Yeah...I'm inclined to say the hardest working people are the ones that are juggling two minimum wage jobs, driving for Uber on the side, and a family to take care of. The idea that working "harder" correlates positively with income or wealth is a myth that needs to go away.
While I agree, people who work hard do see the fruits of their labor, albeit not much. I went to visit my home country after 20 years and my family there has not advanced economically in 2 decades. They are some of the hardest workers I know and barely scrape by. I realized then that getting out what you put in is something not all countries have.
Growing up poor, and watching my dad work as a grade school janitor, I'm quick to tell people my dad worked for a living, but I don't - I just play with computers all day.
I also grew up poor, with my dad in construction and my mom a waitress. I push buttons and solve all sorts of interesting puzzles for a living.
Rather than racing the 100+ temperatures on a roof, I mosey to work before whatever scheduled meetings. Rather than permanently damaging my wrists from carrying trays overhead, I sometimes get a bit uncomfortable so adjust the height of my ergonomic desk and chair, maybe take a walk for a bit.
I value how easy I have it and put in extra effort to make sure it all persists.
Convinced part of the problem with political offices is that elected politicians have no incentive to actually consider second order or third order effects of any piece of legislation they pass. Everything is optimized for first order effects only e.g. optics because that is what they think "shows" they did something.
> elected politicians have no incentive to actually consider second order or third order effects of any piece of legislation they pass.
You're absolutely right. And why should they care? They don't own the power they wield, they're merely renting it for some period of time. After their time is up, and they're done throwing their weight around, they can wash their hands of all repercussions.
Exactly, this is a major problem. If anything, they're incentivized to not use second-order thinking, because most voters don't. Plus it's more complicated to communicate second-order effects.
> Convinced part of the problem with political offices is that elected politicians have no incentive to actually consider second order or third order effects of any piece of legislation they pass.
Whereas companies that harm the public often don't even care about the first order effects of their business.
As a result the entire planet is in grave danger due to climate change. How do we fix this? To borrow a little from Switzerland, I think a direct democracy at every level of government is needed. But first we must have many more remote jobs so people don't feel pressured to live in cities. They can then result in the creation of new cities elsewhere with a direct democracy via cryptographically secure apps.
Sure, but office jobs are a fairly small portion of the overall workforce. Based on [0], it looks like the "Information", "Financial activities", "Professional and business services" and I'll assume 50% of "other" and the government jobs could be done remotely. I'm sure this is missing some jobs in the other categories, and there are certainly many, jobs in these categories that can't be done remotely, but so goes. That leaves < 30% of jobs that could be done remotely.
I would say ~30% is not "fairly small". Also that 30% predominately works circa 9-5 and is disproportionately responsible for traffic congestion.
Plus, it's unclear how those industries get split. For example utilities, trade, healthcare, and leisure/hospitality all have a large number of office jobs. And cities have a higher concentration of office jobs than rural areas. I would be willing to bet that in most medium-large sized cities, half of all jobs could be done remotely.
A direct democracy would be even worse. In California, prop 13 didn’t come from the legislature. It came through ballot proposition. And that law is the granddaddy of second and third order effects.
I totally agree that it would be worse in the absence of an app based system. The point is to be adaptive and correct the legislative mistakes that get made. Adaptability is always a key requirement for the success of any system. Right now this rate of change is IMHO too bottlenecked.
A two-thirds vote can also be minimally required for major changes, so as to stabilize the system.
Are you sure? After Prop J and Prop K, I’m positive that the California populace will just go after things that seem like they’ll make them individually better off in the short term. In fact, I can’t see why an app would make it different. People will still want the stability of laws being enforced for a long term. I see your proposed system as amplifying the problem honestly.
I honestly think there's an opportunity to create a YouTube channel that literally does nothing more than explain how X makes money, whether it's a VC firm, a Subway franchise, a toothpaste manufacturer, etc.
As someone with an entrepreneurial tick but not someone who's gone all in it would be so helpful to have edu videos that just explained the basic business model of XYZ.
NPR has a podcasts that interviews founders and how they got started, how they made money (likely they didn't, at first) and how they continue to be better than everyone else. It's called How I Built This.
Do you have a strong preference versus learning this from videos versus other potential form factors, like a podcast or e.g. glossy coffee-table book or less-glossy "this essay times N" book?
It’s clear that there are lots of people that disagree with me but I have a terrible loathing for the YouTube video where someone looks at the camera and talks at you.
Are other people getting a lot out of facial expressions or something?
I don't feel quite as strongly as you, but I generally agree. I don't mind if the person is picture-in-picture-style in one of the corners, but I really would rather see something useful on the screen vs. just the person talking to me.
I feel the same way as the parent, and I would say I have a strong preference for Video. I wouldn't need crazy production value, even if you just did something Khan-Academy-style and wrote down terms and showed diagrams of how some of this works it would help me a lot. I found your article pretty interesting but also pretty overwhelming since I'm not fluent in this area.
My next preference would be something like base.cs (https://medium.com/basecs) where, similarly, you at least define terms and draw some diagrams. I find it much easier to follow this stuff when there's something to look at with relations etc.
While I love podcasts, I find learning anything like this pretty much impossible by listening to them. This is partially because it's harder for me to always follow the concepts just by listening, and partially because I'm usually only somewhat engaged (I'm exercising, or driving to work, etc.).
But, maybe I'm also not your target audience, because I have far too basic an understanding of this stuff, so take it with a grain of salt.
For those of us who don't have a strong preference - what sources would you recommend? I prefer reading but when it comes down to it, I'll take any form factor if the information is good.
There’s a similarish channel called Company Man. I treat it as purely entertainment, because I have no idea what the credentials of the dude are, but it’s fun.
I agree there's a phenomenon happening here and elsewhere where being "normal" doesn't cut it anymore, meaning if you're just an average person of average intelligence you have it harder now than someone in your shoes 40 years ago to live a good life. OTOH, if you're extraordinary in some way, and smart enough to know how to capitalize on it, you're in a much better position now than someone who was equally extraordinary a few decades ago.
FB exerts increasing control over, and insight into, financial transactions. Alongside excessive insight into most other aspects of personal lives. The result becomes the sort of MegaCorp that cyberpunk novels are built off of. Except, you know... I don't think William Gibson ever expected the future megacorp to have sprung up from an undergrad pivoting his Hot or Not rip-off.
Crypto in this case does mean cryptographic currency, and it is indeed part of an Cypherpunks wet dream, which is a movement since the 80s to 90s[0][1], and Bitcoin was largely enabled by people of this movement[2][3]. They basically strive to build society with cryptographic methods.
Cyberpunk on the other hand is just a science-fiction genre, which mostly play in futuristic orwellian dystopias and people like to draw comparisons to them.
Cyberpunk doesn't necessarily have to do with crypto, it can just be internet and VR and being a rebel while being jacked in to your nine-CRT set up in your neon-lit basement techno club.
Cypherpunk refers to the same basement techno club but the freedom and rebellion comes from the privacy and inviolable secrets enabled by cryptography.
edit: Better comment below me, cyberpunk is very much set in economic dystopias, and the rebels are tech hackers.
I thought it might just be volatility. It makes sense that when people are interested in something they will both trade and talk about it, and both actions are probably in feedback cycles with interest. I would expect the same to be true of, say, Boeing stock. I would expect shills to play some role, but perhaps a relatively minor one.
No, but you could say that in order to hit 0 by 2050, you need to be at X by 2025 and Y by 2030...then commit to those.
And of course, the article states: "New York will be required to get 70 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, and shift entirely to carbon-free power a decade later."
FWIW, I'm very familiar with Plaid as I've worked in several FinTech startups using Plaid for various reasons. If you simply want to revoke Plaid's access all you need to do is change your bank password. Of course, all past data will live on in Plaid. If you're a EU user, you can request to have your data removed. Curious what their response might be if you're not in the EU. Hate to be cynical, but I bet they'll ignore you as is all too common for customer service these days.
It's sad how many times I walk around in SF and see basically crumbling buildings or empty parking lots and wonder why new housing has not been built there yet? And more importantly who would actually oppose development on crumbling or wasted land?
It's pretty easy to understand locals' opposition. More people => more congestion. More housing supply => lower property values (at least at first). It doesn't matter if the housing is on what used to be a parking lot it's still more people and housing supply. (You can argue that NIMBYism is selfish and short-sighted but that doesn't mean it's irrational in the economist sense.)
