firstOrder

7 ms·

31.
by firstOrder 12y ago
I see, "defense" is an "investment in the future", but Social Security and Medicare are "morally bankrupt". I guess the US military bases ringing the world are an investment in some kind of future. US arms sho
32.
by firstOrder 12y ago
China's GDP has grown 7% or more every year since 1991. It had an impressive economic record before that as well. You can read gloomy articles like this going back to 1949. In that time, China has become the second largest economy i
33.
by firstOrder 12y ago
> it would be nice if...you could sponsor homeless people with enough money to find accomodation and medical/psychological assistance You're presuming that our society and economy isn't designed to purposefully try to get
34.
by firstOrder 12y ago
> The VC has collected extra cash How was that cash collected? What is the VC collecting now? He collected cash from the last batch of "entrepreneurs" and their teams who did all the work and wealth creation. He's doing
35.
by firstOrder 12y ago
> We learned that unnamed employees felt pressured by Tom and me to work pro-bono for my nonprofit. We racked our brains trying to understand this new allegation...I am so very sorry if anyone felt that I was pressuring him or her for ad
36.
by firstOrder 12y ago
You need surplus to establish a hierarchy. A migratory hunter-gatherer band has no surplus - people collect enough food to feed themselves, their children, and perhaps some older people, and that's it. Once there is a hierarchy with t
37.
by firstOrder 12y ago
What resources does a highly migratory hunter-gatherer band actually have to take? The whole point is there is no surplus production. Also, how exactly would one band of hunter gatherers continually oppress another band of hunter gatherer
38.
by firstOrder 12y ago
It's interesting how throughout the 1930s we see almost no mention of this in the New York Times. Which is what your link is pointing to. Now that armed right-wing bands have staged a coup in the Ukraine, we suddenly are hearing a lot
39.
by firstOrder 12y ago
Maybe that's why Churchill stopped being a supporter of him.
40.
by firstOrder 12y ago
What happened to Fred Hampton when he disagreed with how blacks were being treated like second-class citizens in Chicago? The Kent State students who protested the US invasion of Cambodia? The Jackson State students who protested the US i
41.
by firstOrder 12y ago
Wow, I guess that means they are biased. Luckily, academics in universities across the US, funded by grants by the Koch brothers ( http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/11/144280/koch-uni... ),
42.
by firstOrder 12y ago
Tell me where in the world people did not live communistically prior to 10,000 years ago. So according to you, the entire world lived under a system that required the oppression of others prior to 10,000 years ago, when everyone lived in mi
43.
by firstOrder 12y ago
This interview took part when the economy in the UK and USA had hit the skids, while the USSR's economy was chugging along like gangbusters. In fact, a significant number of English and west European workers moved to the USSR to work
44.
by firstOrder 12y ago
A janitor who works and lives in San Francisco would have to have enough money to buy food, pay rent and so forth. Perhaps the reproduction of labor might be included (able to afford to have and raise two kids). This would be the elementar
45.
by firstOrder 12y ago
> Government had nothing to do with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Zuckerberg Gates and Jobs built their companies on the microprocessor, the development of which was completely dependent upon government contacts to Fairchild. Zuckerberg's
46.
by firstOrder 12y ago
> parts of the progressive community do not believe in supply and demand Wow, those left wing progressives must really be crazy. It's not like tech CEO's would ever say there is a shortage of good technicians. They obviously
47.
by firstOrder 12y ago
> Marx is saying...bosses are evil, capitalism is evil Actually Marx said capitalism was a positive historic development. > So X - Y, is what? Pure profit in bosses pocket? Not really...It's the cost of everything needed for the
48.
by firstOrder 12y ago
Marx's argument for the inevitability of extreme wealth disparity and at some point a breakdown in the capitalist system is too long to put here, but I can summarize it somewhat. A worker is creating wealth - why else would a company
49.
by firstOrder 12y ago
> Does turning away highly skilled and educated people due to an artificial cap on visas sound silly? This is a false way of framing things on many levels. First, as Norm Matloff has extensively documented, they are not all "highly
50.
by firstOrder 12y ago
Exactly. I read the book "Nickled and Dimed" when it came out. In the book, she describes a job application test which asks if employers and employees interests are aligned. She noted to herself this seemed a pretty political q
51.
by firstOrder 12y ago
What are you talking about? Romania has secret prisons where people are held without trial and tortured. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/world/europe/08iht-prisons...
52.
by firstOrder 12y ago
> Robotic car manufacturing hurt some auto workers, but all of society gets cheaper cars This is false. Over the past forty years, the rise in price for the median car sold in the US has far exceeded inflation. The idea that "soci
53.
by firstOrder 12y ago
Is Firefox a local project? It is a project used by the industrialized world, and by some of the non industrialized world. More than 47% of voters in California voted against this bill. Deep pocketed people like Eich were able to get th
54.
by firstOrder 12y ago
> If I read it correctly then they are not holding wages down as such, but are trying to avoid employee poaching. Well then you are not reading it correctly. What does it say? >> Google is the talk of the valley because we are dri
55.
by firstOrder 12y ago
> Meg called to talk about our hiring practices. Here is what she said. Google is the talk of the valley because we are driving salaries up across the board. Then Eric Schmidt says: > I would prefer Omid do it verbally since I don&#
56.
by firstOrder 13y ago
ExxonMobil brought in $469 billion in revenue last year, on which they made $44 billion in profit. It's not a big gamble for them at all if some programmer who gets $100k, $150k or whatever does not work out. Of course, some bootstrap
57.
by firstOrder 13y ago
You hit the nail on the head. He talks about the 5x programmer. Well if the 1x programmer is making $100k-$150k a year, the 5x programmers should be making $500k-$750k a year. When was the last time you went on Craigslist and saw a progr
58.
by firstOrder 13y ago
I agree about making an effort looking for people. I know nothing about the company being discussed here. But for other companies, I know some that contact a (crappy) headhunter or two, or who post an ad on Craigslist, and then expect top
59.
by firstOrder 13y ago
I don't know how many jobs I've seen out there where they have an incredibly high bar to hire someone, and then it is 99% CRUD work. Some of the AI jobs at Google, yes, they need good people. Amazon needs some good engineers at t
60.
by firstOrder 13y ago
The objective basis that you are offering engineers too little pay is that they are not taking your offers. Unless you don't believe in one of the first things they teach in modern economics - that at a certain value (price), supply w

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