nirnira

Great, I look forward to the day when you read The Gulag Archipelago and a first-year economics textbook and realise that you're talking out your ass. Maybe throw in some Hayek while you're at it. Good luck!

It's been time for a while, unfortunately.

Sorry, you must have misread Belleruches' post. He asked for examples where this has worked.

Last I heard the UK was a depressed shithole with a stagnant economy. Hardly a glorious example of the success of such policies.

Liberty means allowing people to make their own decisions about how they live and use their resources, as long as they're not infringing on the liberty of others. It's a universal concept, not just tied to your vilification of wealthy conservative people.

Thanks for the nasty stereotype though.

Since when did "liberal" mean someone who supports coercive redistribution by states?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

Thanks for being one of the least insane and retarded people on this comment thread.

What?!? Suggesting people use their own money to support their own beliefs, rather than expecting the rest of society to pay up while they make no sacrifice?? Heretic!!

Yeah, and early vertebrate species in the Cambrian just swam around singing happy songs and smooching anemones all day while they enjoyed a universe free of those horrible constraints of energy and matter that nasty humans invented to oppress each other.

Get a fucking grip. Hunter gatherers lived in shitty conditions with unbelievably poor material wealth, and had no protections against disease, injury, starvation, attack by animals, attack by other humans, old age, death in childbirth, etc etc. Average lifespan was 20.

Blisterpeanutes: "People who support blind charity should put their money where their mouth if they think it's such a great idea."

Yourapostasy: "Hey great idea, even better why don't we give them all the money they give back so they don't actually have to make a sacrifice at all for their beliefs!"

If people can improve their economic performance so much with just a small cash grant then, why haven't businesses jumped in on this apparently incredible opportunity? Seems like a great chance for businesses to make some money in tandem with people reaching their potential.

Naturally it would be much better for businesses to do this than the government. Businesses have much higher motivations to use their money wisely (i.e. give the right amount to the right people and create the right incentives to ensure people are motivated to use the funds wisely, go bankrupt or get sued by investors if they spend poorly) than a government (which just gets to shrug or inflate the currency or embark on a fresh round of vilifying productive citizens).

Oh wait, don't we already have that? Bank loans or something, I don't know, lol.

Communism didn't work because they tried to micromanage every aspect of the economy.

No, sorry, you're completely wrong. Communism didn't work because it destroyed every incentive for industrious, honest labour, supplanting healthy competitive free-market economics with a landscape of scheming and parasitism as people scrambled to exploit one another.

Communism failed (and will fail every single time another stupid generation which hasn't even bothered to pay attention to the past implements its ideas again) because, under Communism, there is no economy.

Communism is a terrible, terrible idea. Just like all coercive redistribution, which, proportional to the degree of redistribution, destroys economic growth. It's no accident that, other than a handful of tight-knit low-population nation cum communities with large oil stakes, the number of socialist policies enacted by a legislature correlates directly with poor economic performance.

The tragedy is that populations suffering from the negative effects of these policies delude themselves into thinking that an expansion of the policies will fix their woes, rather than hard work and smart investment. It's a vicious circle.

A truly insane and stupid idea befitting an insane and stupid political culture.

And lo and behold! Embraced with open arms by the Hacker News community. What a surprise.

Because your comment was very stupid.

Who gets money and who doesn't?

Easy question. Nobody. Stop all government welfare and redistribution. Sever the dependence of unproductive citizens on the productive. Return to each citizen their natural right to freely distribute their resources. End all perverse incentives. And force each citizen to provide for themselves through the value they can offer to other freely-choosing citizens in consensual trade relationships, rather than through wielding populist political pressures to enforce coercive redistribution.

That feel when Hacker News became an echo-chamber for the YC schmoozerati.

100% correct form from the media team at Andreesen Horowitz... er, I mean Github.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_can't_fix_stupid

It's always been fashionable. The cause is a chronic deficit of genuine moral leadership across all strata of society.

If you look into them, common sense will tell you Greenpeace and the modern environment movement in general are full of shit. So you don't need to take the word of internet commenters on that one.

they should pay the rest of society royalties for all other value-adding modifications that were introduced in those same lifeforms since the dawn of agriculture.

What a stupid, facile thing to say. Should we call authors leeches and sue them for profiting from the common linguistic heritage of humanity?

Do you come on to Hacker News just to derail conversations with garbage like that?

You're confusing yourself, because there're two interpretations of the phrase "exacerbating resistance" in play here.

In your interpretation, any use of a product which results in increased resistance to that product "exacerbates resistance."

In his interpretation, he compares the use of Roundup + Roundup-ready crops to a non-Roundup situation, and notes that indeed in both situations products must be used which will result in increase resistance, but notes however that the former scenario does not increase resistance relative to the latter, and may in fact increase it less. So he finds that the problem of resistance is not "exacerbated."

It's similar to noting that people riding bicycles to work does not "exacerbate" road-use, even though roads are busier than they would be if the people riding bikes just stayed at home (which obviously they won't because they have to work.)

What's the best way to translate a meeting with one executive complaining about the behaviour of another executive into a meeting with both executives? Even if you schedule the meeting, aren't you admitting that you can be swayed by the influence of the first executive whispering in your ear?

Hint: the answer for both companies lies somewhere between 0 and 0%.

Thanks for contributing yet another well-reasoned, impartial analysis of modern society to Hacker news.

Jesus, get a grip. Stop embarrassing yourself.

They have the same kind of "success" the czar in Russia had - they were born into it.

Oh brother. Most of these people started out in life ahead of the average person, sure. But you know what, they all took what they started with in life and worked their asses off to build it into something even greater. I'm sure for every person on this list there's ten people who started with a silver spoon in their mouth, and through sloth and weakness blew everything. Some probably wound up on the streets.

And have you looked into the family histories of these successful people? How many of these families started off with members who had nothing, who worked hard and made it? Does it invalidate their original success that they were smart enough to build a family culture which preserved and built upon success? Oh, I suppose that's another thing we shouldn't bother trying to emulate.

But hey, let's not bother trying to build a representative sample base for our snide claims eh?

Bill Gates may have come from privilege, but then he built on that - he brought computing to the world, introduced untold economic efficiencies to every single industry on earth, and produced more economic growth arguably than any other single individual in the last century. Buffett again worked hard, made smart bets, took risks, and it paid off. Ellison you admit invalidates your hypothesis. Koch I'm not familiary with. The Waltons have obviously been working diligently because last I heard Walmart was a powerhouse that millions of Americans choose of their own free will to shop at every day.

Comparing Bill Gates and the others on this list to a blatantly parasitic ruling class extracting resources from the toil of slaves through a monopoly on state violence is just plain, unforgivable idiocy.

I would expect better from the audience of a website devoted to the idea that anyone who has a valuable idea and works hard can make something of themselves.

I read the whole article thanks. It was stupid and judgemental - eg criticising rich people for only supporting research into rich white people disease - woops, never mind Bill Gates!

"Balance of funding" is a cute euphemism though for "let's punish rich people for exercising their free choice, steal more of their money and give it to bureaucrats and congressmen in the White House to squabble over and divert into kickbacks for districts and lobbyists." Because everyone knows the government's track record of wise use of funds is so fantastic.

Their success is on the backs of people who do the real work.

Oh really? And when was the last time you attempted to do what these people do? Easy to judge sitting from an armchair, isn't it?

While you're at it, why don't you stop using any of the products that these people create? And stop using any of the products created by people using their products? Why don't you stop patronising for instance any business that uses Microsoft or Oracle software? Let's see how much choice that leaves you.

They are also on the backs of the American people who contribute significant amount of money through government sponsorship.

The American government decided to use public resources to fund research without attempting to monopolise the application of results. If you don't like the fact that people have created successful businesses and products with this, you should blame the government, not the people who took risks and brought the applications to market. You don't get to hold out your hand and ask for something back when you gave it away for free in the first place.

I will judge them sharply for profiting so handsomely from public investment.

Perhaps you should be judged too. After all, aren't you this very moment enjoying the internet? Isn't your enjoyment of it, its enrichment of your life (even potentially your dependence on it for your economic niche) a profit of your own? And how much have you decided to donate to the government as compensation for this profit from your use of the fruits of public research funding?

Profit has no space in "real" free markets.

I suggest you educate yourself in basic economics before making such stupid claims.

I truly, truly hate articles like this. The constant tone of judgement and scepticism. The underlying assumption that the rich don't deserve to spend their money however they want. Why can't you just celebrate success and encourage people to emulate the successful? Why can't you just say thank you that so many wealthy people choose to turn their fortunes towards so many philanthropic causes? Why do you have to have so much bile and resentment towards individuals choosing freely and harming no one?

Whatever happened to America being the land of the free? When did it turn into the land of cutting down tall poppies?

Funny, Microsoft seems to have figured out how to strike a middle ground.