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nebulousthree

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It's the flip flopping of liberal investment in government and public services, followed by conservative slashing of those services, followed by a condemnation of government's ability to provide after having been slashed, followed by an open bidding war for private consultancies to take over the role of the slashed service at a supposedly lower cost (that overruns in the end anyway, just like the aforementioned government service did in the first place). Rinse and repeat as every generation of politician proposes the new thing (repackaged old thing) and can then pat themselves on the back about what a good job they did. The kickbacks must be nice too I suppose ;)

When you get on a plane do you think they fuel it to run out exactly at the moment the plane stops at its final destination, and not a drop more? Don't you think that they reserve fuel for emergencies?

Why shouldn't a business consider itself at 0 operating dollars but still have a full account for healthcare or equivalent severance?

This is some of the most disingenuous crap I've read in a while. Flip it on its head:

"If c-suite really only cares about $ spent on labor, they would accept the productivity outcome of their salary proposals to employees. But they don't. They want to get more productivity, just like the workers of [insert competing corp], while not changing or even reducing comp."

The reason your comment is disingenuous is that it assumes that the best place for this money to go is into c-suite/board pockets, and for some reason assumes that workers wouldn't take the couple extra grand the CEO pay split would give them. I challenge any CEO to put it up to a (non-binding, don't shit yourself) company-wide vote.

But let's disregard the salary split. It is an incredibly simple-minded way of approaching what to do with millions/year. Are all of you, who justify these ridiculous ratios, truly unable to think of ways to spend dozens of millions of dollars to improve all employees' qualities of life? Those who spend all this money on consultants to figure out how to squeeze an extra penny of profits can't figure out how to further optimize the health of the workforce instead?

Cue the comments about "no choice, fiduciary duty". Makes me sick.

U.S. v. Google 3 years ago

Do you see ads to play solitaire on a regular basis but "control yourself" to not play it? I also don't see ads for magazines like I see ads for cars, food, gambling, etc. The magazines themselves contain ads, sure, but I have to have the desire to read a magazine first in order for my attention to be hijacked by an ad within.

Allow me to spell it out: if IBM could guarantee themselves a maintenance or growth of market share in the short-term while simultaneously clamping down on licenses that are anything but closed-source, they would. iBM didn't buy redhat because they think it's doing things the "right way". They bought redhat because they thought they could make money with it.

In a way, students trust the aggregate of "authority checking" that the school and the professors go through in order to develop the curriculum. The school acts as the jeweller friend that vouches for the stories you're told. What happens when a school is known to tell tall tales? One might assume that the reputation of the school would take a hit. If you simply don't trust the school, then there's no reason to attend it.

You shouldn't trust any old certificate more than it looking shiny. But if a third party that you recognise and trust happens to recognise the jewelry or the jeweler themselves, and goes so far as to issue a certificate attesting to that, that becomes another piece of evidence to consider in your decision to purchase.

You go to a jewelry store to buy gold. The salesperson tells you that the piece you want is 18karat gold, and charges you accordingly.

How can you confirm the legitimacy of the 18k claim? Both 18k and 9k look just as shiny and golden to your untrained eye. You need a tool and the expertise to be able to tell, so you bring your jeweler friend along to vouch for it. No jeweler friend? Maybe the salesperson can convince you by showing you a certificate of authenticity from a source you recognize.

Now replace the gold with a LLM.

It's only in recent history that it became free to play. What you pay for now is a "verified" badge, so you can play with others who have bought the verified token, reducing the amount of low effort hackers you play competitively against.

Try to imagine yourself as a worker with little to no asset ownership. One day you decide voluntarily to cut yourself off from your job. You no longer are able to pay rent/mortgage, and you are on the streets. You're hungry but have no money. You think of the best place to get some money for food.. Maybe that rich neighborhood would be generous to you. You start panhandling, but 5 minutes into it, some local rent-a-cop starts harassing you to get off the sidewalk that's "reserved for the business in front of it". You refuse, stating that the sidewalk is public property. A few minutes later, the police come over and force you to relocate. Where to? You pick another spot, and the cycle repeats until you pick a spot far enough away from everyone. Still no food though.

Now you want to sleep.. need I continue?

In short, the violence is not in "letting someone starve". Most people aren't out there trying to starve themselves. The violence is in preventing someone from saving themselves. Being homeless/penniless is an eyesore for those that aren't. The actions taken to fix the eyesore are the source of violence. What happens to a panhandler if they refuse to comply with police's arbitrarily justified order to "relocate"?

Because not-for-profit at least guarantees that the primary incentive is..not profit. Especially not profit over the well-being of the consumer.

Now, does that mean that the primary incentive will be the well-being of the consumer? Time will tell, and only if this initiative even makes it through.

The system is a little more nuanced than that because there is a "private review" portion of reviewing where you send a final message to the host specifically about the things they can improve about the space they are renting. The review isn't posted publicly. The host can also send an equivalent review to the guest.

This presents a more honor-based opportunity to leave a review that doesn't risk reputation but still gets a message across. It's honor-based because the host and guests have little pressure to improve from the reviews they receive privately. You don't always need to publicly humiliate people if you have an experience that isn't 100% perfect.

Checks and balances are a perpetual game of cat and mouse. While yes, they do raise the barrier of entry, it doesn't account for nepotism or favouritism, which would be the equivalent of lifting the ribbon to let someone through. It can go so far as to make legitimate attempts at entry unreasonably difficult or downright impossible, making the paper publish only papers pushed through a rigged system that appears on the surface to be of value. It is only through time or by investigation that it is found that a paper reputation is increasingly fraudulent.

Capitalist philosophy is about maximizing profit and minimizing expenditures. One is led to believe that the end result is a flourishing competitive environment but, in reality, the best way to achieve the above is to collude with your "competitors". Better yet, create your own competition, and then "compete" against them.

They are advocating for self-worth to be intrinsic to oneself. The reason for this is the acknowledgement of at least 2 things: that every human is a victim of their starting circumstances, and the potential in every human being to alter their course in life. All the criminals you would be content to see disappear still were victims of the circumstances that led them there, and they all had potential to alter their course in life. You never know what stimulus life will offer you that can change everything for you. From a more utilitarian view, even criminals can possess very valuable skills that can be directed to constructive uses.

The pleasure of working out only becomes obvious after you've built the habit to do so. You'll know you've built the habit when it starts to feel bad when you don't work out on a day you're normally supposed to. It's pretty similar to a drug addiction.