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Comment Re:I don't get it... (Score 1) 457

...what has happened so fundamentally in our country (US) where people don't care about actual citizenship, and protecting our borders?

If you are here in this country illegally, you have criminally trespassed. You should be deported.

That is the current law.

I don't know the current law and if what type of deportation it prescribes, but a few key questions are: (1) is the law being applied correctly? (2) is the law the one that "the people" want? and (3) if "the people" don't want the current laws, how do they change them?

I would suggest considering the parallel between these prank calls and the civil disobedience that Rosa Parks and many others performed in the Civil Rights era. We might get to different answers, but I hope we can agree on the questions.

Comment Late April Fool's? (Score 3, Interesting) 307

This feels like a joke. This is a joke right? Because the value proposition, besides creating controversy, doesn't make sense. It seems like they're offering to solve information asymmetries, when supply differs from demand. But this creates new problems.

Landlords Now need to figure out when to close their auction to get the maximal volume of the best tenants paying the best prices. How do I even think about that?

Renters need to figure out on which rentals to bid. It seems like bids are binding - are they not? Is there conditional bidding and Rentberry is solving so complex logic problem? Or combinatoric bidding where renters can win only one item?

Comment IANAL (Score 1) 179

I'm somewhat new to the industry, but my understanding is that there aren't copyright protections for fonts. So that won't work. However there is trademark protections, and the standard there is confusion.

If consumers think Googe and Google are affiliated then Googe might be in trouble.

Comment Economist in Support (Score 5, Interesting) 866

I'm an economist; I recently finished my PhD and am now working in the tech industry.

I am hugely in favor of UBI. I think of it in 3 ways:

Is it doable?
Yes, of course. Existing social programs are very costly, and this will replace many of them. Furthermore, there are a lot of profits that have been created by technology in the last 50 years. And yet work weeks have increased, and many people have a lower quality of life than before. You might ask why this is. I'll give you a hint: the answer isn't population growth.

What is the cost?
Social disruption in the short term. Probably a cost to some or many very wealthy individuals. New regulations are required, but these may be less in total than existing regulations.

What is the benefit?
Many. Increased social stability. A simpler social safety net for one. A promise that each individual will be better off as technology improves and jobs may be destroyed.

That last piece I believe to be very important. The looming driverless car revolution has highlighted the risk of technology: jobs lost there have no promise of replacements.

Comment Re:what about skinny people? (Score 1) 378

No, game theory tells us that sociopaths do well in a society that is primarily composed of non-sociopaths, but do not do so well in a society where they are the majority (and that society also doesn't do well as a whole).

Please check your source on this, I do not think you can conclude that based on game theory, or even a reasonable application of game theory. Alternatively, how do you reach this conclusion?

Medicine

Obama Administration Seeks $58M To Put (Partly) Toward Fighting Ebola 105

The Associated Press reports (here, as carried by the Washington Times) that The White House is asking Congress for $58 million above current levels to speed the production of promising drugs to fight Ebola and additional flexibility for the Department of Homeland Security to cope with the thousands of unaccompanied Central American children still arriving at the southern border. ... [T]he $58 million request for the Centers for Disease Control would help the agency ramp up production and testing of the experimental drug called ZMapp, which has shown promise in fighting the Ebola epidemic in western Africa. It would also help keep the development and manufacturing of two Ebola vaccines on track. The White House request also seeks to use $10 million in unused balances at the Department of Health and Human Services to help with the Ebola outbreak in Africa. The scarcity of ZMapp, the most promising treatment known for Ebola, is such that the third U.S. doctor to have been returned after being infected by the disease will be treated without it.

Comment Re:Political/Moral (Score 2) 305

...[you need to] recognize his base assumptions from his math, or you're still not qualified to check his math.

As an economist, I want to reiterate that point.

That said, I wouldn't take the article at face value. Look at how they describe 'unaccepted research practice.' Playing devil's advocate, splitting research into smaller publishable piece makes sense if you want to get it out as quickly as possible. Or their statement about checking the contents of work cited? Do they mean ensuring that works cited are correct? Because that's ridiculous, no one can do that. Or do they mean glancing at the work cited? Because that's equally ridiculous.

Comment Re:IANAL, but... (Score 1) 130

It's a little more complicated than that. The issue is match quality between workers and firms. Match quality increases over a worker's tenure at a firm (as they learn the systems / practices / whatever). To better model the issue you'll want to include training costs and long term contracts.

For example, it won't work out if a firm trains workers and then those workers just find better jobs, so one solution is long term contracts. Long term contracts may be forbidden, so firms need other ways to retain workers who they've spent a lot of money to train. Anti-poaching rules may be another solution.

I'm not saying implicit anti-poaching agreements are good, but it's not a black and white issue.

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