alexashka

We can at the very least tweak existing systems to be meaningfully better.

For example we could phase out all marketing and advertising. We could simplify and automate accounting and many other jobs. We could reduce the work week to 30 hours. We could make jobs teenage friendly and replace high schools with entry level jobs so that people get to try to be in multiple fields before they commit to years of studying anything. We could eliminate most university programs and again replace them with entry level jobs, 20 hours/week - people can study new material on their own free time and at their own pace - eliminate all memorization based learning to pass arbitrary tests and have people progress based on performance on the job. Make moving down on a career ladder or switching careers entirely a common and non-humiliating occurrence, etc.

The most pertinent question to ask is - why haven't any of these already happened? What kinds of people prevent these changes from occurring and what should be done about it? Do you know any of these people - are some of them your family members. Are you one of them? Why does no one seem to ask these questions and seek answers? :)

Sounds like sociopaths being allowed to do sociopath things problem, rather than supply and demand problem.

> unspecific vibes that it must be bad if employees like it

Chef's kiss.

Meh.

The greater scam here is that rugged individualism can lead to positive societal outcomes.

Just more free market capitalism, bro! We just need more freedom for the tech bros, the finance bros, bro!

This AI shit is yet another oh look - increase in rugged individual 'productivity' is going to lead to positive societal outcomes, trust me, bro!

It's all bullshit but what else have the western retarded elite got? Or non-western elites for that matter? USA is USSR 2.0 - falling apart from the retarded short-sighted incompetence and selfishness of its sociopathic 'elites'. China will be USSR 3.0 in a generation or two.

It's all so terribly tedious, boring and cruel - the monumental amounts of wasted opportunity and resources because everyone's too busy being 'productive' to ever spend a decade or two to actually think through anything and come up with potential real solutions to real problems. The average 'elite' doesn't even know what the real problems are or how to begin finding out what they might be - they probably think it's climate change or more likely - how to make sure they retain their billions. Oh well, so it goes.

Because the 'trend' of the economy going into the ground has been consistent for decades.

> So folks, practice talking to people. Much of what's wrong in the current world is actually loneliness, having no outlet for your expressions.

If I had a penny for every bizarre theory people who ruin the world believe about who/what is actually ruining the world.

My favourite was an interview with Jerry Springer. He also had a theory of what's wrong in the current world and none of it had anything to do with what he did.

Anyone that wants to take their money and leave and never come back ought to be encouraged to do so as soon as possible.

The never come back bit solves the imaginary problem you mention.

Step 1. Have something of non-trivial value to others

Step 2. Doesn't matter

This applies not only to giving a good talk but living a good life. Unless you were born beautiful - step 1 takes 10-20 years of conscious effort to develop. Everything else is marketing/advertising, otherwise known as lies (99% of what's on HN, for example)

You can't anything your way to miracle profits without destroying society in the process.

I suppose destroying society for profit is top of the barrel for people like you.

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Using logic with people who think logic fails laughably short anytime they get emotional does indeed not work.

These people view everything through the lens of power - they are amusingly simple creatures who only use logic to acquire power or for an occasional hoot.

When people like that get into positions of power over others - disaster follows.

Because we already have too many.

You should ask why we don't close them instead.

Would the world be a better or worse place if all university business programs were shut down tomorrow? Follow the thought regarding advertising, marketing and psychology.

Reading books is an instance of doing instead of thinking in many cases :)

'The problem' is this species prefers doing instead of thinking.

'Vibe coding' is merely an instance.

There are a lot of problems with slavery and I am all for it them but this seems like such an extreme response. As someone who has worked for slave owners, without some form of slavery, people would just not pick cotton at all.

Would bricks of gold really change anything in a dire situation? I don't get it.

I'd bet on aligning with people who know how to make use of bullets personally.

It is first in the context of the two goals being mentioned, in the context of discussing software quality.

You've gone ahead and made it the first goal in the context of all goals a company has (thus making it 'primary').

That's not a legal move - switching contexts and claiming that the sentence plucked out of its original context and inserted into your context becomes a 'conspiracy theory'.

That's on you, not me :)

And yes, I edit my posts plenty. Including this one.

Feel free to tell me where I said it was a primary goal.

> What these companies need to do is slow down and stop chasing every shiny thing

Who is dealing in fantasies now, friend? :)

Apple's software really isn't in crisis. It's just very low quality relative to what people who've written software for a living know to be possible.

But it doesn't matter - Apple is a prestigious jobs guarantee program for rich kids first, entity that delivers value to consumers second.

It's not that they're chasing shiny things. They're cosplaying competence and they genuinely don't know it. They think they're actually competent, elite really, because they attend 'elite' schools, get good grades and go work at the 'best' places.

They have it ingrained in them that anything a poor person says can be disregarded because poor people are losers, because they're poor. They're an unintentional suicide cult. They genuinely don't know it. You can't convince them of anything because they are rich. If you complain - go see a therapist, there's something wrong with you.

You can youtube search Garys Economics. It's a poor kid who slipped into the rich kids club and defected. It's quite eye opening.

I think it'd be helpful to stick with just the military example. (Your comments re Oracle are well taken and I agree)

I don't think you've tackled the problem of if we're playing competition and they build nukes, we need to build nukes. It's a zero sum game and the result is nuclear holocaust.

Do you disagree with the premise and if not, what is your proposed solution?

Regarding there must be a king - I think it'd be helpful if you could summarize your political stance in a few short sentences. I'm worried that we'll be hopelessly lost discussing minutia otherwise.

ps. I've been here a while and always been a fan of your comments :)

This is an excellent post.

I think the competition idea works at the level of a country if people by and large play by the rules (a big if).

It does not work at the level of macro economics.

If you (as a country) insist on competition and absence of mega corps in your country while a country next to you subsidizes mega corps that outcompete your smaller companies - you will lose.

Thus in a world of competition, every country will strive to get nuclear weapons to be able to compete militarily and then given that we're human, we will have conflict sooner or later and it will result in nuclear holocaust.

If you think fair enough but nuclear holocaust is just the price we pay and it's worth it to continue doing competition, then alright.

I don't think it's worth it, so there needs to be a fundamental re-think how we approach these problems.

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Regarding wealth inequality specifically - I agree with Aristotle who made the distinction of Aristocracy vs Oligarchy. Aristocracy being the rule of the few for the common interest and Oligarchy being rule of the few for the interest of the rulers.

Somebody will rule, it's the intention and overall direction that matters. I'm not sure that just re-distributing wealth addresses the problem - it does strike me as something an Aristocracy would surely do if one were to appear, so that much is well and good.

My unifying vision would be a few bullet points:

- People who are cruel are not fit to make important decisions in human society

- The most important quality in a human's life is dignity

- There needs to be a return to spirituality and philosophy, away from religion and tribalism

These ideas if contemplated and thought through on an individual and collective levels would undo much of what makes modern living unpleasant and bring about some wonderful new perks :)

> In neither case can evil.com read that information

What stops evil.com from having an API endpoint called evil.com/returnBankCSRFToken that goes to bank.com, scrapes token and returns it?

CSRF tokens are just part of an html form - they are not hidden or obscured and thus scraping them is trivial.

When I go to evil.com, it calls the endpoint, gets token and sends a request to bank.com using said token, thus bypassing CSRF?

> My less cynical side assumes that nobody ever warned them that you have to put a lot of work in to learn how to get good results out of these systems

Why am I reminded of people who say you first have to become a biblical scholar before you can criticize the bible?

> it set a cookie that your browser presents when it makes any request to bank.com, regardless of how it was initiated

Right, this seems like a very bad idea and now everyone has to do CSRF because of it?

CORS doesn't prevent evil.com from sending a reqeust to bank.com, it only prevents reading the response, no?

So again, what stops evil.com from sending a request to say transfer 1 BBBBillion dollars to bank.com and including a CSRF token it gets from visiting bank.com?

Regarding CSRF - how would I be authenticated to do actions on bank.com when I'm on evil.com?

It seems like the problem is at the level of login information somehow crossing domain boundaries?

What stops a script on evil.com from going to bank.com to get a CSRF token and then including that in their evil request?

Just be aware that once you escape your default setting, you'll come to realize everybody else hasn't.

It'll be like teenage angst at your parents, except it'll be angst at the entire species :)

Anyone that writes and asks earnest questions pretty quickly turns to spirituality, religion, philosophy or pseudo-philosophy/pseudo-science (self-help) because they end up realizing oh - I don't know what's going on at all!

The spiritual path is living with truth of don't know. Religion is choosing to have 'faith' and a set of instructions but really is about huddling with others for warmth and comfort. Philosophy is about attempting to build a logically consistent system of what's going on. Self-help is a set of quick hacks to make one feel better.

Almost all people settle in a modified default setting (self help) and choose to use thinking to do tiny little puzzles instead of asking the deeper questions. They can't handle the angst, they want that human comfort more than they want the truth :)

I heard this exact argument about blockchains.

Or has that been a success with tons of productive uses in your opinion?

At some point, I'd like to hear more than 'trust me bro, it'll be great' when we use up non-trivial amounts of finite resources to try these 'things'.

Do you not realize you've been programmed to look for a specific group to blame instead of thinking?

Why would you blame tech workers? They're just another brainwashed mass that works for a living. If I were to suggest a wrong solution - I'd at least blame the finance sector.

Blaming doesn't solve anything because once you're done with your witch hunt - the problems remain. The systemic problem remains. We need systemic solutions and those require thinking, not reaching for a pre-made solution you've been brainwashed to reach for.

Until people recognize modern society to be a complex system that requires thinking to operate, there will be no meaningful progress. We're still operating under the system of I take people willing to dish out violence and go around bullying everyone in sight. I then take the plundered resources and tell nerds to go do their nerd shit to make me a complex society that works wonderfully.

It doesn't work. Not because nerds realize working for power hungry dummies is stupid but because we're destroying the planet and regular working people worldwide hate us and we have to work hard to barely keep the thing from falling apart. Constantly lying to everyone and yourself once you realize the fucked system you're in is exhausting, so it doesn't work. But please realize - the answer isn't to blame anyone. It's to find solutions and that takes thinking.