Winds of Change: The Case for New Digital Currency - T-A https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2018/11/13/sp111418-winds-of-change-the-case-for-new-digital-currency <comment><AUTHOR> > This currency could satisfy public policy goals, such as (i) financial > inclusion, and (ii) security and consumer protection; and to provide what > the private sector cannot: (iii) privacy in payments.

If financial inclusion and privacy in payments were actual public policy goals, cryptocurrencies would be a lot less attractive.

In reality, the real public policy goals are:

1) Financial exclusion: using denial of access to the state run financial system as a political, law enforcement, social control and tax collection tool.

3) "Know your customer" and "anti-money laundering" (AML/KYC) rules that remove privacy in payments to make it easier to use the state run financial system as described in 1). These regulations in practice exclude the the poorer people in society - the people Lagarde like means when she says "financial inclusion" \- that can't meet requirements like "proof of address" and can't meet the minimal balance / month fee requirements that have come about from these AML/KYC regs.

<comment><USER2> I don't disagree with your points around the public policy goals of currency, but suggesting that minimal balance / monthly fee requirements come from AML/KYC regulations is quite the stretch. I'd wager those come from greed, pure and simple.

The banks charge those fees because they can. If we got rid of AML/KYC regulations and reduced the banks' costs around regulatory compliance, do you think the banks will pass the savings onto customers or pocket the difference? I know where I'm putting my bet.

<comment><USER3> > If we got rid of AML/KYC regulations and reduced the banks' costs around > regulatory compliance, do you think the banks will pass the savings onto > customers or pocket the difference?

The existing banks, on their own? Surely not. But complicated and expensive regulations like that are the main reason we don't have more, smaller banks, and _they_ would be happy to gain customers by charging lower fees. Then the existing banks would have to compete and do the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > cryptocurrencies seek to anchor trust in technology. So long as they are > transparent.....Still, I am not entirely convinced. Proper regulation of > these entities will remain a pillar of trust.

I don't think they understand that the purpose of cryptocurrencies is to remove the need for trust. Trust in the math, not the banker. AKA the economy should be built off the monetary system rather than the monetary system being built off the economy.

<comment><USER5> You can't remove the need for trust - that need is inherently _beyond_ the reach of math.

If I want to use money to pay for some goods, I need trust that I can get that money back if the goods won't arrive. Math alone can't provide that, it needs something extra, e.g. a _trusted_ escrow service in the case of crypto.

If I want to use money as a store of value, I need trust that the value is going to stay stable and maintain liquidity in the long term. Math alone can't provide that, that trust is inherently social. I also need reasonable trust that the money isn't likely to get stolen - math isn't sufficient for that, and our current experience shows that crypto assets are more vulnerable in practice than e.g. bank deposits, maintaining appropriate "opsec" is tricky and people fail in that too frequently.

And for your other point, the economy existed before a monetary system and currently works off of many monetary systems - however, for a monetary system the only criteria that matters is if it's good for what the economy needs; if some system does not fit these needs, then it won't get used much and is not particularly relevant.

<comment><USER6> >If I want to use money to pay for some goods, I need trust that I can get that money back if the goods won't arrive. Math alone can't provide that, it needs something extra, e.g. a trusted escrow service in the case of crypto.

No need for extras, you can do this today on Ethereum with Hashed Time Lock Contracts

<comment><USER7> Could you please expand on how does the Ethereum blockchain get to know whether the goods arrived if the buyer and seller are saying conflicting things and no third parties are involved?

<comment><USER3> > Could you please expand on how does the Ethereum blockchain get to know > whether the goods arrived if the buyer and seller are saying conflicting > things and no third parties are involved?

It's possible to have some mutually assured destruction here, e.g. the contract is for $100 so the buyer puts in $150 and the seller puts in $100. Then when the buyer releases the money, they get $50 of their money back and the seller gets $200 ($100 from the buyer and their original $100). If the buyer doesn't release the money, _nobody gets anything_.

It gives the buyer a way to punish the seller for non-delivery, but without receiving any personal benefit (and in fact at a personal cost) for using it.

<comment><USER8> there's an endless supply of replies to comments like yours that go like "it will never be possible to fix every problem so the safest move is no move", and I _don 't_ wish to be that kind of commenter, i.e. I think it is good to at least try and propose mechanisms -even flawed ones- so that at least the discussion of the problems continue and hopefully the mechanisms can be improved.

it is in this mindset that I am asking if we can adress the following issue: suppose the government or its postal system selectively withholds the goods payed for through cryptographic protocols, then buyer and seller lose.

again, I'm not trying to be destructive, just wondering out loud if we can generalize the kind of protocol you describe to include the transporter as an attacker in the attack model.

I think we could split up in 2 cases: transporters that are paid on the same cryptographic protocol/platform, and transporters that are paid outside. I believe it will be easier to solve the problem by restricting to transporters who get paid by the same contract/platform, since we could have the transporter deposit an insurance of same or higher value as the good to be transported, and upon arrival his pre-agreed transport cost and deposit are released?

Obviously the traditional postal system can not be forced to be paid through this platform, so this hole in the market would effectively create demand for crypto postage and hence create jobs.

I would like to see a more rigorous breakdown of such a protocol, and a censor-ship free listing of issues remaining with the protocol, so that the discussion on improvement can continue.

Also it seems like the first transporter does not need to be the same person as the last transporter, i.e. intermediary packet handoff could also be handled by the protocol such that the first transporter gets paid back his deposit after doing "his part" of the packet journey...

<comment><USER5> It seems that you're describing a solution to the problem of delivery failure. However, the larger problem where consumers need the ability to revoke deals is not failure of delivery as such, but failure to deliver _the right goods_ , possibly maliciously. And vice versa, the possibility by consumers to exploit the system to maliciously refuse paying for goods.

Censorship resistance is an edge case that's nice to have for some people, fraud resistance is the mainstream need that's mandatory for most users. Current crypto approaches don't handle fraud resistance as well as the traditional payment systems, so censorship resistance is a moot point until/unless _that_ gets solved.

<comment><USER8> I am making no claims about priority of problems, so I certainly welcome identification of other issues and proposals to improve them.

If we mentally subdivide all commercial activity between traditional/centralized/blind trust commercial activities and novel/decentralized/cryptographic trust commercial activities, then (even if it is not occuring yet) it can desirable for the supporters of decentralization to be able to assure themselves that the status quo can not undermine the economic value of the cryptographic trust community.

Even outside of cryptocurrencies we have debates about net neutrality, priority of packets etc... One could similarily wonder if current delivery services are able to say profit by investing in specific companies within a sector of products, and differentially prioritizing the delivery of their goods (or gentleness of delivery for fragile goods, or even non-delivery).

I don't believe in moot points, people can work on different issues, design solutions for them and then they can look at how to intersect/generalize their protocols so that it displays both or more desirable traits...

<comment><USER5> Okay, in that regard the assumption that "the government or its postal system selectively withholds the goods payed for through cryptographic protocols" seems questionable. Is this a real problem that we're seeing in some markets? As far as I'm aware it seems that in general delivery services are decoupled from the payment for goods; the delivery system, no matter if it's government postal system or private parcel delivery, does not know and can not know how (and if) the goods were paid for. They may require some declaration from the sender about the value for insurance and customs purposes, but that's different than the payment data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chroem- If cryptocurrency is like bittorrent for finance, then this proposal is like downloading DRM-encumbered music from a walled garden marketplace. I think I'll pass.

</comment><comment><USER9> Because of bitcoin, cryptocurrency has a strong association with "free money," which is basically a dissent theory of macroeconomics that doesn't want central banks to have control. This was written by a central banker, so obviously there's a belligerence here...

In any case... Idk what I think about free money. Macroeconomics is hard.

OTOH, I think cryptocurrencies have other disruptive potential even if we want to keep our current macroeconomics, central bank control over interest rates.

It's the kind of technology that turns a £100bn industry into a £1bn one. There are several clunky inefficient financial services sub-industries that could potentiall be digitised by good implementation of blockchain tech.

The problem is too-big-to-fail. Besides actual central banking, does Christine Lagarde see her job as protector of the financial services industry? If so, she's going to build bureaucracy that maintains the status quo.

</comment><comment><USER10> I feel like one day, central banks are going to be attacked by private banks and the means of attack will be cryptocurrency. The aim will be to get rid of central bank deposits and seize control of the payments system - once the central bank deposits are gone and we're cashless, this will become easy. They could even base it offshore to avoid consumer protections. If we're lucky when this happens, it will be a test of the remaining power of nation states. If we're unlucky, they'll roll over as the most basic means of exchange is privatized.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is suprisingly good and even refreshing speech after reading tons of very opinionated pro- and contra-crypto articles.

Financial system design still have this chicken or the egg problem – we need to design fintech systems aligned with offline social interaction patterns as much as possible, but their (current) design changes our social interaction patterns in return as well.

It's still fascinating to see how the world reimagines and reconsiders the nature of money. And not only in cryptopunks community, but in such a huge powerhouses as IMF as well.</comment>


I don't want to "hack" the Y combinator application. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.seedlauncher.com/2012/10/30/i-dont-want-to-hack-the-y-combinator-application/

<comment><USER2> I think there's a disturbing trend in our society towards trying to get something that's competitive by "hacking" it or cheating on it somehow. Either that or working insanely hard at the expense of your personal life and personal health. It ultimately leads to a raising of the standard so that only those people can really get what they want. "Hacking" the Y-Combinator application is an example of that. Suppose some people figure out how to hack it so that they can give the reviewers exactly what they want. Well, then the other people who aren't hacking it in that way are at a disadvantage. Then they have to hack too or be left in the dust. And it becomes this sort of arms race where the original point gets left in the dust.

The same example is true of taking adderall to study for tests. In high school, I didn't take adderall, but I know a lot of kids who did and they would remember information a lot better and score above what they should have been. So if there was some kid who was objectively a worse student than me and he was getting the same grades as me, we both look the same. If everybody started doing it, I'd be left behind or pushed into a lower bracket by virtue of being the only person who _didn't_ do it - who wasn't willing to risk my health (I think, don't know too much about it) for a higher grade. I don't think this will happen, but there are a lot of other examples:

-Doping in bicycling

-Working an insane amount of hours on your startup/job

-Spending months/years studying for the GMAT to get into business school

-Corruption or lying in politics

-Autotuning in the music industry

-High school kids taking all these leadership roles and such things that they don't really care about to try to show passion and get into Harvard. Same for grad school applications.

etc. etc.

<comment><USER3> Are you sure this is a trend? Was it different some decades ago?

Also,

> _-Autotuning in the music industry_

Oh, come on. That's like not giving Tron an Oscar because they cheated their special effects scenes by using _computers_.

<comment><USER4> That's different - special effects in movies make the impossible possible. A better actor couldn't conjure up the Grid.

A better musician COULD sing on tune. It is well within human capability. Autotuning is a quick hack to make up for not being able to sing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Preface: I have no personal experience with Y combinator. I've never applied, I've never interviewed, I don't know anything about it, etc.

However, I'm guessing that this discussion and this article in general are giving way too little credit to the interviewers at Y combinator. I think this is a classic survivorship bias here, where the people who "hack" the application and get in are probably the loudest people proclaiming what they did, so people assume that their "hacking" of the application is what got them in. I suspect however, that their "hacking" was a useful data point, but it was just part of the whole picture that resulted in the decision made by the people at Y combinator. The partners at Y combinator weren't born yesterday and I have no doubt see right through any transparent attempts to curry their favor.

However, I agree with the conclusion of the article. You don't need to be in Y combinator to have a successful business. Just focus on doing what you do and don't worry about other people.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't at all mean to say the interviewers aren't able to see through it. They're all incredibly smart people, and after reading 1000's of applications I'm sure they can tell who is trying to game it and who isn't. As for the rest of the post I agree with what you're saying.

<comment><USER6> Doing some kind of tedious thing that you don't want to do in order to get an advantage in the future is kind of a good attribute isn't it? That's a fair summary of some of the papers I took as an undergrad anyway. The whole fake leadership thing that goes on in high school is pretty weak seeming other than this aspect in my opinion otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the point that you don't _need_ an incubator to start a company. I see many people who are only interested in starting a company if they get funded by YC.

I think it's a bit harder to tell people you're working on your own company full-time if you aren't funded and you aren't in an incubator program. The incubator program lets other people know that investors believe in your idea, so you'll be more confident in telling people about it.

But really, if you want to start a company, you shouldn't need the investor to have your back. You should be able to believe in yourself and your idea no matter what people think otherwise you'll never succeed.

<comment><USER8> Not everyone tries to get funded by Y-Combinator for the ~$18,000. A lot more is offered; network, talent, investors etc..

<comment><USER7> I am in no way saying that's all you get from YC. I'm just saying that I disagree with a pretty common opinion that you starting a company without being funded by YC (or etc.) is ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems that most comments here (and the post itself) are conflating "Hacking" with "Cheating".

Cheating would be something similar to placing your name on the interview list, bypassing the need for an application.

Hacking is figuring out the rules to the system and using them to your advantage.

Examples from other posts:

"Taking Adderall"

Taking Adderall is hacking your biochemistry. Taking it to misrepresent your abilities to potential employers is cheating.*

*unless there are proven long term benefits to Adderall?

"Doping"

Doping is hacking your biochemistry. Using it to win a biking race is cheating if the rules prohibit it.

"Spending years studying for the GMAT"

That's just studying. There is no hacking, and no cheating going on here. Hacking would be finding a way to remember more about the GMAT in less time. Cheating would be using a cheat sheet.

"Autotuning"

Autotuning is a vocal effect. It also degrades the quality of your voice. Comparing a trained vocalist with someone using auto-tune is no contest, the trained vocalist will always perform better.

"Creating higher visibility by posting on HN"

This is hacking. The rules of News.YC have been used to garner greater mindshare with the partners that review applications. This is using one process to have an effect on a different process.

In conclusion Hacking is a mentality, Hacking != Cheating even though sometimes one may be an integral part to the other.

</comment><comment><USER10> There are a lot of people who say 'hacked' in lieu of normal words for normal day-to-day tasks like 'did,' 'accomplished,' 'wrote a blog post,' 'watched,' 'logged in,' etc. We're apparently a long way past the point where most 'hacks' are actually worth discussing.

"How I hacked airtime by logging on and talking to people"

"How I Hacked My Breakfasts by Switching From Muffins to Crumpets"

"Hacking your toilet routine by using three sheets of toilet paper per wipe!"

<comment><USER11> I use 4, then 3, then 2, then 1 up front. Even 10 in total. I'm a numerical toilette paper hacker!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't believe that showing the application reviewers what they you think they want to see (where it does not line up with what you intend to do) is "hacking";

It's _lying_.

</comment><comment><USER13> Here is the message that I am getting from this.

They are applying. They don't think they will get in. They are setting up the excuse in advance that they aren't willing to try to do anything that looks like cheating to get in, with the subtext that _if they wanted to_ they could do it. And then if they lose they will have planted doubt about the actual qualifications of anyone who did get in. They didn't deserve it, they cheated.

Yeah, right. As has been noted, the interviewers are competent enough to catch obvious BS. If "hacking" the application works, the #1 reason is because the mentality required to attempt that is a positive characteristic in the minds of the interviewers.

Doubt that? These are people who ask on the application, _Tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage?_ They WANT people who try to spot an angle and exploit it. That kind of person tends to be more likely to succeed in a startup. Someone who follows rules because they are there does not. If they notice you trying to find an angle to manipulate them, and you're not obviously sucking while you do it, do you think it goes down as a positive or a negative? Positive, right?

<comment><USER14> I think people in general focus too much on the superficial components of their application. Pg has debunked many people's theories about what was good/bad about their presentation. Ultimately, it seems like you can do equally well with a conventional or hacker approach, provided you actually have positive qualities they're looking for. Its all in the execution, not in whether you think you're clever

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I completely agree. You sometimes hear in interviews partners talking about how some companies sometimes convince them of one thing but turn out to not be able to execute on their plans. As in they sound really convincing but don't really know what they're talking about. Of course, what is "hacking"? Most of what founders do to get into YC isn't hacking the application. Writing a good application and getting lots of feedback isn't hacking it.

Asking founders you don't know for recommendations could be but in a negative way but a recommendation isn't easy to get as it's on their back.

If you lie about or fake parts of your application the partners will very quickly pickup on this as they've seen thousands of teams and YC founders who have applied themselves. By the way, this could be considered a trick/hack to attempt to butter-up the reader and instill a level of confidence in the authors credibility.

</comment><comment><USER16> A lot of the articles and blogs posts that I have read about "hacking" the YC app aren't really hacks, and they shouldn't be - for the exact reason this article brings out. You don't want to misrepresent yourself, but instead you want to show your best side and what your capable of. If you did xyz to your application to make it better, that's not a hack - That's showing your skill and knowledge of yourself and your product, not to mention it proves that you know how to get attention and make yourself memorable. I read a post earlier about a funny video that was submitted, the one with the accents. That's not a hack. That's explaining your product (And might I add in a damn easy to understand way) and making sure that there's something that the viewer will remember (Like I just remembered it now).

</comment><comment><USER17> The fact is most people never actually "hack" the interview, it's just a buzzword people use to get their post boosted up higher. Most posts claiming to have "hacked" the application in reality followed best practices and had a compelling case. But admitting that doesn't get upvotes or pageviews.

</comment><comment><USER18> Changing credit cards that frequently is bad for your credit, which often costs you more in the long term (e.g. if you ever buy a house). So I'm not sure that's the example you should give-it can come across as pretty short- sighted.

<comment><AUTHOR> I keep the credit cards open, I just don't use them and phase them out slowly over time. I'm very diligent with it, and because I use them often and never miss a payment my credit is quite good. Admittedly though this was simply the first answer that came to mind.

<comment><USER18> Oh good, sounds like you know what you're doing! Hopefully you keep making small payments, e.g. $5 monthly fees on each card. If you leave a card unused for a long time that can lead to some nastiness and a sudden drop in your credit score later. The reason is basically that accounts with much higher credit lines than they actually use are high risk because they have a small chance of a major default.

Source: I used to work in a credit cards division at a major bank.

<comment><USER19> What do most banks consider "a long time" to be? I have a number of cards that I rotate usage on. I may go as long as 3 months before charging something on it.

<comment><USER20> Credit histories go as far back as 7 years, so in terms of 3 and 6 months, it is a relatively short time. This is also why it is a challenge for many young adults to receive fair credit scores.

Also, you should at least be charging one thing per credit card so they are still remaining active.

As dumb as it may sound, it is actually better for your credit score if you have around $5-$10 on your statement on any given month which achieves a higher credit score vs. paying it off entirely. This is illogical because most smart people just set it up for auto pay and pay it off entirely. Hope that helps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How is writing this blog post and submitting it to Hacker News not hacking the application process?

<comment><USER22> Creating higher visibility doesn't quite seem like "hacking the application process." Of course, it's a bit of a ploy, but no more so than any advertisement has ever been.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand this blog post. It seems to imply that lying on an application for a place like Y Combinator is commonplace, except that the author won't do it, because it's _wrong_! Does his implication hold? Is it really that bad?

In other news, I decided to not steal candy from little children!

</comment><comment><USER23> In my application video I look like a crazy-eyed psychopath. I'm ugly as a train crash. English is my 3rd language. My application form was written in 10 minutes and I didn't really review it. There is nothing interesting about me, I'm just like the most. (except the crazy eyes, good lord do I look crazy)

But the product I'm building (IMO) is really cool and profitable.

That said, I think I have the same chances of being accepted than those application form hackers.

</comment><comment><USER11> Haha. First you have numerous "how I hacked YC application" submissions when there wasn't absolutely any hacking going on there. And now you have responses how you someone doesn't want to hack it.

There's no any kind of hacking going on there, people.

At least this one isn't a shameless plug.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think it's distressing to think any kind of success in the Y Combinator application process is significant at all.

You're presumably trying to start a company. YC is step -1. Treat it as such. It might be the catalyst for your success, or it may not.

</comment><comment><USER25> Honesty is the best hack. If it's coupled with a genuinely good way of solving a big problem, then it's an even better hack. And if it's associated with a team that has accomplished things in the past, viola!

</comment><comment><USER25> Annnnd this post is a hack :) If it gets more points and you get up in the queue, then this would turn into a great hack indeed.

And by hack, I mean a smart way of getting noticed, not a deceiving hack.

</comment><comment><USER26> Well written article. I completely agree with the author.

</comment><comment><USER27> Absolutely loved the title and the thoughts. Pleasant change from all the "How we hacked into YC" posts flooding HN every now and then.

</comment><comment><USER28> Successful business often requires the perception and exploitation of loopholes – market inefficiencies, gaps in regulation, even misunderstood consumer preferences. Coming out on top is aided by a willingness to explore outside the parameters other people impose upon you, if only because it widens the number of options available.

Were I investing, I would find a willingness to adhere to the rules, the letter of the application instructions, or any other enthusiasm for the taking-of-directions to, perhaps, be a negative signal.</comment>


Math Lessons for Locavores - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/opinion/20budiansky.html

<comment><USER2> Couple things here:

* First, it's not true that the overriding concern of "locavorism" is energy conservation. Other concerns include food quality, the survival of small farms, highlighting the bad practices of huge corporate farms, and animal welfare.

* 80-90% of the "value" of these ideas you can capture by eating only what's in season (ie, no fresh tomatos in February) and sourcing protein from small farms. Both of these things: you want to do anyways.

* "Locavorism" doesn't support the notion that we should grow oranges in Wisconsin so they can be local. No, the Alice Waters types think people in Wisconsin shouldn't be eating many oranges at all.

It's true that Locavorism is on the cusp of becoming more a yuppie religion than a valid principle. It's certaintly true that industrial farming is more energy efficient. Maybe it's right that the word "Locavore", which is stupid, be tainted by association with this trend.

But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Small family-owned farms carefully raising high-quality cows, pigs, and lambs are a very good thing. Restaurants that can tell you name of the farmer who raised the lamb on their menu are a very good thing. Seasonal cuisine is a very good thing. These ideas don't have to be "locavorism"; maybe they can just be common sense.

<comment><USER3> While "food miles" may not be the overriding concern of most locovores, it certainly seems to be the favored argument they use most often to justify various actions and decisions; of the various concerns you listed energy conservation is the one that is easiest to try to quantify. Since this particular point is one that will, by definition, almost always be won by the locovore side they tend to drag it out more often than they should (especially because it is a point they subsequently lose on when the bigger picture is examined.)

Personally, I think locovorism is way past the point of no return in terms being nothing more than a means for yuppies to distinguish themselves from the hoi polloi. Once you could get organic veggies at Wal-Mart they needed St. Pollan to give them a new rallying point.

I live in the bay area and from the vantage-point of this mild climate it is very easy to enjoy local seasonal food with almost no inconvenience to my lifestyle. I grew up on the midwest on one of those small farms you praise (back before shipping arugala around the world for my local salad bar was common or even possible) and I can tell you with certainty that seasonal cuisine in that climate really sucks.

<comment><USER2> If the point of this discussion is to stigmatize and ridicule the orthodoxy of "locavorism", I'm on board.

If the point is to ridicule Michael Pollan and Alice Waters, to highlight the fact that the model of production they talk about is a luxury item for the rich and utterly untenable for most of society, I'm even on board with that.

But if the point is to make the argument that there is little benefit to seasonal cooking or small-farm animal husbandry, you lose me completely. There clearly is a benefit:

* Out-of-season vegetables are very often of lower quality than canned; the obvious example is tomatoes, but you're also not going to eat a ramp in December, or a high-quality parsnip in May, or a Vidalia in the fall.

* The consumer embrace of faux-fresh off-season veg actually is a bad thing; it pushes out producers who make real veg in favor of people who are selling wax veg year-round; people are still buying wax tomatoes in July.

* Alienation from seasonal cooking results in home cooks who, like me, had never tasted a ramp or a morel or a vidalia or even a real tomato; seasonal cooking is vector towards _good_ cooking, and one thing that I think is hard to argue is that America needs more and better home cooks.

* Supermarket meat is a bona fide debacle. There's universal agreement that we've managed to breed flavor and health out of pigs almost entirely. Industrial chicken is epsilon away from being grown in vats instead of farms. Beef is being treated with ammonia before grinding (the trend towards buying meat not only pre-ground but pre- _shaped_ is another pathology).

* "Local meat" is in some cases actually _cheaper_ than the supermarket crap; you have to make a lifestyle concession to get access to those prices (ie, you have to have a $150 chest freezer, and you have to be willing to actually cook), but high-quality pig and beef is _not_ out of the reach of a lower-middle-class homeowner.

* I live in the midwest. I'm not a fan of St. Pollan[1], but there are some restaurant owners here that I do admire and who make a point of sticking to midwest-seasonal. I take exception to the idea that it "really sucks". We should meet in the middle. In the colder climes, we should be shipping in "accent" products from the west coast to liven things up, but there's plenty of regional produce that can and should form the staple. Right now, we're at the other extreme: most people in Chicago are happy to eat a caprese with gassed-red wax tomatoes and mutant basil and kraft mozzeralla in the middle of January.

* And don't get me started on our access to cheese here.

[1] _Although I like his writing about plants. He's a great garden writer._

<comment><USER4> _Industrial chicken is epsilon away from being grown in vats instead of farms._

Great line. (Apropos of nothing: when vat-grown meat arrives, I will be there on day one, eating it off the freaking petri dish if they'll let me.)

<comment><USER2> No. Don't. Don't eat that crap. Not because it's unhealthful. Because it _sucks_. It's just stringy tofu. Just buy tofu; it'll be cheaper and more versatile.

The rest of us can eat actual chicken, the kind that had feet and beaks.

<comment><USER5> Since we are talking about a hypothetical product that doesn't exist (at least in a commercial way) yet, I think it is a bit premature to judge its quality.

But even if hypothetically it tasted worse then the real thing, there are likely to be great benefits that will outweight that factor for most occassions

\- It avoids the need to kill a normal animal that feels sensations, can experience cruelty, and has emotions that are (debatably) similar to our own.

\- It is likely to be more affordable and more sustainable since it likely will need less space and less energy per unit meat produced

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, no, we're not talking about a hypothetical product; we're talking about an only slightly hyperbolic assessment of Tyson/Purdue chicken.

If you want to argue about the benefits of e.g. Quorn, I have no problem with it and won't be fun to argue with; it's basically exotic tofu.

But if we're talking about industrialized factory chicken, which is tasteless and loaded with antibiotics (because yields would dramatically drop if an unprotected chicken organism was exposed to the chicken-raising environment) and still arrives rife with salmonella so that cooking with it is a hazmat operation... I think you're on shakier ground.

Better that we not cook with chicken (switch to tofu, it's cheaper) than with crap chicken.

 _PS: for what it's worth, I don't care about the ethics of animal treatment that much at all. I'm not a fan of needless cruelty, and I do believe that happier animals (incidentally) taste better, but animal welfare is not one of my animating concerns._

<comment><USER5> Perhaps we are talking at cross purposes, but I know that I was discussing actual vat grown meat, and I strongly believe that is what patio11 was referring to.

It is not yet commercially available, but it is under serious research: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_meat> has a good summary of the current situation and [http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/scitech/release.cfm?ArticleID=10...](http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/scitech/release.cfm?ArticleID=1098) has a good laymen's summary of a recent technical paper on its commercial feasability.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I think the point I'm making is: "I don't know if you're talking about future-protein or not, but if what you're saying is, 'all progress in meat production sounds good to me, so bring on the cheap Tyson chicken breasts!', yeah, don't do that."

What you do with mycoprotein and cultured meat is between you and your deity. I have no opinions about it. I'm also fine with you consuming all your meals in tablet or milkshake form. Just leave the chickens alone!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At present we grow enough grains alone to satisfy the caloric needs of about 20 billion people. Agriculturally, we are living in a post-scarcity world, unless the population triples again, and we have been for forty years. What we need in agriculture today is not more efficiency, but more resilience and more justice in the distribution of the results.

It is inexcusable that today, forty years since the end of food scarcity, poor people starve to death every day while steers are fatted on corn and soybeans for the rich. Through efficiency, we've achieved a post-scarcity world. Now we need to achieve a post-poverty world. Efficiency is not going to get us there.

Locavorism might promote greater resiliency; but does it? Does the long- distance and international food trade ameliorate or exacerbate the privation of crop failures? Do small, local farms produce less fertilizer runoff per acre than big agribusiness operations? (Historically, in first place, with the most agrochemicals applied per acre, has been the suburban lawn.) Is locavorism an effective hedge against new pests devastating monoculture crops? Does it effectively break down hierarchies of richer and poorer regions by reducing long-distance exploitation, or does it reinforce them by keeping the money of the rich close to home?

I don't know. But when you're sitting in a fancy restaurant, pondering whether the lamb on the menu, priced the same as 100 kilos of soybeans, comes from Niman Ranch down the road or from a giant ranch in New Zealand — don't delude yourself into thinking that that's a serious food policy issue.

<comment><USER2> Let's see if we can't get locavorism to address nuclear nonproliferation, while we're at it. Jeepers.

Whether we should be eating more or less meat, whether meat should be priced massively higher or not, why can't we agree that most other things being equal, we should eat _better_ meat when possible?

Cargill meat is inflicting all the same imbalances on the world food market, _and_ loading our food with antibiotics while still increasing foodborne illness, _and_ reducing the overall quality of our meals.

Niman Ranch, for what it's worth, is a consortium of independent small farms spread all over the place.

<comment><USER6> As far as I can tell, there's no connection between the structure of the food supply chain and nuclear proliferation. On the other hand, locavorism consists of advocacy of a particular structure for the food supply chain, which necessarily has profound implications for all attributes of the food supply chain, including resiliency, affordability, and environmental impact. It isn't obvious to me which way those implications run, but I am claiming that those are the important aspects to investigate, not energy-efficiency or flavor.

I agree that big meat producers like Cargill (and, apparently, Niman Ranch) harm resiliency and the environment.

I think that your questions, like how much fecal contamination is in your meat, and how it tastes, are rounding errors when compared to questions like how much farmland had to be saturated with ammonium nitrate to feed it, how much methane it emitted, and how much downstream spinach was contaminated with Salmonella — from a public policy perspective, that is.

As long as a substantial number of people in the world who are starving to death, many more people are eating meals of very low overall quality and suffering serious illness as a result. This is the important issue.

You're right about Niman Ranch. Thanks for the tip. They had me fooled; I thought Niman Ranch was a ranch in Marin County, California. I didn't realize they were a nationwide marketer of grain-fed feedlot-finished beef (it explains this in the FAQ on their web site) and that Bill Niman now refuses to eat Niman Ranch products!

<comment><USER2> I think the Niman Ranch backlash is quite a bit overblown, but that the brand commands a premium that the product quality doesn't justify.

Your concerns about the food supply chain are valid. I just don't think it's reasonable to make one food issue ("locavorism: fate or fad?") a proxy for _every_ food issue.

<comment><USER6> I didn't know there _was_ a Niman Ranch backlash; I thought it was just Bill.

I agree that different issues relate to different degrees to each other. But locavorism is advocacy of a deeply different structure for the entire food supply chain, and that _does_ relate to every other food issue. If we're going to restructure the whole food supply chain, we should focus on issues that really matter, like whether the resulting structure is just and resilient, not on the flavor of the resulting veal.

Edit: although of course _your personal_ locavorism may _not_ be any kind of advocacy at all, which would explain your puzzlement at political issues being raised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another NYT Article on this theme talking about "food miles"

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/opinion/06mcwilliams.html>

Here's Will Wilkinson on why eating Local may not better

[http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/08/27/ea...](http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/08/27/eat_local/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm no locavore, but for an article with the word "math" in the title, the following breakdown seems a bit silly:

 _Overall, transportation accounts for about 14 percent of the total energy consumed by the American food system.

Other favorite targets of sustainability advocates include the fertilizers and chemicals used in modern farming. But their share of the food system's energy use is even lower, about 8 percent.

The real energy hog, it turns out, is not industrial agriculture at all, but you and me. Home preparation and storage account for 32 percent of all energy use in our food system, the largest component by far._

Well, fine, but ceteris paribus you've just shown that transportation and fertilization do, in fact, make up a not insignifcant percentage of food production cost. Why would you add in the cost of home storage and preparation, which (presumably) will be the same for everyone?

<comment><USER9> They're not the same for everyone. If you do your dishes in the sink more often, eat your veggies raw more often, open your refrigerator more often, your energy use might be lower than if you started optimizing for transportation costs instead.

<comment><USER10> A better point would be that home storage costs are the same for local foods as they are for shipped foods.

<comment><USER11> Actually possibly worse, since shipped foods are engineered to last longer without spoiling, and they go through a lot more quality control than what you pick up at the market, so the ones that spoil quickly often don't even make it to you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Static analysis of Apache Hive source code - <AUTHOR> https://habr.com/en/company/pvs-studio/blog/463753/ <comment><USER2> From the article:

 _This check of Hive revealed quite a few defects and suspicious fragments. If the authors of Apache Hive come across this article, we 'll be glad to help with the hard job of improving the project._</comment>


Alibaba Upset With Partner, Yahoo, for taking Google's side on cyber attacks - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704247504575008742148632682.html

<comment><USER2> This may be a sign of something I was hoping would happen after Google made their superb move last week: that it would raise the bar for other Western companies. Yahoo can't _not_ "take Google's side" without making themselves look abject by comparison.</comment>


Strategy: How to Develop, Structure and Shape a Winning System - <AUTHOR> https://chrisbolman.com/strategy-develop-effective-framework/ <comment><USER2> This is a nice and ambitious post. A few thoughts:

1\. There are great insights in Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma. The focus of that book is on Disruptive Innovation, where a new upstart with some new tech/angle crushes your business. A lot of your notes/principles here are captured in that book concisely.

2\. One thing that is useful for employees to understand is how their company creates and executes on a strategy. It's crazy to me how many guides there are on strategy when most individuals do 0 strategy setting. The result is that you think of a great strategy, get shot down for whatever reason, and just grumble about how the "execs don't get it". It's much more fruitful to understand how the big dawgs are setting their strategy and what models they're using, and then you can figure out how to operate and innovate in that context.

3\. Your comments on insight and research reminded me of Charlie Munger's talks on Mental Models. The basic idea is that you learn from a bunch of disciplines and your brain starts to tie things together and you'll produce insights. Shane over at Farnam Street ([https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/mental- models/](https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/mental-models/)) has a great guide and intro.

Overall, I enjoyed reading your post and am impressed by the level of research. Great job.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Good call-out. Agree and would strongly encourage anyone in this space to read Innovator's Dilemma.

2\. Could not agree more with this (and have seen a lot of first-hand pain here). One of the biggest generators of employee anxiety is simple uncertainty, and uncertainty is a product of inadequate visibility into and/or understanding of how and why things are happening. That's again one of the reasons why I feel every org/team needs a framework like V2MOM, because that's a hierarchical structure for documenting and communicating a strategy in a way that gets employees participating in its development, execution, measurement and refinement.

3\. +1 here too. I link out to the Farnam street post in mine.

<comment><USER3> Link to resources about V2MOM and other frameworks?

<comment><AUTHOR> In there too, but tl;dr:

[https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2013/04/how-to-create- alignm...](https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2013/04/how-to-create-alignment- within-your-company.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> okay I have a system and structure..why am I not as successful as Henry Ford or Russell Simmons or Bruce D. Henderson. Luck plays a huge role, imho. The survivorship bias is huge. It's easy to review the winners and then work backwards to derive a 'theory', after the fact, as for why they were successful...it's like an interpolation polynomial.

<comment><AUTHOR> Paul, thanks for the comment and I agree with you: luck and timing are two external factors that have significant influence on the outcome, and strategists have little if any control over either. The only "counsel" I can provide is the idea of being as iterative as possible, and try to adapt / respond to the result (test => observe => refine). If you had $10 to bet on the same probability outcomes, rather than betting all $10 on one outcome, if you could play it by putting $1 on 5 outcomes and reserving the remaining $5 to double down on your highest probability winner, you're much better- positioned, statistically, to come out ahead.

<comment><USER5> And in a similar vein, you could use the Kelly criterion for how to optimally allocate your time/effort/capital.

<comment><USER6> For those who, like me, didn't know what the Kelly criterion was: _In probability theory and intertemporal portfolio choice, the Kelly criterion is a formula used to determine the optimal size of a series of bets._

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Highly recommend checking out the podcast Exponent and the blog Stratechery, both by Ben Thompson. He is a great analyst and both Exponent and Stratechery focus on the intersection of tech and business strategy.

<comment><USER8> I listened for a couple episodes, but when they started talking about machine learning it became obvious how little they understood it. With how willing they were to confidently opine on how it would change industries based on an incorrect understanding, I lost confidence in the other things they talked about.

<comment><USER9> True. They did the same in other technical subjects(UberPool and travelling salesman), so this is probably a repeating theme for them. And in the same episode, they didn't even do a survey of similar startups solving the same problem(which carries big implications on market structure), so it's not just a matter of technical subjects.

<comment><USER10> What startups would be worthy of inclusion in that discussion? I'm not familiar with any that'd have any implications on market structure.

<comment><USER9> via((@ridewithvia) manage to do true ride sharing very well. they fill 8 seater vans. they don't use freelancers, but employees, and they license their software(and practically their model) to cities and other organizations.

Market structure: i can see workplaces(or maybe big events) licensing via, keeping control of the user, and offering free ride services from home/work to the cheapest transportation bidder, for example. Thus workplaces will keep all the "network effect" and market power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting article.

The money quote is the part about insight:

 _The best strategies are built on top of great insights. Generally, I 'd consider a strategic insight to be an understanding of "the true nature of something" (a customer need, market dynamic, or future trend) and/or its relationship to other important environmental factors. There's also a forecasting component to insights. Strategic insights commonly identify opportunity gaps in time — such as the difference between the current state of something and its anticipated future state._

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks sah2ed

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A really great overview of the topic.

One thought on the building blocks summary - I would add an Ideation phase after the Insights phase or somehow mention the importance of ideas. The current outline suggests strategy creation is a highly analytical process, when, in fact, it is both creative and analytical at the same time, and requires both sets of skills.

As a side note, you might want to check out the work of Victor Cheng who introduces a lot of McKinsey strategic tools in his book and video series. Could be helpful for your future work!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks Peter, appreciate the feedback. I kept ideation as part of the "Insights" phase but you're correct, it could be split into (1) research and (2) ideation. I'll check out Victor's work. best, Chris

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sort of conflates marketing strategy and corporate strategy, though there is overlap. The flow charts are vague enough to apply to any type of problem.

Marketing strategy covers anything related to sales/revenue, such as customers, products, channels or communications.

Corporate strategy covers long term business policies of a firm, and is best understood through an economics lens. Things like make vs. buy decisions, competitive advantage, market and industry analysis.

<comment><AUTHOR> The belief that corporate strategy somehow exists separately or independently from marketing/sales/go-to-market strategy is not a good baseline assumption to operate from.

<comment><USER13> Sorry for the late reply. You are right that they are closely related, as revenue is a pretty important part of running a business.

But I find it useful to distinguish between them, as do most business schools. Mergers are part of corporate strategy that only somewhat involve marketing considerations. Advertising is marketing strategy that doesn't have much to do with corporate strategy. A decision to enter new markets would be in the overlap area.

Anyway I thought the original article was just vague consultant speak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A lot of it is being at the right place at the right time.

Let's take a successful product: Pacman. Launch it in 2017 instead of 1980, the result would not be as good.

<comment><USER15> You mean, an arcade? Like Flappy Bird?

<comment><USER16> Flappy Bird was successful, but it wasn't Pacman-level successful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wonderful read. Thanks.

Few thoughts, In my opinion, leaders communicate the mission, vision and values, but never clearly communicate the strategy. The strategy for each department and team and it's sub-teams with-in an org will be different. This has to be communicated at all levels to have the entire workforce work towards the single mission.

Many Startups are successful due to this.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. could agree more. communicating strategy is incredibly important and a gap that seems to happen often in companies. there's a big difference at the employee level between (a) a strategy that exists [somewhere at the executive/management level] and (b) a strategy that exists and is transparent, well-communicated and well-understood.

This is why I think a hierarchical, cascading V2MOM or OKR approach is a helpful communication vehicle to transfer strategy top-down and build consensus and participation in the strategy process bottom-up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice article.

I just want to add that with regard to definitions of the term strategy, , one could do worse than follow Jack Welch:

 _" The evolution of a central plan through a continually changing set of circumstances"_

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, glad you enjoyed. spot on quote: Jack certainly knew what he was talking about.</comment></comment>


The importance of having a plan - <AUTHOR> http://mathoda.com/archives/565 <comment><USER2> This is all you need to know about planning, from two of the greatest military minds of the last century:

 _In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable._ \- Dwight D. Eisenhower

 _A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week._ \- George S. Patton

<comment><USER3>
      No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

\- Helmuth von Moltke

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is always a famous quote that supports your point of view, no matter how wrong you are.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely, although I'm struggling to find a good famous quote to support this point of view.

<comment><USER6>
      Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote,
      And think they grow immortal as they quote.

<comment><USER7> And:

      The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

As an added plus the quote is badly taken out of context for this use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All the old business advice books I read talked about the importance of having a plan. In the interviews I do with successful entrepreneurs, I don't see clear, detailed plans. I wonder what this means?

<comment><USER9> Most successful people don't know how they got to be successful. They'll attribute it to whatever they think got them there.

 _Luck is being prepared for an opportunity_

 _Those who are not prepared, are unlucky. They let life push them in whatever random direction life pushes them in._

[http://sithsigma.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/luck-is-being- prep...](http://sithsigma.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/luck-is-being-prepared-for- an-opportunity-2/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is a difference between not having a plan and having one that allows for experimenting. Just because you're trying different things doesn't mean you don't have a plan.

A plan is a good thing. It keeps you from losing focus, lets you set goals and helps you know if you're on track.

Create a plan, you'd be a fool not to, but make sure it allows you to experiment.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've written a few business plans in my life (3 started companies, 2 sold, current one is Series A funded FWIW).

Every single time, the plans sat on the shelf. Every single time, I looked back at those plans and laughed/cringed at the assumptions I made in them and was amazed at how little my business resembled the picture I painted in those plans.

I think it's a great exercise to run through the sections that are common in biz plans (marketing, etc). Think about 'em, talk about 'em, maybe even through together a spreadsheet or two.

But don't make it formal and don't spend too much time on it-- the more you invest in it, the more it'll feel like a blueprint rather than an exercise.

</comment><comment><USER12> Obviously a lot of ingredients go into being successful, and invariable few of them get highlighted more and few less in any advice or suggestion given by anyone.

A great plan will not take one anywhere without good execution. and a great plan executed well can fail if timing is not right or for thousand other reasons.

The bottomline is - there is no single silver bullet.</comment>


Show HN: Screenshot Creator – Create stunning marketing assets for the App Store - <AUTHOR> https://screenshotcreator.com <comment><AUTHOR> Screenshot Creator is a web app that helps mobile app developers create beautiful marketing assets for their App Store and Google Play listings.

Screenshot Creator came out of a problem that I had encountered when I was building mobile apps in the past. When listing apps on the App Store or on Google Play, I always dreaded uploading screenshots because they took me forever to make. I didn't want to just upload plain screenshots - I wanted to make them look just as good as the ones that the top apps had.

I used to spend hours making these screenshots and updating them. I tried to look for an existing screenshot maker but none of the ones in the market really stood out to me - they tended to be buggy, or hard to use, or too expensive. So I decided to make my own, and I designed it to be dead simple to use, but still really powerful.

Check it out, and let me know what you think!</comment>


Why Building Apps the Wrong Way Can Be the Right Way - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/google-developers/why-won-t-this-work-coding-angry-for-fun-and-profit-1ef38a2b7196#.3dpv4bov9 <comment><USER2> It may seem like it, but no engineer writes "right" code on the first try. They get it working, then they iterate, cleaning it up to make it "right".

Experience teaches us where to start, where to think ahead a little, and how to structure code such that it can be refactored in the future.

Writing code the "right way" means 1) getting something working 2)taking what you've learned and refactoring and/or.

If you care about maintaining a chunk of code for 6 months, or a year, you'll quickly learn to refactor. If you are prototyping, right likely isn't a priority to begin with.

<comment><USER3> The three priorities of software development:

1) Make it work (at all)

2) Make it work _right_

3) (If necessary) make it work fast

<comment><USER4> I heard a similar quote from Nathan Marz of Storm fame: "First make it possible, then make it beautiful, then make it fast" [http://nathanmarz.com/blog/suffering-oriented- programming.ht...](http://nathanmarz.com/blog/suffering-oriented- programming.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you build it they might come. If you don't build it they can't come. Therefore you must build it for them to come. Therefore the most important thing you do to make them come, is to build it by any means necessary.

Them of course means customers.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, just what I needed to push me to build my side project. I think I need this on a shirt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most of the code I write at work is just automating processes and I usually do it piecemeal until managing it all gets too unwieldy then I refactor and simplify. I'm not exactly building one to throw away, but I'm using a lot of essentially placeholder code that I know I'm going to replace with a more coherent system once I see the pieces working together. Sometimes the quick and dirty stuff is good enough and I never need to touch it again, though.

<comment><USER8> I've found it's a lot of the time that the quick and dirty is the stuff I never come back to.

<comment><USER9> In some companies, it's the stuff you're not allowed to come back to because 'it works'.

<comment><USER10> Working code that has been battlefield tested and ugly as anything is still more valuable than pretty but unused code in many scenarios.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Brooks said it best: "Build one to throw away"

<comment><USER10> I don't think I was ever allowed to throw away a prototype. They always end up being the production version in the end. I make an effort to make reasonably good prototypes for that reason.

<comment><USER12> I might not toss it away all at once, but by the time I'm done with v2, little of the original code remains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Twenty minutes of debugging later, it turns out I'd forgotten to call > .show() after creating a Toast.

It amazes me that people still think that strong typing isn't useful.

<comment><USER14> > It amazes me that people still think that strong typing isn't useful.

I've heard people argue that its not _always_ a _net_ benefit, but I've never heard anyone argue that it doesn't have benefits.

<comment><USER15> I have never used a strongly typed language. But it seems like it would be almost strictly superior to the php and ruby I use now. So why on earth _isn 't_ everything strongly typed? What's the downside?

<comment><USER16> C/Java-type strong languages have the downside that they're super redundant. Typing "MyObject myObject = new MyObject();" is not fun in your free time. The same goes for any other required proof in your program, when you already know you're right.

Hey, remember this guy? He used to be pretty famous, you know.

[https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/is-weak-typing- str...](https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/is-weak-typing-strong- enough)

[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-languages- st...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-languages-strike- back.html)

<comment><USER17> Stevey would criticize languages left and right, though. I wonder if he is coding in dynamic languages at Google nowadays... Most likely he is writing Go while complaining about it.

(miss you stevey please resume writing)

<comment><USER16> Neither of these are even the article I was thinking of. There was one with the same method written in Java and Perl, doing the same thing, and both obviously correct. But the Perl one was much much shorter because you didn't have to type any types.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Indiegogo: Ubuntu Edge - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge?c=home

<comment><AUTHOR> I think a side effect of his campaign is that it will put Indiegogo into the spotlight for crowdsource funding at least temporary. But this Ubuntu Edge campaign itself seem to me is writing a new chapter on what is possible with crowdsource funding when you hit a true market demand and when you ran a well thought out campaign. My hope is they do deliver the to their best capabilities and make this to a successful campaign.

</comment><comment><USER2> I understand why they put 128GB of flash storage in it, but that's very expensive. Why aren't they offering at least a $600 32 GB version? This would be the version for people who'd use it more as a smartphone than a PC (or not at all).

<comment><USER3> The whole point of the ubuntu edge is to be bleeding edge (Punny). Their not trying to target anything other then high end phone, and people who love the absolute greatest. As they said, its the indy racing for phones, aka being able to test the limits without trying to market to the masses</comment></comment>


Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theincomer.com/2018/02/28/basic-income-crime-rate-drop-by-40-lower-inequality-even-stronger-workforce/ <comment><USER3> Every time you want to evaluate results from social research, you need to ask yourself two questions:

1\. Are the results internally valid? That is, did the authors reasonably control for factors other than the treatment (in this case, UBI) that could affect the observed results? Turn out, that this is actually difficult to do outside of randomized control trials. Quasi-experiments and natural experiments all lack random treatment assignment. This leads to biased estimates and wrong conclusions.

2\. Are the results externally valid? That is, to whom do the results apply? Most UBI experiments are done in contexts that are different than the US (if you are interested in what would happened if UBI becomes law in the US). Local factors could impact the way that people react to UBI. Because these factors do not apply to the US, the study results do not readily translate to the US.

For example, the article cites this NBER working paper[1] as proof that UBI has positive impacts on unemployment. The article uses a difference-in- differences model with a systemic control group to get to a causal estimate of receiving dividends from the Alaska Permanent Fund. This boils down to compare changes in employment between Alaska and states that had similar employment trends during the pre-treatment period. Their analysis seem to be sound and they conduct multiple robustness checks.

As far as external validity, how similar is Alaska to the rest of the US? Would results from that setting translate to California, or Mississippi, or New York?

[1]: [http://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf](http://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf)

<comment> aaron-lebo Yes, this is unfortunately pretty lazy research used to push an agenda.

Related to that, the main claim: the 40% reduction in crime (no link, why?) is in Namibia. Is there anything about Namibia which makes it different from a developed economy like the US?

I know it comes off as pedantic to complain about such stuff, but there's gotta be higher standards for evidence, otherwise you don't really trust your own argument.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't necessarily call it "lazy research". It's imperfect, but there aren't exactly that many natural experiments in UBI that provide you great data. Sometimes you have to piece together insights from imperfect data.

<comment> aaron-lebo It's not the research itself that is lazy, it's the way results with very limited scope are used by people to push an agenda. I guarantee you the authors are aware of the limits of their research. They aren't the ones making overarching claims. I challenge you to look up how social scientists themselves (and not one stop issue sites) feel about UBI.

You can't bother to provide a link when you are citing a statistic? That's just lazy. In graduate school they train you like an attack dog to find this stuff, so it's pedantic, but that really doesn't bother anyone? Just a link supporting your main claim - too much to ask?

The association with academia and "stats" without the same standards is weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "a quora member answered when asked about the UBI"

And at that moment, any semblence of legitimacy disappeared...

The main question about UBI is who pays for it and how. In the UK, a back-of- a-napkin calculation showed that all current benefits equally divided into a single BI would be around £4K, way below anything that most people would consider enough to live on.

<comment><USER6> So to get a BI of £12K, average taxes would have to go up by £8K per person. And since about 2/3 of the adult population are taxpayers, that gives £12K per taxpayer, which balances the payout they'd receive from BI. People with above average incomes would pay into BI, and those with below average incomes would net from BI.

<comment><USER7> In other words, legally redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Not saying there's anything wrong with that, but that's what this program is.

<comment><USER8> That's absolutely what it is at the core. The problem with it's application has been proven over and over again; the very wealthy have the means and motivation to avoid it while the burden falls on the same segment of the population over and over again.

<comment><USER9> The solution is simple: legislate so the very wealthy _can 't_ avoid it, while remaining in the country. It's really not that hard: if they have assets here and reside here, then you tax them, and seize them if necessary. The only reason this isn't done is because too many people vote for politicians who pass laws favorable to the very wealthy.

<comment><USER10> > The solution is simple: legislate so the very wealthy can't avoid it, while > remaining in the country.

... then they'll leave the country. I don't think you've thought this through.

<comment> munk-a America has a real problem with money in politics which has prevented strong penalties on top earners. But, the US does currently levy a minimum tax total for overseas personal income, it basically can be summarized as "If you earned X in the US you'd owe us Y, you payed the government of the country you're residing in Z which is less than Y, you owe the US government Y-Z", this law is extremely poorly enforced currently but even if they leave the country they still owe the taxes, legally speaking.

If they flee to other countries and illegally circumvent the law then that's where the US should start flexing it's muscles.

<comment><USER10> Yep, and you can just renounce your US citizenship. That Facebook guy did it a couple years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The big problem with UBI, aside from how to pay for it, is that it will not survive as either universal or basic once the voters get their hands on it and decide that, say, UBI benefits should be cut for felons, increased for single mothers, indexed to the cost of rent, etc.

In other words, we have a bunch of different welfare standards for people in different situations because that is what succeeds politically, and there is no reason to believe the same impulses that got us our current welfare system won't influence UBI also.

<comment><USER12> To be fair, I'm not entirely convinced that a truly universal system is the best. After all, a single parent has significant additional expenses - <USER2> should taxpayers be paying to give violent criminals a work-free existence? (Would you pay a living wage to someone who sexually assaulted your daughter?)

In the US, this is especially a problem. The cost of living in Texas is low enough that my salary as an engineer gives me a very high quality of life - but the same salary in NYC would be very different in life results. A federally set UBI then seems... well, to have the same issues that minimum wage do.

<comment><USER13> With money comes mobility, so people are free to move somewhere cheaper. Currently, those in the poverty cycle are trapped and chronically stressed, making it quite difficult to execute a plan that involves anything more than what's right in front them—moving out of city or out of state is out of the question.

One of the biggest problems facing humanity is sustainability towards the planet. Unbounded population growth eventually breaks everything we all need to survive. If we incentivize having children more than it already is, some people will spawn just to get at that extra money for themselves and do the bare minimum to "raise" their children. And the kind of person that does that does not raise stable, healthy children who will come into their own as productive, healthy members of society...

<comment><USER14> > With money comes mobility, so people are free to move somewhere cheaper

I think generally people are not very willing to move regardless of cost. It takes (on average) quite a large economic gradient to move people out of a location they are comfortable in. Social ties to a location can be very strong indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find this mostly click bait. We should expect results like this or frankly better. Results from one small African village are not globally applicable. The issue is where does the money come from and is it truly universal. All the experiments to date have been of the "we gave free money with no restrictions to X thousand people for Y months and it was great". This is necessary but not sufficient research. We could have huge savings in the US with simplified welfare programs but we shouldn't forget that most of those savings come from firing some number of thousands who now also need UBI and have diminished pension benefits. All of these systems are inter-related and we will have to keep trying things as the financial divide grows.

<comment><USER16> I'm still waiting for the UBI trial that includes allowing everyone receiving it to vote for how much the UBI checks are for.

That aspect never seems to get included for some reason.

<comment><USER17> Great point.

Politician #1: "I'm going to increase UBI to $2000!"

Politician #2: "I'm going to increase UBI to $5000!"

Politician #3: "I'm going to increase UBI to $10000!"

I'm totally voting for politician #3!

<comment><USER16> And don't forget: proponents are claiming this is necessary because large groups of people will be incapable of obtaining gainful employment. This means, by design, this cannot just be "the necessities" because increasing groups of people will be relying on it to live out their entire lives.

That means we'll be discussing how many vacations should be paid for. After all, you wouldn't tell a huge group of people they'll never be able to afford a vacation their entire life, right? And this will include a car, at least for most of the US. How much money should be allocated for that? Should they be able to afford home ownership, or just rent? Will it be enough to let them choose where they want to live?

These questions (and many like them) will be debated over and over again. I don't think it'll be as on-the-nose as you laid out, but over time, the end result is the same.

<comment><USER18> > That means we'll be discussing how many vacations should be paid for.

If people don't have work to do then they are already, practically by definition, on vacation.

If you mean going on package tours and the like, there's no more reason to discuss those as a Basic Income "entitlement" than there is with social security payments.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps "travel" would have been a better word, but the point still stands.

\--Social security isn't intended to be a single monetary payment people will, by design, rely on for their entire lives. That's the key difference.--

EDIT: Actually it does do that for specific subsets of people (those with disabilities and similar), but it's a very limited subset as opposed to the entire population, and I think the difference is significant.

<comment><USER18> Basic income proposals that stand any chance of being adopted are for it to replace other forms of government provided unearned income (unemployment benefit, old age pension), and are approximately revenue neutral, so those out of work and claiming benefits would receive the same amount, those working or earning private unearned income would on average see their tax bills rise by the same amount as the basic income they would now get, and those not working and not currently claiming any benefits would receive it, but at the same time there would be savings from simplifications of the benefits system.

<comment><USER16> I've heard those theories and am quite skeptical, but they don't relate to my claims.

My point is that even if everything you claim works out exactly as hoped, that will only be on day one. It is not the case that a growing majority of voters will simply be content with whatever is handed to them and be grateful. There will be ongoing debates about what that number should be, but it will almost never go down.

And I've still seen no reasonable "exit plan" for how to transition away from a UBI society where some huge majority of people have, for decades or generations, been told they will never be working a day in their life.

<comment><USER17> Once implemented, it will be impossible to turn UBI off. In fact, they'll never take away existing welfare programs in favor of UBI--they'll just add UBI on top of it. Think of the children, they'll say.

And if we think people will be happier when handed money that allows them to not work, we are sadly delusional. No one is happier NOT working. People are happy when they are productive members of society.

<comment><USER16> I mostly agree, with a few caveats:

> In fact, they'll never take away existing welfare programs in favor of UBI-- > they'll just add UBI on top of it. Think of the children, they'll say.

They won't even have to say that.

The idea that the poorest among us have the financial literacy to be simply given money, budget appropriately, and spend with proper prioritization is empirically false. That's a big part of the value of food stamps, subsidized housing, Medicaid, and similar programs: They only apply to a very specific thing. You can't plan poorly and spend too much on your food stamps and be unable to come up with rent.

With UBI replacing those programs, it will happen, so I expect the "you won't need those programs with UBI" premise to be dropped pretty early on.

> No one is happier NOT working. People are happy when they are productive > members of society.

I think people can be happy as long as they _think_ they are contributing to society, even if they are actively making it worse. For a lot of them, I think there will be plenty of union power and political activism among this large group of bankrolled, but unemployed people with plenty of free time. Those people will be able to find happiness and meaning through activism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm curious to hear how folks, who are more knowledgeable than I and have done more research, reconcile data points like these with the data showing lack of success in places like Finland.[1]

[1] [https://nypost.com/2018/04/25/finlands-universal-basic- incom...](https://nypost.com/2018/04/25/finlands-universal-basic-income- experiment-didnt-work-out-well/)

<comment><USER20> Finland's experiment was not actually a UBI experiment. I mean, originally it was going to be a really big basic income trial... but by the time they finalized it, they'd chickened out and made it basically a tweak to their existing unemployment benefit for a tiny sample of people who were already on unemployment.

Additionally, Finland had to release a response to the article you linked because of misleading reporting by US media: [https://www.kela.fi/web/en/news- archive/-/asset_publisher/lN...](https://www.kela.fi/web/en/news- archive/-/asset_publisher/lN08GY2nIrZo/content/contrary-to-reports-the-basic- income-experiment-in-finland-will-continue-until-the-end-of-2018)

So officially there are no results since the experiment is not over. But whatever the results end up being, they won't say anything about actual UBI one way or the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There ought to be a name for a minimal UBI that can allow people who are normally just scraping by to bridge short periods of unemployment, unexpected expenses etc. £4K wouldn't be much for the average Hacker News reader, but for people on minimum wage it could make a real difference. You can't really call this "Basic Income" though, because that term comes with the build in assumption that it's enough for a person to live pretty comfortably. I've been thinking of this as a "Really Basic Basic Income" ("RBBI"?), but nobody seems to be talking about such a thing.

<comment><USER22> I've always thought there should be an essential basics program, where you can always receive an adequate amount of flour, rice, beans, corn, and other basic foodstuffs to survive. I'd also add toothpaste, soap, and other sanitary items.

We can still have food stamp programs that allow people to spend as they please, but the guaranteed floor ensures literally no one need go hungry.

Sticking to basics keeps the costs far lower than trying to subsidize processed foods, and the extent we susbsidize our farmers also subsidizes the program.

<comment><USER23> The additional complication is problematic, as is the additional control / disempowerment.

Such as: \- Who decides the list of goods? \- Who provides them? \- Who delivers them?

Ex: Pizza as a vegetable.

Sure, you'll have people make shit decisions - but part of the point (IMHO) of UBI is that a shit decision this month doesn't have to screw you next month.

My brother also always points out that "shrinkage" (from retail) is a really good concept to apply to welfare programs: The cost to 100% anything far outweighs the benefit to 100% that.

<comment><USER22> Yes, it's a program that is at high risk of overexpansion like many others.

It would be constantly attacked for not providing "healthy" options like fresh fruit, organic flour, more variety and whatnot.

I just wish we could do stuff like this. Same with housing, provide budget accommodations in low cost areas and you'll be accused of creating ghettos and modern day internment camps. So we spend much more to subsidize housing in the highest cost, most desirable regions, leaving far too many without anything.

<comment><USER23> Right. Or you give people the capacity to make their own choices (and make sure the market can function as properly, which is non-trivial).

Any kind of goods/services delivery removes people's capacity to make their own choices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Perhaps the most ironic thing I've read in a while:

"Suicides would also decrease, as the most of them are result of depression, which is mostly caused by anxiety about survival."

<comment> the-pigeon "Grand claim because grand claim and other grand claim, evidence not needed."

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> None of those references are primary sources or peer reviewed. I've also _personally_ never heard of "the incomer". I feel like I'd prefer to take those claims with a grain of salt. It feels like a lot of work to try and spend time digging in to whether this is true or not.

It might be true - but this doesn't feel like a credible source.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you're doubtful on where the money for UBI comes from, for the US Andrew Yang (running for 2020) suggests to increase VAT.

He was on SH's show [0] and apparently has a book on it [1]

[0] [https://samharris.org/podcasts/130-universal-basic- income/](https://samharris.org/podcasts/130-universal-basic-income/) [1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36204293-the-war-on- norm...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36204293-the-war-on-normal- people)

</comment><comment> the-pigeon Did anyone up voting this read it?

Worst article I've ever seen so high up on Hacker News.

<comment><USER27> It's practically incoherent

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It might be politically unpopular, but maybe we should just raise taxes and index them for measures of inequality. The GDP per capita of most modern economies can easily handle a basic income sufficient for all but the most expensive cities.

<comment><USER29> That assumes that GDP would not be impacted negatively by the massive tax increase.

I'm sure there are many theories, in both directions, of what would happen to the total tax revenues if you were to raise rates significantly, but it's surely far more complicated that your idea makes it sound.

<comment><USER6> Moving money from rich people to people much more likely to spend it rather than hoard it should result in a significant GDP boost.

<comment><USER30> You misunderstand the fundamental mechanism for improving standard of living: productivity gains. Consumer spending does not improve productivity. Rather, investment in capital goods (by those rich hoarders) leads to productivity growth.

<comment><USER31> That's a fairly basic liberal view, profoundly flawed. Consumer spending improves productivity as a second order effect. Consumer spending improves the demand side of the economic cycle, prompting opportunities for investing in efficiently supplying that demand.

The disruption of the demand side of the economic cycle is the reason behind the loss of competitiveness of economies with high inequality. You get capital accumulation that finds no outlet for investment, other than riding economic bubbles.

This open lecture by LSE, although focused on the UK, touches most important points about inequality: [http://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2018/07/20180717t1830vOT/peak- in...](http://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2018/07/20180717t1830vOT/peak-inequality)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Nowhere in this article does the author provide a source for the mentioned 40% drop.

<comment><USER18> The article isn't very well written. The drop was 36.5% and is reported in [http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b...](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b.pdf) starting on page 45.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Clickbait from a new website.

The "strengthened workforce" if you click through is actually about this paper with the alaska fund: [https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf](https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf)

Not about basic income per se.

The work disincentive of _basic-income-like_ cash transfers, in studies so far, is actually somewhat consistent at around 10%. Some papers referencing this approx figure:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/r19npwc30trejb6/Basic_Income_in_a_...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/r19npwc30trejb6/Basic_Income_in_a_Small_Town_Understanding_the_Elusive_Effects_on_Work__Calnitsky_Latner_Social_Problems_BI_in_a_small_town.pdf?dl=0)

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/oi0kv3vcya9o0ad/The_Rural_Income_M...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/oi0kv3vcya9o0ad/The_Rural_Income_Maintenance_Experiment__sr10.pdf?dl=0)

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/hkd489vcarcrorg/Findings_from_the_...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/hkd489vcarcrorg/Findings_from_the_Gary_Income_Maintenance_Experiment__Gary%20Income%20Maintenance%20Experiment.pdf?dl=0)

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/5m2k5qzgv699dfe/THE_TOWN_WITH_NO_P...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/5m2k5qzgv699dfe/THE_TOWN_WITH_NO_POVERTY_Using_Health_Administration_Data_to_Revisit_Outcomes_of_a_Canadian_Guaranteed_Annual_Income_Field_Experiment___forget- cea%2520%282%29.pdf?dl=0)

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/dsucn7jone74g65/New_Jersey_Graduat...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/dsucn7jone74g65/New_Jersey_Graduated_Work_Incentive_Experiment__ED099531.pdf?dl=0)

(from research on a long BI article I wrote)

</comment><comment><USER34> The part about people not leaving the workforce is based on a non-peer reviewed working paper arguing that the Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays ~$2000 per person, has not decreased employment: [https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf](https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf)

I doubt any rational person would quit a job for $2000 a year. Or for a temporal UBI that may last a few years, leaving a gap in their career. I'm curious, does anyone know of any UBI test in which the amount was enough to live decently, and was assured for the lifetime of the recipients?

</comment><comment><USER35> Ontario recently cancelled their experiment with universal income. Which points me to the fact that even if UBI becomes reality at some point, it's only one government away at any time from being cancelled or adjusted. So your livelihood at any given time is dependent upon government balancing its books. Considering how bad many modern developed governments are at doing this, it gives me little hope of UBI being any sort of good, substantive thing happening in the near future.

<comment><USER36> What's wrong with having UBI for 2 years and then suddenly having it cut off?

Jack London, the famous homeless / hobo writer of "Call of the Wild" and "White Fang", was only able to write his first book because of the support of community libraries and random strangers who gave him a bed occasionally. Eventually, he was able to pull himself out of poverty and become one of the most famous writers ever.

If you can help those homeless people for a few years, that's all that's needed to permanently change some of their lives for the better. It will suck when the program ends, but some-help is better than none at all.

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

These programs aren't supposed to be sustainable living forever-and-ever. They are parachutes to help people who are in tough times. They provide a pathway out of poverty.

<comment><USER8> >> What's wrong with having UBI for 2 years and then suddenly having it cut off?

re: Ontario's cancelled "experiment" \- the recipient they talked to felt she had been "betrayed" and "wasn't going to be able to make ends meet"

So after less than 2 years it transformed from a narrow experiment into a entitlement, like many (most?) government programs. It was no longer treated as a "top-up" but a core component of survival.

It seems to make sense that a fixed-limit benefit would prevent this, but history shows that a non-trivial percentage of recipients just use it as a reprieve from the inevitable.

<comment><USER36> > re: Ontario's cancelled "experiment" \- the recipient they talked to felt > she had been "betrayed" and "wasn't going to be able to make ends meet"

Well yeah. But that person's life is surely for the better because the program existed for those two years?

I don't want to demean that person's feelings. But two years with basic income is strictly better than two years without basic income.

If the only argument against UBI is that "Penny-pinchers in the future might shut down the project", that isn't really a counter-argument at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I found the source for those who like me couldn't understand the article (had to click several links). PDF

[http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b...](http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER38> A better headline might have been "Basic Income caused crime to drop in Nambia".

I think there are a lot of variables that deserve closer study before jumping to conclusions about what might happen in other places.

</comment><comment><USER39> The English is really bad in this, was this article translated or something?

<comment> Digit-Al Going by the name of the author (Atha Fromy), I would guess it was written by someone who has English as a second language. This being my assumption I am going to give them a pass on slightly dodgy grammar since I couldn't write an article in any other language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Meanwhile, in the real world, UBI is too expensive and unsustainable. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/01/ontarios- new-c...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/01/ontarios-new- conservative-government-to-end-basic-income-experiment)

</comment><comment><USER41> I am wondering often with UBI: if everybody gets a certain amount of money. Wouldn't prices just adapt and everything gets more expensive, and there would be the same divide as before? Similar to Scandinavia where prices are very high. What mechanism could prevent this from happening?

<comment><USER42> Why exactly do you think this would happen? It doesn't actually make sense. Let's say Company A charges 2$ for an apple and each apple costs 1$ to procure, and then at some point a UBI is implemented. What changed that suddenly allows company A to raise the price of an apple without being undercut by Company B? The cost to procure an apple might increase somewhat because laborers have more leverage under a UBI, but there's an upper limit to this with automation anyway. A more equal distribution of wealth in itself will not cause any increase in the cost of goods.

<comment><USER41> Yeah, i guess you are right in a perfect market. My hypothesis was that increased buying power leads to more demand. In your case for apples it would allow apple producers to increase prices and raise margins, as long as competitors don't undercut them.

What is the original cause that drives prices in countries like Switzerland or Norway higher? Is this only due to currency trading and a country's credit rating?

<comment><USER43> Prices are stable and not really rising in Switzerland, same for salaries.

Prices in Germany are rising but salaries are stagnant.

Just my observation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>