Capitalists, Arise: We Need to Deal With Income Inequality - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/opinion/sunday/capitalists-arise-we-need-to-deal-with-income-inequality.html?smid=fb-share&_r=1&assetType=opinion <comment><USER2> Am I supposed to take the article seriously? A rich guy suggesting that the first thing to do to solve the 1% having 50% of our wealth is "Government can provide tax incentives to business". It made me think of the quote from John Kenneth Galbraith."It is a strange idea that the rich work better if they constantly get richer, while the poor just work better if they get poorer".

We need to stop incentivizing the rich - they have been incentivized for too long already.

<comment><USER3> Amen brother- -the only way to solve this is a Guaranteed Basic Income across the board... With maybe a 50-60% tax on the rich, we don't need to go all the way up to 80%. They'll get it back probably in loopholes, and business breaks anyways.

<comment><USER4> As a libertarian, basic income seemed quite against everything initially. However, if basic income were to completely replace the current entitlement system and all it's defects, I would absolutely support it.

It would cost considerably less and thus higher taxation would be less of a concern (as a way to stifle more money from the rich to the poor).

<comment><USER5> I like the basic income idea, but from what I've read it would cost considerably more than our current entitlement system, if it provided anything like the same level of benefits. The big reason, as I understand, is the number of young, low-income men who currently receive no support at all, but would under a basic income system. (Many low-income young women, by contrast, are already eligible for support, as they have children.)

Do you still like the idea if it's more expensive rather than less?

<comment><USER4> As with anything, details matter. There are no single definition of what basic income would entail. For example, would it truly be unconditional, regardless of income? I doubt those who make $200,000/year want a basic income cheque.

I think the difference would be in the efficiency and simplicity of such a system. Currently, the U.S. spends over a trillion dollars on state and federal welfare programs (spread across 126+ programs). However, the government spends it quite poorly and in many indirect ways. Giving them a cheque would certainly be better.

You're right in that it could actually be more expensive. I'm not sure what my stand on the subject would be in that case. Even with my libertarian beliefs, (and there are good arguments that basic income is perfectly compatible with libertarianism) I have to keep in mind of the realities related to the surging amount of poverty and that it's unsustainable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Stop taxing away so much income. Resolve the entitlements cliff that makes earning more than $12/hr untenable until breaking even at $38/hr. Back off the regulations that make inexpensive living practically illegal. Help people relocate out of high cost of living areas (NY Times location take note). Slash the red tape making business startups near impossible. Squelch the tort, liability, insurance and other laws making risk costs overwhelming.

You can't fix social problems by demanding capitalism be socialism.

<comment><USER7> One of the things he suggests --raising minimum wages and medium wages as well, I think would go a great way to curb the disparity... (the extreme example is the Seattle company having a $70k/yr minimum salary... but I'm also afraid this would make quite a few low-skilled people permanently unemployable as it becomes cheaper to invest in automation.

Young adults can be retrained, but there are lots of people in their 30s 40s etc. who don't have a secondary education some of which never finished elementary school in their native languages (thus illiterate). What happens to them? Do we let them find themselves back as they can't find a job and contribute to a high-skills economy?

<comment><USER6> That company with the $70k min salary is hurling toward bankruptcy. Top performing employees quit because they got nothing while low performers got fat raises. More than quit had to be hired to replace them. Customers left anticipating increased prices. Stockholders sued CEO for incompetence.

Look up "Gravity Investments" in recent news.

<comment><USER8> > Stockholders sued CEO for incompetence

To be fair it was the CEOs brother who sued and was part of a long time feud and not about the new minimum wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "I'm scared. ... the income gap will most likely be resolved in one of two ways: by major social unrest or through oppressive taxes, such as the 80 percent tax rate on income over $500,000"

I stopped reading here. Try again. Current top income tax rates are insanely slow by historical standards. They were 90% in the 40s and 50s and 70% in the 70s [0]

[0] [http://taxfoundation.org/sites/default/files/docs/fed_indivi...](http://taxfoundation.org/sites/default/files/docs/fed_individual_rate_history_nominal.pdf)

<comment><USER10> I had s similar reaction to this example of an "oppressive tax". This is just the sort of taxes that were in place when America was taking over the world. It's not oppressive. It's a good idea. It hurts the oligarchs, it helps the 99 percent, which is who drives the economy.

<comment><USER11> I have never understood the notion that taxes at or above 50% are at all ethical, and yet some argue openly for 80%+.

The idea that the government is entitled to more of someone's earnings than they are is shocking. To then suggest the government is entitled to 4 out of every 5 dollars a person earns is, quite frankly, beneath consideration in my eyes.

What right do you, i or anyone else have to call this anything but theft?

<comment><USER12> Do you know what is theft ?

When kids born today are unable to afford to go to college, while the same people who are against +80% tax were born in an era when tax was way higher at +90% that helped pay for their education and create the infrastructure that allowed them to earn their wealth.

"Surplus Wealth is a scared trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community " \- Andrew Caregie.

Guess what if you think the government is treating you unfairly then be prepared when society bifurcates and returns a stack error in the form of "bolsheviks".

<comment><USER13> More kids than ever before can afford to go to college.

[http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2010/ted_20100428.png](http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2010/ted_20100428.png)

<comment><USER14> Having little choice but to sign yourself up for a mortgage-sized debt that can't be discharged isn't the most obvious definition of "affordable" I've ever encountered.

<comment><USER15> Little choice? There is a wide spectrum of choices for higher-education in the US.

While I think the idea that everybody should go to college is fundamentally harmful, I do think that everybody who wants to should be able to go to college. On the other hand, taking out $200,000 in loans to study comparative literature at an ivy league school, and then demanding that the universe provides means to pay it all back is ridiculous. People should buy into their education with a long-term plan. Most people cannot afford the luxury of majoring in an unprofitable subject while incurring enormous debt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was recently having a conversation with some friends about what major technological changes we might see in the future. The idea was that when these changes happen, they tend to alter society in ways that couldn't easily have been predicted beforehand. It would have been hard to imagine the ubiquity of the internet or smartphones in our lives before they existed. So what could the next major change be? Self-driving cars on the scale where manual driving is illegal on city streets perhaps? That actually isn't too hard to envision. Something else?

One thought that came out of that is that a major change I would love to see, although not a technological one, is for a major economy to implement a workable guaranteed basic income. It's been a popular subject on HN, and does seem to be starting to gain traction in the 'real world'. While obviously there are issues to solve, it's something I see as really having a chance of working. _Something_ will have to happen to address the growing inequality as technology keeps moving us closer to a post-scarcity society, and a basic income seems to fit the bill.

Or perhaps it will be something else. But some kind of a transition to a post- scarcity society seems inevitable at _some_ point if the human race survives long enough, so maybe significant strides in that direction will be made in our lifetimes. It would certainly be exciting.

<comment><USER12> I do not think basic income is a solution.

I know programmers are thrilled at the magic of modern AI but its very simple to tip it over even theoretically.

Self Driving cars are not even that good, they are better than the average and that is an immense amount of creative labour destruction. But if you look back at history there has been a greater amount of labour destruction both physical and mental.

Coming back to basic income.

Do you think the way we use resources in the modern world is anyway efficient ? Speaking from Physics we are still way off from having solved major problems in society.

Right now 1/2 of adults in the UK are on entitlement which puts immense debt burden on the other half.

Both US and Europe are heading in that direction.

Both US and Europe need a massive restructuring of their infrastructure if climate change is to be dealt with.

Not to mention helping african countries get on their feet.

Right now that burden is shared mostly be china who are helping build roads and other developed nations within africa like nigeria.

The faster we can get contraceptives to africa we can stop the problem of the african baby boom due to industrialization right at its toes. We know from data that the country of Nigeria alone will have 750 Million people by 2100.

These are real problems facing the globalized economy.

There also the problem of deflation.

Economically once the poor global south industrialize there will be immense downward pressure of wages for all forms of jobs.

We know what happened when 700 million chinese joined the global economy. What happens when the rest of the 3 billion join ? Most of them of younger age and would constitute higher labour productivity.

China as a country is already much more efficient - they have high speed rail links connecting their entire nation. No need to buy fossil fuels when all their transportation is powered via electric. which is generated by solar panels in the gobi desert.

They have one of the most sophisticated supply chain producing all our iphones and computers.

Now they are interested in doing the same in central asia which geographically is the most mineral rich regions on earth.

Yes all of this doesn't matter if you are in Europe where the population is low enough and the resources is high. But the cost of production will get lower and labour gets cheaper along with resources. We will end up with a situation where something in Europe costs significantly higher than produced in africa.

<comment><USER4> Basic income could absolutely create a better minimum for the poor (and everyone, really) if it replaces the current entitlement disaster. It would most likely be cheaper (edit: it might not be, depends on the details) and become much more efficient considering you're sending a cheque that would ideally have no conditions associated with it.

When large quantities of manual labor jobs or easily automated jobs are replaced, basic income, I think, would push that class of folks to a livable standard. Not much, but just enough. You'll have more people transitioning off the streets and into normal lives.

(Even as a libertarian, I say this, which at first, might be at odds with the philosophy but there are good arguments that make it perfectly compatible.)

<comment><USER16> Yes, exactly. A basic income would both make sense for the ideal future we're trying to create (but which the parent correctly states is a long way off) and also for many of the issues of the present.

I'm personally pretty skeptical that it would indeed cost less than what we have. (I'm in Canada, but basically the same arguments apply.) I expect there would have to be a significant tax hike, which could be structured so that it cancels out the basic income somewhere in the middle class range, leaving the poor better off and the wealthy nominally paying more.

 _However_ , it could also achieve so much more than the current minimally effective (if that) safety nets. People would not be forced to take a job just to survive. They could instead pursue work that they enjoy, and most likely end up making a greater contribution to society. This would apply for the middle class as well. Rather than being so focused on compensation, people would have more freedom to pursue the job that gives them maximum satisfaction, again benefiting all of society. Sure, some few would just milk the system, but it's ingrained in human nature both to produce something of value and to try to better one's state in life, so I expect that would be the minority.

Even though I wouldn't directly benefit financially from a system like that, I would love to see it seriously explored.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely! (I also live in Canada)

It might be more expensive than the status-quo. It depends on the details of such a system.

To add to your point about people working not to survive but to thrive: re- education, or education would be a more realistic possibility. Currently, going back to school at 30 or 40 years old when you've held low wage jobs is really hard.

A family member of mine, after a divorce that ended her up with nothing, was able to raise her 6 kids, upgrade her high school and get a university degree, all without a job. This is simply not possible with the safety nets currently available (welfare helped but definitely wasn't enough). This was only possible because of her family taking a second mortgage to buy a house that she "rented" and a line of credit for food and necessities.

The amount of people that will have to be re-educated to find a job will only increase. This would only be a positive for the workforce.

<comment><USER12> I agree that the status-quo is terrible. Here in the UK the welfare state has gone out of control.

No one is arguing for people to be homeless and its not the fault of the working class.

It lies squarely on the fault of the govt.

I notice houses falling apart at the same time 23 year old are on welfare.

I am sympathic towards disabled people but a lot of disabled people could help run shops and participate in white collar work.

Heck - There is a massive demand for teaching english to Africans and Chinese.

My point is there is no shortage of work.

Right now not only are a huge percentage of adults on welfare due to demographics reasons - average age is higher.

But adults with perfectly good education are also on welfare. How is that possible ?

It shows a massive loss of potential in society.

And its going to get worse as more people enter old age and are unable to work for any job.

I think a lot of people in the west are completely oblivious to the fact that so much labour is needed to produce their clothes, iphones, fossil fuels, coffee, . .

Just because you cannot see it doesn't mean some person in rural china is not picking tea for you.

And because of deflation ppl complain that its "too expensive to hire in canada/england/US"

The fact is the world price point has shifted and money supply hasn't been keeping up.

Almost everything is cheaper due to the force of the globalization economy. Not politically but economically.

This should have resulted an aggressive move towards a more unified form of global governance, but there wasn't enough political will. Imagine when a english major graduates in the States they get to travel to africa to teach thousand of kids english.

Or labour moving to Europe to transform the infrastructure and install solar panels.

Or a concession amoung europeans and africans to solarize the sahara and provide clean energy for europe and africa.

The only country that is able to do this ( limited form ) is china in 2015. But I hope more countries can work to solve the big problems of humanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This all just beats around the bush. What's killing incomes for some and raising others is automation. One day soon, the only asset people are born with (minds and bodies) will be essentially zero value. Until now, everyone has at least that asset and now they won't.

That might imply we need guaranteed income. And maybe we do. But if that's coming from the government, remember who we're talking about; they lie to start wars, they're replete with corruption. If we ask the government to redistribute out wealthy, they'll redistribute it to their friends. The power to take everyone's money is too tempting for anyone to have.

<comment><USER7> I think you're right. If not right now, some time in the future. I think at this time outsourcing and off-shoring are dampening wage growth --but in the future it will be automation which puts the kibosh on it. For sure higher minimum wages will accelerate the obsolescence of low-skill low productivity jobs.

The one question about guaranteed income is who is qualified for it? Anyone and everyone? What do rich countries with high automation do about illegal immigrants, send them back? If minimum income is offered to everyone, why wouldn't everyone for whom the guarantee is above their own incomes want to come and undermine everyone else's income?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article is incoherent. Title discusses income inequality, then 13 paragraphs discussing issues which are completely orthogonal to inequality (mobility, "poverty" and overconsumption). The article never actually addresses inequality at all.

Then it starts comparing unrelated statistics (productivity and wages) and cribbing about how they diverge, and ignoring the real cause (the rise of non- wage benefits) for the divergence.

Finally, it devolves into random peripheral solutions like reducing share buybacks. Because somehow it'll be good for America if Qualcomm can't return money to shareholders to invest in Tesla? I guess it's better for CEO's to spend profits on empire building than for investors to seek returns?

Why is this nonsense here?

<comment><USER18> Productivity and wages are most definitely related. Increased productivity is surplus value created per worker. In a strong labor market workers are able to demand some of the generated productivity surplus as wages. When workers have no power all the gains go to the owners which is what causes inequality to rise.

<comment><USER13> In a strong labor market workers are able to demand some of the generated productivity surplus as _compensation_. Wages have been somewhat flat because employers are paying workers in (untaxed) health and retirement benefits instead of (taxed) wages.

Secondly, there is no particular reason wages should track productivity. Productivity is output / workers. If output increases due to capital (e.g. automation), there is no reason for wages to go up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _We business leaders know what to do. But do we have the will to do it? Are we willing to control the excessive greed so prevalent in our culture today and divert resources to better education and the creation of more opportunity?_

I think we need to wrestle with the fact that the world has changed and education and credentialing are different things. Education and information can be made available to large numbers of people for very little money via the Internet. It doesn't get you a status-y sheepskin, but that doesn't always matter.

This new reality requires a new approach to sharing the wealth. I don't know what exactly that will look like, but I am confident that we need to hammer that out.

 _The fact that real wages have been flat for about four decades, while productivity has increased by 80 percent, shows that has not been happening. Before the early 1970s, wages and productivity were both rising. Now most gains from productivity go to shareholders, not employees._

This is a serious problem and needs to be clearly addressed.

 _There is a way to start. Government can provide tax incentives to business to pay more to employees making $80,000 or less. The program would exist for three to five years and then be evaluated for effectiveness._

I have my doubts that this is the way to address it.

Generally speaking, poverty solutions that start by trying to help 'poor' people are dead ends that do not work. A more oblique approach, that defines the problem in other terms, is usually more effective.

</comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of this Ted Talk from 2014

Nick Hanauer: Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming

www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocrats_the_pitchforks_are_coming

</comment><comment><USER15> Excuse my ignorance, but I have an honest question. I assume that income inequality can be approximated by measuring the difference between the income of a certain group of high-earners and a certain group of low-earners. If the income of the low-earners is increased by mandate then wouldn't the entire system, over time, adjust upward? Wouldn't the difference between the two groups (income inequality) remain the same?

</comment><comment><USER21> Ok, let's deal with the root cause of why income inequality soared from 1995-2015:

The Federal Reserve debased the dollar, paying for wars, terrible government spending choices and entitlements that are ballooning. They also spurred numerous asset bubbles through bad policy choices. It's entirely understood that the Fed can cause asset bubbles by holding interest rates too low for too long. They've been aggressively using that understanding for the last six years.

The rich can deal with the dollar losing half of its value in a decade. Nobody else can. The rich have capital, and make a lot of money on the Fed's intentional asset bubbles in real estate and stocks. The S&P 500 - and the wealthy who own most of it - benefits massively from a debased dollar, as their exports boom - while most of America suffers from a vast loss of purchasing power.

The end of the strong dollar of the 1990s, is what began the era of dramatically increased inequality. It's not a coincidence. The currency race to the bottom, is really code for a decimation of the median standard of living. This is especially true in a country that consumes so much of its own manufacturing.

Debasing the dollar and sending commodities soaring benefited a very small group of people (Saudi Arabia, Canada, Australia, Norway, commodity investors). Who it didn't benefit: US manufacturing that is consumed domestically. The oil price boom of the mid 2000's, caused by the weak dollar, also harmed the US dramatically as deficits soared and the Middle East got uber rich. It acted as a huge wealth transfer to Canada as well.

The soaring inequality was caused by the Fed's horrendous, and repetitive monetary policy mistakes. You'll find people on the left go out of their way to evade ever pinning any blame to the Fed (it makes the welfare state possible through deficits and debt, so they love the Fed), and the people on the right don't want to talk about inequality at all.

What did QE accomplish? Primarily it reinflated wealthy people's balance sheets, and reinflated the housing market (which disproportionately benefits the top half in the US). The median net wealth of Americans still hasn't recovered, even with housing and stocks so high. Skeptics will claim QE helped to heal the economy, generate jobs and so on - as though the US economy didn't do that on its own for 200 years prior to the Fed utilizing QE.

<comment><USER2> I'm not saying you're completely wrong...but it is worth noticing that the middle class had growing prosperity until the mid 1970's - and since then has either stagnated or slid down. The GDP during that time was rising - but going disproportionately to the wealthy. So it is worth examining other factors in the change - I would argue that "debasing the currency" becomes no more than an occasionally contributing factor.

<comment><USER22> I'll suggest the change is the globalization of the US economy. The US effectively added a billion low income workers to its economy, and that group has seen large relative gains in income over the past few decades. Some of those gains were, as predicted, effectively a transfer of wealth from the US middle class. Although newspaper articles about globalization are now relatively rare, it is a day to day reality that I'm sure many HN readers live and breathe.

While the massive destruction of poverty in the developing world has been an unqualified good, it was no secret that the trade-off was stagnating wages in the developed world until the developing world 'caught up'. There has been a reduction in income inequality, but it has been at the global scale. The US is not a gated community like Scandinavia. The US is deeply embedded in the global economy. Any attempt to ignore the global economic perspective will be misleading at best and ultimately futile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd like to strike at the core of this ...

Why is that every such time a system is extorted/exploited to the point of disaster, the same individuals who pushed it to that point then want to say 'We need to deal with the problem'.. The problem they very well and knowingly created.. And they never speak up before this point.. It's only after they've sucked every last drop out of the system.. And Oh' b.t.w:

> lets not solve it by fixing the exploits that created the problem in the > first place

> lets not go after the individuals who exploited it the most and their gains

Lets solve it by :

> extorting/exploiting the income of everybody

> Putting a band-aid on the problem

> And Oh', btw, lets put the people who created the disaster in charge of > administering the program

Is this supposed to be a joke? And why does society fall for it every-time?

And I like how socialism is being promoted as a solution while the very same jokers who decimated American culture/free market capitalism are pumping in illegals by the boatloads. It's as if they're already prepping to tank/exploit the next system that gets paraded as a solution. Yeah, so there's not enough jobs and the jobs there are don't pay enough because we allow corporations and individuals to extort the crap out of everything a person needs. So, lets ignore all of that and have :

> Guaranteed income

> Free healthcare

And since there isn't enough to go around in way of jobs, lets have :

> Open borders so people can overload the system

> Tons more legal immigrants

> Tons more illegal immigrants

And lets not focus at all on education so people can actually be productive... In fact, lets make it harder for the educated individuals by importing tons of competition from outside the country...Yeah, that'll work out great

Who pays for all of this? Certainly not those who create/created this disaster. But yeah, socialism will fix things. After-all, it works in Europe where they have all of the things we don't have :

> Far more strict immigration

> Far more Homogeneous culture and population

> Far less exploitative economic system

> Far more educated and involved populous

> Far less corrupt government

*Facepalm .. Here we go again .. For anyone who doesn't see that this country is in sharp decline, I wonder.

Every time, America puts the foxes in charge of the hen house and then people wonder why it ends in disaster...

When you fix a bug, do you target the root or do you try to find the most inefficient and indirect way of fixing the code issue? If you have an unreliable code base (economic equality), do you initiate an unbridled code blitz among your worst software engineers (Unbounded illegal immigration)?

I feel like I'm in the twilight zone sometimes in this country... But then, I stop and look around and I decide to see it for what it is and then things don't see that strange after-all.

<comment><USER24> > And why does society fall for it every-time?

Who says we are falling for it ? Most people think: "What are we going to do about it ?" And that's actually a rather good question. At this point the best solution are avoiding buying from abusers, and voting better (if that is a choice where you live).

The alternative are mobs/pitchforks/revolutions. But that's a bit like war, you only start one (well any sane person/country anyway) if it's (one) of your last resorts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> No we don't. Socialism failed for a reason instead we should encourage people to be less jealous.</comment>


Paypal making a change? An automated e-mail I just received from them. - <AUTHOR>

Rewarding your PayPal performance
Dear * *,
PayPal appreciates your business and continues to design its products and services with you in mind. Our goal is to make sending and receiving payments simple and seamless.
With that in mind, we want to share some good news with you. Due to your feedback and outstanding account performance, PayPal will no longer temporarily hold your funds in the event of a dispute, claim, or chargeback. These processes used to require funds to be held in a pending balance while the outcome was determined. Going forward, your funds will not be held in a pending balance.
Please be aware that we still need your assistance by responding accordingly in a timely fashion, and that the dispute, claim and chargeback process will remain the same. Although PayPal is not placing a temporary hold on your funds, a lost dispute, claim, or chargeback will still result in your PayPal account being debited at the time the case is closed. Please note there are other transactions that can still result in funds being temporarily held and this new change only applies to claims, chargebacks and disputes.
Your account performance will consistently be monitored and the terms of this feature are subject to change based on your selling performance. In order to maintain this feature, above-standard performance is necessary. PayPal sends system-generated e-mails which may cause you to see references to held funds in e-mails, disputes, claims, and chargebacks. Despite this, your account is exempt from such holds at this time.
The PayPal Debit MasterCard Business Card® will also provide you with fast access to your funds. Thank you for your continued commitment towards the PayPal community as we partner with you to grow your business.
Sincerely,
PayPal <comment><USER2> Any chance you can email me a screenshot of this? Happy to blank out the name. Would just make a great addition to an earlier story we did.

firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


A variety of corn has evolved a way to make its own nitrogen (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/corn-future-hundreds-years-old-and-makes-its-own-mucus-180969972/ <comment><USER2> This is an extremely hard problem. I've been following efforts to replace nitrogen for around forty years. It's part of a bigger trend of the seed industry grabbing a larger portion of the crop production dollar.

It's the science of GMO's. We've replaced some insecticides by letting the plants produce their own. We've eliminated some herbicides (weed sprays) by producing resistance in the plant to first Roundup and later other herbicides. It's truly one of the scientific miracles of the past thirty years.

Yet it has had strong opposition by the very people, organic advocates, that it benefits the most. This saddens me greatly. The very people who run around advocating 'listen to the scientists' on some issues, then selectively don't listen to them on others.

<comment><USER3> Not supporting Monsanto's business model isn't the same thing as not 'listen[ing] to scientists'.

The issues with blanket application of Glysophate combined with roundup resistant crops are real; application volumes have ballooned and we still don't have a scientific consensus on it's effects on humans. Ignoring, in the immediate, the potential health effects of the molecule, it is also a driving force in the expansion of monoculture techniques rather than more sustainable polycultures.

Monocultural key foodcrops are a long-tail risk to food security. The Irish potato famine, the lightning quick elimination of the Gros Michel clones, etc.

I won't get into the myriad legal issues surrounding Roundup, terminator seeds, etc. but they aren't theoretical either.

This isn't to say there's no benefit from Glyphosate application. It's to say opposition towards it is not driven by scientific illiteracy. Quite the opposite.

<comment><USER2> I was in the fertilizer business for twenty plus years. I went from Roundup's original introduction in the seventies to the beginnings of Roundup Ready seed. I kept a book in my office (as an EPA requirement) that allowed any employee or customer to view the safety of each chemical.

Roundup was way safer to humans than the cocktail of other herbicides that it replaced. It felt like considerable progress at the time although we all knew it would lead to Roundup resistant weeds in time.

From the beginning there was a small but loud opposition to GMO seeds. Some scientist, usually in Europe, would produce a report that Roundup causes cancer or such. Six different Midwestern universities would try to duplicate the research, fail and then publish exactly where the original researcher made a mistake.

I don't claim to be a scientist but as an interested observer I think that's how the scientific process should work. Now they've switched battlefields to the courts and gained several early victories. I predict they will be overturned on appeal.

I agree with you on monocultural crops. I think rotation should be encouraged but I'm not exactly sure how to do it. What I don't want to see is the government telling farmers what they can plant. They could provide financial incentives however if they can convince the taxpayers it's worth the price.

<comment><USER4> > They could provide financial incentives however if they can convince the > taxpayers it's worth the price.

Or financial disincentives. Like an outright tax or removal of existing subsidies.

<comment><USER5> That does not play a role in their decision. They are rotating to other subsidized crops as well. If their was a profitable 'other' crop, they would grow it. Commodities are tough

[https://thinkingagriculture.io/what-silicon-valley-doesnt- un...](https://thinkingagriculture.io/what-silicon-valley-doesnt-understand- about-agriculture/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very exciting. As an outsider looking into the world of academic science, though, I am genuinely curious as to what about this paper took 13 years? The article mentions research by the team began in 2005, and only finished in 2018. Was it just the time needed to watch multiple generations of the corn grow? Anywho, fascinating stuff.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm wondering if there are other plants with "Aerial root mucilage" also?

The wikipedia page on aerial roots [0] needs some love. There's also another similar article about this corn [1].

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

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/amaizeba...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/amaizeballs/567140/)

</comment><comment><USER8> There's a better way to add nitrogen to soil and it's through the nitrogen cycle. The US Midwest (which grows a lot of corn) used to be highly populated with ruminants who did exactly this.

We killed them all (well, most) and now grow corn which we use most to finish off cattle, which is also a ruminant.

Maybe a better solution would be to feed the ruminants off the land now used by the corn? Imagine what that might do.

<comment> quixoticelixer- How do ruminants add nitrogen to the soil?

<comment><USER9> They pee on it.

[http://fertsmart.dairyingfortomorrow.com.au/wp- content/uploa...](http://fertsmart.dairyingfortomorrow.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2013/05/Figure-12.1.png)

(Image hotlinked from [https://fertsmart.dairyingfortomorrow.com.au/dairy- soils-and...](https://fertsmart.dairyingfortomorrow.com.au/dairy-soils-and- fertiliser-manual/chapter-12-nitrogen-and-nitrogen- fertilisers/12-1-introduction/))

<comment> quixoticelixer- Yeah but where is that nitrogen coming from? It's coming from plants.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, hence the "Nitrogen _Cycle_ ".

<comment> quixoticelixer- Yes but they do not actually add nitrogen to the soil

<comment><USER10> Sure they do, they add nitrogen back to the soil that the plants extracted from the soil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This would seem like a good candidate for regular old cross-breeding.

People in the past would select which seeds and plants to cross breed by hand.

You could imagine an automated system which could cross breed 1 billion (1e9) plants at once by using cameras and ML techniques looking for good traits on each plant, using just 3% of US farmland. It doesn't need perfection - a 10% error rate simply requires 10% more plants, so it's a perfect application of ML.

The same plants you're using for breeding can still be producing sellable corn, so the cost of this selective breeding program on a per-plant basis is nearly zero.

<comment><USER12> These days people are doing selective breeding by simply sequencing genes. It can produce the same results as transplanting genes in a matter of months for a lot of plants (because they don't use normal procreation).

It's not cheaper or faster.

And of course, now there's a massive debate whether this is GMO or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> With all this mucus dripping, won't it need even more water? Wouldn't that be a problem in the dry future?

<comment><USER14> Compared to the the problem of nitrogen fixing in a future without haber-bosch fertilizer plants, water use barely registers.

<comment> quixoticelixer- Actually it does

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've skimmed this and will dig further (it's certainly interesting stuff) but one alternative needs considering is that it's there to attract animals which somehow leave nitrogen by other means - perhaps droppings? Or that eave offal? or are killed by other carnivores? Something else?

</comment><comment><USER16> So the plant basically does something like a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process) ? That would be huge.

</comment><comment><USER17> This seems like it would lose an appreciable amount of water, but perhaps not nearly as much as transpiration. But in most places water is a cheaper input than nitrogen.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why can't plants make their own nitrogenase? Why do they need to outsource the nitrogen fixation to bacteria?

<comment><USER19> They never invented it for themselves. Attracting nitrogen-fixing bacteria turned out to be easier. Nature loves easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well, I'm sold.

</comment><comment><USER21> But what about the nitrogen production industry? /s

</comment><comment><USER22> (2018)

<comment><USER23> The Corn of Today?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Apparently it is not making nitrogen at all, but splitting aerial nitrogen and binding it into bigger molecules.

Making nitrogen would be an impressive achievement for anybody, never mind a plant. Probably easiest is to make a lot of hydrocarbons with deuterium substituted for the regular hydrogen, and pack that around a source of free neutrons. The neutrons would lose energy to the deuteriums, and end up slow enough to be absorbed by the carbon nuclei, which would become nitrogen after a few steps. Also the deuterium would become tritium and then helium. Plants probably could concentrate deuterium. Where plants would get free neutrons is a poser; some plants will concentrate radionuclides from soil...

But of course there's already plenty of nitrogen in the air.

<comment><USER24> Did you originally think we had found a variant of corn that was able to fuse or fission atoms?

Haha, that would be something!

<comment><USER19> The title says it does. If it doesn't, the title is a lie.

<comment><USER24> Not understanding that things is not supposed to be taken literally is a common trait with autistic people.

<comment><USER19> "Fix" is both shorter than "make", and correct.

Literality has nothing to do with it. Obviously they meant "fix". It would have been equally easy to say "fix".

Mistaking a riff on nucleosynthesis for not understanding that they were just being sloppy means some other thing.

<comment><USER24> It does have something to do with it. Everything has to do with everything else. It is just about the perspective you use when evaluating.

Yes it certainly could have been expressed better/differently, and it can be seen as sloppy. Those Are valid perspectives.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


For all of you small business owners, you can relate to this  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fivemilliondots.com/archive/2008/12/27/for-all-of-you-small-business-owners-you-can-relate.aspx

<comment><USER2> That guy sounds like a passive aggressive, condescending dick. He may have some nuggets buried in there, but they're difficult to find when he drops phrases like "while you get here at 9, and mentally check in at about noon".

I worked in an environment where the business owners subtly questioned the worth of all of their employees once and I'll never do it again. I hope that I'll treat people differently if I'm ever in a similar position.

<comment><USER3> If this guy actually sent that note to his employees (and I don't doubt that he did) he is absolutely a passive aggressive, condescending dick... couldn't have put it better myself. He's also a whiner and an idiot who obviously doesn't trouble himself with facts or history.

First of all, Dick (which is what I'll call the author, since I don't know his name) writes: _If you lose your job, it won't be at the hands of the economy; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country, steamrolled the constitution, and will have changed its landscape forever._

Within the context of the article, Dick isn't referring to any actual steamrolling of the constitution that has taken place at the hands of the Bush administration (as long as there are terrorists out there... and there are _always_ terrorists out there... it's apparently un-American to defend the Constitution, civil liberties, etc.). No, in the article, Dick is referring to changes in the tax code that the Obama administration has proposed (though they may not act on them for a year or two).

The funny thing is that Dick appears to believe that these tax hikes will be unprecedented. He believes they will _streamroll the constitution and change its landscape forever_. In fact, all Obama plans to do is return the top two tax rates to what they were in 2000 (and throughout most of the 90's). Taxes will still be lower than they were in 2000 because he plans to leave the other brackets (which are now at lower rates than they were in 2000) untouched. Even the wealthiest 1% of households (with an average income of $1.6 million per year) will pay less than they paid in '93-'00. So the idea that Obama's tax plan will _streamroll the constitution and change its landscape forever_ is hogwash. His proposed taxes are lower than they were just 8 years ago and in any case, there is absolutely nothing unconstitutional about taxes. I've read the constitution; obviously this guy hasn't.

Even stronger evidence of the ridiculousness of this claim can be found if we look at history. Let's look at the top marginal Federal tax rates seen in recent history:

50% (1982-86) 70% (1965-85) 77% (1964) 91-92% (1946-63) 94% (1944-45)

Under Obama's plan, the highest marginal tax rate starts at an income of $357,700 (in 2008 dollars) and will only be 39.6%. And it's important to note that this is the marginal rate, not the average rate. Someone making $400,000 won't be paying 39.6% of her income to Uncle Sam, she'll be paying 31.6%, making the absurd assumption that she has no deductions. In reality, she'll almost certainly be paying less.

Finally, I'd just like to point out that two people with perhaps the highest tax burdens in the United States (Bill Gates and Warren Buffet) both support Obama and his tax hikes. In fact, Buffet has said it's ridiculous how little tax he is expected to pay. I tend to agree, especially considering our budget deficit (not to mention our national debt). I for one would be happy to pay higher taxes... if I'm doing well, a large part of that success is owed to the country that provided me with my education and the infrastructure and opportunities to make a success of myself. I'd like to see that education and infrastructure get even better. I'd like to see poor kids get preventative health care. It may not be a popular sentiment, but I agree with Biden: paying taxes is patriotic.

<comment><USER4> What's so great about being patriotic? I'm American by birth, so I guess my views are pretty uncommon but I just don't personally see the point in being proud of something that happened by complete chance, and I _certainly_ don't feel like I owe the place I was randomly born something.

About taxes; I don't mind paying taxes _if I see some benifit for it_. In e.g. Sweden you pay 40-50%, but for this you have free healthcare and free education (plus lodging and food!) for as far as your willing/capable of going.

The US, on the other hand has taxes higher then I would pay in e.g. Switzerland, Lichtenstein, etc. while having a _much_ worse health care system, a _much_ worse public school system, etc., etc.

(NOTE: These comments don't have anything to do with Obama/McCain, just patriotism and taxes)

<comment><USER5> In my humble opinion...nothing really. While it certainly has it's benefits, it also leads to xenophobia and sometimes borderline racism (ask the average American what they think of outsourcing).

 _Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it._ -George Bernard Shaw

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fine, I hope all the people who feel this way leave. Go. Get the fuck out.

I believe in American exceptionalism. I believe that there's something about the immigrant experience that allows people to pull themselves up and live their dreams with lots of hard work. Yes, it takes luck - but so does everything else worth having, including love and health. You can become rich and fabulous and no one will fault you for your accent or your class.

So take my taxes - I'm happy to have a profit enough to pay them. I'm safe in my country's borders, I have 500 channels of TV available to me, I can eat meat every day for every meal if I wanted to, and I get to watch my two favorite teams play baseball day and night during the season.

My father chose to move here for me, before I was even born. Not that India is some kind of hellhole - far from it - but, today, on what would have been his 60th birthday were he alive, I know what gift he gave me.

<comment><USER7> If you were born elsewhere, and could never get to America, would you be fine with American exceptionalism?

<comment><USER8> > If you were born elsewhere, and could never get to America, would you be > fine with American exceptionalism?

Sure. Why would I care what Americans think about themselves? Why would I care what Americans think about me?

And, on a more objective note, the argument for American exceptionalism isn't that America does so well, but that other countries do so badly.

After all, let's compare the stereotypical American with the stereotypical European and then look at the aggregate results. Some might argue that the stereotypes are wrong. Others give credit to the flying spaghetti monster. Maybe the Illuminati are to blame. And so on.

<comment><USER7> Could you precisely define what you mean by "American exceptionalism"? I'm not getting what you're saying.

<comment><USER8> > Could you precisely define what you mean by "American exceptionalism"?

I'm okay with "American exceptionalis refers to the belief that the United States differs qualitatively from other developed nations, because of its national credo, historical evolution, distinctive political and religious institutions, ethnic origins and composition, or national ideals." from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism>

You seem to think that non-Americans should be bothered by American exceptionalism. Why?

<comment><USER7> > the belief that the United States differs qualitatively from other developed > nations,

Is that belief that the United States is _better_ , or just different?

<comment><USER8> > Is that belief that the United States is better, or just different?

Let's go with the one that bothers you. Why do you care?

<comment><USER7> The one that bothers me is "better". The reason it bothers me is because that type of American exceptionalism is _very_ close to nationalism, which, in turn, works to build mental walls of ethnocentrism and classism.

<comment><USER8> While we often hear how fascism is descending on the US, I'll note that it lands in Europe.

Or, if you intend "ethnocentrism and classism" in a less malign form, to the extent that it's bad, it will work to the US' disadvantage. Are you opposed because you want the US to succeed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Chain letter politics emails aside, if your business looks like this, you're probably doing it wrong. I don't understand why people think being married to a business is healthy or necessary. (It might be in some businesses. If you're the sole employee keeping a hospital's generators running, yep, you just bought yourself a very stressful lifestyle. Don't be the sole employee keeping a hospital's generators running.)

I love my customers. They are very important to me. If there is a bonnie lass who has booked my evening, then their emails can wait a few hours. I'm an engineer -- I'm perfectly capable of creating automated systems which generally function whether I am physically present Right This Minute or not.

If they tend to not do that, you can either code better (not sarcastic -- every time I lose money or time on date night as a result of a bug, my appreciation for proper testing increases) or pay somebody to worry about it for you.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is pretty clearly a chain-email written months ago by a McCain supporter, breathlessly warning of the dangers of electing an Obama administration.

The "...this is the type of change you can keep" is a dead giveaway.

<comment><USER5> With the hyprocrisy being that both parties are indisputably big government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's a little over the top. Almost Rand-ian at the end there. I think small business owners should, however, start to cultivate a difference in perception between small business and "big" business.

There is a substantial difference between the startup founder who employs 15 and is the hardest working guy in the bunch and the executives of something like GM or AIG who are still not quite sure why its wrong to ask for a bailout while flying around in multiple corporate jets and taking fancy executive retreats.

Its going to be very important in the next couple of years to be sure that the needed reforms that will reign in the recklessness of the latter does not adversely affect the former.

</comment><comment><USER12> That is a ridiculous letter and should not be on HN. Fist, it disrespects others, which is bad for business. But more importantly, he fails to aknowledge the roads he takes to work, the water he drinks, the electricity, the schools he went to.... you get the idea.

I don't think government is the most efficient thing in the world, but I do think they have an important role in business development, if not the most important.

After living in developing countries (China, Turkey, Ethiopia), you come to appreciate the little things that our taxes pay for - firemen, policemen, roads, schools, hospitals. I am a small business owner and do not enjoy parting with money to an arguably inefficient government either, but taking it out on employees like that is childish at best.

<comment><USER5> Maybe, but it's sparked some pretty good conversations. I've always found the discussions on HN to be better than the articles/news anyway :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find these anti-tax sentiments nuts. My recent history is essentially the same he describes. I currently employ 12 people.

My attitude is the polar opposite however. I worked so hard over the last couple years so that I could create the best environment on earth for me and my friends/employees. We have fun at work and because of that our products are excellent. There is no debt or guild about them having a good time while I wasn't, in fact I do have a good time now because they do.

Outside of the business, the reasons we live well, are directly related to the taxes we pay. Can you imagine stepping out of your office and hitting a dirt track? Taxes payed the paved street. Can you imagine that sprawling towns, such as the ones we live in, would function for a moment without Police and oversight? Do you think software businesses could be made outside of sprawling towns?

There is a certain basic infrastructure that needs to be in place to get the best out of people and that's what good government provides. I lived in Germany and Canada, both countries with welfare systems and health systems that the states now finally aspires to, and I have enjoyed (relatively) good government for my entire life.

If we cut out taxes of all kind we will end up without those basic infrastructure and the foundation on what the OP build his business will no longer exist.

<comment><USER14> This, of course, is a strawman. The taxes being railed against are not the libertarian-esque ones like infrastructure and defense, but more controversial ones like corporate bailouts.

<comment><USER5> And the allocation and efficiency of the taxes already in place. If you work for the government, largely due to lack of competition & indifference, there's very little meritocracy and it's hard to fire people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interestingly the higher taxes will in part be used to raise the standard of education which will result in a more dynamic and entrepreneurial work force, which will in turn result in more business owners looking for employees. He simply sounds mad because he'll be making a few dollars less.

He's using a straw man argument to cover for his personal greed and ideology. Randian indeed.

<comment><USER8> > Interestingly the higher taxes will in part be used to raise the standard of > education which will result in a more dynamic and entrepreneurial work > force, which will in turn result in more business owners looking for > employees.

Yeah right.

While Obama didn't go with the worst from Chicago's education gang, their best isn't all that good.

A convincing counter-argument will cite actual results from Chicago, a noted bastion of educational excellence....

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This exemplifies why tax avoidance (NOT evasion) has become one of my favorite pastimes.

<comment><USER16> Any tips? We have what I think are a good group of accountants doing our books and taxes, and yet beyond basic business expenses (computers, attending a conference to sell our stuff, cell phone bill, etc...) we're pretty much paying a TON of taxes.

Maybe that's all there is, but if you have any advice, I would be very interested in hearing it. (email@example.com)

<comment><USER5> _Fair warning: I am not an accountant, the below information is just from my own experiences and does not constitute professional advice. Talk to an accountant._

The biggest one is expensing things you'd have to pay for anyway (e.g. health club memberships [if applicable], insurance, cell phones, health savings account, home internet & computers [if you work at home enough], parking passes, subway cards, business mileage on your cars and lumping personal trips & business trips together [careful with this one]. These take advantage of pretax dollars. I encourage you to do same for your employees since you're offering real perks with pretax dollars. Just make sure you talk to your accountant first

If you operate on a cash-basis (as opposed to an accrual basis) make any capital improvements/major purchases at the end of the quarter or fiscal year instead of the beginning of the next quarter or fiscal year. You can get around some of the 401k limitations if you own your own business. Finally, sometimes it's cheaper, in a tax sense to issue dividends to yourself and fellow equity holders. All of this varies significantly by legal formation and state.

Finally - and I can't emphasize this enough - _invest in a good accountant_. There's so many write-offs & tricks that the average person would never even think of and the laws, in typical US fashion, are filled with red tape & loop holes. Having someone to help you navigate them is crucial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can't believe this is on HN. He writes as though he didn't get the memo on the fact that the McCain plan was much worse than the Obama plan. Why are we discussing this?

<comment><USER18> The McCain plan was an attempt to equalize the tax incentives facing individuals and large businesses looking to buy a health insurance plan, thus severing the tight link between employment and health care which hinders potential startup founders. Obama's plan, as far as I can tell, is "more subsidies".

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are people still shilling for McCain at this late date?

The election is over, you know.

</comment><comment><USER20> I get 403 on that link..

<comment><USER5> Works for me. I recreated it here for you as well:

<http://tinypaste.com/pre.php?id=3b399>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> He mentions the 50% figure a lot of times and it's one I find particularly interesting, because in a lot of countries which tend to have good socialized healthcare, social security, et al and don't have to run deficits or anything like that, tend to have personal tax rates of AROUND 50%.

<comment><USER22> Yup! As a Canadian we can pay more than 50% income tax plus Provincial taxes, sales taxes and all the other taxes.

It doesn't stop Canadians from operating businesses. RIM is Canadian, EA has a huge operation in Canada. When you hear of companies moving from Canada to the US, I believe it is more often brain drain than due to the taxes.

<comment><USER23> The Western provinces have lower tax burdens than many states in the US. I compared a few income and family situations with my California income, and there's a 5-10% savings in taxes. Add in the free healthcare and the option to get a 15% rate on small business and British Columbia is looking really good. If only the weather was good.

Canada Tax Estimate Calculator: [http://www.ey.com/GLOBAL/content.nsf/Canada/Tax_- _Calculator...](http://www.ey.com/GLOBAL/content.nsf/Canada/Tax_- _Calculators_-_2008_Personal_Tax)</comment></comment></comment>


Leisure Is Our Killer App - <AUTHOR> https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/leisure-is-our-killer-app/ <comment><USER3> I am a big fan of this. As a 25 year old, I feel that I was truly the last general to experience what true boredom was like as a kid. Hanging out at the school during the weekend wondering what to do - those days are over now. Technology has definitely taken over our lives, and now there's always something to do.

I believe that leisure time is something that most people don't have nor know that they want. As the article states, it lets you think outside of the box and come back with fresh ideas. In a work-centered society though, it's really hard to justify spending that time. Even knowing all this, I still fall into the trap of always being busy with something.

<comment><USER4> > I was truly the last general to experience what true boredom was like as a > kid

Old guy chiming in. Every generation feels like this. Socrates lamented that becoming literate would "create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories." In the 16th century, Swiss scientist, Conrad Gessner, warned that the overabundance of information caused by the printing press was "confusing and harmful". In 1940s, radio had caused children to develop "the habit of dividing attention between the humdrum preparation of their school assignments and the compelling excitement of the loudspeaker." In my time, similar concerns were raised about cable TV and the walkman.

<comment><USER5> Pretty much all of the critics you mentioned were right in some small way. Relying on printed material does have downsides compared to memorization - <USER2> a modern example, consider the disadvantages of googling for information vs. actually learning it.

<comment><USER6> There's a difference between Googling and comprehension. Google is a great substitute for remembering facts and details. It means there's more room in my brain for concepts and things that can't just be Googled for.

Treat Google as an augmentation of your brain. You both do what you're good at (facts vs. concepts) and you end up better overall.

<comment><USER7> I don't know if I completely believe the more room for your memory part. That's my excuse for not memorizing things that take a few minutes to look up. I don't necessarily believe it as a truth. I've heard the memory of people in countries where paper is scarce tends to be amazing. This was before the everyone had a phone. I think we would have to measure how much memory is achievable for certain tasks before we can calculate room saved for concepts and where the threshold becomes an advantage. Anyway I'm a skeptic either way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One tiny issue with leisure in general is unpredictability. An uncontrolled mind can wander anywhere and come back (may not come back at all) in whatever state, not necessarily charged and refreshed.

I wonder if there's anything like disciplined leisure, where you concentrate on one thing intensively for a while, and you intentionally force yourself to let go of those thoughts, divert your attention to something else and let sub- consciousness deal with the topic. But the point is to come back to the same thing at the end with new ideas and a refreshed mind.

Am I too naive?

<comment><USER9> Disciplined leisure is almost a contradiction in terms - how does one not think of it as work?

<comment><USER10> This is called "meditation".

<comment><USER11> Yes, meditation could be called disciplined leisure. I'm not sure if the post you are responding to is getting at that. Meditation and minding wandering are very different things, even opposites. But I think both are very useful for that creative process. It would be interesting to examine the effects of these two things in the context of this article.

<comment><USER12> There are broadly speaking two kinds of meditations: focussed meditation and awareness meditation.

I heard a useful analogy of the mind being like an elephant that wants to wander around on its own.

In focussed meditation, we try to focus your attention on our breath, or some point inside our body or an idea. We tie the elephant with a rope to a pole. If it wanders too far, we tug it and bring it back to the pole.

In awareness meditation, we just observe where the elephant roams wherever it wants. That is more like leisurely mind wandering.

<comment><USER13> I'd like to recommend "The Mind Illuminated" by Culadasa John Yates. Besides the elephant analogy, there is much actionable advice on meditation to be found in that book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and capacity. Men who, in their professional work, have become interested in some phase of economics or government, will be able to develop their ideas without the academic detachment that makes the work of university economists often seem lacking in reality. Medical men will have the time to learn about the progress of medicine, teachers will not be exasperatedly struggling to teach by routine methods things which they learnt in their youth, which may, in the interval, have been proved to be untrue.

\-- Bertrand Russell

[http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately in practice it seems that people have actually responded to increased leisure time by dramatically increasing the amount of time they spend watching TV. That's certainly not true for everyone, but I think most people need some external impetus or accountability to make progress and stay on track towards their goals.

<comment><USER14> The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which they took an active part.

\-- Bertrand Russell

[http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > You can turn a machine off and on to reboot it, but this simply simulates > sleep.

Not really. Human sleep is much more than simply turning off and on. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_and_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_and_memory)

<comment><USER16> Mandatory reference: the brilliant Matthew Walker:

[https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/295/295665/why-we- sleep/9780...](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/295/295665/why-we- sleep/9780141983769.html)

I'm halfway through the book, and it has already influenced my behavior. I began setting "to bed" alarm, just like I set "wake up" alarm.

If you don't have the time (?) to read the book, then at least listen to Walker's presentation at "Talk at Google". (Not to mention, he's an outstanding public speaker, too.) He has a segment where he talks about how sleep hits the "save button" to preserve your memory (after learning) to "persistent storage in your brain", as it were.

Walker's work is urgent and important.

<comment><USER17> I'm reading this as well, about a quarter of the way through, so far it's really interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Human mind is most creative when it's idle. That's where unplugging and turning down your cellphone would help. With the advent of smart phones and being constantly plugged in, I feel like we've lost our ability to be creative. Instead now we always reach for the phone when we are bored.

</comment><comment><USER19> > nobody is safe from being replaced by software, algorithms, and machines.

That's a big leap. We yet have to prove we can make machines smarter than human. It might be possible but it might be not. Like flying - as without huge fans - cars.

<comment><USER20> flying cars is an interesting analogy since it's entirely possible to make one, it's just impractical

<comment><USER19> It's very far from the vision people had in 50-60s. We haven't found yet the gravity fighting mechanism that will allow them.

We might find a novel way to fight gravity tomorrow, in another 50 years, or never. Like AI. We might find a way to build truly intelligent computers tomorrow, in 50 years, or never. However in both cases, it's ridiculous to try to come up with rules for a non existing technology. It will be like people in the 50-60s trying to make rules from the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Leisure also is a luxury, not everyone could afford it when it is needed most

<comment><USER22> True, but the article isn't trying to say that everyone _can_ have time for leisure, but rather everyone _should_ have time for leisure. An optimist may say that with the advent of automation people should have more time for leisure, where a pessimist may say that the poor will grow poorer.

<comment><USER23> Why can't it be both?

Sure the poor will grow more poor, and also have a lot more free time due to not having employment. That's not necessarily a _good_ thing, but it does agitate for both the optimistic and pessimistic views being likely at once in the future.

<comment><USER24> > have a lot more free time due to not having employment

I assume you're advocating their support through some social safety net that provides them with basic necessities.

Because currently, not having employment is a major loss in free time: you spend all your time trying to meet core needs like food, shelter, and clothing. Where an employed person can simply order take-out, hire a contractor to fix their house, and buy new clothes as required, an impoverished person will be scraping together safe food and trying to cook it to be palatable, sheltering in uncomfortable or unsafe places, and repairing clothes that are long since worn out. And if they do go to work, they earn a pittance that's insufficient to pay rent, much less afford luxuries like prepared food, home ownership, or durable clothing.

Unless you're extremely optimistic about social services improving, the poor being poorer puts heavier burdens on their time, not lighter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The article builds up to this: "By encouraging our minds to wander, leisure activities pull us out of our present reality, which in turn can improve our ability to generate novel ideas or ways of thinking."

Then wraps up and ends.

We don't have a killer app.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is why I moved my family to Patagonia. The concept of Time is different here. I've finally managed to do really deep work from my 'garage office'.

My best ideas come while either driving my son to school or taking a fishing break on the lake just meters near our home. Back to Basics.

Weekends are 99% Tech-free now, and it's been amazing so far.

</comment><comment><USER27> > By encouraging our minds to wander, leisure activities pull us out of our > present reality, which in turn can improve our ability to generate novel > ideas or ways of thinking.

And then you get the post [Nobody Likes the "Idea Guy"]([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280907](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280907)).

You can have great ideas but the hard part is the intersection between being lucky to be able to apply them at work, those ideas to be relevant and execute them properly.

</comment><comment><USER28> If anyone likes this sort of idea, they should check out the book: A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative[0]

There's a section where he talks about thinking about other businesses or activities that are outside of your main focus, and after you go through that process you may come up with different ideas for your own business. It's pretty easy too. Just look around your room or where ever you are for objects and then think about how they are manufactured -- stuff like that.

I remember seeing a piece of lumber (I was reading outside) and it got me to think about how efficient some lumber manufacturers are. They might make 2x4s and other processed wood which they sell to retailers, but there's so much waste produced during the process in the form of sawdust and those manufacturers figured out how to sell their sawdust waste.

I never would have ever thought about something like that on my own, but it got me to think about how I can reduce waste and cross pollinate some of the things I create (code, blog posts, videos, etc.).

[0]: [http://amzn.to/2CqmvqH](http://amzn.to/2CqmvqH) (yes it's an Amazon affiliate link and no I don't care if you Google it instead. I just happened to have the link handy since I wrote about the book on my site in the past.)

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe one day, next generation of robots are not just robots. What if robots are backed by real human DNA, while a CPU and RAM is of a machine.

</comment><comment><USER30> One wonders if the ability for a technological "mind" to wander could be the threshold of the singularity.

<comment><USER31> I've wondered the same thing about dreaming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> While leisure is great for human creativity, does that necessarily mean it is an advantage over robot creativity?

</comment><comment><USER33> Why can't we program robots/etc to "wander" and use leisure themselves?

<comment><USER34> What do you mean by this? I assure you there is no difficulty on making a robot move around randomly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't see the point of rest. We are biologically bound to need a resting period which is not the case for robots thereby making them superior species. A robot would rather crawl more webpages and learn more than shutting down, even we would like to finish those couple of side projects than sleeping off but are unable to.

<comment><USER36> A robot doesn't have a preference. It wouldn't "rather" do anything because it's not sentient.

Machines don't need rest because they aren't capable of regeneration. They run and damage accumulates until they break. Then they're done. You can run them less and have the damage accumulate slower so they last longer, but they don't heal themselves without somebody else to perform maintenance.

Living things on the other hand, do repair themselves while they rest. In fact, they even grow stronger to better endure the stresses they experience. So, that's the point of rest.</comment></comment>


Get Out of Gun Control, Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/opinion/get-out-of-gun-control-apple.html <comment><USER2> > Apple hasn't said why it would be making this change, but this summer, along > with Microsoft, the company lobbied Unicode, the nonprofit consortium that > decides which emojis should exist, against adding a separate rifle.

The rifle emoji Apple and Microsoft opposed was a sporting rifle (used in biathalon) that was proposed along with other winter sports. It had absolutely nothing to do with "gun violence" except for the vocal protestations of a tiny minority.

I look forward to Apple removing the football emoji soon since pro football has a problem with chronic traumatic encephalopathy and tinkering with emoji will clearly help with solving the problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a perfect example of what Peter Thiel calls the phony culture wars distracting Americans and politicians from real issues.

<comment><USER4> Which/what do you and he consider to be phony about this culture war over guns?

<comment><USER5> Linking the frequent sending of gun emojis to gun violence would be hard indeed. Perhaps it's not phony, per se, but it is so hilariously ancillary to the actual discussion regarding mental health, access to field combat-grade firearms, and disparities in urban molestation of certain classes of people that this smacks more of Apple doing solid PR than it does actually solving issues in our communities.

That's my take on Thiel's point, and guns are NOT the only topic where big corps trot out stupid stunts to capitalize on what yesterdays big cultural outrage was.

<comment><USER4> But this does put the very clearly on one side of this cultural war, so it's something more than nothing. Virtue signaling at the very least.

And it's not as if Apple isn't giving OS X/macOS plenty of reasons to switch to something else from what I've been reading....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Apple's change is ill considered because it breaks the conceptual > compatibility that Unicode is meant to establish. Anyone with an iPhone > ought to be able to send a message to someone with another company's > products — like Google or Microsoft or Samsung — and have what's delivered > communicate the same idea as what's sent.

If Apple is guilty of causing miscommunications, then so are the other platform vendors:

[http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/your-favourite- emoj...](http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/your-favourite-emoji-dont- mean-what-you-think-they-mean--xklmeNGvvZZ)

So far, variance from the unicode standard is pretty widespread. The gun is not the first, probably not the worst.

<comment><USER7> It is widespread but it's not variance in message and interpretation.

One can argue about who has the "cutest" monkey or the "spookiest" ghost but they are still a monkey and a ghost.

A water pistol is not the same thing as a "realistic" gun. What do you think would happen if some one sends a text from an iphone saying "war in the school parking lot bring your [gunemoji]" while being used to the water pistol emoji and some one gets the same message with a realistic gun emoji?

Having artistic variance is fine, but there are guidelines, the emoji still has to be universally recognizable and not misleading a water pistol is not a gun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> >Apple's change is ill considered because it breaks the conceptual compatibility that Unicode is meant to establish..

News flash: ALREADY BORKED (ref: [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-the- emoji-youre-sendin...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-the-emoji-youre- sending-actually-look-like-to-your-friends))

Totally agree that this distracts from the real issue, and there are many here. Stop distracting folks Apple/Microsoft and chip away at the harder stuff!</comment>


Kapacitor v0.10.0 with support for custom functions and dead man's switch - <AUTHOR> https://influxdata.com/blog/announcing-kapacitor-v0-10-udfs/ <comment><USER2> Is this project open source?

<comment><USER3> [https://github.com/influxdata/influxdb](https://github.com/influxdata/influxdb)</comment></comment>