Universal Basic Income and the threat of tyranny - <AUTHOR> http://quillette.com/2017/10/09/universal-basic-income-threat-tyranny/ <comment><USER2> UBI isn't meant to be a full replacement for an individual's economic activity. It is /basic/, which is to say, it will cover the basic necessities.

The whole article is based on the assumption that once basic necessities are covered, huge numbers of people are going to call it a day and cease economically profitable activity.

I think the opposite will happen: once people have the basics taken care of they will become more economically active. They will take risks they couldn't before because of the overhanging risk of complete destitution. They will negotiate for better wages because everyone will know they have a perfectly viable alternative. They will invest time in themselves because they won't have to worry about how they will live if they don't have a job while they study or launch a business.

Further, there will be more money sloshing around and creating broad-based demand for goods and services that these self-same people can try to capture through their own industriousness.

I strongly believe that we have as many on welfare right now because we have a huge sector of our population that have the following choice: live in poverty on welfare with lots of free time or live in poverty while working your ass off treading water. And the reason they remain in poverty is that their employers know that there isn't a great alternative for those marginal employees so they pay just enough to keep their employees afloat but not enough that they can get ahead. UBI or negative income tax (my personal preference) would deeply change this calculus. People could spend their time and energy to truly better their situation rather than merely not lose everything.

We're not going to turn into a banana republic where only the economically elite and the political class keep each other happy and everyone else are kept just happy enough to avoid revolution. There isn't a lot of democratizing of economic power in those regimes.

<comment><USER3> > The whole article is based on the assumption that once basic necessities are > covered, huge numbers of people are going to call it a day and cease > economically profitable activity. I think the opposite will happen...

I would assume the burden of proof to be on you (and supporters of UBI) to prove that opposite will happen and people won't just slack off once their basic necessities are covered.

<comment><USER4> It's already extremely well established that people will work far beyond what they need to maintain basic necessities. There are all sorts of strong motivations for humans outside of basic survival. In addition if you look at groups with steady income streams and no perverse incentives (ex. retirees, trust funders) the vast majority remains productive in some capacity. If you are making the claim that UBI would so drastically change human behavior as to invalidate all this observed behavior than the burden of proof should be on you.

<comment><USER3> Burden of proof belongs to those who want to change the system. So if you want to convince fellow citizens to vote for UBI, you will have to convince them that people won't slack off once on UBI.

So again, can you please provide objective evidence for your assertions? Eg. "vast majority remains productive in some capacity." \- I have no idea whether its true or not. Why should I trust you when you haven't provided any data to support that claim?

<comment><USER5> > Burden of proof belongs to those who want to change the system.

This is only true if the existing system does not keep on worsening. As the technology progresses human working hours has become more and more. How is this even fair when the whole point of technology is to make human life easier. So the Burden is on the people who want the current system not to change.

<comment><USER6> "Burden of proof belongs to those who want to change the system. "

What if it is impossible to bring the proof before the change has been tried? There is essentially no test scenario which can replicate, accurately simulate and predict the behaviour of people when millions of them suddenly receive a UBI.

At least if one agrees with the claim I just made, then following your logic, the change could never happen, for the simple reason as advanced proof of the effects is impossible to provide. So you would simply never find out if the proposed system would be better or worse than the current one.

Having said that, I do think the article makes a point worth considering.

<comment><USER3> > At least if one agrees with the claim I just made, then following your > logic, the change could never happen...

... _big changes_ could never happen... FTFY!

Which is what we are seeing: non-trivial health care changes happened in 2010 after 1965 (45 year gap), needed massive majorities in Congress and incurred huge political backlash. i.e. a smaller step was possible only after all the stars perfectly aligned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> According to the logic used in this, Alaska is an autocratic regime. But when I look at Alaska, I see a state with the lowest poverty, lowest inequality, and highest well-being of almost all 50 states. I also see a population who comes out to vote, especially when anything dividend related is voted on.

It's stuff like this that really annoys me, and I feel gives academics a bad name. It's coming up with what-ifs and not applying any applicable evidence to it. Take this for another example:

> "Will the working minority agree to support non-workers with ten or twenty > children per family? Will that be sustainable?"

Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone really honestly think that there's a high percentage of women out there wanting to give birth 10 to 20 times? Is that theoretically possible? Sure, but that doesn't make it in any way probable. In fact the evidence we have again points in the opposite direction.

I really don't see any value in writing shit like this. Why not next write something about the concerns of universal health care, and how people might use it to drink so much they just replace liver after liver? Or maybe people will feel they could then rob banks because if they got shot, they'd have free health care. Are these things theoretically possible? Yes. But that doesn't make them not stupid to express.

Look, in general, democracies all over the world, in addition to UBI, need to be strengthened through dropping ideas like first-past-the-post, and adopting ideas like single-transferable-vote that feature more proportional representation and lack spoiler effects.

With that said, I only see those changes as more possible through UBI because people with their basic needs met have more time and mental space to engage in being more informed and more involved as citizens.

Look at how involved seniors are and how much power they have. Government answers to them. It's not the other way around. They don't lose the right to vote because they are no longer part of the labor market. Instead they vote in even greater numbers. And guess what happens when that happens? You get represented.

Articles like this are written by those who don't bother to look at the evidence around them and instead choose to use imaginary thinking in the hopes of influencing others.

Basic income is freedom FROM tyranny, not the threat of it.

<comment><USER8> > Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone really honestly think that there's a > high percentage of women out there wanting to give birth 10 to 20 times?

The numbers are overblown, but I see this as a real issue with utopian interpretations of UBI. I.e. those where, to quote the article, proponents expect "a majority of non-workers to live off the fruits of the labour of a small minority", as opposed to a more realistic UBI where the working poor use that free money to maybe cut one or two of their multiple jobs from their tight schedule.

But in the "utopian" version, a huge group would be left without anything to strive for. If the payout would be too generous, adding an entry level work income would not make a noticeable difference. When people are depraved of all other kinds of achievement, they are likely to use breeding as a substitute. If you can't climb or defend any ranks, you can still move up one level by spawning "subordinates". Instant status.

I feel bad just for thinking thoughts that cynical, but I can't help expecting that kind of outcome if it isn't openly addressed. A "nonutopian UBI" that just creates a smooth, regulation-free ramp (I almost want to say "interpolation") between welfare and full self-support would leave the cynic in me much more at ease.

(Edited: my writing is terrible)

<comment><USER9> Humans will strive to rise to the top in any game we choose to play together.

Competitiveness like this does not require that people are competing for basic needs.

Free people from the Puritan conceit that the majority should struggle and suffer, and observe what happens.

Independent of how you feel about it in other respects, Burning Man offers a fine large scale experimental environment into which observe the social organization that occurs in circumstances of plenty rather than scarcity. (Because it operates on a strictly enforced gift economy. Not barter. Not sale. Never mind people who don't play by the rules for now; as a 25 year attendee I have seen first hand the reality behind the cant.)

Humans will "strive" plenty whether they are fed or not. There are more needs than the ones we can and should provide for all (housing, food, education).

Humans will always find a way to self segregate and award status, whether it's in terms of karma or dollars.

At a social level, dollars too are a consensual fiction and useful primarily as a crude proxy for status and success and desirability. (Not talking about utility, talking about social status.)

<comment><USER8> Thought experiment: lock people up in a permanent Burning Man and measure the time it takes until it resembles a refugee camp more than the Burning Man of a handful of days per year. I do not share your optimism that it would last, and that's already factoring in the very self-selected group of Burning Man participants. Now imagine the same with a random selection of those who don't make up the "working caste" of utopian-UBI. (I do not think any of this would apply to a "regulation free interpolated unemployment benefit" kind of UBI)

<comment><USER9> I don't think BM itself would last, for sure; the scale of the vent is already greater than many people can hold up to.

That said, I think the gift economy element itself can be separated from all the rest and would stand up.

Maybe the TLDR for my optimism is,

Give humans a competition they can take seriously, e.g. because the social status accrued wins real rewards of various kinds–and we will be happy productive and competitive.

The part of the UBI skepticism I am eager to see tested pragmatically is that this competition must necessarily be for "that amount of money needed to lead a dignified healthy productive life worth living."

IMO the value proposition of the UBI is that we can do have it both ways. Free people from _fear_ first and foremost; then give them a motivation as well.

Maybe another way to put this is: keep the carrot, remove the stick. We've learned from evolutions in parenting that sparing the rod leads to better emotionally adjusted [and productive] kids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't buy it. In a democracy, the government cares about votes, not people refusing to pay their taxes. The government has a lot of ways to compel you to pay taxes, but not your vote.

The massive political power of retirees in the US seems like a perfect example. They aren't very productive economically and they receive lots of benefits from the government, but they wield political power out of proportion to their numbers, and politicians won't dare cross them.

<comment><USER11> I don't believe you understand what he's saying.

His point, as I understand it, is if you participate economically in a social structure, your vote represents economic activity in that structure. So if the nation was full of fast-food workers, the democratic structure that would come out of it would be something that favored fast-food workers and took their economic needs into account. In your example of retired people, a world full of retired people would create a governmental structure that understood and favored the economic activity of retired folks, which is basic consumption.

In a world where most people simply consume, such as those retired people, either you wouldn't get participation at all or you'd get participation that was structured economically around what retired folks do. In either case, it's a tyrannical and dysfunctional government. The only way to "fix" it is to have a de facto oligarchy where a small number of rich people control everything and deliver it to the masses. And that's as bad or worse than the other scenarios.

<comment><USER10> You're right, I don't understand it. Why does a government structured around the economic activity of its voters suddenly become tyrannical and dysfunctional when when most of them are no longer productive?

<comment><USER12> > Why does a government structured around the economic activity of its voters > suddenly become tyrannical and dysfunctional when when most of them are no > longer productive?

Because those people wield the power in the relationship, by virtue of the fact that they can stop working and disrupt the system economically.

This is, I believe, the author's point: political power follows economic power, over time. The two can diverge temporarily, but over the long run this tends not to be stable, or has to be maintained by force with much attendant unpleasantness.

Historically, I think this checks out. The combination of market(ish) economies and representative(ish) democracy that exist in most Western states evolved alongside the increased economic power of industrial workers, starting in the 18th century. Marxist theory takes the same ideas and runs with them further, hypothesizing inevitable conflict when worker-labor is alienated from the economic gains it produces. Neither of these two systems, which basically dominated the 20th century, would have emerged under conditions of agrarian peasantry. (And in the early Soviet Union, which basically blundered into Communism by mistake -- Marx had always thought it would emerge in more- industrialized Germany first! -- the peasantry was largely either forcibly transitioned into industrial laborers or exterminated, since they had no place in that political-economic system.)

But even in a democratic context, a "vote" is fundamentally meaningless; it is at best merely a suggestion. Underlying the idea of democracy is always the question of what the citizenry will do if the government decides to ignore the vote. Governments that depend on economic activity which citizens can disrupt through simple nonparticipation have a vested interest in keeping those same people happy and productive. Governments that only need to worry about armed insurrection can employ more draconian methods.

<comment><USER10> Historically, modern representative democracy, with something vaguely close to universal suffrage, has only been around for 100 years or so. You can look back farther and draw the conclusion that increasing economic participation results in increased democracy as you describe with the industrial revolution, but that doesn't imply that you're bound to reverse course if economic participation declines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love articles like these.

That said, I think they miss a core point: there is very little precedent of functional democracies, which have been functional democracies for more than a few decades, turning into autocracies [0]. In the grand scheme of things decent democracies are a pretty new idea and we simply lack the data.

The author's list of awful fuel-exporting countries has a nice exception in it: Norway. Apart from a WWII hiccup, Norway was pretty much a functional democracy for a long time when they started exporting oil in the sixties. And they did not turn into an autocracy, even though Norway's government does not need its people to stay financed.

I feel like this single case undermines the author's entire argument. I'm willing to buy that an autocracy turning to universal basic income won't make it any less autocratic. But a functioning democracy (for a sufficiently great value of "functioning") has no incentive to turn into an autocracy merely because its median citizen increasingly depends on the government. That needs a much stronger argument and I haven't read it in the article.

[0] Some people might point to Turkey, Hungary and the US right now, but a) those stories haven't played out yet and b) none of those countries fit the author's bill.

</comment><comment><USER14> Instead of basic income, which has the danger of creating a tribal, polarizing division between working and non-working people, economist richard d wolff suggested (since he is an avowed socalist, amusingly, appearing in a Fox Business interview) that instead of basic income, we put everyone to work, while at the same time reducing everyone's hours. Work, but work less (adjust according to demand as needed, adjust compensation as necessary).

<comment><USER15> That's pretty much communism. Everyone forced to work and compensated according to a centrally planned ("adjusted") economy.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" \- Karl Marx

<comment><USER16> Under communism, you pretend to work and the Government pretends to pay you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So which way is it? Non-workers will be disenfranchised politically, or tyrannously use democracy to assert their power over people who do work?

The fact that even in this article both sides are argued points to the fact that there will be some counteracting forces that will stabilize things for at least a while if basic income is implemented. I think that getting concerned about what will happen 10 steps down the line when things could really go either way is a type of premature optimization.

I believe it's pretty clear that people _with_ money will have that power, but at some point that money will have to make its way into the hands of more citizens in order to avoid societal collapse. Then when political power needs rebalancing, there will still be a massive amount of people fighting for political power if things go too far one way, and people with a massive amount of wealth to counterbalance them.

</comment><comment><USER18> In my opinion, UBI should be earned not freely given away. Perhaps it is earned through education coupled with community service. This ensures that those who are rewarded UBI know that they are expected to produce something of value (to give back) to society and their communities. In return, we are given valuable education (it could include entrepreneurship, computer science/programming, cooking, personal finance, communication -- stuff that should be taught in schools!). In the end, UBI serves as a reward for completing this rites of passage to become part of society through education to better ourselves for our communities.

If given freely -- based on our current society where the poor gets the lowest amount of education -- it will help in some cases, in most it will not. It is very hard to wean yourself of a mindset without education.

<comment><USER19> Isn't that just really standard employment? Or maybe similar to an academic tenure position?

I think UBI is meant to be "universal", with no prerequisites.

<comment><USER18> Something freely given becomes less valuable versus something given through being earned. It is really not a standard employment, because you have no employer except perhaps your community or city who pays you the UBI. But being paid means you give something first. What you give is contributing to society, your tribe.

This is similar to the notion of tribes. If you want to be part of the tribe, you better contribute, by hunting for food or making something for the tribe.

<comment><USER20> One of the key efficiencies that UBI is supposed to bring over welfare is in cutting out the bureaucracy of determining who is worthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting observation. Societies where large numbers of people participate economically in the structure of government have lots of freedoms. Societies in which small numbers of people participate economically in the structure of government have fewer freedoms. UBI, by definition, takes more and more people out of active participation and makes them just consumers of the economic "product" of government.

 _...And this is the real danger of a universal basic income – it makes the citizens unnecessary to the government...._

The conclusion, if I understand the author, is that UBI postulates that a few really rich and successful people need to worry about the money and how to get it to the masses. The masses are there for consumption, to find their true meaning in life, and so on. Not to create economic value for others, which is a critical part of a healthy state.

Beats me. I'm looking forward to more data from the experiments YC and others have going. I'm also looking to narrow down exactly what UBI is. So far it looks far more like a slogan to me than an actual policy. The experiments should help with that.

<comment><USER21> UBI is a technique the state can use to entrench its influence by encouraging the people to become increasingly dependent on the government for basic needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've seen this happen in Bahrain in the past, wherein the government relies heavily on selling oil and uses the profits to subsidize living costs in Bahrain, making Bahrain bearable so that people don't complain/protest all the time. I can see the UBI argument of tyranny.

However, I raise another point, wouldn't then these people who are made jobless due to technology, etc. be again powerless and unable to stop tyranny or autocracy in a without-UBI scenario yet in a much similar strain of a with- UBI world, isn't tyranny still inevitable because those that need UBI are powerless and hold no sway on opinions or even angry and gain enmity against those who hold power such as in the Tea Party and Alt-right movement?

(Recently, however with oil prices falling, subsidization isn't happening as much and Arab Spring has brought on protests and govt. repression)

<comment><USER12> > However, I raise another point, wouldn't then these people who are made > jobless due to technology, etc. be again powerless and unable to stop > tyranny or autocracy in a without-UBI scenario [...]

I think this is a pretty good point. It's possible that UBI basically just delays the inevitable, if you believe that there really is a possible future in which most people are just economically irrelevant due to mechanization, etc. With UBI, you get a few more years before the small number of people at the levers of power harden their attitudes enough to stop the handouts; without UBI you just starve immediately. Either way, it doesn't look good.

Personally I don't think that the premise, of large-scale, structural unemployment due to automation, is really likely -- I think that "work" can expand to fill the available labor pool, with some amount of incentivizing, and a large pool of unemployed workers is threatening enough to most governments that they'll pursue economic policies to employ people, even if it's WPA-type projects, rather than endue the destabilization of having them just sit around.

As various others have pointed out, if you look at "work" today, it would be largely unrecognizable to someone from the mid-19th century. The amount of modern labor necessary to live a reasonable lifestyle by mid-19th century standards is quite low (it's hard to do this on an individual basis, but if you were to take a bunch of people and modern technology, particularly agricultural machines, but reduce expectations for standards of living to that of the 19th century, you end up with a whole lot of spare time). But yet few people do this. In fact the only people I know of living 19th century lifestyles by choice are people who actively reject modern labor-saving technology (e.g. Amish and other orthodox Mennonite traditions).

Someone from that era might justifiably question why people are still working 40 hours per week, rather than just working, say, 10, and adjusting their needs downwards accordingly. It's a fair question (and there are a lot of barriers to doing it, e.g. provisioning of health insurance). I do know a few people who have done that, in fact, and they seem to like it. But I have doubts that it will ever be an especially popular choice.

So my guess is that while automation will be disruptive, and if not managed correctly it may result in some (perhaps many) people finding that what they've spent a lifetime training themselves to do is no longer necessary -- an outcome that I think government should work to avoid, the economy will figure out ways to use the surplus human capacity freed up by automation as it always has.

There are lots of automation-resistant fields where people can essentially pay each other for services, sloshing money around and keeping everyone employed, even as a smaller and smaller fraction of people actually work in "primary industry", extracting resources from the environment or growing food. That's a transition that's ongoing already in many developed countries, and it doesn't seem grossly unsustainable except where it runs up against opportunities for arbitrage against less-developed economies at the expense of both sets of workers.

<comment><USER22> I like your response, however I refrain from future arguments because I'm never right and probably the other side is neither. I guess this is more of a circumstantial issue, maybe in the future there is no radical change of employment or maybe UBI gets implemented for a totally other reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands The major issue with basic income is what to do with all the government programs that provide safety nets for low income folks.

Will a basic income supplant those programs or be another addition to those programs?

<comment><USER23> The only way universal basic income even approaches making sense is if it replaces _everything_ else. No housing benefits, education benefits, welfare, unemployment or social security. Dump it all.

Yes, instead of living in large urban centers, unemployed poor people would have to move to smaller places with low costs of living. This is a good thing, really.

And without price supports through unlimited government loans, schools will have to become cheaper. Those associate professors of English lit who are so abused by the current system can live on BI plus cheap tuition in addition to online classes.

But of course it's all politics and I'm sure it will be impossible to pass a reasonable, cost neutral plan. Instead people will find ways to pile on the bureaucracy until it is less annoying to just go to work and get paid than it is to fill out all of the BI paperwork and file it with six different agencies.

The easy idea of just creating a virtual bank account at birth linked to a SS number or equivalent is so simple it's just a non-starter. And I've tried to convince people that means-testing and such is a waste of money and time but no, plenty of people see BI as welfare and want drug testing and means testing for it. Bah! Give Bill Gates his $20K per year. Who cares if he doesn't need it!?

<comment><USER8> I'd say "almost everything", since UBI would never pay for serious disability care and the like. But there should be heavy, even _unfair_ consequences for relying on that kind of extra support, so that people self-select instead of being admitted or rejected by some authority. Replacing some or all of the UBI stipend with goods and services might be a way. I think that a similar programme could also be necessary for people who can absolutely not trust themselves with money, and strong rules against abusing future UBI as collateral in loans (as in "if you lend to a non-earner you are out of luck", not as in "if you promise someone your future UBI you not only owe them, but also a hefty fine to the state").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We already have tyranny without any income :(

</comment><comment><USER25> This author makes some good points. But I think he's making a crucial mistake.

He posits that political power comes from the ability to withhold something; in this case work. That seems correct to me. But, I think the mistake is in assuming that the majority of people today even in countries like the US do have that power. If you are working a job that doesn't require credentials or a long period of training or education, then you don't really don't have anything to threaten the powers that be with, aside from a massive general strike, which has not happened in a long time. So the danger scenario he posits is really already here, for most people.

UBI wouldn't really change that, _except_ inasmuch as it would make it plausible for working people to go on strike much more painlessly, which would really increase their bargaining power, not decrease it.

And that's why we'll never get it.

</comment><comment><USER26> Slightly off-topic: only read part of the article, but just want to say thank to the OP for turning me onto the website. I've already read several of their other articles and am pleasantly surprised at the balance and clarity with which the authors approach the issues. These kinds of publications are an extreme rarity, especially nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER27> This has nothing to do with UBI. Fewer and fewer people will be necessary to cover everybody's needs regardless of the existence of a UBI. The Future here presented could happen anyway without a basic income.

But what will we do with billions of people without any income?

</comment><comment><USER28> > And this is the real danger of a universal basic income – it makes the > citizens unnecessary to the government.

I'd be more worried that a UBI makes citizens unnecessary _to each other_.

</comment><comment><USER29> Similar to the ethical and philosophical basis of things like universal health care, a universal basic income could not work if done partially. If you adopt universal health care without enshrining in your society the utter importance of taking care of everyone because of their fundamental value as human beings absent all other factors - the outcome will be tyranny. If there is an ability for someone to say 'oh, but perhaps we shouldn't take care of person X because they made bad choices and it would save us money to do so' then you will rapidly see the definition of various health-related regulations created with the goal of reducing the cost burden of health care.

While one might be tempted to say 'that would just result in people living healthier lives', that would be a very superficial and unstudied evaluation. Behavior modification on a society-wide scale like that is radically dangerous. It might actually be the most dangerous thing in history, I'm not sure. I'd need to run some numbers, but I think there is a good chance that the unintended consequences of well-intentioned behavior modification like that has killed more than all wars combined.

Basic income is an interesting idea, but requires social support. It cannot succeed in a society which has been accustomed to seeing other people suffering less than themselves as the worst thing possible. This is a necessary legacy of the Protestant Work Ethic which dictates that a persons virtue is measured by the degree of suffering they endure for the benefit "of society" (in truth only for employers, not society at large). In that mindset, asking for reward is itself immoral and can only reduce a persons virtue. Either to receive or provide such rewards is an act of immorality, and though many can not actually recognize or admit it, this underlies how they see the world. The poor deserve their lot because they contribute little. The rich must be moral because they are rich (this is predicated on a fantastical delusion that riches are awarded only when a person has benefitted many). This is why so many people hate punitive damage judgements. They're not concerned with the well-being of the corporation being fined tens or hundreds of millions of dollars for acting harmfully. They are obsessed, to the point of willful self-destruction, with ensuring that some individual does not get a "payday" legal settlement.

Without a philosophical backing that justifies a universal basic income, it would continuously be under threat, with people from all sides attempting to reduce the income to the point that few could survive on it alone, attempting to push people to 'be productive' in a world that doesn't need productive people. It's not a situation you can simply ignore and hope people wake up to. It has to be discussed and justified and explained. Why should society at large provide for those who do not produce material products? At what level should they be supported? Should drug addicts and criminals be supported? When someone feels slighted that someone who has not suffered as much as they gets the same amount, how will you answer them?

</comment><comment><USER30> This would be a much better argument if it had data and citations instead of just references to things that of course everybody knows (and, in practice, not everybody knows).

Here are a couple of my objections, that could be answered by data or references to serious studies:

> _In the suggested world of universal basic income, what puts pressure on the > government to maintain democracy and political rights? Will they be afraid > of a popular uprising? The people have nothing to threaten them with. A > person who does not pay taxes cannot threaten to stop paying them. Violent > revolution? History shows that governments tend to be significantly better > than common people in using violence._

Who puts pressure on the government _now_ to maintain democracy and political rights? For example, are the governments of the US or Australia really feeling today that if they fail to allow gay couples to marry, the people might stop paying taxes or engage in violence?

There is, certainly, a mechanism whereby the sentiment of the people puts pressure on democratic and even sorta-democratic governments. But the assumption that that mechanism is tax is a huge and undefended one, and seems pretty central to the argument.

> _It has often been taken for granted that as societies advance, fertility > drops, but this has only been happening for a short time and in societies > where having children requires hard work to provide for them._

Isn't the main factor here the availability of birth control (which depends on scientific advancement/knowledge and industrial practice in mass manufacture of birth control, not on hard work)? I'm surprised not to see birth control mentioned at all in this argument. The strawman pleasure-seekers would be motivated to spend their free time figuring out better forms of birth control, because (again as a strawman) sex is fun and childbirth isn't.

> _The World Bank gives us a list of countries ordered by what percentage of > their merchandise exports comes from fuels. At 50% or more we find, in this > order: Iraq, Angola, Algeria, Brunei, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Saudi > Arabia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Oman, Norway, Colombia, Bolivia and Bahrain. Can > we notice a trend? How many of these countries provide a good set of > political rights for their citizens?_

A _huge_ number of those countries have been ravaged by external political interference, in part because of the fuels in those countries. I don't think it's honest to can leave that out of the analysis and make a direct correlation between natural resources and despotism. We know that warlords and strongmen rise in politically unstable places, and we know in several cases that warlords and strongmen are _propped up by_ other countries who are trying to gain favorable exports, to the extent of populist revolutions being suppressed.

(To be clear, I am not an unreserved proponent of UBI. I just think that this argument is a bad argument against it, and in particular I worry that this argument leads in short order to positions I actually disagree with "Economic inequality is inherently good" or "Lazy people shouldn't eat.")

</comment><comment><USER31> Instead of giving people money, why not have bare minimum shelter, food and education that's available for everyone.

make it a universal parachute.

free money will just raise the prices of essentials.

<comment> at-fates-hands > Instead of giving people money, why not have bare minimum shelter, food and > education that's available for everyone.

There's already a myriad of government programs and safety nets that provide all of these and more.

<comment><USER32> ...Which, in the US, are fragmented, varyingly difficult to access, varyingly generous, and nowhere nearly universal.

In other words, a 'universal basic shelter' program would look very different.</comment></comment></comment>


The cyclist behind an anti-cyclist Facebook group - <AUTHOR> https://cyclingtips.com/2018/08/finding-mr-x/ <comment><USER2> Compelling reading.

There should be a name for the phenomenon of a satirical, ironic or trolling community turning into the real deal, by aggregating people taking the issue seriously.

This seems to be a repeating pattern.

In this case, it seems to be slightly more complex but still it begs the question if by keeping posting fake news or stories, you start believing them, consciously or unconsciously.

<comment><USER3> A user on hacker news years ago put it well like this:

"Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011498](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011498)

<comment><USER4> That's a variation of Poe's law:

"Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)

<comment><USER2> It is a corollary but it is an application to people in large numbers.

Since, in the long term, there is always less people in on the joke than new followers, you are guaranteed that the community is going to be taken over in the end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "In a nutshell, that's why this story matters: because the hate preached on anti-cycling Facebook pages isn't confined to the digital realm. It's a poison that bleeds from the screen into the real world, where aggression towards cyclists is very real, and very deadly"

Goes for a lot of other things too.

Cycling seems to be a really inflammatory subject for online discussion, and I've never really been sure why; it seems like a kind of identity politics.

<comment><USER6> It seems like a regional thing though. In many European and Asian countries there may be animosity between some cyclists and some drivers of cars, but not the extreme polarisation seen in American (perhaps Australian and a few other countries too?) communities.

<comment><USER7> There's a few things going on that I see (in the US), and probably many I don't.

* Most US roads are not bicycle ready. They weren't designed to have mixed vehicles, they weren't built for it, and they don't do it well.

* Cyclists have been given a right to be on these roads, which can't safely handle them, by legislation.

* Having them there does impede traffic that the road WAS designed for.

* The US culture has devolved lately into a "my rights" based one.

* Both the car drivers who have historical precedent with "rights to be there" and the cyclists with the newfound legislative "right to be there" willfully fail to recognize the rights of the other.

* Both sets of drivers blame the other for the lack of adherence to safety and traffic laws. Both are correct.

<comment><USER8> As a US citizen I am the biggest hypocrite when it comes to cyclists/pedestrians in the road. When in a car I think "They'll get out of my way, I'll win in a fight" while riding a bicycle I think "What are they going to do? Hit me".

<comment><USER9> That's such a normal way of thinking in the US's transportation culture. What's chronically absent from it is any sense of common courtesy.

So, inevitably, we end up in an inherently acrimonious situation: Everyone smaller than you is treated as nothing but an obstacle to be avoided, and everyone bigger than you is understood as a threat to your safety, and everyone about your same size is regarded as that asshole who just cut you off, or that asshole who needs to speed up and quit holding up traffic, etc.

We've become such misanthropists when it comes to transportation that it's even common for people to aver that they don't like using public transportation because they don't like how it brings them into regular social contact with people they don't know, and nobody thinks that attitude the least bit strange.

It's really quite odd, when you step back and look at it. Sad, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A (car) motorist crashed into my 5-year old son while he was riding his bicycle through a cross-walk (legal here). She had a stop-sign and failed to look right to see him before plowing forward. She ran over his bike, but he was knocked back and escaped with only bruises and scrapes. He had clear right-of-way.

Cyclists (the less considerate ones) can be unpredictable and frustrating for cars - I appreciate that. But "Get off the roads!" is only a very small part of the issue. Respect, training, and consequences commensurate with the level of damage inflictable by cars is something very absent from US driving culture (especially where I live in the relatively rural northwest). Cyclists whether on the road, bike paths, sidewalks, etc. kill and seriously injure people with negligible frequency compared to cars per mile.

</comment><comment><USER11> Compelling reading indeed; Even less work was done at this terminal than a normal friday afternoon...

Is there not an equivalent "compulsory single file for motor vehicles" petition?

I can envisage that first triptych that shows the bicycles spilling into the car lanes, in reverse ... ie the roughly equally-capable fast-moving cars should be in the single lane, with bikes, pedestrians and other road users free to maneuver and accommodate one-another across multiple lanes.

<comment><USER12> >compulsory single file for motor vehicles" petition?

Yes. In suburbs and rural areas "think of the children" types routinely get all their friends (usually stay at home parents and retirees) to complain to the town that a particular instance of dotted yellow line is inappropriate. Probably about half the time it backfires (e.g. they get a bunch of 4-way stops or speed bumps to slow down traffic through their snowflake neighborhood which results in them listening to every motorcycle accelerate off of every one of those stops or every landscaping trailer make a racket going over the bumps).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of VI hart and her anti pi agenda. She made a video explaining how to get your followers passionate about your ideas (in this case pi< tau). Its sort of tongue in cheek but it makes some points about social media and the ability of it to influence people.

[http://vihart.com/tau-day-2018-suspend-your- disbelief/](http://vihart.com/tau-day-2018-suspend-your-disbelief/)

<comment><USER14> Thanks, I hadn't seen that one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What a great opportunity to ignore a very interesting article on social media's role in "fake news" and instead have a debate about cyclists vs. motorists again. Well done everyone!

</comment><comment><USER16> With deep learning and techniques such as text and image generation, as well as the existence of motivated and well-funded state or corporate organizations, I fear the age of social media as social manipulation is just the beginning.

<comment><USER17> Which I suspect is actually a good thing. People will eventually become resistant to such manipulation. It happened in the world of computer BBSes back in the day. It also happened in the world of USENET after that. Compuserve, AOL, ... it's always the same thing. You end up with a group of people with extreme troll resistance which I am pretty sure carries over into day to day life and politics.

Facebook, and the like have exposed more people than ever before to online trolling. It is very possible that the result might be a world where people tend to think for themselves.

<comment><USER18> > It is very possible that the result might be a world where people tend to > think for themselves.

Would be nice, but I don't think that's realistic. Look at the past few millenia of religion in human civilization and it becomes increasingly clear that humans are not just vulnerable to, but seem to be actively courting, brainwashing. It's the default state. And religion and brainwashing have plenty of expressions in the tech world, and science, too. Most people just aren't critical thinkers.

<comment><USER19> Brainwashing fills needs intellectual honesty cannot, which is why it has historically won and will continue to win.

The closest we've come to filling those needs with intellectualism has both manifested itself as pseudo-intellectualism and an almost religious take on Enlightenment era philosophy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What the heck is a gun cyclist?

<comment><USER21> "Gun" is just a way of describing someone who's good at something. Australian slang.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> To all those commenting about "Whoa is me, the dastardly cyclists are running red lights and stop signs", please look up the concept of an Idaho Stop.

Stop pretending that you're seeing these cyclists performing an Idaho stop during busy traffic. You know full well they're paying attention a whole hell of a lot more than you considering their life is on the line. You may not see us looking both ways, because it only takes about 15 degrees of head movement to allow our eyes to capture the full peripheral to check for oncoming traffic and it's a hell of a lot more convenient for the drivers behind us to have some distance between us.

The only reason this is a big deal is because humans are barely different from monkeys on an emotional level and can't rational handle the concept of there being a different legal context for a bike vs. a motor vehicle.

<comment><USER23> I know about Idaho stop, but unless Idaho stop makes its way to the official Rules of the Road of the respective state, province, or country, and its knowledge gets verified at driver's test, it is irrelevant.

In the province I live in, there is no "Idaho stop". Rules are unambiguous: if you are on the road, whatever you are driving, you STOP at the stop sign. No guessing "do I/they do Idaho stop or not".

<comment><USER24> The whole notion of treating bicycles as vehicular traffic was wayward and has been debunked. It's really obvious that bicycles are not cars, you can tell just by looking at them.

There are differing levels of enforcement in different places, but I've made thousands, possibly tens of thousands of infractions on my bike in 35 years of commuting, sometimes right in front of the police, and I've never had a ticket. Is a rule really a rule if it isn't enforced?

If I say everyone needs to wear clown shoes to work on Wednesdays, is that a rule? It doesn't mean jack-shit because I can't enforce it.

Drivers are held more carefully to the rules of the road, but given that they're ensconced in a protective metal shell, they have a lot more leeway with the law of the jungle. With cyclists it's the other way around.

<comment><USER23> > The whole notion of treating bicycles as vehicular traffic was wayward and > has been debunked. It's really obvious that bicycles are not cars, you can > tell just by looking at them.

The same as with Idaho stop, it does not matter. Looking at something that approaches the intersection, do I have to think what that is? What if it is a bicycle with electric assist? Moped? Scooter? Is it electric? Is it with ICE? Something in between the moped and the bike? Where do I draw the line? That is way more thinking than just following the rules of all-way stop/or main road/yield.

> There are differing levels of enforcement in different places, but I've made > thousands, possibly tens of thousands of infractions on my bike in 35 years > of commuting, sometimes right in front of the police, and I've never had a > ticket. Is a rule really a rule if it isn't enforced?

Rules are there for your benefit, not police's.

> Drivers have to obey the rules of the road. Cyclists only have to obey the > law of the jungle.

This quote right there pretty much explains why there is so much anger towards cyclists

<comment><USER24> The rules are definitely not there for my benefit, the bearing they have on my safety is incidental. I've got more important things to look out for than the traffic signs. The roads were designed for cars and any attention given to cyclists, the rules they shod obey, or design features to accomodate them is largely an afterthought.

It really doesn't matter how cyclists behave, the anger will still be there, because cyclists are part of the wrong tribe, their presence on the roads in any capacity is viewed as a violation of the natural moral order.

When I'm cycling, whether or not I'm obeying the rules has little material effect on a driver's ability to get from A to B, I'm courteous, but their blood pressure still goes up. My advice to them is to see a doctor and get it fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Rob Pike and net.suicide?

</comment><comment><USER26> As a driver and a cyclist, it seems to me simply that many drivers have a tremendous sense of entitlement. Everything else stems from that, otherwise poor behavior would just be an annoyance instead of triggering actual murderous rage.

<comment><USER27> _many drivers have a tremendous sense of entitlement_

It seems to me to be precisely the opposite. It is _extremely common_ to see cyclists have a full 4-5 foot shoulder to ride on, but they _always_ choose to ride as close to vehicular traffic as possible. Sometimes even _on_ the white line. By doing so, they endanger everybody, and the only explanation for this behavior is entitlement.

So, cyclists, please change my mind: when you have a wide shoulder to occupy, and you choose to ride so close to the left of it that your handlebars are in serious danger of being clipped by vehicular traffic, why? Why not the middle of the shoulder, or, god forbid, the right side of it?

edit: thanks for the enlightening replies.

<comment><USER28> Often, there is more gravel or sand or other crap as you get closer to right edge of the shoulder. Also, potholes are more common at the edge of the road in some places. The leftmost part of the shoulder is usually the clearest and smoothest. And if there are cars parked on the right, it's good to have some clearance in case someone throws open their door without looking.

I'll try to ride as far right as possible, especially on a busy street. But those other dangers are quite real, especially once you've picked up a bit of speed. In the areas I ride, cars can't really go much faster than bikes anyway (except they accelerate faster). So the relative speed of a car in motion is less than all the stationary stuff on the right that can hurt me. My city has a lot of cyclists and bike-friendly roads, so drivers are relatively alert and used to slowing down for cyclists. As a driver, the only time I find cyclists annoying is when they ride on the roads without shoulders or bike lanes and take a whole lane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As someone from Amsterdam who owns a car, commutes by bike, and rides a road bike for sports, my opinion is that it's mostly the road cyclists who create unsafe situations. Sure, car drivers are not free of any blame, but they tend to stick better to the rules than cyclists.

If you're an avid road cyclist like me, there's a big changes you've done all these things more than once: \- Crossed a red light. \- Ride on the road while there's a cycling lane next to it. \- Cut corners. \- Ride a bit to fast in busy area's (maybe to keep your Strava average high) \- Pass an normal cyclist a bit to close.

<comment><USER30> This is a lie. Cyclists and Motorists break the rules at the same rate. [https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-18/survey-finds- bicyclis...](https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-18/survey-finds-bicyclists- and-motorists-ignore-traffic-laws-similar-rates)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think the hypocrisy and self righteousness of some movements like fanatical cycling particularly gets people worked up online.

(Complaining about car drivers being unsafe but then constantly running red lights themselves.)

<comment><USER32> We apply very draconian rules to motorists, and then people get upset when those same kind of rules are not applied to other users. It is very inconsistent and that makes people angry. But this ignores the fact that motor vehicles are exceptional in terms of the harm they can cause simply due to weight and speed. That is why we need draconian and annoying laws, but only for motor vehicles. The risk posed by bikes and pedestrians is so small that strictly enforced rules would be authoritarian and restrict freedom to an unacceptable degree.

I do agree that cyclists should follow rules. But the magnitutde of danger caused by rule breaking is massively lower and that should be acknowledged. A dangerous driver is committing a worse crime than a careless cyclist.

Also, cyclists are not some homogeneous group. The person complaining about dangerous drivers is not neccessarily the person going through a red light.

<comment><USER31> > The risk posed by bikes and pedestrians is so small

I don't know... cars stay on the road where I live. Cyclists will happily ride on the pavement and justify it with 'the road's too dangerous to cycle on'. They seem to consciously be happy with endangering people more vulnerable than themselves in order to keep themselves safe... which is what they criticise car drivers with.

I'm more concerned in practice about my three-year old daughter being hit by a cyclist on the pavement, than by a car on the road.

<comment><USER33> As a daily cyclist I commonly see parents with strollers on the bike road. For my bike road to work there is a down slope followed by a sharp turn, and there the city planners have made a temporary combined bike road and pavement for the last couple of years during construction. It is very common to see strollers during there, people in wheelchairs or groups of small children.

The city seems happy with endangering people. Parents seems happy with endangering babies there. No one has ever been charged with endangering of children, and I have never seen anyone stopping a parent with a stroller and telling them that they are endangering their child by walking on a bike road. If anything I also see an increase of strollers during the time when the road is full of ice. The order in which the city clear out snow and ice is roads > bike roads > pavement, and parents with strollers do not want to walk in snow. Given the alternative most seems to pick the bike road.

Other fun participants I have seen on exclusive bike roads is 4-5 year olds learning to bike with training wheels. Just like with strollers I always give them a bit extra distance when passing them, which might explain why there has been zero deaths or injuries from bike hitting strollers or young children even through those are common sights on bike roads. If one wonder the cause of that I think one just need to check the average speed of bikes in a city and the reaction and braking speed.

I am sure if a parent would take a stroller and walk on the road against car traffic then social service would have a very strong opinion about it. That would actually be unsafe behavior and traffic records support in every way that bikes are safe and cars are not. Being more concerned about a three-year old being hit by a cyclist on the pavement than by a car on the road is flying against statistics, and I would say actual behavior. Would you honestly say that your reaction to a parent walking with a stroller on a bike road would be identical to a parent walking with a stroller against car traffic on the road?

<comment><USER32> I think it is great that the parent feels safe enough to do that. Cyclists should yield to pedestrians if need be and not get upset about it.

<comment><USER33> This might sound odd but I agree. It is good that it is safe for bike and pedestrians to be on the same road, and a common rule of thumb for cooperation is that whoever is faster should yield to those who are slower. That is true for boats and planes, often true for cars and trucks.

A lot of tensions and unnecessary fear would be resolved if we just applied common sense and speed limits to roads. Have pavement and most bike roads like today but put a speed limit to that of a running person (around 15km/h (9mph)). At those speed and lower there is no safety concerns and tolerance between cyclists and pedestrians should be encourage. Then we have fast bike lanes with a max speed of 30km/h (18mph) and city car roads with the more common 40km/h (24mph) and 50km/h (31mph), both which pedestrian use should be discouraged because of the danger from increased reaction, braking and stopping time. If two roads of different speed cross then the lower speed limit should be used and who ever is faster should yield, and if accidents still happens then traffic lights, speed bumps, cameras and other methods to reduce speed should be applied.

By focusing on reaction, braking and stopping time you get a fairly decent prediction model of accident rates. This is what our assessment about what is dangerous should be based on.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Two-Dimensional Argument Against Materialism (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://consc.net/papers/2dargument.html <comment><USER2> A concept has to be more than conceivable to have implications for real-world issues such as the nature of consciousness or the origin of the mind. The usefulness of Occam's razor is predicated on this fact, as its purpose is to avoid being drawn into endless speculation over ideas that are merely conceivable.

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem is P&~Q has no meaning outside one's imagination.

<comment><USER4> doesn't this beg the question? (i.e, given "ones imagination", then Q. )

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure what question you are asking. But I'm fine with the idea that materialism is wrong, if there exists physical world which is contained in someone's imagination. That's basically "if God exists, then materialism is wrong." In other words Chalmers has no psychic powers to verify that the world he conceived satisfy ~Q, unless this world exists in his imagination.</comment></comment></comment>


SOPA Doomed? Pelosi, Issa Speak Out. - <AUTHOR> http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/pelosi/?akid=1028.219579.5jS1NU&rd=1&t=1

<comment><USER2> Even if SOPA doesn't pass, what really worries me is that the perpetrators have bottomless pockets and lots of time. They'll doubtlessly keep ramming similar bills into congress until either the politicians decide they've received enough campaign contributions, or the public's minuscule attention span drifts elsewhere.

The state of our political and social climate plus the fact that this bill has gotten as far as it has makes me think that censorship will be inevitable. The only way we can get around this is to build a truly distributed internet, one without a backbone or single point of control. Can we do it?

<comment><USER3> Well you can go on the attack and create laws that they will be busy lobbying against, reduce their power, etc. The tech industry doesn't seem to go on the offensive with this kind of stuff, probably because they find it distasteful, while *IAA doesn't.

What the BSA and Pfizer want can be separated out of the SOPA bill and it wouldn't effect the tech industry much at all as far as I understand. Some smart lobbyist combined the two categorical interests to increase it's likelihood of passing.

<comment><USER3> What I mean by reduce their power, are new laws that reverse some of the victories that they've had previously and create new freedoms that would hurt their bottom line and help everyone else's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> More detail at Reuters: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/17/idUS40280193622011...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/17/idUS402801936220111117)

</comment><comment><USER5> Encouraging news, but the war isn't over yet.</comment>


John Gruber: Apple Invented USB Type C - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2015/03/13/apple-invents-usb-c/

<comment><USER2> "And that the politics of such is that they can't really say that."

I'm going to call bullshit on that one. Regardless of how much or little Apple had to do with USB Type-C, what historical examples do we have that Apple's collaboration with the USB standards body would be seen as problematic? Apple aren't unknown in the world of standards bodies. Just because they use Thunderbolt on some other devices? Here's a newsflash, Apple doesn't control Thunderbolt development, Intel does.

If you have some verifiable information about the history of USB Type-C (and it's protocol counterpart USB 3.1), then by all means share it, but cut out the rumour mill shit stirring.</comment>


Don't use XML to store data - <AUTHOR> http://www.mockuptiger.com/why-mockuptiger-is-not-using-xml-for-data-storage

<comment><USER2> In summary, use JSON. Which is natural if you are HTML and Javascript.

<comment><AUTHOR> Amen!</comment></comment>


Internet freedom around the world keeps decreasing - <AUTHOR> https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2016/11/23/internet-freedom-decreasing/ <comment><USER2> At the same time, I feel like we have to be approaching a breaking point where the internet will become less inherently global.

In these non-free countries, large American platforms are being blocked for the damage they do to regimes. Meanwhile, data compromises and state surveillance, as well as attacks on networks and, occasionally, infrastructure, seem to show that nothing connected is safe.

It doesn't seem out of the question that we'll see significant restriction of traffic flow across borders. Maybe the next time a major war breaks out, or even just when tensions rise, it will be a wartime measure that, like passports, never recedes.

</comment><comment><USER3> IMO, the UK should be changed to yellow on the graph regarding the latest announcement...</comment>


Colder winters possible due to climate change - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre6af3c7-us-climate-winters/ <comment><USER2> I'd like to go on the record and say that while it's also possible that the winters will be milder in some locations, one shouldn't rule out the possibility that winter will be just about the same as it was last year in other locations.</comment>


Ask HN: Which is correct? Un-Install, or De-Install? - <AUTHOR> We're all pretty clued up people right? And we're more than familiar with software... So my learned friends, which is correct English.. uninstall, or deinstall ?<p>The internet seems confused over this, hence me asking it here. <comment><USER2> Uninstall, or remove.

However, if a critical mass start using deinstall, that will become correct. English doesn't have a governing academy, it has a general consensus.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just remove.

</comment><comment><USER4> uninstall</comment>


Show HN: Notably – a simple tool for sharing markdown notes - <AUTHOR> https://notably.cc/#/?v=1 <comment><USER2> I implemented a similar idea a couple of years back, originally as a set of Perl CGI scripts. Nowadays the code is powered by a simple golang server:

[https://markdownshare.com/](https://markdownshare.com/)

The service gets a ton of traffic, and some of it is content I didn't expect. For example I see a bunch of IoT devices logging IPs and temperature details.

At one point a group of students were sharing (binary) notes with each other. They'd each upload a gzip/base64 encoded binary and that was eating a ton of bandwidth. In short expect to be abused.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is a good point, will get some safeguards in place

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice, some comments:

1\. I don't see details of retention anywhere, are you just storing indefinitely at the moment?

2\. No sign-up is nice, but have you considered even just using cookies for 'my past notes'?

3a. ```Code blocks``` render as `inline code` in editing mode, which looks worse than not doing any 'preview' of them in edit mode at all IMO.

3b. ```lang hints (in the manner of Github flavour) are ignored, though some syntax highlighting is done with or without them.

3bi. This seems to mean that keywords from other languages are highlighted as if a keyword in the language used.

3bii. The syntax highlighting colour scheme used is not very colour-blind friendly.

4\. Two users (uh, tabs) can concurrently edit, but each others' edits are not seen until refresh; so last to stop typing (=> save) wins.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback:

1\. The backend is graphql/django/postgres and yes, the notes are currently being preserved indefinitely. At some point I might add a cron job to remove the empty ones

2\. I'm thinking of adding a notebook option eventually, but still considering the best way of doing this in terms of not compromising the current look and feel, which I like the simplicity of

3\. for these three points - the markdown editor itself is an open source solution () and not my own creation, so these issues are limitations of this library. I may fork it and make some fixes at a later date, although some of these issues may be fixable with simple css

4\. good point, i'll try to implement some kind of a lock here

<comment><USER4> For 3, I'd recommend using as an editor [https://codemirror.net/mode/gfm/](https://codemirror.net/mode/gfm/) and then markdown-it to render it to a preview. It has variable height support too: [https://codemirror.net/demo/variableheight.html](https://codemirror.net/demo/variableheight.html).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I just launched notably. It's a simple app that lets you share any kind of text note, and supports markdown syntax

I created this mostly as a way of sharing notes between other developers. We use MS Teams at work and the interface for copying and pasting code snippets in and out of there is terrible

Notably requires no sign up - you can just create and share notes straight away. It's also completely free

<comment><USER5> This is fantastic. I am working on a peer to peer file system sharing tool in the browser. Soon I will add a text messaging component and I want it to support markdown cleanly just like this.

Excellent work

<comment><USER4> Are you starting from scratch or building on top of existing libraries? Curious to know because for text editors, there's systems built around CRDTs like automerge and yjs.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict- free_replicated_data_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict- free_replicated_data_type)

<comment><USER5> I am starting from scratch. All the file system libraries I could need are provided by Node. All the data structures I am having to create just pass messaging which connects user interactions to the structures already in place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Weird bug I've never seen before on any other site: I can't use the swiping feature on the Google Keyboard on an iPhone. Using swiping on the iOS 13 built-in keyboard worked fine though.

</comment><comment><USER7> Shameless plug here :p

[https://hackmd.io/](https://hackmd.io/)

HackMD also allows creating markdown notes anonymously. You can share the note with a link, and start realtime collaboration. Welcome to give it a try!

</comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like a great idea, but the site just brings up a blank page in both Firefox and Chrome on Android.

<comment><AUTHOR> i'm actually not able to reproduce you're issue on either of my android devices

<comment><USER8> Just to let you know, I updated to the latest version of Chrome (Android) and it seems to be working fine now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> default for a share link should be the preview

<comment><AUTHOR> this is actually true. I've just pushed a small change to change this now

<comment><USER9> that was quick, cool :)

Edit on the shared link is also a bit dangerous as there is no colab- collission detection. But there it really depends on the use-case.

I always wanted to set up a web renderer that I could quickly paste to (but was too lazy to actually do it), just to quickly show something to others.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was never really my intention to disable edits in these cases - there is no separate view for editing/viewing notes. I am considering adding a lock to stop people editing the same note simultaneously, but I've got no plans to disable the edit button at the moment

<comment><USER10> Maybe, instead of locking something in, just have a read-only link and an editable link for every note, without being able to derive the edit link from the ro link.

Otherwise, maybe someone should implement this purely as a frontend to volatile.wtf

Now that I think about it, I kind of want to implement that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Doesn't work that well on mobile Chrome (Android). You might want to test that.

</comment><comment><USER12> Gist.github.com. it even turns them into mini git repos you can clone and fork.

<comment><AUTHOR> This isn't really intended to do the same thing as gist

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> this is an absolutely beautiful markdown implementation.</comment>


Becoming Foolish - <AUTHOR> https://hmemcpy.com/2017/10/becoming-foolish/ <comment><USER2> Nice article.

One thing I'm noticing is that I have less and less time to learn and explore.

Between the work projects, the open-source projects of my spare time, family life and the entertainment I need to keep some sanity, I can't seem to find the time or the focus necessary for expanding my knowledge.

I still do a lot of learning, but as I suspect that most of you are doing, the learning I'm doing is only incremental and in small dozes. This means that I end up rejecting solutions that invalidate my prior knowledge, because those require a leap of faith and resources that I don't have.

Maybe this is what growing old feels like — experience and responsibilities ends up getting in the way of learning.

I do feel the need to become foolish again.

<comment><USER3> Time is fixed and the things we want to learn is expanding. I'm not sure how to deal with that. For me, there's a real tension between breadth and depth and finding the sweet spot between the two is hard.

<comment><USER4> This perfectly describes my learning dilemma. If you have a niche job like in the article (visual studio extensions) your skill-set may be narrow enough to easily expand upon and gain depth in a new area. If you are a full stack developer at a small company the breadth of stuff you need to know and learn is such that it seems impossible to master new things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lovely post. The Haskell-I/O-inspired brainflip is very nicely described.

I've never been a Haskell programmer, but a thing that struck me about the Idris book (which is mentioned in one of the comments on that post) is its very calm introduction to monadic I/O in terms of the separation between evaluation and execution - which the author of the book (and developer of Idris) manages without using the word monad, I assume deliberately.

There are a lot of appealingly surprising things in Idris. Other languages that have given me that "oh...!" feeling in the further past include Prolog and term-rewriting languages like Pure (and to an extent TeX).

<comment><USER6> The Idris book is awesome. Also, Liquid Haskell is awesome, if Idris is too painful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's why in germany the first course in the first semester of CS teaches you three things: imperative programming, functional programming and logical programming. That way you can choose your favorite programming paradigm early on in your career and don't get surprised and wonder what would have been if you found it earlier in your career. I hope other countries teach programming like that as well

<comment><USER8> I have the impression that people tend to turn to functional programming after spending a lot of time in imperative programming and seeing its downsides.

</comment></comment><comment> J-Kuhn This remembers me of the Blub paradox from "Beating the average" [1] from Paul Graham.

Learning new ways how to express things is never bad.

[1]: [http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't learn languages - learn pure paradigms. I can write C# three different ways - imperative procedural, functional, imperative OOP.

<comment><USER10> I have seen imperative / OOP Python written in the style of Java. It's not great.

<comment><USER11> Relevant video: Stop Writing Classes

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9pEzgHorH0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9pEzgHorH0)

<comment><USER10> Thats the nice thing about a mixed paradigm language, you can use the features when appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's not clear exactly which video gave the paradigm shift...can anyone enlighten me?

<comment><USER13> It is explicitly named in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There has to be a better way of stopping people from upvoting with alt accounts, or emailing a listserve asking for upvotes.

One way would be to make sure the article generates good discussion. There are no comments on this article other than complaints that it's on the front page...

<comment><AUTHOR> (Genuine Question) Is an article only considered good if it generates a large discussion?

What about if people read it, found it thought provoking, but didn't have anything to add, to discuss?

<comment><USER15> I agree. I thought this was a great article and don't have much to add. Is there any evidence there is vote rigging in action here.

<comment><USER16> Same. I upvote all the time but rarely comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This item has 6 points and is number #6 on Hackernews' homepage. The fuck?

<comment><USER18> [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) see "How are stories ranked?"

<comment><USER19> Right, when the stories on the front page are older that time factor dilutes their high scores, giving lower-score but newer posts an advantage.

<comment><USER20> I think it would be interesting to display the derivative of votes with respect to time, or a Wilson score or something. I assume there are good reasons why you don't, but nonetheless it interests me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What questions to ask to evaluate a tech lead? - <AUTHOR> I'm good at interviewing engineers, but what questions do I ask to determine how good someone is as a tech lead / people manager? For example:<p>"Tell me about a time when someone under you came to you with a problem they couldn't solve. How did you solve it?"<p>What other questions to ask, and what aspects of their work to probe? <comment><USER2> Ask him/her the exact same question: "What questions would _you_ ask to evaluate a tech lead?" This will tell you his/her priorities for the job.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can tell you what to ask but how are you going to know if their answers are good? =)

I would start to test coding skills. You says you are good at it and especially for a lead, they are still part of the daily job.

Ask: How do you align a team? What are the steps you go through?

Ask: You are starting a new product, what technology do you use and why?

Ask: How do you prevent bugs? (look for what process he put in place to reduce bugs).

Ask: How do you measure the team success?

Ask: Tell me about how you hire people.

Ask: How do you run you 1:1 with the people in your team?

If you want to know about what look in the answers... this will take longer to explain. Happy to help if I can.

<comment><USER4> A law firm wouldn't ask an attorney to prove he knows law.

A medical practice wouldn't ask a physician to prove he knows medicine.

You wouldn't put a veteran over-the-road truck driver through a driving test you set up in your parking lot.

By the time someone's senior enough to be a tech lead, they'll have a stream of completed projects and glowing references. Amazing how many people will not consider those but will base everything on a slipshod tech screen. Even if third graders consider themselves qualified to teach the second grade, they're not, because they're third graders. Same with programmers evaluating other programmers.

Treat candidates like they're the scarce commodity they are, and avoid the stupid questions, buy them lunch (offsite!), and you'll instantly outperform 95% of other hiring managers.

Treat them like they're fresh out of clown college and they'll rightly recognize you as a cargo cult hiring manager. The good ones will bow out or ghost immediately, and what that leaves you with is not what you want to hire.

Hiring top talent is hard, but it's 100x as hard when you're stupid.

<comment><USER3> On references and treating good candidates like they're the scarce, I agree.

On "they'll have stream of completed projects", not so much. "A high tide lifts all boats" and at the same time it does not tell you a lot about the candidate's responsibility in an unsuccessful product.

I met enough tech engineer "leaders" that got their job from business people because they were good at talking even if they were pretty bad at everything else.

Soft skills are VERY important as a people manager but they cannot come at the expense of business acumen, good product sense, mediocre processes and technical inadequacy.

So when something is important for the position and it is easy to test, test it.

I agree on looking at reference for other things, harder to test.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Start off by figuring out what your tech lead's primary responsibilities would be.

Depending on the company and position the tech lead could be responsible for any of the below

1\. managing people

2\. managing product

3\. managing clients

4\. keeping devs focused and on a schedule, even if that means doing the "wrong" thing

5\. ensuring devs do the "right" thing even if schedule slips

6\. being a technology expert

7\. mentoring

The first step if figuring out how you get what you want( a good tech lead) is figure out what is you want(what a good tech lead means to the organization)

Specifically in your organization what would be the primary responsibilities for this tech lead?

</comment><comment><USER6> How do you handle a developer you feel is falling behind?

</comment><comment><USER7> Are you comfortable delegating?

</comment><comment><USER8> How do you measure your team's impact to the business?</comment>


Sushi DNA Tests Reveal Fraud - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/tunadna/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've posted this because of this passage:

"Their goal is to build a catalog of every fish species on earth so that anyone with a handheld DNA reader could definitively identify fish within minutes."

Now, I've heard about people that wanted to develop handheld DNA readers, but to my knowledge they don't exist, yet the article mentions them off-hand as if they are commonplace technology.

Is that true ?

<comment><USER2> They are not yet commonplace, they are still being developed. See this 2005 National Geographic article: [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0126_050126_...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0126_050126_dnabarcode.html)

I can't seem to find too much details on how it might work other than the fact that it looks at a specific region of DNA that is common between a lot of eukaryotic species.

<comment><AUTHOR> They are not yet commonplace ? That's something else than they don't exist, where can I buy one ?

The article you cite is about the start of a project to index species, not about developing a hand-held reader.

If such a hand-held reader exists then that would be very big news indeed.</comment></comment></comment>


The Real Reason IPOs And Mergers Are Down - <AUTHOR> http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/07/real-reason-ipos-and-mergers-are-down.html

<comment><USER2> This is a great post. Summary: build companies for the long haul, forget exit, build excellence.

I agree entirely. I love technology but I get turned off by the excessive short-termism that plagues the valley from time to time ...

</comment><comment><USER3> No reasonable commentary on the lack of IPOs can exclude the increased cost of being a public company. For example, complying with SOX alone costs 1-3 million dollars a year.

<comment><USER4> On the other side of the coin, no reasonable commentary on the lack of IPOs can exclude the decreased barriers of entry for building a lifestyle business.

If a couple of guys can build a seven or eight figure revenue business with nothing more than sweat equity, savings, a little debt, and maybe an angel, they may not be in such a rush to cash out.

<comment><USER3> That is an interesting point - implied in that statement is lifestyle businesses are crowding out cashout businesses. That may be true, but it is very debatable and speculative (so a reasonable commentary about the dearth of IPOs wouldn't have to talk about it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article complains about 'gimmicks'. People around here believe in producing tangible prototypes for $15,000 in three months, what can you expect but gimmicks?</comment>


Jack Dorsey's "EMF-shielding tent" is bogus - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1646531/jack-dorseys-emf-shielding-tent-is-bogus/ <comment><USER2> The guy, not the tent, is broken and obviously in distress.</comment>