nicoffeine

> Most of your points I'm ignoring

Easier than a counterpoint, sure.

> Sure it can happen, but there needs to be actual evidence before anyone should assume it is widespread.

Do[1] you[2] read[3] the[4] news[5]?

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-01/russian-b...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-billionaire-behind-the-bigg...

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2021/04/16/ta...

[4] https://slate.com/business/2014/05/richard-branson-tax-fraud...

[5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ywang/2021/08/24/companies-link...

I'm not talking about Zuck trying to buy a personality in the form of a custom yacht. I'm talking about Epstein and people like that who prefer to rent people against their will, or the Sacklers who will gladly set ethics and death tolls aside if there is enough profit opportunity.

Billionaires should to go jail for tax fraud, preferably in proportion to the amount of money they stole. They are not running their itemized deductions by a typical accounting firm. They are seeking out teams of lawyers and accountants with a reputation for hiding money, and paying millions of dollars because they expect them to be good at it.

"Alongside a minimum corporate tax rate, the pact includes provisions to ensure that multinational companies pay tax where they generate sales and profits, and not just where they have a physical presence. That could have major ramifications for tech companies such as Google and Amazon, which have amassed vast profits in countries where they pay relatively little tax."

I share your skepticism generally, but it seems like this agreement is a good step towards getting corporations to pay taxes. There's no point in starting a shell company in the Caymans if your taxes are paid based on where your products were purchased.

Everyone at a university is taking the same test with the same expectations, usually to some national or international standard for that field of study. Each FAANG has their own set of tests that are not standard or internally consistent, even for the same job.

This is the cost of fighting professional standards for the industry as a whole. I'm not necessarily for that, but I don't know what the sensible alternative is to inter-corporate pissing matches and job titles that are practically meaningless. Nobody who knows how to build a house or fix a car is going to spend months playing puzzle games about those topics. They are just going to find an opportunity to do the work they enjoy somewhere else.

Edit: to remove unrelated rant.

> Adjust that for the fact that they have basically no rational reason whatsoever to commit crimes

They may have no rational reason to fear prosecution, but they commit crimes all the time. Becoming untouchably wealthy does not remove base desires from anyone, it only shields them from accountability.

"The uber-rich also shield their wealth through elaborate purchases of real estate, yachts, jets and life insurance. Moving money around between bank accounts, estate and inheritance planning, engaging in a web of complex financial engineering, help them from paying their fair share of taxes. Some of the documents suggest the possibility of financial crimes, including money laundering."[1]

If you don't file your taxes correctly and you fail to pay the fines, or you attempt to defraud the government, there's a very good chance you will do time. The same is not true of the billionaire class no matter how much money the steal through tax avoidance schemes.

Once they have enough money, they can lawyer up and get out of just about anything, even the repeated sexual assault of their own family.[2] The only time they are held to account, with a few exceptions, is when the victims are other billionaires or powerful autocratic states.

This is not some new anti-wealth idea. Equal application of the law regardless of wealth, birth, or status is the fundamental American value. Or at least it was.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/10/04/the-pandor...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/cartercoudriet/2019/06/28/curt-...

They aren't even held accountable when they sell products that spark a nationwide overdose epidemic.

"That may seem like a lot of money, but billionaire math can be deceptive. The Sacklers proposed to pay the $4.5 billion out over nine years. Their current fortune is estimated to be at least $11 billion. Conservatively, with interest and investments, this means they can expect a 5 percent annualized rate of return on that fortune. If that’s the case, they’ll be able to pay the fine without even touching their principal. When they’re done paying in 2030, they will probably be richer than they are today."[1]

There are a few cases of powerful politicians serving jail time. I can't think of a single case where a billionaire was put in jail, except for Madoff, because he was stealing from other billionaires. When you've got billions, you have enough to buy politicians every cycle. You are effectively above the law, forever, regardless of how well your initial product line is doing.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/opinion/sackler-family-op...

I agree generally, but I think the reason executives lean on seniority is because they have no confidence in their own team to make a good technical hire, or spending a lot time/money/effort on the hiring process isn't a priority. They assume if someone has had a job for a few years, that they can't be that bad. Nobody ever got fired for hiring a former FAANG employee.

They started adding tests after this approach failed, and they're making the same mistake in a different way. Having the motivation to grind leetcode is not the same as having the motivation to finish a software project. You'll end up with a lot of people who really want the money, and will suffer any number of hoops, but in the end they really hate the work.

> Or do they just memorize the answers

Yes, and guess where they learned it from? Regurgitation and handing in "something" on time can pretty easily get you a degree, even at a top tier school. That will get you further at most organizations than a resume with completed software projects and no college degree. Once you are in, it's easy to do enough to avoid getting fired. No one wants to take the blame for a bad hire.

After a few years, they're a mid-level engineer and maybe they make good looking diagrams. They answer all of their emails, they show up for the meetings that actual engineers don't want to attend. They have a purpose and fill a role, even if they still fundamentally don't understand what's going on.

No matter where you go, or how high up the chain you get, they will be on every team and in every meeting. What they lack in technical understanding they cover with political and social skills. Which also means they will be your management.

When you don't have a good argument, it is best to stick with hypothetical situations. As soon as you move from straw men like "imagine three firms" to reality -- let's say, any F500 company -- it's too obvious that your hypothesis cannot be taken seriously.

I don't understand why anyone would want a weak central government. Who's going to be there to bail out corporations during the next crisis?

It absolutely is. When your boss asks for overtime and weekends to support the company in a startup culture, they take the most valuable thing any of us has. The exchange is about more than money and time: they are also expected to pour their time and effort into this one idea with similar, if not equal, sacrifices. They sink or swim with you.

This putz was too cowardly to lead honestly, and too incompetent to get a deal done to protect the livelihood of his team. If he knew he was checked out, he could have explored restructuring and letting the team buy in, maybe allowed them to reach out to their network and replace him. Instead all those hours of effort were reduced to nothing while he ran away from his responsibilities.

Fuck people like that, and fuck their boats and their Instagram feeds. They steal time away from our families for no benefit to us our society at large.

> I'm arguing about the feasibility of it in light of naive statements.

I have directly addressed your question with the fact that already a third of Americans are in a single payer system, and most of the world has a single payer or hybrid system.[1] It's naive to think we don't know how to do it, and that we can't learn something from other nations when we expand it.

If you don't think we're capable of achieving the same results as a bloc of nations that has twice our population and many more cultural differences between them, why? Low confidence in America as a whole? Math and science fundamentally change in different time zones? Nobody in America knows how to read German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Belgian, or English?

> If the answer was "Just expand Medicare", it probably would have been implemented already but the fact that it's not should tell you something: maybe it's not that easy.

There's an even simpler explanation: S.1129 was not passed.[2]

> So my question is not whether or not you think it's a good idea, my question is how do you get from the current state to your goal of a single payer system?

No, your question is, "How can I keep the conversation going pretending that I'll accept an answer?" So let's nip that, and you can answer the following question: what evidence would convince you it is feasible?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_univers...

[2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/112...

Obama has also been endorsing Medicare For All since 2018. From an article about that subject:

"The facts are undeniable. Citizens of developed countries with variations of single-payer systems — Britain, Germany, France, etc. — pay roughly half what Americans pay for health coverage and have better results to show for it (longer life spans, lower infant mortality).

They accomplish this not through some exotic, foreign magic but by exploiting the economic benefits of large insurance pools that represent the entire population. This allows comprehensive coverage to be offered at affordable rates because everyone shares in the risks and rewards of the system.

Let’s be real clear: This isn’t socialism. This isn’t communism. It’s simple risk management — the same economic principle that underlies all forms of insurance."[1]

The bottom line is that nearly a third of America (over 100 million people) are already on Medicare or Medicaid. That is enough data to forecast any outcome there is. Billing, coding, everything is already at a federal standard. Hospitals, doctors, and clinics love Medicare/Medicaid because they know what they are going to be paid and they are paid. Anyone who claims that it can't work here is either unaware of these facts, or purposefully pretending they don't exist.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-obama...

Deep down he knows that all he did was create a cleaner version of MySpace at the perfect moment. He's used that lottery ticket to acquire companies built by people smarter than he is, and he'll keep trying to tie their genuine innovation back to FB to soothe his fragile ego.

It was an anecdote about how complicated the US system is. Other countries figured out decades ago that adding competition to healthcare does not bring down the price or lead to better life expectancy.

It is not complicated.

https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm

https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/life-expectancy-at-birth.ht...

It's not that complicated. When we setup competition for infrastructure, we needlessly duplicate management, marketing, accounting, and everything else that does not directly result in the service being provided. The US is doubly idiotic by creating huge financial barriers for anyone who wants to enter healthcare. We make the problem even worse with a system that encourages people to delay treatment for problems that get more expensive to treat over time. The less money you have the more you delay, so the entire system eventually ends up overpaying for a worse outcome.

This doesn't factor in all the time spent dealing with inscrutable billing practices for fully insured people having routine medical procedures, or the tens of thousands who are bankrupted every year by the same practices. We recently took our daughter to the ER, which is supposed to be a $400 copay. We now have three separate bills from that visit totaling $1100, and I have no idea how many hours it will take to sort out. The same billing department sent us a $380 invoice six months after her birth because (in their description) they forgot she was there.

Five nines uptime only exists in the mainframe world. Everywhere else it's a requirement set by someone in management, which is met by the vendor in their marketing material. It's never achieved over the long term, but enough time passes so the inevitable downtime can be blamed on the previous management. The vendor meets their "guarantee" by paying back less than a point on the yearly bill, and then everyone can reset the clock and pretend that it won't happen again.

The only people who suffer consequences are the staff forced to work overtime performing SEV0 RED ALERT theater. They will work through nights/weekends while the responsible parties tut-tut and "manage" by reading updates they can collate into the post crisis report. After that, everyone participates in the joy of emergency meetings to discuss said report that will be entirely worthless when a completely different part of the system fails the next time. A more reliable HA solution will be worked up by the engineers, finance will estimate implementation costs, and it will be turned down by an executive on the 8th hole green because they don't care about anything except improving profitability so they can hand themselves a bonus.

Not that I'm bitter or anything.

That's why Vienna mixes subsidized housing and regular housing, often in the same building. They also allow families to stay in their housing or purchase it as long as they pay the higher rate related to their rising income.[1]

The problem in the US is that there is no gray area for subsidized housing. As soon as you hit some magic number, you lose all of your benefits. The people who game the system to stay under this number are not stupid, but acting rationally because they know their new job may not stick around. They would rather have housing security than take a chance at losing everything and living in the street until their tax return shows that they are poor again.

[1] https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/2019/09/housing-basic...

Posted in another thread, but there is a very interesting theory about why Germany has stable housing prices compared to other nations. This funding model may also explain why local municipalities are against multi-family housing, which is driving sprawl and unwalkable zoning policy in the US.

'Local German officials, like local leaders everywhere, seek bigger budgets to provide more and better services to their constituents. What’s different about Germany is that the way to get bigger budgets is to increase local populations. And, as Professor Buettner says, “Ultimately, to get people, municipalities will need to support housing.”

The result is a system of incentives that is the opposite of “fiscal zoning”—the US practice of zoning land in ways that maximize local governments’ income and minimize their costs. In places with high sales taxes, such as Washington State, leaders zone more land for shopping centers. In places where residential property taxes are capped, such as California, they zone less land for homes and more for offices. In affluent suburbs, they often zone land for houses on large lots, excluding low-income people.

Maximizing property values is such a central concern of local government in the United States that Dartmouth economist William Fischel developed the notion into an entire political theory. His “homevoter hypothesis” holds that local governments are almost single-mindedly focused on maximizing real estate values, because homeowners typically vote their home values in local elections. German jurisdictions gain financially by maximizing population, not house values, and because renters outnumber homeowners in the country, homevoters are not the dominant electoral force in local German elections. Renters are.'

https://www.sightline.org/2021/05/27/yes-other-countries-do-...

I am helping a few people getting started with web dev, and I have had good success using Svelte. It's not necessarily the best choice if you're trying to start a resume to get hired, but if you're trying to get comfortable with the foundations of all of the possibilities (javascript, html, css) it's a lot less intimidating. I think it will be a big player in the future, and you can make just about anything you want with it.

https://svelte.dev/tutorial/basics

In my case, I always have to do video tutorials to get started with a new stack. I use Academind ($20 a month) since their courses are comprehensive and still manage to split topics into shorter videos. When I get confused, I can usually find a good refresher on what I'm having trouble with. They have a course on Svelte specifically and 101 guides to all the technologies involved.

Germany is nearly halfway to replacing fossil fuels and nuclear power, other countries are even further along (though they are smaller). Pretty sure they qualify as a modern human civilizations.

I've heard nonsense claims against renewable energy my entire life, but it's all over except for the shouting. Nuclear is going away because wind and solar are already cheaper and easier to deploy and better for the environment. Maybe it's a good option on Mars where there isn't a biosphere.

If you were on a spaceship and every year the CO2 => oxygen recycling systems grew increasingly unpredictable as well as the average temperature of all systems onboard, would it be alarmist to figure out what was going on? The climate is changing, very slowly on our individual lifespan timescale, but very quickly on the timescale of the last twenty thousand years of weather patterns that can support our current population.

That's something that can certainly happen in the lifetime of my grandchildren, if I have any. The problem is that even a two or three foot rise in seas (the current projection for Miami in 2060) requires trillions of dollars across the world so sewage and other nice features of civilization continue to operate.

The short term existential crisis is economic instability and mass migration leading to unpredictable warfare. The long term existential crisis is that south Florida really is gone along with the place where something like half of all humans live, the ocean life that supports billions of people dies out, and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns cause entire ecosystems to fail taking out huge chunks of humanity in addition to war over the remaining resources.

> That seems like pure nonsense and perhaps a way to market their goofy experiment to gullible journalists.

Grasslands evolved in symbiotic relationships with the animals that tread on them, just as in any other part of the biosphere. As long as the wooly mammoth population is kept in check by humans, since they are not introducing mammoth predators, they will aerate the ground, eat and spread seeds, and provide essential elements and minerals to the soil as a natural part of their excretion processes. It will also have knock-on effects as insects regain access to dung, and that will feed the birds, and the birds and their eggs will become food for other animals, and so on.

It's a lot easier to restore ecology that existed 10-20 thousand years ago than to wait millions of years for another set of species to maximize the biological output of a given area. Rewilding is based on solid science and is thankfully here to stay.

You can't claim that taxation is a complex subject, yet begin by asking simplistic questions about it. Even then the concept is easy to understand, and expected rational behavior: the wealthy evade taxes because they like money and use their considerable resources to get it done. It's a fact that has thousands of years of historical precedent.[1] It's a pattern of behavior well documented in books, documentaries, and research on the subject. It's even part of the backdrop for dramas based on historical events, like the French Revolution.

It doesn't require any conspiracy, only self interest. Even then, the wealthy do have yearly economic summits where tax policy is discussed. Why would you assume it's about how to raise their own taxes instead of the opposite?

> Can you provide a year-by-year (or close enough) summary of the progression of this design and how it met your stated purpose?

There's a fairly good summary at Brookings.[2]

> I'll add my own observation to this: No, the US tax code is not designed to benefit the wealthy. It is based on incentivizing behavior through tax breaks/credits.

Yes it is. Even narrowing the focus to their personal income tax after it's loopholed through corporate tax shelters, the extremely wealthy pay have a lower tax rate than workers earning $45k.[3] Workers who make $140k pay as much into social security as the richest people on earth who also have US citizenship. What's the benefit to society having less money for shared infrastructure, and what's the benefit of rewarding people who find a way to avoid paying into that?

> And, no, what they do in (country) "m" has no bearing whatsoever on what is done or should be done in any other country

Eliminating the chance to learn from other nation's policy mistakes and successes is a terrible idea.

[1] https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/when-governments-can...

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/testimonies/funding-our-nations-pr...

[3] https://www.propublica.org/article/you-may-be-paying-a-highe...

Rich white dudes have a lot of empathy for other rich white dudes.

"collude: cooperate in a secret or unlawful way in order to deceive or gain an advantage over others"

Shareholder votes are public, but anonymous. The more typical scenario is that you hold on to the shares and create demand for the stock as a sign of your approval. Unless you own tens of thousands or more shares, you were probably not invited to the perfectly legal but private discussions about the proposals.

Shareholders recently voted against every single proposal that was also opposed by Amazon.[1]

[1] https://www.geekwire.com/2021/final-tally-amazon-shareholder...

'The Illinois-based worker explained that once the $15 minimum wage was enacted, part-time employee hours at their store were cut from an average of 30 to 21 hours a week, and full-time employees saw average hours reduced from 37.5 hours to 34.5 hours. The worker provided schedules from 1 November to the end of January 2019, showing hours for workers in their department significantly decreased as the department’s percentage of the entire store labor budget stayed relatively the same.

“We just have to work faster to meet the same goals in less time,” the worker said.'

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/06/whole-foods-...

They could start by ceasing their union busting efforts.

Last year they posted a job looking for a senior intelligence analyst to gather info on "sensitive topics that are highly confidential, including labor organizing threats against the company." Later that day they claimed they had made a mistake in describing the job.[1]

There is no single answer on what pay and benefits should be, or how well they should treat their workers. That's the whole point of unions: they provide collective bargaining where employees can decide how much their local area can reasonably support.

That's why organized labor is a threat to them. Their business model depends on squeezing wages and benefits, which is exactly what they did when they bought Whole Foods. They removed medical benefits for part time employees[2], and have recently cut paid breaks from 15 to 10 minutes, which now includes the time it takes to walk to and from the break room.[3]

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/01/amazon-seeks-intelligence-an...

[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/09/14/amazon-whole...

[3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whole-foods-cuts-some-workers-p...

Yes, because instead of just paying higher wages and letting individuals decide what they'd like to spend their money on, they have this PR stunt. Amazon gets some free marketing, another tax write off, and they can use this as evidence that workers don't need protection from their constant scheming. They can continue to exploit their workforce to the maximum extent of the law while they lobby to get more worker rights removed because their workers can potentially jump through a few dozen hoops and get a college degree. Amazon will absolutely use this empty posturing to try and cover up their dismal labor record.

"Why should our workers be allowed to take bathroom breaks or even think about forming a union? We gave them free college*!"

*Some conditions apply

The EU is already dependent on other regions because without imported synthetic fertilizers and other chemicals, they won't be able to produce the same yields anyway. Most countries there already have 10% or more farmland dedicated to organic practices.[1] They have more tooling and expertise available outside the chemical monocropping approach, which is what doomed the change in Sri Lanka.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/657572/organic-farmland-...

Social Security is solvent if you remove the income cap. Right now, if you make $140k annually, you pay into social security as much as Jeff Bezos does.

You'd also have to figure out how to eliminate other tax loopholes at the same time, like taxing unearned income from investment at a far lower rate than earned income from actual work.