jeffe

Can't wait until he hears about that time we had a marginal tax of over 90%.

The value is similar to that of internships - the amortized cost of a 6 month 'trial period' should be similar if not cheaper than false positives that are a lot tougher to fire so you avoid dumpster fires like Amazon's mandatory attrition rate. I also wouldn't call it giving up there lives, when they know what they're signing up for and are presumably getting paid a similar amount to the the full time role they're applying for. Now if FAANG companies try to use their reputation to get cheap labor with no intention of hiring I don't have answers to that, but I can't imagine it would be worth the cost.

What was the cost to himself? He clearly has the experience to obtain a similarly compensated job, and if the post achieved what would be its 'virtuous' goal of large exposure, it would be done so on a short timeline no less (a recruiter from Microsoft has already reached out).

For a more modern and youthful perspective, I'd recommend "Trick Mirror" by Jia Tolentino. It really dives into how chaotic world of internet and media has influenced younger generations.

At least for higher education, I think it's a little more difficult to scale than this piece makes. Higher education has a very entrenched culture of obsessing with fundraising, accumulation of prestige through factors tangential to education quality, and exploitation of undergrad/grad labor. My state school tried to 'build' enrollments in it's historically competitive STEM majors and I just saw these problematic factors become worse; increased reliance on underpaid student TAs, with additional funding being dumped into band-aids such as tutoring programs fractured between departments and stress relief fairs. For higher education it needs complete cultural or policy reform to focus on educating and eliminate cruft, before we can start building it out.

I don't believe the concept of some 'natural order' the book seemed happy to worship. Nature is always in a state of flux, and species will always compete and alter their environments. Limited resources means all species are 'takers'. I would argue that it is even more 'unnatural' for a dominant species to deliberately cede dominance.

There is plenty of evidence suggesting we are currently on an unsustainable path with regard to the continuation of our own current lifestyle. I doubt it will lead to the end of life on Earth, and (regarding the book) I'm not quite convinced that a return to hunter gatherer societies is the proper solution.

I'm surprised that this book, which is as about as heavy handed and nuanced as Atlas Shrugged, seems to have such positive consensus. Reading it at a similarly impressionable age I found it to be a typical luddite philosophy presented by a condescending pseudo-intellectual gorilla. It presented some obvious truths about human culture and its effects on the environment, but insidiously twisted everything to support his notion that we have destroyed some grand 'natural' order and need to stop being a culture of 'takers'. Did I mention that to Quinn all cultures are either 'givers' or 'takers'? You can probably guess which one he spent the majority of the book demonizing.

This story has been updated since. https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/17/21184308/coronavirus-ital... Basically the company does not plan to sue, and was not selling the part at $10,000.