181–190 of 197 posts
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> The pay does increase slightly, but nowhere near proportionally to the value provided. Maybe it’s not as valuable as you think it is. If it was, people with means would pay more for it.
That's a flat out fairy tale.
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The data is readily available to make an informed decision. It’s the responsibility of the person getting in debt to do the research.
Except that can change within the 4-5 year lag time between entering school and graduating.
r1) Actors have normally distributed abilities r2) Actors are chosen randomly based on current winnings, the more you have won, the more you compete. r3) Winner of competition wins one point from the loser
You can find what I wrote about this at
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~arnold/research/80-20/
including the code. It's interesting!
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Maybe it should be a little more clear what is considered 'valuable', before people spend years of their life's efforts and a great deal of money on education.
The data is readily available to make an informed decision. It’s the responsibility of the person getting in debt to do the research.
In a meritocratic society, there is positive correlation between talent and success. But how steep should this relationship be? If the talent-success slope is very steep (i.e., a small talent difference causes a large capital gap), you might end up having a wide distribution of wealth (severe economic inequality). On the other hand, if the slope is quite flat (i.e., a big talent difference makes little difference in…
You assume the ability to gain capital has anything to do with the ability to invest well. A quick check of sports stars shows this is very far from the case. Talent is not universal, being a great Doctor has little to do with being a great painter or investor.
Some athletes may have that talent, and some not — enterprising and disciplined people are broadly effective in life while the merely gifted struggle to tie their own shoes in the morning.
Allocating capital to these latter people often does result in its destruction, as you point out. There is a social cost when capital ends up in the hands of people who can’t grow it.
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> The point is that whether you think our system is great or terrible, you can't change it by dictum. > "We'll just demand things change" is not a serious approach to anything. > ...neither of us would take someone seriously who showed up and said "We have to just write 'STOP CRASHING' at the top of each file". You're arguing (at great length) with straw men. (I think you feel like you're being reasonable, but having…
>You're arguing (at great length) with straw men. Here's the original comment I replied to: > That's a choice that society has made, through laws and institutions which benefit the wealthy -- such as treating corporations as people. It doesn't have to be that way. [from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619025 ] The implication I took away from this is that economic conditions are the direct result of "a choice…
This argument you have ascribed to me is beyond simplistic. It's economically illiterate. Cartoonish.
> You are correct that you've never said verbatim "the economy can be changed by dicta", but the implication I took from your post is that you believe it can, by, e.g., saying "corporations are no longer people" and expecting this to mean something.
This other argument which I am supposedly advancing is likewise, idiocy.
> That's not how substantive disagreements work -- it's how blind tribalism works.
> That doesn't portend equality, it portends fascism.
You were never having a substantive disagreement with me, but with some fictional fascist out to change the world through immoral means to achieve unrealistic goals for preposterous reasons.
Responding point-by-point to all the caricatures in those voluminous posts is a fool's game. I have faith that readers worth reaching will interpret the exchange correctly without needing me to straighten things out.
> I'm merely making the case that changing economies is not just a matter of issuing dicta and expecting everyone to willingly comply or conditions to magically shift (e.g., corporations are no longer people anymore, and therefore ... ???). That is a highly simplistic view.
That's all so obvious it doesn't need to be said.
Strip away all that, and the value judgment is what's left. It's commonly held and consequential -- so worth engaging.
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The data is readily available to make an informed decision. It’s the responsibility of the person getting in debt to do the research.
Forgive my ignorance - where is this data?
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Whatever rules in life get laid out, whether it's scoring soccer goals or everyone gets X amount of food per month, someone always becomes good at "optimizing" those rules. We are humans born with different abilities with different tastes and strive for different things. Equalizing the outcomes of all by artificially holding some back suppresses the very creative life force in each one of us, ends in misery and progr…
Talking about the extremes, I agree. Talking about defining sensible rules to allow a wider range of people to be successful than only those being a member of the local Golf Club, I disagree. There should be no question that we need rules, and at the same time there should be intense discussions - if not intellectual fights - about which rules we need and how to implement and enforce them.
But what does "successful" mean in practice?
E.g. If there are 100 software security companies, 50% of those are below average in performance (and will probably get chosen less).
Do we no longer choose let the consumers choose? All of these software companies should now receive a percentage of business, regardless of performance/trust/expertise?
Or should the top performing companies be disallowed the following year to market or do sales in order to give the underperforming companies a chance to catch up?
What is "sensible" and who decides?
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Then you're just not looking hard enough, or your moving your goalposts of what you count. You're also falling into the trap of believing that all children are planned. Pregnancy happens even if you take precautions to have safe sex, and in many parts of the country, a person's options for dealing with that are extremely limited.
So you think the majority of the people you are referring to, were using condoms and most of them failed? I think that is unlikely. If it is unlikely then it means the fact they have kids are a reflection of their decision making, self-control, etc. I don't believe all children are planned. Is it harder to get started in life with kids? Of course. When you choose a hard path life is harder. Not impossible, but harder…
Which is what you want to believe. You want to believe that it is these people's fault; that they did things wrong, and not that it was an accident that could easily have happened to you. That makes it much easier for you to sit in judgement over them, and for you to justify to yourself that you're better than them, and to deny assistance to them. After all, it was their own fault; they were the ones with poor self control. Why should they get any help?
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Saying "The market sets pricing" is admitting that it's arbitrary. "If we fully deregulated education I bet you’d see teacher’s salaries rise." I don't, not by a long shot. "it’s disingenuous to suggest demand and its impact on price is “arbitrary”." But that's not what I'm suggesting. Demand for teachers is pretty high. Pay has not risen to meet that demand, however. Demand for software engineers is also high, but o…
Supply and demand defining price is economics 101. If you’re going to propose an alternative reality, you’re going to have to provide some data to back it up.