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Comment Re:$15 minimum wage (Score 1) 61

Since Amazon is probably well aware of the law in Seattle and they are going forward with it, apparently the numbers work OK.

I think the point is that restaurants that already have delivery drivers (such as pizza parlors) may be more willing to outsource delivery to Amazon in order to not have to pay the higher minimum wage to the delivery people on their payroll.

[BTW, why should I worry about the minimum wage rise? I'm not a young, low-skill worker. If they loose their job, it is not my problem...until they decide to become self-employed entrepreneurs and rob me at gun point]

Comment Data point (Score 1) 561

I went to some "young Mensan" meetings back in the 1980's. I ended up dating a very nice (and smart) girl and had a good time.

In the 2010's, I'm not sure there is much point in joining Mensa to meet people for romantic reasons, especially given the large number of "meetup" style events available, plus online dating sites allow one to signal intelligence pretty easily if not explicitly.

There are many signals that people look for in romantic engagements that people prefer to not receive explicitly, including money, intelligence, and power. For example, women on average may like rich men, but if you show up at a date and give a woman a $100 bill to signal your wealth, it is not likely to be received well.

Comment Dependencies suck (Score 1) 279

"Similarly, almost 53% of all C++ build errors were classified as dependency-related. The most common such errors were using an undeclared identifier and missing class variables."

OK, why can't a compiler just Google for the dependency?

Identify everything with a unique ID. When you need to reference it, your system searches all your code (and any other code repositories) for the unique ID.

Why hasn't this been solved?

Comment Re:"The Internet" (Score 1) 209

If power is removed from government, some other entities will gain that power and become the new evil that must be fought.

I believe there are occasional market externalities that need to be dealt with via government. However the problem is that most people feel everything is a market externality that needs to be dealt with via government, thus government has too much power.

What is keeping YOU from competing with your local cable provider on higher-quality Internet connectivity? If you could prove to investors that your offering would be profitable, and they would invest in you because rich people like making money.

But then you would have to go to your local cable franchise board (set up because people feel that cable service is a "natural monopoly" that is not amenable to market forces, which is BS), and then you would have to fight against government power to be able to legally offer a service that people want.

Comment Re:"The Internet" (Score 4, Insightful) 209

starting with removing the corrupting influence of money

I have news for you, the corrupting influence of money will remain AS LONG AS POLITICIANS HAVE POWER. Money will "route around" such "campaign finance reforms". That is why all the campaign finance reforms put in place since the 1970's have consistently achieved nothing (except for allowing incumbents to hold on to power more strongly).

Politicians are always answerable at the ballot box. If you vote for politicians who promise to REMOVE POWER FROM GOVERNMENT, you will REMOVE THE POTENTIAL FOR CORRUPTION.

Most of our "Internet problems" are last mile problems. These are not national problems. You need to show up to your local government meetings and work on last mile access. I suggest local government reduce barriers to entries for new local ISPs (my suggestion). Or perhaps local governments should build open FTTH (which of course would be open to corruption to the contractors who build it, but perhaps that is better). But local is where to deal with this issue.

Comment Re:Japan is already a nuclear power. (Score 1) 398

Neither country has ever carried out a test

You don't need a test for a U-235 gun-type fission weapon. It is too simple to make. "Little Boy" was never tested. But purifying U-235 is a huge industrial undertaking.

And it probably isn't too hard to work out the implosion mechanisms for a plutonium fission weapon either.

Getting fusion-boosted weapons to work might be a tad bit harder to do without practical experience.

Comment Re:In civilized countries... (Score 1) 169

World War 2 dragged the U.S. out of recession.

WW2 reduced private spending. The private component of GDP fell after 1941, and while the war lasted, private output never recovered to its pre-Pearl Harbor level. In 1943, real private GDP was 14% lower than it had been in 1941.

It was the end of WW2 (and perhaps co-indicdent with the destruction of Fascism and death of FDR, both large concerns of business leaders before the war) that allowed private spending to return to pre-war levels.

There were actually some economists who thought that the end of WW2 would plunge the world into another Great Depression due to the end of massive government defense spending. US government spending was cut nearly in half from 1945 ($118B) to 1947 ($57B). But the private economy boomed after WW2 despite the dramatic cuts in government spending.

Comment Re:Feckless tools of big business (Score 1) 422

These folks simply do not understand that the underlying goal is to drive U.S. wages to third world levels by introducing large labor surpluses.

It is unlikely that any surplus of labor would lead employers to pay significantly less than the productivity of a worker, especially in sectors such as computer programming where barriers to entry are low and new firms can rapidly form.

It is possible that labor surpluses could actually lower the prices of goods and services in general, which can benefit consumers.

for those who talk about expanding the economy to accommodate millions of new workers; how's that working for you?

Research suggests that "U.S. natives (especially high-skill natives) appear to have benefited from greater availability and reduced prices of nongraded goods and services that are intensive in low-skill labor"

Complimentary labor from low-skilled immigrants makes things better for high-skilled natives, although it may have a small negative effect on the earnings of low-skilled natives (especially those that drop out of high school).

BTW, I know several women in tech fields who only have the opportunity to work because of the low cost of services from immigrant nannies for their young children, immigrant house cleaners, etc.

Comment Re:Amnesty (Score 1) 932

Your argument is that the United States should be the only country in the world with open immigration?

Okay... lets do that. And then lets see how long your welfare and entitlement programs last with millions crossing the border and suddenly getting full social security benefits, EBT, etc.

I'm sure plenty of people would like to move to the US to work even if they do not get any entitlement benefits. Ethically, that would probably be better than forcing people to stay in places where they live at under $1 per day...

Comment Re:It's arrived there ages ago (Score 1) 382

The "value" of stock is by no means connected to real world revenue of the issuing corporations anymore. It's just dependent on expectations of stock traders and whether or not they have any "faith" in the paper.

Actually equities price to earnings ratio (P/E) is highly correlated with 20-year annualized returns, (see graph here).

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