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Are we the baddies?

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Re: Are we the baddies?

#351

Post by carlosjobim »

cedws wrote: post #305
carlosjobim wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in your 20s you should change your life so that you live a lifestyle with easy social connections and ways to find partners. Being alone too much in your age will give you permanent mental damage. So change careers, change city, change country, change whatever is needed so that you can have a decent life.

What do you mean by the permanent damage part? I actually go out a lot, and moved across the world to Tokyo four months ago. The problem is not meeting people. I can make surface level connections every day of the week. The problem is finding people who want to stick around.

If it's only been four months, then you don't have to worry. To make deeper than surface level connections, find a group activity and show up repeatedly (this can be work or school as well). But perhaps the Japanese aren't too interested in making friends with foreigners? The part about moving I mentioned is also about moving to a place where people are more sociable, I don't know if Tokyo is it.

Permanent mental damage is rather from years spent in loneliness, or lovelessness, or poverty, or any other kind of unsustainable personal situation.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#352

Post by andrewflnr »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #159
tossandthrow wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make you comfortable while you exist I don't think there are many proponents of that type of ubi. The way, at least I, see ubi is absolute subsistence - with a right to earn above that without affecting your subsistence. IMHO something along UBI is needed for a democratized market economy - and I think the Scandinavian countries are the support for this claim.

> I don't think there are many proponents of that type of ubi. Another good sign of a difficult policy to implement successfully/an idea that isn't ready for primetime. If everyone has different ideas of what the thing is, it's very hard to make good decisions, and easy for the "wrong" UBI to sneak in. Other commenters have already made this point, but there are other ways to guarantee "subsistence". I think the hard…

> Another good sign of a difficult policy to implement successfully/an idea that isn't ready for primetime. If everyone has different ideas of what the thing is, it's very hard to make good decisions, and easy for the "wrong" UBI to sneak in.

This is not a reasonable bar for a policy being "ready for primetime". Some version of this is true for practically all policy proposals. The details will always matter, it will always be possible to get details wrong in critical ways, and people will (likely) always disagree on what those are.

It's very funny that you snub UBI in favor of "wealth distribution mechanisms". What do you think UBI is?

Re: Are we the baddies?

#353

Post by bko »

jen20 wrote: post #285
Y-bar wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the time before Uber arrived here, where ”here” obviously is not USA. I don’t mind the old ways. Taxis had apps before Uber arrived here, they had geolocation with ETA, contactless payment, up-front pricing, and never refused service (because they were required by law to offer service to anyone anywhere). The problem probably never was incumbent taxis, it was how they were regulated (or not).

Taxis in the US are one of the most regulated services around, and they were still utterly atrocious. Sure, they’re mandated to not refuse service, but you try getting picked up in Manhattan with a suitcase mid afternoon (when it’s obvious you’ll be taking the fixed fare to JFK in heavy traffic). To this day, the meter being “broken” is a tactic used in taxi strongholds like Las Vegas, even with this regulation. The…

> Taxis in the US are one of the most regulated services around, and they were still utterly atrocious.

Maybe the fact that they were the most regulated services around was exactly why they were atrocious. Regulation often erects barriers to competition. It's impossible for a regulatory body to spell out every way in which a company can be exploitive and disallow it. The only thing that prevents bad behavior is meaningful competition.

It was this regulatory body that limited the number of cabs that could be on the road at any given time and set "fair" meter pricing. What resulted was that if you lived in a poor isolated neighborhood, there would be no cabs willing to take you there or driving around to pick you up. Uber solved this pretty much overnight.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#354

Post by Ray20 »

boudin wrote: post #172
xoralkindi wrote: post #94

> Someday, people will have to realize we live in a society. What will it take? Anarchism, socialism and communism can work perfect in a small village where everyone knows and trusts each other. But if you scale it up it does not work well because people can be corrupt. If you want to scale up to a Geo Global level that is trust-less the best way we know is to use Capitalism, but Capitalism ends up becoming more and…

What are the benefits of capitalism?

With it, you don't have to die from hunger. Not much, but compared to the alternatives, it is one of the strongest arguments in favor of capitalism.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#355

Post by greyface- »

mhb wrote: post #346
georgehotz wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not price discrimination, like hardcover vs paperback if you have two versions of something and people can choose which they want. That's totally fine and actually something that makes capitalism great. The rich usually end up covering more of the costs here cause they are less price sensitive, like business vs economy on airplanes. Price discrimination is when two people visit a site to buy a book, the algori…

Yours is an overly narrow version of price discrimination in which the discrimination is extended to the customer level. If that's what OP meant he should use a less ambiguous description.

The comment you replied to is OP clarifying his description.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#356

Post by sensanaty »

jasode wrote: post #185
surgical_fire wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For some people, paying the premium to jump the queue is the point. What they didn't forsee is what happens when everyone has wound up paying the premium, and the queue is now with you again There's a freedom that comes with not caring and just accepting I am last in the line. I don't pay the premium and I can sit and relax in the lobby while the sheep that paid wait in line. Only when the queue is nearly depleted…

>while the sheep that paid wait in line. The supposed "sheep" that want to get on the plane first are people that want to get that precious overhead bin space to avoid checking a carry-on bag at the gate. Boarding last means there's no more bin space and the gate agent will put the bag in the belly of the plane. This adds extra hassles of waiting an extra 30+ minutes at the arrival terminal to wait for the bag on the…

Maybe it's different in the US, but I fly constantly and have ever since I was a kid, and overhead storage space has never been an issue in my experience. At worst you'll have to put your bag a few seats away from your seat, but even then I usually travel with a pretty big duffle bag and have never had issues

Re: Are we the baddies?

#357

Post by lazystar »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #331
rr808 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My fellow Australians all feel a bit shit about the introduction of tipping in paywave and food service. That's unaustralian. We have legally enforced minimum wages and penalty rates. Turn that feature off. I think non-Americans need to take a stand against this. Refuse all tipping. Its a slippery slope - I know these guys are underpaid but if you start tipping the wages will just drop and we're all worse off.

Here is the core problem laid out: 1.) Owner needs workers and wants to make the position attractive. 2.) Owner is given the option to enable tips, and entice works with "Pay, plus tips!" 3.) Owner doesn't pay tips, patrons do. 4.) Workers blame patrons, not owner, for not tipping. 5.) Patrons feel guilty and tip. Workers make pretty good money from this, and enjoy the job more. In a way it's kind of like a social mi…

as someone who survived on tips for 2 1/2 years while studying comp sci, you're missing one key detail.

tips introduce a situation where harder/faster-paced workers get a higher pay per hour than workers with average productivity. a pizza driver that optimizes their routes and memorizes stop light patterns in their delivery zone will get more deliveries per hour than that of a new hire. so even though they work the same number of hours, the higher skilled driver earns more because they get more tips.

this "work harder => more pay" incentive is pretty unique in the industry; in manual labor jobs where each day has a set limit on the amount of work that can be completed, like grocery merchandising, workers that work harder get paid less than average workers. stock incentives are the closest comparison, but it's too far removed from the individual worker's output when the company's size grows above 100 employees.

the point is, part of the problem is the lack of other incentives that reward the hardest/best skilled workers.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#358

Post by Ray20 »

nlitened wrote: post #82
vasco wrote: post #67

Nothing will make a nerd a communist faster than getting a taste of real life on dating apps.

How would communism help with that? Make women common property?

No. It's just that the teachings of totalitarian sects are especially effective against narrow-minded, disillusioned people. The solutions they propose are not supposed to be effective or even realistic.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#359

Post by Ray20 »

nlitened wrote: post #261
vasco wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It helps if you read the post to understand. He was bummed people pay for boosts.

Yeah, so how does communism solve the situation when attention of women is limited and needs to be competed for? Does every man get an equal 3-second slice of attention from each girl on communist dating apps?

Attractive women are not such a rare resource. There is no particular problem in collecting it and distributing it fairly. One attractive woman can satisfy tens of thousands of men during the period of her attractiveness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_of_water_theory

Re: Are we the baddies?

#360

Post by mortsnort »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #74

> If you open a government S&P 500 account for everyone with $1,000 at birth that’ll pay their social security cause it like…goes up…wait who’s creating this value again? This is a good point. Some VCs were major proponents of this (and tons of other business people I'm sure), but this is of course just a guaranteed inflow into the largest companies and the companies that think they will be large some day. Yet anothe…

S&P 500 companies don't get any inflow of cash when their stock is purchased
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