My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rongarret.info/2016/01/my-simplified-response-to-paul-grahams.html <comment><USER3> PG's simplified essay seems like attack on a strawman; he's mainly arguing that inequality is good, but then mostly everybody agrees with that.

The issue people see (and PG conveniently ignores) is _increasing_ inequality - not _locally_ increasing (i.e. an enterpreneur becoming rich because of a successful business idea), but _globally_ increasing inequality, which happens because of rent-seeking, tax avoidance, buying political influence, monopolistic behaviour, corruption, nepotism, inheritance...

Personally, I'm mostly concerned about the last one - inheritance. I don't have a problem with resourceful people being rich. But I see a danger of the wealth being concentrated over generations unless we introduce proper (non- avoidable) inheritance taxes.

<comment><USER4> Inheritance taxes on their own will do nothing to change the situation because then you'll simply concentrate all the wealth in corporate structures that transcend the death of their owners.

Even if you make it impossible to 'pass down' these structures as property, you will have de-facto inheritance through nepotism and clan structures.

<comment><USER5> This doesn't make sense to me. At the end of the day, all stock must be owned by actual people, even if it is through a network of other corporate entities and trusts.

A corporation may transcend the death of its owners, but if I own 50% of a corporation, and I gift my shares to an heir (or even let them purchase it at a discount), the government will still take their cut.

<comment><USER4> Sure - let's assume for a moment that inheritance tax does work to distribute ownership. That simply removes 'ownership' as the instrument for control, positions within the corporate structure would then become the 'title' to the assets, and these would be passed down through nepotism and clan structures as I mentioned.

<comment><USER5> While I'm not a lawyer, it doesn't really work this way, at least in the US. The law defines "ownership" pretty clearly based on who has real control over an asset. You can't really pretend someone else is the owner if you have the real control over the disposition of an asset.

<comment><USER4> Who says the titles wouldn't provide real control?

Do Larry And Sergei legally own all of Alphabet given that they have full control?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great reply, although I disagree with the typical simplified assertions that the Soviet System didn't work. Without doubt the system had major flaws. But it is perhaps much more shocking that the system worked as well as it did given so many obvious problems with it. Taking a primitive peasant society and turning it into a space traveling civilisation was quite astonishing. One has to also keep in mind that for decades the Soviet Union had very impressive GDP growth.

The problem with discussing any of this is that the anti-socialism and communism feelings run so deep that people can't have a neutral discussion of the merits and flaws of socialism and communism. Anything positive can so easily be dismissed by the utter tyranny and inhumanity practiced by Stalin.

By the irony of this is that Stalin does reflect the nature of socialism nearly as much as people believe. Both China and Russia were terrible and totalitarian societies long before socialism and communism.

Still both the Soviet Union and China have turned into far more humane societies during socialism than they were at any earlier times.

<comment><USER7> To extend on this with an anecdote; A buddy of mine lived and worked in Cuba for many years, and has very positive things to say about life there. He lives in Canada, and enjoys life in Cuba as much as he does in Canada, which I think says a lot.

Every single person has healthcare, food and shelter. Every single person has a job, and their kids go to a good school. Because everyone is paid the same, work is not the focus of life, social interactions are (which echos my experience during 2 years in Latin America) There is no point working harder or longer, it doesn't get you anything, so you go home to your family.

When you see a friend or distant acquaintance on the street, you stop and talk for 20 minutes. You prioritize family and spending time with them, rather than prioritizing work.

Obviously it's not perfect, but it's very far from the disaster it's made out to be.

<comment><USER8> Your buddy is whitewashing to an absurd extent. The Cuban government regularly engages in censorship[1], religious persecution, stifling of free speech, indoctrination of children, and imprisonment of political dissidents.[2] It's getting better, but it's still _really_ bad.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Cuba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Cuba)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#Contempor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#Contemporary_Cuba)

<comment><USER9> It's quite possible to go there and only see the whitewashing. I'm always curious where the reality is for a country that has so many wealthy and powerful enemies. Given all the evidence we have of agencies managing public opinion through money or speech, I'm always a bit skeptical.

One of the key critics of Cuba in our links was Reporters Without Borders. I'm actually quite surprised to find the following still visible on their own page:

"An article by John Cherian in the Indian magazine Frontline alleged that RWB "is reputed to have strong links with Western intelligence agencies" and "Cuba has accused Robert Meynard [sic] the head of the group, of having CIA links".[79]

RWB has denied that its campaigning on Cuba are related to payments it has received from anti-Castro organisations.[80] In 2004, it received $50,000 from the Miami-based exile group, the Center for a Free Cuba, which was personally signed by the US State Department's Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere, Otto Reich.[75] RWB has also received extensive funding from other institutions long critical of Fidel Castro's government, including the International Republican Institute.[81]

Journalist Salim Lamrani has accused Reporters Without Borders with making unsupported and contradictory statements regarding Internet connectivity in Cuba.[82]"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporters_Without_Borders#Cuba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporters_Without_Borders#Cuba)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Today, the top 1% control fully half of the planet's wealth

This is a meaningless statistic given negative wealth is possible (indeed common). By this simple measure a recent MBA graduate of Harvard with 200k debt and no assets is poorer than a Mumbai slum dweller with 2 rupees in his pocket.

I would argue that's not a fair reflection of the actual comparative wealth of the two individuals.

A potentially better measure of wealth would be say energy consumption which is highly correlated with living standards.

Of course the other point is that whilst inequality may be increasing, if measured in absolute cash terms, is that a bad thing if the living standards of the poor are being universally raised? A billion people in India and China have entered the middle class in the last 20 years.

It's ironic that the perceived decrease in wealth of the middle class in the US is exactly because on a global scale inequality, at least amongst the middle 80% is decreasing: an increasing percentage of wealth created is being distributed east-wards rather than remaining concentrated in the historically dominant economic powers of North America and Europe.

<comment><USER11> > This is a meaningless statistic

It's only meaningless if you cherry-pick your examples and draw your opinions from those examples. For 99 percent of the population, wealth is a fair reflection of the actual comparative wealth of individuals.

<comment><USER10> It's hardly cherry picking. I don't know exactly the percentage, but let's say 50% of the US population is net in debt. So all these people are poorer than the millions in developing nations without a penny to their name? As above, I would argue no, they are not. Hence this statistic doesn't mean much.

<comment><USER12> The point of the statistic is not living standards, which you are focusing on. The point is who _controls_ the wealth. A person with a negative net worth is not wealthy. The person who holds the note for their debt, is. A loan is an _asset_ on the loaner's books, and yes, it will be included in the calculation of relative levels of wealth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The only thing I'd disagree with is the statement 'we're nowhere near there' with regard to oligarchy and societal collapse. I think we're quite close. We have an entire generation where a tiny proportion have great prospects and the rest have steadily diminishing prospects and increasing stress, and we have educated people who grew up in the west going to join an expressly suicidal terrorist organization. We have a significant proportion of the population willing to vote for a demagogue whose positions are clearly nonsensical because he represents their (legitimate) anger at their lack of prospects the status quo affords them.

The descent from here isn't going to be linear.

<comment><USER13> >I think we're quite close.

USA: 5% unemployment, GDP per capita of $55,000, 78.74 years life expectancy, Human Development Index: 8, etc.

EU: 9% unemployment, GDP per capita $38,000, 78.82 years life expectancy, Human Development Index: 6 average, etc.

Yeah, we're not "close."

Meanwhile countries like the BRIC nations, especially authoritarian autocracies like China or Russia, with terrible inequality and 100x the problems the West has strangely get a free pass from these discussions. HN your bias is showing.

<comment><USER14> This wealth is based on social cohesion, which can fall apart in a generation or two. Genghis conquered half of Asia and built an empire of great wealth and high culture, but lack of cohesion tore it apart not long after.

<comment><USER13> >Genghis conquered half of Asia

Are we really comparing this to a country that's nearly 240 years old and is a global superpower that has weathered everything from civil war, a major depression, defeating communism, a moon landing, inventing the internet and all the technologies you're using right now, the largest economy by GDP, the most powerful military in history, etc?

This is like saying the The Who or The Stones should have broken up by 1970 because the Dave Clark Five did. I think youre purposely selling short the USA and citing election hysteria that happens every four years is far from convincing. If anything this kind of discourse is healthy and good in a democracy.

<comment><USER4> Yes - why not? Are you saying that civil war and defeating communism means that the US is immune to internal problems? There are many previous examples of societies that survived a civil war and defeated similar sized opponents, but later collapsed. Why not this one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord _Paul Graham, like nearly everyone in today 's politics, fails to appreciate the near-universal validity, at least when it comes to social and economic policy, of Ron's First Law: All extreme positions are wrong._

I realize this is tongue-in-cheek, but never forget: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation)

One could say that the modern world is largely a result of continuous middle- ground reforms that have built up into in an unfathomable and pathological state. Some radicalism might indeed be in order.

<comment><USER15> > "I realize this is tongue-in-cheek, but never forget: > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation) > "

"Vladimir Bukovsky points out that the middle ground between the Big Lie of Soviet propaganda and the truth is a lie, and one should not be looking for a middle ground between disinformation and information.[2] According to him, people from the Western pluralistic civilization are more prone to this fallacy because they are used to resolving problems by making compromises and accepting alternative interpretations, unlike Russians who are looking for the absolute truth."

Seeking absolute truth is a fool's errand. To use a physical analogy, truth is not a single point, it's a range. If you seek absolute truth you'll blind yourself to the range of possibilities.

<comment><USER16> > _truth is not a single point, it 's a range_

Uh, that really depends on the domain. I agree that _politics_ is the art of compromise but that does not mean there are no facts and logic.

<comment><USER15> Tell me a fact.

<comment><USER16> ZenoArrow just asked me to tell him or her a fact.

<comment><USER15> That's one possible truth. Another possible truth is that someone else asked you that question using ZenoArrow's account.

<comment><USER16> Ok, now you're just being silly. I will not waste more time on this thread.

<comment><USER15> Another option: I could be a bot.

Truth involves an element of interpretation. Truth depends on your frame of reference. You believe I'm wasting your time, but I may not be, it's up to you to choose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> PG:"We will not do a good job of fixing the bad causes of economic inequality unless we attack them directly.

But if we fix all the bad causes of economic inequality, we will still have increasing levels of it, due to the increasing power of technology"

I still don't get what PG is trying to say.

For example few years ago Google and Apple bosses made secret agreement to not hire employees of the competing company. The goal was to transfer wealth from engineers to shareholders and bosses. There are a lot of other examples. That's why the essay had so much negative comments. PG should clearly condemn these practices.

PG:"we will still have increasing levels of it, due to the increasing power of technology"

That is just narrow VC point of view. Think about what cheap printing technology did for our civilization. There are countless of other examples. Today UK monarchy can only dream about the power they had.

I had a dream that the technology (Internet, DVCS ...) will make legislation process more transparent. Tax loophole? Just file a bug, propose a fix, vote for the fix. Think about what Stack Overflow and Github did for software development. Something similar can be done for the law.

<comment><USER18> It seems PG is thinking backwards on this. Instead of fixing the bad _causes_ of inequality we should try to fix the bad _consequences_ of inequality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would leave my simplified response at: income inequality prevents creation of startups and is generally bad for society.

We don't want more income inequality at the end of the day. Our wildest dream is not to have a world in which everyone passes by but some are opulent, but rather a world in which everyone is opulent-- no inequality. In lieu of this greater dream, merely reducing inequality is a good start... the motions about being able to reduce poverty without changing economic inequality are laughably out of touch, still.

</comment><comment><USER20> <<We tried it. It didn't work. No reasonable person disputes this.

Karl Marx would argue that his ideas might have worked if someone else implemented them.

<comment><USER21> Maybe he would, but all the experiments so far have failed for pretty much the same reasons and at enormous human cost.

Meanwhile capitalism in whatever form it's tried has proven itself to be an incredible engine of poverty reduction and human/social progress. There's always been tension between capitalism and democracy and we may be at a point where some of the cracks are showing.

<comment><USER22> It's worth keeping in mind that we do live in the propaganda bubble of the Soviet Union's arch nemesis.

For their KGB, we had our J. Edgar Hoover. For their political purges, we had our House Committee on Unamerican Activities. For their later economic struggles, we had our great depression.

<comment><USER23> We never had several deliberately inflicted famines killing millions of people. In every single example you listed Communist countries were demonstrably worse. Humanity is capable of some pretty awful things under any system of government - Communism, or perhaps the way it comes about, has consistently demonstrated that itself better at enabling our worst impulses compared to democratic capitalism.

That people, included in the UK elected representatives, make a case for the Soviet Union and Communist China having done more good than bad is a a terrible failure of history.

<comment><USER22> But you're missing the point of what I'm saying:

I suggest taking the notion that communism is always bad with a grain of salt, given that our nation has been propagandized to despise communism much as the Soviets were propagandized to hate capitalism.

The Soviet Union went from a third world country of farmer peasants to becoming the world's first spacefaring civilization in only 40 years. Considering where they started, I believe that is quite impressive.

During the cold war, each side's media focused exclusively on the other's shortcomings, turning molehills into mountains, so to speak. To not acknowledge the reality distortion field around reporting of the era is an assault against the historical record.

<comment><USER23> The USSR becoming the world's first space faring nation is to a large extent the result of the Second World War and the knowledge gained from German scientists - because Stalin purged the nascent Soviet programme during the Red Terror.

Was the breaking of the kulaks - causing the Holodomor which killed an estimated 2.5m-7m Ukranians let alone deaths across the rest of the USSR - <USER2> necessary step in the industrialisation of Russia?

Capitalism industrialised - and indeed created industrialisation, with some pretty nasty consequences which led to unionisation and the growth of the middle classes. However none of those nasty consequences were anything close to what Communist regimes have brought us - that isn't bias, historical propaganda, it is just fact on whatever measure you choose to adopt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> PGs argument does not take into account the majority that make it possible for the few to create things, but instead of being bolstered by those few, are instead being left behind. Its sad to say, but his current social position is definitely influencing his thought process.

I turned down a job in Silicon valley. Even a 100K job doesn't mean anything when most of it goes to rent and my free time is spent sitting in a car or on a train commuting. I can imagine the stress the rent hikes are having on everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER25> There's one thing PG seems to implicitly which is that the movement from small company to large, dominating company in a vertical is a good thing.

Ultimately startups seem to be producing winner-take-all companies. I do not believe this is a healthy thing for the economy or even rights of the consumer in the long run. There are a lot of services where if you do not like their terms, there may not be a great practical alternative.

I don't want to see much changed, but I do feel the government should be encouraging competition much more than it is today. I do not think Facebook should have been allowed to buy Instagram, and I think WhatsApp should have been fined an enormous amount for blocking the words "Telegram" to stall their competitor. We put in the Sherman Antitrust laws to reign in behavior in the Gilded age and we should have a modern equivalent to encourage not one Google but 10 Googles in a market.

I'm clearly asking for too much, but after all the recent Airline consolidation several studies have proven that prices are now higher in certain markets as a result of lost competition. Capitalism doesn't magically prevent monopoly or oligopoly - it is up to us to put the right checks and balances in place.

<comment><USER26> There are natural monopolies and there are government granted monopolies and personally I believe the later are doing more harm than the former. Historically technology has made natural monopolies obsolete, but technology cannot bypass the law. Because when that happens, new trade agreements can be made and the law can simply be changed.

If getting rid of monopolies is the goal, we could get rid of patents and copyrights, government granted monopolies which are about creating artificial scarcity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Globalization/free trade has caused wage stagnation in developed countries by allowing capital to more easily move jobs to the developing world. This system has created way bigger profits for capital, increased wages for millions in the developing world, and more wealth overall.

All this has been enabled by the great triumph of "free trade" treaties that are the first way that humans have figured out how to create enforceable laws across countries. For example, the US recently repealed meat labeling laws due to a WTO ruling. This mechanism has allowed capital to bypass democratic forces that tend towards protectionism.

But the free trade treaties arere heavily rigged towards manufacturer's interests with intellectual property industries now trying to influence them more. If labor had a seat at the negotiation table for creating cross-country enforceable rules the outcome for workers could be better. Some ideas I can imagine off the top of my head,

\- free movement of labor, not just capital

\- environmental rules that prevent capital from shopping for the jurisdiction where they can pollute the most

\- prohibitions on child labor, slave labor, trafficking, etc

\- all countries provide free education through teenage years

\- global tax shelter rules to prevent capital from hiding its profits

</comment><comment><USER28> _Today, the top 1% control fully half of the planet 's wealth. That is awfully close to the second extreme._

I can't stand this malthusian, historically myopic, zero-sum thinking.

Using that same distribution, if I started a business, hired 99 others using half of the equity, then we sold it and I ended up with $500 million, should this inequality be a concern? No. the concern should be whether or not there's real suffering taking place with how that other $500 million is allocated, and the purchasing power it has relative to the past.

If you show me an economy that I can easily increase my real wealth by 5% per year, I don't really care what the guys on top are doing. What toys they are buying. I do care about them buying power, and they can only do that with a weak/corrupt political system. As PG reiterated: attack the causes, not the symptoms.

</comment><comment><USER29> [http://www.vox.com/2015/1/22/7871947/oxfam-wealth- statistic](http://www.vox.com/2015/1/22/7871947/oxfam-wealth-statistic) [http://fusion.net/story/44648/why-its-silly-to-add-up- wealth...](http://fusion.net/story/44648/why-its-silly-to-add-up-wealth/) [http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/04/stop- adding...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/04/stop-adding-up- the-wealth-of-the-poor/)

Can we just stop repeating that line?

</comment><comment><USER30> > In the long run this leads to oligarchy and possibly even economic and > societal collapse. We are nowhere near there

I totally agree with your point. I disagree with your opinion that we are nowhere near there... Just look at what the oligopoly practices of 'big banks' that were 'too big to fail' did to the global economy. They ALL used their money to influence the regulatory rules and the governments that governed them. Goldman Sachs was the worse at this, they were shameless in putting their ex employees into key White House positions.

They built a gated community around themselves to protect their giant profits and when it all went south, the TAX PAYERS, US, WE PAID FOR THAT.

</comment><comment><USER31> If I could summarize PG's thesis (and his critics misunderstanding) in one sentence here it is:

        Beware any promises to cure social ills that make an appeal to economic inequality, just as you'd be cautious of a surgeon trying to cure you by releasing evil spirits.

I don't know why it's taking 100+ comments to get to the bottom of this 1% of the rich "have more wealth" than the Bottom 30%. It's simple: it's a misleading statistic and there's no defending it, or anyone who uses it to make their case.

The reason why it's misleading points to the inevitable problems of using summary statistics of wealth inequality to evaluate economic performance.

</comment><comment><USER32> PG's simplified essay and a lot of its proponents seem like people, in the middle of a drought, start warning about the potential for flooding.

Yes, inequality is inevitable. Yes, the poor you will always have with you. Yes, central planning has been tried and found wanting. But that doesn't mean that the state of things is good, nor does it mean we need further deregulation, less taxes on the wealthy, and so forth. It's really weird to see threads where people argue against that the very existence of progressive taxation is some sort of statist plot.

We need less philosophizing, and more evaluation of the current state of affairs and discuss what pragmatic steps need to be taken to alleviate the situation.

</comment><comment><USER33> This, and Ron's original version, and most of the "my response to Paul Graham's essay" esssays I've seen aren't actually responses to Paul Graham's essay.

Here's what I see happened: pg said, "Income inequality is a consequence of freedom and technology. If you want to reduce income inequality, be careful you don't wind up just making everyone less free and more poor."

And then a lot of people said: "Paul, you asshole! Rich people can buy political power!" which is totally unrelated, and pg agrees is a bad thing...

</comment><comment><USER34> Innovation is the primary driver for improved quality of life. The kings of 1900 did not fly across the globe in hours, have access to the variety of foods of our lower class, and connect with loved ones in seconds. Basics such as a bed or filtered water came from innovation. Taxing or otherwise slowing innovation will put brakes on quality of life improvements for everyone. When have top-down mandates ever been as efficient at fixing problems as an individual grinding away at a cause they care dearly about?

<comment><USER35> Did you read the article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> What is the top 1 percent's share of the world's consumption? Wouldn't this be a more useful metric than looking at wealth or income distribution?

Consider the following scenario: In a (conventional) socialist society the state controls an overwhelming majority of wealth. However, this would be justified by a (hypothetical) proponent of socialism by referring to consumption products being provided by this capital. Therefore, it seems the same measure should be taken with regards to market economies.

</comment><comment><USER37> One step in solving it is adding more marginal tax rates. It's silly that they stop at 400k and 39%. I'd also introduce progressive taxing on capital gains as that's a primary way the wealthiest individuals get around income tax. The estate tax should also be progressive. These ideas aren't popular and would never get passed since the government is ruled by the wealthiest Americans but they would indeed be steps in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER38> None of you are thinking about class.

To you, this is a technical problem with a technical solution. Just a math problem. "How do we align incentives?" "How do we set the tax rate to maximize productivity and growth?" etc. As though simply increasing the number of startups and corporate wealth in the world will eventually eliminate scarcity and poverty. No big changes necessary, just keep up the good work and the great Polynomial Curve of Technology will propel us to the end of history.

Some of you are more proactive. We should "attack poverty." Like it's a disease, and we can "science the shit out of it" and find a cure. But poverty, and disequal distribution generally are not diseases - unpleasant but inexorable byproducts of our evolution - they are inextricable from our political economy. Why? Because we have a society that is stratified by class! Our capitalist economy does solve the problem of distributing resources to everybody (though not equally or fairly, and not without wrecking the planet), and of creating new resources, new products, driving progress, but it also serves the crucial purpose of maintaining class power.

Given the massive forward surge in productivity over the last 50 years, why do most of us now work more and earn less? Surely this isn't the only way it could be. Even Keynes, the liberal economist thought we'd be working 15 hour weeks by now. So why don't we?

It's because we're in the working class, and the working class serves the ruling class. It's not in their interest for us to work 15 hour weeks, and they're in charge, so we don't. That's really all. Until working people have some democratic control over the economy, we'll always work more and earn less, and wealth will accumulate at the top, because that's what this system is designed to do. And it works.

Our world is not billions of people on equal footing, freely exchanging goods and labor. It's not woodworking artisans crafting chairs and selling them to each other. It's owners and workers. Sure you can start a startup. Make a great app that coordinates precarious workers to take out SF yuppies' garbage for them (yep, that's a real one!), and transition from worker to owner. Great. You made it. That's certainly not the norm though, and it certainly won't eradicate poverty or scarcity. An on a human scale, it's hardly progress. We used to have a space program, remember? We can do better than capitalism. Anyway we better, or we're screwed.

</comment><comment><USER39> Site appears to be down. Google cache version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NoON38K...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NoON38KY7psJ:blog.rongarret.info/2016/01/my- simplified-response-to-paul-grahams.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER40> Capitalism is the _best_ system for distributing wealth and governing trade - and simultaneously one of (though perhaps not the) _worst_ forms of government. Societies that lose the ability to maintain that distinction - from either side - are inexorably doomed. We have regressed to a point where our grasp of that dichotomy seems tenuous at best.

</comment><comment><USER41> It is also important to realize that startups might produce jobs but they are mostly capital intensive companies NOT labour intensive. This is especially true with technology companies who are notoriously hiring relatively few compared to the capital they spend.

This trend will continue as technology removes more and more functions.

</comment><comment><USER42> >In the long run this leads to oligarchy and possibly even economic and societal collapse. We are nowhere near there [...]

False. We are there. [http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs- echochambers-27074746](http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746)

</comment><comment><USER43> You've reframed the problem to wealth influencing politics, which still isn't something that needs to be fixed by taking money away from people. Redistribution is a decent solution to resource problems, but this isn't that kind of problem.

Ending money in politics is hard to do using the levers of democracy since those levers have already been purchased, so I understand the desire to end extreme wealth instead. There is another solution, though. We can end the influence of wealth on our politics without needing the government to do it for us.

Instead of trying to get the government to stop excess political spending, we should eliminate the incentive to accept excess political spending. People accept money to influence our democracy because they can use that money to get whatever they want from almost anyone, including you. You can't opt out because economic power is invisible. But we can make it visible, and give every individual the freedom to reject economic power that they feel is misused.

This is merit capitalism. [http://meritcapitalism.com/](http://meritcapitalism.com/)

<comment><USER44> This is a very interesting mixture of two ideas I hadn't really considered before. Has this been discussed or brought up here previously? Is the only real obstacle to this adoption? It seems like an extreme transparency, but the lack of a central authority while maintaining reliability is very compelling.

<comment><USER43> I bring it up in comments here any time it's relevant, but it hasn't had its own discussion. Adoption is the only obstacle, but tools and infrastructure are obstacles to adoption. There's lots of software to write before it's easy for people to install a mobile wallet app that banishes oligarchical influences from their personal economy.

A bug/feature that needs to be addressed is that this mechanism can be used to enforce any rule enough people decide to pursue. We've discovered a lot of the ways our form of governance can go wrong over the past few hundred years, and we've even fixed some of them. We have to do the same thing for merit capitalism and limit its use until we know how to use it without causing catastrophes. Luckily, we can use merit capitalism to limit the use of merit capitalism: if someone breaks the "constitution" of acceptable uses, they can be sanctioned. We can slowly evolve the constitution as we learn more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I think that large income inequality has been harmful in the past because of scarcity. If a small number of people had a lot more money than the masses, it meant the masses were starving.

Technology has the ability to potentially change this. It hasn't yet; it's mostly just given us the ability to play Candy Crush and look at what our friends ate for dinner while waiting in line at the store. But it will. And it's a mistake to assume that because income inequality in a world defined by scarcity causes social ills, it will necessarily do so in a post-scarcity society.

Unfortunately using political influence for rent-seeking is a huge problem. I would like to believe, at least in our humble little democracy, that the masses are slowly awakening to this. At some point billionaires won't be able to use social-issue boogeymen like abortion and gay rights to convince poor people to vote against their own economic self-interest. I hope.

I think that's implicit in the argument PG is making. Income inequality has always been bad in the past, but the future is not the past. There are variables that may change that.

<comment><USER46> But human nature is not as variable as human circumstances. Jealousy and envy can be just as strong even if you aren't starving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> " _But if we fix all the bad causes of economic inequality, we will still have increasing levels of it, due to the increasing power of technology._ "

This is the sentiment of the man who is certain he will be at the top of the heap when the dust settles.

</comment><comment><USER48> _Ron 's First Law: All extreme positions are wrong. :-)_

Re: His last line about extreme positions -- Any position with "all" in it is extreme.

Extreme positions aren't wrong. It's just that they're most often appropriate only in extreme positions.

<comment><USER49> >Re: His last line about extreme positions -- Any position with "all" in it is extreme.

Therein lies the joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The only thing I don't like people to repeat about 1% owns 50% wealth is because that's just a mathematical truth from Pareto principle.

If 20% populations owns 80% resources. Just recursively applying Pareto principle. You see 0.8% populations owns 51.2% resources.

So we are in fact now efficiently using resources around the world to support 7 billions populations.

Of course this ignores our biological tendency of protecting our offspring. So we try to pass down what we have to our children by non productivity related measures (such as lenient estate tax, immigration restrictions). That's the real reasons for the 99% population feels 'unfair'.

If we are really fair, we should open first world border to all poor people around the world, right? But we don't. Same as people of wealth want to pass down their wealth to their children as much as possible. Or even try to starting a dynasty.

<comment><USER51> The Pareto distribution has a parameter (alpha in the mathematical formulation used on Wikipedia). If the value of that parameter evolves over time that might demonstrate an evolution of economic inequality.

But indeed access to credit and amount of debt makes it hard to interpret the results on wealth. Income distribution might be easier to interpret.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The gist of the original essay is that it is kind of stupid to treat a symptom as a cause. Instead, we should address the problems that promote inequalities. The reply doesn't counter-argue this statement.

</comment><comment><USER53> More simplified summary of the debate :

PG: "Startups create economic inequality. But it looks like they drive the economy and create value. I'll defend Startups so let's say that economic inequality is not a core problem"

Crowd 1: \- "OMG ECONOMIC INEQUALITY IS BAD !" \- "OMG you defend concentration of power in rich people !" \- "OMG your pinterest wall is more important that educating you children, that's what you call value ?!" \- "OMG !"

Crowd 2: \- "Startups don't create that much economic inequality anyway" \- "They don't actually drive the economy either" \- "We're not sure they create value" \- "Everyone know economic inequality is fine, we should adress poverty"

Elon Musk: \- When do we go to Mars guys ??!!!!????

<comment><USER33> Yes. It's bizarre to see everyone responding to something that wasn't actually said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> > We tried it. It didn't work. No reasonable person disputes this.

I'd dispute that it was really tried, but I still don't think it would ever really work.

<comment><USER38> The "we already tried that" argument throws all the non state-capitalist ideas down the toilet with Soviet central planning though (it does belong there, of course, but so does American capitalism).

There's a pretty wide range of ideas between anarchism and social-democratic capitalism that aren't included in the false binary of US/USSR models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> It is like that Laffer curve. If your tax rate is too high, you get less revenue because of the negative effects.

It is not just that "taxes kill the economy", but also that when the tax system is corrupt and inefficient people don't pay the tax. For instance the situation is crazy in Italy where officially 30% of the population is unemployed but actually most of them are working "off the books".

This is to not to say Laffer was right or wrong that tax rates were too high circa 1980, but there is truism that taxation has good and bad effects.

In a "perfect equality" scenario there is not incentive to raise your game, but the same is true in "perfect inequality."

We did the experiment in Ithaca where local activist Paul Glover started "Ithaca Hours", a local currency. The system is still there, but it has mostly failed because a few businesses that accepted Hours could not spend the ones they got, so they have accumulated in a small number of places and do not circulate.

Also I see people in situations where inequality causes them to "not try". For instance I know people with student debt or who owe a lot of child support who perceive that if they make another dollar it will just get taken away, so there is no point in busting your ass or taking things seriously. I funded a business run by one of them, by a guy who knew his market so well and had many of the skills of an excellent salesmen, and it ended it tears.

I know some people, both black and white, who really have been the victims of poverty, discrimination, and such and feel they "can't win." You can point to examples such as Barack Obama and Ben Carson who overcome both real and perceived discrimination to succeed brilliantly, but most don't.

Once when I was teaching I had a black student who was intelligent and very much liked by myself and the other teachers and we all wanted him to succeed and we were all proud that he got a respectable grade in the end in one of the most difficult classes at our school but had his own challenges and one day came around and told us we were treating him differently from other students and he was right, yet it was not at all that we did not want him to succeed but that we didn't entirely understand what to do to help him.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Today, the top 1% control fully half of the planet's wealth.

I've seen that statement debated, so I was curious if it was actually true. I had to follow quite a few links before I hit bedrock. Garret links to an NPR piece[1], which links to an Oxfam "study"[2], which references a Credit Suisse report[3], which is 64 pages long and covers _way_ more than global wealth inequality. I finally found the relevant bit on page 10, in a section named, "Distribution of wealth across individuals":

> Our estimates for mid-2013 indicate that once debts have been subtracted, an > adult requires just USD 4,000 in assets to be in the wealthiest half of > world citizens. However, a person needs at least USD 75,000 to be a member > of the top 10% of global wealth holders, and USD 753,000 to belong to the > top 1%. Taken together, the bottom half of the global population own less > than 1% of total wealth. In sharp contrast, the richest 10% hold 86% of the > world's wealth, and the top 1% alone account for 46% of global assets.

Finally! Can the author please link to _that_ instead? It would have saved me so much time. So the statement is mostly true, except note that debt is counted. That means a significant fraction of people have negative net worth. Those trading against future earnings (using student loans, car loans, mortgages, etc) will be at the bottom of the wealth distribution.

Remember, this is world wealth inequality, not US wealth inequality. What does US wealth look like? According to page 46 of the Credit Suisse report, 40% of US adults are in the top decile of wealth distribution. Heck, 7.5% of US adults are in the top 1% of wealth owners worldwide. There's a graph of US wealth distribution compared to the world.[4] It shows the US as a much more balanced place.

More than anything else, "The top 1% control half the world's wealth." is a statement about the inequality of nations, not people. Unless one is advocating wealth taxes to finance foreign aid, it's disingenuous to further a domestic agenda by citing the impoverished masses in developing countries.

I think if Garret took the time to be more rigorous, he could build a very good critical companion to PG's essay. But in its current state, it's not something I can really engage with.

1\. [http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2014/01/20/264241052/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2014/01/20/264241052/oxfam-worlds-richest-1-percent-control-half-of- global-wealth)

2\. It's just a short overview of others' research: [https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp- working-f...](https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for- few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-summ-en.pdf)

3\. [https://publications.credit- suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fi...](https://publications.credit- suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fileID=BCDB1364-A105-0560-1332EC9100FF5C83)

4\. [http://geoff.greer.fm/photos/screenshots/Screen%20Shot%20201...](http://geoff.greer.fm/photos/screenshots/Screen%20Shot%202016-01-05%20at%2009.14.40.png)

</comment><comment><USER14> The preface to all further discussion: wealth is power, and nothing else. In our highly capitalist society, monetary wealth is perhaps the only useful form of power, from which all other power (violence, social influence) ultimately flows.

The Soviet Union attempted to produce equality of income, but not power: power was highly centralized. The equality I want is one that is diffusive.

<comment><USER46> > The preface to all further discussion: wealth is power, and nothing else.

Okay, you made a dogmatic statement. That proves nothing, except that you are capable of making dogmatic statements.

Wealth is the promise (perhaps false) of satisfaction, it is (perhaps false) identity, it is security, and it is the freedom not to have to work. I suppose you can say that all those are forms of power, but... If you define everything to be power, then yes, wealth is power, but that tells us nothing interesting except what your definition was.

> In our highly capitalist society, monetary wealth is perhaps the only useful > form of power, from which all other power (violence, social influence) > ultimately flows.

Democracy is another form of power. It is influenced by money, but not totally. That is, the little people can in fact vote against the money, and will do so if the money pushes too far. Campaign ads won't be enough if the little people get fed up enough.

Social influence largely flows from money, I'll give you that. Violence? Money gives you a greater ability to use violence and still escape the law, but you can't go very far no matter how much money you have.

<comment><USER14> >Wealth is the promise (perhaps false) of satisfaction

I think, perhaps, you are speaking of the kind of wealth accumulated by middle class families. I'm speaking of the billions accumulated by Jeff Bezos, which allows him to purchase the Washington Post (etc). You might call this "satisfaction", but at this scale it's raw power - the ability to command resources and bend them to your purpose.

>Democracy is another form of power. It is influenced by money, but not totally.

Democracy is quite strongly influenced by money. I'm sure you've seen this study: [http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fil...](http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf) which purports to demonstrate that American democracy responds exactly to the interests of economic elites and not to popular will. Popular will is much weaker than the influence of money. There is an entire (unelected) arm of government that is devoted to lobbying and writing legislation on behalf of monied interests; half of Congress leaves and joins this arm when their term is up.

I'm not saying these things are inevitable, that monetary wealth cannot be constrained by democratic power, etc., just that this is not how things currently stand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is pretty silly. Also, Paul Graham's premise, I'm sorry to say, is sensationalized (by invoking concepts like "inequality" and "startups") but wrong. The premise is, basically, "inequality has bad CAUSES, but startups and technology are never one of them." Only at the end does he hint at what I believe to be the more accurate analysis: AUTOMATION and OUTSOURCING lowers demand for expensive human labor, therefore reducing one of the main ways that money trickles down to the middle and lower class. The better and more widespread the technology, the more I can 1) Outsource jobs to regions with a lower cost of living, leading to two losses of trickle-down: 1a) local workers don't get the job, and the money goes to someone in another country 1b) either way my company writes the expenses off its taxable income, but my country doesn't get the tax $$ from the worker's income to spend on social programs, safety nets etc. This by itself is fine, unless you're a nationalist, because it helps reduce poverty where people are poorer, which is outside your country. However, technology also enables: 2) AUTOMATION, which means I now reduce the amount of HUMAN workers, and once again it has two aspects: 2a) Now, the demand for human labor drops, and since the supply of workers remains the same, their average wages drop. 2b) The worst one: monopolies with server farms, contracts of adhesion, and all the power. Like Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Uber, etc. extracting rents from users and providers, until open source disrupts them. By commoditizing the providers and workers, they get squeezed. See Amazon's dealings with wage slaves, and its tactics with publishers (middlemen which it eliminates). But those same workers are also supposed to be spending money back into the economy on things they need. It takes time to invent new industries and educate everyone, there is no guarantee that will happen forever, and there is no guarantee that demand shocks for labor won't be severe. So, there should probably be unconditional basic income, negative tax or some other scheme for people to KEEP BEING ABLE TO AFFORD THE BASICS even if they face no prospects of making money, which a growing unemployed class will. On the bright side, automation will help wean countries from their dependence on an ever-growing population to fund social security schemes. Endless population growth is unsustainable, and countries are currently worried about birth rates mainly because of that. So in a global sense, the solution is: tax the gains from automation, redistribute the proceeds, use condoms.

<comment><USER57> Europe as a whole has a <non-replacement> fertility rate of 1.5. In other words: it is dying. Total fertility rate for the US is just below replacement value at 2.09 and the total fertility rate for the world is 2.59, down from 2.8 in 2002 and 5.0 in 1965. Any weaning that goes on will certainly have to be off welfare schemes because they are going to collapse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> When I read Graham's original essay I laughed. In my mind, he's a force for greater wealth _equality_. After all, he takes money from rich investors and puts it into startup companies, the majority of which do not produce great wealth.

</comment><comment><USER59> I don't understand the obsession with wealth inequality, the focus should be on eliminating poverty not eliminating the number of billionaires.

</comment><comment><USER60> I read pg more as describing a phenomenon than trying to justify its existence. I'm not sure why so many people are so hostile to a simple explanation of what is.

</comment><comment><USER61> Most people agree that inequality is not a bad thing in itself. But we have two problems with inequality right now:

1\. The sheer amplitude of it.

Having people whose net worth is equal to the GDP of a small country poses interesting questions (separate topic). This is caused by the winner-takes-it- all nature of globalized economy. Example: Ads featuring Gisele Bundchen sell to potentially billions of women all over the world, and she gets a cut. A generous one, because the market is global, not local as it was 30 years ago.

2\. The fairness.

Again, nobody has a problem with Steve Jobs making a lot money, because he produced. But there are people out there who got rich, just because of connections, etc. Al Gore has sat on (among many others) Apple's board of directors. Which part of iPad did he design?

Even if you ARE qualified, there almost always is the luck factor. There are many other genetically blessed young women who look at least as good as Gisele Bundchen, but who, for whatever reason, never became the "it" girls. The are not starving (though they look like they do), but they are not raking in millions either. The same applies to more serious industries as well.

</comment><comment><USER62> Perhaps I am an ignorant. A little background about me:

* I live in NYC

* I live with my parents, still very young as a recent grad

* I don't make tons of money, but with overtime I probably make 80K? I don't really count my money these days.

* I do spend money on monthly gym membership (I should suspend that to save $100 since I am too busy haven't been there for a few months), netflix and couple other stuff.

* I give my parents allowance (almost half of my paycheck) to help with mortgage and stuff

* I am single all the way (that seems to be a pretty saving...)

* only been working full time for one year

And yet, I am still able to afford nice meal if I wanted to, go to nice places if I wanted to. Of course my wallet will bleed and cry if I were to spend too much, but on a daily basis I have a comfortable life, so I don't really feel an economic hardship, I don't make millions and the wealth is still controlled by that 1%.

It doesn't bother me, until, if I were to have kids to raise, and a mortgage entirely on me.

I think the attitude toward economic inequality needs a context. If you want to go on a cruise 365 days of course we can't afford that. Going to Italy and France once a year? That's gonna bleed for most of us. But in case of affording a good meal? Little but not too much. Then for those who makes significantly less than I make, they will feel the pain the most and I don't see a way out of it.

<comment><USER63> I'm in a similar situation to you, but:

* One year out of college, you're in the top 30% of the US: [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-p...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-percent-map.html)

* You didn't mention loans, so I'm assuming you were able to graduate college mostly or completely debt-free

Just these two points mean you're doing better than most people in the US, and much better than most people in the world. You never have to worry about about food or shelter, you have plenty of disposable income, you can support your family.

Your comment seems to be phrased as "I'm as average guy, and I can be happy with what I have", but you're not average. 80K is "tons of money" for most Americans your age, most people aren't so comfortable that they never have to worry about money, most people can't throw away $100 a month without noticing.

So you're right, discussion about inequality does need a context, but your context is that you're well into the top half of society.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where can I find places like Mindwork? - <AUTHOR> Where can I find places like Mindwork (http://www.mindworkny.com)? I live in California, and I have yet to see or hear about a place like it. Is it simply therapy? If so (or not), where would I find places like Mindwork. <comment><USER2> Yes, looks like it's 'simply therapy', although with a nice website.

I'm sure there's plenty of good therapists in California. E.g. look at [http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/how-to-find- ther...](http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/how-to-find-therapist#1) or [http://www.goodtherapy.org](http://www.goodtherapy.org) to get started.</comment>


Engineering Management: The Pendulum or the Ladder - <AUTHOR> https://charity.wtf/2019/01/04/engineering-management-the-pendulum-or-the-ladder/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm a director of engineering with tech leads/engineering managers who are considering their career paths carefully. This post was helpful to us. My highlights from this post:

It was interesting to read her reasoning for why a "tour of duty" as a manager should be 2-3 years. That's a very tight time range, so if she's right then that increases the stakes for making good decisions along the way.

There is a tension between her point that management is painful and engineers shouldn't pursue it long-term (and in the comments said that she doesn't know many engineers who are happy doing it) but and her point that if managers earn more than engineers it becomes harder to move back to engineering. The increased salary for managers is at least partially a result of the fact that many people wouldn't become managers otherwise.

My favorite piece of advice was "stop writing code in the critical path". Someone told me that when I first started moving into management, and it was very helpful.

</comment><comment><USER2> >The great ones are a treasure: and they are rare. And in order to stay great, they regularly need to go back to the well to refresh their own hands-on technical abilities.

Similar to principle 9 from the Toyota Way. >Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others.</comment>


Ask HN: Service exists, but not in my location - <AUTHOR>

So, I had an idea for a start-up today, and in doing some research there's nothing that already exists in my geographic location (the UK) however there is a similar service based in the US.<p>Looking through the US site, they state they're only for US businesses - would it be better to talk to the US site and see if they'd be interested in expanding to the market I'm in, or execute the idea myself?  Personally, I'd rather execute the idea in my own way, and as far as I can tell the idea doesn't involve anything patentable (and no, I wouldn't be looking to expand into the US market) <comment><USER2> What's the idea ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Reverse-auction style service for a specific market - there's nothing really new (yet) in the actual idea, it's just the target market that isn't served yet in the UK so I wanted to start validating there's a need for the service in the UK (and as there's no competitors in this market as yet and it's a market that can lend itself to this style of service, as evidenced by the US site) - once I'm happy in my research that there's a need/base that will use it, I'll start planning more about how I can provide a unique service for both parties targeted by it

<comment><USER2> For a specific niche market, I would no bother with the US startup and stay independent.</comment></comment></comment>


The Kik Bot Platform - <AUTHOR> http://avc.com/2016/04/the-kik-bot-platform/ <comment><USER2> Can anyone explain how a chat-based interface can possibly be generally successful except briefly as a novelty?

Surely an UI with controls specific to the task at hand is much better than having the user guess what the bot responds to and what it can do?

In the restaurant use case, for instance, a QR code + text URL that points to a website where you can advertise the restaurant with whatever graphics and UI you want seems far better than some sort of text interface (which also requires them to be Kik users, know they can scan the code, etc.).

<comment><USER3> It can be, but with a bunch of caveats that I'm not sure people are fully aware of. There's a fair bit of over-enthusiasm about chat interfaces and IMO not a lot of realization of its limitations.

The usefulness of chat interfaces is proportional to how complex the task is and how poorly the user understands the scope and structure of the task.

To use a contrived example, if you have no idea what's left in your fridge, saying "Computer, restock all my essential groceries" is easier than going into the fridge, figuring out what you need, and ordering it via a traditional interface.

Or think of a customer service hotline, where the caller has no idea what options are even available to them, nor do they understand the hellish tree- structure of the touchtone menus. In these instances natural language interaction can remove the need to understand the structure of the task and get them directly to the thing they need. _Many_ customer service lines are _already_ doing this in a simplistic keyworded way, and they can be better.

On the other hand we're seeing a lot of people try to apply chat/natural language interfaces to tasks that are both simple and well understood by their users, and I think these will be doomed to fail. Ultimately voice/text is _harder_ and more annoying for the user than punching buttons, the tradeoff being that they can be valuable when the task is complex/opaque. Most of these applications don't hit a positive tradeoff for the user - and end up being a complicated/annoyingly unstructured mode of interaction nobody wants to use more than once to show off to their friends.

Simple/well understood things like "call an Uber" I think will be pretty DOA if you try to shoehorn a chatbot into the middle - users will prefer the actual UI over it any day of the week.

<comment><USER4> \- Computer, restock all my essential groceries.

\- Sorry, I didn't quite get that.

\- I want you to restock.

\- Sorry, I don't know how to "Youtube Rostock". Do you want me to google that?

\- Well, it's... Uh...

\- I don't know what you mean by "Whale that's a".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If your investor has to pimp your idea for you then that probably means it's a dud. The idea of Brand Bots seems really impersonal. I would want Bots for quickly getting through the things I hate doing (returns, troubleshooting) but not for getting coupons by scanning a "Bot sticker" (fancy QR code?).

<comment><USER6> i pimp everything, so i guess that means everything is a dud. i am an equal opportunity pimper. i plan on pimping again tomorrow on AVC

<comment><USER5> I read your blog a lot. Thanks for writing it. But some of the conclusions you're trying to draw in this post feel forced. The "websites -> apps -> bots" deal especially jumps out to me as odd.

<comment><USER7> many websites, apps, bots conceptually share the same goal: to let users interact with a database. they represent different ways to read and write company data, and as such have different strengths and weaknesses. websites, for instance, are terrific for discovery/browsing activities while chat bots _could be_ terrific for transactional activities (e.g., amazon, cancel my last order).

today, the problem with bots is that natural language AI is extremely difficult, so many criticisms hold true: websites and apps are better than bots for most tasks. today.

but that is similar to someone in 1994 saying that online shopping was worse than offline shopping. yes, it was. but technology improved to where online shopping -- for many cases, but not all -- became better than offline shopping.

the real question: if you believe AI will evolve to where chatting with a company bot is indistinguishable from chatting with the company's top human employee/representative -- e.g., imagine the equivalent of jeff bezos personally handling your amazon queries and transactions -- would a bot become the more natural interface for many activities?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just don't open source your bot and put it on NPM :-)

<comment><USER9> I was expecting a left-padding robot as a demo.

<comment><USER10> leftpad.bot

<comment><USER11> [http://kik.me/leftpad.bot](http://kik.me/leftpad.bot)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We've been developing a bot with their platform for the last few weeks and it's a well designed API with features that can help sculpt a great bot experience e.g. allowing for controlling the amount of time the bot appears to be typing. Definitely worth a look if you're into bots (and as a team that recently developed an iOS app, boy is it great to be out of under the thumb of Apple's review process and developing on a platform where the UX is the copy).

</comment><comment><USER12> Let's take an example of a general personal assistant chat bot experience and compare it to a brand chat bot experience. Remember in both cases we are typing our conversation not speaking it

General/PA chat bot Me: What movies are playing tonight?

BOT: HBO has XYZ from 8PM to 10PM, UVW from 10PM to midnight. Starz has ABC from 7:30PM to 10:00PM, DEF from 10PM to 12:30AM

Me: No I mean what movies are playing in theaters tonight?

BOT: AMC at Location 1 near you is playing blah blah blah, Century Cinemas at Location 2 near you is playing blah blah blah, (lists off 3 other theaters with movie times)

Me: I want 2 tickets to blah blah at AMC tonight

BOT: Ticket price at AMC.com is $22. Reply with AMC to buy them. Ticket price at Fandango.com is $23. Reply with FAN to buy them.

ME: AMC

BOT: Here are your tickets. [http://amc.com/tickets/23BDK532KDJF93434](http://amc.com/tickets/23BDK532KDJF93434)

BRAND CHAT BOT EXPERIENCE ME: What movies are playing tonight?

AMC BOT: At an AMC near you, ABC is playing at 7:30pm, DEF is playing at 7:00PM, GHI is playing at 8:30PM, ABC iMax is playing at 9:00PM

(I switch to the Century Cinemas bot)

ME: What movies are playing tonight?

CENTURY BOT: At a Century near you, XYZ is playing at 8:00PM, ABC is playing at 8:30PM, GHI is playing at 8:30PM

(I switch to another theater's chat bot)

ME: What movies are playing tonight?

BOT: Movie 1 is playing at 9PM, Movie 2 at 9:30PM, Movie 3 at 9:30PM .....

So in the end a general chat bot will be more user friendly than going to each individual brand's chat bot. That basically means developer's not associated with a brand will be building aggregate bots for specific verticals because building a general BOT that addresses any query is impractical for any single developer. Then what happens when multiple developers all target the same vertical? The BOT marketplace becomes littered with duplicates and becomes like the Android marketplace. So basically BOTS = APPS but with a chat interface and some rudimentary NLP rather than a UI.

<comment><USER13> fair point, not withstanding what these bots can know/learn about you and your preferences.

More importantly though, the general bot would have to connect to all those APIs...however, if each theater has their own bot, than perhaps the general bot can query those bots without integrating with them. So, I guess the question becomes, are bots useful to other bots..if so, than everyone will need their own bot to be found by general bots.

<comment><USER12> to have a bot be available to other bots is the same as having an API and letting a general purpose bot connect to the API. The only advantage a BOT would then have over the API would be NLP and some personalization data and device sensor data. No matter how I look at it general purpose bots prevail but they require connecting to all those APIs like you mention. Personally I don't think BOTs in chat is the future of chat.

<comment><USER13> what do you think the future of chat is?

I am not an engineer, so I don't know enough about integrating with APIs, but I would think a bot could use natural language to talk to another bot without integrating or even know about the other bot prior to the user needing it. Essentially, the user is talking to one bot that is finding and passing along the message to the other bot and vice versa.

Bot A > finds bot b > adds bot b as friend > asks bot b for a list of a commands > forwards bot b commands to user or interprets the users natural language in a way that maps to bot b's common commands> returns any results or errors and shares whatever relevant data, acting as middle man between user and bot b.

To me this sound simpler to create than a bot that needs to map to every APIs functions, etc... Even with a middleware tool...It still needs to hook into it. However, if those APIs have conversational interfaces, than users can interact with everything magically.

Maybe my lack of tech knowledge has me imagining a utopia that isn't technically feasible...but to me this sounds like a solution that can replace 30% or more of my web and app interactions completely and simplify another 20%.

<comment><USER12> Bot A finds bot B via (marketplace search, keyword search, published functionality search or manual settings?) This is very difficult to do accurately especially when there are 100 other bots that provide same functionality as Bot B.

Let's assume user selected Bot B to be added as friend for Bot A.

Bot A asks Bot B for a list of commands > This is essentially making an API call or Bot A sending a chat message to Bot B "Please send me all your public commands" (which is a simplified NLP API call)

However Bot B might not want to expose all its NLP command keywords (that is after all their Intellectual property) or it is too complex to send all commands because of myriad of ways an NLP query can be structured.

I like your idea of a conversational API. Maybe there is a better way to do that and definitely something worth thinking about.

Regarding the future of chat, the problem is these chat apps are trying to become task help apps. What is the purpose of chat/group chat? Communication, discussion, planning, sharing between "friends/contacts" (not between me and a bot) Communication with a friend or contact does not require a bot. Discussion with a friend, group of friends or contacts does not require a bot Sharing content with a friend, group of friends or contacts does not require a bot.

The only thing that requires a bot is planning an outing, trip, dinner, etc. with a friend or group of friends or contacts. For that I think it is better to have a general purpose bot. Here's how I envision that use case with a bot called JEEVES.

ME: Hey have you guys watched Zootopia yet?

FRIEND 1: Nah I want to but didn't have the time. I'm free tonight if you want to go.

FRIEND 2: Yeah count me in too

ME: JEEVES find us a movie theater close to us that's playing Zootopia tonight.

JEEVES: There are 3 theaters close to all of you that's playing Zootopia tonight. Theater 1 at (map)Location 1 is playing it at 9PM, Theater 2 at (map)Location 2 is playing it at 8:30PM, Theater 3 at (map)Location 3 is playing it at 10:PM

ME: you guys wanna get dinner before the movie?

FRIEND 1: Sure

FRIEND 2: Nah having dinner with GF's parents today.

ME: JEEVES find us some chinese restaurants near Theater 3.

so on and so on.

JEEVES can then book tickets, make a reservation, put the event on calendars, send restaurant location to just the 2 people who agreed to have dinner, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> BTW: KiK (different capitalization, full name: KiK Textilien und Non-Food GmbH) is also a German fashion seller: [http://www.kik.de/](http://www.kik.de/)

<comment><USER15> I'm conflicted. I think I want kik.de to sue these guys for trademark =\

<comment><USER16> Poe's law at work.

If you're serious, you don't. They operate in different domains and it doesn't make sense for kid.de to sue kik the chat company.

Trademarks do make sense (most of the time), and the application that the chat company tried to apply it to with the NPM packages was proper. Reviewing the emails (posted by the offended programmer) they even came off as pretty generous. They wanted a name, a name they'd had for a while, for a project they were releasing to the NPM platform. As others said, part of the problem is NPMs naming scheme. It doesn't allow (by convention or implementation) for sensible naming like with libraries in other languages (com.kik.bot.authentication, com.kik.bot.blah).

If you're generally opposed to trademark then I suppose you would want them to sue just to make a mess of things and eventually cause countries to get rid of it. But that's exactly why trademark law covers this issue already. Apple (computers) and Apple (music) were in different domains, consequently no problem. Once Apple (computers) got into music (via iTunes), Apple (music) had a case against them. It's also a bit more nuanced, down to locality as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is it the same Kik as in the leftpad npm incident?

[http://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and- npm](http://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-npm)

<comment><USER18> Pretty sure it is, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can I use the word "Kik" in my bots that connected to Kik?

</comment><comment><USER20> The comments on the AVC blog are full of an unbelievable amount of ass kissing.

That being said, the content is solid and I read pretty much whatever Fred writes even though my focus is not on B2C.

</comment><comment><USER21> Would like to note that kik is the company that threatened to go after an open source developer and get accounts terminated because he wrote a library with the same name. [https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-discussion-about-the- breakin...](https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-discussion-about-the-breaking-of- the-internet-3d4d2a83aa4d#.antgfyl9b)

</comment><comment><USER22> I have no idea why people use these programs over straight up SMS.

<comment><USER16> kik in particular? Or chat programs in general?

1: International SMS isn't free (US-centric viewpoint, what's the situation in other countries?).

2: No character limit. Which is bypassed with MMS. Which introduces its own limitations when sharing media (reduced resolution/quality of video and images, for example).

3: Potentially, depending on the particular client, not tied to your phone number in a way that others can access (that is, as a fellow user you don't know that my number is 555-555-5555). This can be gotten around by using something like Google Voice, which then loses the MMS feature (have they added that in yet?).

4+: Probably other reasons that I can't think of at the moment.

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

It just occurred to me that by "people" you meant the companies that kik is apparently courting with this. They'd want to use this because their users use kik. It's one more interface for customers to interact with them, on a moderately popular chat network.

<comment><USER22> Chat programs in general, and the people that use them.

I've never had a problem with SMS length as my phone splits messages into separate messages automatically.

SMS is free as hell in Canada and USA. I didn't realize the situation wasn't the same worldwide. Why is it not?

<comment><USER16> I believe it's free within most countries. What's not free is across most nation boundaries (particularly non-adjacent nations). It's mostly because you're dealing with the interaction of several different networks. Also, if a company has a lock on its customers, it'll charge them what it wants to charge them.

Other problems with SMS: Message order isn't guaranteed. Message delivery isn't guaranteed. You receive no notice what state a message is in (in transit, delivered, viewed). It's an unreliable medium tied directly to your phone (short using a service like Google Voice) and only to your phone (ok, less true these days, at least in the Apple ecosystem, where I can see and send SMS messages through my Mac if my phone is on the same wifi network). Still requires the presence of my phone in that last example.

<comment><USER22> These are pretty valid. I guess none of those things are important enough to me, except message delivery guarantee. The thing is, I've never had it fail. And if it did, I didn't notice, so no harm, no foul.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shiny - elegant web-apps with R - <AUTHOR> http://rstudio.github.com/shiny/tutorial/

<comment><USER2> It looks cool but I get a 404 following the link to the repo[1] on GitHub

[1] <https://github.com/rstudio/shiny>

<comment><AUTHOR> Request beta access here: <http://shiny.rstudio.org/>

It appears to be automatic.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What opportunities still exist in desktop software? - <AUTHOR>

In the last few years, the software industry has moved to deliver stuff over the Web or mobile, with the desktop slowly getting hollowed out.<p>Reading the recent threads about Sublime Text and Atom is making me wonder if there's a blind spot amongst us programmers: What kind of desktop software can one still build and expect to make a living? (It could be for the casual user or tailored for professional use cases). <comment><USER2> It is good to start with the truth: currently making money selling desktop software is really hard and, in general, doesn't payoff the amount of work you need to be there. We have a lot of examples of companies doing herculian work beyond Sublime Text and Atom which don't have enough revenue. Part of this is related to the web and mobile trends but also the desktop software maturity. In Microsoft Windows you can find a lot of tools but very few assume that they need to pay for them, they can be very popular (look at the most downloaded desktop software) but the profits/users has a very low ratio. In general, the successful ones rely on a mature sales force or they are unicorns. I think it is a good start studying the current desktop ecosystem to see how hard it is.

Notwithstanding that, I recommend to think about a services/product business model more than in selling "millions of units" only. Although a little old now, I recommend Michael Cusumano's work on this [1]. My small company uses (complex) desktop and server software products as a marketing tool for services and support.

Now the question is what is the minimum profit you will accept to make. Is it $ 100k / year, $ 200k or $ 1mm ? From that picture you can deconstruct how many units of your app/service/support you need to sell to be there. As a thumb rule I will say that selling few units for a higher price will be much easier than selling a lot of units for a few dollars. If you want to try, I would recommend start selling to SMB companies who have a budget for this.

Regarding finding ideas, talk to people who have real software problems in their companies.

[1] [http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/papers/197_Cusumano_ProdSr...](http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/papers/197_Cusumano_ProdSrvcsBusMod.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey, there is more than that!

Lots of programming isn't very visible to outsiders, but it often provides wonderful opportunities. Web and mobile are the trendy career alternatives to the desktop, but there is a whole world beyond that. You might think from Hacker News that all the world is web and mobile, but no no no...

Think of the people writing software for air-to-air missiles. Well OK, it is sort of "mobile", but not in the usual way. These people tend to get paid extra for any overtime and they often get to live in places where houses are affordable.

Think of the people writing software for industrial robots. Sometimes they get to fire lasers. Again, they get to live where houses are affordable.

Think of the people writing software for medical devices, engine controllers, satellite modems, printers (inside the printer), routers, telephone switches, spacecraft, UAVs, hard drives (in the drive itself), commercial HVAC, NSA tools, hospital billing, and so much more.

</comment><comment><USER4> Managing a fleet of Windows desktops to reliably deliver an office suite and web browser to ~35 clerical workers is a gapingly unsolved problem. Seriously, it's hilariously, soul-crushingly painful.

Fix it. Preferably for less money than buying Macs.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. What's the specific pain point there? I would have assumed that running 2 installers on 35 machines was pretty much all there is to it, but clearly that's not the case.

(Note: definitely not saying you're wrong! More saying "hmm, my assumptions are obviously wrong. More info would be very interesting".)

<comment><USER4> \- Machines get verifiably "slow" for no apparent reason. This is sometimes fixed by a reinstall, sometimes isn't.

\- Even on supposedly "locked down" machines, you'll come around for a support call and find 15 IE toolbars sometimes. It apparently requires a genuine domain expert (which some $100/hour enterprise network consulting firms in the Midwest don't have) to accomplish a seemingly common goal on a Windows domain with Group Policy: only run the software we preinstall for you.

\- The infrastructure to automate installation of your Windows image via netboot _technically_ exists, but is expensive (requiring salespeople and resellers) and difficult. Large corporations tend to have it, small-medium ones tend not to. I spent most summers of my adolescence clicking through Windows installers.

\- People install (and are exploited by) malware pretty regularly.

\- Windows Server and particularly Exchange are dominated by quirky, undocumented behavior on the sysadmin side. You cannot do what seems natural or what it says in the manual - you need a subject matter expert who is experienced in all the ways common admin tasks will break things and how to fix them. Not 1/1000th of the time, more like 1/5th of the time. It also generally requires a business partnership with Microsoft so you have access to real support people. Even they aren't always helpful.

Managing a healthy Windows domain is certainly _possible_ , and lots of big companies do it more or less, but it requires a whole lot of effort, highly experienced people who can "eat" the quirkiness and complexity, and a special relationship with Microsoft.

This might be reasonable for a very large, complex deployment, but it's also required for the simple case of "deliver an office suite and web browser to ~35 computer-illiterate people." I think any modern SaaS company would be _appalled_ to deliver something with UX as poor as Windows for small-medium companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dash [https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in- review-2014](https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014) is an oft cited example.

</comment><comment><USER7> I make a living from FileSearchEX ... the "best" desktop search experience for Windows. Granted ... it needs more features.

<comment><USER8> You support yourself off that entirely? I have a similar idea (not search, but improving existing windows features) and I was thinking of selling it. Is it possible to make an income (over the cost of hosting the website)

<comment><USER7> My site has been around a long time. Not sure how a "new" site would do that attempted to sell desktop software. No, I can't live off of FileSearchEX alone. Too many pirated copies floating around. If you have the cycles, I say go for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just to pitch in at the last minute :)

I could make a living from my windows installable watermarking software [http://www.watermark-image.com](http://www.watermark-image.com) (I am kinda, I also run a consultancy and is bootstrapping [http://timeblock.com](http://timeblock.com) with the reveneu from those two business)

I have been working on it for five years and 5x the revenue after attending MicroConf in europe 2 years ago.

Currently I work on the software and do supports 5-10 hours a month making $4-5k i could probably grow it some more, but is using my energy on TimeBlock.

</comment><comment><USER10> Assuming the windows store becomes popular, it does support various business models, like advertising, in-app payments and subscriptions. Those once were a large advantage of the web.

Also maybe deployment would become easy and secure. Another big web advantage.

So maybe change is coming.

</comment><comment><USER11> Developer tools definitely.

Technologies aiming the enterprise also have an opportunity with desktop software, Slack is a clear example.

Not much opportunities in the consumer tech space for desktop apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought developer tools would be the toughest to make money off. Developers always believe there is a free, open source alternative out there somewhere, and if not, someone's sure to start one soon.

<comment><USER12> _All_ developers don't _always_ pursue free tools; I suspect you can make a very nice living selling tools to a small percentage of developers.

Personally, I've paid money for the WebStorm IDE, the PyCharm IDE, Sublime, Dash, Paw, Balsamiq, and more. I've bought ready-made UI components, database drivers, etc., and I'm about to start shelling out $4,000+/year for a commercial Qt license even though I could probably get by with Qt's free LGPL version.

And that's just me as an individual; companies are even more willing to spend money on developer tools.

<comment><USER13> It's interesting that you as an individual would want to buy a $4,000/year Qt License. Are you trying to found a startup that uses it or do you have some other reason?

<comment><USER12> Yes, I am developing a product to sell, and I hope it will become a profitable venture. I would not pay for Qt's commercial license if it was just for hobby projects. (For clarity, it's not necessary to buy a commercial license for Qt just because I want to sell Qt-based products, I could do that under the terms of the free LGPL license, but there are a few nice extras that come with the commercial license and I consider them worth the expense.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Scientific software, maybe? Everything I use to control equipment in my lab is terrible and expensive. I don't know how you'd go about getting into that without getting a contract from a manufacturer to develop their software for their devices though, since I'm sure all this stuff relies on undocumented and poorly-designed drivers to start with.

</comment><comment><USER15> Anything that requires a lot of processing power and very low latency would be my suggestion.

My first thoughts would be video games and CAD.

</comment><comment><USER16> Desktop software(inc sublime text) is cracked everywhere, you cant expect to make a living out of it. You can make it as side project and get paid by donation.

on the other hand, you can build your game and sell it on Steam with DRM support.

with that I'm sure.

Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER17> Graphics, CAD, photo and video editing programs work better as desktop apps than as web-based apps. Also, games and system utilities such as antivirus and backup.

</comment><comment><USER18> You could make tools for up and coming technologies. The Resharper of Rust, or FindBugs of Go</comment>


A Hierarchy of Engineering Values - <AUTHOR> https://www.duncanmcisaac.com/a-hierarchy-of-engineering-values/ <comment><USER2> Personally the way I examine dissatisfaction with a project is by comparing my (mostly subconscious) expectations with reality, then asking why the major gaps exist. These gaps could sometimes be equivalent to the values mentioned in the article (e.g. I was expecting to learn this cool new technology but we're using the same old thing), but many other things could bubble up. E.g. expectation to spend all day developing new features vs. reality of hunting down bugs, expectation of everyone agreeing with my opinions vs. reality of some disagreements, etc. Many times it's surprisingly easy to match my expectations with reality once the gap is explicit. I've found that the feeling of disillusionment described is usually the result of my subconscious finding it progressively harder to ignore the gap between expectations and reality.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is a valuable thing for a team to think about and understand. However, I don't agree that if someone's ranking of these values differs from others on the team that means that someone should leave.

As I see it, finding ways to accommodate the different goals, outlooks, and personalities that make up the team is one of the team leader's responsibilities. After all, there's not really much need for leadership if everyone is the same.

<comment><USER4> I work on a team with a portfolio of ~30 separate features and 5 people. I've almost never been in conflicts with my teammates' values or aesthetic sensibilities, since we can almost never afford to have two people working on the same thing. If I'm working on someone else's code it's usually because they've left, so I'm free to change it to my liking. When we do surge several people to a project, there's still one owner who calls the tune on design, style, etc. so just not much debate about it. It's their house; the extra contributors are just passing through.

We always do code review, so no one goes too far off the reservation, but you accept diffs that are acceptable in their own context; values disagreements are nonblocking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problems with this hierarchy are:

In the worst case scenario, a bad design or implementation can be the equivalent of multiplying all effort by zero.

\- It can cause you to be unable to demo a product to a customer, or offer them the product as a trial period, because the product simply doesn't work or is unusable.

\- A bad implementation can make you waste all your funding in something you cannot monetize and leaving you without an exit strategy.

\- A bad implementation can violate regulations and be effectively illegal.

\- A bad implementation can make you lose clients and affect your company reputation, sometimes permanently. Even if you hire an army of customer support representatives to contain frustration, or offer refunds, gifts and discounts, the bleeding won't stop until you fix the implementation.

\- A bad implementation can make it necessary to hire an army of engineers to implement a simple change, because all your engineers spend 99% of their time trying to keep the Jenga tower of spaghetti code they can't refactor running. They cannot refactor it because you told them that "how" is not important.

\- A bad implementation and bad practices can frustrate your engineers and cause them to actually leave their job.

So, implementation is not only some abstract nerd problem about spaces vs tabs, it can be an HR problem, a financial problem, a reputation problem, a legal problem, etc.

<comment><USER6> That's not how I read the article. The author didn't say that "how you build it" was at the bottom of the hierarchy or anything like that. They presented an unordered list of values and asked the reader to rank them.

It sounds like "how you build it" is very important to you, which (as I read the article, and in my own opinion) is a perfectly acceptable value. That's the point of value systems, you don't have to agree about them but if there is a conflict between your values and values of your organisation, be aware of it because otherwise it will eventually cause conflicts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hard to like the answer to any of these question in a large company.

You don't like the product

You don't like the why of the company

You don't like the how it's build.

But, the salary is useful.

</comment><comment> dynamite-ready What's particularly pertinent to software engineering, is in `How something is built` often appears to override `Why something is built` and `What is built`.

Even, not infrequently, in safety critical environments, if some case studies are to be believed.

<comment><USER8> The same is true for bestseller business books, all concerned with the How and not the Why, when it's the Why that moves the needle.

And you see this blind adherence to "process over purpose" everywhere in software teams, with things like Agile, Scrum, Kubernetes, microservices etc. where none of this actually matters to the user.

Henry Ford's autobiography is one of the few that focuses on the Why, and it is ironic that business schools tend to talk about him in terms of the How ("he revolutionized the production process"). Henry Ford's secret to everything was not his production process, but the basis on which he conducted business and approached industry.

The thing is, if you get the Why right, then the How automatically follows: do things in the most direct way possible with a minimum of red tape.

<comment><USER9> Maybe it's just me, but I don't see Scrum prioritising the "how" over the "why". It advertises itself as a "how" (and a very flexible, minimal one at that), in order to get out of your way to focus on the "what" and "why". Because it completely avoids speaking to the "why", adoptees are free to use it in whatever relation to "why" they see fit. To me it's clear the "why" comes first.

I do agree that we find it very easy to talk about "how" ahead of "why". Especially those of us whose job it is to make the "what".

I'd happily dig into whether a "how" does indeed fall out of a "why". My knee- jerk reaction was "probably not", but on A bit of reflection you may be right in more cases than not. The "why" helps frame customer/user expectation, which in turn suggests tolerances for usability, functionality and quality, which in turn should suggest a "how".

<comment> dynamite-ready I think problems tend to arise from the following...

\- The clamour over "HOW" something is built, will most certainly shape 'WHAT' is built

\- After "WHAT" is delivered, it's existence is then found to conflict with "WHY" in someway (missing features, design made to fit the tooling, people implementing ideas they feel is right for the user, etc)

Two years later, you're re-writing vast portions of the originally defined "WHAT", based on a renewed declaration of "WHY".

By this time, the engineering team will have new and innovative ideas related to "HOW", even though the "WHY" never changed...

But the "WHY" has been forced to move on a great deal, because the "WHAT" made the original declaration of "WHY" look misguided. Although it wasn't.

Tbh, the "HOW" is extremely hard, which is why this is such a common state of affairs...

Not sure if that makes any sense, but that was fun to write!

<comment><USER8> And it was fun to read!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "When you build it" is missing from this list. In my experience, the "when" often tends to take precedence over the "how" and occasionally over the "what" as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> For me, as important as any of these factors is "who are you building it with". Great teammates and a great manager can go a really long way towards job satisfaction.

<comment><USER8> "as important as any of these factors"

Surely direction has to be more important?

A great team is great, but not if "we're on a road to nowhere".

And even a good (or possibly mediocre) team with a great direction, a noble goal, must be better than a great team with a dead-end direction, because people will sacrifice and put up with all kinds of politics if the cause is worthy, if there are lives on the line.

<comment><USER11> That's a fair point. I guess my point is that even with direction, if I'm not surrounded by a great team, I'm probably not going to be enjoying my job. Both of these things for me are more important than the specific problem I'm solving or whatever tech I'm using to solve it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "How you build it: How much do you value the application of specific technologies, engineering practices or processes when building software?"

And the inverse: How much do you value doing things in the most direct way possible with a minimum of specific technologies, dependencies, frameworks, practices or processes (i.e. red tape)?

</comment><comment><USER12> What is the fundamental reason why a software engineer is expected to care about what feature he's building, whereas a plumber isn't? Is it due to how differently the two professions are viewed by society, or is there some intrinsic difference between the two professions?

(Just don't tell me it's because software engineers are "creative" whereas plumbers are mindless drones; when faced with a problem, a plumber has to propose solutions and evaluate trade-offs, same as an engineer)

<comment><USER13> A plumbers' work basically always improves society.

A software developers' work sometimes improves society, sometimes harms society, and sometimes is a meaningless waste of time. Society encourages developers to use their judgement and ideally improve society.

At it's core, I think caring about the feature you're making is a judgement on whether you think the feature will improve the world or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of The Golden Circle by Simon: [https://simonsinek.com/commit/the-golden- circle](https://simonsinek.com/commit/the-golden-circle)

<comment><USER15> Could you talk more about it? The site is vague and low info density. It comes off like The Secret or other kinds of weird neurolinguistic programming ideas crossed with a multilevel marketing scheme.

<comment><USER16> Here's a TED talk by Sinek on the concept (it turned into a book, Start With Why, and now a set of courses, etc.)

It's a simple but powerful concept - one of those you should revisit on a regular basis to test your beliefs and the difference you want to make at work, in your society, etc.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA&vl=en](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA&vl=en)

<comment><USER17> What is Sinek's thesis statement? I don't think this answered the parent comment's question.

<comment><USER16> I mean, the title of the book is Start With Why. The thesis, I suppose, is "Starting with why yields better products / results than not."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Neater async failure handling in TypeScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/info/2019/dec/22/async-failure-handling-in-typescript <comment><USER2> Here's the attempt() function that was described in the article:

[https://github.com/guardian/ts- failure/blob/master/src/index...](https://github.com/guardian/ts- failure/blob/master/src/index.ts)</comment>