dirtdobber

I wasn't sure if they did or not, as I do not own a mega yacht. I was more just posing a question as to whether the purchasing of mega yachts was somehow tied into these tax strategies (which it sounds like it's not).

I said θ ;)

In other words, your algorithm is asymptotically too fast and you failed the interview! :D

> that's misdirection and bureaucratic hair splitting.

I'm simply stating a fact about DARPA and how their mission and operations fit within the US government.

Look, if you want to characterize DARPA research as IC work, go ahead. You clearly don't work in the space.

Interviewer: "Write a Θ(log(n)) approximation algorithm for converting n miles to kilometers that's accurate within plus or minus .01*n kilometers."

Is this partly why so many billionaires own things like mega-yachts? Presumably they aren't all avid yacht enthusiasts, no?

For example, Mark Zuckerberg has a lot of money. So much that he can buy a mega-yacht and it not really affect him financially. But, he could buy lots of things that don't affect him financially, and he chooses not to do so.

I always assumed that acquiring a massively valued asset like a yacht that's assumed to appreciate was part of this "buy, borrow, die" strategy.

The "no dictator" property states that a single voter should not override the preferences of the majority. For example, if every voter (excluding the dictator) prefers candidate A over candidate C, then the dictator should not be able to control the outcome so that candidate C is ranked higher than candidate A.

If you follow the proof closely (it's very subtle) you can see that despite every candidate ranking A over candidate C, the actual preferential outcome will have candidate C ranked higher than candidate A (and this is entirely dependent on the dictator's choice).

In other words, there's a counterexample where every single voter decides to rank A > C, and yet the dictator alters the outcome so that C > A. This is different from a swing voter that pushes one candidate over the top in a very close race.

The part of the impossibility proof that deals with dictators is subtle and neat. At first, I was convinced that the dictator was actually a "swing voter" whose power was entirely conditioned on the other voter's preferences, but that's not actually the case.

Still, my guess is that these types of edge cases could be handled by using some randomness and low probability arguments. For example, claiming that such dictators exist with negligible probability given a small-ish fraction of voters that are considered "random."

While you would never want to inject random votes into an election, it's probably reasonable to assume that some fraction of voters behave naturally random (e.g., people get sick and don't vote, or are just politically fickle). This probably conflicts with the property of "unrestricted domain" but it seems like a reasonable concession in practice.

DARPA is an R&D agency under the DoD. Even if you work on their classified projects, it's going to be under the umbrella of the DoD. There are specific R&D agencies for the Intel community (see IARPA).

Some constructive criticism: it's better to just admit when you made a false statement than to double down on being wrong.

DARPA isn't an intelligence agency.

This is pretty easy to verify by just knowing how 32 bit floats are represented.

A 32-bit float is represented as:

- 1 bit = sign bit

- 8 bits = exponent; represents a signed value in [-128, 127]. Note that an exponent value 127 is special and reserved for infinity.

- 23 bits = mantissa

Numbers >= 1.0 ==> (sign = 1, 0 <= exponent <= 126, mantissa >=0). That's (2^23 * 127) + 1 (to include infinity). This comes out to exactly 1,065,353,217 for numbers in the range [1.0, +inf].

Numbers < 1.0 and > 0 ==> (sign = 1, exponent < 0, mantissa >= 0). That is 2^23 * 128 = 2^30. This comes out to exactly 1,073,741,824 for numbers in the range (0.0, 1.0).

I don't understand your argument? You seem to be implying that if heirs don't withdraw any money then they will stay rich? Yes.

The point I was making is that most heirs might not fully understand tax implications, inflation, and that increases in nominal wealth != increases in real wealth. This all leads to generational wealth dying out, as well as for reasons mentioned by others in the thread.

Not saying a home isn't a good investment. But on average, home prices have risen 4% y.o.y. in the US. Inflation target is 2% but is much closer to 4%. If you sell your house for $1m more than you bought it for, you can exclude 500K from capital gains, but you're still paying cap gains on the other 500K.

Bottom line: assume a 1% real profit y.o.y. on your home, then factor in closing costs (8%), and. then cap. gains on the profit. You didn't make as much as you think.

Haha oh geez. Some parents are just awful

I have not heard of that poem, thanks for sharing!

With respect to education around money systems, I am referring more to (a) knowing that investing is necessary but insufficient and (b) understanding the main drivers (besides spending) of wealth loss: inflation and taxation.

It's hard (even for successful, intelligent people) to wrap their head around the fact that their $1m house that ballooned up to $2m over the last 25 years has in fact, lost value.

While this is true for many, it's worth noting that there's a growing trend of "giving while living" (especially for UHNWI and HNWI in the US).

This means that heirs of wealthy families are receiving portions of their inheritance often in their late 20s/early 30s.

Spend no more than 1% of their investment per year and invest the rest. This means that if you inherit $10m (after taxes), you should really only be withdrawing about 100K (before taxes). On the remaining wealth, you hope to earn 7+% year over year to beat inflation and grow your *real* net worth over time.

Inflation is necessary, and a low, predictable inflation rate is good for the economy. But it's still a wealth tax of the worst kind -- it's essentially a flat tax on everyone regardless of their level of wealth.

Remember, a government with $35T in debt can't possibly raise that much money from taxes; 3 out of every 4 dollars we pay in income taxes already goes to interest payments on that debt alone. The government will instead inflate the debt away by paying it back with future dollars that are worth less.

Many high net worth individuals are aware of this fact, but blindly giving heirs millions of dollars and not educating them about the money system will inevitably lead to poor outcomes.

I feel like this is almost always due to education around modern money systems.

If a child inherits $1 million from their parents (after taxes), they may feel rich, and they may try really hard to hold onto that money by saving and buying appreciating assets. In 10 years time that money might grow to $2 million. However, the buying power of $2 million is approximately equal to $1.5 million (3% inflation over 10 years). Couple that with a 20% tax on capital gains, and their real wealth increased by only 300K over 10 years after inflation. So while their nominal wealth seems to have doubled, their real wealth was only increasing by a modest 30K per year.

And this is all assuming that the person isn't spending any of that money. A different person might spend + invest and still have $1 million in their bank 10 years later... But this isn't the same $1 million they had 10 years ago --- adjusted for inflation they are 250K more poor

> In Linux, software doesn't even get that option. Nothing ever gets kernel access except the kernel itself.

what about loadable kernel modules?