padobson

This is one of those rare sentences that changes the way my mind works. When I read a weird word in a magazine piece, I usually think the author is being pretentious or needlessly flowery - perhaps even a secret handshake inside a literary class where I don't belong. It never occurred to me to think this was showing respect to the reader.

Breyer dissented in part.

Ginsberg and Sotomayor dissented completely.

I jog for exercise. When I'm dealing with a deep bout of depression, nothing works better than a fast mile. A comfortable pace for me is about 8-8.5 minutes per mile. If I want to break out of depression, I'll run the first mile around 7. The resultant runner's high almost immediately shocks me out of the depression.

I'd also add meditation/prayer to the list, plus I see a professional therapist every two weeks.

The time difference is about a "half day", the one PG is describing here.

So if I schedule all of my meetings in the afternoon pacific time, I can get a full day of work done before calling into teleconferences.

So I wonder if some kind of staggered scheduling, like PG described in the essay, is the answer to this problem.

The viral growth of companies started by 20-something founders is fueled by 20-something consumers.

The growth of companies started by 40-something founders is fueled by businesses with 40-something managers/executives.

I seem to remember some old computer game, I think it was Amazon Trail 3[0], in which there was a side quest where you had to trade rubber for other items while near Fordlandia.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Trail_3rd_Edition

I'm not sure this is true. I'd say it's more like demand in cities is outpacing supply, whereas that's not the case in the suburbs. It seems more like a commentary on the scarcity of real estate (both natural and artificial) in city centers.

Again, the article has generally good advice, but there's no secrets here to make someone a master blogger. It's going to require the same thought, hustle, and persistence as anything else.

What I found interesting, though, were the competing right-wing narratives in the lives of the immigrants. They were so ready to live industrious, entrepreneurial lives (largely) outside of the protection of government, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, while their work ethic, frugality, and ultimate success led to anti-immigrant, nativist sentiments and the politics that reflect them.

I tend to be relatively laissez-faire in my tastes for both economic and immigration policy, but watching the right-wing in Europe and the United States reject the latter makes me think the sentiment comes from a deeper, visceral level. Almost like an immune system rejecting something it doesn't recognize. For all the posturing and intellectual maturity of free-market economics and small government policies, it seems that right-wing politics will always find easier alliances among those with xenophobic or even racist sentiments because those motivations are hardwired into our DNA, and embracing your hard wiring is a lot easier than comprehending Friedman or Hayek.

No great product mind I've ever studied sacrificed making a great product for a more profitable, adequate product.

In the long run, the company that makes the best product always wins. Apple was never worried about cannibalizing the iPod to make a better product in the iPhone. You won't find anything in Amazon's leadership principles[0] that could justify this kind of thinking. Even Wal-Mart, after pressuring their suppliers for lower costs, doesn't keep the difference as profits. They push their prices lower and build trust with the customer.

Curing patients is absolutely a sustainable business model, and only the most small minded, short-sighted Wall Street suit would think it isn't.

[0]https://www.amazon.jobs/principles

And it makes sense if you look at the tippy top of the wealthy as an illustration: In nominal dollars, Bezos is less wealthy than Walton was less wealthy than Rockefeller, and Bezos is a major beneficiary of globalization.

Rockefeller had an outsized influence on American politics because his wealth was chiefly American.

Bezos, on the other hand, to hold his wealth incumbency needs to influence politics in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the UK, the EU, Japan and China.

Globalization definitely allows the rich to reach newer heights, but it also diffuses their influence and spreads their power thin.

>If a single person's net worth is more than a medium sized country's GDP, we DO have a problem.

I added italics to parts of our respective posts. They seem to indicate we agree.

We might disagree on the size of the problem or how to fix it, but that would be covering new ground.

- The "1%" is ever changing, the mobility in and out of that group has only increased over time [0]

- Most measures of inequality are local or national. The same markets that have enriched the 1% have also brought a billion people out of poverty globally in the last 30 years. [1] Globally, workers are doing better than ever.

- The practicality of inequality changes over time. Most people in the middle 50% in developed nations live better than the .1% of a hundred years ago.

Inequality may be a problem, but it's not an existential threat or even a primary concern to developed countries.

[0]https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/04/mo...

[1]https://www.economist.com/news/international/21719790-going-...

What's more interesting is the comment you're replying to actually describes the super-personal nature of God - what Christians call the Trinity. Writings expounding on the Trinity have filled many volumes of Christian theology - it's something far from being "swept under the rug".

The problem here, as with any economic ideas, is properly defining "stupid stuff". Value has to be defined on an individual basis. If someone gets more entertainment from digging holes and filling them with dirt than using their phone, then hole digging doesn't seem like such pointless endeavor. The hole digger will probably end up in better health than the phone user, too, so it's not like there endeavor is altogether pointless.

Taking options away (like cash) is a bad idea if you're optimizing society around individual autonomy. We should want as many options as possible.

YouTube's UI prominently features search. So if my interests change and I search for something I've never been interested before, YouTube can show me a pretty good selection of videos and tune its recommendations for future viewing.

I will say, though, that all social networks seem to fail at weighting past behavior too strongly. Whenever I start a new account on a social network, I find it's recommendations are much more tuned to my interests, and those recommendations become less relevant overtime.

Biologically, I'm a new person every seven years. As a collection of varied interests, it seems like I turnover much more often than that - and I suspect the rate of turnover is different for everyone.

I'm open to being wrong, but I don't think anyone can do a good job.

No one has yet invented a way of distributing resources more efficiently than markets. I'm not sure if socialism can be real socialism if markets are involved, but I know there's no existing solution to feed and clothe people without them. You might argue for Ptolemaic Egypt, but they had a huge advantage with the Nile, and starvation was rampant in drier years. Every 20th Century example of trying to eliminate markets either led to mass starvation or a quick return to markets once it was clear you couldn't grow an economy without them.

Sweden, Denmark, Norway and most other big government countries socialists like to point out still rely on markets to provide the economic growth needed to pay the taxes for their social programs. They also have the advantage of strong allies and needing to spend only a small fraction of their tax revenues on defense.

One man's disgusting pig shit is another man's profitable pig shit.

[0]https://coinmarketcap.com/

Hopefully we're about to land in a cultural place where getting an education is seen as getting an education, rather than either a panacea for individual success or a complete waste of time/money for the docile masses.

I myself have begun to think that a higher standard of friendship is needed in social media. Something like Twitter, where you can follow anyone unless they actively block you, makes more sense where engagement is limited, like how selecting a TV channel to watch is largely a one-way experience.

I would love to see a social network demand a higher standard of friendship from a user before other users are allowed in their network - based on something more than reciprocal button pushing, so kind folks don't feel compelled to accept a friend request out of politeness. Snapchat may be on to something here, as you actually have to know the person exists before you can add them.

I don't know exactly what the answer is - ask compatibility questions, quiz the user about their history, analyze their current social networks for positive engagement - but I'm extremely curious about the possibility of a social network that purposely limits its own network effects.