561–570 of 765 posts
I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…
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>they lack the capital This is absolutely not true. In absolute numbers, the cost of starting a business is quite low, and workers have a lot of money, much more than their employers. And if workers collectively stop spending their salaries on unnecessary things, and instead organize a fund - on average, in 2 years they will have enough money to buy out the entire company they work for, or organize a comparable one.…
And no, you didn’t have to live in a mud hut for it. In fact, it was more affordable for the regular worker to build a house than it is now. Those houses were/are comparable to what you see in Germany today. Go check out the real estate market in Slovenia if you don’t believe me, look for houses built 1950-1990.
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> I made acquaintance to a city worker who, to her non-professional friends, is very proud that she takes home a salary for about two hours of work per day following up with contractors, then heading to the gym and making social plans. If she's able to do this without risk of being fired, she's absolutely succeeding according to the values of capitalism. The worker / employer dynamic under capitalism is: employers tr…
>she's absolutely succeeding according to the values of capitalism. It is not entirely clear why you call these the values of capitalism. These are universal human values that do not depend on the economic formation. If anything, capitalism makes people less cynical, simply because it is designed to function independently of such qualities in people. While in many other systems, cynicism, cruelty, unscrupulousness an…
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“ you will find that the GCD is always financial self-interest” I think most people want to have security and some predictability for their lives. One way to achieve this is by having money but there are other ways too. Reducing humans to purely economical beings who always want to maximize profit is a gross simplification that appeals to economists and bankers but it doesn’t reflect reality.
> reduce to purely economical I didn't. Please read the multiple qualifiers I added to that phrase. >> If you collect enough people, with sufficient heterogeneity, you will find that the GCD is always financial self-interest. What that means is that if you scale groups of people too much, the only common interest you'll find among _all_ of them will be financial self interest. Hence GCD - "greatest common divisor". O…
I honestly don't think this is true. Finances are a tool to get security and comfort in our society but it's still just a tool to achieve the real goal. I bet if we had viable UBI that gives people their basic needs, most people wouldn't worry about finances.
This is the entirely predictable and avoidable impact of hyperscale bureaucracy. Its not because people aren't paid enough (though, most aren't). Its because people in these systems aren't given enough agency. Humans crave authority, agency, and creativity. Here's something I implore tech business leaders to think about: If you believe AI to be the world-changing technology you say it will be: It follows that you mus…
You say bureaucracy, but what I think you mean is complexity. Bureaucracy is a type of complexity that occurs once systems become to big for a small well trained group of people to manage. AI/humans managing the system will work for a while, we'll be able to manage the current complexity better, but it won't last. We'll make even more complex systems that become unmanageable.
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> 1. People are embracing the fact that there is no possible objective direction for society I saw one on twitter the other day and was struck by it's take: "in the 1900s, it was common to dream of the 21st century. when was the last time you heard talk of a 22nd century? it's like we don't believe we're going to make it anymore, but to endure, we MUST dream of futures worth suffering for. please, dare dream of a 22n…
Mostly just sounds like everyone has depression.
Oh man, I gotta write a comment here. I'm gonna leave out a few details in case this guy or my tech lead/manager read HN. So, I am senior software engineer, got hired into this company. I was tasked by my manager/tech lead to work with another senior software engineer. Overtime I realized that this engineer did not have the proper background in this field. I asked him and I asked my tech lead, and confirmed he did no…
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There's no such thing as late stage capitalism. There's ebbs and flows, businesses that were formerly great (like newspapers), fade out and go out of business. New forms of media take their place, the cream rises to the top, the train keeps going.
In our case I think late stage capitalism is what we are calling the combination of extremely low interest rates, low tax rates on the super-rich, and a lack of antitrust enforcement. The rich get richer, the middle class gets gutted, and nobody is incentivized to care any more.
Citation needed. The current mortgage rate is 6.8% for 30 years.
> a lack of antitrust enforcement
Citation needed. Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple are all in court for antitrust cases.
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Boeing consistently went up for many decades prior to the MAX crisis. So did GE. Companies have life cycles. They grow until they become unable to function efficiently anymore, then they go down. It's not about prioritizing short term results.
>> GE [1]? Boeing [2] [3]? The stocks go up because management and shareholders pull forward the gains as financialization destroys the long term value of the enterprises. Works until it doesn't. > Boeing consistently went up for many decades prior to the MAX crisis. So did GE. The point is they could have probably kept going up if they hadn't done that. It's like how if you choose to eat your seed corn, you'll be fa…
Part of that is probably embedded in the environment. The market favors risk-taking. Everyone is dipping into their seed corn, hoping they can use the extra energy they have now to secure some new corn and cover for the surplus. Sometimes they can't, and they starve. More importantly though, anyone who didn't dip into their seed corn is no longer there - risking a bit gives you a competitive advantage over those who risk less.
This dynamics plays at multiple levels in large companies, and arguably is deeply embedded in the overall business culture.
It's not totally irrational either - "eating your seed corn" sounds stupid in isolation, but the calculus changes when every village around you is at war with you and everyone else, all while the whole region gets hammered by natural disasters. Saving the seed corn to survive the next year may end up killing you next week.
I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…
Then I get there and the doctor's never looked at the document I sent. No one even told him about it.
The customer service liason is "very sorry for the miscommunication and will be looking internally to see how this occurred!"