The Year Tech Workers Realized They Were Workers - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/why-hotel-workers-strike-reverberated-through-tech/ <comment><USER2> While this article seems like it's trying to be profound, my main reaction to most of it's claims are "no kidding, Sherlock" rather than surprise.

For instance, when the article writes, "If tech's moment of reckoning has taught us that Silicon Valley is the same old capitalism" I straight up just laughed. Who _didn 't_ think that technology companies weren't engaged in capitalism? In fact, I'd even say that they're the poster child of capitalism: a group of people invent new and or more efficient technologies, processes, or organizations and provide a desirable product or service at a competitive cost. That's what capitalism is all about.

I also think the author is also stretching things when trying to draw parallels between tech workers and low skilled labor. Unionization in low skilled labor functions by artificially reducing the supply of labor to drive up costs. Tech workers' are not engaging in this, since the demand for tech jobs is largely higher than the supply. Rather, tech workers are leveraging the high demand for their labor to get the things they want.

<comment><USER3> most tech workers aren't irreplaceable on an individual level. so what you described is just driving up costs.

The thing is corporate management have just benefited by tech workers egos by letting them thinking their some kind of special worker. Gee. look at all this free labor I provided by training outside of work and building side projects. Can I be in your little tech club. Sure. we're changing the world. your a disruptor now.</comment></comment>


The Rock Test: A Hack for Men Who Don't Want to Be Accused of Sexual Harassment - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@annevictoriaclark/the-rock-test-a-hack-for-men-who-dont-want-to-be-accused-of-sexual-harassment-73c45e0b49af <comment><USER2> I believe this trick wouldn't work. Such a big and self confident man is the best target for jokes. Size gives us a lot of ideas for jokes, self confidence guarantees that he wouldn't become angry and wouldn't kill us. We can make fun from joking, he can to appreciate our awe for his muscles interpreting our jokes as jealousy. So it would be fun for all.

But jokes about sizes or other physical properties of women is a big no-no in a world where sexual harassment accusations is a real threat.

There is one big difference between The Rock and woman: The Rock have no fear to become a subject of sexual harassment, so we can do almost anything, he would interpret our behaviour by any way but sexual harassment. He could think that we are stupid clowns, or that we are funny. He could think anything, but the idea that he is the subject of sexual harassment wouldn't cross his mind. No way.

On the contrary women could interpret _any_ our behaviour as a sexual harassment. You have no chances: women on average have higher verbal intellect, so if you choose one at random, there is more than 50% likelyhood that she is more able to find sexual harassment in your words than you.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle highly unrealistic deadlines? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Make a list of the tasks being asked of you.

Add an estimate of the number of hours you think those tasks will take( try to be as honest as possible, don't try to inflate them or keep them low to try to hit a date).

Share that with your manager or whomever is imposing the unrealistic deadlines.

Ask them to help you prioritize these tasks. Show them where you think you will be by the deadline they set, and how much longer you think it will take.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just say no.

Ok, it's a little more complex than that. In project management people talk about the "triple constraints" of budget, time, and scope.

The relationship between budget and time is not a simple tradeoff. To some extent you can accelerate a software project by increasing the budget, but that extent is limited, maybe you can accelerate the schedule by 30% relative to a "least cost" plan.

Fred Brooks learned these limitations the hard way in the 1960s and he wrote the Mythical Man Month so you don't have to! One problem is that if you add more people to a project, it takes time and attention to onboard them that could otherwise be used to get the project done.

A counter to that is that sometimes buying hardware, software, or services, can greatly accelerate the project. For instance if you are training neural networks on a MacBook, it is probably worth every penny to get a real desktop PC and put a 1080Ti graphics card in it, or to spend some money on cloud computing.

Many managers look at the cost as a function of the deadline, that is, they see the cost of the project as a function of the time you are tied up doing it, so if they can compress the deadline, the cost goes down. (or so they think).

Thus that leads to the "phony deadline" which has no real basis. One problem is that setting out without a realistic plan you are likely to make mistakes which will draw out the project, add to costs, possibly make the project fail.

Most of what I say above is laid out in more detail here:

[https://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Development-Taming-Software- Sch...](https://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Development-Taming-Software- Schedules/dp/1556159005)

The flip side of that is the hard deadline, where the job might as well not be done if it is not done on time, for instance, you need to get a grant application in on before a certain day, or you are putting together a demo you are going to show at a trade show on a particular date.

It is important to understand what the actual nature of deadlines that you are up against, what flexibility you have, what impact being late has on the business, etc.

That leaves "scope" as an area with wriggle room. Probably there are some features of the project can be dropped or modified, and management may be able to hit the deadline by dropping features it can afford to drop. This is one big advantage of "agile" methods; if you have something that sorta-kind works at the 25% mark of the project and then you hit the deadline with the most important 80% part of the functionality you are doing better than most people.</comment>


Sosumi - Apple's Easter Egg Mocking The Beatles (Apple Corps) - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi <comment><AUTHOR> I hadn't heard this story until I listened to the latest Java Posse episode ([http://javaposse.com/java-posse-332-newscast-for- dec-10th-20...](http://javaposse.com/java-posse-332-newscast-for- dec-10th-2010)). Thought it would be a good Friday read.</comment>


StackGAN: Text to Photo-Realistic Image Synthesis - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hanzhanggit/StackGAN <comment><USER2> My first thought was that this kind of technology will eventually put police artists out of a job. Given a verbal description from the witness such a system should be able to generate several possible photorealistic images of suspect faces.</comment>


Build a commission only sales team - <AUTHOR> https://www.commissioncrowd.com?ref=qJYgHcBL <comment><AUTHOR> I found these guys after being advised to find a Sales Guy for my side- project:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11453802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11453802)

Disclaimer:

I'm not associated with them in anyway but the link is my referral link.</comment>


Ask HN: Engineer contractor rates and full-time salaries in Israel? - <AUTHOR>

Hello,<p>Any ideas about engineer/dev contractor hourly rates and full-time salaries for Israel? <comment><USER2> [http://www.investinisrael.gov.il/NR/exeres/B750794D-C7DB-495...](http://www.investinisrael.gov.il/NR/exeres/B750794D-C7DB-4958-8641-18E04F2E0937.htm)

[http://media.wix.com/ugd/f0dec0_4e7d1a6e5d794fb9ad4f52757bda...](http://media.wix.com/ugd/f0dec0_4e7d1a6e5d794fb9ad4f52757bdae2bd.pdf)

[http://www.cji.co.il/cji-2015-salary- survey.htm](http://www.cji.co.il/cji-2015-salary-survey.htm)

In my limited experience it's pretty comparable to what you'll find in the US. I took a pay cut when I moved here from SV, but I would have taken one even if I hadn't left SV since I wanted to work at a smaller company and I was leaving one of the big internet players.</comment>


Urge President Trump to give scientists a seat at the table - <AUTHOR> http://www.314action.org/home <comment><USER3> The thing is that I don't care if a politician has a background in STEM subjects - in fact, if they have a STEM background, I prefer they also have a political science background or something that has to do with public policy. It doesn't need to be a formal degree if the person has a long history of political experience. This is for state level or higher. Local elections I doubt it matters so much.

I do, however, fully expect elected officials to take those in the STEM fields seriously and listen to their advice like they would listen to any expert.

I do want the elected officals to appoint STEM folks to the appropriate departments. I want someone well-versed in science to head the EPA and the like. Similarly, I want someone with teaching experience (and confidence in bettering public education) to head education. And so on.

<comment><USER4> > I want someone well-versed in science to head the EPA and the like. > Similarly, I want someone with teaching experience (and confidence in > bettering public education) to head education. And so on.

Canada's Cabinet [1] is diverse and the positions are individuals representative of those fields.

Quoting from the article:

> The defence minister, Harjit Sajjan, a decorated lieutenant-colonel in the > Canadian armed forces, was the first Sikh Canadian to command an army > regiment

> appointing two Aboriginal politicians to cabinet, along with indigenous > affairs minister, Carolyn Bennett

> The veterans affairs minister, Kent Hehr, has also overcome adversity to get > to his current role. A one-time hockey player, he was struck in the neck by > a bullet in a drive-by shooting, and rendered paraplegic in his early 20s. > He went on to become a lawyer and an advocate for the disabled before > jumping into provincial, and now federal politics.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/05/canada- diverse...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/05/canada-diverse- cabinet-includes-astronaut-badass-colonel)

<comment><USER5> > Canada's Cabinet [1] is diverse and the positions are individuals > representative of those fields.

I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing.

Secretaries of State are supposed to be advisers to the {elected|appointed|self-selected} leader of the Government. If they already have some personal 'skin in the game' then that may influence the advice they give, rather than listening to _their_ experts and selecting the options that are best for the _country_.

For example a Lt Col certainly knows how a regiment of 5000 men works, but why should that qualify him to advise a Prime Minister on, say, the strategic implications of nuclear deterrence? He's going to have to go and ask the experts first.

In that example it might actually be better to appoint him to a totally different department, so one still benefits from his management skills but he in turn has to start from a blank slate without preconceptions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The majority of Einsatzgruppen (SS) officers had PhDs.

Anecdotes aside, I used to think this way until I realized that being a leader is about a lot more than raw intelligence.

The best leaders (business, political or otherwise) have a unique mental resolve that is a lot stronger than the rest of us. They need to be able to thrive in chaos and stay motivated when everything is falling apart.

I arrived at this conclusion after years of looking at various CEOs and scoffing at how easily I could do the job--just make arbitrary decisions, take credit when they work and deflect when they don't, right?

It wasn't until I worked for a company that was teetering on failure that I realized there was more to it. While I would have felt completely overwhelmed, frustrated and defeated, this CEO somehow managed to stay positive and kept fighting for years until the business was in the clear.

<comment><USER7> This is really true. After working my way up in a mid-sized organization, I've learned being a CEO is hard and really easy to screw up.

As you mentioned it's about motivating people when they all want to go in a different direction. And it's not about saying "do this". That doesn't work. It's about _convincing_ them it's the right path forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This will help, but isnt the real issue .. which is that the main qualifier for high office is having immense wealth.

The measure of wealth in and of itself selects for people without the depth of experience in fields other than personal-wealth-generation. Due to effects explained in Piketty's Capital, it also has a secondary selection bias, preferring inherited wealth over entrepreneurial wealth.

Given the prior, that we do have money-in-politics, it makes sense to erode that bias in a minor way by having more STEM [ and poor but innovative entrepreneur ] people get involved in politics.

It also helps as a partial measure to reduce the power of the daily alternative facts, post truth media barrage we now face [ itself partly due to big-money owning the media ] - STEM practitioners are familiar with sifting facts from noise.

We should also solve the real problem - big-[old]-money in politics - <USER2> by flushing the big-money out with little-money : a torrent of 27 dollar contributions from citizens.

The massive womens rally and the Bernie movement give me hope we might achieve this - but clearly the DNC itself is afflicted by the same cancer, and must be taken over by real/progressive Democrats for there to be any hope of sane policy in America.

[edit : clarity, intent ]

<comment><USER9> Overturn Citizens United and publicly fund elections.

<comment><USER10> I think blame on Citizen's United is misplaced. Even without it, rich interests can (and do) simply buy media companies and promote politicians without any regulation at all.

In theory at least, the pooling of money into PACs allows ordinary people with small donations to make a dofference.

Maybe we should encourage ordinary citizens to put some money into PACs, which will have a greater impact than trying to prevent rich people from having influence (which doesn't usually work).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Because it works so well in China ?

Also Ahmadinejad has a master in civil engineering, a PhD in transportation engineering, and has taught as a professor (apparently he has returned to that job).

<comment><USER12> The Soviet Union had a bunch of engineers in their government too and they made all kinds of stupid decisions anyway. I don't think the composition of the government matters as much as its structure and as governments go I think the US has a decent one.

I think the problem is more _who_ our politicians are listening to then what they actually believe themselves. Banning lobbying would probably do a lot more than just trying to elect a bunch of scientists and engineers.

<comment><USER13> The engineers may have even exacerbated some things, especially in the 1950s-70s, as they were more optimistic about rapid advances in (what was then called) cybernetic control than turned out to be warranted. It seemed within short term reach to have rational, data-driven optimization of large sections of the economy, but neither the technology, nor theory, nor data was there at the time to make that actually work. It's an interesting question what would've turned out differently if expectations of rapid advances turned out to be accurate, and they had 1960s USSR-level political resources paired with something closer to today's level of data-collection and ML technology. Central economic planning, but run by an engineering-bureaucracy with the resources of 2017 Google.

<comment><USER14> You mean today's computers can assign prices to existing products and decide which new products to develop better than the market? The iPhone coming out of a neural network which isn't close to passing even a pale shadow of the Turing test (which a lot of humans pass who certainly cannot develop new products or set prices better than the market)? I wouldn't put my money on it.

(BTW Botvinnik, the first Soviet chess champion, was trying to push his (weaker than competition) chess-playing program as a basis for running the entire Soviet economy (he explained the weakness of his program for chess by it being more general than the competition; it apparently did not occur to him however that the fact that it lost to other machines and of course to people - this was 1990 - could perhaps mean it might run the economy somewhat worse than say a person. He was an engineer.))

As to electing engineers - let's put it this way: all else being equal, I'd rather be ruled by an EXPERIENCED ex-engineer (not just a guy with a degree) with a track record of achieving something, for which people who worked with them can vouch, than an ex-lawyer or an ex-journalist. But "engineer" by itself is not even a certificate of basic sanity, let alone the ability to lead someone somewhere other than the abyss, and for this HN's comment section provides ample evidence on a daily basis.

<comment><USER13> I'm not betting my labor vouchers either for or against it, just an interesting thought experiment. Some of the technical problems with 1960s cybernetics are solved now, especially for more defined tasks. The USSR had huge problems getting to work things that would now be called "supply-chain optimization" and similar and are now routinely done, in a pretty centrally planned style, at large vertically integrated companies with complex logistics. This kind of stuff just didn't work at the time at the scale Soviet planners hoped to use it (scales like "optimize agricultural production in the whole USSR"), and when people tried to use it it produced bad results. I do agree that how to switch production into new sectors and products and how not to have a terrible bureaucracy capture all these decisions is a different, probably more difficult question though, certainly having some logistics optimization tools that work isn't solving the full picture (it's just better than having those problems and also having logistics optimization tools that _don 't_ work).

<comment><USER14> There's a huge difference between a vertically integrated company competing for customers and vendors and the entire economy of a country, IMO. One evidence is that large companies keep ossifying and failing to adapt all the time which means the economy needs more than one giant company to move forward. A new Google needs a way to tell the state/the giant computer/whatever, "you're wrong, search works badly and we can do better." It's very hard to do that if the giant computer is running everything and effectively decides what you do (and it cannot run the economy if it cannot decide who does what, or at least what projects are funded and which aren't.)

Also the USSR didn't just have problems optimizing supply chains. It had a problem deciding what to make. You couldn't buy woolen sweaters so you bought woolen socks and made sweaters from the woolen threads making up the sock (yes, I fucking participated in this fuckery). How is a giant neural network going to figure out how many socks and sweaters people want better than demand affecting prices affecting production, even if I grant you the assumption that the problem of managing the socks supply chain is nailed today?

<comment><USER13> What, A/B testing not good enough for you? Please rate how you liked these two socks, this will be taken into account in order to serve you better.

<comment><USER14> I hear you, I just think you're a lot like that Soviet cybernetician [1], meaning that you think you're very close to the technology of that ever- elusive tomorrow, but you aren't :-) Of course it's not really fair to say that since you qualified your statements, it just sounded good and I can't miss an opportunity to fire a cheap shot at the AI/big data bubble :-)

[1] Nobody was called that as cybernetics was declared "a servant of Imperialism", I guess nominally because automating away jobs hurts workers or something, which is one reason the USSR never produced particularly good computing machinery. But I get whom you refer to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The problem isn't that politicians are stupid, the problem is that they have adverse incentives. Education is no vaccine against corruption, and if you're not a team player you won't get advanced by your party.

</comment><comment><USER16> Anecdotally I don't think choosing leaders with STEM backgrounds would produce improvements in acceptance of climate science. Here's some members of congress who are climate deniers despite their STEM backgrounds.

Joe Barton, Texas 6th, industrial engineer and climate denier.

Tom Coburn (senator from Oklahoma from 2005-2015) is an obstetrician and leading climate denier.

Thom Tillis, climate denier and senator from North Carolina, has a degree in "technology management".

Timothy F. Murphy, Pennsylvania 18th, climate denier with a Ph.D in psychology.

Steve Scalise, Louisiana 1st, climate denier with a B.S. in computer science.

And that's just what I found off the top of my head plus 5 minutes of clicking through the bios of some of the Republican members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, then googling to check if they were climate deniers. I'm sure people will take this opportunity to bash medical doctors, but I think it definitely counts as STEM, and they generally have abhorrent views on health policy as well.

<comment><USER17> I wonder how many of these people truly disbelieve climate change, and how many are "towing the party line"?

<comment><USER16> Toeing the party line would be voting no on climate change bills and keeping your mouth shut. I came across a couple of people apparently doing that, and they of course didn't make the list. I think all but one or two of the people listed gave some wacky statement invoking the Bible to say that humans can't change the climate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I didn't like her politics, but Margaret Thatcher had a BSc in Chemistry, and went on to work as a research chemist.

Credit where credit's due: she understood the problem of climate change: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg)

<comment><USER19> Angela Merkel has a similar background, doesn't she?

<comment><USER20> She had a doctorate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not hopeful. I am young but my experince has been that moving up the leadership or management ladder requires a vastly different set of skills than stem and if you are serious about doing it you will have to leave your stem behind, or you simply won't be able to compete.

<comment><USER22> True. But your background lasts. Management gives you people skills, organizational ones, teaches you to listen, and a sense of duty towards your team members. Couple that to a solid technical/scientific background, and you got a prepared leader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Dear god the last thing I'd ever want is a country ruled by engineers. Most have one track minds, can't multitask, and can't see the forest beyond the trees. Maybe if they also have some sort of background in philosophy/economics/humanities or anything that can add perspective on the human condition, managing people, etc...

<comment><USER18> Here's a list of PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) graduates from Oxford: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_University_of_Oxford_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_University_of_Oxford_p..).

They're very much a mixed bag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> President Carter had training in nuclear engineering. President Hoover had a geology degree, later practicing mining engineering. Neither were particularly exceptional Presidents.

<comment><USER24> Saying that Carter wasn't "exceptional" is quite an understatement. He kinda sucked at his job in general, and at getting the Congress to support his agenda in particular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> From my experience, guys with the highest IQs are the worst leaders and they inexplicably, usually lack vision and courage.

<comment><USER26> Hey, just a clarification. Could you ballpark, roughly, the ballpark that you're talking about for "highest IQs" and the IQs of the better leaders you've worked with? Because I think in software development, we fail to appreciate that 100 - by definition - is the median IQ and that half of people are below 100. I'd say the bulk of highly effective leaders in software I've worked with were substantially over 100. Before software, I have worked with different populations with greater variance. Unintelligent people usually make poor leaders.

Anyway, people have written and research a lot about this (MBTI, EQ, etc) and IQ is just a component and IQ itself is a very coarse grained metric that has many subcomponents. High IQ certainly doesn't hurt in general.

<comment><USER25> I meant real high IQ like most engineers & scientists, maybe IQ > 125 or 130. I guess there may be some relation between higher IQs and poor communication skills, less courage and other traits. But that's just a personal view with no scientific evidence.

<comment><USER26> That's what I guessed. I have seen some very smart individuals lack empathy for people that weren't as smart or otherwise capable, or undercommunicate because they thought more things were tacitly understood than really were. I have no idea if there's a negative correlation there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Elect more leaders who come from a Philosophy background.

</comment><comment><USER28> Wanting more STEM seems like an indirect way of wanting more critical, evidence-based, thinking. Atheism is probably a better proxy.

<comment><USER29> Do I want more critical, evidence-based thinking, or more decent human beings who want to serve rather than play god? I wasn't thrilled with say Cass Sunstein's ideas when he was appointed by Obama.

<comment><USER30> _I wasn 't thrilled with say Cass Sunstein's ideas when he was appointed by Obama._

Would you expand on this? I was quite impressed with what I read in _Nudge_. Did any of this practical thinking carry over to OIRA? Or was that perhaps part of the problem?

<comment><USER29> It's impressive, but falls into the "playing God" bucket for me.

<comment><USER30> Gotcha. I'll admit I was hoping for more, but I can understand not wanting to get into it in a comment. Can you point me to a critique (your own, or someone else's) of Sunstein that would elaborate on this for me, in particular his work under Obama?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Of course, it is a fallacy to assume that leaders from STEM backgrounds may be qualitatively better than others, or even perform better for their constituents. But then again, such leaders would definitely not ignore climate change wholesale.

If there is indeed a correlation between education in any of the STEM fields and "leadership qualities", would it not be better to reform education to introduce skills implicit to these fields at an early age (logic, reasoning, rational discourse, understanding of the scientific process) instead of selecting for these qualities later on?

</comment><comment><USER32> This is doomed to fail. Even if they succeed, it will be a cosmetic victory. The explicitly defined object of desire is the trappings of power. The SEAT rather than the influence. But nobody is taken seriously because they have a seat at the table, they have a seat at the table because they're taken so seriously that the meeting is worth less without them.

The only setback Trump has caused to science's input to policy was removing it's current cosmetic status. Nobody in government, in either party, takes science seriously when it conflicts with their policy goals. It's just a cudgel that sometimes aligns with their goals, and is wielded the same as any other block of useful idiots with fancy nametags.

In other words: if the government had actually taken science seriously when Democrats were in power, this would have never been a problem.

</comment><comment><USER33> Jimmy Carter was an engineer and he turned out to be bad president. I think the president should be someone who can work with people and gets things done. You could be the smartest person in the world and if you can't deal with people you will end up not being an effective president.

</comment><comment><USER34> We need fewer leaders with legal backgrounds as well. The law trains you to argue a case by selectively ignoring unfavorable evidence, and guess what our politicians are incredibly good at?

<comment><USER35> > The law trains you to argue a case by selectively ignoring unfavorable > evidence

No, it doesn't.

<comment><USER36> A law degree is great thing for a leader to have, but not sufficient. You need people with integrity too. I think a lot of the common backlash against lawyers is due to the fact that a lawyer lacking integrity is good at circumventing the law. Similar to how a doctor, usually a profession known for healing, would also know how to make many people sick.

<comment><USER34> > A law degree is great thing for a leader to have, but not sufficient

A law degree has an opportunity cost. That's a bunch of years you didn't spend learning something else. Is that the best thing you could have spent that time learning?

Bear in mind that a huge proportion of our politicians have law degrees. If we had as few people with law degrees as have backgrounds in statistics or economics or engineering then sure, we'd want more -- but we are in no immediate danger of that.

<comment><USER35> > Is that the best thing you could have spent that time learning?

If you are going to be writing laws and evaluating the practical impact of proposed laws written by others? Yes, learning law is pretty much the most relevant thing you can learn. Political science, public policy, public administration, economics, finance (both public and private), international relations, history, and game theory in any context are also quite broadly useful. (And while most of those are fields you could get a degree in, they have substantial overlap.)

Most STEM subjects are pretty far from being broadly useful; each would be relevant to a small minority of the work of any legislator (and even where it was relevant, multiple of the previously mentioned fields would also be relevant.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Margaret Thatcher comes to mind. Jimmy Carter comes to mind.

<comment><USER38> Angela Merkel comes to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> For reference, here is link [http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2012/02/by- the-numbers-th...](http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2012/02/by-the-numbers- the-jobs-jobs-jobs-of-the-first-congress-vs-the-112th-congress/) to 2011 - 2012 congress and their career backgrounds.

</comment><comment><USER40> Might as well go the extra mile and demand people to elect only the good politicians.

Just like demanding programmers to not write bugs.

</comment><comment><USER41> [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2015/11/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2015/11/17/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Elect more leaders like me! Seriously? This is seriously at the top of HN? What is so great about science? Didn't science create nuclear weapons? Isn't it rushing us towards the AI Singularity? Why are you so confident that STEM is the answer to all our prayers?

I do STEM because it provides for my family. However, I appreciate and understand that I might very well be the problem rather than the solution. But, I am good at it and pays well and sometimes it seems to do good when in the right hands.

If you ask me though - elect more leaders who are anti-violence and anti- consumption. But hey, one person one vote - right?

<comment><USER36> You owe your life to STEM. We don't get to ~7 billion without it. You are the roadways that bring you food. You are the pipes that bring you water, and carry away your feces.

I agree with your assessment though, STEM isn't sufficient to be a good leader. You need to care about people and want to improve their well-being too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> How about electing more leaders who know how to solve problems and can do a decent job of breaking down complex problems?

I don't care where they learned how to do that.

</comment><comment><USER44> When I clicked the link I expected to be presented evidence this approach would create better outcomes than the status quo.

</comment><comment><USER45> It definitely wouldn't hurt to have less lawyers in leadership. they seem a little over represented.

<comment><USER46> Congress' job is to write, evaluate, and vote on laws. It makes sense that we have legal experts--IE, lawyers--doing that.

I can definitely see a good argument to the contrary: Politicians should be the experts in negotiating/being the interface between field experts (scientists, lawyers, economists) and public values (voters or all citizens). Having them distinct from the legal experts seems sensible.

But right now, law is the language of politics/policy, so I'm not sure how this separation would work. Congress can say "NASA, based on your input and the public's preferences, you get these resources to do aeronautics" and leaves the details up to NASA, and that's fine, but if Congress just says "lawyers, based on your input and the public's preferences, write a law on decriminalized cannabis use" and let's the lawyers handle the details....I dunno. Somehow, it feels like law requires less delegation and more technical understanding on the part of Congress than aeronautics does.

I see the problem not as too many lawyers, but as corruption (though not in a literal bribery sort of way) and--for lack of a better term-- _politics_. (e.g., the problem isn't lawyers don't believe in climate change. The problem is that climate change has become a political issue that half of the country rejects ideologically.)

<comment><USER45> Politicians in congress don't write laws themselves. They are written by staff and unfortunately often lobbyists. I would much prefer if they had real expertise in some areas and left the detail of writing laws to the lawyers in their stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guest-speaker-4 Gotta fix the top of operating system before suggesting a lowly cabinet position that will be ignored anyhow. There are fundamental problems with the incestuous corporations buying off the news media and the politicians, combined with a broken and corrupt system which has failed in Romantic ways. Things which the illegitimate, corrupt politicians cannot or will not address. This doesn't mean throw everything away or wait by the phone for incrementalism, but multiple, major, decisive changes are vital in order to level the playing field for public servants.

0) Only allow X dollars per campaign from named, naturalized, human beings to fund specific candidates, and the candidates must disclose how it must be spent only on that campaign. No more super PACs or dark money pools.

0.5) No more special interest political smear ads. Again, the clear and present danger to the republic by manipulating elections supercedes unlimited "freedom" to persuade people that "clean coal" is good for them.

1) Make it a felony for any elected official to accept any compensation, gift or privilege including food, goods, services, vacations or exclusive event participation. Politicans are there to be public servants, not cut book deals or consulting gigs.

2) Matching public campaign funds to private funds.

3) Make it a felony for a for-profit news organization to be funded by advertisements or politicians.

4) Eliminate the electoral college: it has failed, twice. Replace it with national popular ranked vote (1st Sally, 2nd Joe, ...)

5) Eliminate jerrymandering by redrawing all districts based on a simple, deterministic, open-source algorithm finding population centroids. Tweaks to this law can only be enacted to fix flaws and edge-cases without predetermined favoritism.

6) News media embargo on manipulating election results from a day before early voting starts until after all final results are in, punishable by a 10 years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine.

7) National voter conformance: national vote on the same day, permanent absentee voting by mail, early voting (two weeks), same day registration for in-person and open-source blockchain tabulation with a paper (non-thermal) receipt. No discriminatory "poll tax" or bureaucratic hoops laws. Period.

</comment><comment><USER24> People with decent STEM backgrounds can be MUCH more gainfully employed elsewhere. Higher echelons of US government are badly underpaid, which is why they attract the kind of "talent" they do. A Google search shows that it takes $110K to decently get by in DC. $175K for someone who is expected to be at the top of their game is a bad deal when a professional can make two to three times as much in the private sector. So you get a bunch of has-beens who aren't good for anything else. The only exception I can think of is the USDS, where idealistic young people go to serve their country and take a massive pay cut (which is even more massive if you factor in the opportunity cost), but sooner or later life will catch up to them, too, and they'll discover they need to save for retirement and college, pay for private school for their kids, etc, etc. Shit's expensive.

<comment><USER47> Worse, there is a _massive_ chicken-and-egg problem here.

At least with normal jobs, I only have to risk _occasionally_ encountering someone who is difficult or slightly incompetent. While dealing with difficult people is normal, at least right now it isn't a daily occurrence.

Conversely, I can pretty much guarantee that a _huge_ number of future colleagues would be making my life miserable when in Congress. Some of them apparently cannot be reasoned with at all ("I'm sorry, you have the wrong letter after your name _therefore_ your idea sucks <turning brain off now>"), and a pretty insane number of them just do whatever they want without obeying rules.

It reaches a point where you have to decide where you can do the most good, and there just doesn't seem to be a way to do much "good" by being in public office. I feel better working on engineering projects that go somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Just stop electing republicans for a start.

<comment><USER23> So you are proposing a Democrat led dictatorship?

<comment><USER48> There are other parties. The two party monopoly is exactly what led us to this disaster of an election.</comment></comment></comment>


How 2 village childhood friends Bootstrapped from 0 to a million dollar startup? - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/story-how-two-childhood-friends-from-village-has-built-suresh-kumar-g?_mSplash=1 <comment><AUTHOR> A Story of How Two Childhood Friends from Village has bootstrapped and build their startup up from Zero to a million dollar company in 3 years.

A Journey of thousand miles starts with a single step, coming from a non- business family we are happy and humble that we have bootstrapped this far and this is the first step of success and still a long way to go, we are now coming with some of the great products.

Stay Hungry . Stay Foolish.

P.S. This Post is written to share the passion, pain, sacrifice and hard work travelling through the path as entrepreneurs and startup. Hope it will inspire someone who read and can relate to it.

</comment><comment><USER2> This story is super inspiring. Thank you so much for sharing. It made my day!

</comment><comment><USER3> I have seen his hard work very near as i stayed in same apartment. As Suresh said his wife "Archana" is his backbone for all his growth. Good luck maacha. Keep up the moment.</comment>


11-year-old boy arrested over a stick-figure drawing - <AUTHOR> http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/02/22/2011-02-22_11yearold_boy_arrested_in_colorado_over_violent_stickfigure_drawing_made_in_scho.html <comment><USER2> I really can't make up my mind about this one.

On one hand it's very obvious to me that things like this need to cause a reaction, on the other hand it seems insane to handcuff a _child_ and put him in a cell for something like this.

Seems to me like this would be more of a job for a medical professional or child services. But I'm still very unsure what the correct action to take would be.

<comment><USER3> The words "Young man, you're going straight to the Principal's office!" spring to mind.

Of course, I think most of us when we were kids might have occasionally joked about killing the teacher. Hell, at my school we had _songs_ about killing the teacher. (Ooh, the internet wins again: [http://www.citizenofthemonth.com/2005/08/04/a-tribute-to- tea...](http://www.citizenofthemonth.com/2005/08/04/a-tribute-to-teachers/)). Of course if this kid is _really_ fantasising about killing the teacher (especially at age eleven) then he's probably a bit disturbed, so it's time to have a meeting with the counsellor and the parents.

I really can't see any circumstances under which getting the police involved is anything other than a waste of police time, though, unless he _actually_ has a gun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope they never find out about comic books. I hear there might be some illustrated violence in some of them now and again as well.</comment>


Nearly half of Americans didn't go outside for recreation in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://coloradosun.com/2020/01/29/fewer-americans-participate-in-outdoor-recreation/ <comment><USER2> It seems like this survey is about "outdoors activities" and not just activities that take place outside. For example, traditional sports like basketball, football, baseball, and soccer aren't listed in the outdoors section even if they take place outside. The survey is instead only counting activities like fishing, hunting, hiking, etc as outside activities. That will wildly skew the results.

EDIT: Here is the fine print of the survey:

>In this report, outdoor activities include adventure racing, backpacking, bicycling (BMX), bicycling (mountain/non-paved surface), bicycling (road/paved surface), birdwatching (more than 1/4 mile from home/vehicle), boardsailing/windsurfing, camping (backyard or car, within 1/4 mile of vehicle/home), camping (recreational vehicle), canoeing, climbing (sport/indoor/boulder), climbing (traditional/ice/ mountaineering), fishing (fly), fishing (freshwater/other), fishing (saltwater), hiking, hunting (rifle), hunting (shotgun), hunting (handgun), hunting (bow), kayak fishing, kayaking (recreational), kayaking (sea/touring), kayaking (white water), rafting, running/jogging, sailing, scuba diving, skateboarding, skiing (alpine/downhill), skiing (cross-country), snorkeling, snowboarding, snowshoeing, stand up paddling, surfing, telemarking (downhill), trail running, triathlon (non-traditional/off road), triathlon (traditional/road), wakeboarding, wildlife viewing (more than 1/4 mile from home/vehicle).

<comment><USER3> Indoor climbing is an outdoor sport?!

<comment><USER4> Yes, because the study was for outdoor rec companies, so harnesses and climbing gear is relevant even if the sport is done inside. Lead or bouldering is done both inside and outside and very similar gear is used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd like to say the cost of a lot of outdoor recreation is really, really, high. People wanna say just "go outside, it's free." But... it's really not unless you live in a very rural area where you have your own land to wander or extremely close to a publicly owned land.

A lot of outdoor activities require investment to participate in. It's easy to laugh at the bicyclists wearing spandex until you try to ride a hundred miles and chafe your balls into a pair of blisters. Let alone a bicycle comfortable/safe enough to ride long distances without injuring you. Even just walking can be really damaging without proper shoes, or with bad ones because they're all you have.

For a lot of people, simply trying out an activity might cost a hundred or two hundred dollars once everything is done, and that's waaaaaay too high for most people. I think if there were public gear closets like the one referenced in the article or a bigger push towards communal access/usage of gear, the number would go up somewhat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hiking is very cheap for virtually all of Los Angeles, the second largest city in America.

This is because: \- 88% of households have a car, enabling them to get to a hike [1] \- the average vehicles per household is 1.6 [1], thus the average across 2 households is 3 cars. Considering most people to hiking with friends, this greatly increases the chance a vehicle is available regularly. \- there are many hikes available in state parks in the Santa Monica mountains within 15 miles of the majority of the population \- parking is very cheap.

I agree that rock climbing or kite surfing are way more expensive, but there is little substitute for a good hike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can that be true?? My mind is totally blown. There must be rather huge regional variations in this, though. In my part of the nation, the vast majority of people engage in outdoor recreation at least once per year -- and most much more often.

<comment><USER7> Depending on where you are and what infrastructure you have access to, going "outside for recreation" can be an ordeal.

For example, fishing and most forms of camping are relatively inaccessible to me. Public transit tends not to run to such places.

<comment><USER8> I don't think the term is defined as narrowly as going into the wilderness. For example, they say:

> only 18% of Americans played outside at least once a week

I doubt one in five Americans are driving out to national parks once a week, so "outdoor recreation" probably includes things like soccer in a city park or going for a bike ride.

That being said, I wish the article was less vague with its use of terms like "play outside" and "outdoor recreation" so we didn't have to read tea leaves to deduce the reality.

<comment><USER7> I looked at the paper, I couldn't readily spot what they considered "outdoor recreation". Camping, fishing, hiking, biking, and jogging/running were things they mentioned repeatedly though.

I have no idea if they included, say, reading in a park.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The great outdoors is now a 4 foot strip of grass between your outer wall and the sidewalk or your neighbor's house, and the suburbs go on forever. The outdoors isn't as accessible as it seems for a lot of people.

Doesn't apply in my area, but it's easy for me to understand.

<comment><USER10> >The outdoors isn't as accessible

should be noted that this foundation (which seems to have quite a big interest in promoting the 'outdoors industry') seems to define the term as "uninhabited nature" going by their listed activities.

Plenty of people are still socially active outside. I'm not sure why running in the city park, taking long walks or playing basketball on the court is supposed to be less valuable than hiking.

<comment><USER11> This is probably subjective but for me, walking or running in nature is a substantially better experience than doing that in a city park.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My foreign wife gained 30 pounds after moving to the USA. She attributes it to reduced walking and an increase in food consumption.

:(

<comment><USER13> Same thing here. I gained weight moving back as well, due to lack of time and motivation for exercise since I am working without a real break, no walking for anything, and ubiquitous availability of comfort food coupled with high stress due to high cost of living and that work schedule noted above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For those confused or angered by the definition of "outdoor activities" the article is about the "outdoor recreation" industry. Think REI, Patagonia, or Cabela's. So yeah, hiking will count but a stroll through your neighborhood won't. Climbing would, but soccer is out.

I would be very interested to see the numbers for a more inclusive definition myself, though still saddened people aren't hiking, camping, and generally spending time in nature a bit more.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ironically, the outdoors areas are more crowded than ever.

Just moved from Denver to Austin and I totally understand why... It sucks outside in most places.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, it's gotten pretty bad in the Bay Area too. Lack of basic hiking courtesy (saying hello when you pass people, giving right of way to people going uphill on narrow slopes, walking single file when you're in a group, etc) would be frustrating enough on its own, but it's way beyond that - leaving trash, playing music on Bluetooth speakers, people mountain biking for what seems to be the first time and having no clue how to behave on their bike, etc.

Any trail that can be found with a basic google search on the weekend is just not worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> With so many people living in big cities, this doesn't surprise me. If you live in a big metro area, getting out of the city limits might take an hour or more and requires having a car. Outdoor recreation areas inside city limits or near city limits are already over-crowded.

That alone makes proper outdoor activities like mountain biking, rock climbing, or hiking difficult to do. The article shows pictures from Grand Junction and other parts of Colorado where outdoor recreation is generally easy and accessible, but a lot of cities make it far more difficult to venture out and in big parts of the country outdoor recreation just sucks unless you travel. I lived in Central California for years and moved away because hot summers, dry, boring terrain, and distance to decent trails made riding my bike or hiking extremely time consuming (or just lame).

If cities want people outdoors (and they should), they need big walkable greenbelts, and big parks with recreation options in or very near city limits. Many cities have really terrible options for getting out.

<comment><USER18> I think I agree.

I have a list of "outdoor" places I want to visit for various reasons, ranging from a specific highway rest stop mentioned in a fictional podcast episode to national parks. All of these require a vehicle.

If I were to start visiting tomorrow, I would need to rent a vehicle.

Do I live in an urban setting? Yes. Do I still go outside for recreation? Yes. I am fortunate enough to walk, I am fortunate to have parks and bike trails within walking distance to my living place and I do those things, and like this.

Does any of this count as the posted article's "outdoor recreation"? Good question.

For me, yes. I get outside. I want to avoid cabin fever. I want fresh air more than two open windows giving a cross-breeze [which is also great].

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> That headline is wrong. Nearly half of Americans didn't participate in _a list of 42 outdoor recreation activities that this particular trade group profits from_ , which is quite different from "didn't go outside for recreation".

"Outdoor recreation" was defined as: adventure racing, backpacking, bicycling (BMX), bicycling (mountain/non-paved surface), bicycling (road/paved surface), birdwatching, boardsailing/windsurfing, car or backyard camping, RV camping, canoeing, climbing (sport/indoor/boulder), climbing (traditional/ice/mountaineering), fly fishing, freshwater fishing, saltwater fishing, hiking, hunting (rifle), hunting (shotgun), hunting (handgun), hunting (bow), kayak fishing, kayaking (recreational), kayaking (sea/touring), kayaking (white water), rafting, running/ jogging, sailing, scuba diving, skateboarding, skiing (alpine/downhill), skiing (cross-country), skiing (freestyle), snorkeling, snowboarding, snowshoeing, stand up paddling, surfing, telemarking (downhill), trail running, triathlon (non-traditional/ off road), triathlon (traditional/road), wakeboarding and wildlife viewing.

That's a pretty decent list, but it excludes what are probably by far the two most common forms of recreation that occur outdoors: walking in local parks and playing team sports outside (organized or pickup). But for some reason does include __indoor__ climbing!? Probably because this is a trade group comprised of companies that make an enormous amount of money from gym climbing but make exactly $0.00 when kids spend all summer playing in the community park ;-)

Direct link to report: [https://outdoorindustry.org/resource/2019-outdoor- participat...](https://outdoorindustry.org/resource/2019-outdoor- participation-report/)

<comment><USER20> What a weird list. I haven't done a single item of that list _in years_ , but I would say I go outside for recreation about 100-200 times per year. Walking around the neighborhood? Kicking a soccer ball around in the backyard? Shooting hoops with a hoop attachment to a garage? None of that counts? What a ridiculous headline!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> But it's scary out there! /s

Seriously though, I wish I could be outside more often, but here in South Texas 9 months of the year it feels like death outside (heat, allergies, what- have-you) and the other 3 months it is typically too dark when I get home from work.

I've always thought boating might be a cool thing to do/learn, but I've never lived close enough to water to try it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Makes me feel pretty lucky that I spend an hour a day rain or shine taking the kids to school on my cargo ebike. We all get outside time and I think there are fewer fits from the when riding in the bike's front box. I have a dual- battery Packster 80 with a 28mph motor on it. Gets across town faster than driving at rush hour and carries two adult passengers as long as they are fit enough to climb in and out.

If I didn't have so much to carry I'd ride a Load, they have full suspension, mine only has front.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is .. absurd. I find it hard to believe.

We live in an urban centre (Somerville, near Boston) and go outside not just every weekend, but almost daily with our three year old.

In the evenings we do neighbourhood walks. In the winter it's even more fun with a flashlight

On weekends we're out of the house by 10am on average. We are minutes away from reservation areas and so much green space

It's stupidly easy to be surrounded by trees and nature, even in the city. We don't even need a car to do it (but we do use one at times!)

</comment><comment><USER24> Long walls are great for thinking ... visual stimulation coupled with the fresh air makes for a very rewarding investment of time ... even a short walk every few hours is a game changer when thinking about some mental challenge ... it helps but there is no need to go out of your way to do this walking in any location ... vary your path ... there is no excuse to not walk often ... breaking a sweat several times a week is as easy as a good long hard walk

</comment><comment><USER25> ...and increased obesity rates: causation or correlation?

</comment><comment><USER26> Maybe we are just preparing for the point when climate change makes going outside difficult and largely unsafe...

<comment><USER27> Really? How would even a 3 degree change make going outside unsafe or difficult?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> We had a rare occurrence of snow in our small town. Some kids went outside to play and a neighbor called on them to the police. Lesson learned - just stay in the freaking house all day.

<comment><USER29> Was there real consequence for this though? Getting the cops called can be essentially a no-op sometimes.

<comment><USER5> For a lot of folks it's pretty terrifying to have the cops show up at all; especially, for something so benign as kids playing in the snow. Many people have been killed by police for doing less.

<comment><USER29> I know these encounters can be detrimental. I was careful with my wording. Notice I said sometimes.

<comment><USER5> Not be an ass, but "sometimes" for you is "always" for others. I think the chance of a bad outcome, for those with always, greatly outweighs your unlikely-hood of one...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


World's Best-Run Pension Funds Say It's Time to Start Worrying - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-06/world-s-best-run-pension-funds-say-it-s-time-to-start-worrying <comment><USER2> The fundamental issue is that saving _financial assets_ today has essentially zero impact on the total consumption of future retirees. Instead, what matters is 1) the amount of real goods and services future workers generate, 2) how much of this production they give up in tax transfers to retirees or sold for financial assets owned by retirees, and 3) how many workers there are per retiree.

As a society, we _cannot_ collectively save our way out of the coming pension crisis. Already economic growth is basically not capital-constrained - if an extra billion dollars starts sloshing around the system, it simply raises the market capitalization of existing bonds, businesses, and real estate by a billion dollars. Public companies, on net, _return_ cash each year to investors. Saving doesn't make future retirees as a class wealthier, it simply rearranges the rank ordering of future retiree wealth while allowing current retirees to spend more via higher asset prices.

So, what can future retirees collectively do? Have more children, allow more immigrant workers, increase future tax transfers, force higher savings rates on future workers (eg, student loan debt, mortgage repayments, land rents), retire later, or accept a lower standard of living. What individual options are there? Basically all you can do is save more and wind up in a more privileged tranche of future retirees, and hope that society winds up rich enough to support your retirement dreams. There's _some_ room for optimizing your investment strategy so that it minimizes costs and risks, via tax- advantaged accounts owning broad-market index funds, but there's only so much juice to squeeze there.

<comment><USER3> What makes me somewhat mad are the (Western) countries "solving" their public pension problems through immigration. Not only do you then destroy the tax payer base in the country that loses the emigrant, but you're just pushing the problem down the line so that the immigrants that saved you tomorrow, are themselves screwed when/if they ever get to retire.

It's literally a legal Ponzi scheme and in many cases, you are legally obliged to play.

I'm looking at you Canada.

<comment><USER4> Yeah the new push is to drive our population to 100M in 80 years from about 37M now. It costs $2300/mo in our biggest cities for a single bedroom apartment on average.

<comment><USER5> A lot of this is the rush of foreign investment and the government you elect caring more about the tax revenue from people who don't even live in your country over the welfare of their own constituents.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, however it's also a result of overly strict building and zoning codes that don't allow density to increase in exchange for a reasonable price.

The result, however, is tragic. People just live in "illegal" housing situations like stuffing 4 or 5 people into a 1 bedroom or 2 bedroom apartment, where people just create temporary walls to zone off part of the living room or use an extra large closet for extra "bedrooms".

Thus the city loses out on tax revenue AND preventing population increase in certain areas, which is the whole point of these restrictive zoning laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The warning comes as pension firms across Europe struggle to generate the > returns they need to cover their growing obligations. In Denmark, some funds > saddled with legacy policies guaranteeing returns as high as 4.5% have had > to use equity to meet their obligations.

Using equity to meet current obligations sounds a lot like a Ponzi scheme:

> A Ponzi scheme ... is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits > to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors.[2] The scheme > leads victims to believe that profits are coming from product sales or other > means, and they remain unaware that other investors are the source of funds.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme)

Provided that the equity drain is limited in scope, a pension fund can continue to fight another year.

The more interesting (or scary) question is what happens when tapping into the equity becomes the norm? At what point does the fund manager level with pensioners and inform them that the fund is in fact insolvent?

<comment><USER8> When interest rates are negative, there is no other option than to fund current obligations from equity. You can't do it from interest, because there isn't any.

<comment><USER7> Depending on the fund, there may in fact be another option: more risky assets. As noted in the article:

> In the meantime, pension funds have been coping by buying up riskier assets. > The Dutch, ranked with Denmark as the world's best performing pension > providers by Mercer, have complained to the European Central Bank about the > fallout on the industry.

And this is where things start to go off script pretty quickly.

<comment><USER9> > Depending on the fund, there may in fact be another option: more risky > assets.

Everybody knows the ECB will take some "risky assets" either as collateral or by outright buying it as soon as markets begin to crack. This whole article is just a rant for the public. Behind the scenes some traditional risky assets such as index funds are already on par with mortgage backed securities in terms of risk and will be accepted as collateral by the central banks.

> And this is where things start to go off script pretty quickly.

There are serious finance people (Mosler) who think this is nothing new and we've been doing "Modern Monetary Theory" in disguise for decades now. It's hard to tell for sure since most of the relevant information is not public, but almost everything makes sense if that's the case. It looks like new finance textbooks are being rewritten now with both QE and MMT mentioned with no references to them being measures of last resort, obscure or unusual. I don't know where this is coming from but it's speculated this is an attempt at normalisation of the current policies and MMT.

<comment><USER10> > Behind the scenes some traditional risky assets such as index funds are > already on par with mortgage backed securities in terms of risk and will be > accepted as collateral by the central banks.

Can you explain this in a bit more detail? What are some index funds are on par with mortgage backed securities and in what way is the level of risk similar?

<comment><USER9> The risk is similar because the too-big-to-fail phenomenon applies to both. Back in 2009 the central banks stepped in and bought any MBS for sale at pre- crisis market price, still on their balance sheets to this day. They couldn't let MBS fail because it was used as collateral in all kinds of loans. Now we see the same with stocks, so we know what to expect, thus the risk is similar.

The central bank of Japan is already openly buying ETFs (stocks) along with many sovereign funds around the world, giving ETFs further credibility as collateral between central banks and governments. ECB and the Fed are following their steps, even though they haven't done public purchases yet. All central banks are singling that buying stocks is on the table, there is no question it will be done in case of emergency.

<comment><USER11> I agree that quasi-equity purchases will be on the table. ETFs have different voting rights than direct stock. Governments won't let these pensions fail in mass. Also look at dual interest rate options like teltros in the ECB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The underlying problem is that, aside from hoarding canned food, consumption in the future must be produced by workers in the future. How do you make claims on the output of workers in the future? Pension funds buy up financial assets, so workers in the future will have to give money to the owners of those assets (old people) as interest payments on debt and corporate profits on the goods and service they buy. All of this is intermediated by the financial sector. Financial sector profits and executive compensation keep going up, which means less is left over for investors. The share going to the financial sector is increasing because they are winning the class struggle. One alternative is to bypass the financial sector completely, and simply give old people money and finance that with taxes. Social Security transfers a little under 5% of GDP from working people to old people, with very little overhead, independently of financial market tempests.

<comment><USER13> >aside from hoarding canned food

That's not true. A lot of non financial assets can last years or even decades:

Cars, houses, renovations, factories, inventory, household supplies (toilet paper, razor blades etc.), clothes, tools, durable goods, washing machines, stoves, furniture, some commodities (processed metals, wood, sand, gravel etc), building materials, public infrastructure, education, some food items (salt, sugar, rice, pasta ...).

If you know that the ratio of workers to consumers is dropping, it might make sense to promote investment in these things before workers become too scarce. Incidentally, low or negative interest rates promotes investment in these things.

Buying these things is a way for people to save and consume at the same time. During a recession, promoting spending in these categories is probably a good way to boost GDP without pushing people to draw down their savings too much. They can instead go from financial savings to physical savings.

<comment><USER14> > Buying these things is a way for people to save and consume at the same > time.

This is the myth that Baby Boomers have been fed. They've been told their home is worth $X but when they're ready to retire and the next generation can't afford to buy it they're going to suddenly be without the savings they've been banking on and we're _all_ going to be in a boatload of trouble.

<comment><USER13> It doesn't have to have positive returns to be considered a saving. You buy a house, you get to live there rent free for decades even if you can't sell it for much at the end. That's still worth a lot.

<comment><USER14> I'm not really clear how it's rent free when you're making monthly mortgage payments? That seems rent free in name only.

<comment><USER13> We're talking about buying a house as a form of saving vs buying other financial assets. The part that you borrow is not savings. Only your home equity is savings. The part that the bank owns is not savings to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am already worrying but so what? Sell everything and have all cash? And what then, wait for the "crash" to happen?

Sure the article gets clicks but in reality, if you have invested smartly and with a long-term outlook it shouldn't matter if the market took a momentary nosedive. Good companies remain good companies and I don't mind being invested in them even while my holdings go temporarily to perhaps negative.

One of the most annoying things as an investor I feel is the constant pressure to validate my investments to see if I should I sell them or not. It's just too much of a hassle and unless the company really does something dumb, I'll keep holding until the sun starts shining again. I'm not in a hurry either way as a young person, so time is on my side.

<comment><USER16> I tend to follow Benjamin Graham's advice from The Intelligent Investor. Summarized by investopedia:

\- Graham recommended distributing one's portfolio evenly between stocks and bonds as a way to preserve capital in market downturns while still achieving growth of capital through bond income. Remember, Graham's philosophy was first and foremost, to preserve capital, and then to try to make it grow. He suggested having 25% to 75% of your investments in bonds and varying this based on market conditions. This strategy had the added advantage of keeping investors from boredom, which leads to the temptation to participate in unprofitable trading (i.e. speculating).

I've been shifting over to bonds for a while now (currently sitting something like 70/30). Running the numbers on where I would have been if I hadn't started swinging towards bonds, I haven't missed out on much at all. The S&P is pretty flat since the January 2018 peak, and I'm in a safer position if a crash happens.

[https://www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/07/grahamprinci...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/07/grahamprinciples.asp)

<comment><USER17> Bonds or bond funds? Those are two different beast with two different behaviors when crises hit.

<comment><USER18> A lot of people buy bond funds and think they own bonds. Bond funds can lose principal quite easily, bonds generally cannot, but are a pain to buy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The headline sounds worrying but the article is merely about technicalities of European pension regulations in light of low bond yields.

<comment><USER20> In a way europeans are reaping what they sowed

<comment><USER21> What has Europe sowed and what is it reaping?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The time to start worrying is long past. If you aren't worried yet then you've been ignoring the tell tale signs that are all over the business world. Safeguards instigated after the last close call are being relaxed, whole asset classes (including regular savings) are no longer viable and pensions are being cut while at the same time the age at which you get are eligible is being raised.

2008 wasn't the worst crisis ever, that doesn't mean we've seen the bottom of the pit yet.

If you are counting on others for your old age then maybe think again.

<comment><USER23> This isn't an article about pensions and retirement savings. It's an article about financial indicators, which pension funds, with their enormous amounts of funds under management, have a unique perspective on. Most of your comment isn't responsive to this article at all.

<comment><USER22> On the contrary. This is all about the 'solvability' demands on pension funds, which are driven to a large degree by computations involving future yields, which in turn depend on interest rates and other market indicators. The trends has been - for years - that the combined elements of demographic time bombs and historically low yields spell out that pension funds will likely not be able to fulfill their obligations.

So if you are going to depend on one of these for your future sustenance you need to re-do your homework or you may end up with a real problem in old age.

<comment><USER5> Prior to social security and pensions, people had kids to care for them in their old age. In order to do that, parents would save and the children would inherit the wealth they had created.

Now society is different. Older folks don't rely on children anymore, they rely on corporations and the government. They reverse mortgage their homes instead of leaving them to their children.

The family has broken down. Extrapolate that to communities. Companies. Friends.

Our society is broken for everyone but the wealthy in power and they don't want to help anyone else either.

<comment><USER24> > people had kids to care for them in their old age

Bringing kids in this world to take care of you when you are old is probably the most selfish thing you can do.

<comment><USER22> In many third world countries this is still the case. One of the biggest indicators of how wealthy a country is is to see what the average number of children per couple is. It's the first thing to drop once the feeling that the country will be able to deal responsibly with its elderly is established.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> To a student looking to go into quantative finance instead of data science, the number of negative finance headlines on the front page is worrying.

<comment><USER26> On the contrary. The less predictable a future is, fear creeps in and the oxygen-deprived managers develope an urge to be surrounded with more Astrologers. Or the more socially plausible option - Mathematicians.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nobody "wants" another recession. We all read these articles, though, and then go on to spread them amongst peers like wild fire. The echo chamber only gets louder as time goes on. At some point those predictions/analyses become irreversible and de facto a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I've started refraining from talking about negative financial news with friends and family.

<comment><USER28> Is there any evidence that talking about a possible recession with your grandmother or uncle could actually cause a recession to happen? Are recessions like Tinker Bell, they only exist if you believe in them?

<comment><USER29> For a country like the United States, recessions are at least somewhat like Tinker Bell. It's hard for external factors to seriously impact the US economy, as evidenced by the fact that growth is seriously slowing in China and several major EU nations are either in recession or very close to it, and the US economy is still growing. The major factors that influence the US economy are largely people's willingness to borrow, lend, and spend. If you can convince a large enough share of people that a recession is imminent it will actually happen as they pull their assets back from risky growth-fueling investments into low-risk low-growth investments. This will limit growth opportunities in the economy. If this gets bad enough it can impact the function of certain types of existing businesses that depend on capital markets for liquidity, and the economy can actually begin to contract.

<comment> grey-area _For a country like the United States, recessions are at least somewhat like Tinker Bell. It 's hard for external factors to seriously impact the US economy_

Multiple trade wars precipitated by the current president certainly impact the US economy (and the global one). The coming global downturn will be almost entirely self-inflicted, but it won't be down to gossip about a possible recession, it'll be down to massive trade barriers imposed by fiat.

Trade wars are bad and hard to win.

<comment><USER30> We've been stacking tinder for a very long time with our monetary policy, as well as shifting demographics. The trade war might be the spark, but a spark on a clean forest floor doesn't do much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The "best-run" rating comes from the Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index:

* [http://www.mercer.com.au/globalpensionindex](http://www.mercer.com.au/globalpensionindex)

* [https://australiancentre.com.au/projects/melbourne-mercer-gl...](https://australiancentre.com.au/projects/melbourne-mercer-global-pension-index/)

Technically Denmark is the second-best, with a score of 80.2 versus Netherlands' 80.3

</comment><comment><USER32> The most worrying thing is that the media machine seems to _want_ this recession to happen. It's madness. It's like they want to destroy the world's economy for their own short-term click metrics.

<comment> n0t-satoshi Recessions aren't due to how people feel. It's the freezing and culling of debt.

<comment><USER33> You stated that rather authoritatively but I'm not convinced there's any real consensus on the matter.

After all, _why_ do people freeze / cull debt?

<comment><USER34> Because in non-negative interest world there's a limit on how much debt you can take?

<comment><USER33> I agree! But a person or business choosing whether to take on more debt is going to rely on just the cold calculus of income and outgoings?

I believe that how take into account how secure they feel in their job, whether everyone else seems to be panicking about the economy, housing fomo, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> [https://outline.com/Jr68vZ](https://outline.com/Jr68vZ)

</comment><comment><USER36> European pensions may be well run but they are hugely under exposed to venture and tech overall so I'm skeptical of them crying wolf about the tech industry when they have so little exposure to it.

<comment><USER23> Are American pension funds particularly exposed to venture? My understanding of this industry comes almost entirely from the Kauffman report, which I'm sure is very dated, but that understanding is that venture as an asset class is just a small slice, and invested in primarily because of asset manager requirements to look for un-correlated assets.

If that were true, that wouldn't be an argument that a collapse in tech wouldn't be a systemic failure, because of course all sorts of other actors are connected to tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> And then the ECB calls all the debt, gutting all Europe based corporate borrowers for actual assets on ECB balance sheet

And then Germany seizes ECB

Germany finally wins European Single Market, and predictably steers productivity as their culture was already optimized to do

</comment><comment><USER38> One thing I have learned is that when it comes to mass media articles the best bet is to always do the opposite they are saying. Like "George" in Seinfeld, they are most of the time wrong, thus doing the opposite is right.

</comment><comment><USER39> to me what is worrying is not that pension funds are crying about trouble (although it may end sadly for those to be covered)

what is worrying is that people keep the current economical system which creates the need for pension funds.

if all immobilia were rent only, and the rent was continuously redistributed per capita to the population, then everyone would enjoy the average rent:

housing: everyone sleeps somewhere and the total expenditure on housing is fairly redistributed,

food: everyone eats something and the farmers use the bulk of their income to rent the land, so the population gets a significant fraction of their food payed back

energy: wind and solar take up space, competing with farms and housing, and the energy companies spend the bulk of their income on renting that land

ecology: we can democratically agree to leave a fraction F for nature of different degrees of wildness, and only put up the the rest for human rent

in such a world, why do I need a pension fund? when I am old and less mobile, I can be satisfied with smaller housing, less transportation to compensate for my probable inability to work. If you look at how elderly are [mal]treated in elderly homes etc, I would prefer to be in control of my fair share of average rent, so that if I don't like a place I can go rent somewhere else. Instead of having to gamble today if insurance company X will be solvent in the future, or even if it is, if the resulting pension will even cover for food, housing, ... while with average rent, while the average rent does not devalue with respect to the average rent other people receive...

why would I need health insurance? in the current world I would need it because of unexpected lump payments to hospitals etc, but in the system of average rent (under correct compliant conditions), I could set up a standard smart contract for health: "if you treat me now, part of my future income will be diverted for a duration long enough to cover the medical bill", or I can choose to disagree _at the moment itself_! The current system requires you to predict in advance for all possible medical urgencies, and across all available treatments if you agree on average. There are situations where I would decide against a certain proposed treatment, with another treatment not being covered. But then why did I pay medical insurance for the last X years?? With a system of average rent, your expense is a free trade at the moment it arises and you are capable of consulting your feelings about a certain proposal, instead of having to guess in advance if you will like what is compatible with your insurance plan...

<comment><USER40> > what is worrying is that people keep the current economical system which > creates the need for pension funds

Exactly. And what is worrying is that your comment (laying at the bottom of the page) is the only one so far talking about solving the problem by thinking out of the box.

I'd be even more free to mention a money-less world, or resource based economy as a solution, but people are too deep into this system to even comprehend that idea, let alone believe in it.

Edit: Related article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21173493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21173493)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Does anyone know how to bypass Bloomberg's paywall?

<comment><USER42> [https://outline.com/Jr68vZ](https://outline.com/Jr68vZ)</comment></comment>