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Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

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Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#281

Post by chiefalchemist »

> "The list of innovations we need is long: clean and cheap energy, better crops, interventions to help against the diseases that shorten and impair our lives. This, and much more besides, is needed to make progress against the big problems we face. But while the demand for innovation is large, its supply is limited."

Yes and no. What we need is better problem identification and more appropriate priorities.

For example, we don't need "better crops." We need to stop wasting so much of that we do have. Less waste means less wasted resources.

For example, less wasted food also means less chemicals and pesticides, which likely means less disease and medical issues.

If we solved for root problem (i.e., apply The Five Whys) we'd waste less time and resources solving for symptoms.

As for the supply of innovation being limit. IDK, I've heard that scarcity breeds innovation. So perhaps we are innovating, but in the wrong places, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#282

Post by ta1234567890 »

joyeuse6701 wrote: post #275
ta1234567890 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, millions might be an exaggeration, I was going off of numbers read elsewhere online. Here's a source that estimates total deaths, post-9/11 so far (by November 2018) at hundreds of thousands: https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/20... That doesn't take into account the previous war with Iraq. By the way, I never said US citizens. Do you think US citizens' lives are somehow more imp…

I'm limiting it to U.S. citizens (soldiers) because I can with some confidence say that U.S. policy at least can be traced as a cause of their death. No, I don't think US citizen's lives are more important defacto, but I don't see all lives as equal either, for the record. Oil/greed fit the leftist narrative, but I'm not convinced, and since you made the claim that it's about oil and greed, the onus is on you to prov…

> I suspect two planes crashing into a building might have something to do with it.

The first war with Iraq was pre-9/11, so nothing to do with two planes.

Now, about 9/11, what did Iraq or Afghanistan had to do with those planes? If anything, the US should have gone to war with Saudi Arabia, whose citizens piloted those planes.

So how do those planes justify going to war with two totally different countries, that potentially had nothing to do with 9/11? Or how do those planes justify going to war at all?

Has killing thousands more people somehow redeemed or justified the deaths of people during 9/11?

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#283

Post by bigred100 »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #132
eaenki wrote: post #9

Imo Education is overvalued, Capital is under appreciated, And, Because Capital is trapped into networks, that Capital is squandered among an infinite array of companies employing the talent and producing products that don’t make you, or the planet, better, healthier, smarter or happier. (Apple’s SJ era, Google until 2014~ and Tesla fit the useful smarter happier paradigma, and not many other) My solution is: take a…

I don't think just giving the money to whoever has a prototype is a good idea. Some culturally relevant projects aren't the sort of thing you can make a prototype of, but I like where you're going. I'd amend it like so: Once I've been a citizen long enough (i.e. paid enough taxes) I get to invoke my free year, which is a year where the government pays me enough to cover my bills and maybe a bit extra for projects and…

My personal opinion is that the average person is struggling not to die of obesity or become diabetic, not be massively in debt, take reasonably good care of their kids, attain a reasonable level of education, etc. So from this perspective nobody really cares about a computer programmer getting to do an interesting project for a year.

As for government funding for interesting projects, the way you get these is submitting research proposals to the NSF or something. Unfortunately I think it’s rare for them to give you money if you’re not a university professor or something.

As I understand it there are similar public and private grants for artists but you probably have to be pretty good already to get one.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#284

Post by thrower123 »

alchemism wrote: post #167
abakker wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question is: why did we install the protections(barriers) in the first place? I assume that a major component of that was as a reaction to the increasing complexity of modern life. Self sufficiency is fine, but it is difficult to take the consequences for many things knowingly. As such, we created, one at a time, experientially driven barriers designed to protect people from new, novel issues. I don’t think…

For the many regulations in American society, there is usually a dead body buried underneath, possibly many dead bodies, including those of women and children, etc. For each and every one, someone suffered terribly or died.

Unfortunately, many times, the dead body belonged to an idiot, whose foolishness won them a Darwin Award, and the legacy of inconveniencing millions of people.

We place too high a value on human life, and it's no wonder that we can't accomplish anything when a non-zero level of risk is unacceptable.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#285

Post by umeshunni »

mLuby wrote: post #233

Immigration isn't mentioned at all; that's shocking. Assuming talent seeks opportunity to express itself, places looking for success (=talent*opportunity) should to make it easy for talent to move there. For the US, let students who earn masters/doctorates at American schools stay.

As an immigrant in the US, I'm not surprised. The word immigration/immigrant has been subverted by the popular media in the US to refer mostly to "illegal immigrants escaping violent regimes" or some such fantasy. You'll rarely see a discussion of H1B visas or the length of the legal immigration queues discussed in the popular media.

The popular media in the US also violently opposes opportunity or skills-based immigration even though that's what the majority of the world does. The liberal fantasy of immigration is a variation of the white man's burden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden) where it is the US's role to save the oppressed and the downtrodden by welcoming them to the US. Allowing immigration to be determined by talent or education is "racist".

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#286

Post by hammock »

nitrogen wrote: post #234
JPKab wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Once I've been a citizen long enough (i.e. paid enough taxes) I get to invoke my free year, which is a year where the government pays me enough to cover my bills and maybe a bit extra for projects and stuff." I really wish people would stop saying "the government" in these scenarios. It's the taxpayers. Actual humans whose money is taken by force. Not saying it's a bad idea, just saying that we need to be thinking a…

The money is taken regardless, whether through higher prices on goods sold, higher interest rates on money borrowed, lower returns on investments, or higher taxes. The question is what will do the most good for the most people at the highest efficiency.

Is that the question? Is that written somewhere? Or is the question, what will lead me (elected representative) to achieve my personal ambitions of, for example, being re-elected or landing a high paying job in the private sector?

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#287

Post by hammock »

QualityReboot wrote: post #255
benjohnson wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an unspoken premise that this nation belongs to the government? If so, I would say that this nation belongs to the citizens instead.

Found the libertarian! I kid, but I think most people do have the view that the government really owns everything. In practice, control means ownership, so it's not an unreasonable view.

Who controls government?

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#288

Post by inimino »

southerndrift wrote: post #273
inimino wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a (rather heavy) weight, and only a unit "of money" by extension. A Homeric talent was a unit of weight, hence the half-talent " of gold " as a prize. A talent of silver would weigh the same but have less value. The Hebrew "talent" (kikar) was also a unit of weight. The later Latin talentum borrowed the existing weight measure and the Greek word τάλαντον and by the time of the parable of the talents, this word…

>The only thing we can say with confidence about these "goods" is that they were heavy, and not necessarily something you want... especially if they are to be repaid "with usury" at some future undisclosed time of reckoning, as in the story! But having talents, isn't that essence of being human? Having talents and using them? Who are we if we fear having talents?

Sure! But just because we don't fear something doesn't mean we necessarily want it. It's courageous to not be afraid of something you don't want.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#289

Post by cryptica »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #240
cryptica wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you prefer to pay 10 times or 100 times the amount to subsidize debt which drives the capital appreciation of stocks to benefit rich shareholders and executives who either sit around and do nothing, or worse: they use the money to create shitty companies which waste everyone's time and energy... Then when the companies finally go bankrupt after a decade everyone loses except the executives who are actually respons…

There is so much wrong with this post, I don't know where to begin. It scares me how quickly the US population is turning on entrepreneurs. Do you really believe starting a company is the easier route? Is it better to just complain and demand tax payers equalize all opportunities for non risk takers like yourself?

I'm pretty sure that I've taken more risks than most entrepreneurs. It's a mistake to assume that if someone is not financially successful, that they haven't taken risks. This kind of logic was never accurate and it's getting even less so over time.

There is a lot of talent and there are many really great projects which go unnoticed these days. Our entire economy is founded on hype and misinformation. It's no longer possible to compete based on merit; the only way to win is through cheating and deception (e.g. the focus is not on value creation for customers, it's all about social scheming). Maybe that is why people are increasingly turning on entrepreneurs.

Social schemes which allow entrepreneurs to make money don't add value to society, they take away value. The VC funnel, corporate acquisitions, IPOs, social media advertising, etc... All these schemes don't create any value and yet that's where most of society's money seems to be going.

I think the financial system has failed. TBH I still can't believe that cryptocurrencies are worth so much money after so many years. The ongoing success of Bitcoin is proof that fiat money and the entire economy is completely speculative.

In a proper functioning economy in which money has real value, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies wouldn't have been able to last a single year.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#290

Post by lazyasciiart »

umeshunni wrote: post #285
mLuby wrote: post #233

Immigration isn't mentioned at all; that's shocking. Assuming talent seeks opportunity to express itself, places looking for success (=talent*opportunity) should to make it easy for talent to move there. For the US, let students who earn masters/doctorates at American schools stay.

As an immigrant in the US, I'm not surprised. The word immigration/immigrant has been subverted by the popular media in the US to refer mostly to "illegal immigrants escaping violent regimes" or some such fantasy. You'll rarely see a discussion of H1B visas or the length of the legal immigration queues discussed in the popular media. The popular media in the US also violently opposes opportunity or skills-based immig…

As an immigrant in the US, I think your perception of the issue is driven more by your (probably pre-existing) existing attitudes on "liberals" than by the media in the US.
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