The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/the-self-destruction-of-the-1-percent.html?hp&_r=0 <comment><USER4> I have several comments.

1\. We're talking about literally 400 years between the height of Venetian power and the creation of the Libro d'Oro (1315) and its decline (17th to 18th century). Forgive me if I'm not quite ready to accept the author's core premise here.

2\. This sentence made me LOL:

"Public schools are starved of funding... This is the new Serrata".

The premise of the statement, that public schools are starved of funding, is preposterous. NYC spends upwards of $20,000 per pupil per year. But even beyond that, comparing moderate variation in school funding levels to the creation of an ACTUAL OLIGARCHY is just, hack-city. That might be the kind of tortured analogy that gets you a favorable slot in the NY Times during election season, but it's sheer nonsense. Look, I can make any argument, on any part of the political spectrum, that way!

"High income taxes ... this is the new Serrata."

"Occupational licensing ... this is the new Serrata."

"Immigration limits ... this is the new Serrata."

"The Yankees spending $200m a year on their payroll ... this is the baseball Serrata."

<comment><USER5> >Public schools are starved of funding..

That made me laugh, too. Somehow this has become received wisdom for the press, but not only is it false, it's _very_ false. Here in CA we're spending twice what we spent per student in 1970 (in constant dollars), and if anything outcomes are worse.

<comment><USER6> I point that out to people and it annoys them. I ask how is it we've doubled the funding per student and our results are so bad, maybe funding isn't the issue.

It is a hard thing for folks to hear though. If the thing you are telling them means there isn't an "easy" (or even imaginable) solution to the problem they care deeply about, they really can't accept it. It feels like accepting defeat.

<comment><USER7> The problem isn't the amount we're spending, it's how it's being spent. Everyone I know who is a teacher has severe issues funding class activities and are usually told they have $0 for supplies for the entire year. That tells me the money is being used in largely unproductive ways.

Where is the extra money going? Probably to pay for a bureaucrat to enforce the new standardized testing and feedback crap that isn't really helping all that much. Probably to fund more sports because sports, amirite? Probably paying for iPads that, while useful, aren't being use the way they're supposed to because of untrained teachers.

Wherever it's going, it likely isn't going to fund classroom equipment that teachers actually need or quality textbooks for students.

<comment><USER8> Yup: UK we spent huge amounts of money on _new school and college buildings_ which did not actually improve anything. Some College managements are so precious about their new buildings that they have regulations about putting things on walls. Yes, even art Colleges!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is not the generally accepted view of the cause of Venice's decline, to put it mildly. Venice owed its power in the medieval period largely to geography. When trade between Europe and the rest of the world was almost entirely something that happened via the Mediterranean, Venice was the most important port. After the Spanish and Portuguese discovered sea routes to the Americas, Africa, and the Far East, that was no longer true. It would have been surprising if Venice hadn't declined after that.

It didn't help, either, that at about the same time, the whole Italian peninsula became a prize fought over by the now very powerful kingdoms of France and Spain. City-states in general were becoming obsolete.

Maybe there is some sort of badness going on in the US, but almost any other failing empire would have made a better example than Venice. There have been few where the external causes of failure were clearer.

<comment><USER10> Still though, civilizations usually collapse for more than one reason. The discovery of alternative sea routes certainly contributed to Venice's fall. But the thing is, if it wasn't for the Serrata, perhaps they would have enough entrepreneurs to find other means of powering their economy. At the end of the day, if you want to be able to solve difficult problems and make progress, then you need risk-takers.

<comment><USER9> I already listed two. If you want a third, add the Ottoman Empire.

Venice was a trading empire. Its empire became worthless. To bounce back from that would have required a transformation unprecedented in history. In fact, even knowing the history that followed, if I had been summoned back by time machine to advise the council about what to do to repair Venice's fortunes, I probably would not have been able to give them advice that would have worked, short of telling them about all the scientific and engineering discoveries that had been made since, and sending them off on a Riverworld-like future.

<comment><USER10> I was going to mention the Ottoman Empire as well to support my argument that civilizations collapse for more than one reason. In the case of the Ottomans, the discovery of alternative trade routes definitely reduced the amount of gold going into the coffers. But there were also many other problems, such as growing income inequality and rampant corruption among the ruling class. These economic and social issues eventually led to the stagnation of the empire. Then competitors caught up and surpassed them technologically, which directly translated into defeats on the battlefield.

That said, you're right that Venice was a trading empire, so losing that competitive edge hurt them a lot more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Liberty produces far more equality than the pursuit of equality could ever achieve, if I may borrow a line from Milton Friedman.

It really is the fault of us citizens that we've allowed our government to grow so large and unaccountable. More accurately, we've allowed it to grow far outside its constitutional limits. And we accept this and deem it necessary. In fact, some of us still think it needs to be bigger to protect us from calamities like the housing crisis! Yet we don't realize that it was precisely the largeness of the government and its influence on the market and money that caused the crisis.

All of this really does have its roots in the Great Depression. At the time, people blamed the crash on capitalism when the real causes were anything but, and as a result people were more than willing to let the government become bigger so it could 'protect' them. It's unfortunate that we the people were, and still are, so shortsighted.

On a side note, robber barons are largely a myth. As well, blaming the fall of the middle class on globalization and technology is simply absurd; how would we afford iPhones and all of the miracles of modern technology without globalization and.. technology? You can't look only at one side of the equation (jobs moving to China) without considering the other (much cheaper products). While it may hurt certain workers when some kinds of labor leaving the U.S., consumers as a whole benefit. Not to mention that people elsewhere on the globe benefit from these jobs.

<comment><USER12> 1\. What constitutional limit?

>Yet we don't realize that it was precisely the largeness of the government and its influence on the market and money that caused the crisis.

2\. Just how was _overregulation_ responsible for a massive price bubble?

>At the time, people blamed the crash on capitalism when the real causes were anything but

3\. What part about your definition of capitalism excludes massive price bubbles, followed up by the government of the time constraining monetary conditions?

>how would we afford iPhones and all of the miracles of modern technology without globalization and.. technology?

Well, I'm not going to argue against global trade. It's pretty great, and the growth it's generated in China absolutely benefits the Chinese. Mass exploitation of the labour force, hopefully, is a transitionary stage.

That said, we'd still have iphones. They would be a bit more expensive but not _that_ much more expensive.

<comment><USER11> > 1\. What constitutional limit?

The limits imposed by the Constitution. It's really not that mysterious of a document. The interstate commerce clause might seem ambiguous, but it certainly was never intended to be as abused as it is today. The existence 10th Amendment makes this even more obvious.

> 2\. Just how was overregulation responsible for a massive price bubble?

I'll be a bit more clear: we either need much less regulation, or a whole lot more. Given how badly more regulation generally goes, I'd prefer less. We were stuck in this awkward middle ground as a result of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act. It didn't get rid of the FDIC, but it got rid of certain regulations preventing commercial banks from being investment banks (simplification). So it basically encouraged risk taking by banks. Remove the FDIC, and you'll see much less risk taking. So we really need to get rid of ALL of the Glass- Steagal act. As well, we need to get rid of the SEC. By this sort of deregulating, you discourage risk by making banks much more accountable to their investors.

> 3\. What part about your definition of capitalism excludes massive price > bubbles, followed up by the government of the time constraining monetary > conditions?

My definition of capitalism, ideally, would not include the Fed.

> They would be a bit more expensive but not that much more expensive.

But would the lower/middle classes be able to afford them? Or as readily? Given wages here, probably not.

<comment><USER12> >But would the lower/middle classes be able to afford them? Or as readily?

I'm in favour of globalization. I agree with you that they'd be more expensive (it'd be interesting to determine what percentage of the iphone's cost is due to labour), I just don't think there's a moral argument to be made. Almost everyone could afford a car, in America, in 1968. In real terms of quality of life improvement in the grand scheme of things iPhones and computers are probably minor inventions next to plumbing, central heating and the first couple waves of mechanization.

>The limits imposed by the Constitution.

This assumes that a) the intent of the founding fathers was relevant to today's society and b) their intent was to have a limited size of government, both of which are pretty big assumptions. For more on the failings of constitutional originalism see here: [http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/09/eu...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/09/europe- and-america?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/constitutionsandthecrisesthatwarpthem)

>I'll be a bit more clear: we either need much less regulation, or a whole lot more.

Your conclusion does not follow from your premise. How would removing an unrelated insurance corporation promote healthier decision making amongst investment banks?

Poorly designed regulation does stifle innovation and thus growth. However, there are certain kinds of innovations that prove to be too dangerous to be handled without some safe guards.

It seems to me you possess a shaky understanding of 1) the events that led to the FDIC and SEC, and Glass-Steagal 2) the events that occurred from 2001-2007/08 and 3) the cognitive pitfalls and biases human beings suffer from when reasoning about risk.

<comment><USER11> > a) the intent of the founding fathers was relevant to today's society and b) > their intent was to have a limited size of government, both of which are > pretty big assumptions.

Their intent for a limited size of _federal_ government is almost certain. And I don't see how it's not relevant: our federal government is huge and almost entirely unaccountable, and clearly is not functioning as it was intended. From Federalist 45:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government. The more adequate, indeed, the federal powers may be rendered to the national defense, the less frequent will be those scenes of danger which might favor their ascendancy over the governments of the particular States.

> How would removing an unrelated insurance corporation promote healthier > decision making amongst investment banks?

Not unrelated. Gramm-Leach-Bliley removed barriers allowing commercial banks to act as investment banks. That was my point: you can't remove these barriers without also removing the insurance. Having the FDIC encourages commercial banks to be much riskier.

> It seems to me you possess a shaky understanding of 1) the events that led > to the FDIC and SEC, and Glass-Steagal 2) the events that occurred from > 2001-2007/08 and 3) the cognitive pitfalls and biases human beings suffer > from when reasoning about risk.

Feel free to correct me where I'm wrong. I think the housing bubble was entirely avoidable had the government taken different action. I'm not saying that it was ENTIRELY the fault of regulation. I do think that: deregulation (including removing the FDIC and SEC), much less Fed fiddling in attempts to 'fix' the dot com bubble, and no bailouts or any implicit guarantees of bailouts, and you wouldn't have seen the housing bubble.

<comment><USER12> You're still making an originalist argument. Who cares what Alexander Hamilton had to say about anything? He's dead.

To steal a quote from the Economist article I linked to above, suppose we fast forward this conversation fifty years. Do we really care what James Madison might have thought about which privately cloned human-animal hybrids could use viral DNA material drawn from public health databanks?

No, of course not. This is a conversation to have amongst the living. How big should the government be? Is a complex question with many stakeholders.

> Having the FDIC encourages commercial banks to be much riskier.

No, it doesn't - because when a commercial bank became an investment bank, that insurance only applied to deposited accounts. If we define the risk holders to be the people with deposits, then sure.

However, most people would define the bank investors to be the ones willing to take risks. The shareholders, accordingly, were not protected by the FDIC and got wiped out when these banks failed or merged into larger banks.

>I think the housing bubble was entirely avoidable had the government taken different action.

Yes, but that's a tautology for a lot of things in the economy.

The financial crash was far too complex for me to try to recount here. There is a wide range of incentives that could have been tweaked; but the bottom line is people took far too many risks across far too many levels of the economy. The end result was not caused by an industry forced into bad decisions due to poor regulation. Investment banks were allowed to borrow too much money relative to their capital holdings, and they were allowed to pour their money into financial instruments that are computationally impossible to accurately judge.

Removing the FDIC and the SEC would exacerbate the problem.

Here's some very accessible reading material, that I think you ought to brush up on:

[http://www.npr.org/series/124587240/planet-money-s-toxic- ass...](http://www.npr.org/series/124587240/planet-money-s-toxic-asset) [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/355/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Short>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> After spending quite a bit of time outside of America, articles like this seem strange to me. Not right or wrong in assessment, just... very American-centric and lacking a lot of perspective (Venetian anecdotes aside).

I mean... pretty much everyone in America is rich. Stupidly ridiculously rich. The working poor in America are fabulously fantastically stupendously ridiculously rich compared to most of the world. I mean, staggeringly so.

It's like, as time passes, luxuries become conveniences become necessities... and thus, there's always this keeping-up thing going on. But the majority of American "necessities" are truly luxuries in, like, 2/3rds of the world's eyes.

<comment><USER14> Well if you really mention this you are likely to be badly admonished to keep this to yourself.

I can't even imagine how anybody in the US can even describe themselves as poor. I mean the definitions of poor so badly put down in this case, it makes the actual poor look like they don't exist at all.

Sometime back there was a post here about blacks(in the US) in some place not having good sanitation facilities. They were considered very poor. And they had cars, good enough homes, food, electricity, roads, park and ask what not. In my country they would qualify as very rich people(In India).

Its law of diminishing utility, a massive hedonic threadmill to describe at the best.

<comment><USER15> Its about social equity and respect. I remember a story where a redneck in Appalachia made about as much money as a highly regarded doctor in Africa, but the redneck was definitely worse off: he had no respect from the community, his social contribution was very low, and very low self esteem, while the doctor got to eat with the president of their country, had connections abroad, and so on. The war against poverty isn't finished once survival needs are met, people want meaningful lives, to thrive in society also and not just survive.

I very much admire Europe (or at least Switzerland) where the upper class treats the working class with a lot more respect. Everyone is important, you don't treat the guy at the fast food rudely, even if you have much more money than them. Everyone's life seems meaningful and people are happy. Now, compare this with China where I now live, where very little respect is given from the middle class to lower-working class that cleans their houses, makes their food, drives them around...

Edit: I didn't mean to use redneck here as a pejorative, it just seemed to get the point across more quickly.

<comment><USER16> Semi-tangent. In 1989, I did the summer of backpacking across Europe thing. Just before the fall of the Berlin wall, so there was still soviet control of eastern/central Europe.

Anyway, I went to Budapest on that trip, and at the time it was common to be met at the train station by people offering a place to sleep in their homes for cheap. Me and some guys I was with at the moment took one of them up on the offer and went with him to his apartment, $15 a night for the three of us. It was a cramped little place, but in the city, so it was cool. We stayed up late talking to the guy, and found out he was a doctor.

Which was a huge shock to me. A doctor living in a tiny little place and letting tourists sleep on his couch for very little money. That (and the flagship department store in Budapest being nearly barren by US standards) convinced me that the West had gotten some things right, at least.

The guy did have a lot of books though, and asked me to send him some science fiction books once I got home. I mailed him a bunch of cyberpunk. Wonder what he made of that. Wish I'd kept up with him.

<comment><USER17> I was just in Budapest in June, arrived via train, and there were at least a dozen people offering room for rent. Don't know if any of them were doctors, but the economy has been struggling there. We stayed in a really, really nice hotel for about $100/night.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty found that 93 percent of the income gains from the 2009-10 recovery went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The top 0.01 percent captured 37 percent of these additional earnings, gaining an average of $4.2 million per household._

Shocking that income gains during a stock market rally (typically a leading economic indicator) go to the investor class while employment income (a lagging indicator) continues to struggle.

This is agitprop. Isn't there anyone other than Saez folks like the author can cite? Saez could have put out a "study" to show that the rich took a real bloodbath during '07-'08 while the middle class barely felt a prick for just the same reason. But he didn't: he'd rather be a hack and win unending favorable references in _Times_ thumb suckers.

<comment><USER19> Saez's contribution to economics was a novel way to measure income inequality of really small percentages (top 1%, 0.1% etc.) of the population. That's why it's hard to find other studies. He wasn't "being a hack" he was doing research in a topic that he found interesting. His work by the way, won him the prestigious John Bates Clark medal so we can infer that his work is respected in economic circles.

By the way, if you took the data from the census and measured wealth instead of income, you would get a far more extreme differences in inequality. This makes sense of course, since wealthier people have more money in the stock market.

You are correct that the rich lost a lot during the stock market crash in 2008, but it similarly recovers quickly as the market rallied. Again, this is a natural effect of wealthier people having more money in the stock market.

<comment><USER18> _Saez's contribution to economics was a novel way to measure income inequality of really small percentages (top 1%, 0.1% etc.) of the population._

That may be, but income statistics like the one cited here don't require anything novel: The IRS publishes everything you'd need to know.

<comment><USER19> No it doesn't, that's the point. The IRS publishes the top 1% and I believe the top 0.1%, but it does not cover the top 0.01% which you cited.

<comment><USER18> <http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/08in12ms.xls>

Try dividing the number of $10M+ earners by the total number of taxable returns. You'll get a number surprisingly close to .01%.

<comment><USER19> Yes, what Piketty and Saez did was a more sophisticated operation on IRS data to get a time series so that we can measure exactly how the top 0.01% etc. did.

Here's the link to the paper if you want the details. <http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article seemed pretty cool until he started talking about the "$700 billion dollar rescue of Wall Street". Why do authors constantly love to throw out this number without any context? It just makes me think that the author is either stupid or full of crap.

Here's some basic info right from the Wikipedia page: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program>

"The TARP program originally authorized expenditures of $700 billion [...] reduced [...] to $475 billion. [...] total disbursements would be $431 billion. [...] $245 billion handed to U.S. and foreign banks. [...] $169 billion has been paid back."

And here are the latest numbers: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveschaefer/2012/10/11/cbo- upd...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveschaefer/2012/10/11/cbo-updates-tarp- tally-24b-cost-to-taxpayers-14b-from-aig-bailout/)

"the latest update from the Congressional Budget Office projects the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) will ultimately wrap up at a cost of $24 billion."

"The ultimate losses from TARP will not come from that first round of spending, as all of those initial bank investments have been repaid, but instead from the use of TARP funds to help smaller banks (minimally), as well as the extension of the program to pump $79 billion into automakers General Motors and Chrysler and contribute to the bailout of insurer American International Group."

<comment><USER21> If true (I want to investigate more), this kinda blows my mind. I haven't heard this from either side, and you would expect someone would bring it up at some point. I've always been against the bailout, partly due to the cost, but given how much we spend on the most ridiculous of endeavors, $24 billion hardly seems a drop in the bucket.

I still am not in favor of the bailout because of moral hazard, but that's a discussion for another time.

Thanks for this!

<comment><USER22> Having seen only bits of the information in the wild, I was also impressed to see the GP's summary there.

I had already known that many of the banks that received bailout funds had already repaid it, but (as the GP mentions) for many of the smaller banks, but I didn't know that the initial outlay came down to as little as $431 billion.

<comment><USER23> Have you counted what is on the Fed balance sheet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So, the article is saying that government giveaways and government rule-making is entrenching the rich even more, and it's the fault of the rich? Wow, what perverse thinking that is. It seems to me that if the government made less rules and gave away less of OUR money, there would be a more even playing field. That doesn't mean NO rules, just a minimum.

The title of the article should be "Government and it's role in causing wealth disparity".

<comment><USER5> This. The problem isn't that the government doesn't have enough rules to control business. The problem is the government is so involved in every aspect of life it's become far more efficient to co-opt the state than to compete with other companies in your sector.

For some reason people on the left think if only the government was _more_ involved, _this time_ it would work to rein in powerful people instead of making them more powerful like the last 97 times.

<comment><USER25> I once maintained that Senate Republicans on the Banking committee supported a complex regulatory regime because their influence and status derived from the value they provided helping banks navigate that regulatory apparatus. My left- wing friends regarded this as the most cynical thing they'd ever heard, but they didn't have much evidence or analysis against it.

Politicians want a powerful state because their power derives from their influence over that state. They want their power to grow because no one is ever satisfied with what they have.

If the US has a Serratta, it would be in the impossibility of doing business without managing political relations, and thus the exclusion of people with serious interests from any serious effort to reform the state. I'm not sure we're there yet, but if we aren't we're dangerously close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The article only touches on lobbying, but that's the key mechanism by which wealthier people gain an unfair influence on government. As campaigns have gotten more expensive, the system selects for those politicians that raise enormous amounts of money – people who cater to the lobbyists. Lawrence Lessig did a phenomenal job breaking down the campaign finance / lobbying problem in his book Republic, Lost: [http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts- Congress/...](http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts- Congress/dp/0446576433)

I also found the Lawrence Lessig / Jack Abramoff interview very illuminating in understanding the corrupting influence of money on government. It's long but worth watching: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkvIS5pZ0eI>

<comment><USER27> We'd all be better off without winner-take-all elections. It takes money to pretend to be all things to all voters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "the libertarian writer Charles Murray blames the hollowed-out middle for straying from the traditional family values and old-fashioned work ethic that he says prevail among the rich"

"Following the June Seventeenth uprising the secretary of the Writers' League had leaflets distributed on Stalin Allee where one could read that the people had forfeited the confidence of the government and could regain it only through redoubled efforts. Wouldn't it be simpler under these circumstances for the government to dissolve the people and elect another one?"

\- Berthold Brecht

</comment><comment><USER23> _Exhibit A is the bipartisan, $700 billion rescue of Wall Street in 2008. Exhibit B is the crony recovery. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty found that 93 percent of the income gains from the 2009-10 recovery went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The top 0.01 percent captured 37 percent of these additional earnings, gaining an average of $4.2 million per household._

\-- The $8 Trillion "bridge loan" that finances this? Split pro-rata, of course, amongst the lower and middle class.

<comment><USER21> Could you expand on this?

<comment><USER23> Yes. The main point is you need to follow both the asset base (how it is being financed), as well as the ancilliary revenue streams (coming from the assets). Its one thing to skew income to the group X. Its another thing to finance that with financial contracts, being paid for by another group Y. The latter is even more perverse from a perspective of social equity. Capitalism is (even for its most ardernt, free-market supporters) premised on ~proportional returns (ie, x% capital, pro-rata % share of earnings).[1] The liberal-left position is that this should skew somewhat[2].

The illustrated example is worse than both, it skews _opposite_ , making a "sucker" class of the general group Y. If you are in group Y (no matter if you are on the right or the left), you should be thinking WTF, because it is not only contradictory to both principles, it's all self serving to X (incl. both left and right, etc).

______________

[1] Nuance: RAROC'd

[2] To the poor, or in this example to Y

<comment><USER21> I agree with the fact that most of the benefits are going to X, but I'm not at all sure that the cost is being borne by Y, where Y is defined by the poor and middle class. I say this because the reality is that the poor and a big chunk of the middle class in this country do not pay any Federal income tax, which is where the cost of this will be paid from. The lion's share of this will probably be borne in the end by Z, which are the upper middle class and wealthy with earned income who pay the highest marginal tax rates and a huge share of the tax revenue. In fact, the top 20% of households pay 94% of the Federal income tax [1]. They're the ones who are going to pay for this boondoggle, and while that does include hedge fund managers and Donald Trump, it also includes dentists and professors and small business owners.

Of course, this is all just debt right now, so who knows what will end up happening. But given the conversation happening in this country right now, I can't see a big change in the 20% / 94% number above.

1\. [http://taxfoundation.org/blog/top-20-percent-households- pay-...](http://taxfoundation.org/blog/top-20-percent-households- pay-94-percent-income-taxes)

<comment><USER23> Understood, but I'm simply defining Y as not X. Within y, the distribution may not itself be homogeneous. There is also the issue of the regressive (and pernitious) nature of inflation on the Y.

<comment><USER21> I was responding to this:

 _\-- The $8 Trillion "bridge loan" that finances this? Split pro-rata, of course, amongst the lower and middle class._

I don't think it will be split amongst the lower and middle class at all really. Upper middle class will end up paying for this. Unless you count the potential for a long-term deleterious effect on our economy, in which case we all get to pay for it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The reality that "the tippy-top, of the economic pyramid who have been most effective at capturing government support" is canon in my opinion.

I'm not insanely liberal or anything, so I don't want to go too far down the road of "who does the government REALLY serve" - but the Constitution was built around building a state that could enforce contracts. And for good reason, but that reason was NOT that they were worried about serving the poor.

<comment><USER30> You should expand on what you're trying to say, because you've said nothing but started with a very interesting premise. So I'd like to hear more.

<comment><USER29> So I think the best resource on this topic, by far, is Woody Holton's Unruly Americans. [http://books.google.com/books?id=w-IiCowd8_4C&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=w-IiCowd8_4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Woody+Holton%22&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false)

But essentially what really motivated those behind the Constitutional convention was the diminishing value of their assets under the Articles of Confederation. Contracts weren't enforceable because the federal government wasn't strong or effective enough, especially across state lines.

Man, this just reminds me of one of the truly amazing things about American history: virtually the same people who wrote the Constitution tried to form the country under a different set of documents, and it failed so thoroughly that they TOTALLY re-did it (arguably illegally) 6 years later.

<comment><USER30> That's very interesting. Thank you for the book reference!

If you have more time, would you philosophize on how all of this might relate to present-day circumstances? (In addition to the topic of the original motives for the constitution, it might be interesting to include some discussion of what those those "at the top" could/should infer from history.)

<comment><USER29> So the only thing I can say for certain is to remember that the rich always benefit from the existence and strength of government more than the poor unless that government is extremely hostile toward business. Despite some rhetoric that is out there, that is extremely far from the case in the case of the US government.

What the US government has almost always done a fantastic job at (not necessarily above and beyond other governments, just in a vacuum) is creating a system where financial transactions can occur without much risk (monetary policy, moving off the gold standard frictionlessly, etc.) and where contracts can be enforced. And that's business pretty much right?

The argument from there about taxes and regulation are details, and we can argue about that all day. But they are details that are minor compared to the ability to conduct business with confidence in a general since, not the slight variations we see these days.

I'm a liberal, but it's for the above reason I supported the financial bailout. If I fear for anything, it's either of those core securities being diminished.

<comment><USER23> There is a lot of very good insight here, in particular the focus on foundational economic institutions (ie, truth telling and promise keeping). Even so far as the taxes and regulations being details (a couple percent here or there, not a crisis).

The issue that we are facing though, is starting to become of another sort. It is evidenced by the shift of wealth from the commercial centers to the DC area. It is evidenced by 80% of government spending not being on running government or protecting the population or even enforcing laws, etc. It is evidenced by (what was quoted in the article) of goverment borrowing (and printing money) to support the oligarghical too-big to fail banks. It is evidenved by the nationalization of private sector debt via student loans and via housing loan guarantees. It is evidenced by the failure to regulate derivatives or split investment banks from commercial ones.

It is evidenced by "Economists" in the keynesian tradition who support uncritical borrow and spend (as the answer to everything), all of which provides stability but none of which provides actual earnings/power to the working classes...etc. It just provides benefits to the rich and debt/taxes to the poor. The "Liberal" current administration has underwritten the most perverse transfer of weatlth from the poor/middel to the top, its almost comical they pretend to be for anyone other than themselves. They make the Tea Party, in Contrast, look almost perversely rational. There is too much fear. In the Left. Of change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm always dismayed to read comments in HN when an article like this comes up because their is always such a complete backlash against it. Don't get me wrong, I saw problems with the article too, but I don't necessarily disagree with overall premise and I find it sad that there isn't even an inkling of an opinion of someone trying to defend it.

<comment><USER32> It's kind of funny. The article is pro entrepreneurship, pro capitalist and pro free market. So many here are taking it as an attack on success or the rich. Theres a huge misreading of the article and a lot of attacks on minor points and statements and nobody addressing the basic premise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The one fundamental error in this article is the assumption that money solves everything. As many have pointed out, we spend lots of money on education - <USER2> has had little to no effect on the quality of that education.

</comment><comment><USER34> Don't forget that the income gap in Venice was immeasurably worse then in the USA today. Contrast the doge with the sailer who had nothing but a life of indenture.

Although the income gap is fact, it is hard to say that America is become less inclusive and hence I find it hard to support this author's argument.

<comment><USER35>
        immeasurably worse

I think you mean inequality was _higher_ , not _worse_. Executing all American billionaires would lower inequality in this country, but it wouldn't make it better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The iOS 6 maps reference is incredibly forced

</comment><comment><USER36> Like the "education gap" explanations (and its solutions, like "more education is the answer"), this explanation is about the last battle, not the current one. It mentions briefly the role of automation (AKA "technological unemployment"), but that's it.

The chief driver of unemployment in the future is going to be labor automation, and that is that. The new battle lines are going to be over "how do we get taxes - _and a culture that supports levying them_ - to the level needed so we can supply a guaranteed income, universal healthcare, and free/low-cost housing to support the mass of permanently unemployed, zero marginal product (ZMP) workers that are going to be created over the next 20-30 years." Countries like Denmark have a real leg up on the US policy-wise here, as they already have some of these things in place along with what appears to be a populace that is fairly supportive of keeping them.

When you see someone under 10 from now on, ask yourself "what is the likelihood that this kid will have a job 25 years from now?" The answer is becoming "less likely every day." The world is only going to need so many politicians, managers, programmers, and robot designers.

Even the hard-to-automate jobs (as per Autor: <http://economics.mit.edu/faculty/dautor/papers>) are slowly getting automated,and there won't even be jobs in "food service, cleaning and gardening, health support, child care, personal appearance, security guards, recreation, and miscellaneous services" for them to do. We should be thinking about the current and next battle, not the previous one(s), though that's (sadly) often the pattern when it comes to political economy.

</comment><comment><USER14> There are some errors in this article. Or I rather must say the author might be unaware of the certain things that he is talking about.

>> Extractive states are controlled by ruling elites whose objective is to extract as much wealth as they can from the rest of society.

and

>> That was the future predicted by Karl Marx, who wrote that capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction.

The world has changed drastically since Karl Marx, in fact so much that Marx wouldn't ever recognize the world if if he were to suddenly thrown here. The biggest change is the definition of wealth as a dynamic entity which can be created and expanded with work. Unfortunately this didn't exist in the time Marx, or even if it did- the access to such an activity was limited to only a certain set of individuals.

>> You can see America's creeping Serrata in the growing social and, especially, educational chasm between those at the top and everyone else. At the bottom and in the middle, American society is fraying, and the children of these struggling families are lagging the rest of the world at school.

I laugh when people write things like these. I am an Indian, staying in Bangalore. If you say the US is struggling, I would say you have no clue about other parts of the world. You have no clue what struggling means, no clue what hunger means, no clue what poverty or lack of education or health care means. Think of it this way, even the poorest in the US would be like 10x better of than the poorest in the other parts of the world.

>> Economists point out that the woes of the middle class are in large part a consequence of globalization and technological change.

I would say these changes are good for the US and the world in general. A lot of co operation and competition means things will move quickly.

>> Tolerance for high executive compensation has increased, even as the legal powers of unions have been weakened and an intellectual case against them has been relentlessly advanced by plutocrat-financed think tanks.

Sorry, is the word Tolerance the right word? It makes it sound like some sort of a criminal scam is going around in those circles which every one needs to put up with.

Sorry but the author seems to point what we generally call as 'Socialist guilt'. The problem is people automatically label the ambitious, hardworking and people who look for big rewards as greedy. This problem is an unfortunate consequence of communism and to an extent socialism in general. Unless these people are made to believe that there is inherent evilness in money and desire for it, they really can't sell their philosophy. The direction in which a communist thinks is to visualize money and in general wealth as a minimal thing merely required for survival. And other things are also pushed, like for example glorifying poverty- Promoting rationing of things etc.

The author fails to understand why there are 1%'s anyway. Which is that a capitalist society believes the rewards are not fixed, but vary with effort applied towards the work done to achieve goals. Its not like somebody just called a person in the cabin and wrote them $1 million check. You are selling something and somebody is ready to pay a price for it. This of course requires working hard, taking risks and going through tough times to get there. Not everybody would like to do that, because some people are just happy with what they have now. But just because those people don't want a little extra, it doesn't mean those who want it and earn must share their rewards with others.

The fact is nearly everybody wants to be rich, some just convince themselves they don't want to after considering the effort they need to expend to get rich. But later when they look at somebody getting rich, they just happen to either proceed with all this drama.

Unless you are ill, or disabled or limited for another genuine reason can't work to get successful, you just can't blame somebody else for your problems.

<comment><USER12> You're missing the point entirely.

The point is, the process which you describe above where pluck and hard work will get you everything is only possible in states whose ruling structure is inclusive and not extractive – i.e. you can open a business without having to belong to the aristocracy.

The analogy being drawn is that the oligarchic elite in western societies are increasingly seeking ways to patrimonialize the state and whether consciously or not move towards an extractive structure.

You require far less pluck and hard work to succeed if you belong to the contemporary 'landed nobility' and, on a vast institutional level state incentives are being redrawn to reward incumbent elites in one way or another.

<comment><USER14> I absolutely agree.

And its not that very different in India either. To give you an example, being born into a rich family absolutely has some benefits and that is undeniable.

My point is how is that default advantage the rich have, a disadvantage to the poor? Unless the poor want it to be, it really can't be. And here is where things go wrong, agreed that no one gets a level playing field and game itself isn't fair to even begin with. The moment you enter the game the advantage is already favoring the rich.

But what the game does offer is a way forward to improve your chances of winning if you play well along.

Besides it will be nearly impossible in system of economic set up to create a level playing field at the very start and I don't even think that should be the aim of any economic system either.

<comment><USER12> >The moment you enter the game the advantage is already favoring the rich.

If you're progressive, the idea is to try to level the playing fields somewhat. We don't have to equalize them, just try to improve everyone's odds a little bit.

>My point is how is that default advantage the rich have, a disadvantage to the poor?

Because the more of the total percentage of economic activity gets captured by an oligarchy the less is available for everyone else.

Further more, the issue at hand is that across the west we're enacting policies that make tilt the balance even more towards elites.

<comment><USER14> >> If you're progressive, the idea is to try to level the playing fields somewhat. We don't have to equalize them, just try to improve everyone's odds a little bit.

Correct, but I believe that will come through opportunities. The poor will be given opportunities, but however remember using them and converting them to goodness is really their responsibility. And as a rule of thumb, opportunities always present themselves in the form for some work.

I would believe US is far better of at this than any other country I know of. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you people have county schools which are free? Don't you people now have some form national healthcare system? Don't you have social security? I would already consider these as very big advantages compared to many other countries. I mean the government can practically support you when you go broke, and then of course its up to you to take it from there.

>>Because the more of the total percentage of economic activity gets captured by an oligarchy the less is available for everyone else.

True only if the percentage of wealth created at any time static, which it is definitely not.

>>Further more, the issue at hand is that across the west we're enacting policies that make tilt the balance even more towards elites.

I think any economic system should reward getting wealthy, because that is good motivator to create more wealth.

<comment><USER12> >I would believe US is far better of at this than any other country I know of.

It's not a leader overall. It may have the most billionaires, but if you're looking at average outcomes you're probably best off in Norway.

>I think any economic system should reward getting wealthy

Absolutely. It doesn't work nearly as well otherwise.

>The poor will be given opportunities, but however remember using them and converting them to goodness is really their responsibility.

Responsibility _and_ availability of opportunities. The more opportunities, the more people benefit. We're talking about increasing the pool of opportunities.

<comment><USER18> _We're talking about increasing the pool of opportunities._

And what are the progressive schemes for doing that?

<comment><USER12> Standard social welfare and insurance comes to mind. There are many possible policies, but that's the outlook at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> These comments aren't taking into account the deterioration of the quality of teachers. One reason for this is due to smart women leaving the field in the '70s when the rest of careers opened up to them. My sister quit teaching English and became a lawyer. She earned a lot more and got a lot more respect. And, yes, in order to attract those people back to teaching the country will have to pay a lot more. These women have options and they walked.

Further, there is a serious problem with the fact that classroom discipline is so compromised by unruly students that many competent teachers no longer want to be with these children. This is not just in the US. I was in Chile last year, taking an ESL teaching class, and watched a video of a Chilean teaching English to a class of 10 year olds. The whole room was in complete chaos.

An older man in the class with me who was my age (early 60s) had been a teacher and said that the video depicted why he would no longer go into the classroom. Curiously, the 2 younger students in the class, recent college grads, felt we didn't accept normal in students. Well, the new normal is devastating to learning. Parents are responsible for this mess.

Christine

<comment><USER38> The way we will mitigate this is expanding things like Teach for America. Basically, the gov't will start canceling student loan debt based on years of service. You can imagine a scale from 2-10 years. They already do this for the medical research field. That's the only way. It will be a "hidden" indirect cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> pg's written a couple essays defending income inequality:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html>

<http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html>

<comment><USER40> In response to PG's article - I think most people would agree that wealth creation is a talent like any other. I think where people have a problem is that the particular talent of business and wealth creation buys so much more influence in society compared with being in the top 1% of teachers, policemen, academic researchers, or even programmers.

Furthermore, pg suggests that those who get rich innovate and drive society forward, which I agree with. Unfortunately this seems to be the case for only a minute portion of those who are rich. Most of the best and brightest are doctors, dentists, lawyers, and investment bankers. The smartest pursue these avenues not to push society forward, but to gain the influence that assured wealth provides.

Innovators (Peter Thiel's 0-1 innovators, not 1-n) absolutely deserve the highest possible influence in society - fame, status, and wealth - <USER3> they push society forward and raise the standard of living for all. On the other hand, the top 1% of doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, and non- innovative businessmen gain a disproportionate amount of wealth without contributing to society and in my opinion should not be valued tremendously more than the top 1% of programmers, teachers, or biologists.

<comment><USER41> Peter Thiel runs a hedge fund and most of his successful investments have been advertising-industry web startups. I'm not sure how much that really pushes society forward. At least Elon Musk is doing something truly socially useful with his money.

I suppose my brother and I are great examples of your point: I left engineering to become a lawyer, and he took his physics degree to an investment bank. More money in law and banking. But is engineering or programming really more socially valuable, as practiced? Like many engineers, I used to work in defense contracting--I feel someone more socially valuable as a lawyer, and that's saying a lot. Where does a talented programmer go these days? Silicon Valley? Where the big, world-changing work everyone seems engaged in is exploiting private information for advertising profit? I'm not sure if I believe that's any better for society.

<comment><USER23> You're dismissing paypal, which is the sin qua non and an actual 0,1 innovation. Thiel was also a lawyer by trade, who went into entreprenuership to do something useful. His investments in FB etc are also thru his vc fund, not his macro-hedge fund (clarium). These are details, but important.

<comment><USER41> You're right, I'll give him Paypal. But I don't see the distinction between VC and macro hedge funds. Are you saying VC are socially useful?

<comment><USER23> Before the mid-1990s VC in fact were responsible for a lot of 0,1 type innovation. Intel, Apple et al. Wall street was not set up to provide asset lite companies debt. Nor was it set up to take public equity deals of early stage, cash bleeding, negative gaap earning early-stage companies. So they filled a market gap, and enabled new deals/businesses to get done.

Since then, the increasing sophistication of general market participants has commoditized everything about VC, except for perhaps certain elements of information flow. In that regard, you are right, that a stage agnostic hedge fund and/or a $NBillion VC funde start to look alike.

But Remember Thiel was in FB as an <Angel> in 2004. Clarium itself was a macro fund, taking positions on open public markets. They are actually quite disctinct lines of work. Its not like clarium was doing later stage VC or PE deals either (from my recollection).

Lastly, someone needs to write the contracts in a free market economy. So Legal and Finance guys are socially valuable. The underlying issue, however, is are they abusing or overleverageing their (privleged) position in the economy to extract opportunistic rents. See, eg.

> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunism>

That's an argument (perhaps for another day), because it is more an ethical/cultural/policy discussion and comes down to how people are educated/brought up, their values, etc. That kind of thing varies from decade to decade, from firm to firm, etc. Arguably, right now across all of what used to be the professions, we are losing the partner _ethos_ , and replacing it with arguably a more a-moral, and mercenary one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I found Niall Fergusons last lectures to be quite eye opening in regards to possible reasons to the wests apparent decline and what is driving it. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jms03/episodes/guide

</comment><comment><USER43> This New York Times Sunday review opinion essay, "The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent," is an interesting read and has prompted a very interesting set of comments here on HN overnight in my time zone. As I turned in yesterday, the top comment was by kamaal, pointing out that India provides a useful reality check on some of the assertions about the United States in the article. As I woke up this morning, the top comment was (and is) by acslater, posted not long after kamaal's comment, pointing out that United States public schools are well funded by international standards. Can both comments be true? Yes they can.

I agree with the main claim of the submitted article that a society in which many people have opportunity to make it into the top earning echelon of the society is a better society all around. "Like all open economies, theirs was turbulent. Today, we think of social mobility as a good thing." And I still think of social mobility as a good thing, having lived in more than one country in my life. International rankings with annual revisions produced by nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations reveal that the United States enjoys huge advantages outside its government-operated school system. One of those advantages is an exceptionally high level of political and economic freedom for ordinary citizens and residents, as reported in The Freedom House rankings of countries by freedom (both political and economic):

<http://www.freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world>

Another advantage the United States has for progress and prosperity is low level of corruption in private business and government as reported by The Transparency International rankings of perceived public corruption:

<http://www.transparency.org/research/cpi/overview>

Both of those societal advantages continue to draw into the United States bright, high-initiative persons from around the world who received their primary and secondary schooling in other countries.

It is simply a matter of fact that public spending on government-operated schools in the United States has long been high by world standards.

[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2003-09-16-edu...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2003-09-16-education- comparison_x.htm)

"'There are countries which don't get the bang for the bucks, and the U.S. is one of them,' said Barry McGaw, education director for the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which produced the annual review of industrialized nations."

[http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/education- spend...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/education-spending-and- those-international-test-scores/)

"As you can see, the United States is exactly on the line of best fit [on a scatterplot of country GDP and country means on reading test scores]. American students scored about as well as you'd expect them to if all you knew about them was their average standard of living.

. . . .

"So if money doesn't appear to have a strongly predictable impact on students' test scores, what does?

"How educated their parents are seems to play a bigger role."

From "America's Assets" section of the OECD report "Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons from PISA for the United States":

<http://www.oecd.org/pisa/46623978.pdf>

"One of the American assets is the amount of money American citizens are willing to invest in public education – more per student than any other country save one. This means that there is a lot of room to get better performance by reprogramming what is currently being spent."

Eric Hanushek, an astute economist who has many peer-reviewed publications in a variety of journals about education evaluation and education reform in the United States and other countries, has repeatedly examined the vexing issue of teacher quality and how to measure it. His latest publication on the issue, "The Distribution of Teacher Quality and Implications for Policy" Eric A. Hanushek, Steven G. Rivkin, September 2012, Annual Review of Economics, pp. 131-157,

[http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publication...](http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Hanushek%2BRivkin%202012%20AnnRevEcon%204.pdf)

points out that variance of teacher quality within each school is generally much greater than the mean quality of instruction differences between schools. The paper examines what data are necessary to fairly assess "value added" of individual teachers in classroom service.

Hanushek's article "The Economic Value of Higher Teacher Quality," Eric A. Hanushek, June 2011, Economics of Education Review, pp. 466-479

[http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publication...](http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Hanushek%202011%20EER%2030%283%29.pdf)

provides evidence supporting the proposition that simply encouraging the bottom 5 to 8 percent of teachers currently in service in the United States to change occupations, replacing them with teachers of average effectiveness, could move the United States, with its current diverse population, to near the top of international mathematics and science rankings and add trillions of dollars of economic growth to the United States economy.

So to the point of the submitted article, yes, let's make sure that ALL young people in the United States (and everywhere, for that matter) enjoy schoolteachers who are effective at teaching, societies that are free, governments that are not corrupt, and thus upper economic classes that are open to new participants. That will help all of us and all of our children and grandchildren prosper.

</comment><comment><USER44> Marxist tripe.

<comment><USER45> Capitalist tripe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This article is fairly myopic and overly congratulatory about the history of the US. Phrases such as:

 _"The history of the United States can be read as one such virtuous circle."_

 _"Historically, the United States has enjoyed higher social mobility than Europe"_

 _"IN the early 19th century, the United States was one of the most egalitarian societies on the planet."_

 _"For Jefferson, this equality was at the heart of American exceptionalism: "Can any condition of society be more desirable than this?"_

Would seem to completely ignore the history and even the existence of African Americans and their experiences in this supposedly classless society.</comment>


Turning Back the Clock on Aging Cells - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/science/aging-dna-epigenetics-cells.html <comment><USER2> reading about stuff like this, really makes you think that human cell immortality is within our reach.</comment>


Atom 1.8 and 1.9 beta - one-more-minute http://blog.atom.io/2016/06/06/atom-1-8-and-1-9-beta.html <comment><AUTHOR> Every time Atom is discussed, it's pointed out how slow it is, and then others point out how VS Code is much faster yet is also based on Electron. Could someone explain what makes VS Code significantly faster?

Full disclosure: Every time I try Atom I decide to stick with Sublime Text, largely because Atom feels slow. I've never tried VS Code myself.

<comment><USER2> Why haven't you tried VS Code? Relatively small download, fast install, free and open source. You could install it in just a little more time than it takes to post this question. [https://code.visualstudio.com/](https://code.visualstudio.com/)

Disclaimer: I work for m-dollar. My commission rate is 0.0% and VS Code is free, so I am hoping to make it up in volume.

<comment><USER3> I love VS Code and have been using it as my main editor for quite a while now, but the lack of project-wide find and _replace_ is why I still keep Atom around:

[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/1690](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/1690)

This glaring omission combined with the proposed performance improvements in the Atom 1.9 beta might just be enough to tempt me back to the Atom side again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I never understood why everyone complains about atom's speed on HN. I have been using it for 3 years as my default editor with lots of plugins, never experienced performance issues.

<comment><USER5> The people with complaints about performance issues are the people coming from Sublime Text.

Everything you do in Sublime is done _instantly_. Try opening the command panel (ctrl+shift+p) both in sublime and atom. At least a 300ms difference. Multiple cursors, switching to different panels (I can see the whole pane getting rendered in front of my eyes -- not instant!), even things like loading the list of installable plugins or installing a plugin is _far, __far___ faster in sublime, assuming package control, compared to Atom!

Sublime also has this insane feature where no matter how many plugins you have installed, Sublime will still start up in about 200-300 milliseconds, as fast as notepad on Windows and faster than gedit on linux. Atom only goes slower and slower and slower the more plugins you install.

When you're used to an editor that does everything instantly, everything that takes longer than 200ms takes too long.

<comment><USER6> > Try opening the command panel (ctrl+shift+p) both in sublime and atom. At > least a 300ms difference.

Opens instantly in Atom for me.

<comment><USER7> Try Open 10 files in Atom then open the File Panel. Try the same in Sublime Text. There is a noticeable speed difference.

<comment><USER8> * while standing on your hands upside down and drinking a glass of water

You will notice the difference!!11

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A big thank you to [https://github.com/joefitzgerald](https://github.com/joefitzgerald) for the environment handling!

</comment><comment><USER10> I stopped using atom last week. It crashed too many times on me even though I like it's feature set. Went back to trusty old sublime, Atom is crash-prone and slow.

Maybe it is because of the extensions I installed but they were all popular. If so then Atom should track crashes and correlate with extensions or something like that.

</comment><comment><USER11> I tried to like Atom two or three times, but it was simply too slow and too buggy. Visual Studio Code is much faster and I haven't encountered severe bugs so far.

</comment><comment><USER12> atom has become my default GUI editor.

<comment><USER13> I share with others and recognize all the problems with atom. It's so incredibly slow on my strained workstation, especially with large files. And yet, same thing happened to me: it's become my default GUI editor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used VIM / Atom for a long time but after switching to Webstorm I just can't look back. I don't even use crazy IDE features but the click/symbol mapping and knowing what's in use or not is really dope. Atom didn't have anything that sophisticated when I used it. There was a click to tag thing but it wasn't as thorough as webstorm.

</comment><comment><USER15> I really like how easy it is to customize Atom. I'm over "OCD" about syntax highlighting and I love how all I need to do is add some CSS and I'm done. I know it sound small, but it's a very friendly environment if you're a web dev. I still haven't made the full switch from Sublime but I'm using Atom more and more.

</comment><comment><USER16> I finally gave up with atom this week, after switching between st3, atom, rubymine and vs code I deleted all of them and just started using vim with spf13. I liked atom and its vim-mode _alot_ but its handling of tags even with atom-ctags never worked for me.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, the tab snapping in 1.9 is excellent. Looking forward to seeing that in the release version.

</comment><comment><USER18> Atom is my main editor. It used to be little slower at ubuntu 14.04 but now on 16.04 Ubuntu, it works just fine.

</comment><comment><USER19> But is it faster?

<comment><USER20> They do mention "rendering and performance improvements", and the linked pull request [1] mentions "much faster cold startup time and general increase in responsiveness".

I don't know if that means it's fast enough to replace other editors now, but it's promising.

[1] [https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/11474](https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/11474)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think it's a bit disapointing to see no focus at all on performance.

<comment><USER22> Have you tried clicking the link at the top of this page that takes you to the release notes?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How contact form can be protected from abusing by spammers? - <AUTHOR> I regularly receive a lot of spam and have noticed some pattern. Spammers seem to use publicly available contact forms on random (rather credible) websites. These forms send confirmation message to the specified email on form submission.
Is there a way to protect such publicly available forms from spammers? Is *captcha the only way to do this?
Using something like CSRF token doesn't seem to solve the problem. <comment><USER2> I have had success with a simple hack to the forms. I rename one of the fields (usually the email address) and then add a fake hidden field named "email". If the form gets submitted with something in the fake field the back-end code ignores the form submit.

      <input type="text" name="email" style="display:none;">

      Your email address
      <input type="text" name="fax">

The back-end looks for the real email address in the "fax" field, and silently ignores the form submit if it sees anything in the "email" field.

I don't remember where I saw this trick a few years ago, I didn't think of it myself. It has worked pretty well on multiple sites that have exposed "Contact us" forms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting solution. Unfortunately, it seems it doesn't play nice with screen readers.

<comment><USER2> I have this solution in a "contact us" form on an ADA-compliant site. A combination of title and aria-* attributes make it accessible to screen readers, a legal requirement for that web site.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Rayrender, an open source R package to craft and raytrace 3D scenes - <AUTHOR> https://www.tylermw.com/getting-started-with-rayrender/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, you can see the repo and browse the documentation and see more examples using the links below.

Github:

[https://github.com/tylermorganwall/rayrender](https://github.com/tylermorganwall/rayrender)

Website (browse the documentation and examples):

[https://www.rayrender.net](https://www.rayrender.net)</comment>


Can artificial intelligence tell a teapot from a golf ball? - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190107131236.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Is this fair? if your choices are teapot or golf ball? which one is it? what do you answer? the shape or texture?</comment>


Ask HN: Is hiring without a 'remote possible' option discriminatory? - <AUTHOR> There are many people that cannot in the foreseeable future be in a public space (i.e. an office), because they're in high-risk categories for COVID-19. For example, immunocompromised people, pregnant females, etc. But also there are others who are just not comfortable with the possibility of contracting the virus, irrespective of their risk group. At least not before a provenly working vaccine is available.<p>In this light, is it a discriminatory hiring policy (maybe not according to local laws, but in the broader sense) when a company requires in-office presence for their candidates? <comment><USER2> Yes, it is discriminatory. But discrimination isn't illegal; discrimination against protected classes is. Examples of things hiring personnel can discriminate based on include political views, your weight, your sexuality (at leas here Texas), credit history, any bankruptcies, and unemployment.

<comment><USER2> I'd like to just point out that I stated sexual orientation was not a protected class less than 24 hours before SCOTUS made their ruling. It's funny how suddenly things can change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think so, except when it's a position that does actually require one to be in a lab or manufacturing plant or similar. It will take a lawsuit to actually establish this but I imagine a law firm would take a case like this on contingency against a big company.

<comment><USER4> Agree, it all comes down to whether offering remote options is considered "reasonable accomodations". This would probably be considered reasonable if the company has the infrastructure or could easily afford it. Small companies may not be required to provide this option if they don't have the infrastructure and can't easily afford it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Likely so.

Also once there is a coronavirus vaccine, it will likely be considered discriminatory to require vaccination as a condition of employment in order to enter a company office.</comment>


How We Pivoted from eDiscovery to Siege Weaponry and Raised $60k in 30 Days - evan-arm http://siegetoys.com/post/4743188690/con-que-con-lasers-or-how-we-pivoted-from-ediscovery <comment><AUTHOR> Nice story, but how is this a pivot exactly? What's the difference between a pivot and moving on with something else? My gut feeling is that when you start something totally, completely different without using the knowledge or product you built/gathered/accumulated before, it's more of a start over.

<comment><USER2> 'Moving on' sounds like failure, but 'pivoting' is hot startup jargon, so to make sure to sound successful, you need to 'pivot' and not 'move on' :)

(Disclaimer: I caught myself saying 'pivot' in a pitch last week, and literally cringing in my chair when I realized it - luckily it was on the phone so I don't think anyone caught it ;) )

<comment><USER3> I regularly read things like this. Why is saying 'pivot' detrimental?

<comment><USER2> It's not really 'detrimental', hence my smiley and wink; it's more that I feel it's a fashionable word which will lose it's cool next year when the next buzzword shows up. It's a bit the startup equivalent of 'synergy', the much- maligned MBA word.

(I recognize that it's a perfectly valid word (both 'pivot' and 'synergy', actually), and conveys lots of information in a simple word, which in general is good; it's just that it has become the epitome of MBA-speak which is sometimes scoffed at for its perceived vapidness or attempt at sounding important).

<comment><USER4> It is, as Bernard Wooley would say if he were still around, one of those irregular verbs.

I pivot, you change your mind, he flip-flops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Their kickstarter page with video: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1803756771/trebuchette-t...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1803756771/trebuchette- the-snap-together-desktop-trebuchet/)

I got to give you guy's kudos for the snap together design. To make something out of wood that does not require glue or be held together by string yet is strong enough to shoot a projectile (repeatedly) is quite a design challenge.

I remember the push out ply wooden toys you used to be able to get that would fall apart when you slotted them together.

But I was wondering if trebuchette was for geeks or 12 year old kids? I can see a big brother ambushing a little sister with this. So may want to supply goggles to avoid law suits.

Also you may want to do a fireproof version because I can see someone shooting projectiles that are on fire (I can't remember what they are called) with it just like they used to do in ye olde days.

I can also see a range of snap together wooden toys with this system. From castles to catapults to battering rams to cars etc.

Congrats on kickstarting your dreams.

(Edited for spelling and clarity)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, the snap together design is cool, though I wonder if it'll last. If the joints move even slightly it would seem that the pieces will wear over time and it'll get loose.

<comment><USER7> I've got one of these on my desk and I can assure you that it's amazingly solidly built. Evan and Mike have tweaked the dimensions just so that the plywood they use, sanded and waxed in the way they sand and wax it, fits very precisely -- or rather, it _doesn't_ quite fit, unless it is squeezed a little bit, which is actually what you want, because that means it snaps together securely. And this is why the laser cutting is necessary: it's the one technique that lets you achieve the tolerances you need for this sort of thing without manual adjustments to each piece.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just taped this quote on the bottom of my primary monitor. I think that, other than "The worst outcome is mediocrity", it's the most insightful (and directly relevant to me) thing I've read on HN in ages.

      Are they asking all kinds on inane questions, grumbling
      about the colors, and telling you everything you did
      wrong while you can't pry them away from your demo?
      >> Success. <<

      Are they smiling, nodding enthusiastically, telling you
      what a great idea it is, and then wandering off and not
      answering your email?
      >> It's not working. <<

<comment><USER9> This arguably could be reduced to:

Are they using the product?

>> Success. <<

</comment></comment><comment> evan-arm I realized this morning that the post doesn't explain the original title of the piece. We got posted to SMBC, and someone re-tweeted Zach's awesome comment into Spanish: "Estos chabones hacen CATAPULTAS. Con qué? CON LASERS. Por qué? POR LA CIENCIA <http://kck.st/gj3byf>

"Con qué? CON LASERS" has become our motto now.

</comment><comment><USER10> all I could think of watching that, was "where can I get me a laser CNC machine"

oh, and how do I justify the cost to my wife?

<comment><USER11> Build one yourself for $2500.

[http://buildlog.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=391](http://buildlog.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=391)

All the cool kids are doing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Uh... I think 'pivoting' is being used ironically, since the poster probably realizes that they're simply dropping the old project and moving on.

The 'haha, pivot is overused' meme /is/ pretty common by this point, right?

</comment><comment><USER13> Sorry but, this post epitomizes the current entrepreneurship for sake of it trend.

The bubble seems to be inflating exponentially!

<comment><USER14> If you wonder why you're getting downvoted, here's a couple pointers:

>Sorry but, this post epitomizes the current entrepreneurship for sake of it trend.

This statement, while being mildly insulting, doesn't actually give any information. It's a conclusion without an argument. If you feel the post is fluffy and insubstantial, explain why. Rather than a drive by Youtube-style comment, write to convince. You have an opinion that you'd like others to consider, but it will take more than merely stating it to be taken seriously.

>The bubble seems to be inflating exponentially!

This, again, is a statement without substance. There's been a lot of bubble talk lately, and arguments flying back and forth on whether there is a bubble and what form it takes if so. If you feel that this post is symptomatic of the "bubble-era" startup attitude, you need to explain why. Be aware that many people are growing weary of the constant bubble talk, so if you want to be taken seriously you need to make a serious argument. Exclamation points rarely have a place in that kind of exposition.</comment></comment>


The Secrets of Sherlock's Mind Palace - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/secrets-sherlocks-mind-palace-180949567/?no-ist <comment><USER2> (I've not watched _Sherlock_ , so this is just going from the article)

The description of Sherlock wandering through his mind palace as if it were some kind of virtual reality reminds me of what I experienced during a bad acid trip in college. If I looked at some object and tried to remember details about it I would "see" this multidimensional spatial array of all similar objects that I had in my memory with them sorted along each dimension by some attribute of the objects, and then I could "see" a search take place along each dimension to find the memory that best matched the object I was looking at. When the match was found, I could feel the data load from the memory to my awareness.

Basically, it seemed on this trip that the part of my mind that is "me" had become kind of detached from the rest of my mind and could watch how the rest worked. Another example: when someone spoke, I first would hear just nonsense sound, then I'd hear a replay but this time as phonemes, then I'd hear them replay again but this time as words, then I was aware of some kind of parsing going on and them the "me" part would be aware of the thought the speaker was trying to convey. (And this might also trigger an attempt to remember who the speaker was, which would do that whole spatial array thing I described in the prior paragraph).

I have no idea if this experience was just some random thing my brain made up due to the effects of the acid, or if it really does have some connection to how memory works and/or how language is processed.

I didn't try to do any experiments with memory perception while tripping after that, because I never dropped acid after that trip. I'd noticed that my last several trips had felt like context switched between the real world and the tripping world. When I'd trip, I'd kind of pick up where I left off in the tripping world the previous time. Since my last trip had turned bad, I was worried that tripping again would just pick up where I left off, and so never touched acid (or any other hallucinogen) again.

<comment><USER3> Your comments about language reminded me of this:

When I was younger, I had hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). Whenever my blood sugar would start crashing, I could actually feel my brain functions start shutting down, in a rough order from highest to lowest.

First I would have trouble with concentration and attention. I would feel 'spacey'. Lots of things can cause this though, so I didn't always realize it was a blood sugar problem and that I needed to eat something.

The next thing to go would be my ability to process language. Usually when someone is speaking to you in your native language, you aren't really conscious of the difference between 'hearing a sound' and that sound having meaning. Someone is talking and the meaning just forms in your head. But when my blood sugar started dropping, English would start sounding like a foreign language. It was all just sounds. The sounds had the rhythm of language, but not one I understood anymore.

And then when I tried to speak, I would clearly form the intent of speaking certain words and completely different ones would come out of my mouth. Before I knew that it was hypoglycemia, I had an episode once in high school where I knew something was wrong, and I was repeating the words 'I need to visit the nurse' over and over in my head, but when I managed to speak, all I could say was 'I don't feel good' before I lost control and started sobbing. Laughing or crying uncontrollably happens right before I black out.

<comment><USER4> My diabetic fiance has a similar experience. If she speaks gibberish in the middle of the night, I use it as a good indicator that she has low blood sugar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those who wish to know more about the history and applications of the "method of loci", beyond portrayals of it in a fictional series - I highly recommend 'Moonwalking with Einstein' by Joshua Foer. It's an account of a journalist who spends a year learning the methods above and subsequently wins the US memory championship.

It's interesting, in a world in which instant access to a significant subset of knowledge is taken for granted, that these memory techniques are undergoing a resurgence.

I encourage anyone to spend 15-30 minutes a day learning these techniques and applying them to small tasks such as memorising a shopping list, phone numbers and useful bits of info. one tends to forget. [http://mt.artofmemory.com](http://mt.artofmemory.com) is a good starting point also.

<comment><USER6> Cal Newport in _Deep Work_ also mentions that book and recommends this kind of memory exercise. Not only for the value of being able to memorize stuff, but because it seems like memory training improves attention, citing a professor at the University of Washington's Memory Lab:

> _We found that one of the biggest differences between memory athletes and > the rest of us is in a cognitive ability that 's not a direct measure of > memory at all but of attention._

[http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/remembering-as- an-e...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/remembering-as-an-extreme- sport/)

<comment><USER7> Slightly OT, but I quite appreciated Deep Work. Been following Newport for many years now. His last two books have been quite interesting.

<comment><USER6> I quite appreciated it too. Just got back to work after a long vacation and I've been doing some deep working, more or less, although not in a tower out in the forest. But I like the audacity of the book, or something like that: like it encourages me to really try for serious sustained effort. Reminds me a little of that talk "You and your research".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I read a fascinating book on the the Art of Memory by Francis Yates some years ago [1] in which she explores the topic with much depth, a pleasure to read. I have certainly been surprised we forgot about this - once I became aware of it, it made so much sense. I personally try to use my memory where possible, especially in this day of immediate access to digital diaries and calendars. It's a challenge and I'm not sure our modern world can support such ideas for much longer.

If nothing else, read the reviews on the Amazon link below to learn a lot more of interest on the subject.

I remember that when I this in the discussed BBC Sherlock Holmes episode I was not at all surprised that the writers had thought to use this technique. I suppose Arthur Conan Doyle didn't know about this specifically, or it would have made quite a lot of sense to have written it into Sherlock's story.

 _1\. The Art of Memory, Francis Yates pub. 1966

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Memory-Frances- Yates/dp/184792...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Memory-Frances- Yates/dp/1847922929*)

<comment><USER9> As I am running into a 404 here is the link, that worked for me:

[http://www.amazon.com/Art-Memory-Frances- Yates/dp/1847922929...](http://www.amazon.com/Art-Memory-Frances- Yates/dp/1847922929/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453117034&sr=8-1&keywords=frances+yates+memory)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> <Context - I consider my self somewhat challenged when it comes to remembering numbers.>

I personally found 'mind palace' technique very helpful.

It allowed me to remember a financial instrument details which involves 32 numbers without any pattern. Whenever I have to use this instrument I have to input random 6 numbers out of those 32. Before I discovered this technique I had to pull out the hardcopy of the instrument every time for reference, now no more.

Also, it need not be 'palace' or a structure. I use mental map of a roadway which I'm intimately familiar with to place the 32 numbers on the various landmark on the way. Whenever needed I mentally 'drive through' the roadway to retrieve the numbers.

Somewhere I read that it works so well because as a human species we have ability to remember geo spatial things much better than abstract things like numbers. I would guess that it has to do with our hunter-gatherer days when we were primarily dealing with spatial concepts; brain is hard wired to store those information much better than things like numbers.

<comment><USER11> How do you add the numbers on landmarks? Do you just have a road sign with 42 miles to x, or a building with 8 windows?

Also when you are starting with a new number, do all the landmarks need to be unique, or can you re-use the same building but with a different number of windows etc. Or are the items all the same, just in a different order?

<comment><USER10> > How do you add the numbers on landmarks? Do you just have a road sign with > 42 miles to x, or a building with 8 windows?

It could be anything, what you said would work beautifully if it has occurred spontaneously to you. The key thing is it has to be very very natural to you but may not make any sense at all to others.

Example, one of the building I have assigned the number 78 as it is an old building and my father's age is around that.

> do all the landmarks need to be unique

Again it is a very personal decision. For me currently it is one pair of number per landmark as I did not want to 'overload' my system. But if I think about it now, maybe after sometime when I'm comfortable with my current system I can assign another number to the same landmark... But I'm not going to risk it now :-).

If you really want to try it out, start with one thing now and see how it goes before doing for others.

Btw, I discovered this when reading 'Moonwalking with Einstein' (referenced by another commentator here). This book was in reading list of Bill Gates couple of years back.

To illustrate my earlier point, the title of the book does not make any sense at all, but that series of words is used by somebody in the book to remember certain things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I learned this technique as an undergraduate in a seminar meant to help with exams. I thought it was so much woo but it does work. For me anyway, though I never used it for exams- I use it to memorise shopping lists.

I find that for that sort of thing I don't need a whole building. I just visualise an array of empty abstract squares, and fill them up with groceries etc. I think the important thing is the structure you give the memory. I can usually memorise ~15 items in less than a minute.

I also visualise my house sometimes, very convenient for things that actually go to, eg the kitchen or the bathroom irl. I just put them in the proper place in my mind, then to remember them I imagine walking around the house. It helps to do it in the same order both times: start at the front door, proceed to the kitchen, then the bathroom etc. I think I'll try placing them in the actual store next.

It's a bit of a hassle to be fair but I'm normally very absent minded :)

<comment><USER13> It's odd that the empty abstract squares works for you, since the article suggests this isn't typically how the technique is applied ("A large, blank room wouldn't work, but one that has identifiable locations within it might") is it usually only smaller sets of objects you can remember this way?

<comment><USER12> I haven't tried anything else to be honest- like I say I only do this for groceries, once or twice a week.

I had a few exams in the past year and it never occurred to me to try and use this technique there (this was for a postgraduate course- other than the one where I learned about it).

Also to be fair often the stuff I buy at the supermarket is the same list with small variations- for instance, I don't have to remember to buy milk and orange juice, just to remember whether there's enough in the fridge.

I really should try to use this for something more involved.

Edit: to clarify, I was convinced that this thing works because I tried it in class back in that undergrad seminar. I generally have a bad memory, but I was able to memorise lists of more than 20 objects in a small amount of time (I don't remember how long- the person training us kept time). I didn't think my groceries' list is proof enough :)

<comment><USER13> Understood :) I wasn't doubting the technique whatsoever (I'm actually really keen to try it out) just trying to understand if you had some superhuman memory, or if you were just applying the simpler\abstracter version for small- ish lists. For what its worth my memory is pretty shocking too, and in a weird coincidence I find that writing the shopping list out is enough for me to commit it to memory, and I never need to consult it once I have it stuffed in my pocket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has anyone else noticed that they instinctively build these mind palaces with file systems on your computer? I regularly find my self recalling a fact about our code base by mentally diving through the file structure.

It seems like our brains handle structure very easily.

</comment><comment><USER15> I remember another illustration of the mind palace in the movie Dream Catcher. One guy had one ( don't recall why) got possessed by an alien and his consciousness hid in his mind attic, which he'd locked, to escape being deleted or something.

<comment><USER16> I think that what was portrayed in Dream Catcher was meant as a metaphor for the guy's mind, suited to film, rather than an actual memory palace the guy 'built'. The book (as I recall) did not have a memory palace, just dialogue between the guy and this voice in his head. It's been a while, so I might have some of that wrong, but I am sure he did not have a memory palace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does someone actually use those kinds of mnemonics as a student, for learning "higher" mathematics or physics?

</comment><comment><USER18> SPOILER comment:

The BBC:s latest Sherlock with Cumberbatch ("The abominable bride") made it explicit that in the show Sherlocks's mind palace 'technique' is actually just a drug trip :)

<comment><USER19> _made it explicit that in the show Sherlocks 's mind palace 'technique' is actually just a drug trip _

This isn't really so.

Sherlock uses the memory palace technique, without drugs, throughout the entire series.

SPOILER-Y STUFF:

The immersion Sherlock goes through in "The Abominable Bride" is of a different nature -- usually he is focused and in control, driving the search, but in this instance he is looking to go deeper, to dream his way to an answer by letting go of external reality. The drugs are an expedient to get him into that state. It's analogous to the difference between searching a database/knowledgebase and losing oneself in a fully immersive VR scenario.

SPOILER:

(It is true that Sherlock told Mycroft that he was doing the mind palace thing, and Mycroft points out that the mind palace is merely a memory technique and this is beyond that, i.e. a drug trip, but given Sherlock's relationship with Mycroft, it isn't surprising that he'd underplay the drugs, is it? Also, I don't think Mycroft knows Sherlock deeply enough to know what Sherlock can do in his mind palace -- may not even know he had one, given how he reacts to Sherlock's mention of it.)

EPISODE SPOILERS FOLLOW:

And, just a few quick reminders: remember, in the regular series, Sherlock's not the only one with a mind palace -- said character refers to his own and says, "You know about Mind Palaces, don't you, Sherlock?"

And, in that same episode, we also see an active (i.e. non-drugged) Sherlock thinking his way out of a jam -- in his mind, various characters show up to guide him. As one of them says, "It's all well and clever having a Mind Palace but you've only three seconds...to use it.". Another character later on says, "Must be something in this ridiculous memory palace of yours that can calm you down."

(The above examples are on YouTube, but would really spoil some things, so I won't link to them here; there's also a transcript out there, if you want to look it up.)

<comment><USER18> I may have overreached a bit in my comment above. I agree with you about the presentation of narrative facts in the past of the series, but hold my final opinion in reserve as Moffat and Gatiss work drama first and then come up with ways to knit the story back together in a way that appeals to the viewer to suspend their disbelief. I.e. if they think it's more interesting that Sherlock has been stoned the whole time, then they will probably work that in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The method of loci are the jumping off point in Jonathan Spence's marvelous _The Memory Palace Of Matteo Ricci_.

</comment><comment><USER21> Breathless gushing from the Smithsonian over BBC Sherlock? Oh, and a recollection technique.</comment>


All VC Funds Have Engaged in Some Arguably Questionable Behavior at Some Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-startup-investors-have-really-bad-reputations/answer/Jason-M.-Lemkin

<comment><USER2> When you're playing the game of "make a single-service product, get millions of investment dollars, sell it to Facebook or Google for billions at 1000x revenue premium while still not profitable and cash out," don't be surprised that the people on the other side of the table with the actual money are playing the same high-risk long-shot maximize-output game you are. They just hold all the cards.

There's no altruism in this game.

 _Edit: autocorrect_

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, there is always an option to follow this advice: "If you don't absolutely positively have to have VC and if you aren't absolutely committed to growing to be a $1B revenue company regardless of risk, don't raise VC."

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately a lot of people start out by going to an incubator like YC before they really realise what they are getting into (the billion dollar exit lottery instead of aiming for a profitable business). Once you go down that path it's difficult to avoid VC fundraising. The entire point of most incubators is to help you get connected with VCs and get funding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The `?share=1` parameter seems to let you view without hassling you to log in.

[http://www.quora.com/What-startup-investors-have-really- bad-...](http://www.quora.com/What-startup-investors-have-really-bad- reputations/answer/Jason-M.-Lemkin?share=1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip! It saved me an extra click in IE (while not being logged into Quora), I wish I could edit the link in post!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Flagged this because it is not readable without being logged in there, and that's besides the false assertion in the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback, just like tomp I've also tried to use the link in a browser (IE) where I'm not logged into Quora, and it worked out fine (I just had to click "Go and read Quora" button, without logging in, and for me it's not a big deal). Not sure what exactly do you mean by "false assertion in the title", especially assuming you were not able to read the linked Quora post's content. Point is that this specific Quora answer is summarized by the author with the sentence "All VC Funds Have Engaged in Some Arguably Questionable Behavior at Some Time -- From the (Non-Objective) Perspective of a Founder at least.", and this whole sentence is just much longer than 80 chars, so I had to truncate it somehow...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So sharks have teeth?

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I've met only high-quality VCs, but very few of these complaints apply to startups I've experienced firsthand, and others are hard to justify since, for example, you'll get turned down if you ask for an NDA. VCs being fickle about founders running the venture rings truest, but that cuts both ways: VCs can be loathe to admit a mistake and replace a bad CEO they invested in or hired.</comment>