RestlessMind

The point is that a crowd doesn't always have a right answer... popular opinion can be wrong

By that logic, all the laws, regulations and norms would possibly be meaningless. So if we were to ignore those, we all would descend into anarchy.

A morality by plurality is arbitrary and non-universal

In fact, a majority of popular support is a necessary (may not be sufficient) condition for morality of a society. Something is not considered moral if it is not supported by most of the members.

society A vs society B

irrelevant. Morality based laws in a society generally consider morality only of that society. That's why we have the notion of sovereignty.

What criteria would allow for someone to "deserve" death?

As a framework - death penalty should be legalized when a majority members of the society support that as a punishment.

When applying that framework - it should be applied for the cases beyond any reasonable doubt.

Once you agree on these principles, all other details can be easily negotiated.

move to a cheaper city or country for retirement if your house goes up in price

What kind of life experience would lead to such a conclusion? It's almost like you have no idea what a community is - with one's friends, neighbors, familiar shops, clubs, church etc. Money is not everything in life. Any policy which forces people in their late 60's to uproot and go somewhere else to rebuild their lives is bound to face a very angry backlash. A mindset like yours is why we got prop 13 here in California.

"If you can't tell the difference, does it matter?" - Westworld

those will fail upwards to other cushy roles

I see this trope often. Citation needed!

If the board is unable to bring their house in order, the state should fire them, not let their incompetence ruin the lives of the working class.

Oh no please! Last thing I want is letting Donald Trump (or AOC if you are a right-winger) decide which board to fire based on their whims about a company.

I disagree with the assessment of that being a good thing.

What you are suggesting is much worse.

Management is also fired in this instance. What you are probably suggesting is that management should have been fired sooner and replaced with competent ones. That is the job of the board, who is the proxy for shareholders. Since the board didn't do its job properly, their shares are also going to zero.

Again, working as intended. There should be no free lunch or bailouts for incompetent work.

if it's working as intended

It doesn't seem to be working as intended. Look at the reports published by European leaders, like Draghi for instance.

affirmative action being destroyed by the Trump administration.

Affirmative action was gutted by SCOTUS when Biden was president. Not that it was popular before. California of all places rejected it by 56-44 margin in 2020.

https://archive.is/PPhqe

(non-chinese) asian equivalent of whatsapp is still whatsapp, it completely dominates in some of the biggest asian countries like india, indonesia or pakistan along with a bunch of other smaller places

https://archive.is/nGEKn

Reality doesn't match your claim, for example when one looks at European countries who have all of that.

TIL about karoshi, or “death from overwork”. With that kind of culture, no wonder Japanese population is in decline. Why have kids if you are expected to work 12, 14, 16 hours a day? Who is going to nurture those kids?

But most of the people live in countries with death penalties. All the top 6 countries by population have death penalty and only 4 out of biggest 17 countries do not have death penalty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country#...

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

Mid-2000's were the pinnacle of the Western power in general and the American power in particular. First Iraq war, then the GFC punctured the halo from the 90's.

After that, the soil was fertile for the rise of populism. Bungled post-GFC recovery, algorithmic manipulations from social media, unmitigated immigration, COVID and its aftermath just fueled the fire further.

but as a builder you can do it yourself

One who can both build and sell is indeed a rare specimen (unicorn?). I know many builders and less than 10% of them can sell.

A lot of people complain about American FPTP system. But it seems that the French system, with a final round of top 2 in case no one gets clear majority, isn't any better. I am also familiar with the Indian system which gives rise to coalition politics which has its own problems.

by providing a non-essential service like salesmen...

Sorry to break this to you but if you think Sales is non-essential, you don't know anything about startups.

but look what is happening

As of now, a federal court has ruled 7-4 against it. Proves the GP point

The difference is that people are protesting against ICE, writing op-eds openly across various forms of media and a prominent governor is trolling Federal govt's actions in public.

Good luck trying to do any of that in China. US and other democratic societies may have warts, but there is a huge gap between those systems and China.

as long as your grass is not too tall or your house has approved color by HOA apparatchiks.

Freedom of speech, and overall first amendment, is about freedom from government restrictions. Doesn't apply to private organizations modulo some cases like civil rights.

Or as long as you are not burning a US flag in USA, which will land you in prison.

Facts speak otherwise - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._Johnson

And I dare you use words "Mexican Gulf", then your glorious leader will personally ban you from entering White House.

Glorious leader can ban you from entering White House for whatever reason he deems fit. It is his residence and his office. Nothing to do with free speech. I can organize a protest outside White House and he can't do anything as long as it's a peaceful protest (again, right granted by 1A).

Please research your facts next time.

Why doesn't Europe embrace AC, which is widely adopted in the US? After all, there were "only" 1714 deaths in the US in 2022 due to heat related causes per https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-die-from-extre...

Me and 80% of the people on the plane can’t stand the selfishness

neither can I. But most of the people also understand that when a kid is crying, it is not out of parents' selfishness but rather helplessness.

But if there were an airline that charged double for rejecting kids under the “shut up” age, I’d pay double for my seat and I bet I’m not alone.

The fact that no parent wants their child to keep crying is something that eludes you means you have very little social skills and you are amongst a tiny minority. If any airline ever proposes something like that, the backlash will be swift and massive.

EDIT: aha found this through your comment history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38205960

"Children irritate me and I want to block them out to the maximum degree that I am able" - I'll pray for you.

Sometimes you simply cannot control a screaming child easily and the only way is to let them be for a while. If you don't understand it, you are really immature and need to learn some basics about human society.

It doesn't have to be either-or. I think there are a bunch of factors all contributing to the current state of developer job market:

1. Rise of remote work: sure, it was there in some form. But prior to 2020, state of the remote work tools was abysmal. The prevalent culture was also about hiring the whole teams. After covid, remote work tools are far better. And companies learned to onboard one new remote hire at a time which over time is now allowing them to replace US workers with cheap overseas ones at a manageable pace.

2. end of cheap money - if the risk free rate is 4-5%, the demand from risky ventures like software startups is going to go up. So funding has dried up at the margins.

3. rise in the discount rate - related to the previous point, the discount rate one applies to investments have gone up. That means startups valued at 1B are now valued only at a few hundred millions. So to avoid down or flat rounds, startups have to cut costs drastically and show profitability to justify a higher valuation. Cue all the job cuts, belt tightening and death marches with a skeleton crew.

4. rise of AI - AI is helping with productivity of coding and non-coding tasks. It is also acting as an excuse for #3 when laying people off.

In my experience, all these are meaningful factors for the abysmal state of the developer market.

But today's technology has made being there in person superfluous and inefficient.

Hard disagree. Lots of otherwise talented people still have problems with written communication or other norms of remote work. They thrive in an office though.

Mere proof of that is a lot of startups which are still flocking to SF and mandating in-person presence 5 (or 7) days a week so that they can move fast.

I can understand your sentiment in the first two paragraphs, even though I think remote work was bound to fail for most of the companies simply because it is hard to update the culture. Broadcom mandated in-office work even during COVID as soon as the strictest lockdowns were lifted. And yet Broadcom stock is up 5x since 2022, so they are not missing out on anything by embracing the office. Same with Meta (mandated RTO, stock up 7x).

the West, which has already lost so much, will lose what little remains

The West already advanced a lot until 2020 by working from office. If anything, fully remote conditions are a death knell for software jobs in the rich parts of the world. Most of the SW jobs do not require special talent and can be done for a fraction of the cost from Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa or India.

and I see firsthand the way these people just waste time walking around with a coffee-cup shooting the breeze, or sitting in half-day meetings.

This point is a bit naive or misguided. Slackers are to be found in a fully remote setup as well. Also, hustlers like Soham Parekh or North Koreans impersonators are only possible in a fully remote setup.

Ireland has been specifically called out and excluded in TFA due to its unique tax situation.

The latter is basically stuff that is either cheap or free in certain places

Healthcare is absolutely not free anywhere. It maybe that the costs are indirect via government taxation and benefits are curtailed via rationing or simply unavailability of certain types of care.