ilovepitchdecks

After I read your comment the second time 5 minutes later, I had a realization (?): Are you actually being sarcastic? (That would explain the downvotes too. And your username.)

Because of the sensational headline, I'm not even going to click on this. Is there even a real difference between The Guardian and the Daily Mail?

Can you elaborate?

Exactly. If you're outside the US, you can only be a contractor, even if you work full-time for your company. There are no caps on how high a contractor's fee can be - that's not the case with employee salaries.

There are more fancy options, such as having a second, foreign company owned by you be the contractor - if you want to avoid personal income taxes in whatever country you live in. Beware of CFC regulations though.

For US founders, S Corps are better.

There's no no need to use a formation service. Incorporating a company in the US is very easy and can be done online, even by foreigners. All you need is a Registered Agent and they start at $25/year (in Wyoming).

I'd also like to point out that forming a LLC as a foreigner is a bad idea, as that might make you personally liable for US taxes. Either form a C Corp outright or have your LLC taxed as a C Corp. Then just zero out the profits. Some extra forms to fill out, but still better than paying taxes.

Well, your motivation is my motivation too, we just happen to have a different idea of what is 'abhorrent'. I'm just tired of seeing these kinds of political comments go unchallenged. It was my interest in tech that made me come on HN (I don't know about you) and I didn't expect to see so much one-sided political rhetoric here.

Who exactly is part of this 'community' you speak of? This site is on the public internet and open for anyone to join. I don't remember being asked to accept some political ideology when registering.

And this is exactly the problem with consensus: There never is one. Just because nobody speaks up, doesn't mean everyone agrees with you. Nor should they. I have been to those kinds of meetings where the majority of people don't voice a dissenting opinion or, in fact, any opinion at all. To interpret silence as agreement is just bad faith.

In fact, your narrow definition of 'community' is elitist and closely mirrors its use in the mainstream press (such as in 'international community', which just means 'the West').

I didn't know that meme; it's actually funny. What's wrong with asking people to put their money where their mouth is? I thought engineers are not like these managers/salesmen/'talkers' that say one thing on the TED stage, then go do something completely different IRL and find that A-OK.

Don't argue with me then - but you should at least explain how anything I've said was in bad faith if you accuse me of that.

I was merely following kaba0's reasoning. If you're going to advocate for the breaking up of monopolies, why pick only the low-hanging fruit?

Your comparison is not apt. The root directory is merely a container for its subdirectories. In that way it much more resembles geography (a country being subdivided into regions, for example) than a government.

It's bad, because it's a blind spot. Governments, despite being at the top-level, have consistently grown since their inception. I'd expect the top level to be the leanest, not the fattest.

Decentralization and secessionism are highly unpopular ideas that don't look like they'll ever get mainstream acceptance. If anything, it looks like exactly the opposite trend is taking place (take the EU, for example).

Every day you read about new legislation being proposed and introduced. How often do you read about outdated legislation being abolished? Never. It's like writing an app and constantly adding new features but keeping all the existing ones. We all know how well that works out.

Even though HN shouldn't be about politics, when political rhetoric does get posted here (and it's far more common than one would expect), it's extremely one-sided.

It's interesting that you always preface your arguments with a conclusion. I wonder if that's how your thought process works as well.

You get paid for already owning money... that you had to earn previously. There are many other examples of something similar. If you do a really good job on a particular month, you might still get the same wage at the end of the month. But you might get a bonus at the end of the year. Or you might be promoted next year when a position becomes available. However, you will not get a bonus and will not get promoted if you quit your job/get fired in the meanwhile. Do you also consider this unfair?

I never talked about the difficulty of doing a particular job, be it meat-packing or customer service; I meant the emotional difficulty of leaving a bad job and the mental difficulty of making the right choices and being excellent in what you do. Working not for others, but for yourself.

If there are indeed 'low-effort, high-income' jobs, why isn't everybody doing them? Why don't you personally those low-income workers that investing in the stock market (to give an example) is 'easy' and 'guaranteed' to yield high returns?

In fact, many manual jobs are already being replaced by robots/AI. Yet people are complaining about losing their jobs. If you took my high-effort, low-income job away, I'd be eternally grateful.

In the case of billionaires, they don't get to spend all their money, so the comparison between them and a minimum-wage earner is not apt. Jeff Bezos is surely holding lots of paper, but until he spends it, it has no value. Do you have proof his spending is out of line? Besides, when you're rich you overpay for everything, which means higher income (with arguably the same amount of effort) for those who provide goods and services to you.

And I've never heard of children using their inherited wealth to... lobby against inherited wealth. If anything, they'd be more in favor of it. But I see the point you're trying to make. You're not part of the 'aristocracy' (whatever you mean by that word), which you means you hold a grudge against them. Little do you know that people poorer than you hold a grudge against you too (you're considered relatively well off) and would use the first opportunity do redistribute your wealth amongst themselves.

There's no such thing as passive income; there's only delayed income. You're not getting paid for nothing; you're getting paid for putting in the work ahead of time. What's wrong with that?

I never claimed everyone has the same hourly income. Nor should they. Some people work hard (on their career - not necessarily at their current job!), others take it easy. Both are valid options, but there will be consequences for the respective groups (both good and bad).

If you're against inherited wealth, I expect you to leave none to your own children. Respect if you actually go through with this.

Yes, but I wasn't advocating for the abolishment of anything; I was merely pointing out that there's a double standard. To rephrase your words, don't the people get the 'monopolies they deserve'? After all, neither the CEOs nor the employees of these entities are aliens from space.

You can't just leave a government the same way you can leave a job (and become unemployed) or a product (become a non-customer); you can only switch to another one. Why don't you try parking a vessel in the international waters and see how long it takes before it's sunk.

A low-level worker made that career choice themselves. They were well aware they wouldn't become rich by working in a warehouse, no matter how many hours they worked. They still have their life in their own hands: They can look for another job.

Jeff Bezos sure worked like crazy to get Amazon to where it is now, so he has every right to take it easy now that he's 'made it'.

Oh, but you do have a say: You can work for Google! It's the same as moving to a different country and becoming a citizen to be eligible to vote.

Referees, in comparison to governments, can be fired for doing a poor job.

I'm going to rephrase my original comment, which got flagged: There's inherent hypocrisy in having the biggest monopoly of them all regulate smaller monopolies. Because they're 'monopolies'. Right.

How much money somebody has access to is directly correlated with how much time (of which everybody gets the same 24 hours a day) they spend on trying to earn money. People who care less about money will earn less and that is their own fault.

The same is true in politics. Those who shout the loudest, win. A big wallet helps too. Ever heard of lobbying?

uBlock Origin has been my favorite browser extension for years (it's in fact the only one I have installed). These days I only use it for YouTube however.

The best way to avoid ads is not to visit sites that have them.

Products are chosen by 'the people' (consumers) too.