Ask HN: Companies using Racket? - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone,
I'm looking for companies that are currently hiring Racket developers or did so in the past.
I created https://www.racketjobs.com, because I was myself interested in workplaces that use Racketlang commercially, but couldn't find any. After sharing the site on /r/Racket and a couple of other sites I got a bit more than 100 people to sign up for the newsletter.
If anyone knows a company, using Racket, or a place on the web where I can find open Racket positions, I'd be happy to hear from you. Of course I did my Google searches before. <comment><USER2> We are working on a product written in Scheme. It's mostly just me currently. Not (currently) using Racket, but a set of libraries[1] on Gambit-C, as well as an interpreter written in C++[2]. We might take someone on board a few months from now (London/UK).

[1] [https://github.com/pflanze/chj-schemelib](https://github.com/pflanze/chj- schemelib) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18045890](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18045890)

<comment><USER3> What about Racket's ability for arbitrary languages via #lang, not just macros? Are there any plans for this?

It's really nice to be able to do #lang c and just write C that is FFI'd into racket so you can avoid using an external toolchain to compile.

<comment><USER2> I don't really have a use for this. Gambit-C allows to include C files or also strings of C code from a Scheme module and builds it as one. I haven't used Racket's FFI though, perhaps the real benefit is from parsing the C code to auto-generate bindings? Generally I'd like to reduce the use of C code in case I want to re-target the code to run in a different, not C based, environment. chj-schemelib will need work for general consumption, let me know if you want to use it. (If you're talking about the interpreter in C++, it's the other way around, write FFI declarations within C++ to allow Scheme access to C++.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Naughty Dog (game dev) have used it to some extent. This has been up on HN more than once. They have even done a presentation on RacketCon 2013. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12203694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12203694)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I already watched the presentation, but couldn't find any open job positions in regards to Racket. I'll try to contact them directly and will see if I have some luck.

<comment><USER5> I think they may have stopped that after being bought by Sony? I don't think it is still around.

<comment><USER6> I think they still use it for scripting in their games. For things like AI, etc.

<comment><USER7> They are using an in-house variant of Scheme known as DC. There are a few pages about it in Game Engine Architecture, a book written by an engineer at Naughty Dog. [https://www.gameenginebook.com/](https://www.gameenginebook.com/)

DC is compiled to bytecode then interpreted. DC compiler is written in Racket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We, at Linki Tools [0], use Racket for our main product: S10 [1]. Not hiring at the moment but most likely will in the near future. I always hire remote (contracting up to now) and by the time I have to hire remote for racket I don't think I will have any problems finding a fine dev.

If you're in the Frankfurt area, I will be presenting at the first After Work Racket [2] on Thursday, the 8th. Come join us.

[0] [https://linki.tools](https://linki.tools) [1] [https://linki.tools/s10](https://linki.tools/s10) [2] [https://www.meetup.com/After-Work- Racket/events/253939676/](https://www.meetup.com/After-Work- Racket/events/253939676/)

<comment><USER9> Hi,

I found your meetup and would really like to join - too bad that the company I work for is holding a conference at this day (www.talentthinking.de). So I may join for Episode 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I enjoyed using it in college during my programming language theory course. However, I thought it was meant to be more of an academic/teaching language. Why should a company use it over Haskell or Clojure?

<comment><USER11> > Why should a company use it over Clojure?

Not wanting to support the JVM ecosystem.

<comment><USER12> I'll add wanting to avoid any legal risk from its owner, who is very sue happy. They also got that copywritable, API ruling in one battle. I just stay away from anything Oracle owns. Using open standards future-proofs against this a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great initiative. I often wonder why Racket isn't used more in the industry, especially when you see much more niche languages being used...

One note about your site: You are subscribing people to a mailing list without sending a confirmation email?

<comment><USER13> Racket is too powerful to be used by big corporations. The last thing a company wants is to have their rockstar programmer leave behind a terse, arcane, impenetrable walnut of an application.

Languages like Java make it much easier to treat your programmers as interchangeable parts.

<comment><USER14> _Racket is too powerful to be used by big corporations. The last thing a company wants..._

Ah yes, The Slashdot Cynicism.

Guaranteed to get a +5 Insightful.

What is your experience with Racket? Or failing that, Scheme? Or, failing that, Lisps in general?

<comment><USER15> Not exactly Racket. But with Perl. And the same argument.

Early 2010's, I remember my company had a fairly fast, stable and small(LOC wise) data feed processing application in Perl. It just worked, barely any bugs, maintained by 2 - 3 programmers.

Time came around, and your Director level people realized the teams were too small, programmers were having too much fun and more importantly it made programmers felt valuable and hard to be treated as kleenex.

They decided to give some Architect Astronaut love to the application. Then came in Java programmers. Code base size exploded by 500x. Design pattern floods followed. DI to manage complexity which shouldn't have even existed. Hundreds of classes to do things that could be done in hundreds of lines in Perl.

Managers routinely boasted how they managed to grow their teams, about their culture, and how big and great their teams were. They could never make it work as well as it did in Perl. I too moved on. But eventually I saw they just shut down the product.

No manager likes to see their work less valuable or better than that of a programmer.

Languages like Perl, Scala, Clojure, Racket, Common Lisp are never going to see decent adoption in the industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just finished teaching Racket for 2/3 of the semester. I have never had a group of students hate their introductory programming experience the way that they did with Racket. 0/10 will never teach Racket again the rest of my life, no matter how much I enjoy functional programming.

<comment><USER17> We use Racket to teach functional programming in the first semester of the first year at my uni and we never have such horrible feedback from students. We use it again in a compilation course in the first semester of the third year of the same curriculum and it works well. Could you elaborate?

<comment><USER18> Not the querient, but my first experience with Racket was something to the effect of:

      > (cons 'foo 'bar)
      ! error: bar is not a list

There were several other condescendingly-reported gross implementation defects like this, most damningly a inability to define macros, which meant that Racket is not in fact a LISP, and the syntactic homogenity that makes LISPs annoying to work with (at the benfit of being able to generate and rewrite arbitrary program fragments on demand) serves no purpose whatsoever.

I later found out that this was apparently due to having been provided with a "teaching" version of the interpreter intended for beginning students (who presuably don't know any better), which makes it even worse.

I would definitely characterize my attitude toward Racket as "hate", and if acbart made the same mistake my (generally quite reasonable and competent) CS professor did, I wouldn't be surprised if their students felt likewise.

<comment><USER19> It does sound like you were expecting a full Lisp and instead were greeted with one of the Beginner Languages, intended to teach first time programmers in a very structured way. See [https://docs.racket-lang.org/drracket/htdp- langs.html](https://docs.racket-lang.org/drracket/htdp-langs.html)

The example that you give is not an error in full Racket:

      Welcome to DrRacket, version 6.12 [3m].
      Language: racket, with debugging.
      > (cons 'foo 'bar)
      '(foo . bar)

Similarly, full Racket has multiple, powerful macro systems, and more besides, deliberately excluded from the Teaching Languages.

* * *

I'm not an academic, but the community and core Racket team are incredibly supportive, and any Comp Sci professor running into difficulties teaching a Racket-based course can easily access plenty of support and guidance, starting by contacting the user mailing list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have a work available at the moment, but a bit quirky as we're using our own novel Racket-influenced scheme dialect for business workflow, coupled with Python. Happy to chat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great to hear. How can I contact you? You can mail me at cihan(at)tas.fm

<comment><USER20> Just sent you an email, thx.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was surprised to see that you charge $100 for a 60-day post. Is that typical of job posting sites?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's actually cheap compared to other job boards, which usually charge 250+ for 30-60 days, giving you access to a pool of highly relevant developers. Not trying to say, that it couldn't be free of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A long time ago, I was using racket at the largest hospital in Massachusetts analyzing DNA sequences of MS patients. I used racket to create a GUI that allowed non-technical biologists to create custom bioinformatics pipelines.

I found Racket to be great and highly productive. If you are looking to use racket at work I would recommend you look into working as a software engineer for academia.

If you are the only engineer around, you get to use any language that you want.

<comment><USER23> To just offer a possible contrary perspective: nobody else is around to tell you you're using the wrong tool for the job.

There's many fine options for each domain and yeah, you get the choice of them if there's no established languages. But be careful not to go off the deep end on using your favourite langauge for everything.

On small teams it becomes increasingly important to endeavour to objectively scrutinize your own choices as best as possible.

<comment><USER22> I agree with you, though being a lone developer sometimes allows you to be more flexible in the tools you use. At the hospital I used Racket, Haskell, C, and R. Because my programs didn't need to talk to each other, I was free to write each utility in what best suited the job. On a team I think there's a lot of pressure to just use what everyone else is using, which can lead to sub-optimal results.

<comment><USER24> Yes, but if the hospital ever needs to replace you they are SOL

<comment><USER22> Any developer worth their salt should be able to pick up a new language in a couple days. I'm not sure why some developers are so adverse to learning anything new.

<comment><USER25> This just isn't true. There is a reason people look for devs with years of experience in a certain stack.

<comment><USER22> At work we use Scala in a very functional style and Akka. Not a single dev on our team (including me) knew Scala when they started. Everyone was productive with the codebase and programmed idiomatically within a matter of weeks.

<comment><USER25> I imagine the team was familiar with writing Java, which makes moving to Scala the easiest possible language transition besides maybe a move from C# to VB.NET. Switching to a completely different ecosystem, such as to R, Racket, Haskell and C takes at least twice as long. And could be much longer if you're relying on large framework changes, for instance if you're switching from QT to GTK+ or WPF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Having discovered the TCL programming language because of a single person using it in a bioinformatic lab I can second the recommendation.

<comment><USER27> TCL/Tk is used heavily in finance/wall street.

<comment><USER28> It's used heavily at Intel, in hardware verification.

<comment><USER29> Virtually all EDA (electronic design automation) tools include a Tcl shell that echoes back any GUI action as a Tcl command. This makes it very easy to write Tcl scripts that perform repetitive actions (e.g., load HDL source, compile design, simulate, check value of signal).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Another programming language?

<comment><USER3> Racket is unlike many other programming languages, firstly it's a lisp. Secondly, it features a builtin language framework that allows you to seamlessly interop different languages through racket. Once you learn racket you realize that most other languages are just macros in racket, or a #lang in racket, and that their unique implementations are mostly quite wasteful, as they make interop hard.</comment></comment>


What will it take to get a robot to clean your home so you don't have to do it? - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602128/the-robot-you-want-most-is-far-from-reality/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=post <comment><USER2> The problem is not "I want a robot to clean my house", the problem is "Design a home that cleans itself".</comment>


The Myth of the Rule of Law - <AUTHOR> http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm

<comment><USER2> I almost didn't bother to read this because it sure as hell _looks_ like a crackpot tract, but I found a gem of a tl;dr in the third section:

 _Because the legal world is comprised of contradictory rules, there will be sound legal arguments available not only for the hypothesis one is investigating, but for other, competing hypotheses as well. The assumption that there is a unique, correct resolution, which serves so well in empirical investigations, leads one astray when dealing with legal matters._

which I think is an interesting perspective on legal matters. Contradictory assumptions mean that there's usually a bunch of different "right" answers, and which one you get is kindof a matter of luck of the draw.

On the other hand, I guess the whole point of precedent is to slowly whittle down the space of possible answers. If the law can't always be right, it can at least try to be consistent.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like you skimmed half the article and then formed an incomplete opinion based on what you think the article was probably about. Just read it! The author goes into great detail with good examples about what you're talking about.

<comment><USER2> After that point I decided it really _was_ too long and didn't read it. I skimmed the rest, it seems to get a bit silly and suggests we should have different legal systems for different people.

He then goes into an extremely extended analogy about how having one legal system for everybody is just like having one shoe size for everybody, which seems like a fairly flawed analogy.

I just skimmed it again in a bit more depth, and in the end he really doesn't seem to come up with any ideas about what it would _actually_ mean to "end the monopoly" of the single legal system which currently prevails, and certainly not with any ideas about how to overcome the huge inherent problems which you'd get if you implemented something like that (the most obvious one being that if my legal system says I'm right and yours says you're right then we're legally screwed).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article was as much of a paradigm shift for me as reading Stephen Kinsella's work on intellectual property (<http://mises.org/books/against.pdf>). In one essay the author is able to convince me my fundamental understanding of Law is flawed. What he proposes may be hard to realize in the short term but I think if we move back towards States' rights and local rights we will be moving in the right direction.

<comment><USER5> The two thirds of the article that exposes the "rule of law" as the antithesis of a consistent logical system is quite useful. I think it accurately portrays the reality.

The author appears to hold the pre-eminence of property rights over competing rights. The result is an extremely polarized economic system. Medieval feudalism as a model legal system? Yet, we appear to be trending in that direction. When property rights take precedence, then the holders of property buy the "legal" outcomes they want, and they buy the "law enforcement" they want, and they buy the "laws" they want. Such is the author's proposal to remedy the current unrealistic expectations.

The free market proposed by Adam Smith in "The Wealth of Nations" was premised explicitly on a consistent, logical system of moral (God's) law, enforced by the Church (a.k.a. the state - far less distinct at the time). Without that premise - and the article's author takes care to destroy precisely that premise - the free market is destructive. Asymmetries in information and power create monopolies, bubbles and crashes.

So the law is inconsistent and illogical. It is good to remember this. It is good to remember that any large or long lived community can be shown to have betrayed its professed ideals. It is good to remember that historical ideals - our own as well as society's - have typically been superseded by better ones. Does that mean we should abandon those ideals, and let "the market" rule? I agree with Holmes, if only in this: "repose is not the destiny of man". Rather, one works to move toward the ideal; the failure to reach it means there is more work tomorrow. Peace, Justice and Freedom will not find a logically consistent incarnation in our lifetimes nor in our children's, yet the work must continue.

<comment><USER6> I don't really think he (or much of anyone) really holds "the pre-eminence of property rights over competing rights". This is a common "attack" many liberals make against libertarian arguments and have been thinking about it for some time. What I think is really happening, and that appears to be a favoring of property over other rights, is that property rights can be more clearly and positively assessed as to whether or not they have actually been violated; so a "maybe yes-maybe no" decision on a speech issue, may clearly and positively be a violation on a property issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article is very well-written and worth a read regardless of whether or not you are an anarchist [1], as the author appears to be. The naive advocacy for a society without a government monopoly on force at the end of the article falls flat, though. I don't see a convincing argument in there against the natural assumption that such a society would be ruled by gang violence.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism>

<comment><USER8> Gang violence is just a microcosm of nation-states in conflict. Each gang has a monopoly on force within its own territory. One could argue that the monopoly of force is the only criteria necessary for something to be considered a 'government'.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, and I said as much in my comment. If you agree that there needs to be a territorial monopoly on force, the only thing you may disagree with is the extent of such territory. The United States is clearly too big a territory, with too diverse a people, to be ruled by a single monopoly, I suppose. But we tried ending that, it was called the Civil War.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The first half of the article, which makes the point that there are enough contradictions in law to allow for the deduction of any politically desirable conclusions, is quite compelling. I believe that most judges are rather moderate in this respect, and usually choose to interpret law in ways that are close to generally accepted social norms; but the observation that there is a very great deal of subjective discretion involved in this process, and that the social norms do change from century to century is very acute.

The second half is, by comparison, a let down. I happen to believe that the state needs to have a monopoly of force, in part because there are regions that have tried a free market in violence (such as contemporary Somalia and 4th century BC Ancient Greece) and it hasn't worked so well for them. And a monopoly of force necessarily implies a monopoly of legislative and judiciary functions to guide that force in a manner that is not too harmful to the rest of society. It's no wonder the author waffles when confronted with the question of what market-based law would look like - it's simply a concept that can't be defined too precisely without making it look completely unpractical to even the most unbiased reader.

<comment><USER10> I wholeheartedly agree with your summery.

I was absolutely fascinated by the first part; such a shame, the author wasn't able to apply its point to his own suggestion: Whether the law is made by one body or by many -- it will remain an authority, a government made by people, used to impose one set of values to other people, and open to misuse.

His blind faith in free markets seems to have clouded his judgment.

Counter-examples to his free market for laws are easy to find. Sharia laws in Britain are just one example. Women are hardly 'free enough' to voluntarily accept its authority. What about children: Can they voluntarily accept the authority of a certain court? According to the cases of child indoctrination and abuse by crazy religious parents, priests, and schools, not so much.

Markets fail rather often (depending on the definition of failure). Shoes are a perfect example of a free market that somehow 'works', but is inherently inefficient in many regards. One just needs to try to find a shoe that (a) fits, (b) is subjectively good looking, and (c) priced fairly. Now imagine one would additionally need to look for (d) an acceptable court for clearing disputes!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Excellent, mind-opening article.

Still reading, but I disagree with this point:

 _If your response to question two was "False," you chose to interpret the word "Congress" to refer to the President of the United States and the word "law" to refer to an executive order._

Wrong. I chose False because the executive branch's job is to enforce the law, and the President cannot issue an order to enforce a law that does not exist.

He still got me with many of the other questions though. This is quality stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> >I chose False because the executive branch's job is to enforce the law, and the President cannot issue an order to enforce a law that does not exist.

While correct, your choice is not based on "your personal understanding of [that] sentence's meaning", but on "your knowledge of constitutional law". The restriction of scope is critical to the point being made.

<comment><USER11> I have a lot of trouble seeing the difference between my "personal understanding of [that] sentence's meaning" and my "knowledge of constitutional law".

Sure, I'm free to define words any way I want – but that's not how society works, that's not how law works. There are necessarily mechanisms to arrive at common definitions, in everyday life and in the legal system. The common definition of "executive order" – which, obviously, comes packed with information about constitutional law – clearly states that executive orders are severely limited in their scope.

That's the definition of "executive order" I'm carrying around in my head and it is flat out impossible for me to divorce that definition from my understanding of constitutional law. I also can't divorce my understanding of the word "standing" from what I know about gravity. It's nonsensical.

<comment><AUTHOR> >The common definition of "executive order" ...

But neither the President, nor executive orders are mentioned in the First Amendment, which was the subject of the question at hand. The issue was not whether something is un/constitutional, but whether something is un/constitutional _by dint of the First Amendment_.

The eagerness with which some wish to skip beyond that scope is interesting.

<comment><USER11> Ah, so the author cleverly toys with the readers' understandable confusion when encountering the question. That's not really a convincing argument but very clever.

If I make that one sentence from the First Amendment into the sole law of the land there is no confusion at all. The president is obviously allowed to ban speech with executive orders. Why would anyone disagree with that?

This is the setup of the Gedankenexperiment and since it is quite weird it is very understandable that many people would misunderstand it, especially since he is not very clear about that setup. I took it to mean that I'm supposed to interpret that sentence within the framework of US law but somehow without my understanding of constitutional law. That's obviously impossible.

It's a nice rhetoric trick but certainly no argument. Differences in interpretation obviously matter but the example he picked is complete rubbish and certainly exaggerates the problem in a completely dishonest way.

<comment><USER11> Ataggart, your response to me is for some reason dead.

I don't think that the author is very clear at all. He is deliberately misleading. That sentence is clear as mist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Still reading, but I love the easter egg reference to Paper Chase (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070509>)

</comment><comment><USER13> > In the real world, people usually attempt to solve problems by forming > hypotheses and then testing them against the facts as they know them

No, that's how people usually attempt to solve problems in some world that is mostly populated by scientists. It has little connection to the real world.

As far as the law goes, at least the common law and case law, one important thing to keep in mind is that when a problem gets to court you are basically in what in programming terms would be an exception handler. Something has ALREADY gone wrong, and it is often a foregone conclusion that someone is going to get screwed--the law is just trying to determine who to screw the least. You can often only try to minimize injustice, instead of providing justice.

For example, there is a case in contracts that involves a sale of cotton. A buyer entered into a contract with a seller for 125 bales of cotton that would be arriving in England from India aboard the ship Peerless.

Unfortunately, it turned out that there were two British ships named Peerless, both used for shipping between India and England. Neither party knew that there were two ships, and it turned out they were each thinking of a different Peerless when they made the contract. One Peerless was sailing in October from India, and the other in December.

Accordingly, the cotton arrived in England at a time when the buyer was not prepared to receive it. The parties could not agree on what to do with the cotton, and a lawsuit ensued. Someone has to get screwed here, and no one is clearly wrong.

The court decided to screw the seller.

Another example. Three men go out hunting for birds. As they cross a field, two of the men go to one side and the third goes to the other side of the field. A bird flies up in the middle of the field. The first group of two men fires on it. One of them gets the bird, and one gets the third hunter. This was before the days of fancy ballistics tests. Both men swear they were the one that got the bird, and there is no way to tell which actually got the bird.

The third hunter sues. Each of the defendants raises the perfectly reasonable defense that there's no proof that he caused any injury at all to the plaintiff, and in fact insists it was the other defendant who missed the bird.

If plaintiff wins, one of the defendants is screwed because one of the defendants in fact did not shoot the plaintiff. If the defendants win, plaintiff is screwed.

I don't recall for sure, but I believe the plaintiff won. The reasoning, I believe, was something like this. One of the defendants negligently shot the plaintiff. The other did not, but he shot in the direction of the plaintiff at the same time. That was negligent--he only didn't shoot the plaintiff because the bird took the bullet. Furthermore, if he had not been negligently firing his gun at the same time the other defendant was shooting the plaintiff, there would be no ambiguity as to who shot the plaintiff and so this defendant's actions are responsible for us not knowing who shot the plaintiff. Accordingly, it is justifiable to hold them both responsible.

</comment><comment><USER14> Certainly interesting, and I'm having trouble, as the author suggests I might, imagining what he proposes.

It seems to me, though, that the state he describes--free market law--predates (as he sort of points out) currently prevalent systems. So doesn't the fact that all current major systems are ones of centralized legal authority suggest that that actually works better?

<comment><USER15> I think that the problem may be the other way around: it's hard to imagine his system because it's exactly the system that we're living under. There's United Nations lists 192 legal systems from which to choose. The only remaining question is whether this market is free. There's certainly outside regulatory pressure. Startups are a possibility (e.g. Tunsia, Libya), although there can be high barriers to entry (just like trying to move into the cable market). Not every country will grant you citizenship, but not every bank will loan you money. Leaving your nation can be difficult, but termination clauses are fairly common. Let me know if I'm missing something, but the market for legal systems would seem to be the least regulated market in existence.

<comment><USER16> It is actually _insanely_ hard to change states, even if you take away all the human choice factors and pick a robotic subject that simply optimises for personal choice without regard to family, friends, ties to community etc.

All permanent migration is hard by design, some of it is harder than others, but even in the optimal case it's not easy. Further, although there may be 192 legal systems from which to choose, they simply are not _that_ different at the end of the day in most ways.

The reason governments can afford to be so terribly inefficient is because they are the ultimate natural monopoly, and most people don't realise just how locked down they really are. When you actually make the decision to leave the nation of your birth and go some place else that suits you better it becomes abundantly clear that this is nowhere near as simple as it sounds.

<comment><USER15> I apologize if it came across unappreciative of the difficulties involved in emigration. Instead, I simply see the difficulties of migration being just as difficult under the author's proposed system. For the author's proposal, if we don't have a meta-legal system to prevent the various legal systems from trapping their customers, it seems that the new legal systems would use the same tactics that the governments use right now. It's so much easier than actually competing.

<comment><USER16> I guess it depends on the implementation details of the proposed system, the author is a libertarian (he talks at length of this in his other publications) so he may well have some very radical ideas on exactly how this could be accomplished, seasteading is the first that springs to mind, but I'm sure there are others.

It may also be simply an instance of order vendors so to speak, the government as the party with monopoly of force maintains a wholesale on order so to speak, but there are many many resellers within a market that expand on that based on various values and require their adherents to hold to various responsibilities in return for various rights, to greater or lesser extents.

If you could argue that this is a system which would extract more value from the governed population than the current one, then it does seem to be something of a self fulfilling prophecy that this ought eventually be implemented in some fashion. Of course, that's in question at any rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Article as told by a Jewish author:

"Readers of this column may have heard the Jewish joke about the rabbi who is asked to settle a dispute. After listening to one side's argument, the rabbi declares, "You're right!" After listening the other side's argument, the rabbi nods and says, "You're right, too." His wife, who is listening, declares, exasperated, "Rabbi, this is absurd! They can't both be right!" The rabbi sighs and replies sadly, "You're also right!""

Article as told by a psychologist:

"Lots of couples who are in the habit of fighting with each other, are mostly troubled by the eternal question: which one of us is right?

Often they will go to a therapist to find that out. Their hope is that in the therapist's clinic, their justice will finally come to light.

The good news are that it often does. The bad news are that in most cases, the partner turns out to be right, too…"

Article as told by a professor:

<http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm>

</comment><comment><USER18> > If a provision as clearly drafted as [the First Amendment] may be subjected > to political interpretation, what legal provision may not be?

It's not clearly drafted at all, nor "the clearest, most definite legal language"; the term "freedom of speech" is quite vague (insofar as it isn't interpreted _literally_ , voice only, no writing, which certainly wasn't the intent), but there's no reason a law couldn't be written that specified in great detail what sort of activity is protected and what is not. It's just that we'd have to frequently amend such a law to account for changing mores, which is currently done on a more case by case basis.

> The very notion of a free market in legal services conjures up the image of > anarchic gang warfare or rule by organized crime.

Are they not examples of such a market?

> One advocates a free market not because of some moral imprimatur written > across the heavens, but because it is impossible for human beings to amass > the knowledge of local conditions and the predictive capacity necessary to > effectively organize economic relationships among millions of individuals.

This kind of hand-waving is usually used to justify the idea that the free market works best with as little regulation as possible. Unfortunately, the prevalence of harmful monopolies in history suggests that this is not true; state regulation is necessary.

> Although I am tempted to give this response, I never do.

You just did.

> This is because, although true, it never persuades. Instead, it is usually > interpreted as an appeal for blind faith in the free market[...]

This is a somewhat disingenuous way of avoiding the point.

> A final example may be supplied by the many commercial enterprises that > voluntarily opt out of the state judicial system by writing clauses in their > contracts that require disputes to be settled through binding arbitration or > mediation rather than through a lawsuit. In this vein, the variegated > "legal" procedures that have recently been assigned the sobriquet of > Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) do a good job of suggesting what a free > market in legal service might be like.

It's a good time for this to come up, because AT&T and their contract requiring each defrauded customer to negotiate individually is a pretty good example of how private justice can be perverted. What if similar practices were allowed in _criminal_ law?

> In disputes over consumer contracts, the parties might well be satisfied > with the current system of litigation in which the parties present their > cases to an impartial judge or jury who renders a verdict for one side or > the other.

The consumers would be and the corporations would not. Guess who has more bargaining power?

</comment><comment><USER19> The medical hypothetical (the doctor who golfed) is nonsense on real world grounds: The physician would have been on-call, and would have had a contract _with the hospital_ stipulating the precise terms of her work and so on. If she failed to take the call, she would be in violation of that contract and the hospital would not be happy.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is laughable libertarian trash. Without a central authority, humanity would revert back to the animals that we are. The author of this piece should go back to licking Ron Paul's boots.

<comment><USER4> I think you missed the point.

<comment><USER2> Forget it, he's trolling.

<comment><USER17> Boon!?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> He almost had me, until he quoted Oliver Wendell Holmes _favorably_</comment>


Draft: Making Container Development on Kubernetes Easy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kubernetes.io/2017/05/draft-kubernetes-container-development.html <comment><USER2> I'm medium-convinced that Kubernetes will take over the world as soon as someone makes it trivially easy to do k8s dev on a MacBook. Looks like this could get there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Impressive. We've been steadfastly trying to move away from dev-environments- in-the-cloud (cost minifying) but here's a clean, abstracted way to pull it off without the same VM overhead.

Curious how you would handle a) making sure those dev pods die off, and b) collisions between multiple devs working on the same project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Disclosure: lead eng for azure containers and kubernetes founder here...

a) For the longest time, I've wanted a "TTL" extension for Kubernetes objects, maybe this is a good excuse to build it. But concretely, since you are paying for the VMs in the cluster (IaaS) the Pods you deploy are "free" (until you run out of cluster capacity, of course)

b) The right way to do this is Kubernetes namespaces. You can specify a different Namespace in each user's draft config file that will place each developer's containers in a different namespace.

Now that I write that, though, that seems like too much work. We should probably automagically build a unique namespace for you...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anything about .net core support?</comment>


Hat Backup – Back-end-agnostic snapshotting backup system written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/hat-backup

<comment><USER2> > Disclaimer: This is not an official Google product.

All the same, a Rust project in the Google github account... very very interesting considering they've been dogfooding golang quite a bit.</comment>


Startup Quote: Paul Graham, co-founder, Y Combinator - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/5046494320

<comment><AUTHOR> When you're forced to be simple, you're forced to face the real problem.

\- Paul Graham (@paulg)

<http://startupquote.com/post/5046494320></comment>


What Startups can learn from the Mayans - <AUTHOR>

Well I am not an expert here but keeping into consideration the buzz about the Mayans and their predictions I have come up with this list of few interesting things. This is just for fun but who knows it might help some of you. Feel free to add more lessons learnt and have a safe 12-21-12.
Mayans were extremely confident and precise in their astronomy and that's the reason they have predicted that the World will come to an end on 21st Dec 2012.
Lesson learnt: If you believe in your product then sell it with conviction.
We came to know about the Mayans and their predictions by watching and listening to famous astronomers, geologists and archaeologists who were having full faith in what Mayans have predicted.
Lesson learnt: A good product is not only conspicuous to the VC but proper marketing also plays an important role in introducing the product to the World.
With some comfort now I can say that the myth of 21st Dec is almost over, but we have to wait for another scary prediction and who knows it might be better than the one what Mayans have predicted.
Lesson learnt: Prepare for the failure. No matter how awesome is your product, there are always chances someone might come up with a better one. <comment><USER2> please provide some background on who these famous astronomers, geologists and archaeologists who had full faith in what Mayans have predicted.</comment>


Taking a Stroll Between the Pixels - <AUTHOR> https://blog.demofox.org/2018/04/23/taking-a-stroll-between-the-pixels/ <comment><USER2> Very cool. Would be amazing to get performance numbers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear you. It's hard to know what a good benchmark would be. Do you have any ideas for what you'd like to see measured and possibly what it's compared against?</comment></comment>


Y Combinator Challenge #10 - Auctions - <AUTHOR> http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/y-combinator-challenge-10-auctions-celebrity-guest-post/ <comment><USER2> There are already eBay iPhone apps.(not sure if you can list items, but you can def bid/watch).

<comment><USER3> It's more geared towards the consumer than the seller. It doesn't do any of the things I suggested for the startup. Specifically, streamlining the auction process by allow you to create auctions on the fly.

But this isn't my golden idea, and hopefully eBay DOES implement these features into the iPhone app. I think that'd make life a lot easier for me.

<comment><USER2> ah then that idea has already been done too. Was like a year ago, don't remember if it was a standalone site or one that piggy backed on craigslist

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Using twitter (or similar) seems to a popular theme in the solutions.</comment>


Why industry is going green on the quiet - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/sep/08/producers-keep-sustainable-practices-secret <comment><USER2> This article seems to conflate _organic farming_ with _sustainability_.

Organic farming resorts only to non-synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Unless these are provably bad, in which case some synthetic substances are allowed.

It feels awkward having to state, in the most technological age mankind has seen, that the divide between organic and synthetic is not the same as the one between sustainable and unsustainable, nor between safe and unsafe for human beings.

I suspect one of the Portuguese wineries mentioned in the article to be Esporão, that has recently converted to Organic Farming. This was not, coincidently, done in a inconspicuous way, but rather publicized by corporate PR in sustainable farming venues, rather disingenuously I should say.[1][2]

On one occasion, and for lack of time for QnA, I didn't get the opportunity to ask a very simple question:

\- Once engaged in Organic Farming, a farmer is limited in the range of permissible practices, and synthetic pesticides are off limits. On the other hand, if engaged in Integrated Farming, a well known farming standard in the EU, _a farmer can still proceed according to the precepts of Organic Farming_ if one so chooses. Why, then, is that company committed to Organic Farming?

I suspect the reason is the possibility of labelling their products as such.[3] Marketing - not love for the environment - is behind the move.

So regarding the headline question, soft PR avoids the accusation of greenwashing in a world of corporate virtue signalling.

[1] [https://www.esporao.com/en/](https://www.esporao.com/en/)

[2] Search results for organic farming: [https://www.esporao.com/en/?s=organic+farming](https://www.esporao.com/en/?s=organic+farming)

[3] Example of label: [https://www.esporao.com/en/olive-oil/organic-olive- oil-2017/](https://www.esporao.com/en/olive-oil/organic-olive-oil-2017/)

<comment><USER3> The article is not conflating organic farming with sustainability.

It's citing a specific example where a company switched to organic farming because it was more sustainable, specifically making the soil more sustainable.

<comment><USER4> It is conflating the two. For example, the paragraph starting with:

> This phenomenon is not limited to the clothing industry. The UK organic > groceries market has been expanding steadily for the past eight years.

Without any explanation given of how this relates to sustainability, they imply that the relationship between organic and sustainable is obvious. That looks like conflation to me.

<comment><USER3> Except that isn't doing that either.

The this here refers to "whereby innovations are silently enacted and kept from the rest of the industry" which is not sustainability. Further, it calls this practice "secret sustainability" and the article itself encloses it in quotes indicating it's using this term out of convenience, and that it's not actually a precise term.

The use of quotes around secret sustainability is the article explicitly pointing out that it does not consider this an accurate term, and is using it extremely loosely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is what bothers me about organic farming:

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science- sushi/httpblogs...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science- sushi/httpblogsscientificamericancomscience- sushi20110718mythbusting-101-organic-farming-conventional-agriculture/)

> What makes organic farming different, then? It's not the use of pesticides, > it's the origin of the pesticides used. Organic pesticides are those that > are derived from natural sources and processed lightly if at all before use. > This is different than the current pesticides used by conventional > agriculture, which are generally synthetic. It has been assumed for years > that pesticides that occur naturally (in certain plants, for example) are > somehow better for us and the environment than those that have been created > by man. As more research is done into their toxicity, however, this simply > isn't true, either. Many natural pesticides have been found to be potential > - or serious - health risks.2

> Not only are organic pesticides not safe, they might actually be worse than > the ones used by the conventional agriculture industry. Canadian scientists > pitted 'reduced-risk' organic and synthetic pesticides against each other in > controlling a problematic pest, the soybean aphid. They found that not only > were the synthetic pesticides more effective means of control, the organic > pesticides were more ecologically damaging, including causing higher > mortality in other, non-target species like the aphid's predators

This means organic farms cannot use a modern pesticide even when that pesticide is known to be safer, more efficient or more sustainable, purely on the grounds that it isn't a "natural" pesticide. That's pseudoscience.

Sustainable farming should be based on science and facts. Instead, farmers are following arbitrary organic farming rules so they can label their produce as "organic" and charge more. I want a system where the most sustainable farming approaches are encouraged (e.g. via taxes, better labelling) instead of being held back by the "organic" label.

<comment><USER6> All "organic" farming has achieved is taking word that had a particular meaning, and removed any trace of that meaning. What does "organic" mean? Well it certainly no longer means organic. It also doesn't refer to a set of more "natural" farming principles. Depending on who you ask, each certifying body will have their own unique definition that amounts to hundreds of pages of regulations. "Organic" is equally as meaningless and nonsensical as "chemical free".

<comment><USER7> >Depending on who you ask, each certifying body will have their own unique definition that amounts to hundreds of pages of regulations. "Organic" is equally as meaningless and nonsensical as "chemical free".

That's not accurate in the United States. All the organic certifying bodies are required to apply the same rules.

>§205.501 General requirements for accreditation. (a) A private or governmental entity accredited as a certifying agent under this subpart must:

(1) Have sufficient expertise in organic production or handling techniques to fully comply with and implement the terms and conditions of the organic certification program established under the Act and the regulations in this part;

(2) Demonstrate the ability to fully comply with the requirements for accreditation set forth in this subpart;

(3) Carry out the provisions of the Act and the regulations in this part, including the provisions of §§205.402 through 205.406 and §205.670;

[0][https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text- idx?SID=d2567878d0b94a88ef...](https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text- idx?SID=d2567878d0b94a88ef69dbb5d11f493d&mc=true&node=se7.3.205_1501&rgn=div8)

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure what you think you've proven here. The USDA has its own unique, long winded definition, so does the EU, and so do many other countries, and private organisations.

In this context the world has no relation at all to its original meaning, it cannot possibly be concisely defined, as the only way to define it is with an exhaustive set of rules and regulations, and has no consistent meaning, because you can only talk about it in the context of the rules and regulations defined by one of many organisations at a time.

<comment><USER7> >The USDA has its own unique, long winded definition, so does the EU, and so do many other countries, and private organisations.

It's not "hundreds of pages" as you originally claimed, and the interpretation does not vary substantially among certification bodies, as you implied.

Supposing _arguendo_ that there are major differences between the definitions in the US, EU, and elsewhere, perhaps that is a feature, not a bug. Many other regulations are different from country to country, and to some degree that's the point of having different countries. Can you explain what the problem is?

>In this context the world has no relation at all to its original meaning, it cannot possibly be concisely defined, as the only way to define it is with an exhaustive set of rules and regulations, and has no consistent meaning, because you can only talk about it in the context of the rules and regulations defined by one of many organisations at a time.

The modern world (to include agricultural technology) _is indeed complex_ and consequently the laws reflect that. It's not that difficult for the professionals to understand the details, and while I agree that the handful of pages of regulations are a bit too much for the average consumer, that's the point of distilling them to a few principles and a regulated label. This way the consumer doesn't need to decipher fine print on every label if they want to be cautious and environmentally responsible with their purchases.

Do you have an alternative to the current system to suggest? As it stands it's pretty good for everyone. Firms that want to use modern biotech are able to do so, firms that want to hew a more cautious course are able to pursue organic certification, and consumers have a variety of products to choose from without being overburdened by complexity in an unfamiliar domain. There's always room for improvement, can you suggest a way to improve this system without disrupting things for all the current stakeholders (consumers, biotech producers, and organic producers)?

<comment><USER6> > It's not "hundreds of pages" as you originally claimed

The regulation itself is about 60 pages, and references numerous other regulations itself. It most certainly adds up to hundreds of pages of regulation. Not that that changes anything, usage of the word in this way still precludes the possibility of any sort of concise definition.

> and the interpretation does not vary substantially among certification > bodies, as you implied.

Then why are inter-jurisdiction equivalence programs so complex? Typically only including a short list of equivalent countries, with all other imports requiring recertification. Oh, except with USDA Organic. That doesn't have an equivalence program.

> Do you have an alternative to the current system to suggest?

Come up with a label that doesn't unduly prejudice consumers, and doesn't strip another word of its meaning. The word organic did used to have a very clear meaning before "organic" farming came about. If you were to ask an average consumer whether they knew their organic food was allowed to be treated with chemical pesticides and synthetic opioid painkillers, I bet they'd be pretty surprised by that.

GDPR is a complex set of regulations. People understand this when they talk about it, even if they don't understand all of the rules. Thankfully it's not called Privacy Certified, with a restriction preventing any non-certified business from using the word "privacy" to describe their product.

<comment><USER7> >The regulation itself is about 60 pages, and references numerous other regulations itself. It most certainly adds up to hundreds of pages of regulation. Not that that changes anything, usage of the word in this way still precludes the possibility of any sort of concise definition.

Most of those references are to other parts of the same document. As I said before, the world is complex, biotechnology is complex, and agriculture is complex. If you have any suggestions on what parts of the 60-odd pages are unnecessary or superfluous, feel free to share.

>Then why are inter-jurisdiction equivalence programs so complex? Typically only including a short list of equivalent countries, with all other imports requiring recertification. Oh, except with USDA Organic. That doesn't have an equivalence program.

The US does, in fact, have an equivalency program with the EU. [0] earlier you claimed that certification bodies had different, unique definitions. That's not true. Why is it complicated to meet the standards from different countries? Because you're meeting standards from different countries, stuff has to be legal to produce, legal to export, legal to ship, legal to import, and legal to sell. Lots of people think there is too much regulation in the modern world, perhaps you are one of them, can you suggest something constructive that meets the goals of the program?

>Come up with a label that doesn't unduly prejudice consumers

Can you show that consumers are unduly prejudiced by the current system?

>and doesn't strip another word of its meaning. The word organic did used to have a very clear meaning before "organic" farming came about.

"Organic" had several clear meanings and has not lost any, however it has gained another clear meaning and people who use it don't seem to see a problem.

>If you were to ask an average consumer whether they knew their organic food was allowed to be treated with chemical pesticides and synthetic opioid painkillers, I bet they'd be pretty surprised by that.

In general, they would be right to be surprised about the chemical pesticide and the synthetic opioid because 1) pests are systematically controlled with non-chemical means and 2) chemical pesticides and synthetic opioids are only permitted to be used as a last resort, when other means of controlling pesticides and ensuring the health and welfare of animals are found to be insufficient. Organic farmers are not permitted to routinely dope up their cattle or spray their crops. [1]

>GDPR is a complex set of regulations. People understand this when they talk about it, even if they don't understand all of the rules. Thankfully it's not called Privacy Certified, with a restriction preventing any non-certified business from using the word "privacy" to describe their product.

If people were generally mistaken about the way organic food is produced, I could agree with you that there was a problem. However most of the misinformation I see comes from people who are critical of the organic food program. I agree that the term isn't perfect, I had a person tell me "there's no difference between organic and inorganic food" and that was funny. But since there's not really any such thing as "inorganic food" I'm still not sure what problem you see with the term. It's not as though consumers of organic food are confused about the general principles. They buy organic food because they want to minimize their exposure to pesticides and to minimize their impact on the environment[2], organic regulations are written in order to achieve this goal while still permitting the producers to stay in business. If you want to criticize the organic program because it's not strict enough when it comes to limiting these substances, that's fine. But it already requires that the farmers use these substances as a last resort when other methods have failed, and the evidence suggests that it's effective at achieving the goals, at least to some degree. [3]

[0][https://www.usda-eu.org/trade-with-the-eu/trade- agreements/u...](https://www.usda-eu.org/trade-with-the-eu/trade- agreements/us-eu-organic-arrangement/)

[1][https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi- bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=f1419426e5...](https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi- bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=f1419426e53137792ace1bf1e1ec4481&mc=true&n=pt7.3.205&r=PART&ty=HTML#se7.3.205_1271) (See §205.238 Livestock health care practice standard, part (b) and §205.206 Crop pest, weed, and disease management practice standard, entire section)

[2][https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09503...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S095032930200188X)

[3][https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/ehp.8418](https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/ehp.8418)

[4][https://www.nature.com/articles/330370a0](https://www.nature.com/articles/330370a0)

[5][https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-...](https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-017-0315-4?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Newsletter_Dynamis_Novembre_2018&utm_medium=email)

<comment><USER6> > "Organic" had several clear meanings and has not lost any, however it has > gained another clear meaning and people who use it don't seem to see a > problem.

Well putting aside the fact that the new meaning is anything but clear, this is just demonstrably untrue. There's no such thing as an inorganic carrot, but you can not describe a carrot as being organic unless it is certified as such by the USDA (or whatever other certifying body), according to their unique criteria that have no relation at all to the carrots organicness.

> Can you show that consumers are unduly prejudiced by the current system?

Try googling a simple definition of "organic". Google will tell you "produced or involving production without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or other artificial chemicals." Everything about that definition is false according to any organic certification program (regardless of what you think an "artificial chemical" is...)

<comment><USER8> "Organic" with respect to agricultural goods is a term of art defined by law.

"Inorganic" is not a legally defined term with respect to agricultural goods, nor is it a scientifically meaningful term because carrots are made of organic materials (as "organic" is used scientifically). Thus, calling a food product "inorganic carrot" would either be fraudulent or deceptive under US and EU laws.

On the other hand, it is possible to have a "meat carrot" like Arby's did this summer, which consisted of carrot-shaped meat.

And it's certainly possible to have an iron carrot or a plastic carrot. Just not as a food product.

Context matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Consumers seem to believe that products cannot become more sustainable without becoming more expensive."

This unfortunately prevalent belief is extremely destructive. If people believe it must cost money to be environmentally friendly, then they will not be motivated to look for profit from actions that have a net positive impact on the environment. And that means the entire motivation to make money, which drives business and most of the economy, is largely absent from the range of serious problems we label as "environmental".

Luckily some people (like the ones in this article) see through this myth to find profit from this collective blind spot.

<comment><USER10> The key is better education. Without this, _all_ we others do to try and save the world climate from extinguishing human life is made moot.

<comment><USER11> It will never extinguish. Maybe kill most humans, not all humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm surprised "spite" isn't mentioned as a reason, a lot of people see a "green" label and deliberately choose something else in an act of rebellion.

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/04/13043...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/04/130430-light- bulb-labeling/)

>Green labeling causes some consumers to shun energy-efficient light bulbs even when they know the choice could save them money, a new study finds.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/business/energy- environme...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/business/energy- environment/rolling-coal-in-diesel-trucks-to-rebel-and-provoke.html)

>"Why don't you go live in Sweden and get the heck out of our country," Mr. Blue wrote." I will continue to roll coal anytime I feel like and fog your stupid eco-cars."

<comment><USER10> >"Why don't you go live in Sweden and get the heck out of our country," Mr. Blue wrote." I will continue to roll coal anytime I feel like and fog your stupid eco-cars."

Good grace. Maybe the Soviets _did_ have a point with reeducation camps. Sarcasm aside, we as societies desperately need to come up with ways to cope with such people. Being as dense as rocks isn't criminal, but harming others as a result of that should be severely punished (and same goes for antivaxxers and abstinence-only ideology).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Negative externalities should be taxed, so companies optimize for "green" by default.

<comment><USER14> Politics is all about hitting the right shade of gray; however if we follow the logic there all the way through we'd tax negative externalities and subsidise positive externalities; likely leading to a massive subsidy for fossil fuels. I know 'tax them!' is probably something of the realistic compromise solution but that justification has more holes than Swiss cheese.

Taxing the externalities also suggests we know how to measure how bad they are in some quantitative way and it is commonly accepted knowledge that the political process can implement in a law. Both of those assumptions are incorrect.

I'm basically arguing for 'tax them because we don't like this specific type of pollution' rather than trying to generalise into vague language. The generalisation doesn't hold.

<comment><USER15> How on earth would that result in subsidy for fossil fuels? What positive externalities do they produce?

<comment><USER14> On net; most of modern civilisation. China didn't have a hope of bootstrapping themselves using wind power. The energy harvested by mining and burning fossil fuels enables outrageous amounts of good. Nobody talks about it because it is too pervasive.

If we blanket banned fossil fuels tomorrow; there would be a few billion dollars in losses to the producers. That would be the ... I don't recall what the opposite of an externality is. Internality, say. The extrenalities would be the collapse of a bunch of things that depend on fossil fuels, like cheap transport.

<comment><USER16> I think the broad point is correct (fossil fuels are a net positive, compared to the gruesome alternative), but I wouldn't say they have net positive _externalities_. This is a critical distinction. The positive effects of fossil fuels are mostly paid for; some important negative effects are not. As a result, fossil fuels are used more than they should be.

Slightly pithier: fossil fuels _currently_ have massive subsidies --- from all the people who pay for them! It's just that that isn't what `subsidy' is usually taken to mean.

<comment><USER14> I'm pretty confident on the point here. For a specific example, the Haber process [0] consumes quite a significant amount of natural gas. That and the logistics network of moving the food around is all fossil fuels. If we cut fossil fuels out, and food prices rise the damage goes a bit beyond the measurable short-term economic impact.

If the cost of a sea level rise destroying a small island nation is a negative externality, then enabling population growth in a large city (without food riots) is a positive externality. An extrenality is just an impact that goes beyond the immediate buyer and seller; most of the value chain is an externality to a fossil fuel provider who was to be targeted by this hypothetical tax.

The argument in essence is that cheap abundant energy always has a bigger positive impact than a first order approximation would suggest. Pretty much the entire industrial revolution was a long chain of "wow, coal is enabling stuff we never imagined" that was certainly not value being directly captured in the buying and selling the miners were doing. The oil & coal companies aren't capturing very much of the value vs what is created.

I mean, seriously, nobody can argue that fossil fuels haven't enabled civilisation to move from the 1800s to 2019. In a very practical sense they are the enabler of everything we have; there wouldn't be any positive externalities without them. Fossil fuels, crops, wood, iron & a few other metals are the setup materials for all of it.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_env...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_environmental_aspects)

<comment><USER17> So, your argument then is that if we ignore all but the least significant negative externalities of fossil fuels, then fossil fuels have mostly positive externalities? Is that a fair summary?

<comment><USER14> The argument is that "we should tax externalities" is an intellectually lazy justification because it includes costs but not benefits. People should find a better one. We've never used fossil fuels because people have a political love of fossil fuels; we use them because they enable great works.

My line is that we should either use the cheapest energy (before any government efforts to pick a winner) or nuclear as the most technically excellent energy source.

<comment><USER18> I don't see the argument. The benefits of fossil fuels are fully accounted for by the free market. The reason why taxing the negative externalities is necessary is because the free market doesn't account for the negative externalities.

> it includes costs but not benefits

This is completely illogical because the benefits have always been included and nothing can change that other than a complete ban of fossil fuels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> open-source-ux _" Consumers seem to believe that products cannot become more sustainable without becoming more expensive."_

This belief is borne out somewhat when you visit a supermarket. Products labelled 'green' are often more expensive than 'non-green' products. Is it mostly 'green-washing'? I don't know but it does reinforce the belief that 'green' products command a premium price. Example brands that fit this perception: Ecover or Method.

As far as organic fruit and vegetables go, the cost of these varies in the UK depending on the produce. Organic mushrooms are often the same price as non- organic mushrooms in many supermarkets. Some organic produce can be a little bit more expensive (e.g. onions) and other produce can be twice as expensive as non-organic (e.g. leeks). But being non-organic doesn't mean unsustainable.

<comment><USER19> It's not green-washing, IMO it's mostly fleecing the more naive and anti- science parts of the population. Not much different than the related area of "natural" dietary supplements - it doesn't have to work or be any different than regular products, but if it's made entirely from some plant that is "known" to "remove ""toxins""", you can sell it at a premium and a lot of people will buy it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> All of this seems quite counter-inuitive to me:

      "Instead of buying pesticides and artificial fertilisers, they have invested heavily in labour and technology."

but also:

      "They hadn't increased the cost of making wine as they shifted to organic practice"

As far as the article goes, these are just claims with no evidence. I hardly imagine any solution that could maintain price and provide "sustainability".

<comment><USER21> It's a submarine PR ad, ironically denying its own PR nature.

<comment><USER22> Seems like it's not very effective PR, since the article doesn't even name any of the companies it's talking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In theory, economics and ecology are the same science. The fact that that's hard to see for a lot of people is the deeper ecological disaster of which the visible problems are symptoms. If we can "deprogram" our society from ignoring _basic_ problems (like pouring pollution into the air and water) the same drive and resourcefulness that brought us our modern prosperity will then adapt to do so without poisoning ourselves, eh?

Internalize the externalities and our system becomes sane.

</comment><comment><USER24> I didn't see anyone mentioning: alerting the competition.

Once a company has a proven and better solution, immediately has a competitive advantage over the rest in the industry. Why bother telling them how to get a 18% sustainable increase of your yield?

Try and take advantage as much and as far as you can, try to get far ahead, and enjoy the ride. And once the rest figure out what you've done, you have already matured and getting ready for leap #3 while they are still trying the leap #1.

<comment><USER25> > I didn't see anyone mentioning: alerting the competition

Oh huh! Did you read the article?

<comment> frosted-flakes The article does not include this point. Or if it does, I missed it.

<comment><USER25> It explicitly lists this as a point when providing examples of incorrect reasons "why industry is going green on the quiet."

> It refused, not because the innovations were trade secrets, or because it > risked losing a cost-saving competitive edge (due to cheap electricity > prices, the cost saving amounted to less than 1%)

<comment><USER26> > the cost saving amounted to less than 1%

The figure is doubly misleading:

* In a low margin business, 1% cost savings could easily be hugely increased profits. Toyota's profit is about 6% at the moment: changing to 7% would be significant. Many businesses have lower margins.

* "Less than 1%" is anywhere between 0% and 1%.

I would guess similar savings are being made by other manufacturers.

<comment><USER25> Perhaps - nonetheless, it isn't absent from the article

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is there a "climate label" somewhere in one country, based on climate impact (kgCO2eq), that has successfully been deployed to more than one product sold in supermarkets ?

E.g. Oatly's label but more independent and widespread [https://www.oatly.com/uk/climate-footprint](https://www.oatly.com/uk/climate- footprint)

</comment><comment> mark-r > This is despite an increase in evidence that actively investing in > sustainable practices helps business thrive. An example is provided by the > Dow Jones Sustainability Indices, a series of benchmarks assessing the > sustainability of companies around the world. Research has repeatedly shown > that those at the top end of the benchmark outperform those at the bottom.

Doesn't this just make sense? Companies that are innovative in one dimension of their business should be expected to be innovative in other areas too, with a corresponding impact on the bottom line.

</comment><comment><USER28> The "greenwashing" reason has to be the saddest aspect in my opinion. It is one thing to try not to offend regressive fools as a part of your market - they are already part of the problem. Similarly trying to not look like a marketing gimmick is understandable given the typical marketing strategy of emphasizing something irrelevant when lacking in quality and really the fault of marketers jading people.

But from those who want to help the environment? That is a sad combination of tall poppy syndrome and perfect the enemy of the good.

</comment><comment><USER29> Could there be a market for these sustainable technological/process improvements? I'm sure something in one industry could be mapped to another or even be directly applied. The benefit to society overall could be great, but economic benefits seem to be locally maximized (i.e. we're missing out of an entire industry/ies improving sustainability).

</comment><comment><USER30> There are at least two other factors:

1) most of these certifications come with large philosophical impact. You can't choose to be a "social impact only" B Corp, for example, you have to go all in on their philosophy on waste management too.

2) by not publicizing you reserve the option to switch grades/practices if necessary in the future.

</comment><comment><USER23> > He believes this stems from a common perception that there must be some kind > of downside to the introduction of sustainable practices: either a reduction > in product quality, or an increase in the price of manufacturing, or both.

There's an existing body of knowledge and practice for regenerative agriculture, or even productive "food forests" that are ecologically harmonious _and_ can supply the needs of billions (meaning we don't have to postulate mass starvation as a prerequisite of ecological food production.) (One school is called Permaculture (a portmanteau of PERMAnent agriCULTURE).)

If you're doing this right there is an increase in quality and yield and a decrease in cost.

But yeah, a lot of people don't get this.

There was a question the other day, "Does regenerative agriculture scale?"

Well, yes, of course it does, the clue is in the name.

Search on "Geoff Lawton Greening the Desert" for living examples of converting barren desert into flourishing farms. Each farm is then capable of supplying not only produce and meat but also the materials to perform the same transformation at another site. Obviously, this is exponential growth.

There is a way, we must have the will.

<comment><USER31> What I've seen bumping around this area is that the cost increase is in engagement.

I don't know any conventional farmers, and I don't know anyone who has known one in thirty years, so I can't tell you what sucks up their time all day. But I've heard reports it's a second job to keep the farm solvent. In a way, restoration agriculture is asking them to double down on the farm and hope it's profitable.

One of the louder voices in this space is known for compartmentalizing his operation by starting tons of LLCs that collaborate. He really enjoys that sort of thing (or it makes him feel safe) but this is a lot of responsibility on a few shoulders.

I don't think the import of what he's done will be appreciated until either his kid get old enough to take over from Pops, or he files bankruptcy for one of these LLCs due to an accident or a product recall.

<comment><USER23> My limited experience with local Permaculture farming here in CA is that the biggest challenge is reaching markets. Growing food here is pretty easy (such climate! wow) but getting that produce into the kitchens of the city-dwellers is expensive (compared to the economies of scale for big commercial outfits.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> If you tell me something is "environment friendly", I will immediately doubt the product quality. In my head, if your product was good by itself, you wouldn't try to emotionally guilt me into "going green".

<comment><USER33> Is there any credence to this, or is it just in your head? There is a lot that goes into earning the organic label from regulators, and it's highly correlated with doing things slowly, the old-fashioned way. So the _only_ way you can beat non-organic produce is with quality.

<comment><USER34> Lots of people buy organic on principle, so those are automatic customers regardless of quality. Many other people buy organic for quality, but that doesn't actually require quality, merely the perception of it. For a lot of people, the "organic" label is enough to create that perception.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Let's not forget the far-right Aus government, which targets companies and technologies it considers on the wrong site of its superstitious culture war against sustainability.

</comment><comment><USER36> This seems to be the natural progression of things. As technology gets better, people adopt the technology because it makes their lives better and their businesses easier to run.

20 years ago, it was impossible to monitor your crops with drones and sensors and software. All you could do was dust it with pesticides band fertilizer and hope. Now that we have a better alternative, people use that.

It's not about being "sustainable", it's just what makes financial sense. That winery now needs to buy less fertilizer and gets a better yeild.

<comment><USER20> Except this is thanks to the energy peak we're living in ([https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary- energy](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy)). Take out crude oil, natural gas and coal, and most of these luxuries are gone. We'll be lucky if we manage to keep HN running.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> When I saw a label of organic, I immediately assume it's over-priced fraud product. To me, it's same as those stupid product which claims magical cure for cancer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why fraud? Organic is certifying different, but clearly defined production and husbandry standards. You have to meet EU, USDA etc requirements before you can legally use the term organic. It's a worthwhile indicator of less excess in farming, and a marked step up from the many, often dubious, self-certification schemes and logos.

Whether you prefer the flavour, or think the restrictions of organic are necessary or not, or don't go far enough are another matter.

<comment><USER38> USDA struggles to enforce the labeling standard for organic items. Fraud is rampant and they don't have the ability to enforce it fast enough.

[https://newfoodeconomy.org/organic-food-fraud-usda-doj- randy...](https://newfoodeconomy.org/organic-food-fraud-usda-doj-randy- constant/) This was a case just last month. $142 million in false organic grain over 7 years that was shipped as feed to animals later sold as organic.

<comment><AUTHOR> USDA has, I think, just about the weakest definition of organic globally. I can't say I'm surprised to find some fraud in the system, given all we know of the rest of US agriculture. _Clearly_ better enforcement is required, as is a tighter definition of the standard. Even so, it still seems to be the highest US enforced certification available, so remains the best indicator of production and animal treatment a US consumer has, for all its flaws and inadequacy.

Thankfully the EU is doing better, though that may well change markedly for the worse here in the UK after Brexit. Especially if the much mooted, and one- sided UK-US trade deal is made real, not just mythical rainbows and unicorns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's fascinating how the backlash and the anger towards organic run deep in the US and on HN.

The first time I noticed that was ten or 15 years ago when some 20-something on a train ride were complaining about how the green party was everywhere (they had just peaked at 15% in the previous election) and how soon we'll be obliged to eat green, to drink green coke, that everything is going to be organic, etc.

It was a weird mix of "i don't want to admit they are right so let just say anything bad about them" and... I don't know what. They are people in my work circle who voted for the far-right because they were "fed up with the climate campaign" (referring to the recent climate demonstrations). Like they would hold to any position to justify their own actions.

"It's the fault of environmental activists if we don't go green because they scared us too much and we didn't listen to them."

I think I see the same pattern in the anti organic arguments.

edit: Also, "they are making me feel guilty, so they are bad and manipulative". Sorry, there isn't much coherence to my post. Just my feelings.

<comment><USER40> The deontology (paper straws) and eschatology (the end is nigh) of some environmentalism smacks of religion to some. And, given that, the focus in state action incorporates many of the downsides of state adoption of religion, including sectarian bickering, a lack of grace, virtue signalling, and hypocrisy.

A reasonable response to those takes is "but this take on things happens to be _true_ ". That's fair, however that's the premise of the defense of basically every belief system.

<comment><USER41> A good amount of the uncertainties involved in climate science, though, can be laid directly at the feet of the Right, and how they've undermined and obstructed science for decades to enable their corporate donors to continue polluting the planet. Perfect example is when global warming was rebranded to climate change, largely by the Right, after which right-leaning politicians have spent every moment saying "See they had to change it from warming to change! They clearly don't know what they're talking about." Or that they've defunded departments showing the ample data on Climate Change, or instructed various departments to not use the language. Anything they can do to shut it down and make sure their corporate donors don't have to lose a minor bit of their bottom line to, oh I don't know, perpetuate the SPECIES a little longer.

IMHO such flagrant and destructive distortion of truth, especially with such an existential threat as Climate Change is, deserves some criminal charge on the order of Crimes Against Humanity. I've been watching this charade play out from inside Republican ranks for decades and whole thing makes me sick to my stomach.

<comment><USER42> I don't think it's true to say that the rebranding to "climate change" came from the right.

It came from academics who realized that saying "global warming" was confusing to people when the climate swung wildly from unusually hot to unusually cold. It takes some time and a willing listener to explain that "warming" means increased energy in the climate system, and therefore more dramatic swings between hot and cold weather.

Saying "global warming" also does nothing to communicate things like change in precipitation patterns.

Using the phrase "climate change" does a much better job of encompassing these phenomenon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> frosted-flakes There's definitely truth to the point that consumers might suspect poorer quality when eco-friendly labels are present.

When it comes to food, if I see two products on the shelf that are identical except that one is labelled "50% less salt" or "lite", I immediately come to the inclusion that the "healthier" one compromises taste for healthiness, leading me to select the "regular" product. Because why have two separate products otherwise?

Experience has definitely confirmed this for me. "Lite" pancake syrup (not maple) tastes noticeably worse than the regular stuff, and anything gluten- free that normally contains gluten, like bread, is typically disgusting in comparison to the normal product. (On the other hand, Cheerios cereal became gluten-free simply by changing the manufacturing or growing process to avoid cross-contamination, and that didn't bother me.)

</comment><comment><USER43> Being green used to be purely virtue signaling. The idea 'be the change you want to see' combined with (a few years ago) the higher costs of green products have lead to 'look what I am willing to sacrifice for the environment'. Once going green is no longer a sacrifice, it loses its value as virtue signaling. Moreover, as it used to be the case that green was more expensive, much of the marketing really focused on this virtue signaling. Because being green needed to be a unique selling point to make it worth it.

It seems like this perception of green hasn't caught up with reality yet. This also explains the (worry about) accusations of green-washing. If a company announces some green improvement in their products, people read that as virtue signaling. Then, when it comes out the company has not made green sacrifices elsewhere, that is seen as not virtuous. Problem is, their announcement was not 'we are making sacrifices to be green' but 'we made improvements that are green'. But that is not how people read such announcements.</comment>


Show HN: Turn your whiteboard photos into clean eligible pdf documents - <AUTHOR> http://www.unwhiteboard.com/

<comment><USER2> This looks great! My only question is can it be made into an app instead of a web service. A lot of times at work we have confidential info on whiteboards and (it's percieved) as secure if it's an app instead of a web service

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Yep I understand the privacy concern, and that people would feel more comfortable with an app. This was something I whipped up after seeing this post on HN a while back: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7520216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7520216). So I can't take credit for the conversion idea. I do not know enough about iOS or Android development to know if it would be possible to do the conversion on the device instead of server side. Will look in to it if there is enough response. Doesn't look like this one is rushing to the front page though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How long does it take to receive the pdf? It has been almost an hour and am still waiting on my email with pdf attached.

<comment><AUTHOR> Doh. There was an error with the sidekiq worker that processes the files. Sorry about that. I have fixed it and you should have now received the pdf. Usually it takes minutes.</comment></comment>


What if capitalism is obsolete? - <AUTHOR> It seems increasingly that if you are not an "elite" employee, region, nation, age-range, industry, etc., then you get left behind. Inequality is increasing and appears to be spreading to more factors.<p>Globalism and automation probably have something to do with it. It may just be a blip of history, OR what if this trend grows extreme? Society would be on a hair-trigger to collapse upon the next big recession. <comment><USER2> > if you are not an "elite" employee, region, nation, age-range, industry, > etc., then you get left behind

Do you? While it's technically correct that inequality is increasing the baseline level is increasing, too.

So, while an average person's wealth in comparison to the richest person's perhaps has decreased by orders of magnitude in recent decades at the same time globalization and capitalism not only helped with massively reducing poverty but also with increasing the number of people who - while not exactly rich - make a decent living.

They might be relatively poorer than their 1970s counterparts when compared with the richest people of their respective time periods but in absolute numbers or compared with the economy as a whole they're much better off.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think a lot of the pathology comes from having rootless multinational corporations that are largely unaccountable to neither man nor government.

Quigley once wrote that minting corporations with unlimited lifetimes and unlimited scopes of operation--from a historical perspective--is a completely new mistake.

The Intercept had this story a while back where Kerr-McGee was caught dumping creosote into the ground for decades, then the EPA goes and prosecutes the lab owner who blew the whistle. Kerr-McGee gets a fine. Lab owner who blew the whistle gets house arrest.

[https://theintercept.com/2016/11/25/did-the-epa-prosecute- an...](https://theintercept.com/2016/11/25/did-the-epa-prosecute-and-jail-a- mississippi-lab-owner-because-of-her-activism/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Many forget History. Especially since the fall of Berlin's Wall, capitalism went wild. The threat of communism disappeared. Beware the backlash. Capitalism is I believe the best way to move forward. We need to develop a more human capitalism. Profit must be share. Not just with investors, shareholders. We need to stop "maximization" profits by squeezing wages...lets aim to reasonable profits

<comment><AUTHOR> "Communism" and "capitalism" are not mutually exclusive. As I interpret the terms as usually used today, communism is mostly a political system while capitalism is an economic system. As China and Singapore show, (mostly) capitalism and totalitarianism can exist in the same country. Similarly, "democracy" and "capitalism" can be independent things. But I realize the terms are not so clear cut: history shuffled things since they were coined.

<comment><USER4> Yes today "Communism" and "capitalism" are not mutually exclusive. I was referring of the general understanding of communisn as an economic and political system. Indeed I believe-correct me if I'm wrong- China gradually buried the economic side in the early eighties with Deng Xioping. Capitalism can be a hard place when you are left behind but is the best system coupled with democracy and freedom of speech. My idea of human capitalism is to share profits with those left behind. Imagine if all businesses shared their profits. Utopic? I don't think so. We just need to push for it. I myself was homeless, rough sleeping before getting back on track. I now prepare to launch a start-up with the idea of sharing profits with those left behind. Radically lifting homeless families out of the streets in India. That what I call human capitalism

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean voluntarily sharing? The biggest problem I see with that is that during recessions, the ratio of need to "sharers" goes way up.

<comment><USER4> Yes voluntarily sharing (10%) and why not "obligatory sharing" by law (although I'm not a partisan of it right now)but if this idea of businesses sharing with those left behind spread it could forced businesses to share by public pressure. CSR is too often a joke, a token contribution to give the illusion they care. If the ratio of need to "sharers" goes up maybe the sharing may increase. But it is a whole new culture that would have to be nurture. Most of investors, shareholders are let's say a bit selfish. But if we can convince them it is in their self-interest to learn to share it may work. History is a constant reminder that when people are too unhappy the "elite" is in trouble. People need hope they can move up the social ladder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 30 year old millennial here replying from my parent's basement. I think the future is going to be a lot better than the present, we just need to fix some stuff.

TODO:

1) We need low cost housing. Mobile home parks with $10,000 RVs for rent @ $200 / month. Here in Texas the lowest cost housing options are $600 - $700 a month. With radically cheaper housing it will be much easier to survive working the types of shitty jobs that our economy is currently producing.

2) Large companies need to start raising more capital on the public stock markets. Economic growth comes from people investing money to produce MORE goods and services than were previously produced. However, most of our retirement money does not go towards this purpose. The overwhelming majority of retirement funds go toward purchasing shares of stock on the secondary market which does not contribute to producing MORE goods and services at all.

3) We need to quit allowing healthcare companies to fleece our healthcare system. There's no good reason for the United States to spend twice per capita what Canada spends for healthcare.

</comment><comment><USER6> We're not there yet.

When we reach a level of automation where there aren't enough people to sell goods and services to because there aren't enough jobs (and where conversely, there aren't enough jobs to realistically expect a given person to use wages to pay for necessities like food, housing, and clothing), we'll have reached a stage where capitalism is no longer viable as a way to generate or distribute value.

We're on that path, and some of the cracks are beginning to show. But capitalism isn't obsolete. If anything, it's reaching a crescendo. Whether the current form is a good thing for the vast majority of the world's population is open to debate. But that has nothing to do with obsolescence.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's better than the alternatives, such as this alternative:

[https://ca.news.yahoo.com/venezuelans-scramble-survive- merch...](https://ca.news.yahoo.com/venezuelans-scramble-survive-merchants- demand-dollars-130623023.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> The Venezuelan mistake was putting all their economic eggs in the oil basket. That's not a capitalism-vs-socialism issue since capitalists have done similar (rust belt). Further, there are various mixes of socialism and capitalism that can be implemented: it doesn't have to be all one or the other.

<comment><USER7> Um. No. The mistake was putting a dictator in charge, who then nationalized everything and tried to create a centrally directed economy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How do you distribute power with equanimity and keep it that way? I think it's impossible with any sort of inheritance. And with legions of spoiled idiots you get an acceleration of entropy, more randomness to distribute said power from the perfect peaceful normal distribution into a power law. And then you gotta redistribute it all over again.

Yes, knowing who your child is is holding back the human race from a world of perfect equality.

I'm not sure I believe that, or even think there's a way to get there from where we are now. It's truly a bizarre idea. It's just the easiest way I can see to solve the problem as stated.

<comment><USER5> That's actually the idea behind the "death tax." It's meant to prevent dynastic family wealth from accumulating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems clear to many that pure capitalism is just the least terrible of systems we have used to build societies. Experimenting with new forms of societies leads to unimaginable death and destruction. Not the kind of thing that most people want today. Question is, at what point do people feel so left behind by the system that they call for revolution.

<comment><USER10> John Cabot Lodge used to say "the purpose of the UN isn't to take you to heaven, it's to prevent us all from going to hell". Feel the same way about capitalism. I have no idea why it works, many other thing seem like they should work 10x better, but it never does and millions die.

Capitalism comes in waves too. Usually it's really good for while, then declines, and then is reformed into another good period before it declines again and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Capitalism is the corner stone of the Democracy.

So it is up to you to work hard and be the best in your field...

<comment><USER12> Can you expand on the first line?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Capitalism won't be obsolete until we've cured death and colonized two other star systems. Then we've got to prepare for the threat of alien conquest.</comment>


Every Hour of TV You Watch May Shorten Your Life By 22 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/08/17/tv-lifespan-study/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

<comment><USER2> It will be interesting to see if this item from mashable gets any more votes or discussion than the identical story from the BBC that I submitted yesterday:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2891739></comment>


Lightspeed tried to silence Stitch Fix founder about Caldbeck's alleged behavior - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/how-lightspeed-responded-to-caldbecks-behavior-with-stitch-fix-founder-2449360633.html <comment><USER2> [https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/vandehei-mike-allen- polit...](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/vandehei-mike-allen-politico- axios-innovation-party/)</comment>