Dear Slack - <AUTHOR> http://zedshaw.com/2015/02/02/dear-slack

<comment><USER2> I haven't read his other blog posts, but in this one he seems to come off as arrogant and a child, in a sense, by arguing for some kind of feature addition without actually explaining how it would benefit any users other than him and (more importantly) how it would actually benefit Slack. Slack might not listen regardless, but it's a turn off to read the first paragraph and to try to not think of some whiny 16 year old.

<comment><USER3> > without actually explaining how it would benefit any users other than him

He seems to make it pretty clear: "You give me a place to send them, and when my students join they punch in the required credit card and then they're done." This sounds like a more streamlined signup process than what his users currently go through, which involves signing up somewhere else, paying, and then receiving an email with a link enabling them to sign up (again) at slack.

> how it would actually benefit Slack

Again, fairly well spelled out: "I promote it, I do the hard work of being in there, and you get to skim your $6.67 or however much the plan costs off the top of the signups." So free promotion, somebody else drives user signups to your product.

Third, by my reading, the author is implying that this setup would be useful for many others who want to offer a good chat service for online learning, paid support, or a multitude of other reasons I can't think up. It sounds like a great idea to me.

Finally: you'll probably get more out of the internet by being more concerned about content than tone.

<comment><USER2> I guess, yes, there is a benefit to Slack in the sense that they would have more signups overall. But what I was really going for was that it wouldn't benefit them on a large scale, meaning that people that do stuff like what he does would have to move to Slack, which is most likely not going to happen without large incentive. I doubt that he has enough "clout" to drive a noticeable number of people to Slack over a long period of time. The only way that this would change is if Slack marketed itself differently.

> Third, by my reading, the author is implying that this setup would be useful > for many others who want to offer a good chat service for online learning, > paid support, or a multitude of other reasons I can't think up. It sounds > like a great idea to me.

Yes, but Slack isn't really built for some of these purposes and it shows in the way that people see each other within the app. I.e. I see all of my coworkers within Slack, which is not what you want with tech support. I can see it being useful for a student-student interaction, but it would have to be augmented to allow specific student-teacher collabs because all people (at least in the way I understand) are on the same "level" and can see everyone and all the channels, which might be counter-productive to learning because it becomes like AIMing your classmates at that point.

> Finally: you'll probably get more out of the internet by being more > concerned about content than tone.

Thanks dude! When I use the Internet next time I will be sure to think about this comment. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would be an awesome feature to have</comment>


Is Inequality Inevitable? - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/ <comment><USER3> There is a popular political perspective that rules on campus these days that treats wealth as something that just magically exists and is simply "redistributed" by one means or another like, say, a phase change in physics where no magnetism/charge/energy/etc. is ever created or consumed. I waited for a point in their model where people actually produced wealth and consumed it, made something or ate it, in addition to redistributing it. Not part of the model.

And the idea that things have a "true" value, the one put on them by enlightened campus philosophers, so a transaction not controlled by the wise and just will have a winner and a loser. I waited for the idea that I, shoeless but with ten loaves of bread, and you, hungry but with ten pairs of shoes, might reasonably value bread and shoes differently and BOTH win from the "redistribution" of bread and shoes, but it was not part of the model.

But their model (which they claim "reproduces inequality with unprecedented accuracy") could also (they claim) be fitted to a variety of different observed power law distributions when its parameters were adjusted, and the more parameters, the better the fit became. Yes, and they could probably get their model to describe the frequency distribution of English vocabulary (also a power law), with remarkable accuracy which probably does say something about economics but maybe not as much as they seem to think.

<comment><USER4> It's not part of the model because, if you're studying how wealth gets distributed rather than how it is produced, it doesn't matter.

I'm guessing that your disquiet at this notion comes from the possibility that everyone is creating their own wealth, and to some extent that is no doubt true. But if you start with the simplifying assumption that everyone's wealth creation ability is equal, and you just look at distribution, and you find that your model pretty accurately reproduces the real-world distribution of wealth, it's at least some evidence that wealth-creation ability is not that different from person to person, and what's driving inequality is the distribution mechanism.

Since virtually all human traits follow a Gaussian distribution, it seems like whatever the wealth-building factor is, it would also follow a Gaussian distribution. But wealth follows more of a power law distribution. You never encounter anyone 1000 times taller than average, but there are many people 1000 times wealthier than average. This casts some doubt that wealth accumulation is down to individual human ability.

Couple that with the micro-economic observation that someone with 1 million dollars is astronomically more likely to make another million dollars than someone with 100 dollars, even if the two people are otherwise identical, and it seems pretty unlikely that wealth creation has much to do with the distribution we see.

<comment><USER5> > Since virtually all human traits follow a Gaussian distribution, it seems > like whatever the wealth-building factor is, it would also follow a Gaussian > distribution. But wealth follows more of a power law distribution. You never > encounter anyone 1000 times taller than average, but there are many people > 1000 times wealthier than average.

This is nonsense. Lets take an easy example, books, people don't want to waste their time reading bad books so only the most palatable books gets a good amount of sales. This means that a small difference in skill leads to a large difference in sales, which would recreate the power-law of wealth creation. Similar arguments can be made about engineering skills, management skills etc.

<comment><USER6> If you look at the actual richest people in the world though, they largely make their wealth off the hard work of others (walmart family), through some kind of gamble (finance), some kind of parasitism (unearned income like interest) or by monopolizing that "magically existing wealth the OP doesn't believe in" (e.g. saudi arabian oil).

For every JK Rowling or Steve Jobs there's maybe 100 who either fully or mostly extracted their wealth while going to great efforts to pretend that they're really just another JK Rowling or Steve Jobs.

<comment><USER7> More than half billionaires are self-made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It should be self-evident that the accelerating inequality we're witnessing is not the natural inequality of competition and the power law, easily explained by simple arithmetic.

An _accelerating_ and _historically high_ broad societal effect is naturally a product of broad and unique properties of the current regime, rather than fundamentally consistent properties, which would naturally be seen across all time.

What is more broad and far-reaching than manipulation of the money supply itself? "We have found that inflation (1) worsens income distribution; (2) increases the income share of the rich; (3) has a negative but insignificant effect on the income shares of the poor and the middle class; and (4) reduces the rate of economic growth" [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.295...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.295.848&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

It's not difficult to see why - under an inflationary regime, those holding currency lose out relative to those holding assets, because the former's wealth is not preserved; and low income wages are facing a constant headwind that their earners are less equipped to navigate.

We in the US have been engaging in an experiment since 1971, which has resulted in a marked discontinuity and a shift in to whom productivity growth accrued: [https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/](https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/)

This is not necessarily the true or only explanation of our accelerating and historically high inequality, but it has the properties of a realistic explanation, in that it identifies a broad, historically distinct cause.

<comment><USER9> I've noticed an increasing trend in people using phrases such as "it is trivial", "it is obvious", "it is self evident" to defend their arguments. I have yet to encounter a case where it made their argument better.

This might be off topic but it has become a pet peeve because I've even started to encounter it in real life. It is similar to starting a discussion with "if you disagree with me, you are stupid".

<comment><USER8> IMO it's incoherent to say that a locally extreme and accelerating quality of society is a consequence of broad and fundamental forces that have been in place for millenia. Fair enough that "self-evident" is inappropriate because it presumes perspective of the reader, but it's the coherence that I'm referring to.

<comment><USER9> I'll add that I think your comment was interesting which is part of why I commented on it. My comment was meant to be generic and the only reason I commented here was that I saw this thread was popular and your comment was near the top. So it is not a critique of the information and it was a bit unfair to call you out. I am hoping others consider not using those phrases so often. I've noticed very smart people use it a lot, probably because these things are indeed trivial to them. But it does not help anyone understand their arguments. Many times just removing the statement makes the argument more understandable as there is less noise.

<comment><USER10> There's plenty of excess that can be removed or revised for simplicity and understanding in Empacts writing style that would would help in clarifying and simplifying their point...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A lot of it misses the point.

Equality is unavoidable as long as people are allowed to compete for stuff.

If people are allowed to compete for property then those that are better at competing will have more property.

It might be possible to have property equality when people have access to same things but compete for different things, for example status, choice of partners, etc.

And the most important point people seem to forget:

Inequality does not mean we need to have people who can't satisfy their most basic things. It is possible for people to be allowed to compete for wealth and at the same time ensure those that don't want or can't compete have their basic needs like food, shelter and medical care satisfied.

<comment><USER12> You make it sound as though the economic pie is fixed and economics zero-sum. But that's clearly not the case, otherwise we'd still be living with stone age per-capita GDP (i.e., ~0).

And it's not just that "those that are better at competing will have more property". Every person is free to make a variety of choices for themselves, including how much they prioritize wealth creation. Since each one of us has only one life to live, and only one way to live it (i.e., the way each one of us choose to), and so many choices to make, there's no way we'll all make the same choices. Some will prioritize love, others family, others art, others business, or some mixture of these and other things. And that's just fine. We can't all pour ourselves into our work the way Elon Musk does, and we can't all only pick great ideas to pursue, and we don't all have the same talent or drive.

> Inequality does not mean we need to have people who can't satisfy their most > basic things. It is possible for people to be allowed to compete for wealth > and at the same time ensure those that don't want or can't compete have > their basic needs like food, shelter and medical care satisfied.

Indeed!

<comment><USER13> Isn't it also important to note that wealth acquisition activities and wealth creation activities are not the same thing?

<comment><USER11> This is excellent point.

If it is too easy to gather wealth so you can gather wealth without actually having to create any value (through corruption, extortion, monopoly, theft, deception, enslavement, etc.) then you will have the bad kind of inequality where most people are not compelled to put hard work to create value for others in order to create wealth for themselves.

Again, GINI does not differentiate between the good and the bad kind of inequality, so two countries with same GDP and same GINI might be very different. One may be on the rise, with a number of enterpreneurs creating huge progress and value and the other might have couple of oligarchs who were able to amass their wealth with corruption.

<comment><USER14> > (through corruption, extortion, monopoly, theft, deception, enslavement, > etc.)

rent-seeking should be there too

<comment><USER15> In the financialized world we live in rent seeking should be the top of the list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find the creation of physics-inspired sociological models distasteful. It's often a way of manufacturing certainty and authority through mathematical obsfucation.

It always runs the same way. First, you think of some political opinion you want to support. Then you come up with a mathematically trivial toy model that throws away 99% of the structure of the problem, whose few dynamical rules are artificially chosen so that they obviously will produce the result you want. (Though this part may look intimidating, it's not once you know how the game is played; I can easily cook up a toy model that "proves" any given political opinion upon request.) Then you put a lot of energy into solving the model in all kinds of cases, showing off your mathematical skills.

The end result of all such social models is a set of predictions that are only tenuously linked to reality. A common example of such a claim is "X follows a power law". But the models are usually too weak to actually calculate the _power_ in the power law, and the data too tenuous to even show you have a power law at all. (Most of the time this is done by showing a fuzzy cloud of points on a log-log plot with a tiny range, drawing a line through it (ignoring the fact that literally anything can be fit with a line if you zoom in enough) and declaring victory.)

The point of mathematics is to make your postulates and predictions precise. If your postulates are obviously unrealistic, and your predictions are too vague to be meaningful, then the mathematics isn't serving any purpose -- except for giving your work a false authority.

<comment><USER17> Would you rather sociological models not contain any physics or math? What do you propose?

<comment><USER16> I would prefer an empirical approach, as some take in macroeconomics. Just parametrize things you care about in terms of measureable quantities, and go out and measure them.

Once you have that, there's no need to slap on some model that says, like people are a frustrated antiferromagnetic spin lattice on a random small world graph. It doesn't add anything. If you want to explain the _results_ of the measurements, you can do it just as well with words.

<comment><USER17> What about parameters that are hard to measure?

Take for instances infectious disease models, often a very simple set of ODEs that are capable of capturing the wide ranging dynamics that we observe. One of the crucial parameters in these models is the transmission parameter, which determines the rate at which susceptibles become infected upon contact with an infected. Transmission is a function of a long string of physical, chemical, biological, social and economic variables. I am not sure how feasible it is to determine from first principles this parameter and so it is obtained from fitting the model to data. So in this case, one does not directly measure the parameter, but infer it from the data conditional on the model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a lot more satisfying than just r > g, which although seeming to be well supported in a rather large book somehow is dissatisfying. Specifically, I was looking for some kind of agent model like what this author is presenting here.

I've often thought about the "it's expensive to be poor" adage. What's interesting is he takes in this risk preference idea, in which you naturally expect the poor to have to be cede certain opportunities in order to secure further existence. I've played a lot of poker where you see this dynamic where the big stack guy can take chances and still win, and the cards (and skill) don't matter that much.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sugarscape is probably what you want.

<comment><USER18> Yeah that's a good start, and pretty much where I started to think about this kind of thing. This seems like a much more developed version of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I come from Eastern/Asian culture. I'm surprised to see Western culture swings. When I first got to live in Western culture, everyone was talking about equality as truth. There was equality everywhere: gender, income, race, marriage, geography. Now we talk about inequality as, maybe, the accepted truth. People talk about tail, asymmetric risk taking.

I think Eastern philosophy has a balanced view on this. There're Yin & Yang. The system eventually needs to find a balance. Stop swinging, start living.

<comment><USER20> Because real life and philosophy are often in conflict with each other. On top of that, cultural values change and fluctuate with time.

> Stop swinging, start living.

Swinging is living. Life is constantly changing, or "swinging". It is inevitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > "388 individuals possessed as much household wealth as the lower half of the > world's population combined"

My goodness! This completely shocked me. I wonder if we are all complicit in allowing this to happen. I know wealth buys power and vice versa, so it likely would be hard to change but aren't we all indirectly allowing this to happen?

<comment><USER22> It's even more shocking than you may have realized. Not sure if you caught it because you may have been too surprised or just read quickly, but that was the 2010 number. The current number is estimated to be a mere 26 people that hold as much as the lower half!

<comment><USER23> yes, source: [https://www.oxfam.org/en/5-shocking-facts-about-extreme- glob...](https://www.oxfam.org/en/5-shocking-facts-about-extreme-global- inequality-and-how-even-it)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My perspective on this might be too naive; but it seems _wealth_ inequality (which is the topic of this article) is inevitable since a significant proportion of the population will spend their entire income and therefore never save.

It seems like about 19% of all Americans have zero net worth, and something like 44% of single American retirees are dependent on Social Security for 90% or more of their income, implying they saved very little throughout their entire lifetimes.

<comment><USER25> Hmm. If they depend on Social Security for 90% of their income, should Social Security be included in their savings? It's not conventional savings, and yet it's funding their retirement.

In the same way, should pensions be counted as part of savings?

And if you run the calculations that way, what does it do to the distribution of wealth?

Note well: I am not saying that this is the _right_ way to run the calculations. But I think it could be a somewhat informative alternate way to do them.

<comment><USER22> I would argue not to include SS benefits as savings purely because SS payments are a tax levied upon the rest of society rather than any sort of fund, trust, etc. that actually has money allotted to someone. It's basically just an IOU from Uncle Sam that they will tax other people to pay you.

Therefore, that is subject to change at the whim of those in charge of changing the laws. Sure, it's politically ugly to reduce/eliminate, but a severe recession could easily change that.

<comment><USER25> Yes and no. There actually is a trust fund with actual money in it. That money is invested in Treasury bonds. Individuals don't have "accounts", exactly, but they do have benefits allotted to them.

Yes, it's a tax (though they don't call it that). No, it's not a savings account. And yet...

<comment><USER22> True, but that general fund/account is routinely raided by congress periodically to pay for things so it being separated is purely for show and is totally meaningless since they take money from it from time to time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's inevitable and a direct consequence of the labor system that we live in. The internet makes it worse but its not the problem of the internet, its a problem of the system.

In our labor system, a small number of individuals are by definition going to be payed, as employees, a small amount of the value that they add in order to make their boss wealthier.

Over time, the employees get paid a constant amount of money that they need to spend for living expenses, but the employer wealth will compound and accumulate over generations.

It's a system that comes directly from medieval serventry, designed to concentrate the wealth in the hands of the noble.

Take for example a large surface supermarket, with 100 employees making minimal wage. If those same persons would each own their small family shops and serve the same amount of customers, you would have 100 families well off making way more than minimal wage.

Serve those same customers through a supermarket, and most of the wealth will be concentrated in the hands of the supermarket owner, while the employees make only scraps.

<comment><USER27> >If those same persons would each own their small family shops and serve the same amount of customers

Prices would increase (no economies of scale). 100 persons would have to deal with 99 problems (accounting, supply, marketing, ...) they didn't have before. And risks and competition.

Most people don't want to deal with all those problems. Even if it pays better.

<comment><USER26> > Most people don't want to deal with all those problems. Even if it pays > better.

It depends, if raised on a family of shop owners with the values that you should have your own business, that would simply be seen as part of life.

Those problems are not that hard, its not that hard to run a small shop. I think anyone could do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't get why lately the trend it to focus in inequality instead of focusing in poverty.

I mean, if the % of poverty decreases, then economy is moving in a good direction, in spite of inequality, right? Suppose you had one million, and somebody else has one thousand millions, there would be a large gap, but I wouldn't consider it as negative.

If there are arguments against what I wrote I would gladly read them and consider them.

<comment><USER29> Because both inequality and poverty matter. Solving poverty is a matter of decency for all humanity and it would greatly improve our society. Solving inequality is as important, why? Because in a society where greed and profit motive trump any other ethic, we can't have individuals as powerful as states, thanks to the wealth they accumulated, partly, stealing from states. Earning billions and finding ways to not pay any taxes is equivalent to stealing for me.

<comment><USER30> If you are taxed involuntary - isn't that stealing? Well technically by law it is legal and enforced for everyone, but it still is stealing. For example: if everybody is under the immoral law and some people are better than others at avoiding the immoral law - is it morally okay for those people to avoid that law?

Edit: by involuntary I mean if person can't choose. Not talking about businesses

<comment><USER29> No it is not, for a very obvious reason: you get all the advantages of living in a society. Even just for infrastructure alone. Roads, sewages, electricity, internet. Last but not least, safety and order. Any income you might have developed is built upon this foundations. It is the very minimum that you pay back for it, especially if you have more than most others. The only thing I don't like is that we don't have a choice about it. We are born in nations and we're subjected to their laws, like it or not. But you can still give up everything and not pay taxes...

<comment><USER30> I think your point about a choice of taxes is very close to my argument of involuntary taxes. While I agree there are some things that you must contribute to have law and order - there are other things I don't want to subsidize. If my town lacks sidewalks, cars drive too fast and etc. - <USER2> should you pay for other towns problems first? Because somebody needs more votes from that other town they get to take my money against my will?

Also, for example, I don't like some study programs and I really like some of them. Problem is - I can't choose which ones to subsidize for students. If that's the case - I wouldn't subsidize any of them, but I am forced to do so. Even if I think its harmful.

I think this problem arise/will arise in many different places: North vs South Italy, Catalonia vs Spain, young people to carry aging population and etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Have there been any efforts to quantify what level of inequality is reasonable?

For instance, the GINI coefficient ranges between 0 and 1, where 0 means everyone has the same amount, and 1 means one person at the top has everything. Depending on how it's measured, the US is somewhere between 0.4 and 0.5.

You don't want to be at either extreme, so some level of inequality is desirable. Is there an appropriate amount of inequality that is generally accepted? Has anyone tried to identify the appropriate target level?

<comment><USER32> Why shouldn't the coefficient be zero? I'm curious what your reasoning is.

<comment><USER31> I'm more reflecting the general consensus. That's communism, which is generally seen as a failed economic system, and difficult to practically enforce. Although maybe that all changes in a post-scarcity economy, like is Star Trek technically communist? Should the goal actually be GINI-0?

<comment><USER33> Star Trek isn't communist; capitalism and communism are both approaches to the allocation of resources. Neither really applies in a post-scarcity society.

<comment><USER34> Which Star Trek is post-scarcity. They all [within the Federation] have trading and limitations of resources, no?

They're entirely egalitarian either, perhaps that's why you say they're not communist, see for example the luxuries that a captain has that crew do not and the preferences (larger quarters) that accrue with seniority.

<comment><USER35> Next Generation is post-scarcity. Replicators make fighting over a slice of pizza pointless. Just replicate another slice.

It's both a story-telling crutch and obstacle. It's a crutch in that they never have to explain how they provide for the entire crew while out in space. They just transform energy into matter.

It's an obstacle as they can't really tell a story that involves a limited resource unless they explain why it can't be simply replicated. Now, sometimes, they say just that. But it's always something they have to acknowledge.

And we have to bow to the fact that Star Trek is entirely fiction. We don't really know how a post-scarcity society will function. So we will wind up still projecting contemporary mores on them. So the captain gets a special office and larger quarters.

DS9 has replicators, but they're also trying to be the "wild west frontier" Star Trek, so they're not available to everyone and there are non-Federation societies present. And _those_ societies aren't post-scarcity, so money exists. (And then there are the societies that are both technically post- scarcity, yet still materialistic which is just weird)

Voyager has replicators on the ship, but their solution is to remove the ship from the Federation and handwave the fact that for the most part, starships don't require fuel in a traditional sense. I think the fuel for starships would be antimatter, but it's never an issue on the show unless it needs to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Without inequality we would not have airplanes, transatlantic cables, jet engines, electric cars, SpaceX, cloud computing, radar, internet phones, steel, automobiles, the textile industry, fuel, plentiful food, fresh fruit year round, etc.

<comment><USER37> I think we would develop these in due time, just slower. One could also argue that some of these (textile industry, cloud computing) are bad.

Actually, I am not against some inequality, as long as there is some kind of limit to it.

<comment><USER36> > One could also argue that some of these (textile industry, cloud computing) > are bad.

You could, but the textile industry freed women from endlessly spinning thread and making cloth. Pretty much nobody does that anymore. I don't want to spend my life making cloth the pre-industrial way. Do you?

In colonial America, archaeological bone evidence shows the colonists worked like dogs and died young. Not very romantic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Of course it is...it's a natural consequence of compound interest. One's ability to accumulate additional wealth scales exponentially with their level of existing wealth.

<comment><USER39> If course it is...it's a natural consequence of compound interest. One's ability to accumulate additional wealth scales exponentially with their level OF EFFORT.

Even a wealthy person can lose their money if they don't make an effort investing it properly. How do people build wealth from the ground up? They work hard each and every day and that effort COMPOUNDS. They get smarter, more opportunities present themselves, they get better creating value for others. When you make strangers happy, they reward you with their money- a fair exchange! This is how wealth is made - compound effort.

<comment><USER40> Classic. Poor people just aren't working hard enough!

<comment><USER39> How did you get the computer you're writing on, if not by the method described above?

<comment><USER41> (not op but) parents supported me through a high quality education, in the safe wealthy western country they brought me into, helped me to develop social skills, and provided a stable upbringing which—all combined—gave me the confidence, comfort and skills to navigate the labour market, secure a well- paying job, and eventually use my wages to purchase this computer.

<comment><USER39> Sound like you got there exactly by the method described above.

<comment><USER42> Um, but the point is that most of that is stuff he had no control over. The Econ 101 fantasy of "work hard, get ahead" doesn't apply if being a straight white male born into a middle class western family means you're starting 80% of the way to the finish line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> There's been hundreds of years of writing on this subject from political and economic theory, but the article doesn't touch on it at all; it's just a weird mathematical model.

Then there's this:

      You might, of course, wonder how this model, even if mathematically accurate,
      has anything to do with reality. After all, it describes an entirely
      unstable economy that inevitably degenerates to complete oligarchy,
      and there are no complete oligarchies in the world. It is true that, by itself,
      the yard sale model is unable to explain empirical wealth distributions.
      To address this deficiency, my group has refined it in three ways to make it
      more realistic.

So, they started with a model that made no sense, and modified it to make it match "reality", and finished with this:

      Given how complicated real economies are, we find it gratifying that a simple analytical approach
      developed by physicists and mathematicians describes the actual wealth distributions
      of multiple nations with unprecedented precision and accuracy. Also rather curious is that
      these distributions display subtle but key features of complex physical systems.

Yeah... curious....

</comment><comment><USER44> Peter Norvig did one of these.[1]

The authors can fit data better by adding parameters, which is no surprise. But these models omit an important feature of the real world: growth. "Yard sale" models are zero-sum.

[1] [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/Economics...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/Economics.ipynb)

</comment><comment><USER45> Let's pose the opposite:

Is it possible to enforce that 8 billion people be and have exactly the same? Seems pretty obviously absurd.

<comment><USER46> Is it not worth trying to get as close to that as possible, though?

<comment><USER45> How do you even measure? How do you decide how effort and talent should factor in. What system should be used to enforce it?

The answer to all is you can't because it's inherently utopian. You can set a legal framework and follow and that's the best you can do. That can involve programs that are designed to help the poor or redistribute but the notion of trying to micromanage everyone into being equal or even close is absurd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Income inequality is a sign that an economy is functioning properly. For people vary greatly in their talents, ambition, tolerance for risk, vision. Some can lead, delegate and inspire, while others cannot.

Some are great at collaboration, others love confronting difficult challenges. Some are great at squeezing suppliers and others good at pushing people to adopt the next wave of technology. Some know exactly what people want and others are incredibly creative. Some never stop learning.

Some do none of the above and only want everything defined for them with no risks or growth required.

How could anyone analyze all of this incredible variability and decide whether people get too much money for their contributions?

Income inequality rewards the development of all of those qualities.

<comment><USER48> Income inequality can also be a sign that an economy is functioning improperly.

North Korea, Soviet Union, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, etc all have income inequality. I don't think anyone would say their economies are/were functioning properly.

> Income inequality rewards the development of all of those qualities.

Not necessarily.

Your statement would be true if every generation started a 0, on equal footing and the system/environment was fair. Would you say that income inequality in Confederate South was a result of rewarding "talents, ambition, tolerance for risk, vision"?

Income inequality is a very complex subject. People who try to frame it in a simplistic black and white worldview really do it a disservice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Let's assume for sake of argument that "inequality" is in fact "inevitable."

Then what policy conclusions are we supposed to draw?

<comment><USER50> Universal Basic Income to even it out a bit I assume!

<comment><USER51> ...which would significantly decreasing inequality - immediacy disproving the belief that inequality is some sort of inevitable natural phenomenon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Income inequality I'm totally in favor of as a reward for creating value. Outsized value, outsized reward. With that in mind, I have a few caveats. To function properly:

\- Social mobility must exist: income inequality is available for everyone based on their merits, not coupled to things like circumstances at birth.

\- Wealth inequality must only exist for the generation that earned it. Passing on your largesse to your children is just as bad as the plutocracies that the founding fathers tried to escape. They should be rewarded for the value they create, not the value I created.

\- The bottom line is pulled up to the extent that you can live a comfortable life even if you fail.

</comment><comment><USER23> tl;rd if you always bet x% on a fair coin you are going to lose in the long run, ex. 0.95*1.05 = 0.9974999999999999 < 1 (you will win and lose the same number of bets)

so if world is a casino, where everything is a bet for utility with someone else, since the best strategy is not betting (or betting the less %) the richer is always in an advantageous position, and on the long run will have anything: this is intuitively true, but it has to be said that this passive force is way inferior compared to the active skill of a good better, that can completely override this force (that on a single life span would be like 1% of the force coming from skills). Basically the system is too chaotic to even notice this little force.

Interesting idea, but this one from margrit kennedy [https://vimeo.com/71074210](https://vimeo.com/71074210) is even better, here it's another passive force, but with way more impact than that, can be considered a real case of the general idea that "inequality" is a natural phenomena (that is a quite lazy concept cause it makes humans totally dumb and with no free will, like, sure, even war is natural, and murder, etc etc). honestly these ideas are so basic that shouldn't have names on them, and surely they are not the first people to have notice that.

</comment><comment><USER53> This question only worries me in the context of philosophy or in the context of the developed world.

My experience, being born on the African continent and with my (known) family having lived on the African continent for 10 generations, teaches me that this question is not a matter of philosophy but of pragmatism. The impression I have, whether illusory or not, is that the more fundamental human endeavor is towards Mazlo's pyramid of needs. One example that I can give is that often those that "defend" the position of the rich are not rich themselves, but rather believe in the value of personal property ownership.

And with regards to those in developing countries in general, I think the feeling is that you simply want to better your life up to a point of some kind of perception of equal access to opportunity (whether attainable or not). My point is thus that inequality in wealth is perhaps like inequality in everything else, including inequal distribution of personal preferences (in everything). It's easy to say this as a person with access to education and opportunity and pretend to say it on behalf of others, and could of course be misguided, but I don't know if relative spread of opportunity is important in the way that absolute spread of opportunity is.

</comment><comment><USER54> Unfortunately I cannot read this article, because of the pay gate, but I can confidentily say that inequality is most certainly inevitable.

Inequality is the core concept which keeps everything in balance on this planet. Humans are destroying this planet by trying to achieve a utopian world of perfect equality. The only equality that we should strive for is equality of opportunity, but we can't aim for equality of distribution of resources as this would lead us into eating up our entire planet.

If everyone in this world would get the medical care to live until 100, if everyone would get fed with the same amounts of fish, meat, eggs, fruit, vegetables, etc. then we would pretty quickly end up in the tens of billions of human beings consuming everything around us until nothing will be left and we have killed ourselves.

Resources are limited and unless we can build more planet Earths at random will, then resources will always remain scarce and the only fair way to distribute these resources without looting everything to its extintion is to let all animals on this planet (including humans) compete for it. The strongest lion will catch the Zebra, the smartest human will afford a big mansion, etc.

Humans need to become comfortable with accepting the laws of nature which kept our planet flourishing for so many million years or we will put an end to it very quickly. No human has a right to anything. Whatever you are given is what you have either earned, stolen or you've been given out of mercy, but never because of entitlement. The sooner everyone can accept that fact the better things will turn out for us as a species.

Also it's important to understand that what's good for humans (today) is not necessarily good for humanity. It's good for humans to burn fossil fules like mad people to keep our homes warm in the coldest areas of the planet or to install energy wasting air cons in hot places which we want to inhabitate, but in the long run this is damaging our environment and bad for humanity. It's good for humans to fly everywhere and drive everywhere today, but it comes at a cost for humanity at some point in the future.

Humans are ego centric, self entitled and selfish animals which think that what's good for them today is good for us tomorrow, but it's often quite the opposite. The truth is, the more we live in animalistic conditions like survival of the strongest, the better it is for us as a species in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER14> If a model shows that inequality is inevitable, then perhaps we can extend the model such that equality is achieved, e.g. by adding a certain amount of tax to the equation, where the tax is redistributed over the population. This could be called the "fairness tax", and of course would still allow inequality where wealth is created.

</comment><comment><USER55> Inequality is a tricky word. At first I disliked it because, for me, it's a non-goal to have everyone equal.

I know there are some people who are willing to work harder than me, and I don't mind if they have more wealth. I also know there are people who don't want to work as hard. (This isn't meant as judgement, I'm just saying I'm somewhere in the middle.)

But let's not be black and white about it. I'm OK with some variation, but with some kind of limits. It wouldn't be reasonable for someone to receive a million times the reward for working twice as hard.

And although I'd prefer a better term, many people seem to use "inequality" as concise term for that. I don't love the choice of terminology (too prone to misinterpretation), but I can handle it.

</comment><comment><USER56> Why is this surprising? Wealth provides the means to acquire more wealth, so of course any initial inequality will tend to intensify without some mechanism to redistribute wealth among those with less wealth.

</comment><comment><USER57> I have to question the meaning of their result.

it's a known and inituitive result that a random walk on a lattice eventually reaches every point. This has no practical meaning whatsoever. it's not an interesting result because, just like the random walk on a lattice, after one person becomes an oligarchy, eventually a different person will also become an oligarch.

why did you choose to stop when the first became an oligarch? to make a click baity title?

people need to understand probabilities to read through bullshit like this article.

<comment><USER57> If you want to judge a random walk in a meaningful way, you never ask "what's the probability of reaching X started?" you ask "how long do you stay in states like X".

the expected time to exit "oligarchy" states should be pretty small. the whole discussion is completely meaningless, they intentionally asked a misleading question.

<comment><USER17> They are pointing out the existence of a fixed point in the oligarch state.

Yes, you can estimate the time to leave this fixed state by invoking an analogy to a classical mechanics problem, where the time to leave is proportional to the exponential of the action.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Inequality is inevitable.

We are not born equal. Some people are smarter, some people are better- looking, some people have more energy, are more motivated (or the opposite).

We can try and do everything we can so that everyone has the same opportunity to succeed, but if you want the same outcome you'd have to limit the smarter, better-looking, more energetic people so that their outcome is lowered to be the same as everyone else, and I don't think this would be positive for anyone.

</comment><comment><USER59> According to Dave Ramsey, 79% of millionaires inherited $0.

Globally, poverty is on the decline.

What's the problem with wealth distribution, exactly? Besides jealousy.

</comment><comment><USER60> Inequality will always be inevitable. Striving to better yourself by learning new skills and improving your abilities is to produce inequality because you're rising above the mediocre masses anytime you make an effort at anything. People should focus on equity, not equality. Equality of outcome is more fair than equality of opportunity.

<comment><USER61> >Equality of outcome is more fair

How so? To equalize outcomes for all parties, you must take from those that performed better?

<comment><USER60> I might have phrased it incorrectly but the message I was trying to convey is that those that perform better and produce more results should be rewarded more (as expected) because they put in the effort to achieved better outcomes, rather than giving someone a head start because of their race or economic status (ie affirmative action) which is inequality.

<comment><USER62> > rather than giving someone a head start

so you're saying your children should not inherit any wealth, and must be taken away to a state institution to be raised like everybody else?

I think inequality being inevitable isn't bad, as long as the floor is at an acceptable humane level.

Why does it matter if 1 person owned 99% of all the world's wealth, if the remaining 1% is enough to give basic human needs?

<comment><USER60> You're pulling a strawman so not going to dignify your first statement. On the latter, you're right in that who cares how people spend their money but nobody should be obligated to give it away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> That's an interesting model, especially with respect to how well it matches the reality. Since the transactions in the reality definitely do not look like the coin flip transactions in the model, it definitely warrants some more investigation as to why exactly it matches reality so well, despite not resembling reality as we see it.

</comment><comment><USER64> Of course inequality is inevitable. Some people are bigger/stronger/faster than others. They will naturally out-compete the others for resources. And once they have those resources, they will then use them to accumulate even more wealth, buy off politicians and institutions to siphon even more off, etc...

<comment><USER65> > Some people are bigger/stronger/faster than others.

Yes, and smarter/more driven/more socially adept too.

> They will naturally out-compete the others for resources

Only if they feel it is _necessary_ to compete. A hungry animal will risk injury to for food. A sated animal rarely does.

> And once they have those resources, they will then use them to accumulate > even more wealth, buy off politicians and institutions to siphon even more > off

Only if their greed is boundless and unchecked.

I understand these cynical sentiments (having felt this way myself) but it is a product of the abnormal system we temporarily inhabit, not the inevitable or natural state of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> My point in favor of the present income distribution being "natural" is that statistically, income is even somewhat more equally distributed than Tinder likes. Both are indicators of how good you are/how much people want to deal with you: give you cash or have sex with you. If there is no 'trick' in either distribution, they must be distributed equally. They are. Income slightly more equally because of the minimum wage/social pressure on businesses to hire useless workers/government providing some crappy employment to useless people.

Wealth is less equally distributed than income or Tinder likes, because it's an antiderivative of income distribution, also completely natural. And also because of the generational factor: you are very unlikely to get swiped right because of who your dad was, but your dad could have left you some cash or connections.

And yes, income is less equally distributed now than in 2008 exactly for the same reason as millenials having less sex on average than X-ers had in 2008: because we now have Tinder and it makes picking best partners a lot easier, resulting in top 1% best having sex with everyone with just scaps left for others. Money follows the same way due to the same factor of the smartphones and the Internet in general: success has become infinitely scalable.

It's extremely hard to do anything at all about it. Maybe we just need to know about this as a fact of life and build social constructs to contain the resulting pressures.

[1] [https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments- ii-g...](https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys- unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting- your-2ddf370a6e9a)

</comment><comment><USER67> It's a simple side effect of _money creates money_. If you have X dollars, it _almost_ automatically can create Y dollars in time T. Integrate over time and you have exponential growth. People starting with low initial number will have exponentially growing differential.

<comment><USER68> So why has inequality not grown exponentially? There are many periods where it is about constant and/or declining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> There's one glaring issue with this simulation, and it's that it keeps the amount of wealth static — it models a zero-sum world, which is not our reality.

I would like to see this simulation run where the agents are also creating wealth into the system.

</comment><comment><USER70> What if there's a need for inequality? I.e. if everyone is about same as everyone else, how would the society organize any work that requires coordinated effort of many people? How would it maintain the required discipline?

<comment><USER71> what then is the optimum level of inequality ?

What if 1 person owned all the money and everybody else worked for the promise of money ? Would that be enough inequality ?

<comment><USER70> Enough to get things going, I guess, but very inefficient, because he would have to make too many decisions himself and there would be no way to actually control the operations. This is the Soviet Union model where the recipe for a cake in Estonia had to be approved in Moscow and the level of falsifications in what should be reliable internal reports was unprecedented.

My point is that to organize coordinated work there must be some way to persuade people to comply and endure hardships, like working at nights. I see roughly three: slavery (inequality in offensive power?), "economic inequality" in capitalism, and spiritual leadership (inequality in wisdom). I like the latter the most, but it's hard to scale, and I prefer economic inequality to slavery any day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> A simple demo of the algorithm described in the article: [http://dijkstra.cs.ttu.ee/~tammet/oligarch.html](http://dijkstra.cs.ttu.ee/~tammet/oligarch.html)

</comment><comment><USER73> The question is not how to reduce or cope with inequality. Rather, the question is: why is there wealth in the first place? Why have billions of people risen out of poverty over the last few centuries?

</comment><comment><USER74> Is it inevitable? That indicates a teleology and feels to this reader like a bogus question.

Is it _structural_? Oh hell yes it is.

</comment><comment><USER71> No. It's because some people lie and cheat and exploit other people.

</comment><comment><USER75> it's really simple. the world is exponential, not linear. wealth grows (or decays) exponentially. that's it. too bad very few understand exponentiation.

</comment><comment><USER76> This question isn't decided by market theories but by human nature. And human nature, sadly, makes inequality inevitable. Or, to put it another way, avoiding inequality will always be an ongoing struggle.

</comment><comment><USER77> inequality is the natural state of things.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal. – Aristotle

</comment><comment><USER78> Finally found a cached version of the site without a paywall

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:u4UoSf...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:u4UoSfLPWBYJ:https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is- inequality-inevitable/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-b-1-d)

</comment><comment><USER79> Obviously there needs to be a balance. Too little inequality and we end up with communism, destruction of incentives for innovation, and a 10 year wait to drive a Trabant - if you're lucky! Too much inequality and there's too small a market to sustain the extraction of wealth by the elite.

</comment><comment><USER80> This article has several fatal flaws. The first one is that there is a loser in every transaction. Generally speaking, economic actors will only voluntarily engage in a mutually beneficial transaction. A person generally does not enter into a transaction where they are injured. To do so on a consistent basis is self-destructive. A shoe maker makes a shoe and sells it to me for a value greater than it costs to produce. I buy the shoe because the value of having my feet warm and protected is greater than the price of the shoe. We both win. The shoe maker would not sell a shoe for less than it costs to produce and stay a shoe maker for very long. I would not pay for a shoe that did not give me enough value.

The authors claim people make a "mistake". In a very small amount of transactions, this may be true, but you cannot base a model on every transaction containing a mistake. But let's look at the math. The authors use an example where every transaction that costs $1 nets either $1.2 or $.83. Over ten transactions, the net is less than $10. But this assumes that the person puts their whole net worth on every transaction. This is false. Each transaction costs a $1. So, the first one costs $1, and the second costs $1, etc. You cannot accumulate the past values of the previous transactions into the current one. This is the coin toss fallacy. If you flip a coin and get 99 heads in a row, the coin toss fallacy says the odds are greater the next flip will be tails. But, each flip is independent of the previous flips, so the 100th flip has a 50/50 chance of being tails, regardless of the results of the previous 99 tosses. So there is no "loser" in every transaction as the authors posit. Both parties win, or the transaction would not occur.

Their next claim is that becoming a billionaire is just "luck" and could happen randomly to anyone at any moment. Bill Gates is a billionaire because he created Microsoft. Mark Zuckerberg is a billionaire because he created Facebook. John Smith a fast food worker in Hoboken, Nebraska doesn't just wake up a billionaire one day by luck.

And what is bad about being a billionaire. Gates and Musk are doing wonderful things with their money that disbursing it to a million people would not accomplish. The authors never give a reason why income equality is bad. In fact, inequality is the natural order. They never mention the Pareto Principle, popularly manifested as the Bell Curve, which is found everywhere in nature.

The authors claim income equality is destabilizing and must be corrected by redistributing all the wealth in equal amounts. However, as stated, income inequality is the stabilized form. It might be increasing slightly now due to faster movement of information, but class mobility is highly dynamic. Yesterday's billionaires are not today's, and today's billionaires might not be tomorrow's. Income inequality is the stable distribution of scarce assets in a free market economy.

</comment><comment><USER81> Do people not mind the paywall or do you just not get it?

</comment><comment><USER82> Inequality is inevitable. It is baked into everything in nature, from the stars to ocean depths. When was the last time you looked up at the night sky and saw a uniformly spaced and evenly lit field of stars?

Evolution itself would not exist without inequality. Yes, some animals were better than others at certain tasks and evolutionary pressure did it's thing over time.

I suck as a dancer. I suck as a painter. I suck at a lot of things. And yet, I am a better than others at certain things and I am massively better than others in other areas. My life and that of everyone around me has inequality as a positive element rather than a negative. This is why I hire a plumber and an electrician and don't do everything myself.

EQUALITY OF OUTCOME IS A FANTASY.

Equality of opportunity is important and should be promoted far and wide. Trying to force equal outcomes is just silly, sorry.

Hence the Pareto distribution. It's real and it is a fact of nature everywhere you look. There is no such thing as equally distributed outcomes in but the most esoteric corner cases (having trouble thinking of one example).

As for the scale of inequality. That's another red herring.

The way I live today is beyond the equivalent of a rich person a hundred years ago. It is WAY beyond the super-rich before that. Kings did not live this way centuries ago. And yet I don't have Bill Gates level money. Not even close.

The average person today lives far better than the wealthy lived not too long ago. They certainly have greater access to amazing medical advances as well as technology. There are over FOUR AND A HALF BILLION people world-wide using the internet. When you consider that, in rough terms, about two and a half billion out of the 7.7 billion on the planet cannot use the internet (too young or too old) that means that approximately 87% of those able to use the internet use it. You start slicing that further and you might just discover the percentage is much higher than that. For example, my father certainly falls under the category of not too old to be counted as a potential internet user. However, he has less than zero interest and doesn't use it. My mother, on the other hand, is on the 'net every day.

Anyhow, the point is that this business of vilifying the "1%" is just silly. It has no bearing whatsoever on how people live. In other words, they are not taking oxygen out of the room, quite to the contrary.

We do need to raise even more people out of poverty, with some areas of the world notable for a desperate need for improvement. Nobody is saying we can't and should not do better, we always can. What isn't sensible is the constant finger-pointing to this mythical "1%" as the problem. Every year we raise millions of people out of poverty. Life, in general, has been getting better and better over time. Even in places where people have difficult lives you'll find they wear clothes and have things that are markedly better than what was available to them just a decade or two ago.

If we want to make things better for more people we just need to continue to focus on growing economies through free market capitalism. It's the only force in known history that has elevated so many people out of the dark ages. Everything else is a formula for disaster and misery, also a historical fact.

OK, I'll duck now. Let me have it.

<comment><USER83> I think most people promoting redistribution would agree on the benefits of equality of opportunity over outcome (obviously not all). They would simply argue that equality of opportunity is not there yet and the Gini coefficient can perhaps be used to measure that. For example if the Nordic countries operate well and have better equality of opportunity in the 30s as opposed to the US's 40s and we have seen in the past that the 30s worked well for the US then perhaps it's the 30s we should be shooting for with our efforts.

<comment><USER82> Sure, but you have to consider that the often-touted Nordic countries have a very different demographic composition than the US. Easy example:

Estimates place the illegal immigrant population of the US somewhere in the 25 million range (as a conservative estimate). Assuming half of them are of working age, that is, in rough terms, over 10% of the portion of the US population that is working (about 108 million).

The vast majority of the people who enter the US in this manner do not have college degrees or high-value professions. Which means their earning potential will be severely reduced.

Take 10% of the workforce in any Nordic country, replace it with people who are educationally challenged and the numbers will look very different.

Please note: I am NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, arguing that we should not try to do better. However, certain things are simply inescapable realities that simply take tons of time and effort to improve. Not to go too far, the US is famous for spending more money per student than, dare I say, most nations in the world, and yet our educational results in mathematics, language and other areas don't rank very well at all when compared to nations with much less to spend.

Inequality at work. Money isn't the only variable.

Perhaps that's the real thing that bothers me about these discussions about inequality. These are complex multivariate problems and these discussions make it sound like the only variable worth considering is how much money the top 1% have. It isn't. In fact, I would venture to guess that this factor or variable might not even make the list of the top 100 factors if we were to make such a list from a framework of being brutally honest rather than political.

Simple example of this: Brutal dictatorial regimes hold back their population, cause misery, suffering and inequality. That's a big one. Places like Latin America, North Korea, the Middle East and a good deal of Africa are afflicted by this. Do we, the "civilized world" in the name of creating equal opportunity and access to better outcomes, invade all of these countries, depose all tyrants and institute one hundred years of external benevolent control?

This is crazy, of course, but it is also reality. As a single example, I researched the Paris Accord in great detail and learned that dictators were enriching themselves, their families and associates with the money put into the system by the US and Europe. Money that was supposed to be devoted towards these nations becoming "greener" ended-up buying the ruling class new jets, cars and other "energy efficient" luxuries. So, yeah, the "do we invade and rule" scenario isn't too far fetched if we truly care about creating equality of opportunity and elevating millions out of truly deplorable conditions.

Not an easy problem. Not a single variable problem. And the "richest 1%" thing is a complete red herring.

<comment><USER83> Illegal immigration and what happens in other countries are at best a red herring here because illegal immigrants aren't typically eligible for benefits and are typically working off the books. The US government has responsibility for its citizens, not those of Mexico or Latin America.

Also keep in mind many of the proposed redistribution efforts fall squarely in the "equality of opportunity" column which you claim to support. For example, free or very cheap higher education. If we want to be as educated as the Nordic countries this would go a long way. Or taxpayer funded healthcare. This would both reduce the total cost of healthcare and also greatly improve access. It's hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you're sick and can't afford to see a doctor.

Perhaps let me turn this conversation around. Rather than throwing up your hands and saying "it's complex", what specific policies would you support to improve equality of opportunity?

<comment><USER84> It is misleading to say that "illegal immigrants aren't typically eligible for benefits".

Eligibility for benefits happens via children and partners. The group of people thus receives benefits that are then shared.

Via this mechanism, families containing non-citizens consume more benefits than families composed purely of citizens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> ...

</comment><comment><USER86> Wrong question. Better question: why is the scale of inequality acceptable?

<comment><USER38> Because capitalism and free enterprise are predicated on fair competition and equal access. In theory, the best and most innovative ideas thrive and lead to economic growth.

Extreme inequality undermines this by allowing those who already have significant wealth to put their finger on the scales (lobbying, anticompetitive practices, etc.)

<comment><USER87> The thing that always irks me about this is that we keep talking about the individuals even though that's not the real issue.

Sure, Jeff Bezos has a lot of wealth, but really what he has is a lot of shares of Amazon. It's Amazon that really has the money. Even if Bezos is the CEO, he has a duty to the other shareholders to act in their interests. He can't just donate all the company's assets to charity even if he wanted to.

The real problem is that corporations are too big. The fact that this makes their founders very rich is more of a side note. Increasing the capital gains rate isn't going to make Apple or Microsoft smaller or give them more competition. It isn't even going to collect more money from the largest shareholders until they sell their shares, which many of them never actually do.

This is a competition problem, not a wealth problem. If there were ten times as many companies then there would be ten times as many founders who each had a tenth as much money -- or less, if the added competition directed more of the money to the customers and workers.

<comment><USER88> This isn't accurate. Amazon doesn't 'have the money' that counts as Bezo's wealth. It is the value of Amazon to others that produces his wealth.

Bezos may not be able to donate Amazon's assets to charity, but he can donate his assets - in this case his shares of Amazon.

He can equally well sell his Amazon shares and buy something else with the proceeds, so the wealth that is attributed to him really his his.

Of course there is a point at which Amazon's value might be impacted if Bezos sold his shares, but he could probably realize well over 50% of his holdings before that became an issue.

<comment><USER87> The problem with your theory is that somebody would have to buy the shares from him. At scale that's zero sum, and the money can't come from people who don't have any.

Think about it this way. Alphabet owns Google. When that happened, did it create an additional company out of whole cloth with the value of Google, on top of the value of Alphabet? No. That's double counting. The value only exists once. Moreover, unless Amazon is _dissolved_ , the corporation controls that value (and is required to act in the interests of all the shareholders), regardless of who owns the shares at any given time.

<comment><USER88> Your alphabet / google analogy has zero connection to what we are talking.

There doesn't need to be anyone with the cash available to pay the entire price of Amazon.

If Jeff Bezos wants to purchase something, he can trade Amazon stock for it.

The corporation doesn't have any control over whether he does that or not.

It is exactly equivalent to money.

<comment><USER87> > It is exactly equivalent to money.

By this logic Google has an infinite amount of money because it has the ability to issue new shares. It can create a zillion dollars of new shares and sell them in the market and now it has a zillion dollars higher market cap because it has an extra zillion dollars in cash.

But it's not actually infinite, for two reasons. First, the money (or whatever you're exchanging the shares for) still has to come from somewhere. There isn't unlimited demand. It's not possible for every billionaire to sell their shares at once because then there would be nobody to sell them _to_. If they all tried to at once, the share prices would crash into the floor.

More importantly, if Bezos sells some shares in Amazon, it doesn't cause Amazon to have less capital. The company is still the same size. All you've changed is who owns it -- and unless the price he sells it for is dramatically lower than its current market value, it has to be some other rich people because nobody else has the money to buy it from him. The only way for a rich person to reduce their holdings in a corporation in order to spend the money is for some other rich person to reduce their _spending_ by the same amount and use the money to buy the shares in their place -- and then the corporation is in control of _that person 's_ wealth, in the same amount as the original shareholder's.

The things that cause corporate officers to control less wealth are things like corporate spinoffs, taking existing public companies private (which then puts actual control into the hands of the owner), competitors eroding the incumbent's market share, corporate bankruptcies, etc. Two rich guys trading shares for real estate doesn't do that. At the end the corporation still has the same amount of wealth and the two rich guys have the same amount of wealth, you've just changed which one has their wealth in stock vs. land.

<comment><USER88> The statement you made about google issuing more shares has nothing to do with my logic and is completely irrelevant.

You are right that Bezos selling shares does not change the amount of capital Amazon has.

The fact that nobody has enough money to buy all of Amazon from Bezos is also completely irrelevant.

You are right that Bezos exchanging stock for real estate doesn't reduce his wealth unless the real estate is overpriced.

When you buy something with money, the same thing happens - the amount of wealth held by both parties doesn't change unless the goods are overpriced or are consumed.

You haven't refuted anything I said in the previous comment.

Bezos can use Amazon stock to buy whatever he wants, the same way you and I can use money, and the corporation has no control over this.

Bezos's wealth is exactly what it looks like. He can indeed use it just like money.

<comment><USER87> > The statement you made about google issuing more shares has nothing to do > with my logic and is completely irrelevant.

Your logic is that shares are money, but companies can print shares, which would imply that they could print money.

The shares are only valuable because they represent the company. The value in the shares isn't independent or duplicative of the value of the company. If the company burned to the ground then the shares would be worthless too -- it's the same wealth, and as long as the resources are invested in the corporation, it's the corporation that has control over it.

You're trying to make a lot out of the fact that the owners could sell their shares, but there are two reasons that doesn't do it. The first is, that doesn't come into play unless they actually do sell their shares. But if they did that in practice and spent the money (not just move it to another investment security) then we wouldn't be having this debate because then they would no longer be billionaires.

And the second is that they can't actually do that at scale, because in order for that to happen, you would need somebody else to buy the shares from them, which would mean that _that_ person would have to commit an equivalent amount of resources which then couldn't be used for some other purpose. As long as Amazon exists, it necessary that somebody be foregoing their own use of an Amazon-sized quantity of wealth.

> When you buy something with money, the same thing happens - the amount of > wealth held by both parties doesn't change unless the goods are overpriced > or are consumed.

The most relevant part of that being _consumed_ , because that's what the disposition of resources is really about. Trading one investment for another is still investment -- and investment in corporations is giving control of your resources to someone else. Actual spending is consumption. You burn fuel or use electricity. You pay a person to do a job and their time is consumed and can't be used for something else. You occupy some land that then nobody else can use at the same time. Those are the things that actually matter to people and affect the world, not whether Jeff Bezos owns shares of Amazon and Larry Page owns shares of Google or vice versa.

What I'm getting at here is that if you want to reallocate resources from adtech to something else, it is actually necessary to _deallocate it_ from adtech, not just sell your shares in the adtech company to somebody else so that the same total amount of resources are allocated to adtech but now it's somebody else's name on the documents. If the same amount of labor continues to be spent on targeting ads, that labor is not being spent on curing cancer, regardless of whether ownership of the shares changes hands.

<comment><USER88> "Your logic is that shares are money, but companies can print shares, which would imply that they could print money."

That is not my logic. You have made that up our of nowhere.

Obviously printing more shares leads to dilution and doesn't increase the overall value of the outstanding shares.

But that's just like money too - printing more money leads to devaluation of the currency.

So you are wrong, and clearly shares can be used just like money.

I agree with you that selling AdTech/Google shares doesn't anything to reduce the resources that Google can spend on targeting ads.

But that's not what our conversation has been about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Animals on both ends of the bell curve. Serial Killer avg. 10 deaths? Last billionaire I met killed 17 and poisoned 30,000. Silicon Valley is essential viewing at the moment on that subject.

<comment><USER89> Downvotes? At least explain.

<comment><USER45> This is totally incoherent. What are you trying to say?

<comment><USER89> Apologies, I'll try again. At both ends of the human spectrum you have people who are so basic human life means nothing to them. In both respects these people want power over others. I suggest the least intelligent are the serial killer types but the most dangerous are the rich and powerful. Wiki commodities brokers.

<comment><USER45> Fair enough. I think people are people and good and evil are probably normally distributed between the poor and the wealthy more or less. There are certainly bad people at both ends.

I'm familiar with what commodities brokers are and don't see anything wrong with it. I'm quite happy for the existence of modern financial markets.

<comment><USER89> These are the public versions, I promise it's much worse; A little light reading for you: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich) , [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glencore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glencore) , [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafigura](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafigura) . Claude died.

<comment><USER45> Ok, so someone was indicted for fraud.He's in jail as he should be. Many janitors have committed felonies. No one tries to shut down janitoring.

You seem to have a very simplistic worldview.

<comment><USER89> Back at you? You've never worked in finance or you are a shill. Bye, bye. Good Luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Reading through the comments, I was hoping that someone actually pasted the article itself... because it's behind a paywall. But it seems that most comments can be TLDR'ed as the title of the post.

</comment><comment><USER91> Yes, we are all different.

</comment><comment><USER92> Absolutely - and that's a good thing. Those who produce more should earn more as well.

<comment><USER39> It's a fair statement. Can HN provide a logical response instead of downvotes?

<comment><USER93> Because "produce more" and "have more" aren't actually related. Have you produced more if you're born rich? Does Jeff Bezos actually produce billions?

It's a statement that doesn't actually represent reality.

<comment><USER39> Jeff Bezos improved global quality of life EXACTLY the amount he's been paid. Otherwise, why would anybody volunteer their money his way?

<comment><USER94> > Jeff Bezos improved global quality of life EXACTLY the amount he's been > paid. Otherwise, why would anybody volunteer their money his way?

That's just the repetition a rather circular dogma: the market is assumed to be right (typically demonstrated by some oversimplified textbook example), so right is whatever our market does.

If you want to use Bezos's wealth to justify the value he's created, you should at least _try_ to make an independent estimation of that value.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ripple is a Silicon Valley-based startup making milk from peas - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/25/ripple-is-a-silicon-valley-based-startup-making-milk-from-peas/ <comment><USER2> "Is that milk you're drinking?"

"No, it's pea!"

</comment><comment><USER3> Techcrunch has no idea where Emeryville is, apparently.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you track bugs from your side-projects? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> A "TODO" file. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER3> I use Trello. Here's what it looks like: [https://i.imgur.com/9JgaDf9.png](https://i.imgur.com/9JgaDf9.png)

I don't work in software development so have been experimenting with "agile concepts" to see what works best for me.

</comment><comment><USER4> If it's just you. TODO file works best. Other than that, trello works fine.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use a trello board or a TODO file

</comment><comment><USER6> GitLab.com

Free. Yes, even for private repositories.

</comment><comment><USER7> Self-hosted JIRA instance

</comment><comment><USER8> redmine (redmine.org) on a digitalocean droplet.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use TFS scrum board.

</comment><comment><USER10> Gitlab issue tracker

</comment><comment><USER11> Bugzilla</comment>


Not invented here, revisited - <AUTHOR> http://theengineeringmanager.com/growth/not-invented-here-revisited/ <comment><USER2> From my personal experience, NIH corresponds to the need to DIY to proper understand. I often feel like I can't decide between options unless I at least built a super-basic, minimal version of the functionality. The other aspect is this idea of mine that technology is ready for primetime as soon as it can be easily reproduced. People in our field have a sense of elegance - like every problem becomes trivial once you find the best abstraction. And there is this "do one thing an do it right" idea.

How many bugs do fix by removing complexity that is unnecessary for your special case?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a name for the opposite of NIH syndrome, where programmers only use external libraries and frameworks, and are totally allergic to the notion of writing in-house code?

<comment><USER4> For me, reusing widely used code that's heavily tested is preferable to the liability of handwritten code. If I'm given the opportunity, when possible, I'm going to choose the former.

<comment><USER3> That's a good default to start with, but that's not the whole story.

Every system has its own sets of constraints, and its own sets of goals. Those constraints and goals don't necessarily align with the assumptions made in the library you're using, because it's rare to have a library that does _precisely_ what you need.

When you can't find a library that meets your needs, you have two choices: 1) roll your own solution, or 2) find a library that does something similar to what you want, and coerce the library into a form that suits your needs.

Neither are pleasant options, but I find #1 tends to give a better outcome in the long run. You know what your system constraints are, so you're in a better position to design around them.

<comment><USER5> I feel like the problem comes down to people not willing to read the docs. Reading the freaking manual helps understand if your tools are precise enough or configurable to solve your problems. Then reading the source code (if possible).

Then, assuming it's still not worth extending, inventing it yourself isn't such a bad idea.

<comment><USER6> On the other hand time required to read and _understand_ the source can be often very compareable to writing specific solution to your problem. Which all comes down to one biggest bottle neck of our industry: sharing understanding of solutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> IMHO, the only valid reason for "roll your own" is if the application needs 50x+ performance than what would be possible using existing solutions (as is the case described in this blog post). Otherwise follow the rules:

The three rules of software development:

1\. Don't write code as there is a library that already does exactly what you want to do

2\. Don't write code because you can combine several libraries to do what you want to do

3\. Don't write code because there is some mega-framework, one subset of which does what you want to do

</comment><comment><USER8> > NIH highlights situations where engineers side with reinventing the wheel > due to a belief that building technology in-house will be better, quicker > and cheaper than using an existing solution

In my experience, it's more like "due to an uncontrollable urge that building technology in-house will be more fun, more interesting, more pleasing than using an existing solution" :)

...not that I'm completely innocent in this respect.

<comment><USER9> > due to an uncontrollable urge that building technology in-house will be more > fun, more interesting, more pleasing than using an existing solution

Indeed, retention is valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> To explain the bias around NIH, I use the D and D analogy of "pursued by people longer on intelligence than wisdom"

</comment><comment><USER11> so, why do people make their own children rather than look for orphans first?

<comment><USER12> Probably similar reason for NIH syndrome. It's theirs, they made it and they have a reasonable idea how it's going to function. Also, if it breaks, they have no one to blame but themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Somebody else has had this problem."

</comment><comment><USER14> As a marketing consultant, my biggest advice to clients is to never, ever build anything custom. Use Zapier to connect things, Segment to manage data flow, Shopify/Weebly to build the site, use Sumo to test site changes, etc. Building things custom just delays projects so much, especially in marketing where you don't even know if a project will achieve the goals you want.</comment>


The Morning Norm - What Do All Entrepreneurs Have in Common? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.inc.com/the-morning-norm/2007/08/what_do_all_entrepreneurs_have_in_common_1.html

<comment><USER2> this is great news. i've always hoped that after I make some money with some tech startup I'll open up my own restaurant. I must be on the right track :)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's an extra "#more" in the link.</comment>


A Schrödinger cat with eight lives: quantum entanglement of eight photons - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/02/a-schrodinger-cat-with-eight-tails-quantum-entanglement-of-eight-photons.ars?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+Featured+Content%29 <comment><USER2> I'm not sure its really accurate to call the Copenhagen interpretation the "standard interpretation"? I'm given to understand that either a majority or at least a plurality of physicists subscribe to the Everett Interpretation.

<comment><USER3> In fact, the Copenhagen interpretation has been proven wrong by fellow lisper Ron Garret. You can read his paper here:

www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf

and watch his google talk about it here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc .

The problem is, that most people (not scientists, mind you) do not really care anyway, and the Copenhagen interpretation gives you a nice story to tell, which is fairly "strange", yet somewhat understandable. I hate the fact that even science magazines still 100% subscribe to the Copenhagen interpretation, just to attract a greater readership and to be able to use catchier headlines.

<comment><AUTHOR> Kind of what my gut was telling me (from the Google Talk comments):

"I feel like a lot of assmptions were made in this lecture. We've thrown formulas out the window before because they didn't agree with newly experimental data. Using the schroedinger equation to prove the results of the quantum eraser is pretty much equivalent to using old newtonian formulas to prove that you can travel faster than the speed of light - it doesn't hold water. I'm not saying Ron Garret is wrong, but too many assumptions were made in this proof, i'd rather trust experimental data."

Still reading. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really enjoy reading articles like this; what I found interesting is that there is an assumed entangled relation between the photons and the beam.

"A second test of entanglement, which used polarization orientations other than horizontal and vertical, found a ratio of approximately 4:1."

I didn't see a reference to the orientation in regards to the Earth's magnetic field.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the future of computation:

>However, the system is also powerful enough that it is a step forward in terms of optical quantum computation. The authors suggest that their setup may enable quantum simulations to tackle more complicated problems in condensed matter physics than have been possible so far.

That is why I posted this article.</comment></comment>


iOS 8 Adoption Rate Hits 72% as Android Lollipop Distribution Reaches 1.6% - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2015/02/03/ios-8-adoption-rate-hits-72-percent/

<comment><USER2> Last year, iOS 7 adoption rate was at 80% at the same period: [http://www.macrumors.com/2014/01/27/ios-7-adoption-80/](http://www.macrumors.com/2014/01/27/ios-7-adoption-80/)

The slow down of adoption of iOS updates is something that should worry Apple, and all developers invested in the Platform. That worries me…

</comment><comment><USER3> This.. really isn't suprising. Ios 8 is immediately available on all modern iPhones, whereas Lollipop is still unsupported on almost all devices in the android market. Heck, the Verizon galaxy s5, one of the more common phones, just got the update yesterday! Additionally, many people are afraid of loosing their root, which is all-but-essental for power users.</comment>


Commission adopts regulatory proposals for a Connected Continent - <AUTHOR> http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-779_en.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting point concerning net-neutrality:

First this:

This proposal will end discriminatory blocking and throttling and deliver effective protection of the open internet. It sets out clear rules for traffic management on the Internet, which has to be non-discriminatory, proportionate and transparent.

Then that:

Companies would however be allowed to differentiate their offers (for example by speed) and compete on enhanced quality of service. There is nothing unusual about this – postal services (express mail) and airlines (economy/business class) have done this for decades. But this is subject to a vital pre- condition: that the quality of open Internet must not be impaired.</comment>


Manifesto For Success - <AUTHOR> http://www.proudn00b.com/post/1025721009/manifesto-for-success

<comment><USER2> very appropriate!</comment>


Mitsubishi admits cheating fuel economy test data - <AUTHOR> https://thestack.com/world/2016/04/20/mitsubishi-admits-cheating-fuel-economy-test-data/ <comment><USER2> > [...] there was evidence that its employees had altered emissions data for a > number of models.

Of course it was the employees, who else?

<comment><USER3> It certainly wasn't the guy with a few million in equity or the guy who gets a bonus if he hits his sales targets. It must of been that hourly lab tech!</comment></comment>


Conflicting Assertions Over an Electric Car Test Drive - <AUTHOR> http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/conflicting-assertions-over-an-electric-car-test-drive/

<comment><AUTHOR> There was an extensive, and on the whole rather favorable, review of the Model S from The Verge

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/12/3969260/going-the- distance...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/12/3969260/going-the-distance- driving-tesla-model-s-in-the-real-world)

submitted to HN while most participants were discussing the John Broder New York Times review. (Most participants missed the discussion on the article from The Verge.)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5208154>

The author of the report in The Verge takes care to mention, "Tesla hopes for its first quarter of black ink this year after a decade of operation, but make no mistake, it's still in the throes of startupdom. Much of its working capital has come from nearly half a billion dollars in low-interest rate government loans. It has just a few dozen dealers around the world."

</comment><comment><USER2> "Here's the most important data point: Musk says Broder unplugged the charger after charging to a range of 32 miles and then drove off for the final segment of his trip which spanned 61 miles. The car made it 51 miles. If Broder can't contest that, there isn't much use quibbling over Musk's other accusations." [1]

[1]: [http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/elon- musks...](http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/elon-musks-data- doesnt-back-his-claims-new-york-times-fakery/62149/#comment-799443017)

</comment><comment><USER3> I applaud the NYT attempt to come out and acknowledge what happened and ask for a "fair fight" from both parties. This is much stronger than a lame PR statement. Also the links to Reddit conversations off-site are a great testament to just how much journalism has changed in the past decade. Can't wait to see who wins this heavyweight fight.

 _slowly reaches for popcorn_

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't it have been nice if the NYT went out and bought a couple of GoPros before the test drive? Musk obviously improved his recordkeeping, how hard would it have been for the NYT to up their game as well?

<comment><USER5> This is what blows my mind in both directions:

1) A reporter not recording everything he does in the age of GoPro and a 2 TB harddrives at Best Buy.

2) Tesla did record damn near everything: GPS, battery, display, temperature (internal and target), charge duration, etc.

Metrics are king, and I think we are ushering in a new age of "you can't bullshit me, I recorded it too" journalism.

<comment><USER6> Or, we are entering in a new age of "if you can't write your story with the same rigor as a top law firm would write an M&A contract, I'll hang you with your every choice of wording".

<comment><USER7> It's possible a damning story in an influential newspaper could have as much impact on Tesla's business as an M&A contract.

If I were the journalist I would have got my facts checked with Tesla. If I were Tesla, I would have checked that my response was ironclad, especially when accusing a journalist of lying. Now, they have two problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the end I expect both parties to be at fault, no one to apologize, and all of us to be unclear as to what exactly happened.

<comment><USER9> Tesla has a chance to come out of this with more positive publicity than before.

<comment><USER10> This comes off as straight negative to me, especially considering the last I saw of them was winning the car of the year award. I would probably have never seen this review, and the fact that Musk is throwing such a tantrum about it (to my initial perception, anyway) does not endear the brand to me.

I doubt this would ever affect my buying decision, but I wouldn't call this positive publicity by any extent. Arguments and conflicts only look good when you are the clear winner.

<comment><USER9> _> This comes off as straight negative to me, especially considering the last I saw of them was winning the car of the year award._

If a bunch of people end up triumphantly tweeting about their successful road trips as they replicate the trip, Tesla will come out ahead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _I eventually intend to ask him to fully release and "open source" the driving logs_

Wow... how 'open source' has become so mainstream. We can now all look forward to the term getting fully diluted and loose its meaning. Already in this article the term is being abused to, IMO, shift the tone from a "challenge by NYTimes" to a plea to Tesla's values.

<comment><USER12> How do you feel that the term has been diluted? As far as I can tell, the statement is true to the Collins dictionary definition of "intellectual property, esp computer source code, that is made freely available to the general public by its creators" [1]. The data is intellectual property that will (hopefully) be made freely available for the general public to scrutinize.

[1] [http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/open- sou...](http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/open-source)

<comment><USER13> It is being diluted in multiple ways:

1\. The author is "verbing" the phrase

2\. The Collins definition starts like "intellectual property, esp. _source code_..." I contend that (as does the free dictionary), in current usage, "open source" refers _exclusively_ to source code. The author is using the phrase to refer to _data_ , which is not the same thing.

<http://www.thefreedictionary.com/open%20source>

<comment><USER14> With regard to your first point:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=open+sourci...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=open+sourcing)

I think that the tech community is the one that verbed "open sourcing".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As an aside, I love that they linked to the discussion on Reddit - even when at the bottom it has its own comment box (with conspicuously no comments?).

</comment><comment><USER10> I realize that there are two companies' reputations at stake here, but this is feeling a little like arguing over how stupid the driver was, not actually about the Tesla itself.

</comment><comment><USER16> No, there are not conflicting assertions. There are objective facts on one side, and assertions on the other.

<comment><USER17> This is incorrect. For example, "Our Model S never had a chance with John Broder" is an assertion. "Vehicle logs tell true story that he didn't actually charge to max & took a long detour" is an assertion ("long detour") and one that Musk backed away from.

There are also assertions in the original post that Musk's data didn't address. For example, Broder said that a Tesla customer support agent gave him inaccurate information about appropriate driving patterns for maximum range. Broder may or may not be accurate there but it's certainly an important part of the argument.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any positive effects to be expected from the NSA leaks? - <AUTHOR>

Ok HN. With all the NSA leaks we've seen some very negative effects. As many of you know even websites and email services closed it's doors.<p>So I'm curious, what are the positive effects you see? What important initiatives and projects have emerged so far? Are you working on a project that returns privacy to the people? Tell HN about it. <comment><USER2> To answer your questions: "What important initiatives and projects have emerged so far? Are you working on a project that returns privacy to the people? Tell HN about it."

We started working on a project a couple of years ago that would allow users to run their own private servers that will talk to their trusted friends and family and allow search and share without leaking data. Its not impossible to spy on, but the hope is that it will not allow mass surveillance. Currently it allows PDF ebooks and photo albums, + an interface to the file system that users can use to store any files, and access it from anywhere. The connection from the browser to their own servers is encrypted end to end.

Project Homepage Link: [https://register.blib.us](https://register.blib.us)

</comment><comment><USER3> Taking a very selfish approach, it could be argued as positive that websites/services that sell themselves as secure but have been shown to be fundamentally flawed in that security are shut down. Losing a false sense of security isn't necessarily a bad thing. Also the fact this debate is even happening is a positive thing, the government wouldn't have been in a rush to let us know without a leak.

That said, I highly doubt anything will emerge to really combat this - cryptography is illegal in the US if you don't provide the keys when requested I believe?

If you're sending in plain text, or if Eve has the keys, and Eve can intercept the message, you can't keep it secret.</comment>


Facebook, Take Note: In China's 'New Era,' the Communist Party Comes First - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-take-note-in-chinas-new-era-the-communist-party-comes-first-1509615006 <comment><AUTHOR> [http://archive.is/IAsol](http://archive.is/IAsol)

Archive.is link above. Thoughts on striking profits vs compromising morals and ethics. The ovation for the dictatorship/communist/Orwellian speech was very disheartening</comment>