MordinSolus

If you're on a Mac and are rather addicted to these sorts of websites, SelfControl (funny name) can be used to block sites for however long you want after some tweaking. I use it when I notice myself opening a new tab in the browser and instinctively going for the "r" or "h" keys.

I too notice that when I block these sorts of websites, even though I still have access on my phone, I start reading a lot more and getting more stuff done. Now that I think about it, I should try the 30 day challenge. The most I've gone is 15 days. Peace out!

What do you mean by fair?

> Classes are giant

Current CS undergrad at Berkeley. This is the main problem I have with Berkeley. You can interact with the faculty plenty (at least in my experience), especially when you get to your upper division classes. I don't really do that much anyway and care more about how well professor's lecture than anything else.

The problem is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to get into the upper division classes you're interested in. There are just too many people and not enough space. My smallest class is 30 people, but it's a graduate level course, while my other two upper division CS classes have 400 people and 315 with 75 on the waitlist. I thought my classes would get smaller as the semesters went on, but that has not been the case.

If you read the entire article you'll notice that this isn't the only "interactive graphic". Go down further to where it says "How the Tax Law Might Affect You". It pretty much covers all the bases.

This submission seems to be deliberately misleading. The article itself is far less insulting.

I think the act of actually paying a tax is quite important, despite the bureaucratic overhead. For the same reason, I think payroll taxes and the like should be directly paid by checks (not just deducted from pay and handled by the employer). This way, a person would actually have that money and then have to commit the physical act of giving their money to the government instead of just seeing it as money not in their paycheck.

> Would you fire one of them if he sleeps with the other's girlfriend, or would you consider this a 'personal matter' and not interfere?

If I am a small business and only have ~50 employees, I would probably fire them. It's only a personal matter until it affects work. This would obviously affect work.

> As opposed to jetti, I'm not sure the wife would just have found somebody else.

Irrelevant.

Here's the problem:

"At the same time, every time I see his face, I feel like that just kills me inside."

It is silly to think that this doesn't affect productivity and won't affect the business in the future, especially with communication between these two individuals. A person's well being does is in fact a work matter, the acknowledgment of which makes the employees position absolutely untenable. You cannot possibly sleep with a fellow employee's spouse (regardless of whether it is a superior or not) and not expect that to be a work matter.

> It's as if they expect the boss to be able to tell employees who they can fuck.

This isn't about telling the employee who they can fuck. It's about fostering a productive and positive work environment. Knowingly choosing to create animosity between yourself and a superior (or any fellow employee for that matter) in such a hurtful manner is simply stupid.

This employee should be fired immediately.

> But here I am, feeling normal and useless. I lead a moderate sized club at RPI, but I don't even feel accomplished for it. I haven't seen any of the job offers that I felt were promised to me when I enrolled at the school, I haven't gotten any major internships.

I struggled with this as well. A big turning point for me was dropping entirely the notion of being entitled to anything. In reality, no one owes me anything just because I think I'm smart or because I think I work hard.

On the feeling unaccomplished part, maybe try reading a book like http://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Keys-Success-Long-Term-Fulfill.... It's sort of a "the goal is the journey" book with some practical advice thrown in.

> As a kid I used to hit the video games pretty hard, but at some point I started to realize how fake the achievements felt. I literally can't stomach playing video games anymore. It feels like taking some sort of numbing drug. I have good memories, and I don't even regret most of the weekends I devoted entirely to video games (and the costs associated).

Me too! It sucks sometimes because I want to enjoy playing a game but don't. I've found that I can't play games, like Skyrim, that are just time-based grinds. Instead, I play games for the nostalgia, the story, for creativity elements, or for the competition/skill factor. Sometimes even then I feel uneasy playing games because I feel like I should be doing something more productive.. that's a tough feeling to get over.

> I worked a job last summer teaching kids. I still visit from time to time, and the trend of positive reinforcement and lack of criticism seems to be gaining momentum in our youth. My boss would not let me criticize my own students.

I don't think these things are mutually exclusive. You can certainly criticize and be positive (or at least not negative) about it.

Does is matter what the rest of the world would call it? No. In America, Obama is certainly to the left.

If you're so well versed, perhaps you could provide a summary as to what is so wrong about the comment?

For point 1, I would call that the use of white space rather than negative space.

Libertarian is a broad term. You have anarcho-capitalists, minarchists, libertarian socialists, etc. The least authoritarian, an-caps, do wish that everything was voluntarily. Then there those in America who I'll call practical libertarians who simply want to follow the U.S. Constitution more closely than has been done while still adhering to libertarian principles.

In this case, they believe that the federal government should be involved in defense and aiding interstate commerce (without abusing the terminology as has been done by Congress), and leave everything else, as the 10th amendment states, up to the state.

True, but those things are quite inexpensive compared to all of the other stuff that governments spend taxpayer money on, at least in the United States.

Tax evasion is illegal. I doubt this is illegal, as that would be an incredibly dumb move, so it's not tax evasion.

> (and the shareholders)

Well of course they are telling their shareholders: they must be rejoicing with the news!

Makes you wonder why we don't lower our corporate tax rate in the U.S. Hell, both presidential candidates this election cycle agreed on that.

Because it's still too expensive when compared to flying. Just look at the cost of the high speed rail plan in California. Until the price of jet fuel is much higher, economically, it makes more sense to fly.

I say let the high speed rails come naturally (because they will eventually): don't try to force it.

And the federal government for encouraging such behavior as well.

> (Not least because one of it's biggest problems is that it pisses off entitled white kids like you and starts pointless internet flames like this.)

> Right now all you're doing is whining.

Stop the nonsense.

I'm going to specifically look at college admissions since it's a pretty interesting area. Specifically, I want to point out a passage from here (the article itself is worth reading): http://www.tnr.com/book/review/disadvantages

> Moreover, some universities have been successful in maintaining racial diversity despite a ban on using race in admissions. At UT Austin, which was forbidden by a lower court from considering race between 1997 and 2003, a class-based affirmative action plan, combined with a plan to automatically admit students in the top 10 percent of their high school class, resulted in a net increase in racial diversity. In 1996, prior to the ban on race, African Americans and Latinos made up 18.8 percent of the freshman class. In 2004, under the socioeconomic and top 10 percent plan, the combined representation had risen to 21.4 percent.

Not only is such policy less racist, but it is more effective!

> AA doesn't correct for immediate need, it corrects for the fact that people growing up in unpriviledged environments lack advantages.

So poor white folks never grow up in unpriviledged environments?

You're providing no justification for why AA is race based instead of socio-economic based.

On the pharmaceutical industry: part of the problem is the government and the enormous number of regulations and necessary steps to bring a drug (which still could harm people regardless of how many trials are done) to market. As such, while someone may want to research some new but unproven idea, the time and cost and risk involved would be far too great as a result of regulations.

I do agree with your point though. The government should invest in research, not companies.

I don't think you understand what I mean by liberty. Try to not let your political goggles blind you here.

> "pursuit of equality" = giving medicine, schooling to the poor

I'm all for achieving the best results. I want to see more education and better healthcare for everyone. What we're doing, however, is not achieving the best results. Why is it that these areas with the most government involvement (education, healthcare, and banking) seem to have the most problems? We spend more on education than anywhere else in the world (http://mat.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographi...) yet the results aren't there. Same with healthcare.

> "liberty" = medieval scale deregulation + tax cuts for billionaires

How about tax cuts for everyone? No more income tax, no more corporate tax, no more FICA? What about removing regulations that encourage the growth of monopolies and too-big-to-fail banks, removing subsidies, and removing tax breaks for everyone? How about no more bailouts?

> And where people's freedom is actually destroyed, down the rathole of militarism and corporatism, well that's just "patriotism".

Militarism / corporatism are products of big government. How about a much smaller federal government?

> a) the intent of the founding fathers was relevant to today's society and b) their intent was to have a limited size of government, both of which are pretty big assumptions.

Their intent for a limited size of _federal_ government is almost certain. And I don't see how it's not relevant: our federal government is huge and almost entirely unaccountable, and clearly is not functioning as it was intended. From Federalist 45:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government. The more adequate, indeed, the federal powers may be rendered to the national defense, the less frequent will be those scenes of danger which might favor their ascendancy over the governments of the particular States.

> How would removing an unrelated insurance corporation promote healthier decision making amongst investment banks?

Not unrelated. Gramm-Leach-Bliley removed barriers allowing commercial banks to act as investment banks. That was my point: you can't remove these barriers without also removing the insurance. Having the FDIC encourages commercial banks to be much riskier.

> It seems to me you possess a shaky understanding of 1) the events that led to the FDIC and SEC, and Glass-Steagal 2) the events that occurred from 2001-2007/08 and 3) the cognitive pitfalls and biases human beings suffer from when reasoning about risk.

Feel free to correct me where I'm wrong. I think the housing bubble was entirely avoidable had the government taken different action. I'm not saying that it was ENTIRELY the fault of regulation. I do think that: deregulation (including removing the FDIC and SEC), much less Fed fiddling in attempts to 'fix' the dot com bubble, and no bailouts or any implicit guarantees of bailouts, and you wouldn't have seen the housing bubble.

Actually they have pretty different approaches to economics, yet they end up with similar conclusions (except for differences regarding the control of the supply).

And you say that like it's a bad thing, when in reality we could use a healthy dose of economic conservatism right now.

Whoops, I forgot that Mises is the only source of knowledge about economics. Silly me.

If you don't like my reading suggestions, then perhaps try a Milton Friedman youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmzZ8lCLhlk

> You've swallowed the big lie of globalization -- that only by exporting labor to 3rd world serfs can we enjoy the standards of living that we enjoy.

At the prices we pay today, this is absolutely true. We would be paying much more for iPhones if they were manufactured here.

> The government is an enabler of bad economic activity, but the capitalists are always the catalysts. Government regulations did not force Countrywide Loans to give $1M mortgages to people who lacked the resources to repay.

But that's exactly the point. They didn't 'force' banks to make bad decisions, but without the government's bad regulations, bad monetary policy, and bad fiscal policy, the housing crisis would have been much harder to come by.

I'm not saying the banks are not at fault for their poor decisions: I am saying that without the actions of the government, you would either have not seen the crisis at all or you would have seen a much smaller and less disastrous bubble and burst.

> Study the origins of the labor movement. Robber barons were/are very real.

It depends what you mean by robber barons.

Did certain businesses during the 19th century exploit workers and warrant the formation of certain labor unions in order to protect the workers? Yes. I'm not denying this.

Did the most successful capitalists in the 19th century make their money by exploiting workers, stealing from the poor, and adding nothing of value to society? Absolutely not. I'm not saying these men were angels, but these so-called 'robber barons' improved society by an incredible amount, far more than what unions have ever done, producing better and more goods at cheaper prices. The rising standards of living during the 19th and early 20th century were not a wholly a result of government intervention or labor unions, but instead _mostly_ because of technological progress and the ensuing gains in productivity.

And the labor movement is not without its fair share problems. Much of the violence in strikes during the 19th century was caused by the unions. As well, you had a great deal amount of racism.

Perhaps this, and the related book, will explain it better: http://www.fee.org/nff/the-myth-of-the-robber-barons/

> 1. What constitutional limit?

The limits imposed by the Constitution. It's really not that mysterious of a document. The interstate commerce clause might seem ambiguous, but it certainly was never intended to be as abused as it is today. The existence 10th Amendment makes this even more obvious.

> 2. Just how was overregulation responsible for a massive price bubble?

I'll be a bit more clear: we either need much less regulation, or a whole lot more. Given how badly more regulation generally goes, I'd prefer less. We were stuck in this awkward middle ground as a result of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act. It didn't get rid of the FDIC, but it got rid of certain regulations preventing commercial banks from being investment banks (simplification). So it basically encouraged risk taking by banks. Remove the FDIC, and you'll see much less risk taking. So we really need to get rid of ALL of the Glass-Steagal act. As well, we need to get rid of the SEC. By this sort of deregulating, you discourage risk by making banks much more accountable to their investors.

> 3. What part about your definition of capitalism excludes massive price bubbles, followed up by the government of the time constraining monetary conditions?

My definition of capitalism, ideally, would not include the Fed.

> They would be a bit more expensive but not that much more expensive.

But would the lower/middle classes be able to afford them? Or as readily? Given wages here, probably not.

I don't read Mises, but thanks for the assumption. The causes of the housing crisis are and were, for lack of a better word, obvious. You don't need to read this or that, or even subscribe to a certain form of political thought to see why things happened as they did.

> Like you assuming what people in the past thought about an event without searching from some data to support your assertions.

They elected Roosevelt how many times in a row?

Liberty produces far more equality than the pursuit of equality could ever achieve, if I may borrow a line from Milton Friedman.

It really is the fault of us citizens that we've allowed our government to grow so large and unaccountable. More accurately, we've allowed it to grow far outside its constitutional limits. And we accept this and deem it necessary. In fact, some of us still think it needs to be bigger to protect us from calamities like the housing crisis! Yet we don't realize that it was precisely the largeness of the government and its influence on the market and money that caused the crisis.

All of this really does have its roots in the Great Depression. At the time, people blamed the crash on capitalism when the real causes were anything but, and as a result people were more than willing to let the government become bigger so it could 'protect' them. It's unfortunate that we the people were, and still are, so shortsighted.

On a side note, robber barons are largely a myth. As well, blaming the fall of the middle class on globalization and technology is simply absurd; how would we afford iPhones and all of the miracles of modern technology without globalization and.. technology? You can't look only at one side of the equation (jobs moving to China) without considering the other (much cheaper products). While it may hurt certain workers when some kinds of labor leaving the U.S., consumers as a whole benefit. Not to mention that people elsewhere on the globe benefit from these jobs.

> As to Estonia, it's GDP per capita, is only 67% of the EU average and 17% of that of Norway, a socialist country.

Estonia was annexed by the USSR. It's only been a free economy since 1990. Norway didn't have to deal with that.

More importantly, oil. Norway has oil. Being one of the largest exporters of oil in the world gives it a huge boost.

So I don't really get your point. Estonia still has one of the fastest growing economies in the EU, which is what really matters.

> When you find yourself challenging the basis of nearly all economic theories

Keynesian economic theories. And look at where they have gotten us today. Saving is a good thing, despite what many economists say.