edit: well, I'm out. I realized that on HN, after you go against the main liberal narrative enough, all of your comments are down voted by bots from then on...even when you are trying to have a conversation with adults.
edit: well, I'm out. I realized that on HN, after you go against the main liberal narrative enough, all of your comments are down voted by bots from then on...even when you are trying to have a conversation with adults.
We have bred a culture of anger and jealousy toward anyone with money. The mainstream media is responsible for this as much as many of the politicians that don't believe a person should be able to obtain any sort of wealth.
It's no surprise that the wealthy don't really want to socialize with people that have less money.
The music industry is so large, nobody will be able to defeat them or their pack of lawyers in court. Napster was supposed to be a revolution, but all it did was put all of the indy artists out of business and create the environment we have now where music is virtually worthless and the only way to make a living as an artist is to sign with a big company and tour.
Music sharing took away all of the power we had to defeat the music industry. You need big money to make big changes, and now it's way too late.
The only real way to change the music industry is to start your own label, get the rights to all of the musicians' work, and then charge what you feel is right for the music and give them their fair share.
Nobody wants to do this because it will take years of sacrifice and money. I suspect that most people that start out with this intention, end up becoming the exact company they aimed to stop in the first place, because they didn't realize the cost and risks involved with the music industry.
Climate change is a fact. The causes are just theories based on computer models.
To say that it's a fact and needs no further study is not only anti-intellectual, it’s criminal.
I worked in academia for over a decade. Knowing what I know about the process and how much ego, money, and politics are involved, it really makes it difricult for me to believe any study isn't biased.
Thw entire system needs to be scrapped and started over.
Just like with music and file sharing, this will not hurt the large corporations. It will only hurt the researchers that depend on these papers for funding and make it more difficult for them to make a living in the future.
It will also push companies to keep research more private and proprietary. Why would I spend millions of dollars on research, only to have it freely distributed to everyone, including my potential competitors?
I've never witnesses a time where more people fight to give up more and more of their own power and hand it over to governments and large corporations on a silver platter...and then complain when it's all gone.
well, the same thing happens when people would like to discuss alternative theories to the causes of climate change. The BBC, for instance, outright bans anyone that talks about it (and so do many other forums), which is outright censorship.
We should be fighting for the freedom to discuss any topic, not just a select few that matches up with the current narrative.
"May be there's less violence, but the amount of suffering has skyrocketed over the years. A more than significant amount of people are dependent on tranquilizers and anti-depressants to make their life bearable, because for them it has become mundane and meaningless without."
I don't think this is very accurate. People get hooked on painkillers usually because they had some sort of accident and need them for pain...and since opiates are extremely addictive, continue to take them after they no longer need them.
"also these numbers don't show how much exploitation and environmental damage our alleged 'prosperity' causes in other parts of the world."
You can't blame us for countries that decide to have no rules and ruin their environment. When you compare the environment of the US to pretty much anywhere in the world, it's one of the cleanest (if not the cleanest).
..and 'exploitation'? We built the middle class of China. Before we started going overseas to build factories, the majority of people in China were in complete and utter poverty.
"I’ve had much luck in my life: being born into a middle-class family and having any natural ability nurtured by my parents and then by the education system"
This might be lucky on the part of the individual, but parents that sacrifice their own time, money, and life for their child's future definitely isn't luck. It's a choice. If more people saw it this way, we might have parents that actually cared about their child's education and less people in abject poverty.
..and 'nurtured by the education system' is kind of a joke in the US. The K-12 education system is terrible for everyone.
"Yet there is a dearth of thinking about how we can make these jobs more fulfilling, better paid and more respected"
The problem is that low-skilled jobs will always be low-paid in a capitalist system because pretty much anyone can do them. The only way to counter this is to artificially limit the amount of people that can actually do the job by limiting the supply or create some sort of union to force higher wages. Both bad ideas for the long-term.
"and to increase the relationship between effort and success."
Effort has never equaled success. You might put all the effort in the world into something and it you will still fail. You can always learn from your failures. I failed job interviews, businesses, and many other things before I succeeded. We should be stressing to our youth that you aren't entitled to success. You need to earn it.
"it is not uncommon to find graduates working in a bar on a zero hours contract"
What was their major? STEM majors have little problems finding work. Liberal arts? many can't find a job. We should be encouraging students to pick a major that at least has chance of being able to get a job that pays well enough to pay off their debt. Otherwise, it's just a gamble. They might as well start their own business and skip college altogether.
We should be talking about the trades. I know people that are carpenters and electricians and they can't get enough young people even interested enough to apply for the job.
Mostly because they don't want to start out from the bottom and work their way up. Many feel like they should be making $100K right away.
Those arguments are usually when in context of the rich not paying their 'fair share' in the US. When the stats come out and show that the top 10% pay 90% of the federal taxes (not including all of the taxes you mentioned), it really puts things into perspective.
Most scientific climate change reports call for massive problems in a century, not a year. All of the people that voted will be long dead and we don't really know what things will be like in 100 years.
It may actually be a success. Although it causes this to happen with passengers, most probably won't attribute it to Zappos. They will attribute it to the security practices of the TSA, if they even think about it at all.
The whole point was to remember the Zappos name, like on a billboard. Even this article got you thinking and talking about the brand.
"I didn't know a single one who wasn't worried about putting food on the table"
You can put pretty much everyone that owns a business or works into this category. Unless you are the top 1% or have a VC subsidized lifestyle, you are always worried about putting food on the table.
Most businesses in that industry have thin margins. But it doesn't stop people from being successful. In my hometown there are at least 5 competing independent coffee shops that are all doing pretty well.
"developers tend to be very understanding and supportive of other developers who leave stable jobs to start their own company."
Have you ever started a business? Most people are not supportive, including developers. You might even lose friends over it. You are going against the norm and most people can't relate and find it strange. The only people that are supportive are those that have a business mindset.
"I'd say you're in the minority. Startups are much riskier, and "stability" would be one of the last words people would use to define them. Everyone knows that."
All businesses have some risk. It took a year or two to get to the point where it was stable. But I was profitable from day one.
I'm not sure what you define as a 'startup', but if you mean create an app and hope that people come to it with no real business plan, I didn't create a startup. I formed a company around a business model and slowly built it up.
Too many people in IT think they aren't replaceable or that the good times will last forever.
This is why I started my own company. All of my developer friends that told me I was stupid 5 years ago are now on their 5th or more job (and are scared about the next round of layoffs).
While I've had continued stability. I would rather not get pushed out of my own industry for being too old or demanding too much pay. I think I would be pretty depressed if a snot-nosed kid out of college was managing me.
As a side effect, my company can now hire all of the new cheap labor that will be poured into the marketplace after the next bust.
Time to create a new account. rinse and repeat.