinsider.com/study-tax-cuts-dont-lead-to-g...

Re: Sacrificing everything for my dog. How I became a programmer

#119

Post by ebiester »

Heliosmaster wrote: post #39
seldo wrote: post #10

Remember kids, if you work hard, sacrifice, and have parents with a spare house in Tahoe they can lend you rent-free indefinitely, you too can make it as a programmer.

I can't understand the general hostility toward getting (financial) help from your parents or living with them until you are financially independent, even after 18/25/30. I know I am biased as an italian (and pretty much adhere to the true stereotype) but I can't find anything wrong from getting help from the people that brought you in this world and which probably love you more than anyone else on the planet (and th…

To me, I think of it as this: it's great that the author was able to get help like this. What about people who have poor parents? Or worse, abusive parents or no parents at all? I know, "life is unfair," but what if we, as a society, can do better?

Re: Sacrificing everything for my dog. How I became a programmer

#120

Post by mehmehshoe »

As someone who lived in South Lake many years ago, I do get the Tallac reference. In the spring of 90 I hiked that mountain (started at 2am and reached the top at 9am)and snowboarded down the "cross". That day is one if my best memories. Thank you for the reminder=)

http://www.summitpost.org/mount-tallac/150430

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