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cloutchaser

593 karma · joined January 27, 2022

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cloutchaser··on Tesla to build 25,000-euro car at German plant
They did. Then they stopped. https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/16/21569524/tesla-model-3-3...

The model 3 is still the 7th most sold car in 2022.

Is a car company not allowed to raise prices? Like what standard are you holding tesla to? If they can sell a tesla for $42k, why sell it for $35k? Because Elon said so in 2015? That's ridiculous, its just not how markets or companies work. And they DID sell it for $35,000, for a while. So Elon didn't even lie.

Absolutely ridiculous the mental gymnastics some people will go to to hate the guy. Insane.

cloutchaser··on Europe drastically cut its energy consumption this winter
How is saying the US (who spend more than the rest of the world combined on defense) should destroy Russia - Russian propaganda?
cloutchaser··on UK expected to be only major economy to shrink in 2023 – IMF
People seem to ignore the EU is in just as bad a state as the UK, especially now that Russian energy is over Germany as we know it is basically over.

Brexit might have had an impact but it’s one of 10 things badly wrong with europe as a whole.

cloutchaser··on Why ultra-light urban vehicles offer the only viable future for EVs
In a city. How about anyone living in the countyside? Do those people not exist? Where my parents live, there is are 3 buses per day. None around school time. How does a child get to school? Or should these families just move to the city?

Do families get to go anywhere for more than a few hours? How do you bring all their stuff along like clothes, toothbrush, etc. Every child needs a minimum of 1l of water all the time, and some snacks in case they get hungry. And toys. And change of clothes in case they spill the 1l of water on themselves in the winter.

What happens when both parents have 20kg+ bags and one of your children decides to run away, say into traffic?

Judging by the replies to my original comment, not many people on HN have children or have any idea what it involves.

cloutchaser··on Why ultra-light urban vehicles offer the only viable future for EVs
Family of four, with a stroller?

Do you go on multi-day trips, where you need clothes are gear for everyone?

Do you have smaller children's car seats will take up 80% of the back seats?

cloutchaser··on Why ultra-light urban vehicles offer the only viable future for EVs
You can only just fit 2 child seats into a smaller car. For anyone with 3 children, anything without 2 rows of back seats is basically an unusable car for the whole family.

And the reason everyone is going on about "car size inflation" and how it was fine in smaller cars 20 years ago is the same reason - you didn't have to use child seats. Now because of safety you literally can't have a family larger than 2 children with a smaller car.

cloutchaser··on Why ultra-light urban vehicles offer the only viable future for EVs
Spoken like someone without a family. You have no idea how small cars are for even a short trip with a family of 4.
cloutchaser··on Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power
> Why hasn't worker pay arisen proportionally, since if they're working for multinationals they are similarly serving millions to billions?

They have. In China and other assembly countries. And there’s your ultimate answer for what the actual problem is here. For Americans. Pretty good deal elsewhere.

cloutchaser··on Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power
Another way to interpret this story is that the performers were whining and thought they had a bad deal, but when faced with consequences they realised it actually wasn’t a bad deal for them. Words and words. Actions are actions.
cloutchaser··on Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power
Actually there is a reason for the increase recently, globalisation and the internet. While a top exec in the 1960 might be serving a few million customers, maybe tens of millions, now it is in the billions (also population has increased).

By the way, do you support the corporate raiders of the 1980s who were also extremely annoyed at how much execs got paid and fired them and reduced their pay? And they actually did it by putting their money where their mouth was and became shareholders in these companies, at great personal risk to themselves.

cloutchaser··on Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power
Second hand information: Apple on average takes 2 years to fill an empty position. They almost never lay anyone off, just find another role for someone.

It's where the evil corporation narrative falls down, apple makes sure they hire the right people and then keep them. It's the way it should be.

But even for other tech companies, people on HN need to look outside of tech and see what life is like, there are people on here who literally had the best possible jobs in the entire history of humanity, with prepaid 3 meals a day, free daycare, free gym, free everything, yet somehow think that these companies were evil exploitative capitalists.

I'm sorry - no. These were the best employers in the world. Now there's a serious downturn in the economy, they are firing like 5-10% of staff. That's nothing. Try being a factory worker at a Tyson food factory in the midwest, or a foxconn factory in china, then you'll understood how good these tech companies treat their employees.

cloutchaser··on Covid-19 and other pandemics require a coherent response strategy
There are a group of people who will use any excuse to centralise control. You can call this a conspiracy, or the illuminati or the WEF or whatever. It doesn't matter what you call them. Right now there's more of these people in positions of power than the ones who resist this.

The world is definitely moving in the more centralisation direction, and has done for a while.

cloutchaser··on Covid-19 and other pandemics require a coherent response strategy
And we're at the tip of the iceberg. Even the mainstream media is now covering that the mRNA shots increase the risk of stroke substantially. What else are we going to find out?

(and I'm vaccinated, but it's extremely eye opening how all this information is coming out, exactly what the REASONABLE anti vaxxers were warning about. We just don't know the side effects of a new vaccine technology, used on a new virus. It's impossible to declare it to be SAFE (which implies harmless over a long period of time) at day 0. (I'm just quoting Bret Weinstein who definitely isn't an unscientific untrained anti vaxxer).

cloutchaser··on The window trick of Las Vegas hotels
I wonder if we will feel the same about “minimal” design in the future. I really don’t see anything beautiful about a white box with black windows, yet architects seem obsessed with it.

Probably because it’s called good design yet it’s almost the cheapest possible design outwards. Convenient. But I think in 30 years we will facepalm at these white boxes we call houses.

cloutchaser··on Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills
You are right (sometimes), but so is the prankster for challenging authority sometimes.

A healthy society both has rule following and rule challenging. Sometimes there’s too much rule following, sometimes there’s too much chaos, and then things balance themselves out ideally.

If anyone says only one side is the right one, they are ideologically captured. It’s like saying only left or right is the right way to govern a country. It’s both and neither. We need this conflict within society to arrive at healthy decisions.

Get rid of one side at your peril.

cloutchaser··on Higher rates will lead to the next generation of great tech startups
How are sequoia funds doing these days? If your point would be correct it would suggest these types of old VCs have already gotten their money out in some insider trading phase.

They didn’t. And they just lost $400m on just FTX. Their portfolio is massively down too. How is SoftBank doing? The biggest of them all? They are at record losses.

Despite your Marxists leanings, life is not about exploitation and rich vs poor. It’s an easy assumption to make, but it’s completely wrong.

cloutchaser··on U.S. accuses Google of abusing monopoly in ad technology
Life is not Netflix.
cloutchaser··on Letter to Sundar Pichai from TCI Fund Management [pdf]
A banking nation who even holds money for basically anyone, including nazis back in the 1940s. Nice example.
cloutchaser··on Letter to Sundar Pichai from TCI Fund Management [pdf]
I mean sure, that's a nice dream. What society in the history of humanity has ever come close to this?

What is your blueprint for achieving this practically, instead of saying nice sounding dreams?

cloutchaser··on Letter to Sundar Pichai from TCI Fund Management [pdf]
What he is saying is that in any society the elite are isolated, this isn’t something unique to billionaires. You think Chavez in Venezuela or Xi in China is still a man of the people?

Perhaps this is a good thing. You can’t make emotional decisions when you are responsible for millions of people potentially. You literally wouldn’t be able to have leaders if leaders were emotionally involved in tens of thousands of peoples hard lives.

cloutchaser··on Letter to Sundar Pichai from TCI Fund Management [pdf]
You could argue your point the other way round. When times were good these companies clearly overemployed staff. That is very unfair to investors. Cutting back at this time finally prioritizes investor goals, and it’s pretty minimal anyway.

Not to mention the insane benefits these employees get, these are the best employers in the world. It’s clear employee happiness was much more important during good times than any investor sentiment. Investors just shut up as the business was still growing.

cloutchaser··on Letter to Sundar Pichai from TCI Fund Management [pdf]
Dividends are taxed at the same percent as income in the Uk. So he is paying a lot on that.

Unless he isn’t resident in the Uk. Which I don’t know.

cloutchaser··on Letter to Sundar Pichai from TCI Fund Management [pdf]
The headcount in tech recently grew way faster than the rest of the economy, and faster than the companies growth as well. As you get bigger headcount shouldn’t necessarily rise by more than the company is growing, which is what happened.

In a full blown recession going back to the headcount of 2 years ago isn’t exactly some Gordon gecko capitalist evil. It’s pretty reasonable.

Especially as it seems most tech companies are culling admin and hr staff, which is not where value is being created.

cloutchaser··on FTX’s Venture Capital Backers Face ‘Serious Questions,’ CFTC Official Says
You are partially right, of course the individuals bear responsibility. But you also have to acknowledge that at a macro level every economic crises since 1999 has been caused by central banks blowing bubbles. Including the recent VC bubble.
cloutchaser··on Google to reduce workforce by 12k
It’s an anecdote but it’s also what I heard from my doctor dad working in the NHS. There was a time when the UK health system was actually run by doctors or people with medical knowledge. Now it’s MBAs and generalist managers. It doesn’t work, all it does is increase overhead, both in staff and bureaucracy.

In his opinion that’s what ruined the NHS not underfunding.

Business and management courses are not necessarily good.

cloutchaser··on Things I Learned from My 2 Year Old Baby Girl
They are reciting the guilt that they are copying off their parents. It’s horrible.

Think about it this way. You worked damn hard so that your children have a better life. I know I do. So did my parents. Is it unfair that we give that advantage to our children? No. And certainly neither you or your children have anything to feel guilty about.

I’m not from the US so I don’t understand the whole slavery issue but still, no one alive today deserves this insane guilt put on them now for some ancestor sin. That’s called collective guilt and it’s why nazis killed Jews. People need to stop it.

Life is unfair and we are all different. What you do with your talents and resources is what counts. Not what some ancestor of yours did. It’s ridiculous. If you do feel privileged, give away your wealth. If you don’t, then don’t. But for gods sake stop feeling guilt about things you didn’t do.

cloutchaser··on Sergey Brin’s $100B Private Fiefdom (2022)
So you’re not even an expert but you think you know what too much wealth is.

The intellectual arrogance of your comment is staggering. And unfortunately it’s a common opinion.

cloutchaser··on Sergey Brin’s $100B Private Fiefdom (2022)
So one persons intuition works better at working out exactly what too much wealth or a healthy society means, than a feedback system of about 7bn independent entities kind of trading freely and making decisions, and for example awarding Jeff bezos 100bn for making almost all products available within 24 hours at the lowest possible margins, almost never making a profit, and employing 400k people extra during Covid.

Yes I’m sure these independent “experts” like yourself have a much better grasp at “fairness” and we should all believe that 100bn is too much.

Could you just scientifically deduce for me where the limit is? If I have 100m is that ok? In your expert opinion? Or is that too much? Should we cap at 1m? I’d love to see your maths on what constitutes a fair amount of wealth.

cloutchaser··on Fewer than 40% of New Yorkers earn a living wage
Yet from most discourse I see it seems a lot of people actually believe it’s better in Ethiopia.

A few years ago Venezuela was held up as the poster child of how to defeat capitalism by the same people.

cloutchaser··on Fewer than 40% of New Yorkers earn a living wage
It's a bit confusing at a definitional level too. If 60% don't earn a living wage, how are they surviving? Surely your definition of "living wage" is more of a marketing gimick than anything, if 60% of people manage to "live" without earning the "living wage"?

This definition seems more like - earning a wage that allows living seperately from your parents and without any additional subsidies. Which is not exactly "living". Ask someone in bangladesh or ethiopia about "living wages"

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