Live data from Hacker News

Dear Marc Andreessen

al3x.net

51–60 of 194 posts

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

Right, the fallacy of the excluded middle is a particular kind of argument to moderation. EDIT: nope, I mis-remembered argument to moderation. Sigh.

Wrong. They are opposites.

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#52
post #28

> Well, we’re three decades into an era of systemic deregulation and financialization. The result? Not really, finance and banking are still the most regulated sectors on earth. Hardly deregularized.

In the US they are effectively deregulated in close to every way the actors care about (aka regulatory capture). Additionally, enforcement of the few regulations that exist is close to nonexistent. Edit: downvotes, so here's some references: On Regulatory Capture: a growing number of respected commentators now argue that regulatory capture of public agencies and public policy by leading banks was one of the main caus…

I cannot find any hard data on the very long term trend of numbers of SEC enforcement actions, but they seem to be on the rise in the long term, though they have fluctuated greatly. From the books I've read and interviews I've heard, it seems that the opposite is true; financial sector prosecutions have become so common that it is now regarded as a 'cost of doing business' more than a stain on one's reputation.

edit: the comment I responded to has been edited, and I have not yet had time to review the new citations

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the fallacy of the excluded middle is a particular kind of argument to moderation. EDIT: nope, I mis-remembered argument to moderation. Sigh.

Wrong. They are opposites.

You are absolutely, 100% correct. Whoah. My bad.

That's what I get for trying to be snarky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#54

I'm with Alex generally, but disagree with this sentence: "We could make the choice to pay for universal health care, higher education, and a basic income tomorrow" In the last sixty years, a tremendous amount of money has been poured into education. Much money has been allocated to increase college enrollment. But, IMO, for the vast majority of people, college education is a luxury social club. Spending more money o…

In the last sixty years, a tremendous amount of money has been poured into education

I wrote about adjacent issues in "Why can’t we solve poverty, or solve it through schools?", which got started in emails and Hacker News comments on the issue (http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2014/05/17/why-cant-we-solve-p...).

In addition, and as I discuss in the post, right now we can't "solve" poverty because poverty is a moving metric, usually defined as a percentage of income, rather than as an absolute value.

Thanks for your comment.

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#55

> Taxi drivers protesting Uber aren’t saying that they want apps out of their cabs. Of course they aren't saying that, it would be political suicide to say it. But given the stubborn resistance to even using the credit card readers forced on them by utility commissions, do people really think that cabbies are aching to have apps between them and their customers that would thwart their ability to skip inconvenient far…

Relevant, if anecdotal: http://www.quora.com/New-York-City/Why-do-NYC-cab-drivers-ha...

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#56
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think pmarca is different than {anybody with lots of money and are human being with desires}

He's fundamentally a nerd, and optimistic about humanity. That's enough to be better than 95% of people in power.

[deleted]

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#57
post #5

Very nice to see pmarca's neoliberal idiocy taken apart so thoroughly. Peter Thiel could do with similar treatment imho.

He didn't take anything apart. He's just another leftist that has a hard time comprehending that some people have differently ideological views that his own.

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#58

I'm with Alex generally, but disagree with this sentence: "We could make the choice to pay for universal health care, higher education, and a basic income tomorrow" In the last sixty years, a tremendous amount of money has been poured into education. Much money has been allocated to increase college enrollment. But, IMO, for the vast majority of people, college education is a luxury social club. Spending more money o…

Spending more money on college is just a wealth transfer from tax payers to upper middle class teachers and administrators.

This is the case in the United States. In several places in Europe, however, it is a different story. Higher education is cheap or even free and schools are not bloated with a glut of unnecessary bureaucrats and administrators.

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#59
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So things we disagree with now can just be labelled as idiocy? And no matter how much you and other statists hate neoliberalism and how it's taken over the world, thing is the world has never been so rich, so peaceful and people have never lived so long and so healthy in the whole history of humanity. So, if neoliberalism is having a bad effect on the world, I wonder what it would do if it had a good effect. I would…

Neoliberalism (of the Milton Friedman kind) hasn't taken over the world. It gained traction in the mid 70's, peaked in the 00's and is now, thankfully, slipping back from its extreme heights. Also, pmarca's particular interpretation of neoliberalism is what I was referring to as idiotic, not the broader concept as a whole (which I think is also very flawed but can at least respect). Let's not confuse well regulated f…

Neoliberalism (of the Milton Friedman kind) hasn't taken over the world. It gained traction in the mid 70's, peaked in the 00's and is now, thankfully, slipping back from its extreme heights.

Slipping back to what - the horrors of statism that we saw in the 20th century?

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#60

I'm with Alex generally, but disagree with this sentence: "We could make the choice to pay for universal health care, higher education, and a basic income tomorrow" In the last sixty years, a tremendous amount of money has been poured into education. Much money has been allocated to increase college enrollment. But, IMO, for the vast majority of people, college education is a luxury social club. Spending more money o…

Ok, but those who just do not want to be assigned a productive task, what would you do with them?
Post reply on HN