Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://ftp.iza.org/dp12282.pdf <comment><USER4> It's important to note that this study focuses on data from 15-year-olds taking a math test. I assert that drawing broad conclusions based on that sample is suspect and may be, in fact, bullshit itself.

<comment><USER5> I agree with your point. 15 year old boys are by no means a good sample for the population as a whole. I would argue 15 year old boys are in fact one of the worst samples for this study. Aren't boys going through puberty known to be reckless and shortsighted?

<comment><USER6> Exactly boys are cognitively less developed than girls at that age. The fact that the authors of the study did not control for this well-known fact suggests to me that the study is just more clickbait academic bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting the definition of bullshit in this study:

> 'Bullshitters' are individuals who claim knowledge or expertise in an area > where they actually have little experience or skill.

compared to the definition that the philosopher Harry Fankfurt came to in his book _On Bullshit_ , and that this study references:

> bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar > cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care > if what they say is true or false, but rather only cares whether their > listener is persuaded.

The key difference being, these teenagers might still have regard for the truth, they think they know it and believe they know it. But they're still bullshitters under the definition used in this study. Intention seems to have been discarded in this study when I think it plays a very big part, especially among teens. The specific context of a situation might mean certain individuals are inclined to overclaim vs others because they have different reasons to.

<comment><USER8> On Bullshit is one of my favorite books from long ago, thanks for reminding me about it, I just found my old copy and looking forward to digging through it again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm 17 pages in and I am wondering if the paper itself is bullshit and that's the joke.

<comment><USER10> Your comment was published 20 minutes after the submission. If you were 17 pages at that point, it makes me wonder if you were just pointing out that you found the paper somewhat insulting.

<comment><USER9> I was skimming.

<comment><USER11> if you skimmed the questions in the survey, you might be a bullshitter

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Literally everywhere? I don't think I've worked in a work environment to date where at least half of anyone in a management position was not a complete BSer. It honestly made me wonder if that's what it takes to move up.

<comment><USER13> Clearly not if only half of management are bullshitters. It's also not exclusive to management: I've met plenty of rank-and-file developers who specialize in talking shite.

<comment><USER12> The difference is that if you're an IC you generally have to produce actual work that will be evaluated at some point. It's of course possible to BS your way into showing your manager you did more than you actually did or better than what you actually produced. If you're in _management_ , then your job becomes mostly talking/meetings, which is much more conducive to "hand waving," which is probably why there are so many BSers who end up thriving in those roles.

<comment><USER14> No way. Plenty of people drift through life getting other people to do work for them.

<comment><USER15> Bullshitters are good at presenting the work they're doing as very challenging even when it's trivial, so they can also just ride simple a task for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I dislike bullshitters and I've unfortunately had to work with many.

I read the paper and something that really stuck out at me is how bullshitters were more likely to actually try and understand the problem than non bullshitters.

Page 25: I think about what might have caused the problem and what I can do to solve it Non bullshitters: 85% Bullshitters: 90%

I study a map and work out the best route Non bullshitters: 55% Bullshitters: 71%

Interestingly, the non-bullshitters were more likely to try and put off the work to someone else: I leave it to my brother to worry about how to get there Non bullshitters: 34% Bullshitters: 27%

Another shocking thing for me was that bullshitters viewed themselves as having more perseverance and perfectionism: When confronted with a problem, I give up easily Non bullshitters: 17% Bullshitters: 8%

When confronted with a problem, I do more than what is expected of me Non bullshitters: 28% Bullshitters: 45%

I really didn't expect this. It's got me thinking.

<comment><USER17> The "bullshitter" metric actually used is highly correlated with people trying to choose the "correct" answer to the questions.

I'm not sure that people trying to conform to the correct answer in a survey/test is particularly well correlated with what most people would consider "bullshitters" in life though (the guy selling vaporware with fake testimonials, the guy who can confidently talk at great length on a subject without actually saying anything meaningful, the guy that's having lots and lots of sex with amazing girls every night but they all go to another school) who are being _creative_ rather than conformist in how they present themselves.

[FWIW it probably also picks up a fair few kids who ticked their familiarity with 'proper numbers' because they studied proper and improper fractions quite recently and understood it very well, though those who [also] asserted familiarity with "subjunctive scaling" have fewer excuses...]

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm amazed Ireland is so low on the bullshit scale. I feel like we're amazingly good at it. Actually I would say that the country is full of quite subtle bullshitters. I think they gamed the test.

<comment><USER19> I imagine a good bullshitter would also be a good antibullshitter (wait for a situation where one could conceivably bullshit, and, if someone tries, press them in a way that will reveal what they're doing if they are bullshitting, and be harmless if they aren't)

<comment><USER20> I also imagine the converse. A good antibullshitter can be a passable bullshitter.

If you know which patterns peg your bogometer, you can avoid using them yourself in situations where you need to be believed.

For instance, I know that logorrhea, babbling, and "the gallop" are strong indicators of deception. The bull can always shit faster than the farmer can shovel it. So when I want to be believed, I could pause after every point, and maybe take some strawmen from a partially-scripted faux-skeptic conspirator so I can knock them down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I consider myself to be an anti-bullshitter. I once said in a job interview that I knew nothing about the technology they were hiring for, but I was pretty sure I could take a decent stab at it.

I was telling the truth.

I got the job.

<comment><USER22> "I don't know" is such an underappreciated phrase (followed with action to remedy that).

<comment><USER23> We had an interviewee (is that a word?) today who said that he didn't know and to me that was a reason to hire him.

<comment><USER24> I'd say quite possibly so...if he also followed that up with "...but I could find out." (or something similar).

Saying "I don't know" is one thing - it's good to admit one's lack of knowledge.

Being able to then follow it up with the will to expand their knowledge - <USER2> is valuable IMHO.

<comment><USER23> Yes it was clear that he acquired his other knowledge through hard work and interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In the past few months i've become increasingly aware that many successful people around me completely full of shit. They manage to get millions in investor capital or run financially successful businesses for years with horrible ideas and business practices. (selling coffee on the blockchain, changing business direction so often engineers can't finish their projects).

I'm trying to use this to build enough confidence for me to start my business ideas and pitch to investors. If these idiots can do it, why can't I?

</comment><comment><USER26> Here's my counter theory of "bullshitters" that I imagine will be very unpopular on this forum. (Can you disagree without down voting?) Programmers (Engineers who really spend most their day programming) do intellectually difficult, solitary work. The quality of their work is often difficult to measure because its often easier to write your own code than really spend a lot of time figuring out someone else's code. So if you write code that works, you are hero. You are effective at doing something hard.

But because of this, many programmers I have worked with who admittedly are really smart, think they are head and shoulders above their peers, particularly those who aren't writing code. Being your own judge of the quality of your work distorts your perspective.

People who spend a lot of time programming are sometimes not outgoing or people who prefer interpersonal interactions over technical problems. If they are, they often become managers. If they are managers long enough they inevitably lose touch with the nuts and bolts of what the technical team is doing. They talk about things without understanding them nearly as well as the people on the front line of implementation. In the eyes of the people doing the technical work they can be seen as "bullshiters" who are less capable and less effective than the engineers.

</comment><comment><USER27> The life skill secret is not how to bullshit, it's being able to tell whether someone knows when they are bullshitting, or if they don't even know when they are. Are they a Joker (who knows) or a Clown (who doesn't).

Jokers you can get in on the gag with. Clowns you have to avoid, because a clown is just a clown.

</comment><comment><USER28> When job postings are full of trivial BS language, why complain that some people are completely serious about playing that BS game? It's a wart of contemporary corporate culture, particularly in the tech sector. When you are searching for a "blockchain expert to influence the team", you are attracting only extrovert types maybe with good communication abilities, not a modest and calm guy possessing a sense of inner pride for his work.

<comment><USER29> I once read a wanted ad that described how their company was focused on AI, blockchains, UX, IOT, cloud computing and Big Data. That was the coveted bullshit, buzzword bingo I'd always heard about!

<comment><USER30> What they actually wanted: a WordPress theme

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I recently put up a job post for a COO position for my company and the number of bullshitters with MBAs bragging about their accomplishments on blockchain has been astronomical. It's amazing to me that bullshitting comes so naturally to some people that I almost wanted to interview them just to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

</comment><comment><USER32> Lower coefficient of bullshit in areas where people are likely to say "u wot m8"? Can't say I'm surprised.

</comment><comment><USER33> The US has a long history as the land of the bullshitter - the snake-oil sales men, the Psychics and Tarot card readers, the self-help authors, the "business coaches", MLM... the list is endless.

And people love it so much they'll gladly get into debt for it and even vote for the king of Bullshit for president.

<comment><USER34> Ah, why did you have to spoil a great cultural observation with a contemporary political dig at the end?

<comment><USER33> But it's not political, really. Both parties have different politicians shoveling different bullshit to different people. Same game, different target audience.

That's not to say genuine people/products/value doesn't exist but you have to dig through so much bullshit to find any of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> There's one thing here that I don't really get here. Take a look at this paragraph, on page 18:

> There are two primary threats to the validity of our interpretation of the > results above. [...] A second possibility is that young people's responses > are reflecting social desirability bias; that they are providing responses > that they believe will be viewed as positively by others (e.g. that they > know various mathematics concepts, that they work hard at school etc). Both > of these possibilities could lead to a spurious correlation between our > bullshit index and the various other psychological traits investigated in > the previous sub-section.

Huh?? What on earth does "bullshit" mean if not, y'know, giving socially- desirable answers rather than correct ones? (I mean, that's basically roughly how Frankfurt defined it.) Social desirability bias isn't a separate thing interfering with your measurement of bullshit; social desirability bias _is_ bullshit (or rather, a cause of it).

I am quite confused as to how the authors are conceptualizing "bullshit" if their notion of it apparently excludes social desirability bias as a separate thing. That seems to me to be quite different from what anyone else means. I think some explanation is really required here.

<comment><USER36> > Huh?? What on earth does "bullshit" mean if not, y'know, giving socially- > desirable answers rather than correct ones?

They are saying that social desirability bias in responding to the questions that are used to measure correlates of the bullshit scale could distort the correlations, not that social desirability bias on the questions used to measure the bullshit scale distorts the bullshit measurements.

Loosely, they are explaining a reason for concern that bullshitters might tend to bullshit more than other people, in a systematic direction, about traits with which the study is trying to assess the relationship to bullshitting, which might make the results bullshit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Am I reading the data right? It has Canada as the top BS avg? Any ideas as to why this would be?

</comment><comment><USER38> There is one point in the article - that "teenage boys are bigger bullshitters than teenage girls" \- which I have independently verified. When conducting surveys using Google Surveys (surveys.google.com) on fact-based questions (such as asking what country is Aleppo in), men are ALWAYS more likely to select a random option, and women are almost always more likely to select "I don't know".

</comment><comment><USER39> I think there are different kinds of BSer that people meet and that in a lot of cases they are just bundled together to facilitate our understanding of why they exist.

In reality, a lot of BSers are a byproduct of the environment society has created. In my opinion, two main factors come into play: information asymmetry and base expectation. I'll exemplify a single test case with multiple potential outcomes:

Consultant demos a solution and he believes he can deliver X item by Y date.

\- He may truly believe that, even though he may not be accounting for factors that are outside his control

\- Teams and society have always found a need to have someone(s) take the lead. Since folks have limited intel while having the need to guide others, they will sometimes wing it

\- He may wing it because if he doesn't and says he is not certain, it becomes unacceptable to the other party

\- He may bs because nobody has raised his lie before and if they did, the individual still found value in acting that way in the long run.

Sometimes we may not realize, but our actions or lack there of can have a direct impact on how others are incentivized to act

</comment><comment><USER40> I think there's something missing in this discussion.

Do you know everything before you start $JOB? Do you have absolutely every last skill required to get the job done?

I can only speak for myself here. I know I haven't.

There have been cases where I only checked half the boxes for a job I was interviewing for.

I'm certainly not the only one that's been in such a scenario.

Impostor syndrome runs strong and screams loud in my ears. I own it. I live with it.

If I (or anyone else for that matter) were to only apply to jobs or pick up tasks where I knew everything required, I suspect I and a lot of other people wouldn't be doing much.

Does that make me a bullshitter? Where does one cross the line from authentic to bullshitter?

I'm not going to stop doing hard things, things I don't know everything about, just because I'm afraid of what someone will think of me. I don't recommend anyone take that approach.

Do hard things. Sell yourself. Be confident. And I'm speaking to myself, as well as to anyone else who cares to listen.

</comment><comment><USER41> The society rewards those "fake it until you make it" con. Sometimes it makes me wonder if the truth still matter anymore.

</comment><comment><USER42> Why do all Ted Talks and KickStarter Promos sound the same to me? Do I have Bullshit Agnosia?

It's like there's this certain style of Archetypal Motivational Making The World A Better Place Inspiration Porn Bullshit that they're all striving for, and they all use the exact same music and slogans and rhythm and inflection.

<comment><USER43> Your comment reminded me of this clip (Silicon Valley): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The worst part is when your bullshit detector is screaming, but other people (especially managers lacking the technical background) just can't see it. The bullshitter will often seek to have meetings with mgmt without any other technical people around, or only the most docile who feel reluctant to call out bullshit.

A common experience is that the bullshitter will behave semi-reasonably until they have stuffed up, and will then seek to cover up what happened, including by pathologically lying. If you are forced to work in a flat org structure with such a person you need to find another job, because otherwise their bullshit will come back to haunt you.

</comment><comment><USER45> It seems like "bullshit", in the way that it is measured in this paper, is an analog to confidence and risk taking. The groups that were most likely to bullshit (high socio-economic status, male, immigrant, North American) are generally groups who have been exposed to strategic risk taking that has paid off. "Bullshitters", in the context of this paper, seem to be the ones who are willing to put their hands up and have the confidence to explore ideas and concepts that are at the fringes of their skill and knowledge sets. This is very different than the colloquial idea of a bullshitter.

</comment><comment><USER46> This thread is totally surreal and meta enough to be _n-gate_ 's wet dream.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm not sure if this is helping anyone except making people who are not bullshitters more paranoid and the bullshitters be-hated. The bullshitters in the startup world don't get big because nobody realizes that they are talking a lot of bullshit but because those who collaborate with them are _at least_ as greedy as they are. (I was also drinking the kool aid for some time.)

So the core problem is greed and not bullshit, and this is also what makes it toxic. FWIW even the most credible and knowledgeable people are able to fan out bullshit, _everybody_ does this every now and then.

</comment><comment><USER48> Bullshitting is really a booming business. Regardless of what your views are on him, when you juxtapose what the US president says and what is real, he's a bullshitter.

</comment><comment><USER49> I've seen a class of people who are so insecure with their choice of technology that they have to put down rivals technology. I'm fine with objective contrast but I think the generalizations and lack of data with opinion pass as fact is a terrible behavior to have in this industry.

It creates tribalism and it doesn't do anything remotely constructive but to put other people who chose different technology down.

</comment><comment><USER50> In this paper, did the bullshitters actually turn out to be _smarter_ than the non-bullshitters?

Is this in the PDF? I didn't read it thoroughly.

</comment><comment><USER51> I think the word _bullshitting_ is a harmfully imprecise way to describe what is actually several problems:

 _Naive over-confidence_ : People who lack the experience necessary to update their beliefs to more reasonable ones. I'd argue that this is both a good thing and a bad thing. When it works out well (Tesla) there are still people who are angry that it happened and call bullshit on it. Most examples of truly uncommon vision will be characterized as this sort of bullshit by skeptics, who are sometimes (in hindsight) wrong and sometimes right.

 _" Alpha" culture_: Companies/teams where leadership is confused with stereotypical alpha behavior such as dominance, brashness, and artificial confidence/decisiveness. This one is predominantly negative, as it shuts down important thought and enquiry. To make matters worse, it creates a filter where the culture is blind to leadership that is not couched in stereotypical alpha behaviors. This is often referred to as bro culture.

 _Lying_ : Some people lie strategically about things that are important to a business or team. They do this often to serve their own goals at the expense of company goals. When looking at this one we must ask what incentives allow it to seem like a winning strategy for anyone? In my opinion it occurs when there is not a culture of trust to begin with.

 _Intimidation_ : This is similar to bro/alpha culture, but is more sinister, and has more to do with problem individuals behaving in antisocial ways and trying to opportunistically use pecking order, law of the jungle approaches to get what they want out of the situation. This resembles "bullshit" because it is a form of tactical speech that is not based in truth and is meant to create a desirable outcome for the person doing it. It is always harmful to a group dynamic and is often hard to detect because sometimes someone observing the situation will think that the person who is tactically intimidating others is more of a natural leader, or will interpret the successfully intimidated peoples' behavior as timid or un-leader-like.

 _Company-wide lies_ : All companies have an origin story, and some are more true than others. But when there is a big lie that starts at the top, it creates many opportunities for people in the organization to exploit information asymmetries to their own benefit. Since it is based on a lie, the information asymmetries exist due to politics and are not based on truth, so being observant and truth-oriented is not helpful in understanding when someone is trying to act opportunistically. This one is really bad, and the consequences are very broad and include everything from hiring or firing people based on dishonest metrics to leading to resumé inaccuracies, fudged metrics, and (worst of all) major strategic blind spots.

<comment><USER52> Nice Analysis.

I think you may find the book; "Management: A Political Activity by Ted Stephenson" useful. Everything plays out in the realm of "Politics" (in the broad sense of the term) in pursuit of Power, Prestige and Wealth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness. Our industry is one where the impostor complex is rife and anyone who sounds confident _must_ know what they're talking about, since even the PhD's aren't half as confident in their field of expertise as a bullshitter is at anything.

The tech industry is increasingly inundated with these types of people who manage to get placed high in management hierarchies despite knowing nothing about the technologies they claim to be experts in.

They're are the 'Agile coaches' who have never done actual scrum. The 'enterprise architects' who couldn't write fizzbuzz if their life depended on it. The 'thought leaders' who read a couple blogs about blockchain.

They are a cancer to the entire industry. I don't expect C level leadership to be savvy enough to call them out for another 5-10 years, but _something_ needs to be done about these types of people. They actively cause damage to the course of any business by setting unrealistic expectations about what technology can do, how much it costs, and how long it takes.

<comment><USER54> >The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness

The industry (tech, startups, VC money) do bring bullshit to the front of the industry consciousness. I've never seen another industry push and promote "fake it till you make it" so hard.

Democratizing this...disrupting that...we respect your privacy and data...DAO/code is law...Self driving cars...uber is creating good jobs...Fyre fest...VR/AR...Theranos

From top down the industry promotes bullshitters.

<comment><USER55> A colleague of mine put the problem more succinctly "what other industry is there where the top decision-makers have never done the basic work of the company?" Most executives in finance have done some form of financial analysis and reporting, construction company owners have almost always done a hard day's worth of labor, and a lot of directors have had to do some acting / camera work and whatnot. In tech (especially enterprise business verticals) your typical CEO outside Silicon Valley hasn't ever written a line of code or had to deliver a software project of substantial size. Many are salesmen, marketers, consultants, politicians, etc. and the technology and how it works is just an afterthought. It's as if executing on the technology is a complete afterthought to investors and frankly they may be right - the barrier to succeed in most enterprise software is probably not your technology as much as how entrenched you already are in the industry you're working in. This oftentimes bleeds over into supposed tech companies like IBM and HP - <USER3> customer base and partners infects your company culture from the top down and drives out engineers. Engineers are far too often excluded because "they're too pessimistic" and yet every other time I hear about dismissing engineers' concerns I also hear about tanked projects where it's a complete mess or situations like the 737 Max. The thing is that the other half is a pretty good gamble.

<comment><USER56> _> "what other industry is there where the top decision-makers have never done the basic work of the company?"_

Isn't the answer... most industries? My understanding is that large companies in all domains are heavily populated with executives and managers who came straight out of business school and into a leadership position.

There are those who rise through the rank and file up to the executive position too. I don't know the relative fractions are. But all of those kids who get business and management degrees end up _somewhere_ , right?

<comment><USER57> Pre-experience business school (BSc) doesn't launch you straight into leadership positions.

Post-experience business school (MBA) can do that (that's usually leadership of 1-2 kids straight out of school), however to get an MBA you need work experience ... which means yeah, you have done the entry work somewhere

Note: I am not saying that they have done "basic" work (as in: developing code, flipping burgers etc.). But they definitely are not launched into leadership position without ever having done anything.

<comment><USER36> > which means yeah, you have done the entry work somewhere

Even if so, that somewhere doesn't have to be the same industry you go with your first (usually not top-level) leadership position, and neither of those may be the industry in which you end up moving into a top-level leadership position.

<comment><USER58> The vast majority of managers I've had, whether product or program managers, had very little understanding or experience with the job of programming.

In fact, i suspect more than half of them basically failed upwards. I can't be sure about this, because in many cases I could only see the piss-poor job they were currently doing, but I've experienced the incompetent junior-to-senior manager pipeline up close often enough that I wouldn't be surprised these senior managers were previously incompetent junior managers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I think we need to take the right message from this. BS seems to be a necessary evil and instead of lamenting the fall of intellectualism, I would encourage techies to focus on their craft, writing and speaking in that order.

The other day I was reading [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312427581/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312427581/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and the TL;DR was that most of the modern art movement was brewed out of a PR machine which did involve some artistic skill but was mostly lots of BS. So lesson to us programmers would be spend more time cultivating a brand on Twitter and Github.

Over longer timelines and repeated games the techies will have more influence than the BSers who just know how to write and speak.

<comment><USER23> No, if you are actually skilled, you take pride in what you do. I will not give up and join the bullshitters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Absolutely fascinating to me that this is voted up to the top of HN without anyone present talking about the elephant in the room on this particular issue of chronic bullshitters being more successful than they should be.

</comment><comment><USER61> Extending other comments here about bullshitters being prevalent in management, I would love to see this research extended to the economic impact on bullshit, both positive and negative outcomes.

</comment><comment><USER62> Overestimation, overplacement, overprecision.

Three new words to absorb, to help identify B.S.

Page 3

</comment><comment><USER63> It would be precious if this entire study were prevaricated.

</comment><comment><USER64> The article seems to be catching overconfidence (a human bias) as opposed to BS (a disregard for truth). Or am I missing it?

<comment><USER65> I mean, if you say you know a made up branch of math very well - isn't that BS? That's what the researchers tested (they asked students to rate themselves in 16 branches of mathematics, 3 were completely made up)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I have to admit I was wondering after the first couple pages if I was being bullshitted by reading it. Really good though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had the same feeling right around:

> They present experiment participants with "pseudo-profound bullshit" - > vacuous statements constructed out of buzzwords - to ascertain when they can > differentiate bullshit from meaningful statements and create a Bullshit > Receptivity (BSR) scale.

Wouldn't that be meta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> If you've never experienced it before, the first time you work with someone who is a pathological liar and bullshitter is a completely disorienting experience. Normal people just don't lie that brazenly and with so little remorse - so you walk out of meetings wondering if perhaps you just misunderstood because there's no way someone would straight up lie that way.

Interestingly, both of the worst bullshitters I've ever met were in academia - and the business world has been a breath of fresh air in comparison. When I used to work in computational biology, I met several senior professors who lead big labs who had absolutely no understanding of any of the methods used by the grad students in their group.

<comment><USER68> Sometimes a bullshitter consistently peddles untruths, but is unaware of it, and so isn't a liar, just mistaken. I grew up with an older brother like that. He regularly spouted pure bullshit that to him was Truth.

That became clear once when I was struggling with math homework. He looked at the problem, pronounced that he understood it and could solve it easily. So I handed him the pencil. He didn't know he was bullshitting so didn't make an excuse or acknowledge that I'd called a bluff. He took the pencil and sat down, then stared at the book and the problem for 20 minutes. Then shrugged, got up, and walked away. But he really thought he could do it so he did try.

Since then he's made a living in a retail construction trade and hasn't changed. He'll visit a homeowner who will explain the problem. He'll confidently and convincingly explain how he can solve it, and get the job. Then he'll utterly fail and ignore the resulting problems, and not understand why the customer gets upset. His last name, and so mine, is dirt in the city where he works, which he seems to be unaware of. But another sucker is born every minute so he moves on. As a tradesman he is crap but as a salesman he's golden, largely because he honestly believes in his own competence.

Growing up with that has inoculated me against this mode of bullshit so it's been a blessing. I suppose it's like the benefit of raising a kid in an environment that's not too clean.

<comment><USER69> I've previously encountered just this same sort personality. Being pretty paranoid, it took a long wrenching journey for me to discover that he wasn't being deceptive: he just didn't have a handle on the facts, or whether or not he was competent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I probably fall in a group of an occasional bs, big on estimation, get lost sometimes

</comment><comment><USER71> This is explained in part by the Dunning-Kruger effect (which ties into the Impostor Syndrome).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect)

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

</comment><comment><USER72> Where are the tables?

</comment><comment><USER73> I think this article maybe self referential.

</comment><comment><USER74> Extra points for using a ftp in the URL.

</comment><comment><USER75> if this 34 page paper ends in 'this paper is bullshit', ima gonna cry

</comment><comment><USER76> I like how one of the authors is from "Australian Catholic University". An expert on bullshitting?

<comment><USER77> I'm confused: [https://www.acu.edu.au/](https://www.acu.edu.au/) ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Vices or virtues of the article aside, what a great title.

</comment><comment><USER79> Code or gtfo?

</comment><comment><USER80> read only title and comments. paper is wrong - it's just different origins, aims and perspective.

</comment><comment><USER81> They short sell

</comment><comment><USER82> honestly i just came for the title

</comment><comment><USER83> > One caveat to consider is that the study subjects were adolescents.

I.e. the post title is completely misleading.

</comment><comment><USER84> Sorry - is this paper bullshit? Can't tell if they're just funking with us.

</comment><comment><USER85> Funnier still is that I suspect that "bullshitters" are probably well represented in this thread; pitchforks in hand, and bashing "bullshitters" like everyone else.</comment>


Show HN: shrtn.co - a revenue generating affiliate tool for the masses - <AUTHOR>

We have just finished the beta release of shrtn.co, and are excited to get HN's feedback on our new tool.
shrtn allows you to monetize your links seamlessly in an unobtrusive manner by adding affiliate codes to the merchants that we support. Whenever a sale is made via your URL, we share most of the revenue generated with the you. shrtn is currently connected with around 50 merchants, but that number is increasing daily.
The application is pretty lean at the moment. We have a few ideas for future developments which includes a more advanced bookmarklet, a browser plugin to inform you of affiliate link opportunities, advanced analytics & a sexier JS/ajax interface.
Please try us out - we would love to get your feedback on this HN! <comment><USER2> Great idea. Congrats on the release!

A couple of suggestions:

\- An API to generate shortened URLs automatically would be great.

\- Some mechanism for supporting custom domain names.

Say, someone has a link shortener service with a decent amount of traffic. Both shrtn.co and the shortener owner would benefit greatly from an API/custom domain combo.

<comment><USER3> There is currently a very basic api in place @ <http://shrtn.co/api/*your- url*>

Custom domain names are a great idea. Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER2> Awesome!

Is it possible to authenticate using my shrtn username? The current API generates links using shrtn's own affiliate codes.

<comment><USER3> We're currently working on a REST based API with authentication. Release should be in within the next two weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's the amount of work involved in adding merchants? I notice the list grew a lot since last time, should we expect 20/month?

Oh, and there's no chance you've solved my personal bugaboo, and can redirect to Amazon.COM/CA/UK depending on a person's origin, is there?

<comment><USER3> At the moment most of the merchants are added via CPA networks, so the dev time is fairly minimal. I expect this will change when we exhaust all of the top merchants on the affiliate networks and go looking for more 'premium' merchants.

There's no location detection just yet, but it does work with .com/ca/co.uk, you just have to put the relevant URL in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1) How are you different/better than VigLink, which also provides this service?

2) Do you have permission from affiliates to act as a master account like this? (I'd be concerned they'll cut you off and me with you)

3) What percentage are you taking?

</comment><comment><USER6> Love the idea!

I think you should have some mention of how are revenues shared be it at 10-90 or 90-10. That was the first thing I went looking after.

<comment><USER3> We made a concious decision to keep the revenue share margins under wraps, but rest assured it is - and always will be - in the users favour.

<comment><USER7> I don't entirely understand why people are preferring to keep this kind of number under the desk. Would you share why?

In my mind, specific number/statistic is a layer of trust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable URL <http://shrtn.co></comment>


Expert predicts 25% of colleges will fail in the next 20 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/expert-predicts-25-percent-of-colleges-will-fail-in-the-next-20-years-2019-08-31/ <comment><USER2> You wanted to commoditize higher ed and demand people have degrees just to essentially survive, yet you've defunded higher ed. This is exactly how a market functions. Consumers no longer have the time nor money to waste on degrees which are poor returns on investments, either because they came from a college no one had ever heard of, or because the skillset that the degree endowed is not in-demand. Really this is just the market reacting so I don't feel like its a huge surprise. (I guess the article kind of expressed this sentiment already, but I feel its worth reiterating).

<comment><USER3> > You

Who?

> defunded higher ed

I am unaware of this. I thought public funding increased over the last decade or so.

<comment><USER4> Not even a little bit.

<comment><USER3> Alright, looks like my "decade" time period was off. State/local funding for 2-4 year institutions did in fact increase 2% from 2007 to 2017 [1], but that figure is negative after adjusting for 18% cumulative inflation.

It's been rising more recently though.

2012-2017 had a 15% increase (20% per student), with only 7% cumulative inflation.

Either way, "defunded higher ed" is exaggerated.

[1] [https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures- tabl...](https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/total- and-student-state-and-local-funding-and-public-enrollment-over-time)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This could be very, very bad, if it does in fact start to happen with any regularity.

If you have a bunch of colleges go out of business you suddenly have a scenario where degrees from those institutions are either potentially seen as invalid as they can't be verified and/or you have degree mills going "Nnnnnoiiiicccceeee, you want a college degree? Pick from one of these hundred colleges and we will send you aged printed transcripts and a perfect replica of their diploma" and then you suddenly have tens of thousands, or millions, of people with degrees that are fake but can't be proven to be.

Many employers would probably just refuse to acknowledge degrees from those institutions or at least considerably discount their value compared to an applicant that has a degree from a university that hasn't shuttered. Worse, you'd have people still paying for loans for degrees that can't be verified.

<comment><USER5> Colleges themselves are not the only institutions keeping records about students. For instance, you can send people your transcripts and proofs of graduation through [https://studentclearinghouse.org/](https://studentclearinghouse.org/), a nonprofit

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure we have any reason to believe this. There are two reasons given:

1\. families had fewer kids after the 2008 recession.

2\. Alternative forms of education.

The latter will be good news, if it does displaced old colleges. The former, which is waaay earlier in the article and therefore probably the more important cause (in the opinion of this article) could be swung at any moment by a change in immigration, welfare, or regulatory policies on state (for the latter two) or Federal levels.

I don't see much reason to take this prediction seriously. Are private investments or bonds of some kind in these institutions tanking?

<comment><USER7> Their tuition is rising at unsustainable rates, and institutions are making huge investments in facilities whose loans depend on the unsustainable rise in tuition in order to pay them off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the article: "I think we're gonna see a lot more of these sort of flexible, affordable, convenient programs." You want college to be controlled by the free market you have to compete. You can't just keep increasing costs and offering nothing new and not expect consequences.

</comment><comment><USER9> Those 25% were probably degree mills or scam colleges anyway so good riddance. Too many colleges out there that give out non accredited "degrees" and just extract money from people that don't know better

</comment><comment><USER10> Good riddance: it's cosmic justice for the excessive administrative staff and luxury accommodations to go away after decades of extorting students and chaining them with debt.</comment>


SEC cracks down on Bitcoin product, while Citigroup considers jumping in - <AUTHOR> https://offthechain.substack.com/p/crypto-news-september-10-2018 <comment><USER2> paywall</comment>


Beyond Sexual Orientation (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/63/horizons/beyond-sexual-orientation-rp <comment><USER2> This is very interesting stuff. I'm a man and have identified as gay for most of my awareness of my sexuality, but started experiencing attraction to women sometime in college. I think I'm bi now, but preferences seem to vary considerably month to month. It was pretty confusing for a while before I stopped trying to put labels on it and just went with it.

The biggest thing I've realized is that in the ways that count, I really actually just like people. There seems to be a small aspect of sexuality driven by visual attraction ("wow he's hot") but really the person inside (behavioral identity) seems to be more important.

I wonder how many people (especially men) might have expressed sexual fluidity if it wasn't for the societal idea that you're gay/straight/bi and that's that...I know I wasn't too open to being attracted to women for a long time, and I don't think that's a healthy place to be.

<comment><USER3> personally, I'm fairly certain that 99.9% of the population is to some degree bisexual, though most people fall on an extreme where they prefer one gender over the other a lot (but you could convince them to say someone of the same gender is hot or someone of the other gender is hot or whatever you land on)

<comment><USER4> This is my personal experience and yet I'm careful not to put my own experience onto anyone else. I've met more than enough people, gay and straight, who seem genuinely repulsed by one or the other. I don't purport to know what they feel like, nor can I.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like all people would be "sexually fluid" without social pressure. If a person can reach sexual gratification with nothing but their own fist, they can do it with anyone else's.

I don't think attraction is exclusive to physical appearance or genitalia.

<comment><USER6> I really don't give a shit what society thinks about who I sleep with, but there's a type of basic, visceral 'punch in the gut' feeling I get when faced with a very physically attractive woman which never happens with a man. The idea that but for societal pressure I would start fancying men just does not match my experience at all.

<comment><USER7> It's hard, as a straight male my whole life, to tell whether personal anti- homo feelings are completely natural or the result of an ingrained societal bias. I wonder if there's some sort of pyschological test for that.

<comment><USER8> Societal bias. "Homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" are, mostly, modern inventions. The line between "normal" and "deviant" behavior as regards relationships between the same sex has varied drastically over time and between cultures. In antiquity, such a distinction didn't even exist in many cases, and it wasn't that long ago that men kissing one another was considered perfectly in line with what we would now classify "heterosexual" behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I used to consider myself straight, and then I got into the sex scene (think kink scene, but with less kinkiness, and the same amount of sex). After some time, I realized that I could be having fun with people of the same gender as me, and boom, suddenly I had no idea what my sexual preferences identified me as. I have fallen in love with people of both typical genders, and also people across the spectrum of sexuality. I like peoples' personalities, not their genitals. Everyone's got holes, and everyone has things to stick in them. If you need some more holes or some better things to put in them, there's a whole industry waiting to help you find a solution to that problem.

> Sexual fluidity is also not the same thing as bisexuality, which is another > sexual orientation.

This kind of thing triggers me now. Sexuality is not a category. It's the relationships you have. If we want to categorize this, then there are effectively an infinite number of sexualities. How would you categorize me? I am currently in a relationship with a person of the opposite gender, but we both enjoy having sex with people of all kinds. I have fallen in love with people of all kinds. Does that make me bisexual? Pansexual? Sapiosexual? An adventurous asexual? Sexually fluid? My point is that it doesn't matter! It is what it is.

Go experiment and learn about yourself. You might be surprised at what you find

Edit: I would also like to add that you are never too old to experiment with this. And! The "sex scene" is probably the safest place to have sex that I can think of because everyone that I've met in it is open and honest and respectful

<comment><USER10> I experimented and eventually realised I'm asexual.

I'm not depressed, or ill. All my parts function. It's just that I'm not sexually attracted to anyone.

I'm still perfectly capable of having, and enjoying, sex, but it's been a long time now. Even before I realised I was asexual, I was still aware of an asymmetry in what was going on, that I wasn't experiencing things in quite the same was as my partner.

I still like the idea of love and partnership, but I've let this get in the way of my finding it.

<comment><USER11> And that's okay. And _you're_ okay.

:-)

Just wanted to say this, because it seems like aces are still one of the most misunderstood groups out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I got a feeling of incredulity from reading this article because it seems like the article is saying that sexual fluidity is a sexual orientation, you can be asexual, gay, straight, bi or fluid. But that seems like falling into the same type of rigid thinking that the article decries. I think sexual fluidity is orthogonal to sexual orientation. If right now you're attracted to both men and women, you're bisexual. If, in a few years, you find yourself attracted only to men (as a man), then you'll be gay.

I think the problem arises because most people consider sexual orientation to be an identity, instead of a description. Some languages have multiple verbs that are covered in English by 'to be'. In Spanish, for example, there's ser and estar. Ser is used for things like inherent characteristics, while estar is used for temporary conditions, moods, etc. If you say "I'm tall" you would use ser, if you said "I'm tired", you'd use estar. People tend to think of sexual orientation in the ser sense instead of considering that it can be used in the estar sense.

<comment><USER11> I had the same impression. I think the authors are taking what's simply a previously-unacknowledged dimension of sexuality (time) and reifying it into an orientation in and of itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The most interesting statistic I found in this article is that nearly three times as many women as men have had a same sex encounter according to a 2016 survey of 10k US adults - 17% vs 6%.

<comment><USER13> It seems to me that same-sex encounters are _way_ more acceptable among women than among men. If a woman has such an encounter the peer group would classify it as a once-of experiment. If a guy has such an encounter you can be sure he'll be called gay bob for as long as he stays in the same group of friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> tl/dr: Different people like different things, and sometimes that changes over time. Huge surprise, or?

I imagine attraction is a non-trivial function of multiple variables for most people. As such it doesn't seem that surprising that for some certain variables have more (or less) influence than for most others.

On a somewhat related note, I truly cannot imagine why anyone would put jelly on a peanut butter sandwich. The thought seems utterly gross to me. But as long as I'm not forced to eat it, I no problem with others having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Why should I?

<comment><USER15> >On a somewhat related note, I truly cannot imagine why anyone would put jelly on a peanut butter sandwich. The thought seems utterly gross to me. But as long as I'm not forced to eat it, I no problem with others having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Why should I?

Same with me except replace PB & J with pizza & pineapple respectively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Title says 2016 but article is from 16th August 2018.

Edit: I now see the article was reposted from a 2016 issue.

<comment><USER17> The last line of the article:

> This article was originally published in our "Selection" issue in October, > 2016.

<comment><USER16> I didn't spot that, sorry.</comment></comment></comment>


Japan's Hometown Tax - <AUTHOR> https://www.kalzumeus.com/2018/10/19/japanese-hometown-tax/ <comment><USER2> I LOVE this idea! Here in the US, it could really help out rural communities. The best part is that it is 'free' to everyone; you've already paid the taxes.

Small communities could, and do, organize festivals based on local culture: Trout fishing in the summer, Ice festivals in the winter, Duck races in the spring, etc. They get people interested in some aspect of the community, be it a festival, music, the climate, foods, textiles, history, etc. Either way, the community sends stuff out or brings people into itself for 'free' as the taxes have already been paid.

This incentivizes these small communities to plan for the festivals, to clean up the streets, to pay people to make it look nice, get a bunch of bunting ready for the 'homesick' tourists that they sent AirBNB vouchers out to. People come in, spend money at the diners and in the shops, at the mechanic's when a tire goes flat. There are _knock-on_ effects that the community feels.

Or it incentivizes them to get better at food/textile/goods production. Maybe they make a mean steamed-ham. They get better at curing and steaming the hams, they find a niche in the market they didn't know they had, they hire more workers to fill the niche. City-slickers get some steamed-hams, realize that they don't have any rolls to eat them with, and go out and buy some. Again, knock-on effects.

For communities that are _very_ small, they could run mini-lotteries, like one during a Wednesday night bowling league. You sign up, they draw a name out of a hat, you get 10% of everyone's tax money that entered (something less than the 30% that the community would have sent out).

Communities that don't participate still receive taxes as before. Some that choose to spend these taxes _are_ taking a chance, true. But, I feel that this 'priming of the pump' is fantastic idea. It gets people moving about, making things, buying meals and plane tickets.

<comment><USER3> Did you read the entire article? It's not really 'free to everyone', it's not like it's magic money. It's more like a transfer of tax revenue from Tokyo to rural communities, with a bit of a kickback to the tax payers.

And while your vision sounds nice, the end of the article made it sound more like it's become a race to the bottom with most rural towns offering the maximum amount allowed in gift vouchers which people resell for cash.

So it's mostly just a convoluted tax distribution/credit system in a lot of ways. And as much as it would be nice to have something like what you wrote, it would be near impossible to set out rules such that it didn't become another cynical race to maximize profits by attracting 'donors'. Even if you outlawed gift cards, there's always going to be some good/commodity a community can offer that will hold a liquidable cash value.

<comment><USER4> I use the system and while yes you can do what you describe it is usually not really worth it. There is a limit on it that is not that high and it is more fun to just grab different fun things. I ended up using it for lots of high grade meat, sake

<comment><USER5> 1.5% of your _gross_ salary isn't worth it?

<comment><USER4> Difference between maximizing return on it and just getting whatever you want. Effort of reselling vouchers etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I see a lot of moaning about inefficiency here, but here's a point of comparison. During the Bubble years in the late eighties, when many rural areas were feeling left out, there was a scheme to give basically every municipality in Japan a large lump sum of money ($10m?), no strings attached, except that it had to be used for building something new.

This, as you might guess, was an _incredible_ waste of money. Many podunk towns built flashy "multi-purpose halls" (多目的ホール) perfect for all those symphony orchestras just dying to perform in the middle of nowhere. More memorably, the town of Utazu, Kagawa purchased a solid gold toilet...!

[http://english.cri.cn/6909/2010/09/09/1901s593626.htm](http://english.cri.cn/6909/2010/09/09/1901s593626.htm)

[https://www.emporis.com/buildings/191596/gold-tower-utazu- ja...](https://www.emporis.com/buildings/191596/gold-tower-utazu-japan)

</comment><comment><USER7> Couching this in terms of Japanese culture is unhelpful in my opinion. The return gifts probably wouldn't exist in the first place elsewhere, but allowing them is simply a blatant loophole that various local governments have cynically abused to increase their revenue and this is something that would happen in any country.

The biggest problem is that some local governments are apparently giving return gifts that have a value that's higher than the 2000 yen part of the hometown tax that isn't tax deductible, which means that by opting in to donating to these local governments you do slightly better than if you didn't donate money in the first place. These governments are obviously trying to get people with absolutely no local connection to send money purely for the gifts.

One option would be to set a limit on the value of the gifts, but there's absolutely zero reason to allow the return gifts in the first place. The whole reason for the first 2000 yen not being tax deductible is this is something you are only supposed to do if you seriously want your money to go to a local government, and allowing non-taxed return gifts defeats the intention of how the system is set up. Having tax money go back into return gifts is also ridiculously inefficient.

Unfortunately, based on the way the government is set up, rural votes have disproportionate power, and for this reason the LDP has a tendency to pander to rural interests, so they probably have no interest in eliminating the gifts entirely. However, at least they recently announced that they are looking into introducing legislation to limit the value of gifts (and ban the worst abusers from participating entirely) in the next regular session of the Diet.

<comment><USER8> > based on the way the government is set up, rural votes have disproportionate > power, and for this reason the LDP has a tendency to pander to rural > interests

Is there a Western government that _isn 't_ set up this way? You could write this same blurb about the United States. I would be very curious to hear about what happens when rural areas have political power consummate with their population instead of with their land area or with the mere fact of their historical existence. (For example, does it look less or more "fair"? Are there unexpected consequences, like maybe further depopulation of rural areas?)

<comment><USER7> It's actually interesting because in the US it's enshrined in the constitution with the way the senate is set up, so it's not even viewed as a problem.

In Japan the central government isn't supposed to work this way and it is as least viewed as a problem: the disparity in the power of votes is considered unconstitutional, but the supreme court isn't willing to actually invalidate election results (they made up a distinction between being "unconstitutional" and being in an "unconstitutional state" which is not at all supported by precedent (although it's a civil law country so technically there's no binding precedent) or the constitution), so the ruling LDP does the absolute bare minimum to act like they're trying to improve the situation so they can pretend their doing something while actually dragging their feet as much as possible.

Probably the main negative consequence of ensuring that all votes have equal power would be to make it easier for the central government to ignore the wishes of rural areas, but this depends on how the government is structured in other ways.

In Japan, prefectures are relatively weak. For example, Okinawa recently attempted to invalidate approval for filling in of land for the new US military base because residents of Okinawa want the base out, but there's basically zero chance that this will actually end up working because the central government considers the base essentially for national security.

<comment><USER9> Just one nitpick: the anti-democratic nature of the Senate (and the Electoral college, while we're at it) is very much seen as a problem by a lot of people living outside the sparsely populated rural states;

For those of us living in urban areas, we're simply vastly underrepresented in federal government, and quite a few of us don't like it.

<comment><USER10> So you want to reduce the representation from the "fly-over states" so that all elections and all federal government decisions are decided by California and New York?

That's not going to work very well, and would lead to the secession of about 90% of the states, and then you'd find out that your urban paradises depend absolutely on the rest of the country to exist.

The founding fathers set up a pretty good system, and they specifically did not set up a democracy for a whole bunch of relatively obvious reasons. Straight democracy doesn't work.

<comment><USER11> You should extend more generosity to the point GP makes. You can believe in adjusting the system so that representation is more equal without doing away with the protections for small states. For example, you can greatly increase the size of the House. It's the original first amendment! [http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/its- ti...](http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/its-time-to- increase-the-size-of-the-house/)

<comment><USER10> The house already adequately represents the people, that's how it was designed.

Expanding the house doesn't change representation.

<comment><USER12> The house doesn't represent the people in the sense that the party that got a significant majority of the votes has a significant minority of the seats because of gerrymandering.

<comment><USER10> It's an interesting argument, but the house isn't a monolith that represents the entire US as a bloc - it's a regional thing that represents individual regions, and actually the vast majority of those areas in the US do not belong to the minority party. Overall popular vote is not how we elect the house.

You can argue about gerrymandering all day long, both sides do it and have done it since the beginning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always found this system very interesting, since the citizen can decide how some of their tax money is spent (besides voting).

On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by corruption, clientelism, and organized crime.

<comment><USER14> > On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of > my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by > corruption, clientelism, and organized crime.

Heh, funny that richer parts of the EU say this about Italy itself.

<comment><USER15> Italy generally pays ~3-4 billion euros more into the EU budget than it receives from the EU. Ireland is much more of a mooch than Italy

[https://english.eu.dk/en/faq/net- contribution](https://english.eu.dk/en/faq/net-contribution)

<comment><USER16> Ireland is, as of 2016, a net contributor to the EU; this year the country is expecting to contribute 2.7bn€

Source: [https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland-s- contri...](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland-s-contribution- to-eu-budget-expected-to-rise-to-2-7bn-this-year-1.3467403)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What a fascinating concept. I would love to donate to my hometown and just get some raisins back as a gift once in a while. But I could really see the idea struggling through city council meetings because of the "well you could just donate to the city and then just buy some raisins on the side?".

And that's a testament to how ideas can evolve overtime and be accepted which otherwise would never be considered.

<comment><USER18> I think the "but some raisins in the side" thing wouldn't happen, since it's a opt-in system and it's in the interest of the town to keep the relationship up and stay on your mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> That was a fascinating read! I love when things like this happen and some new emergent behaviour appears that was unexpected.

This did end up much better than most perverse incentive situations. In fact, I'm not even sure I'd call this a perverse incentive but maybe I'm musinderstanding the definition.

<comment><AUTHOR> I consider it perverse because it incurs overhead in making the payments (eg if you send a town $100, get back a gift card for $100, and cash it for $97, that's $3 burned for nothing whatsoever than if they could've just transferred $100 into your bank account or not taxed it in the first place), deadweight loss in gifts (you don't value those hometown meibutsu at their market value to other people), overhead from the incentivized marketing competition (ad campaigns aren't free), and of course, the existence of a competition at all means that the hometown which incurred the expenses of rearing/educating you in the first place probably isn't going to get your tax revenue because they don't offer anime pineapple rewards or whatever is hip at the moment. None of that was intended nor is it useful. Interesting & amusing, but not useful.

(And anyway, I had to title it _something_. 'Japan's Hometown Tax' makes it sound unutterably boring & technical, when the second-order effects are what's interesting.)

<comment><USER20> It seems like the overhead of the system is paid for out of the tax savings you get by participating in the program. As I understand it:

1\. Earn $2000 in Tokyo.

2\. Owe $200 to Tokyo.

3\. Donate $80 to Gifu.

4\. Receive $40 from Gifu.

5\. Liquidate gifts for $38.80

You just saved almost 20% on your income taxes. This presumably lowers the deadweight loss associated with them. Does it lower it by more or less than the 3% loss you take converting gift cards to cash or more appropriate gift cards?

Don't double-count the 3% "overhead" of liquidating a gift card and "deadweight loss in gifts"; those are the same thing:

> You really do get plums from childhood in your mail from your hometown (if > you don't optimize for cash equivalents).

Also:

> and of course, the existence of a competition at all means that the hometown > which incurred the expenses of rearing/educating you in the first place > probably isn't going to get your tax revenue because they don't offer anime > pineapple rewards

With a legal cap on return gifts at 50% of donated value, this shouldn't be the case. You can donate anywhere and you'll get exactly the same return; why wouldn't you donate to somewhere you liked?

<comment><AUTHOR> > You just saved almost 20% on your income taxes. This presumably lowers the > deadweight loss associated with them. Does it lower it by more or less than > the 3% loss you take converting gift cards to cash or more appropriate gift > cards?

If any tax dodge which feeds money to third-parties to exploit a loophole while doing nothing productive on its own is efficient, the problem is with the tax rates in the first place. To say that an elaborate charade involving indirectly buying plums or gift cards through tax rebates is 'efficient' and 'the overhead of the system is paid for' is quite a claim and not obvious, let us say.

> Don't double-count the 3% "overhead" of liquidating a gift card and > "deadweight loss in gifts"; those are the same thing:

I was referring to the non-monetary gifts like the products or grave visits. As far as the gifts go, the gift cards are probably the least harmful as they 'only' have a 3% overhead involved in turning them (back) into cash (plus whatever else goes into redeeming them, I suppose, in terms of time/effort/hassle/delay), which is probably a lot less than most of the others.

> With a legal cap on return gifts at 50% of donated value, this shouldn't be > the case. You can donate anywhere and you'll get exactly the same return; > why wouldn't you donate to somewhere you liked?

Because what are the odds that the place which incurred the expenses of educating _you_ , out of the hundreds of competing muncipalities, large and small, near and far, naive and sophisticated, meibutsu vs trips vs gift cards, high or low, will give you exactly the right thing and win the competition, and this will happen in almost every case and produce the same net flows as simply sending the rebates to, say, people's registered birthplaces?

<comment><USER20> > Because what are the odds that the place which incurred the expenses of > educating you, out of the hundreds of competing muncipalities, large and > small, near and far, naive and sophisticated, meibutsu vs trips vs gift > cards, high or low, will give you exactly the right thing and win the > competition, and this will happen in almost every case and produce the same > net flows as simply sending the rebates to, say, people's registered > birthplaces?

I would estimate those odds as near 100%. I assume you can choose what services you'd like to receive, simply because not everyone needs a grave maintenance service -- and if you do need one, there is no way to get it without specifying the particular grave you want serviced.

The OP explicitly states as much:

> A number of cities in Japan, including my adoptive home town of Ogaki, have > made this offer: for a no-cost-to-you donation of $100 or more, the city > will send someone out to any grave in the city limits. That person will > clean the grave, make an appropriate offering, and send you a photo. This is > a beautiful thing.

> Most of the gifts are more prosaic. Locally produced food is very popular. > If you miss the taste of home, they've got you covered.

> Cities partnered with local firms to handle the e-commerce aspect, and > eventually with platforms to bundle many different items into a single > donation; think of it as a shopping cart you could fill with donated money.

This isn't a system where you have to buy a poorly-optimized bundle from the town that happens to offer something close to what you want. You send a donation and you can choose the return gifts you'd like to get back from among the services that town offers. And in the steady state, all towns will offer cash equivalents for people who want them, as well as more hometown-specific services (which have a higher profit margin!) for people who want them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very interesting. A scenario came to mind - a city sends back a local delicacy. Then it notices that the number of donators is increasing. Looks further into it and finds that the delicacy is very popular. Now it has identified a product that it can independently promote and the city can earn more revenue. So many possibilities :)

<comment><USER22> Local food delicacies are a _major_ industry in Japan due to the formalized culture of travel souvenirs, and it's pretty much guaranteed that anything that could conceivably be promoted as one, already is.

<comment><USER23> On my first visit to Japan I went up to Takayama. I had never heard of Hida beef before that visit, but now I've eaten enough for a lifetime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesting how in some contexts kickback is illegal fraud/corruption, while here the government of a developed democratic country openly engages it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kickback_(bribery)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kickback_\(bribery\))

<comment><USER7> It's also interesting in the context of how strict Japan's rules for election campaigns are.

For example, a few years ago Justice Minister Midori Matsushima got in trouble for distributing essentially worthless paper fans since they were considered gifts, whereas paper pamphlets would have been okay, and she had to resign as minister.

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-2799975/Japans-...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-2799975/Japans- justice-minister-undone-cheap-paper-fan.html)

<comment><USER25> It is about reach, a leaflet would reach one person. That person might talk to a person or two about the information in the leaflet. One person with a fan could be seen by many thousands of people on their daily commute.

<comment><USER7> That might be a reasonable basis for a rule in theory, but it's not the issue in this case under Japanese election law. Something that has any value and counts as a gift and therefore isn't allowed, even if the value is extremely small.

There are other various other rules about campaign activity though (where/when it can be performed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anybody else figure out the endgame when they saw the beginning?

"Oh crap, the hometowns just kick back a percentage to the taxpayer and suddenly Tokyo is bankrupt - as the hometowns outbid each other in a race to the bottom, eventually they lose too and it ends just being an expensive and complicated tax cut".

Reality turned out even worse, with brokers skimming off a percentage.

I suppose it's fair. In Japan, registering yourself in Delaware for bullcrap reasons isn't just for corporations anymore!

<comment><USER27> Can you explain a bit more more about why you believe Delaware is the proffered place to register a corporation?

<comment><USER26> [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware- thr...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware-thrives-as-a- corporate-tax-haven.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This sounds like a good way to redistribute funds, but at the cost of lowering total revenue. If taxes are raised to make up for the often hometown-branded but often highly liquid gifts, it will be fine, but 1) I imagine raising taxes is going to be highly sticky, and 2) it's a flat, regressive tax, making it either forced gift-buying for people who probably shouldn't be buying themselves gifts or a government subsidy for the voucher-brokers.

If you're a Japanese politician, you should probably invest heavily in voucher-brokers, then lobby for a rise in the tax.

<comment><USER29> I'd expect that the end-state would be that tax rates go up to maintain desired revenue levels, the localities all bid up to the max amount of refund, and the whole system works not quite as well as the day before the system was invented -- except that a bunch of works gets expended on the useless competition for funds, and the money distribution gets unfairly balanced based on whichever locality has more clever marketing.

This is exactly counter to the concept government -- a system that should be run as a monopoly ends up being full of waste due to competition with no net improvement.

<comment><USER28> > the money distribution gets unfairly balanced based on whichever locality > has more clever marketing.

You might be able to mostly solve this by automatically registering people to a default hometown, and making it very annoying to change your registration.

That latter part might be doable by simply allowing the municipalities to administrate their own hometown lists, so you'd have to contact your current hometown to transfer your registration to a your new hometown. They'd be economically motivated to make it as difficult as canceling a gym membership.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> village-idiot Classic case of "Tax Systems are Really Hard to Design" in action.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is absolutely fascinating, and (while Japanese culture has a number of key differences to the US that make it work) something that we can learn a lot from.

</comment><comment><USER31> Do you think some kind of bidding or voting on the maximum donation amounts involved would make sense?

Ie, cities each vote on what they think a "proper" maximum reward would be, then set it at the average.

Relatedly, I'm not sure why a supermajority of cities agreeing to limit gifts _would_ be generally in their best interests:

1\. Lower status ("less popular") cities gain more donations via rewards

2\. I would guess status/popularity probably follows a power curve

3\. Therefore the long tail cities are able to flatten the distribution curve by bidding their way up

4\. If they went back to a level playing field, they would drop back down the curve, likely losing the (smaller but nonzero) overall financial boost gained after bidding

Basically: if I am a small city with few "natural" benefactors, I can bid my way up the curve (admittedly depending on the elasticity of "demand") such that I gain more from more donations than I lose in larger rewards.

...unless the market today just drives everyone to offer the maximum reward?

Super interesting though, thank you for sharing this!

</comment><comment><USER32> Taxes automatically withheld by employers at the correct rate.

Yes please, this is how it should work for most of the population without special issues.

</comment><comment><USER33> I really like the basic idea of being able to choose a town or region where an alloted part of one's taxes will go. I live outside my hometown for business reasons, so I'm paying taxes on the most well-funded region in my country. Even if the government redistributes tax money, I'd love to have a small say in where my money goes.

</comment><comment><USER34> Won't this degenerate to a pure bidding war, with people sending their money to the town that gives them the largest fraction of cash equivalent returns, transforming into only a tax reduction ? like, cities will bid to something like ninety-something% cash equivalent, to the very limit of their margin because it's winner takes all.

<comment><USER35> If you got to the end of the article you'd know that's exactly what happened. The central gov stepped in and limited the quid pro quo gifts to 50% of the donation amount. so now that's become the defacto standard for the return "gift".

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Super interesting policy!

I was thinking about why Tokyo doesn't do the same and reciprocate, thereby competing with the smaller towns.

I do realize that Tokyo/(any other big city) wouldn't want to do this till the number of people opting in hits a threshold within their city but maybe that is the equilibrium point. Does anyone have any insight into that?

</comment><comment><USER37> There's an equivalent issue with city with large suburbs: companies in the city core pay a lot of local taxes that stays within the city, but living in the city is too expensive for 80% of the employees who live in the suburbs, which cannot benefit from local taxes paid by the big companies.

<comment><USER38> The problem usually is that homeowners in the suburbs vote to keep their own property taxes extremely low, and then blame corporations when there isn't enough money to run things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Poland has something similar on regional (not city) level, it's called Janosikowe (from Janosik - a Polish Robin Hood), and it's much less flavorful than the Japanese thing, it's just a percentage of local taxes paid by the richest regions to the poorest regions.

</comment><comment><USER40> > it's like running an e-commerce business with the special wrinkle that your > customers are entirely price insensitive.

It's obviously very economically inefficient. The larger this thing grows, the more it will distort and hurt the economy.

</comment><comment><USER41> The mechanism used in Japan to compensate for the brain-drain should be used worldwide.

</comment><comment><USER42> The American system (& Japanese?) where schools are mostly funded by local taxes is a root cause of inequality, poverty and unfairness in the USA.

Schools in Europe and Australia are funded by centralized government more evenly so doesn't have this problem and dont need this donate to a region system the article talks about. I think its much fairer.

<comment><USER43> This is not correct. Half of all K-12 funding comes from state and federal sources, which are disproportionately directed to schools in lower income districts. There was a WaPo article a few years ago showing that, if all funding sources are accounted for, most states show little difference between funding for rich and poor districts, and many show poor districts are better funded.

<comment><USER44> Equalizing the funding doesn't help much if you're still stuck going to school based on where you live. If all the rich kids go to one school and all the poor kids go to another, it's entirely predictable that you'll have vastly different outcomes.

I once conversed with a friend in college who had grown up upper-middle class and attended very nice public schooling. She told me that poor schools would be better if the parents just got more involved with PTA, etc. I thought, what an ignorant and privileged position to think that, yes, a single mother working two jobs to make ends-meet has the time and energy to go to PTA meetings! Locking kids into the school they are closest too only means that they've got basically the same support structures as the local community. And if the people of that community aren't in a position to help improve things, then improvement doesn't come.

<comment><USER45> That's the reason why sending more money to schools at some point doesn't do anything to improve outcomes. It's much better to spend on safety nets like single payer healthcare, unemployement support etc... so that parents can actually get more involved with their kids' education.

But in Mad Max America only the strong survives so none of that will ever happen. I hope the "winners" like the world they are creating because I find it fucking horrifying.

<comment><USER46> An unfortunate facet of the human condition is the idea of throwing enough money at a problem will solve it. And that involves paying 10x as much for a pound of cure compared to an ounce of prevention.

It is a darn shame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> this is really deeply fascinating!

</comment><comment><USER38> > A few rounds of vigorous capitalism later

I love this line

</comment><comment><USER48> It's a wonderful idea in principle. I love the fact that regions respond with simple, relevant gifts.

I wonder if would be more appropriate if:

a) you could only give to 'where you went to school' and

b) regions could only respond with a nominal, non-cash gift, like a fruit, flower, or some culturally relevant thing.

It would close the loophole, provide for meaningful tax redistribution _and_ encourage legitimate cultural contact between regions and the mega-centre.

Of course trying to get big business out of Tokyo might be an opportunity as well, though that's a hard thing. Creating industrial clusters is hard, and regions fight over it.

</comment><comment><USER49> Considering the ups and downs of the Japanese economy this can also be seen as a subsidy to boost consumption and economic activity.

</comment><comment><USER50> The system described sounds awesome. As someone in the US I would love to pay a portion of my taxes to a state/town that isn't ruled by corrupt and inept busybodies who's politics I disagree with. Getting a some % back or having my corrupt dump of a state match the donation would just be icing on the cake.

10% losses due to middle men doesn't sound that bad when it gets you the freedom to choose where your tax dollars are spent.</comment>


Ask HN: As a leader, how do you ensure your team is motivated and performs well? - <AUTHOR> Doing a little research into how founders, executives and managers make sure their teams are happy, engaged and high-performing. <comment><USER2> People are often motivated to do meaningful work given that they have autonomy. So, I make sure to bring the meaning to the work. Telling someone to do XYZ were XYZ is some mundane task is not motivating. But painting a picture of how XYZ leads to ABC which leads to a big goal and letting them know that their boring XYZ counts is important. Given that they know how to solve the problem and understand why it's important, they usually perform well.

If they are not performing well, then it's usually that they don't know how to do the task. I like separating my R&D. Researching during Development can be frustrating. Especially if the deliverable of development is time bound. So before work, we only use well known tools & methods. If we are going to experiment, I like experiments ran by themselves where failure doesn't bring any stress. After learning from the experiment, we only bring one new major technology into the picture at a time.

I also give pep speech every weekly team meeting. I can't help it. Everyone has greatness in them provided they are willing to work it out! One must do the work, one must stay gritty in the difficult times. One must find meaning in all work that is done, and that meaning should not just be useful to us but to the world at large (our customers) A positive and growth mindset is very important so I make sure to nurture and cultivate that in the team. Our rallying cry is "Challenge accepted!"

</comment><comment><USER3> Transparency is key. Shared understanding of a vision. Orient teams towards outcomes. Give autonomy. Celebrate victories. Develop a personal rapport with team mates and setup activities that encourages team members to do so too.

<comment><AUTHOR> All of those make a lot of sense, cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Trust, open and honest debate, autonomy, listening to and implementing their ideas, showing up for work and for them. Addressing disturbances in the force.</comment>


Del.icio.us 2.0 (now delicious.com) - <AUTHOR> http://www.delicious.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm a little disappointed in 2.0. They have massive amounts of really good data, but don't seem to be interested in mining it in any way, such as:

\- a recommendation engine for each user

\- a tagging engine

\- a news aggregator

</comment><comment><USER3> The ability to sort my ~1500 bookmarks alphabetically.

That's useful....

<sarcasm detector explodes>

</comment><comment><USER4> Glad they changed the name officially. I could never remember where the extra periods went. Before the 'i' or after the 'i'?

<comment><USER5> To remember it, I got in the habit of pronouncing it as such:

      Dell-dot-icey-oh-dot-you-ess

The hard part was calling it 'delicious' in conversation so I didn't sound like a moron.

I think, in general, 'url hacks' like del.icio.us only work if the periods go between words, like <http://go.to/>

<comment><USER6> In my head I've always pronounced it something like, "Dell-Issio-Us'

The delicious.com name change could certainly give the site broader appeal. I like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sweet I heard the app was built on Symfony that snazzy PHP framework that Yahoo! uses for it's projects.</comment>


Apple, publishers to settle e-books price-fixing suit: Report - <AUTHOR> http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-57407363-243/apple-publishers-to-settle-e-books-price-fixing-suit-report/

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like we may get free market pricing and competition again. Be a nice change after Apple and the publishers colluded to kill it off 2 years ago.</comment>


When Stephen Hawking Hosted a Time Travelers Party and No One Showed Up - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/stephen-hawking-time-travelers-party <comment><USER2> What if time travelers _did_ show up, but only in any of the multiverses except _this_ one? What if all of the time travelers turn out to be multiverse versions of Professor Hawking himself?

<comment><USER3> By telling publicly about the party he could have also forked the time continuum in two. In one of them the future time travel inventor reads about the failed party and abandons studying physics, while in the other one he doesn't, and we should reach the second continuum's HN to know what happened.</comment></comment>


While Bolivia's coup regime lets its citizens die Cuba has nearly defeated Covid - <AUTHOR> https://thegrayzone.com/2020/08/02/while-bolivias-coup-regime-lets-its-citizens-die-cuba-has-nearly-defeated-covid-19/ <comment><USER2> The Cuban regime controls the numbers that are reported. No independent verification is allowed. Of course, the numbers are always awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Projection is our most amusing psychological quirk. Americans aren't allowed by our masters to observe conditions in Cuba, but e.g. European papers have reporters based there. [0] There isn't a question. Cuba and other socialist Western hemisphere states like Nicaragua and Venezuela have properly handled the pandemic, even while contending with the penury imposed by draconian USA economic sanctions. Meanwhile USA and other nations in this hemisphere upon which our unsupervised services have imposed our scandalous form of government like Brazil and Bolivia have suffered setback after setback. We can fail to implement even the bare minimum of testing (and we have!), but we can't hide the dead bodies.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/07/cuba- coronavir...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/07/cuba-coronavirus- success-contact-tracing-isolation)</comment></comment>


Susan Bennett revealed as the voice of Siri - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/technology/techknow/susan-bennett-revealed-as-the-voice-of-siri/story-fnda1lbo-1226733443771

<comment><USER2> I would have chosen Mariella Frostrup.</comment>


Ask HN: Best documentation in code you have seen? - <AUTHOR>

What is the best documentation in code you have seen? <comment><USER2> <http://paste.lisp.org/display/133628>

<comment><USER3> Dude, this is like a course on the imaginary numbers. I am stunt someone would put that in the documentation of a code!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is interesting - when I read your post, I thought, "What a strange question. The best documentation is just the one that explains the problem in a simple, easy to understand manner." You see, I was thinking "in code" as in "// This comment explains the logic in the next code block". And then when I read the comments from others, at the time of this response everyone has chosen that the word "documentation" refers to a "body of knowledge that ships with the product". It's funny how we all interpret this differently.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not exactly what you're asking for, but Ratchet's landing page documentation is very slick.

<http://maker.github.com/ratchet/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Qt has amazing API documentation.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hands down: JDK.</comment>


Reconstructing encrypted Skype calls from packet sizes - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.unc.edu/~amw/resources/hooktonfoniks.pdf

<comment><USER2> TL;DR: "... correlation between voiced sounds and the size of encrypted packets observed over the wire."

This includes variable bit-rate codecs.

Their accuracy with over 90,000 words is 60% to 98%</comment>


Anthony Fauci says staying closed too long could cause irreparable damage - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/22/dr-anthony-fauci-says-staying-closed-for-too-long-could-cause-irreparable-damage.html <comment><USER2> > However, Fauci also cautioned states against reducing social distancing > measures too quickly, adding they must take "very significant precautions."

It seems rather obvious that we can certainly "reopen" wide swaths of the economy very quickly if "significant precautions" are taken. The question is, what qualifies as "significant precautions", and how willing are people to implement and deal with those precautions?

I ask because I see simple things like mask wearing to be something that a lot of people seem to have a big problem with, whereas it seems to be something that confers clear benefits while having very little downside aside from some minor discomfort for some people.

If we can't do the little stuff, how are we supposed to do the "significant stuff"?

The approach a lot of places seem to be taking is to forgo "significant precautions" and simply approach reopening as something where, as long as you do it slow enough in a phased approach, maybe things will just turn out fine. As if the virus can be tricked if we're sneaky enough about returning to normal.

<comment><USER3> I am curious. Where is everyone getting their masks from? I have had a mask on order via am amazon for almost a month now, and it will only be delivered in June.

Is there a faster way?

<comment><USER4> I ordered a few from Etsy. Took about a week or so to arrive. But this was before it was advised that everyone wear them so maybe wait times are now longer?

I've also seen signs that some dry cleaning places are carrying them.

Sports online stores (Fans Edge) also selling sports ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think a lot of the Hacker News audience is pretty insulated from the economic repercussions of the lockdown. At this point I believe the long term consequences of continuing a lockdown are worse. At least most places seem ready to move and start opening up sooner than later.

Sadly this whole things has turned politically too so now SF is going to stay closed as long as possible and really screw over any small business. I'm really not looking forward to the number of bar and restaurant closures in the next 6 months.

<comment><USER6> When there's no cost to denying others their freedom for "the greater good", then I can just do it all day long _and_ feel good about myself.

Disagree with me, and I'll get to call you all sorts of bad things.

How can I lose?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's clear that whether we like it or not, we need to reopen. Lockdown is a luxury that only rich nations can afford to try - and it's not clear that it's having an appreciable affect beyond proper social distancing and widespread mask wearing.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've got to imagine they are getting a ton a disparate data, and it's ugly. Fauci-for better or worse—is truly the face of this COVID-19 action taken.

Hoover did a ton to stave off the Great Depression, yet it still wasn't enough. Hoovervilles stuck to him even to this day: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville)

<comment><USER9> And he saved more lives than anyone else in history, via his food relief initiatives. 10 million people in France and Belgium alone. Another 10 to 20 million in Russia. He's largely the reason the US commonly represents half of all global food aid to this day.

[https://www.cornellcollege.edu/history/courses/stewart/his26...](https://www.cornellcollege.edu/history/courses/stewart/his260-3-2006/01%20one/befr.htm)

<comment><USER6> > And he saved more lives than anyone else in history...

I beg to differ:

[http://www.scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&vi...](http://www.scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=258&Itemid=27)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hospital and clinic here have fewer emergencies, there are fewer sirens going on, the graphs show infections have not really changed. You can't throw 16% of my towns buisness into bankruptsy for this flimsy reason anymore.

fewer than last year I mean. There is nothing wrong in the town.

</comment><comment><USER11> Irreparable damage to what? To returns on capital? To societal structures? To mental health? Worthless article with zero details.

<comment><USER12> I was looking for clarity too in the article. The CNBC video is a bit more clear:

"We can't stay locked down for such a considerable time that we have irreparable damage and create unintended consequences, including consequences for health" \- Fauci

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We should listen to Fauci in his field of expertise: people's health. Not sure why we should care about this statement of his.

<comment><USER14> Well this really is still a health related message. I think it's obvious to pretty much everyone that it's really not economically feasible to stay locked down forever. So he is saying that, given that we do need to reopen, it should be safe if we take significant precautions when doing so.

<comment><USER15> If we can actually "re-open America" without significantly increasing the spread of COVID-19, that will make the lockdown look like a major over- reaction.

On the other hand, if we re-open and then see a return to doubling the number of cases every 3-4 days... what then? Will people go back on lockdown?

<comment><USER11> > Will people go back on lockdown?

It depends. People with the means to do so will weigh the consequences and decide for themselves. Like, I'll be limiting my physical contact with my parents and aunts/uncles for quite a few more months whichever way this goes, I expect. I'll probably not be eating at restaurants, though I may partake in dinner parties with very close friends instead. Voluntary social distancing but not as strictly as the lockdown.

Generally, if we can put the right structures in place to give everyone the ability to reduce their exposure at their choice, a lockdown isn't necessary. Seriously: if you and anyone you care about _could_ live decently without human contact, then we wouldn't need to force a lockdown on anybody else.

We'll never get there fully — humans are social animals and many will weigh the value seeing a select group of family/friends regularly greater than the risk of disease. But there's so much room for decreasing R _without_ lockdown (I.e. in a non-compulsory way) that we haven't explored yet. Obvious ones include some form of UBI so that people aren't _forced_ into high-risk jobs. Or subsidies to organizations based on how much they decrease transmission associated with their practices (e.g. curbside pickup for retail, sanitizing warehouse/store surfaces and testing employees regularly, subsidizing safer local transit (biking, scooters — just not busses), etc).

I think one of our larger mistakes in handling this is embracing mandatory lockdown as the be-all end-all solution. It's _not_ a long-term solution. It risks building serious animosity among the classes of people who feel deprived from opportunity as a result of it, and generally there's no telling what compliance will look like after 4 months, 6 months, or a reopening followed by another lockdown. We have to find ways of reducing the lockdown while replacing its benefits with other tools that have fewer negative impacts on society.

<comment><USER15> > Voluntary social distancing but not as strictly as the lockdown

Doesn't this ignore the idea of viral spread? I mean, the nurses of the elderly come home to their "voluntary" lockdown, and the young mailmail delivers mail to boomer parents. Many people carry and spread the disease without knowing they have it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>