confluence

> People talk a lot about courage in politics, courage in war; standing up in the face of great odds. These things are fabulous, wonderful, but I’ll tell you right now that I would trade them all for a world of these everyday heroes. What I thought I knew about bravery was nothing compared to what I saw in Hong Kong.

-- Edward Snowden

Truly worth the read. I encourage everyone to do so.

The world's most wanted man protected by those with nothing. Absolutely incredible.

Yes, it's what happens when too many people read zerohedge because they think it makes them smart.

Exactly this. It's simply selection bias. There is no filter for earning a citizenship at birth, but there is one when you immigrate.

So in America (or any nation) you will end up with a relatively average (native born) population, with disparities in earnings accounted for by the relative economic strength by historical accident of the racial/gender groups, who themselves are effectively in competition with the top 1% of foreign countries (since those are the only ones given the opportunity to migrate).

Thus you have the results seen above.

This is probably one of the greatest pieces of long form journalism I have ever read, and I've read a lot.

You'd be doing yourselves a disservice by not setting aside some time and reading this all the way through.

> What the poor here really need is financial security, not just some benefits that they lose immediately as soon as they earn too much.

I know right. Why don't poor people just get more money?

I know right. Why don't poor people just get more money?

It has been a phenomenal few weeks. This series truly was great journalism, in the truest sense of the word.

Well done Atavast.

This run stands out as amongst the best long form journalism I've ever read, and I've read a lot of long form. I'm eagerly looking forward to more from this team.

The CIA is not known for its intelligence.

My favourite is parallel construction.

> How is depending on a company for income a risk? You don't lose anything if company closes, you just find another job.

Of course, you lose absolutely nothing. Well apart from your income. I mean that's about all you are risking. Oh but of course, you will immediately find a job after you are fired, without any kind of lead time. And sure, there is no chance you might ever go unemployed for longer than a week. I mean unless there is some kind of industry wide down turn which dries up all positions you could have taken. But that never happens.

> And I don't think that "feeling a thing" is relevant here; regardless of whether your net worth a million or a billion, when a company you invested in closes, you lose the same amount of money — unlike employees who got compensated for their time and work regardless.

Ah but of course. The billionaires take on so much risk, what with putting 1% of their assets on each bet. Truly enormous the amount of risk they take. Meanwhile all an employee is risking if a company goes belly up is funding for their entire family. No biggie.

You don't understand risk. Period.

A worker employed at a startup is entirely dependent upon the startup for the majority of his income. An employee is in general all in with their company in most locations, which is why changing jobs is difficult.

An employee takes on more risk, simply because everything matters more to them, than it does to the owner, you can easily drop X amount and not feel a thing.

More or less, yes. Past, present and future performance of various business variables.

Western intelligence seems to have a hard on for investigating pointless leads for years. Maybe focus on actual threats? But that's just me.

Raise taxes and meet your obligations. Reduce them if need be under negotiation like any kind of bad debt situation, because that's what it is.

Pension reform makes me laugh. "Oh yeah, this is a massive contract we signed, we want to renege on it."

No corporation would stand by this in terms of major signed projects or debts without a massive fight. If renegotiation was required for payment to occur, either in the form of bankruptcy or reduced rates, then it would be a crushing asset grab, with no quarter given. The person who took on a contract they could not afford rightly should be squeezed to crap.

But because it's poor people, they are the ones who have to make the sacrifice when someone wants to renege on their contract?

Hilarious.

You don't have a "falling out" with regulatory agencies.

It's called the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect

My rule is that no job is worth dying for. If the expectations are unreasonable, quit.

End of the day, it's cheaper to pay people to do nothing, than it is to lock them up when they become desperate and commit crimes.

That's a long fall from Google practically begging them to take fat stacks of cash.

Mossad always seems to run the craziest ops because of a lack of ability to project significant power in foreign lands.

That's the politest fuck you I've seen today.

How is that even possible?

From now until his death, he will rest in peace no longer.

It's like physical RAM.

It will always be used at capacity.

I'm simply speaking from experience.

You quickly realize that this is a bad idea when the payments come in fast enough.

> Certainly Milton Friedman [1] thought they were harmful rather than helpful.

Ah yes, Milton Friedman, the man who was right about everything. Also never? Good god man, so what about market manipulation?

> Under economic theory, interference in markets prevents them from correcting prices and is therefore never a good thing.

Well if the market knew what it was fucking doing then it wouldn't need to correct prices now then would it? But the market does not know what it is doing, and when it shits itself, we have to come in and stop the world from imploding in a negative feedback loop.

Jeff Bezos: Out of touch with reality since 1999