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> as polls show a solid majority of Americans believe the drug should be legal

I am for the legalizing of marijuana, but considering the majority of Americans live in only 9 of the states, decisions should not be made based on the "majority". Federal law based on what the majority wanted was one of the things that the framers were afraid of. 9 states should not be able to dictate what occurs in the other 41 states and vice versa. Full state rights. Again I am for the legalization marijuana, but this needs to be a state by state decision, not federal govt.


To flip this, the minority of the country that live in 39 states should not be able to dictate the law to the majority of the country who just happen to be concentrated in a relatively small area. That's tyranny of the minority, which is arguably far worse than the tyranny of the majority the framers feared.


On the other hand one could frame this as the majority of states decided and those nine states are the tyrannical minority.


Empty land doesn't have a right to suffrage, people do.


We're not talking about "empty land," we're talking about member states of a federation. Those members get to decide, you merely tell your state, vaguely, what you want.


That's why States Rights is the solution. Let each state control what the law is for them and only for them. Tyranny of thy own self.

(Ignoring for the moment state level tyranny of the majority.)


> this needs to be a state by state decision, not federal govt

According to the framers the federal govt has no authority at all to regulate the growing, distribution and sale of a product that takes place entirely within a state, so I do agree that this is a state decision.

But since the federal laws regulating cannabis activity within states are unconstitutional and unenforceable in the first place, eliminating or not enforcing them is merely complying with the law, not a change in law.


>Federal law based on what the majority wanted was one of the things that the framers were afraid of.

Some framers were afraid of like Jefferson. Hamilton and Washington were federalists and favored a strong central government.

I personally like state power over federal. If your state sucks, you always have the option to move to another state. That's a pretty fantastic option. Of course it has it's problems too. The South struggled to get states to put money in to fight the Civil War because the central government couldn't require it, it had to beg for it.

>9 states should not be able to dictate what occurs in the other 41 states and vice versa. Full state rights. Again I am for the legalization marijuana, but this needs to be a state by state decision, not federal govt.

Not sure of the logic there. It seems like rthe 41 states are dictating to the 9 states since 41 states pot is illegal.


> I personally like state power over federal. If your state sucks, you always have the option to move to another state. That's a pretty fantastic option.

Note that that option was not at all available for those for whom their stated sucked due to the issue that was the original focus of the “states rights” controversy in the US. It's kind of interesting that you point to the Confederacy’s difficulties in raising revenue for the Civil War as a potential drawback of state over federal power, but not the issue which motivated the Confederacy.


>Note that that option was not at all available for those for whom their stated sucked due to the issue that was the original focus of the “states rights” controversy in the US.

Because that would be a massive moral crusade tangent that nobody wanted to read and was hardly relevant to the discussion.

>It's kind of interesting that you point to the Confederacy’s difficulties in raising revenue for the Civil War as a potential drawback of state over federal power, but not the issue which motivated the Confederacy.

Everybody knows the issue that motivated the Confederacy that has half a brain. I assumed everyone on here did as well.


> Not sure of the logic there.

Its really simple, if you don't understand this, you need to question your own logic. Basically the Marijuana issue should be a state decision, not dictated by the Fed Govt. What don't you understand here?


>9 states should not be able to dictate what occurs in the other 41 states and vice versa.

Because the 41 states are dictating to the 9 states that pot should be illegal, not the other way around.


uh uh. Quirks of population distribution should certainly not permit a minority of citizens from driving policy in directions the rest of the country doesn't want to go. One person, one vote.


California getting to decide the will of Kansas is a broken system. It feels a lot like, say, the king of England ruling the colonies without representation.


States are completely arbitrary political constructs. Why should Albany have power over both New York City and upstate, for example?

You need either much smaller units, or one system with a more democratic structure.


Kansas (assumably) has a working general assembly and is perfectly capable of passing legislation at the state level to express their will in whatever way they see fit. Meanwhile, at the federal level, the will of the majority of citizens is what should be represented.


Except it's not California. It's millions of American Citizens


Kansas and California both have equal representation in the Senate, which every federal law must pass through; there is no taxation without representation comparison to be made here.


This is why the majority of medical breakthroughs and innovations occur in the US. Sure capitalism has its negatives, but its positive is that it provides vast financial incentives for people to create new solutions while at the same time filling a need for humanity. $850k is a hefty pricetag, but the ability to see your loved ones is priceless. Win/win for everyone involved


> Thousands attending Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara in 2016 didn't have options to get home safely after drinking

Pardon my humor, but do designated drivers exist anymore? or was that just a fad that went out of style?


I suspect that designated drivers are economically worse than sponsored rides. A designated driver is a person not buying drinks and yet still taking a spot in your capacity. If you can sell $1000 more drinks by sponsoring rides, and those rides cost $500, it's totally worth sponsoring rides.


Soon, analytics will find the teetotalers that are buying tickets and automatically tack on a surcharge so that their non-drinking spot is amortized at a rate that is determined by the average revenue generated by a drinker. Past ticket holders who have shown themselves to be exceptional at both consuming alcoholic beverages may be eligable for a reduced price ticket.


You make this seem like a bad thing, but as someone who doesn't drink a lot, I would prefer to pay a surcharge rather than deal with a 2 drink minimum.


Is there anything that has a drink minimum besides comedy clubs?


Many "Gentleman's Clubs" do, or so I've been told.


Many Jazz clubs.


On the other hand, you can sell a parking spot if there's a DD. I don't know the going rate, but it's at least a couple drinks' worth ($45 spot = 3 x $15 beers)?

On the whole, stadiums may prefer to have a big line of ubers/lyfts lined up to take people home, but it's not like it's a total loss to have DDs.


From a strictly economic perspective: Free rides homes may mean charging overtime for the spot because they leave their car there overnight and also selling more liquor.

But I don't see why this should be viewed in terms of pure economics. What if people who make beer et al are actual human beings and are bothered by the fact that drunk driving kills people? Since their product is involved, what if some of them feel some personal sense of responsibility to reduce death's due to drunk driving?


Totally agree that it's not just a pure business decision. I was just responding to the sentiment of the GP that indicated that stadiums might be supporting plans like this because more drinkers means more revenue. That isn't to say they want people to drive drunk — this was just comparing getting people home via DDs (who don't buy alcohol) or getting more drinkers in the stadium and getting them home safe on uber/lyft.


Except that you're paying for a lot of overhead for those parking spots year round... Not just during the event. Everything from infrastructure (land, buildings), personnel, etc. That's a heavy, real cost to the stadium and surrounding community compared to a few drinks. And that space could be better utilized for shops and housing.


Parking rates, while seemingly expensive, are usually subsidized by the other economic activity of the business.


Levi's Stadium in particular has horrible traffic accessibility (you can get there easily until the 4th quarter but good luck getting out of the area quickly afterward).

All pedestrian crossings to/from the stadium compete at ground level with all other traffic (cars, buses, light rail). They spent over US$1 billion on the building but wouldn't even consider things like pedestrian overpasses (which Candlestick Park had for 50 years before).

I actually pointed that out to the Legends people and 49ers people as soon as I saw the first model.


That’s a typical California politician’s comment. If someone else doesn’t provide something free or heavily subsidized, they pretend it doesn’t exist.

Pretty dumb to ignore the fact tha buy cutting back on a few $12 beverages at the game one could either drive home or afford a Lyft...


Or maybe it's just a reflection of the reality that there are probably a lot of people who don't want to go to a football game and not get drunk.


This isn't about costs, it's about incentives.

You may have money to get a ride home, but prefer to drive drunk. An incentive will change the minds of some percentage of those people, resulting in less drunk drivers.


I mean, you could do that.

Or you could awaken yourself to reality, where that does not happen. And the politicians here are looking at a potential solution to not having so many drunks on the road, where they can potentially kill someone.


Actually it's an anti-regulatory stance.


It's dumb to ignore data and try to solve problems from one's hypicrital and confused view.


More intermittent fasting. The health benefits are well documented.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-health-benefits-of-i...


Going to need some rules and regulations. Last thing we need are big banks overleveraging on crypto currencies for the excess return. When, not if, this bubble bursts hopefully it doesn't take the whole economy down with it. The whole financial market wants exposure to crypto at this point.


burst of ICO bubble likely won't take down the whole economy. BTC contracts are high return + extremely high risk, which are typical traits of junk bonds, meaning they won't be treated as investment-grade securities.


OK, except we've all heard that one before.


You have all heard it for sure. I am just laying out the fact that low-grade securities won't move the market as much as people thought they would. BTC is an exception on popularity given everyone knows about it, but it doesn't change the fact that BTC contracts will never be rated as A/AA/AAA given its ridiculous level of volatility.


I'm not sure any banks have crypto on their balance sheets so you may be a bit ahead of things there.


You can't regulate cyptocurrencies. That's the beauty of the whole thing.


Hell you can. For example, you can make exchanges illegal. Done.


The government has literally regulated cryptography before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars


But you can regulate how banks can invest their money.


Regulations like that are just driving commerce away from the traditional system and into cryptocurrencies.

The further the regulators try to reach, the further their opponents move away. That's a game the regulators won't win. It ends with complete anonymity for everybody.


I think the dangers of a high sodium diet are pretty well documented, especially in the west where they have very high obesity rates. I would take Dr. DiNicolantonio's advice with a "grain of salt" haha


Documented in what way? All studies focus on people who already have heart disease. Just because sedentary couch potatoes on a high salt diet get sick does not prove causation from the salt. Everyone's body has built in regulatory systems to maintain isotonic balance and excrete the excess. We couldn't have crawled out of the sea without this fundamental ability. But, of couse, everybody knows salt is bad.


> Documented in what way?

Some of the most reputable organizations in medicine have documented the dangers of an high sodium diet.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/salt-and-sodium...

https://www.cdc.gov/salt/pdfs/children_sodium.pdf

There are still some people that believe that smoking doesn't cause cancer after decades of research. In the end you are free to believe as you wish. Godspeed


Sodium, while a main (50%) ingredient of salt, gets into us for example with the probably most popular ingredient ever, monosodium glutamate. I personally believe it's the excess of one polarity ion over another that's detrimental to our health.


Well, I've read that 2-3g per kg at once can actually kill you. It's even a method of suicide.


Calling Uber a tax firm is akin to calling personal workout equipment a gym. Or calling a bed and breakfast a hotel. Don't get me wrong Uber should pay its fair share of taxes/fees, but bunching apples and oranges together for the sake of policy simplicity comes off as non-progressive in my view.


Do Bed and Breakfasts usually operate under contracts with larger corporate entities that set service standards and reap a share of the profits? I'd assume most are small, family run businesses.


> Calling Uber a tax firm is akin to calling personal workout equipment a gym.

You got that exactly right. If I let people pay to use my personal workout equipment, then I'm operating a gym. Uber let's people pay to be driven around and is thus called a taxi service.


"Uber" doesn't own the "workout equipment". Who are they in this analogy?


Uber don't own the equipment but they do:

1. Decide who gets to use it, not you (sole and absolute discretion to accept or decline rides). You may be banned if you don't let someone use your equipment they want you to.

2. Interview and recruit you, the person who owns the gym equipment.

3. Excludes you from knowing who you're entering into a contract with.

4. You must work in exactly the way they say (they set the route, the equipment you're allowed to have,

5. You're not free to negotiate the price higher, they set it.

6. They discipline you.

7. They're in control of refunding "your" customer.

8. Used to guarantee you earnings.

9. They accept the risk of loss, not you.

10. Complaints don't go to you, they go to them.

11. They reserve the right to change any of the above unilaterally.

So basically, they're your boss but you need to bring your own equipment. It'd be like saying my work aren't really my boss if I use my own laptop.

Points taken from the case they lost trying to describe their workers as "self employed", saying Uber worked for the drivers.

https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/asla...


A lot of contractor's work in similar situations -- it seems like you're implying that the passenger is the customer but the passenger is just a package to be delivered. The customer for the driver is Uber. A lot of these are good points, though.


The key difference for many contractors in the UK is the level of control the person paying them has. A right to subcontract is a big one, which is failed with Uber. Also how I perform the work. If Uber were just paying for the package to be delivered, then they'd not care about the precise route, and the drivers could choose which people they do or don't "deliver". Uber exercise significant control over how the work they want done is done, and enough so that it falls under the definition of a "worker" (not employee though).

> The customer for the driver is Uber.

They argued they were not the customer but in fact worked for the drivers. They argued that the driver had a contract with the passenger, paragraph 91 on page 28 explains nicely how odd that seems (I'd copy & paste but it's a scanned pdf).


The precise route is actually an important part of the service provided to customers. Same with ensuring the identity of the driver.

However, I don't see how they can argue the driver has a contract with the passenger since all customer relationship is handled through Uber.


It's certainly an important part of the service Uber offers, but that's rather the point, it's a service they offer to the passenger and contract others to do the work. Then the level of control is such that it makes the drivers workers in the UK. If the control was stronger (more control of hours, equipment, etc) then they'd be employees.

>However, I don't see how they can argue the driver has a contract with the passenger since all customer relationship is handled through Uber.

I fully agree, and I think we both do (at least on this point) with the employment tribunals findings that this doesn't really describe the reality of how things work. The description I referenced is a great attack on what they argue.


>If I let people pay to use my personal workout equipment, then I'm operating gym.

If I let people pay to use my phone, then I am operating a cellular company. If I let people pay to use my lawn mower, then I am operating a grass cutting company. etc... No logically this ruling makes no sense. Just upset taxi companies that want to maintain the status quo.


In those examples you'd be operating equipment rental companies. I'm really not sure how this fits into an analogy with Uber, whose failed rationalization is that they're just a digital service connecting customers with freelance drivers. Filling exactly the same role as a taxi company with a slightly different setup.


I don't follow your examples. How is workout-equipment:gym like uber:taxi-firm?

> non-progressive

I'm not sure what you mean by progress, exactly, but policy simplicity is progress IMHO.


"Uber was founded in 2009 as UberCab" - Wikipedia


Regulations are the next logical step here. My best guess is that the red tape will at least dampen a lot of the mania around cryptocurricines and bring people back to reality.


I like the volatility :/ I made a couple hundred bucks of lint money yesterday playing the dip. Paid for my dogs' food for the month and a nice night out with my wife and her mother. Even though I have some skin in crypto, at this point I personally don't really care whether it keeps going up or crashes since I've already made back what I put in. But gaming volatility is a nice way to pass the evening...


We shouldn't have to go through one of the 2 major parties to contend as a third party candidate. One way to solve this could be putting caps on campaign financing which would level the playing field for smaller 3rd parties. But that would never happen because the major 2 parties make the rules and that would hurt their dominance. By voting for either party we are essentially enabling the either-or system to continue


>By voting for either party we are essentially enabling the either-or system to continue

I used to agree, but the parties have no ideology attached to them. Their names are just generic terms regarding democracy and you can see how much their platforms have changed and moved over the last century. At this point they are just the Urban and Rural divisions of our election playoff.

They are just the ideology of the people elected. If you change the candidates of the party, you have changed the ideology of the party. Trump figured this out and instead of sticking with the Reform party, he just took over the Republican nomination.


> the parties have no ideology attached to them

That statement is simply incorrect. Both parties have a clear ideology that ebbs and flows for the sake of remaining in power

> If you change the candidates of the party, you have changed the ideology of the party.

That is also incorrect. The 2 parties may slightly adjust their ideology for the sake of power but the core of their ideology remains the same.


I disagree, I think there are some clear ideologies. Support for women choosing whether to have abortions is in one camp, support for so called unborn children is in the other. Diversity is in the dems of course, the Republicans want to protect and emphasize the "traditional white american culture". I'm trying not to be pejorative to either side. There are negative influences that lead to them to have similar views, like the influence of say wall street money has both sides supporting big banks, I think this is what you are really getting at imho when you say there is no ideological differences.


Citron is on the short side. Their entire investment strategy of the company is to short assets, in this scenario the future is used as an arbitrage hedge, but overall yes citron is short biased on bitcoin.


It’s bitcoin-neutral, that’s the whole point of the hedge.


Citron is not bitcoin neutral. They are short biased bitcoin as their website and twitter account reiterate. And a hedge doesn't mean "neutral." It simply protects you in the event that an investment doesn't go as expected.


The bloomberg piece says: “Left recommends shorting the trust, buying bitcoin futures”. He says in the video: “I don’t even care what happens to bitcoin”. Where is the short bias?


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