> What's weird is when people like you involve themselves for no reason at all though.
They made it so much better with a witty reply. I was just thinking this is one of my favorite HN threads I've seen in a long time. And now you've ended it with the HN trope of "I have no sense of humor but I still need to point out why I'm better than you."
The same options the average citizen of any country has - protest followed by rebellion. America was founded by rebelling against the tyranny of unfair taxes.
Until Americans understand that this isn't going to end without violence (or a very real threat of violence, meaning people actually show up prepared to fight), they will continue to be increasingly oppressed. You may disagree with violence, but the oppressors see that as convenient.
If your opponent knows all you will do is use words, they have nothing to fear. MAGA was all about the 2nd Amendment and shows of personal force (running busses off the road, boat parades, going armed into state houses, etc) and got all the pacifist Dems cowed.
> if they have the mentality to improve upon themselves
There's the rub. In my experience, and I understand anecdata is only so useful, people that really want to keep learning more than they have to are quite rare. I doubt that group is even 10% of people. If you only surround yourself with nerds who code for fun, you are going to have an extremely biased view on this issue.
Nerds who code for fun often also have the advantage of being single and childless. One's capability for learning and self-improvement really diminishes once you have one or two small kids at home. It's pretty much like working two full time jobs until they go to school and become more independent.
> The Trump administration plans to rescind Biden-era AI chip curbs as part of a broader effort to revise semiconductor trade restrictions that have drawn strong opposition from major tech companies and foreign governments, according to people familiar with the matter.
This doesn't mean anything. He won't get enough likes on Xitter tomorrow and will flip-flop to 1000% tariffs or whatever else comes to his senile mind.
This unstable circus of a government can't be trusted.
You don't even need to think about money as power, you can just think about money as money. There's a far simpler way to think about wealth inequality. If you believe it's a problem, by definition the people holding the wealth are the cause of the problem. This isn't some social or philosophical construct - it's just basic deduction.
So quite literally, the wealthy holding the money means less money to go around to everyone else. The more they hold themselves, the more is withheld from everyone else. You can have debates about wealth distribution endlessly because it's subjective and complicated, but you can't argue that the wealthy getting richer is good for anyone except the wealthy. Trickle-down-economics has already been established as propaganda at this point.
I understand that wealth is not static in the world and it's possible to create wealth for everyone, but my point is money hoarding is definitionally the cause of wealth inequality.
If the wealthy held their wealth in money then there would be no problem. The problem arises because the wealthy hold their wealth in assets, the most productive of which become hoarded in fewer and fewer silos. Since the assets are desireable and increasing in scarcity their asking price increases. Since this price is paid in money, the value of money falls. This would be fine except that most normal people do hold most of their wealth in money so this reduction in buying power makes them poorer.
This split is particularly difficult to address because money is easy to tax (redistribute) while assets that may or may not be for sale at some arbitrary asking price are a lot harder to break up in this way.
Ultimately, to attempt to extract and redistribute this sort of ethereal wealth requires unpopular adjustments to long-held values of personal freedom and ownership that make the whole system possible in the first place.
The problem may in fact be insoluble sustainably. Most of human history provides examples of extreme wealth inequality.
I get what you say -- hoarded wealth is essentially idle. But I think there's more to it. The people who hold that wealth prefer to live in one country, and have inflicted themselves on the governance of that country.
> I get what you say -- hoarded wealth is essentially idle.
I'm not talking at all about wealth being idle in my previous comment. My point is entirely that the more money the rich have, the less money the poor have.
What you're bringing up is how the wealthy use their money to change their political environment to benefit themselves. This is also a problem, but is parallel to the point I was making.
You are replying to every single comment - you seem really upset about this. I never said anything was stolen from me. I said wealth inequality is the result of rich people holding money, because by definition there can be no wealth inequality without rich people. It's an objective statement and you're projecting so much political vitriol onto it.
> That doesn't all mean they are "holding" money. Money is not the same thing as wealth. Personally, I don't have any money other than pocket change.
I'm using money and wealth interchangeably here because there is no meaningful distinction in this context. I cannot take you seriously when you keep bringing up irrelevant things. It's obvious you don't understand my point. And I've had enough arguments with you on this site over the years to know it's a waste of my time to engage with you more than I already have.
It would be absurd to expect to change anyone's core beliefs with a couple of HN posts.
I'm satisfied just letting you know there is a case for free markets. I also admit that it is not an easy thing to understand. How can a chaotic system possibly work?
For a given definition, it doesn't. At least, not without vastly understating the gov's role (some might say responsibility) to step in and monopoly bust, regulate strategically important sectors of the economy, and generally try to provide human-scale stability to a system that tends to want to burn itself and polite society down more than a caffeinated toddler with an outlet, a fork, and a dream.
That's debatable. The US economy grew spectacularly in its first century, pulling scores of millions of poor people up into the middle class and beyond.
Regulation along the lines of enforcing contracts, protecting rights, and internalizing exernalities are the proper role of government.
Governments have never managed to make economies stable.
Anything's debatable. The question is whether or not what you've chosen to defend is more or less substantial than a wet fart in a hurricane.
Pre-industrial growth that was driven largely by settler colonialism does not make for a useful economic model since we're unlikely to find any new continents any time soon. To say nothing of the horrors inflicted on native populations, but I suspect that's not a group you'd be too sympathetic towards.
I would recommend you stop confusing your own willful ignorance with lack of evidence. You could take a cursory look at the wikipedia page on Australia's response to the GFC as a case study in government doing it's actual job, instead of this fantasy of auto-regulation via free market competition. You can have a bit of both and reap outsized benefits as has been the case for every great to super power sunce the dissolution of the USSR.
> It would be absurd to expect to change anyone's core beliefs with a couple of HN posts.
I 100% agree.
> I'm satisfied just letting you know there is a case for free markets.
I'm a believer in free markets. You just cannot stop projecting assumptions onto me. I've clarified my point multiple times already so I'm not going to bother repeating myself again. I think we can both agree it's okay to be misunderstood by people on the internet.
> "I'm satisfied just letting you know there is a case for free markets."
There's no such thing as "free markets", it's A. Smith's BS.
> "I also admit that it is not an easy thing to understand. How can a chaotic system possibly work?"
A chaotic system cannot work for any meaningful stretch of time. Moreover, we don't have a chaotic system, actually it's a system under finely tuned control: Biden placed 100% tariff on Chinese EVs, helping Tesla. Trump added more tariffs on China, exempted Tesla... Truly a chaotic coincidence /s
> the wealthy holding the money means less money to go around to everyone else
Wealthy entrepreneuers created their wealth, it was not transferred to them. It does not reduce the amount of money elsewhere.
The wealthy do not "hoard" wealth, either. They invest it. All of it. Even checking accounts are not hoarded wealth, because the money you put in it is loaned out by the bank (less the reserve requirements).
This is largely debatable and hard to measure. The thing about creation is that it's not black or white, it's gray.
Everything relies on thousands of other things. Products and services are huge graphs that nobody truly understands and that span hundreds of years. How much is created, and how much is reused? Hard to say.
At least some of the money is taken via exploitation. For example, if you opt to outsource product X to some third-world country and you drop labor cost 10%, and that in turn grows your company, you did not "create" that growth. You systematically stole it.
Another example we see a lot today is cutting quality. A lot of goods today are produced more efficiently, but not as much as you may think, because some of the productivity gains is simply pseudo-monopolies using their market dominance to cut quality without recourse. It's just human nature that we can't perceive a, say, 1% cut in quality. But if you cut 1% every year for half a century, then congratulations, you "created" a bunch of wealth. But you didn't actually create anything.
Choice isn't binary, it's a continuous distribution. There's not "free choice" and then "gun to head".
Work, especially for vulnerable, exploited populations, is not voluntary. Particularly when we talk about pseudo-slavery tactics used on migrant workers or other vulnerable populations.
There's a reason companies will often progressively move down to poorer, more vulnerable populations for their labor. Those people are much easier to exploit. We even see this in the US, to an extent. Tyson recently had a debacle where they threatened their (knowingly undocumented) workers with ICE if they attempted to unionize. To call this "voluntary" is willfully ignorant, at best.
Some items absolutely are zero sum - anything that is in short supply with a high demand becomes unobtainable for anyone who isn't rich.
Some things that are effectively out of reach for at least half of everyone:
Mansions and Luxury Condos in desirable locations
Private Jet
Private Island
The best quality food
2021 Ferrari 812 GTS
The best legal advice
A favor from a US Senator
These things are effectively zero-sum, only a limited number of people can have them and we can't expand the supply very much (or intentionally don't because that would hurt their exclusivity value).
The wealthy aren't exactly hoarding the money under their bed. They buy treasuries and bonds so the money get used elsewhere in the economy to do something.
The federal government's credit card is funded by the saving of the rich, which allowed us to run up huge debt.
The vast inequality you seen is the result of undertaxation of monopolies and deliberate granting of monopolies. Disney wouldn't be as big if copyright actually expire some 20 years after the fact.
Anyway, the billionaire are less relevant to you than the average homeowner next door. They are the one who hold further infill development hostage and are inimical to anyone who would depress the value of their home.
High housing prices are the result of a housing shortage. The shortage is the result of government zoning, regulation, and slow-walking building permits.
(Apparently California has only issued 4 permits so far for people to rebuild after the fires.)
Luxuries are cheap and getting cheaper. Basic necessities like housing are increasingly expensive. That's where most of the inequality is being felt by people.
Legally yes, but if you’d had to interact with large numbers of those entering university for the first time you’d know they very much are not mentally adults yet.
All of which is beside the point since this conversation is focusing on the most prestigious universities around. Most universities and colleges in North America don’t need such exams since they already accept basically anyone who applies.
I still don't understand why taking an in-person exam is considered some difficult ordeal that we cannot expect younger people to endure. I have no idea what culture you come from that this is even a talking point, let alone a debate. It has never occurred to me ever in any context that having an exam being proctored means I need to be mature? I took many hours-long proctored exams long before I was 18. What does being mature have to do with having a literal adult in the room? If anything it requires less maturity because you're requiring oversight.
I’m not arguing against proctored exams I’m arguing against:
> proctoring that includes checking biometrics, taking photographs of the individual for posterity, oral examinations, etc.
While I personally do actually believe test like that would be better than the kinds of exams being taken by students while at university I don’t see it as a realistic option for entrance exams. That sort of thing is simply not part of North American educational culture to a large degree. And for medical schools people practice and study and drill for months in order to prepare themselves for it.
Also, for most colleges and universities it simply makes no sense to introduce such an exam (or any at all) since they accept everyone who applies; they need to in order to remain financially viable.
Ah, now I see your point. I suspect the culture will change with the times assuming people want to give any credibility to universities moving forward. I remember how rampant cheating was where I went (decades ago) that I already put very little weight into degrees.
I hope so. Though the economic realities often take precedence. The university of Waterloo is one of their most prestigious universities, so they might be able to create more rigorous entry requirements (though that does bring up the question of “are you really teaching students to be competent or simply pre-filtering for only competent students”). But they can only do this if it doesn’t impact their ability to stay solvent.
I actually don't believe that CCC gives you significant benefit to admission in the faculty of math compared to other factors like ECs and actual Average.
JFC if someone asks you multiple times for a source then provide a fucking source, instead of continuing to be an obnoxious holier-than-thou "do your own research you ignoramus" asshole.
You are so completely incompetent when it comes to discourse that I have to assume you are purposefully spreading misinformation. Either provide evidence or do everyone else the favor of shutting the fuck up you intolerable asshat.
I disagree that turbochargers are shittier. For most people, hell even for a large subset of people that only want to race their cars on a track, turbochargers provide huge benefits. Yes, they add complexity and cost; they also vastly improve fuel efficiency, create the best torque curve possible on an ICE vehicle, and substantially improve power output. Sometimes you actually need more complexity to build a better system. I think turbochargers are a marvel of modern engineering.
And while it's subjective and admittedly more enthusiasts prefer naturally aspirated to turbocharged, I personally prefer the character of a turbocharged engine. I'd rather hear turbo whistles than a whining V10.
If what you want is a reliable commuter, because knowing you can get yourself to work is more important than even fuel efficiency, then turbochargers are a clear net negative. I think most people view their car as a tool first and foremost, and don't have the luxury to view it as a toy.
Turbocharged cars have been reliable for a while now. There was a time when people said the same thing about fuel injection - because it is objectively more complicated than carbureted engines. But as time went on and they became more reliable and cheaper the only people that care about carburetors now are enthusiasts because they have so many drawbacks. It's the same thing with turbo engines today, except they're already reliable and better to drive (assuming you ever want to merge onto a highway). If you consider the higher RPM typical for NA vehicles they're arguably less reliable over time. If you include rising fuel costs turbocharged is arguably cheaper over the lifespan of the vehicle.
Buy whatever you want. But most people's perceptions of 'reliable' for cars is based entirely on rumors and hearsay and has nothing to do with data. Most awards for reliability are marketing gimmicks and aren't based on useful data.
What I know for sure is anybody talking about V10 engines is obviously utterly divorced from normal person reality, and I can't take any of their suggestions seriously.
Performance does not matter to the majority of car buyers. Reliability and capability are what matters. Whether you can count on the car doing what you need it to do. Even fuel economy is second to those. Anybody talking about the sound of turbochargers, performance and V10 engined (seriously, WTF) is totally out of touch.
They made it so much better with a witty reply. I was just thinking this is one of my favorite HN threads I've seen in a long time. And now you've ended it with the HN trope of "I have no sense of humor but I still need to point out why I'm better than you."
Different strokes for different folks.
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