Britain is the most corrupt country in the world? - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/when-a-mafia-expert-tells-us-britain-is-the-most-corrupt-country-in-the-world-its-time-to-start-a7057686.html <comment><USER2> The inadmissible truth about corruption in the UK is that it's endemic. And not just money laundering; the very way governments (both Labour, Conservative, and Coalition) have pursued the business of privatization of state assets since 1979 is uniquely corrupt, on a massive scale.

Hint: corruption isn't just about simple bribery and envelopes full of banknotes passing hand. Ask yourself why so many cabinet ministers retire and end up on the boards of large conglomerates that specialise in bidding for government outsourcing contracts, or why so many long-term viable agencies of government (the Post Office, the Land Registry, the National Air Traffic Control System, the NHS ...) find themselves in need of privatization in the name of "efficiency". You can make any agency -- however potentially profitable -- fail if you run it into the ground through deliberate mismanagement, then show a rebound improvement when you sell it (or the service it provides) off to your golf-course cronies. And when you roll up to the banquet later, there's no evidential chain that can prove beyond reasonable doubt that what you did was grand theft.

<comment><USER3> >Hint: corruption isn't just about simple bribery and envelopes full of banknotes passing hand.

While I agree with you, I find the bare-faced cheek of publicly-advertised "donor clubs" that promise access to the Prime Minister for a mere £50k/year absolutely sickening:

[https://www.conservatives.com/donate/Donor- Clubs](https://www.conservatives.com/donate/Donor-Clubs)

<comment><USER4> Blimey, that's a fascinating link to be so public and explicit. They boast about not being funded by Trade Unions, and then invite big business to donate £50K so they can have lunch with the PM to "defeat the rise of socialism".

<comment><USER5> What's even more amazing, the text right under that header:

> Labour has said that they would turn their backs on our nuclear deterrent, > abolish our armed forces and has openly sympathised with terrorist groups > who seek to destroy our way of life. Their policies for the continued > economic recovery of our great nation should make alarm bells ring.

> Labour are steadily building an army of far left-wing supporters and we > should ignore this at our peril.

What the actual? These people are bats.

<comment><USER6> That page is truly bizarre - I hadn't managed to read all of it before (due to blood pressure issues) but now that I read the rest of it I'm actually quite amused.

Do you think they are planning a 70's style coup?

[NB I'm probably already on a watch list after paying for a book with a debit card (duh!) in a Sinn Féin shop in Belfast)]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The UK is the second country with the most intermediaries (banks, accountants, lawyers…) listed in the Panama papers. The first one is Hong Kong, a former British colony.

"More than half of the companies listed in the leaked Mossack Fonseca documents are registered in the U.K. or its overseas territories [...] If we want to understand modern Britain, we first need to realize that our primary economic function in the world today is probably our network of tax havens."

[http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/04/britains-empire-of- tax-e...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/04/britains-empire-of-tax-evasion- panama-papers-mossack-fonseca/)

<comment><USER8> Tax havens, hmm?

So around the world, basically, the good _honest_ career politicians from Argentina to Zambia are going around to profitable businesses saying "hey, nice business you have there! We'd like to take, say, 50% of your profits, if you don't mind, and spend it on our friends - government contractors, public- sector unions and the like. All the donations to our campaign afterward are purely incidental, I assure you, and none of the subsidies or handouts we'll use your money for are vote-buying schemes, none at all. Thanks for your cooperation."

... and the UK provides places where they don't do that, not on the top-line profit anyway. Sure. I can see how having that would be attractive to both legitimate and illegitimate operators. Its net impact on corruption, though, would be a little tricky to sort out.

(Postscript. As I'm being moderated down without comment, I assume that those doing so are those privileged enough to be in a nice low-corruption Western economy where we have a slightly better grade of politician than, say, Dilma Rousseff and her legislature. So I wish to note that despite cynicism about world governments I retain due respect for anti-corporate sentiment as well...)

<comment><USER9> I don't know about Zambia, but in Argentina most people don't care too much about campaign contributions. The perception is that most of the corruption there is through cronyism, and kickbacks from outrageously overpriced goods and services bought by the State. It is not politicians robbing businesses, but politicians and some businesses robbing the tax money of, mainly, the middle class.

<comment><USER10> The thing about campaign contributions is that it's all about the exchange: in return, the contributors get a say in government policy, enforcement, decisions. It undermines democracy. Is it better, or worse, than naked cronyism and kickbacks in the form of contracts, overpriced goods and services, etc.?

Hard to say. Depressing to think about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article (and the "Mafia Expert" it's about) are both idiotic. The premise is that because corruption involves money and money involves banks and London has lots of banks, transitively, London is very corrupt. It then tries to equate Mafia violence with financial firms refusing to hire 'whistleblowers', as if having your legs chopped off is in any way comparable to having a career issue.

By similar logic, I could claim that Washington DC is the most violent city in the world, because the illegal drug trade is very violent and drugs are illegal because of politicians and there are lots of politicians in Washington DC.

<comment><USER12> If you hold a position of trust (elected politician, policeman, bureaucrat, CEO, board member, employee representative, union boss), and you use the powers of that position to further some private interest rather than the interests of those you are set to serve, then you're corrupt. That's more or less Transparency International's definition, and I agree with it.

But banks' trustees aren't the public. It's their depositors, shareholders and customers. And by most accounts, they serve those reasonably well.

So yeah, they could maybe make a case that Britain is the most _corrupting_ country in the world. But that is not the same thing. Compared to other nations, Britain's public trustees probably aren't so bad at serving the interests of the public.

<comment><USER13> > Compared to other nations, Britain's public trustees probably aren't so bad > at serving the interests of the public.

Dave & Co have probably been the worst offenders in recent recent years for selling public assets and companies they have nationalized to buddies of theirs at massively discounted prices, beginning with the RBS.

<comment><USER14> > nationalized to buddies of theirs at massively discounted prices, beginning > with the RBS.

What? I guess you have much evidence.

<comment><USER15> Sold at a huge loss, certainly: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/rbs-share- sa...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/rbs-share-sale-to-cost- taxpayers-22bn-obr-budget-analysis-shows-a6944146.html)

<comment><USER14> How does that indicate corruption?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From George Bernard Shaw's "The Man Of Destiny":

No, because the English are a race apart. No Englishman is too low to have scruples: no Englishman is high enough to be free from their tyranny. But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous power that makes him master of the world. When he wants a thing, he never tells himself that he wants it. He waits patiently until there comes into his mind, no one knows how, a burning conviction that it is his moral and religious duty to conquer those who have got the thing he wants. Then he becomes irresistible.

Like the aristocrat, he does what pleases him and grabs what he wants: like the shopkeeper, he pursues his purpose with the industry and steadfastness that come from strong religious conviction and deep sense of moral responsibility. He is never at a loss for an effective moral attitude. As the great champion of freedom and national independence, he conquers and annexes half the world, and calls it Colonization. When he wants a new market for his adulterated Manchester goods, he sends a missionary to teach the natives the gospel of peace. The natives kill the missionary: he flies to arms in defence of Christianity; fights for it; conquers for it; and takes the market as a reward from heaven.

In defence of his island shores, he puts a chaplain on board his ship; nails a flag with a cross on it to his top-gallant mast; and sails to the ends of the earth, sinking, burning and destroying all who dispute the empire of the seas with him. He boasts that a slave is free the moment his foot touches British soil; and he sells the children of his poor at six years of age to work under the lash in his factories for sixteen hours a day. He makes two revolutions, and then declares war on our one in the name of law and order.

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles, and cuts off his king's head on republican principles. His watchword is always duty; and he never forgets that the nation which lets its duty get on the opposite side to its interest is lost.

<comment><USER17> <sheds single patriotic tear>

They should set this to music. Fuck Jerusalem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So the most ruthless mafia operate among international organizations, but from London, thus making Britain the most corrupt country in the world? Perhaps they never leave London, not old enough to travel alone, or they don't know how to use the internet.

There's nothing new under the sun, just the sensationalist Bremain propaganda you'd expect a few weeks before an EU referendum.

</comment><comment><USER19> So much hand-wringing. Anyone who thinks Britain is corrupt has never been to a corrupt country. I lived in Britain 5 years and never had to pay a bribe, ever. In some countries bribes are required to even clear customs. Then driving in from the airport, the police stop you at road-blocks and demand bribes. And so on.

<comment><USER20> Corruption occurs at different levels, and in differing degrees of visibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If true (and I have my doubts), this is particularly funny in view of the British PM's recent comments accidentally caught on mic in which he called out the most corrupt countries in the world by name.

</comment><comment><USER22> Spain, not UK, is by far the most corrupt country in Europe. High rank spanish politicians are involved in the Panama Papers.

<comment><USER23> Also british - Cameron's father (and probably Cameron, caught lying), non the less.

EDIT

Why the downvotes?

Factually incorrect? Don't think so: [http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/david-cameron- ad...](http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/david-cameron-admits-he- profited-fathers-offshore-fund-panama-papers)

You don't like it. Fine, but don't downvote it.

<comment><USER24> He ran a fund which was based in tax haven to avoid double taxation. Lots of funds do things like this. It's not corruption or criminal.

<comment><USER25> I listened to a MoneyBox radio programme about this. The "financial expert" said that it was effectively a tax-deferral program, just like a pension plan. Any gains inside the fund were tax free until the money was brought back into the UK. It may seem unfair at face value, but any UK citizen can defer taxes on up to 100% of their annual income in a registered pension plan[0]. So, IMO, the fairness would depend on what investors can do with the offshore fund that regular people can't do with their pension plans?

0 - [https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-your-private-pension/pension- tax-r...](https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-your-private-pension/pension-tax-relief)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ironically, when I read this article, there was a banner advert for a company that helps people get MBEs, OBEs and Knighthoods: [https://pic.twitter.com/UsTf892sr6](https://pic.twitter.com/UsTf892sr6)

</comment><comment><USER27> The depressing thing about this is that us UK lefties have screaming about this years and years. I know a man who works in politics that is convinced that the Tory party is not privatising the NHS because they Tory party put elections above all else.

</comment><comment><USER28> Clearly the author has not taken account of india. India is the most corrupt country. You can not get done anything with out paying bribe in government offices.

</comment><comment><USER29> 'Mafia expert', isn't that an interesting job title.

</comment><comment><USER30> A very heavy article on insinuations, very light on facts.

</comment><comment><USER31> I read Saviano's book. It is enjoyable but it should be said that his intention is purely drama, not rigorous, deep and comprehensive information.

The same can be said about this accusation since he doesn't provide evidence, just moral outrage. How do you measure corruption? How do you know that there is more crime-originated money in Jersey than in Moscou, Lagos or Caracas?

</comment><comment><USER32> I would confirm that it's my country, Spain. But you can't know it if you just read our main press, because they fake the reality. Our politicians, their relatives, their companies and their mass-media have stolen thousands of million of euros, and nothing happens. Nobody goes to jail, except the people who claims agains it.

</comment><comment><USER23> I would say let the UK leave the EU and let's ban financial transactions with the British-run network of global tax havens.

</comment><comment><USER33> Why do we not have the tools for tracing money the way we do for phone calls or data packets? We can argue about how governments should choose to use this data to prosecute crimes, but it seems mad that banks do not have to know where money comes from.

<comment><USER34> I don't know, njloof. Why don't banks track cash deposits? Should we track cash deposits? Why do we track phone calls and IP traffic? Should we track phone calls and IP traffic?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> FWIW, a friend of mine once defined the corruption level of the country by the smallest size of a bribe you would have to pay someone. The lower the number, the more corrupt the country. Obviously not the best measure, but certainly practical.

<comment><USER33> I like this definition, but another way of looking at it is that in more corrupt countries, the middle and lower classes have access to the bribery economy that exists regardless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Higher social class are unethical [http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1118373109](http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1118373109)

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm surprised nobody cares to define corruption. Given that the very topic at hand is measuring corruption, wouldn't the obvious starting point be a definition of corruption that is measurable?

</comment><comment><USER36> Simple solution: Expel [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority) from your country

</comment><comment><USER38> Greed doesnt care which people are active 24 hours a day to acquire money, or about the perfectly fit lazy people who live off social benefits.

</comment><comment><USER39> It is indeed. Just take a look at the thoroughly corrupt and secretive process of awarding a train franchise.

</comment><comment><USER40> Britain is not London.

<comment><USER27> When it comes to finance it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> And India is the most racist country in the world [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating- map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/)

</comment><comment><USER41> It would be interesting if someone can reinforce this statement from a developer perspective.

<comment><USER15> What do you mean by a developer perspective?

The corruption described is almost entirely contained within the area of high finance; it's not a very corrupt country from the perspective of the average John Bull. It is however quite deferential, which means that power and prestige let you get away with things.

<comment><USER42> Have to add that in _truly_ corrupt societies the degree of power circles corruption is not any lower. It just looks less appalling from corrupt baseline.</comment></comment></comment>


Good enough never is (or is it?) - <AUTHOR> http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2010/09/good-enough-never-is-or-is-it.html <comment><USER2> _Not everything worth doing is worth doing well._

\-- Tom West, quoted by Tracy Kidder in _The Soul of a New Machine_ (Modern Library, 1997). ISBN 0-679-60261-5

Commentary: Data General is no longer with us.

References:

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_West>

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine>

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General>

</comment><comment><USER3> I cannot fathom why merely moving the mouse over a simple text-based webpage shall peg my CPU to 100%.</comment>


How to Use Let's Encrypt SSL Certificates with Heroku and AWS CloudFront - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.talis.com/articles/how-to-use-lets-encrypt-ssl-certificates-with-heroku-and-aws-cloudfront/ <comment><USER2> am I correct that this is READ-ONLY? Or does cloudfront now support HTTPS methods other than GET in a web distribution?</comment>


Ask HN: How well does your small company/agency do with social media? - <AUTHOR>

If you work for a small company or agency, or own one, how would you grade your social media presence? Have you tried any content curation tools?
If you use a tool like Buffer, does everyone contribute links?? Is it managed by the company at all, or do they trust you to just post?
In my experience, I've heard "We know we should be doing more, but we're so busy" from nearly every company I've talked to, even those that manage social media for other people. Everyone is too busy working, to contribute to the company blog/twitter/facebook page (unless it's someone's dedicated job to do so).
I'm trying to gauge if this is as common a problem as I think it is. Thanks for any thoughts or feedback! <comment><USER2> Right now I use Beatrix to automate social media posts on my various channels. Beatrix is nice because they curate highly shareable "evergreen" content. Beatrix offers thought leadership on demand, and supports team members.

Buffer is great, too, because it's easy to share things I've already read. Haven't been using it lately, but I was paying for a subscription for a while.

The issue with agency social media I imagine many people have is that it's a great way to be visible, but social media doesn't track well to ROI. People are "too busy" because they don't see immediate benefit of actively maintaining social media channels beyond exposure. Social media for agencies is a matter of deep not wide.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good point. I've mainly run into "everyone says we have to have a Twitter account, so we have one" which correlates to an unknown ROI. Makes sense.

I hadn't seen Beatrix. I'll check that out. Is it similar to curata and other "content curation" tools?

<comment><USER2> I don't know Curata, but Beatrix bills itself as your social media assistant. I'm checking out twibbl.io right now. It's great because it pulls in images along with tweets. Everything else is a total mess right now.

<comment><USER3> BuzzSumo isn't a mess :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At [https://sprint.ly](https://sprint.ly) we use Buffer to manage outgoing posts. It's worked really well; especially now that they have the new scheduler: [http://cl.ly/image/1I2g153e3c31](http://cl.ly/image/1I2g153e3c31).

We publish fairly regularly on our blog, so anytime we post something new, we schedule it in Buffer at the same time (using this schedule: [http://cl.ly/image/3J1V3Q25242I](http://cl.ly/image/3J1V3Q25242I))

<comment><AUTHOR> Does everyone contribute links to buffer, and blog posts? Is it managed by the company at all, or do they trust you to just post?

<comment><USER4> Everyone has the ability, but it's mostly just me who manages it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Services like Buffer or Hootsuite help so that someone can devote a couple of hours straight to find/write and schedule posts for the whole week. Makes it more of an ownable, discrete task (albeit for an assigned person) instead of a fragmented haphazard one.

</comment><comment><USER6> I also use Buffer. I add my posts and I can have them go to any of my social services I choose at a later time.

Simple to use and worth a try. :)</comment>


What am I doing? - <AUTHOR> https://theotherlifenow.com/what-am-i-doing/ <comment><USER2> The problem with saying what you like, is when people want to say untrue, hurtful things to advance an agenda. It feels like the article goes to the "I choose to wear the risks of saying forthright things" but doesn't canvas the "but.. what if something I say turns out to be materially wrong, or has harmful effect"

the "I don't care what anybody thinks" posture is not a problem for me in "trigger-words" sense. It's people who don't understand the problem advancing ideas from false, or weak positions.

What if somebody who is P-jacking does this? Sure, having the courage to stand up and say "hey! you're p-jacking" is laudable but you are forgetting the risk the p-jacker stands up and screams "green pop-tarts cause cancer!!!" at the world.

e.g. mercury adjuvent in vaccines...</comment>


Miso scores $10M to bring hamburger-flipping robot to more restaurants - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/15/miso-scores-10-million-to-bring-its-hamburger-flipping-robot-to-more-restaurants/ <comment><USER2> Cool! Its a start. Still working with a conventional flat-top. I imagine forward to a total automated food robot with meat cooked in closed containers and delivered to buns ready with condiments squirted on, wrapped bagged and dropped in a chute for drive-thru customers. No humans involved!

<comment><USER3> The president of the new FANG corporation announced today the addition of new skills to your home press 1 device.

press 1 for cheezachamburger...it's synthetically created mildly unpleasant goo created from beecheezin. An extraordinarily inexpensive brainless chimera of cheese, chicken and beef grown in a lab for your tasteless pleasure.

Press 1 for other news...with the FANG hostile take over of the second to last corporation today, they announced another stock buyback program leaving only 13 official stock holders who now hold 99.9999% of all wealth in the world.

<comment><USER3> I do think it's a pretty neat invention. cool use of image recognition.</comment></comment></comment>


Alt.techcrunch.die.die.die - <AUTHOR> http://adnam.motd.org/Bored-Crunch-2008-06-10-12-37.html <comment><USER2> _This_ is the top story on Hacker News? Embarrassing.

Should I add downvotes on stories, for users over a certain karma threshold?

<comment><USER3> Hello. I'm a lurker but I registered to make this comment, because I feel pretty strongly about it.

I can understand that the tone of the article is one that you might not want to represent Hacker News, but I think the article subject is on point and worth considering.

I have been fortunate enough to live under a rock and not follow techcrunch at all, until I started reading HN (I'm a recent reddit lurker, and as reddit continues to become digg my clicks seem to be heading elsewhere). The TC articles I've seen in the last few weeks have all been phoned-in armchair architecture drivel and whining about del.icio.us's release schedule (seriously, who cares?)

I think the upmods to the article in question here are specific backlash against TC's quality falling faster than my west coast (USA) home's value. I'd be concerned that downmods would lead to moderation warring, and that would just bring this site one intellectual hop closer to reddit (and thereby digg).

I humbly suggest waiting for HN's traffic (using the metric of your choice) to increase 20% before reconsidering downmods. If HN develops a tradition of tuesday morning "your site sucks" rants then you absolutely have my support -- but please don't react to one or a small number of articles in what could be a very permanent and culture-shifting way.

<comment><USER4> This isn't a small number of articles; it's a growing trend that started about four months ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tend to agree with the article, especially the "impatience factor".

What I especially don't like is the practice of "private beta invitations". I am wasting time reading "news" about features of some new online service, only to find out that it's not available yet, but Techcrunch has "50 free invitations for its readers". It's a win-win-lost situation - startup got publicity, TC is "first to report it", but I wasted my time.

What I think TC got right is the blog-like format + discussions + quick reporting. But the content stinks. I hope competition will take him over.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think they need to decide whether they want to be a personal blog for Arrington's uninformed self-injection or real journalism. Right now, I think they're pretending to the latter while operating as the former.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't read Techcrunch unless someone points me to a story that sounds like it might be interesting which is rare. However, people seem to read, and their traffic hasn't suffered, so I doubt that the site is going to change anything soon. For that matter, who cares what Techcruch is writing about. By moaning about it here, we're giving it airtime that could be used for something more useful. Ignore it, and perhaps others will too over time (or they'll change their focus).

Yes, the site has influence, but to think it's the only way to get noticed is only adding fuel to the fire.

<comment><USER8> Look they even get reprinted in the Washington Post: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2008/05...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2008/05/09/AR2008050902914.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> TechCrunch's quality has gone down over the last year. The problem is that Arrington has critical mass, and not following TechCrunch could keep you out of the loop on some important stories or conversations.

At some point though, I won't be able to handle it and will unsubscribe, regardless of how many people follow his news.

<comment><USER10> Important stories like Twitter's downtime or del.iciou.us not pushing new software when Arrington decides they should?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."_

\--Eleanor Roosevelt

</comment><comment><USER12> To be honest I hope del.icio.us 2.0 never launches. Usually Yahoo has a knack of making things less usable. I really think they have a solid offering now (that is what made it purchasable) I would hate it to be another yahoo tv.

However I hardly go there, usually a track for me. so they could get some more traffic there if they changed their site but the service within the browser and distributed bookmarks will always be their main point.

</comment><comment><USER13> Am I the only one who finds that TechCrunch is unreachable most of the time? I assume its server is overwhelmed with traffic. Possibly the problem is on my end, but I don't have problems with other sites. I find it strange that the guy who complains about Twitter's downtime seems to have some of his own to deal with.

<comment><USER14> I could always access the site without any problems and didn't see any issues.

<comment><USER15> not for me either, might just be you. sorry.

<comment><USER8> a blessing in disguise

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hate Arrington as much as the next guy, but I know first-hand that 1. The database architecture of delicious is outmoded (i.e. thought up by Josh for a much more limited use) and as a result 2. they simply cannot get the 2.0 version to work (i.e. scale).

</comment><comment><USER17> They are in the news business and need to make entertaining stories. I don't see the big deal - all news outlets try to make as much drama as possible, and Arrington seems to be good with words. It's the way of the news.

</comment><comment><USER18> well isn't it better to just ignore TC? I mean it's easy to critique something, where once we had insight all we have now is backchatter.

And seriously, this doesn't deserve to be on YC.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's clear that Techcrunch is preparing to buy Valleywag.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it just me or did these types of articles start appearing once Arrington started promoting HN on TC?

</comment><comment><USER21> Alternatives to TechCrunch, choose one, be happy:

CenterNetworks Mashable! VentureBeat Read/Write Web

<comment><USER22> Can anybody give reasons to favor one of those four above the others?

<comment><USER23> Mashable I would advise against. It's full of fluff articles, and sometime a year or two ago had the inexplicable idea of turning into a social network itself. It's a mess of a site and its writing is no better.

Though I don't follow many blogs anymore, period, R/WW writes fewer articles, but it tends to do a much better job with making sure the articles it DOES write are good. It's fairly high-quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Its problem is the commenting system. Needs something like Digg.

<comment><USER24> They also need some kind of comment moderation but I guess if there is no moderation in the blog post what can you expect :?

<comment><USER8> If Arrington is after traffic, people would stick around to read and participate in comments moreso if it was actually usable.

Regarding the posts, I think better comments would encourage more cooperation by the websites who are profiled as the comments could be more valuable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I do think we have more interesting things to talk about here.

</comment><comment><USER26> TechCrunch needs a comment system like the one used here @ hackernews.

It will then be more fun.</comment>


Ask HN: Can we help each other? - <AUTHOR>

I just found this topic - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1171520 - and it got me to thinking:
I have an audience and a fan base. I am a public figure who is well-known in my city. I have an online presence: twitter, Facebook, blog. I know I don't get the traffic I should, but can  on that.
How can I monetize me? How can I generate revenue without appearing to 'sell out.' Currently, I make zero, so even a few hundred a month is more than I make now.
But here's the big picture: If I can make just $1000 a month being me, and I can find 9 others like me who can make the same amount ... that is $120K per year. What if I can find 50 others?
I don't have the time to do the work to make it happen. Maybe some of you have ideas / suggestions / proposals? Maye we can work together and everyone makes money?
Just thinking out loud ... would love to hear thoughts! <comment><USER2> I'm not sure anyone should get money just for being themselves. "Selling out," a.k.a. having a job, is kinda how it's done.

</comment><comment><USER3> Speaking from experience - if you are indeed a news personality at a TV station, you're going to have a tough time monetizing yourself without running into a conflict with your own stations web goals, etc.

If you think that you have the right to monetize yourself while using the station as a promotional platform (even to put yourself in the public eye) and that your employer is not going to want a cut of the revenue you generate based on the "TV version" of you, you're fooling yourself.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it helps to have a platform or idea that you stand for, because marketing yourself generically probably won't generate too much interest. For example, a local news personality where I live is well known in the gay community, and his name pops up on its own in that context. What are you into? Food, "financial responsibility," horses, etc.

Or maybe you can start a phony rivalry with the weather guy and post catty things about each other. That might get some attention!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clarification: My full-time, paying job is being said public figure. Just for fun, lets say I'm one of the top-rated personalities at one of the news stations in town.

<comment><USER5> You don't get paid for being you, you get paid to perform a function.

That your public profile rises because of that is a side effect. Anybody in that role would see their public profile rise.

How - and if - you monetize that is up to you, some people feel that monetizing their public image is not in their long term interest, others have no qualms about it and allow their image to be used for product endorsements and so on.

The final decision on how and when you 'mint' your public persona is really up to you but whatever you do don't become the 'face' of anything that you do not 100% believe in. Otherwise you might find that you can lose respect and standing as quickly as you can gain it, and possibly even faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would be more than happy to shoot the shit: email@example.com</comment>


Ask HN: What is the Internet all about? - <AUTHOR>

Internet has changed a lot since its invention, especially with the additions of social networks and eCommerce.
However, it seems Internet has lost its original meaning in some parts of the world, at least, in China. People think Internet is all about eCommerce and how to make people clicks more ads. Even the VCs and PEs in China encourage C2C (copy to China), and they call it micro-innovations.
It's time to step back and ask HN the question: What is the Internet all about? Is it a "information logistics" revolution, to enable people create, share, search, discover information more freely, and communicate with others more easily? Or is it all about few more ads clicks? <comment><USER2> Its whatever you make of it. The internet creates opportunity and solves problems of all types and all scales. It can mean anything to anyone. There's no such thing as a mutually exclusive definition of what the internet should encompass for everyone.</comment>


Bootstrapped, profitable and proud: WooThemes - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2359-bootstrapped-profitable-proud-woothemes

<comment><USER2> An interesting thing about WooThemes: Their products are all GPL'd. There's a bunch of sites exploiting this by reselling their entire theme collection as a bundle for about 1% of the normal price.

<comment><USER3> Was this intentional?

<comment><USER4> It was most likely so you could freely use and modify them when using them on your own sites. Someone with a good eye spotted the opportunity though.

From what I know, the owners of those sites are being approached and asked to shut down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great interview.

I don't think they said it here, but when I interviewed Adii, he revealed for the first time that his company exceeded $2 mil in annual revenue.

</comment><comment><USER6> Excellent!

If you're in Europe, you might want to come see Adii speak at at my bootstrap conference set in Vienna, Austria. We haven't announced speakers formally yet, but he was the first one to say yes. (I'm gonna bring the bootstrap mentality to Europe if it kills me!)

A few more details are up on <http://schnitzelconf.com>.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Their "Permanent 3-for-1: Buy any one of our WP themes, and get two more FREE!" and "Can't choose a single theme? Join our theme club and get them all for only $125" deals make this seem like such an undesirable business model.

It's like the constant sales at low-rent retail stores.

<comment><USER7> _undesirable business model_

In which sense of undesirable? Their club pricing model convinces a non- trivial amount of people to _pay monthly for GPLed bits_ , which is so astoundingly desirable that I would be inclined to file it away mentally next to unicorns and bug-free software if they weren't actually showing evidence of succeeding with it.

Disclaimer: customer.

<comment><AUTHOR> "In which sense of undesirable?"

In the sense that it's not much of a longterm business. There are thousands of other people offering both a similar service and even WooThemes's own services resold for less.

Also, just because they're "GPLed bits" doesn't mean they don't cost money to produce. They have both fulltime employees and high-profile designer contractors working to sell designs that are then immediately repackaged by others.

<comment><USER8> In case you've never dealt with real people before ...

WP designs are hard to modify in case you want little modifications here and there, and you have to be a developer to do it. WooThemes can assist you with customizations, and knowing they can do it matters.

And people in general always have ideas ... especially when they don't know shit about publishing (like when some people, everything they do or write on that website has to have a visible place ... ever tried to explain to such a person that the site's readability will suffer? good luck with that).

Also, when you're setting up a website, it's great the first time ... and many people want more. I have a friend that's a psychologist, and she has something like 5 blogs (I shit you not ... it's like she's setting up a new blog every 3 months). She also bought something like 30 shitty stock designs that she never used (thinking that she will someday).

Having a central place where you know you can find good stuff when you need it is valuable ... instead of searching for it all over the web (you can find gemstones for free, but you have to go through shit to find it).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Hardest-Hit Industries - <AUTHOR> http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/the-hardest-hit-industries/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting that automotive related industries actually appear to be up by 2-3%.</comment>


The one machine learning concept you need to know - <AUTHOR> http://www.sharpsightlabs.com/one-concept-machine-learning/ <comment><USER2> Showing a signup form before you show content is not cool at all, particularly when many of these things that hide the whole page don't work properly on mobile devices.</comment>


Piketty, inequality and volatility: How can r exceed g? - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/piketty_inequality_and_volatility.html <comment><USER2> I'm only through the introduction right now, but assuming that it's representative of what's coming later, Piketty isn't saying 'r > g' as mathematical fact, he's saying ' _when_ r > g, divergence in the distribution of wealth happens' and 'empirically r has frequently been and is again moving towards > g'. And his concern with this is the same as the problem you state, that r > g implies, eventually, r = g, which translated back to English means economic activity devolves into rent paying.

Quoting:

"When the rate of return on capital significantly exceeds the growth rate of the economy (as it did through much of history until the nineteenth century and as is likely to be the case again in the twenty-first century), then it logically follows that inherited wealth grows faster than output and income... Under such conditions, it is almost inevitable that inherited wealth will dominate wealth amassed from a lifetime's labor"

"Forces of convergence also exist, and in certain countries at certain times, these may prevail, but the forces of divergence can at any point regain the upper hand, as seems to be happening now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century"

"My conclusions are less apocalyptic than those implied by Marx's principle of infinite accumulation and perpetual divergence... In the model I propose, divergence is not perpetual and is only one of several possible future directions for the distribution of wealth"

</comment><comment><USER3> First off you're I believe incorrectly using g rather than r in your "how volatility changes things" section. Secondly you seem to be assuming not only that r will be more volatile than g, but that it will be so much more volatile that medium/long-term r will drop enough to match g.

And lastly you're ignoring the actual history Piketty is describing, in which dynastic families very often tend to accumulate and pass on vast empires of wealth. When your speculative theory doesn't match reality ... perhaps it's time to reconsider the theory.

</comment><comment><USER4> > To begin, I'm going to illustrate a mathematical fact.

'growth' rate is likely to be a geometric constant, not an arithmetic one. A 0% growth rate followed by a 6% growth rate is not 3% geometric growth on average. 100% growth followed by -100% growth isn't 0% growth on average.

Many a quant manager has gotten rich off of spruiking the reverse of this story.

The market price of capital is the discounted value of future production (which will be equal to consumption). If the discount rate declines, then the price of capital goes up and at least some of this effect finds its way into measures of capital growth (and capital return).

Windfalls accrue to the current generation of risk capital holders and, to some extent, the current generation of consumers. Losers are everyone else - current savers and future generations.

<comment><USER5> > 'growth' rate is likely to be a geometric constant, not an arithmetic one.

I agree. I find it unlikely that Piketty's thesis rests on such an elementary mistake as interpreting arithmetic means as geometric ones. Academic economists are basically applied mathematicians. (In the book, Piketty actually bemoans the fact that economists are preoccupied with proving mathematical theorems at the expense of engaging with the real world.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it just me or does the economics-mathematics remind anyone else of doing three or four decimal place calculations at school after measuring things with your hand because the ruler got broken.

It is an old argument but really came home in that article.

</comment><comment><USER7> Disclaimer: I have not read the book either.

One thing I don't understand about the r and g thing is how it makes sense to compare these two values at all. Isn't capital a measure of accumulated wealth, while GDP is a measure of wealth produced in a certain unit of time? For example, what if we just maintained a perfectly steady GDP that exceeded our consumption needs; wouldn't that yield a positive r and explain r > g? Does someone who read the book have a better understanding of exactly what these two numbers mean?

P.S. I find it implausible that Piketty would make such an elementary mistake as the arithmetic mean vs. geometric mean issue discussed in the article. But again someone who has actually read the book should weigh in.

<comment><USER8> For the record, I (author here) also think it's unlikely Piketty simply ignored it. I think the reviewers of the book are either ignoring it or failing to understand it.

See this comment I wrote on HN discussing the book review which inspired this post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7619412](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7619412)

 _...most reviews of Piketty, have to be misrepresenting...r > g...I don't think it's actually what Piketty is pushing._

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a very extensive (60 pages or so) analysis of the book in french here:

[http://www.les-crises.fr/piketty-le-capital-1/](http://www.les- crises.fr/piketty-le-capital-1/)

[http://www.les-crises.fr/piketty-le-capital-2/](http://www.les- crises.fr/piketty-le-capital-2/)

[http://www.les-crises.fr/piketty-capital-3/](http://www.les- crises.fr/piketty-capital-3/)

Check the unforgiving and long conclusion here:

[http://www.les-crises.fr/piketty-capital-4/](http://www.les- crises.fr/piketty-capital-4/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Nassim Nicholas Taleb has also debunked the math in Piketty's book. Here is the paper: [https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIbzRrRkhhc1RNY0U/...](https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIbzRrRkhhc1RNY0U/edit)

<comment><USER11> One of the best and most accessible pieces I've ever read on inequality is PG's essay on the subject: [http://paulgraham.com/gap.html](http://paulgraham.com/gap.html)

My all-time favorite quote on inequality: "You need rich people in your society not so much because in spending their money they create jobs, but because of what they have to do to get rich. I'm not talking about the trickle-down effect here. I'm not saying that if you let Henry Ford get rich, he'll hire you as a waiter at his next party. I'm saying that he'll make you a tractor to replace your horse." -PG

Also see: [http://paulgraham.com/inequality.html](http://paulgraham.com/inequality.html)

<comment><USER12> So the thesis is that technological progress relies on us incentivizing people with the hope of extreme wealth?

Seems unlikely - for one counter-example, a large part of progress in society rests on investment in basic research, and most of the scientists engaged in that work have no real expectation that they will get rich.

<comment><USER13> I don't think any of that is necessarily true. The Henry Ford that we know of is a myth, an aggregation of ... "process engineers" and engineers-in-general that worked for him, not to mention the army of line workers. He's a "macro".

The real Henry Ford was modestly ... nuts. But in a _good_ way... well, mostly a good way... the Rouge Plant is the Neuschwanstein Castle of American industry...

But who gets identified with a machine that is as iconic as a horse? Perhaps you have to have know someone who used a 40-horse Ford in anger for decades - there were a handful of my paternal grandfather's brothers, who I knew, who did ( guys who were fully adults at the onset of the Depression) . As a suburban brat raised by somebody who was not going back to the farm, they were like priests of the Old Religion.

In order for a narrative to make any sense, we have to have a two-legged archetype. The truth is closer to "we (collectively) stumbled into using tractors and Haber-Bosch* process related fertilizers to make Malthusian scarcity/crises go away as a potential force of history."

*yes, that's James Burke's "Connections" voice you hear there.

Of course, the equal but opposite counter to that is these things also made way for machine guns and tanks. Might some extra CO2 outta it; we're not 100% sure...

Even modest wealth has a lot of fantasy tied up in it.

The whole point of markets is to enslave Vast quantities of inscrutable information. When we make up stories about this information, we should expect to fail.

I don't think it's been said better than by Talking Heads - "You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here? "

If anything, what hubris it is to think we can shape that to order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If I understood correctly (me too judging only from secondary sources) Piketty is concerned about uneven distributions---the relative share of the total pie of all that is measurable economically (GDP+capital) is becoming more concentrated in very few hands.

He's an economist and I don't generally trust economists' calculations[1], but the concern he raises relates more to the fact that the long-tail wealth people are better at hiding their revenue offshore. As more of the pie goes to them, there is less tax revenue for the state.

He proposes more International laws be put in place to prevent off-shore stashing (Hollande's of the world unite!). Also, some of his research papers are about "optimal" inheritance taxation.

I find these to be interesting lines of thought---not so much as they will happen, but because it brings the 0.001 into the lime light, and I bet they don't like that at all...

__________

[1] my reasons being that you can pretty much use _any_ model and it _might_ come out true ;)

<comment><USER15> It's not just inequality, he also fights the statement " everyone's getting richer, even if inequality's increased"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think there are two flaws in your premise.

First, I think Piketty is merely making the claim that whenever r is greater than g, inequality tends to increase.

From the book:

> When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and > income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do > again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and > unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values > on which democratic societies are based.

Second, r is actually the return to capital, not the "growth rate" of capital. That is, the owners of capital can (and will) choose to spend some of it rather than reinvesting all of it. You can imagine a steady state where the return to capital is tremendous but wealthy oligarchs are also profligate and reinvest only enough so that their investment keeps pace with g.

<comment><USER8> Your second point is an interesting theory, but seems unstable. What if one capital owner decides to consume a smaller amount of his wealth, and thereby increase his share of the economy?

Eventually he would rule the world.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I'm not saying that's where society is actually headed. It's just a hypothetical to illustrate how r can diverge from capital's "growth rate". To rephrase the last sentence, "In the extreme case, you can imagine a hypothetical equilibrium where..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I read this as an overly complicated statement of Jensen's inequality [1]: if f is convex <f(x)> ≥ f(<x>). Where <> denotes the expected value.

This can be used to prove that the geometric mean is always smaller or equal than the arithmetic mean; obviously equality holds for x constant. So _volatility drag_ is really just restating this very fundamental inequality.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jensen's_inequality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jensen's_inequality)

</comment><comment><USER17> I am not sure I trust someone disproving a book that they didn't read. I mean, come on.

</comment><comment><USER18> From the article, "Suppose that r and g are both fixed quantities which do not change over time." This is a straw man that I didn't get in the book. The idea I understood from Piketty is that whenever g is greater than r, _no matter how different_, inequality grows. Since you can have g > r, with g approaching r with time (g = r at infinity), capital simply continually takes up a larger piece of the economic pie.

<comment><USER8> I only got that "straw man" from the book reviews.

It's incorrect that r > g implies inequality grows. You need r - volatility > g.

<comment><USER19> So is your thesis that inequality will increase in periods of economic stability, where the volatility is low?

Also, can you provide a ballpark figure for (abs(r - g) / volatility)?

(edited to improve phrasing)

<comment><USER8> _So is your thesis that inequality will increase in periods of economic stability, where the volatility is low?_

Yes. Some data vaguely suggesting this is directoinally correct:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/business/economy/recession...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/business/economy/recession- crimped-incomes-of-the-richest-americans.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all)

Recessions tend to hurt the rich the most.

I don't have a ballpark figure - I'd need to dig into Piketty's data and it would take a while to come up with that. I'm kind of hoping someone who actually read the book can tell me it's in there, since I think it's a bit crazy that everyone is talking about Piketty's book without mentioning this.

<comment><USER19> Take individual income as (l + c), where l is the return on labour, and c is the return on capital, and assume a recession reduces both. The rich are rich (long term) through large c, not a balance of l and c, and so as a group they will inevitably be hurt the most during a recession. The only way this wouldn't be the case is if the reduction in returns to capital was negligible which, given what recessions are, seems unlikely. Also, whilst the rich are, undoubtedly, proportionally hurt the most be recessions, I presume you wouldn't claim that they were hurt the most in absolute terms (on average)?

And a follow up to my previous question: I realise it's difficult to guess a figure for (abs(r - g) / volatility), and it inevitably varies with economic conditions, but I'm interested in your sense for how it changes. Are you suggesting that it is mostly less than 1, mostly greater than 1, or that it spends roughly equal amounts of time greater than and less than 1?

edit: Sorry, after re-reading my post I realise that my use of absolute could easily be misinterpreted - I meant that although those with large capital portfolios will lose proportionally more of their income, they will still, on average, have significantly more wealth in absolute terms than those who started with small capital portfolios; and so the suggestion that they are 'hurt' more is, itself, fairly misleading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 1\. Of course that over the long term, r will become equal to g (well, it's actually mathematically possible that r > g forever). But the point is that we don't want to live in a world where 90% of the GDP goes to people who own capital.

2\. The volatility argument says, that even if r = g over the long-term, the per-year average of r can be bigger than the per-year average of g. What Piketty's claim does it debunk?

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe I am naive, but if g is the growth rate of an economy, and r the growth rate of a smaller part of it, doesn't this mean that if r>g the portion of capital growing at rate r increases? This would also mean that g increases.

<comment><USER20> r can be positive and g negative at the same time. Total growth consists of labour and capital growth. Piketty's point is that capital is growing faster than labour – if that continues forlong enough, we can end up in a world where 99% of income goes to owners of capital.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In a fast-paced, industrial society, like the one we live in, long dynasties tend to get wiped out by high volatility. I don't know exactly what happened to the aristocrats of Russia as of 1910, or the businessmen of Germany as of 1935, but it can't have been good. Likewise for China, France, Poland, India...

In a stagnant, agricultural society, like medieval Europe, dynasties tend to get weighed down by the problem of reproduction. If you've inherited a fortune, there's no reason not to have ten kids, especially before birth control. And those ten kids will then want to fight over or divide the family fortune, and so on with their kids, etc. Queen Elizabeth is a descendant of Charlemagne, but so are millions of others whose distant ancestors were slightly less lucky in the power game.

<comment><USER21> The businessmen of Germany from 1935 eventually got to use slave labor to build lucrative weapons... Quite a few corporations and individuals survived the war.

<comment><USER23> The Krupps are perhaps the most famous. They profited handsomely from both WW1 and WW2, managed to escape losing their fortunes during denazification (for unclear reasons), and the family still controls large amounts of wealth today: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp)

<comment><USER21> I have a personal beef with the "profiting from war" story. In the particular case of Krupp it stands to reason whether or not spending for the war, getting their factories bombed to the ground and the lost opportunity for peace time development (and even peacetime production of arms) wasn't making the world wars a lot less "profitable" than a peace would have been. Leaving aside the discussion if peace throughout the 20th century would have been possible in slightly different circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> tl;dr: "I haven't read the book, but I'll disprove the headline from first principles without looking at the data."

Yay praxeology! Gives so much more pleasing results than the annoying "look at the world" step, doing the damned legwork with the data, as Piketty did.</comment>


Jeff Bezos in 1999 on Amazon's Plans Before the Dotcom Crash - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GltlJO56S1g <comment><AUTHOR> I'm also surprised at how convinced he was about taking care of the customers. The customer comes first: and it is the ultimate goal. It's what made Amazon successful. I remember my first problem with Amazon, a book that came in a bit broken (one angle was crushed), the customer support responded the same day of presenting the complain and they've told me to take it to the nearest library, which they had already sent the order to send me a new one. When I read that email, they earned it a loyal customer for life.

<comment><USER2> This is just some armchair quarterbacking, but I suspect that this kind of "no questions asked" customer service is very good at retaining new customers but may not be a profitable practice long term. It may be that Amazon is able to keep this going due to subsidies from other, profitable portions of their business.

I have seen lots of companies with permissive return policies that seem to erode over time. REI comes to mind. Best Buy also used to be much easier to return things. Costco might have a winning plan by requiring membership and retaining a higher income customer.

<comment><USER3> The way gas stations work, with profits on the attached convenience store or fast food, seems to show no signs of changing. So I don't see that having Amazon operate at break-even or a slight loss, subsidized by AWS, is necessarily unsustainable.

<comment><USER2> No, but it will go away once they drive out all competitors that don't have a separate cash cow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> His foresight and confidence is commendable. So is his leadership - steering a company of tens of thousands of people towards the vision/mission he sets is incredibly hard to execute, and he's done it for decades now</comment>


Cool things one can do with Facebook likes - <AUTHOR> http://yurylifshits.com/like-log-ideas-for-research-projects-and-web

<comment><AUTHOR> I did a pretty successful project with Facebook likes a few weeks ago <http://likelog.yury.name> (it was on HN frontpage for a few hours). Shortly after that I left Yahoo! Labs to start my own company in unrelated space. But there are a lot of great things one can do with social signals (like and retweet counts). So I compiled the list of possible next steps. I hope some of you can do the follow-up project ))

I've got a lot of inquiries from media industry (WSJ, BBC, TIME Magazine, etc). So if you can do something cool, I will forward it to all these folks ))</comment>