yorkedork

This response is neither productive nor insightful.

First, it's probably not useful to arbitrarily claim what the biggest flaw in the design of C is without context or data.

Second, I don't think it's reasonable in this case to place the blame on the design of a language (certainly, the choice of C has long been a pragmatic decision). As Linus alludes to directly, the tools exist with which to write more correct, idiomatic C code for the kernel (e.g., ARRAY_SIZE and a useful gcc warning).

Finally, as the historical record should demonstrate, 'getting rid of X by replacing it with Y' is not particularly actionable; it certainly isn't the most efficient solution in terms of resources and likely not in terms of correctness over the short- to medium-term.

If I'm to hazard a guess, the point of his message was to remind everyone the biggest source of flawed code lies in our own hands and in the biases individuals and groups bring to large-scale development.

The choice, here, isn't between using a good language and a bad language; it's between using a language and its idioms correctly, and using those things lazily with foul consequences.

>There's a very significant and logical reason why American corporations - particularly tech companies - are accumulating so much cash: repatriation taxes. Absolutely.

I'll claim no authority to speak on corporate tax policy (at least from the perspective of firms); on the face of it, I can imagine that it might be reasonable to suggest that tax policy is the major contributor to the dynamics of firm investment behavior.

I wasn't, however, really sincerely questioning why, e.g., AAPL is accumulating cash or necessarily correlating that fact with domestic investments. It was sloppy writing on my part, but my intent was only to give an obvious example of capital accumulation.

Surely, cash is not the only means of firms funding investments. Firm investment behavior will be guided by a variety of factors; my thought was to point to macroeconomic factors like insufficient aggregate demand, capital flight from EM and persistent deflationary pressure to provide simpler explanation to the conclusions of the OP.

What is it that's working as intended? The process of buying back shares of your own company?

If you read what I wrote carefully, you should notice something that I didn't say:

  AAPL has a bunch of cash and is using it to fund its stock buyback program. Thus, capitalism has failed.

In fact, I was attempting to elucidate the OP's topic. I believe a reasonable interpretation to be: why are so many startups with weak fundamentals and/or specious business models receiving so much funding via private equity?

My response to this question was to observe macro-level phenomena and speculate that the _emergence_ of this dynamic was due to a broad-based failure in matching capital with desired investment risk and return. I mentioned Apple to demonstrate what a capital hoarder has done (which is to reinvest in its own equity) in relief against private equity firms. In a global environment where demand for safe assets exceeds supply, less risk-averse firms are chasing further risk to maintain their desired level of return.

None of these points, I thought, required a race to defend attacks against capitalism; however, in the interest of demonstrating my sincerity, I'll share a couple of my own positions I believe are loosely-relevant to the broader discussion:

  * Capitalism maximizes human capital: no
  * Efficient markets hypothesis: wrong-headed, at best
  * Moralizing capital: one of the most socially and politically toxic behaviors

It is my view that capitalism is a set of prescriptions which seek to define and regulate economic behavior. Further, it seems misguided to say simply that capitalism has succeeded or that it failed. A better alternative might be to say: given a set of expectations, a capitalist environment produced correct or incorrect results. Or, a more politically-charged example: capitalism has succeeded (or failed) in maximizing, e.g., environmental capital, human capital, social welfare or aggregate happiness.

In any case, I now regret side-tracking myself and I don't find it particularly relevant to be debating the merits of capitalism in this context.

While I'm not intending to be heavy-handed and reductionist, I think the (macro) trend(s) we've seen in (domestic) startup investment since 2008-2009 can satisfactorily explain this behavior.

Disinflation & deflation, capital flows and political friction preventing effective (any?) fiscal policy have produced an environment where private capital set on a given rate of return on investment is chasing increasingly risky organizations [1][2].

Large firms have been sitting on enormous sums of cash; e.g., why is it that the most capitalized company on earth isn't investing aggressively. In lieu of investment, many of these firms have been focused on engineering stock buybacks.

So, the thesis: why are so many firms pouring money into startups with increasingly questionable fundamentals? Because hands previously gripping bundles of capital have (nominally) more capital than they did with decreasing options for productive investment and downward pressure on returns.

1. http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/puzzles

2. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/?s=low+inflation+return+inv...

P.S. I recognize that I'm probably a bit left field for this group as I'm not a libertarian, I support strong regulation and I question the marginal value of lots of Valley products.