Can any people who know the situation in Sri Lanka comment on what the causes of this are? Has there been a deteriorating security situation in Colombo for some time, or did this happen unexpectedly?
I remember a documentary on Kandy, it seems a beautiful and peaceful place. Such a tragedy.
how can we cure these poor people from this delusion that they have a right to possess what they have not earned?
life is inequitable you have to fight to get a higher station. substituting taking responsibility to create wealth for convincing yourself you're entitled to it just disempowers you.
I'm not saying it's not hard. but that it is hard is not special and that it is hard is the motivation to overcome it. and when you get there that your hard earned achievement can be taken away by people who don't want to overcome is wrong.
The fundamental point is this wealth is not some free right it's not some magical thing that just exists. wealth is precisely the value created by overcoming difficulties.
wealth is made by work and the people who make it ought to be free to choose what they do with it rather than coerced into surrendering it in the name of equity, a false equity which is inequitable to the moral nature of wealth, responsibility and hard work. that kind of idea is a disease that will erode away the social foundation.
I'm not saying wealth disparity is easy nor that it creates no problems. it creates a lot of problems but I don't believe the solution is by redistribution. at least not at this stage of human and economic evolution. while our species is still bounded by the amount of energy we can extract from our surroundings.
taxes yes, State yes, a social welfare net yes, but not to an excessive degree, and not to cure inequality.
if energy was free of course it should be distributed to all without cost. like air.
but it's not. to do so would bankrupt our species in the name of compassion. the greater compassion is the realization of the poor state we're in, and the preservation of all. not the temporary satisfaction of some who convinced themselves that things should be easy.
one day as a species we will get there. no crushing disparity. but we're not there yet. trying to live like we are already there is a toxic delusion that doesn't help us get to that more compassionate future.
Wealth is made by labor, yes. But it is not accumulated by it. It's accumulated by being in a position of power whereby you can extract rents from the laborers who make it. In older times, this was done by threat of physical force. These days, it's more often done by exploiting some economic advantage - for example, if you own any valuable resource, such as land or means of production, you can extract rent from people who use it.
Whenever you see concentrated wealth with such extreme disparity that you have one person owning more than a million others, there are only two possible conclusions: either they really are a million times more productive, or it was actually produced by that million, and extracted from them via rents.
You could argue that those rents are fair, since they stem from legitimate ownership. But what makes it legitimate? Most land was originally taken by force, for example, and the result enshrined in law (that was written by the people who did this) post factum. If that doesn't make economic advantages that stem from such ownership unfair, then surely the same standard holds today, and those people have no right to complain if society decides to take it away from them by force, and enshrine it into law, just because it can.
Exactly, and there’s in particular the very special kind of rent extracted by the hiring of people to work for you without profit-sharing, and using your negotiation power as a capital owner to get people to agree to the terms of your employment contract stipulating your appropriation of the whole work product.
I’ve found the writings of David Ellerman to be very elucidating on this topic, and admirable for giving a deep critique of capitalism without any reliance on Marxism. He relies on a labor theory of property rather than a labor theory of value, and a Lockean liberal notion of inalienable rights. Two short texts that make a good introduction:
Land is finite natural resource and its ownership is a zero sum situation. Company ownership, however, is not. It is entirely possible to own your sweat and labor, which is demonstrated by millions of small business owners.
The sentiment we hear often, however, is yearning for benefits of co-owning a (ideally mature and profitable) business while retaining the hired hands' rights. Not many are keen to give up their 8 hour workday, benefits, social welfare net for the upside of owning their share of corporate profits.
Exactly, people are making choices, and then complaining about it, which make sense as a coping strategy, but not if you really want to own your own labor.
There's hardly a place in the world (yes, even in Scandinavia) where starting a business entitles you for welfare or the usual labour rights. A typical small entrepreneur has to live with that for years, until the cashflow becomes viable enough to support them employing themselves.
I realize that's not what most people have in mind when they ask for profit sharing. They want to be a part of an already successful operation, and take no risks. And that's precisely what I've been talking about. The process of building a successful business is given little thought, as if they grow on the trees or are being brought to Earth by meteors.
Then there's that thing with businesses statistically being just slightly more often in black than in red. Would your profit sharing scheme involve absorbing the losses as well? How many takers you think it will have? If not them, who will get to absorb the losses, potentially reinvest to weather through rough times etc? The expense would be not negligible, on the order with the profits.
Scandinavian entrepreneurs and coop workers can certainly participate in the social security. Probably some reforms could make the situation better, especially if cooperative business becomes more of a norm.
When the firm spends more than it produces, it needs access to capital. This can be in the form of savings, credit, or new investment. Small new businesses are routinely launched through loans. Credit institutions are quite used to absorbing losses.
A worker-owned coop can also take investment from external capitalists. It would just be in the form of a profit-sharing contract rather than equity with voting rights.
We are in Norway and my wife ran her own small construction engineering business for a few years. You get no welfare, as it is funded from your previous payroll contributions, and only for up to 2 years. If you business is too small for you to have yourself on payroll, tough luck. Getting there takes a while, as tax burden on a business here is quite significant.
> Credit institutions are quite used to absorbing losses.
They are also quite good at taking the profits on their investments. If a bank bails you out, it wants to take its pound of flesh. You essentially arrived at status quo.
It’s also naturally abundant in the form of land, those cadastral game tiles on which life plays out, dominion of which are allocated by the state in a system of hereditary monopolies.
Wealth is not allocated the same way it’s created. That’s why we have the concept of rent-seeking, behavior that increases one’s share of wealth without creating more wealth.
Owning wealth lets you accumulate more wealth without working, because you can charge other people rent in exchange for using your wealth. Not only that; you can also hire people in an arrangement where you automatically own everything they produce using your capital goods.
Rich people know that labor is a very inefficient and tedious way to increase one’s own share of wealth. That’s why they prefer rent, interest, and staying on the top of the employment hierarchy where they have a legal claim on the products of others’ labor.
Yes, work is a true source of wealth, and so is capital and land and the other factors of production. There’s a long history of criticizing how most of the wealth created by working ends up owned by the owners of capital and land—that’s the essential critical point in the discussion of capitalism, whether Marxist or Georgist or Ellermanite.
Or you could say the crucial question is how can we cure the rich people from the delusion that they have a right to appropriate what they have not produced?”
no you couldn't. I think you've been deluded by fancy sounding ideas.
you could just as well say that people are rent seeking with their labor, using the capital of their bodies.
if you deny personal ownership of property and land and the ability to extract wealth for rent from that ownership you may as well also deny personal ownership of one's own body and personal space and the ability earn income for renting out one's time, or professional service or the capital of one's body. that gets you to slavery in one step, well done.
so the simplistic argument that labor capacity of people is fundamentally different to other capital is false. consider that you invested your time and your money in your education to better your skills increasing your ability to rent on your own capital. if you want to deny people extracting money from their investments and property why not also deny them extracting money from their investments in their own education?
so again I think on the premature path to compassion and equality in your mind you have actually found a shortcut which disempowers people and limits their freedoms. I don't think you did this intentionally, you just haven't thought it through.
I understand the temporary appeal but it does not actually provide a workable solution to the problems you are trying to address.
the next step is consider what the second-order effects of policies inspired by your theories would be. the ultimate goal of this is to create a dependent slave class to do the bidding of the elites. these theories have been designed for mass appeal.
Nowhere have I argued for eliminating private property or renting out land or capital; I’m for all of that, so I can’t really respond to your condescending dismissal.
How do you extend this argument to, let's say, three of the richest people on the planet namely Bill G, Mark Z and Jeff B ? What cure do you suggest for them?
Something like using legislation and taxation to shift corporate structure towards something more like democratic worker-owned firms. But that’s a long term project; I don’t suggest suddenly and forcefully restructuring existing corporations. As a fundamental long term goal I suggest abolishing the renting of people (a la David Ellerman), along with heavy taxes on land value (a la Henry George).
That's why the Marxist critique of capital is wrong. Was use of capital to extract rent from others ethical or not? Maybe yes, maybe not, who knows. It is impossible to decide.
Georgist perspective doesn't blame the rich capitalist, but the rentier, no matter if rich or poor. Rentiers provably extract others people's and businesses' labor.
Renting out capital is not an ethical problem, but renting labor is. Human actions are not a commodity, and treating persons as tools is wrong for the same reasons “voluntary slavery” is wrong—it violates inalienable rights. The problem with capitalism is that capital owners alienate persons from their own natural property rights through the injustice of employment contracts. (Land ownership is also a problem in our world but it’s sort of orthogonal to capitalism, although it depends on how you define capitalism. Georgists make a big distinction between capital and land; maybe we can talk about both capitalism and “landism” as different strands of the economic system?)
or maybe such an ancient city could be preserved under the polar ice caps, perhaps with ancient humans and their technology. and revealed by deep geothermal heat creating cavities under the ice, if only the cavities were explored.
Some of it may be technical reasons, some of it may be delivery reasons, some of it may be people reasons, team reasons, political reasons, etc.
You just landed a sweet perm job in a field you love. Don't ruin it by becoming that cliched new hire that sees all their problems and knows how to make it all better. You may be right. Technically. They may even encourage you.
But you could also be wrong technically. You could step on toes politically and end up sidelined. You could end up biting off more than you can chew and end up becoming responsible for the bigger mess later.
May advice is to stop, take a deep breath, look around, appreciate what you've already achieved by getting there, get to know your colleagues, get to know the company, get to really understand the system so when the next new hire comes in you can explain the reason behind everything (maybe getting to know the detailed history of the system and why it formed the way it did?), and make sure you know absolutely everything you can before changing everything you can.
Yeah, maybe you'll feel some parts of your job suck for a while (I wish this was easier, it's stupid that I have to do all this work to get form A to B when I can see a better way), but if you give yourself more time to learn, you're really doing yourself a favor in the long run.
And you're a perm now, in a big corp, doing data science. Relax, you got it made, right?
So chill out and take a deep breath and enjoy your new workplace and everything about it (not just the stack in front of you), and if you still want to make changes somewhere down the line, start small, bit off a tiny little piece you can chew, and succeed with that small improvement before moving forward with anything more.
Also think of it differently, if you do end up being the one responsible for reinventing the whole stack, then milk that project for everything you can. It's a big corp play so you have to do that in a big corp way. There'll be meetings, committees, decisions, stakeholders, teams formed, responsibilities. You could even parlay this project into some greater responsibility and title for yourself, maybe even use it to boost your career. SO think of it not like you are trying to understand a technical problem, but you are trying to understand a piece of (and through it, the enitrety of), your whole new organization, with all that entails: the people, the team relationships, how decisions get made, etc. So enjoy playing that game, because you are happy to be in a big corp, so the sort of benefits that can bring you is what you want, right?
It's not a startup. And if you feel technically unsatisfied, use the time to learn some new languages or skills, or kick some side projects down the road for your own benefit.
> Don't ruin it by becoming that cliched new hire that sees all their problems and knows how to make it all better.
I don't, which is why I'm asking around. I'm also scheduling chats with people to understand the background and the history to see if it's worth changing anything. I will make a move if that make sense. In the meantime, I'm just gathering information to not make a stupid decision.
> And you're a perm now, in a big corp, doing data science. Relax, you got it made, right?
> So enjoy playing that game, because you are happy to be in a big corp, so the sort of benefits that can bring you is what you want, right?
I don't think this was necessary. I've only worked for startups before, and I was hired in part to see if we can do a better job with the resources we have. Buy in from management is not an issue. I am not asking for life advice.
you thought it wasn't necessary because you feel I was trying to be mean to you? I thought it was necessary to remind you. did you feel I wasn't being genuine? I don't think that was necessary to take it like that. but I can definitely understand how you might feel scared you're being judged for working at a big Corp after startups.
I'm not judging you, I think big Corp is a great achievement. I am genuinely congratulating, and reminding you that big Corp is what you wanted, so you can learn to play that game. is that better now?
buy in from management is always an issue. it's just they don't want to give you the impression of friction because you've just started. they're presenting you a side they think you'll like because management has decided it's important to hire and retain talent like you.
you're not asking for life advice? you're saying that because you feel I've been giving you life advice? I can understand you really take your work personally and I think that's a good thing to be passionate at what you do. I've only given you work advice specific to the situation you describe. and I'm happy with what I've said.
but that's enough about you, I took the time to read your post and make an answer, and when you make these comments, I feel like you're making it all about you, I feel you are attacking me for that and like you're not showing any gratitude. that hurts because I just wanted to be seen for contributing my help and perspective. can you when you ask for help not only consider your feelings and also consider the feelings of those offering you help? thank you.
finally, when you ask in a public place this, the answer is not just for your benefit.
I'm surprised that FAGAM haven't got into the crowd-sourced fact checking space. Seems like a great way to build a knowledge engine / AI, by getting humans to "connect the facts" while motivating (herding) them with the idea they are doing it to "preserve truth in an era of fake narratives", when actually they are just helping build an AI.
MCAS can be disabled, but pilots says this may not help in some situations:
> On the simulator when the stabilizer was "on a dive" at maximum angle, me and my colleagues weren't able to recover a plane.
> If you follow Boeing bulletin, but start the procedure too late, it will only make things worse. Simpler solution (in case of problems right after takeoff) is to release the flaps at least to the first position. This will disable MCAS and give you an additional time.
They procedure just disables the electric motor that MCAS is using to adjust the trim down. MCAS will still be sitting there sending trim down commands that get ignored.
Problem is, that electric motor is used by the manual trim adjust buttons too, so they stop functioning too. Following the procedure results in a nose down trim that pilots have to correct by manually turning the trim wheel, and it turns out the aerodynamic forces may be too strong for that procedure.
Airline safety has increased by a factor of 100 in the last 50 years, in terms of fatalities / miles travelled. Both in the past and now, far more accidents are the result of pilot error than failure of any system.
Gloryfing the good old days of pilot jocks just isn’t supported by the actual data, this incident nonewithstanding.
the plane's crashing, and you're telling the pilots (who you think might be jocks which makes you feel...even less safe?), "No don't turn it off, I have 50 years of data that says systems are safe." perfect example of doing data wrong. crazy dangerous arrogant ideas like this contributed to this tragedy.
when the systems are failing, you better hope you have some pilot jocks / true fixed wing enthusiasts at the controls, who know how to make the systems work for them, or take control if they fail, rather than some data jocks, with blinkered faith in the systems, who count cost of lives as "notwithstanding".
flyers deserve competence from their systems and data, not just from their pilots. we need pilots who have earned their capabilities, and systems that have earned their impression of reliability. current MCAS occupies a privileged position in charge of safety it has not earned.
Isn't that orthogonal to the previous statement? The ideal situation would be to have fly-by-wire and a single hands-off button instead of HAL saying "Sorry Dave, but I cannot do that".
Of course, commercial pilots would need to have an actual interest in flying manually. The Gimli glider pilot was an enthusiastic pilot outside professional aviation.
I don't know if such an interest is still possible with modern exploitative labor practices.
I’d go beyond an “off switch” and argue that any software that’s smart enough to turn itself on without being asked needs to turn itself off if it’s obvious that the pilot is fighting against it. It’s like a classic Bayesian probability problem where the chance of a false positive is high. The software has to take into account that the stall scenario it thinks is happening is rare, and that happening followed by a pilot yanking back on the stick is vanishingly rare, accept that it was probably wrong and undo its actions.
there is a manual override but once you are fully trimmed down manually trimming up takes time and time is something you don't have much of with the plane pitching down near the ground.
the control surfaces have less authority than the trim. original spec called for less mcas authority, but it was increased later without much consideration.
The 737 is still mostly 1960s technology, despite all the tweaks over the years. With autopilot off, autothrottle off, and electric trim disabled, which is the situation the Ethopian pilots would have ended up in from following the checklists, all the main flight controls are entirely manual. Only the engine FADECs can't be turned off, and you wouldn't want to because modern engines rely on computised controls.
Surprisingly to me the author of "down and out in the magic kingdom" and the maintainer of BOINGBOING supports web DRM and he's part of the W3C committee. he's a great author and a good person with an anti-authoritarian bent I don't understand his position on this.
Yeah, I believe Doctorow has multiple characters (from multiple books) say something along the lines of "no lock is there for your protection", and I'm certain I've read his opinions on DRM to be negative multiple times.
Hell, I'm fairly certain he had a deal with Barnes and Noble to publish his book without DRM which was nonstandard at the time.
Hahaha. You already have it. Covert interception. FAANG. Snowden "blew the whistle" on only a tiny fraction. You already exceeded 1984's monitoring.
Dictatorship forms okay without it.
More overt surveillance is a civil maintainer. Taiwan has camera surveillance everywhere and solves above 90% crime.
It used to surprise me how in denial people can be about their own localities' surveillance. Now I think that makes sense as a consequence of the surveillance mostly being covert.
> Are there any legal methods for me to force him to sign a vesting agreement?
This seems like a red flag for any relationship. If your attitude to your cf upon disagreement is to find a way to force him, it doesn't sound like a partnership. more like someone you don't want to work with. if that's the case, maybe better to face it and find a way to part ways.
I remember a documentary on Kandy, it seems a beautiful and peaceful place. Such a tragedy.