logicalmind

I have no axe to grind with Buffet in particular. He just happens to be the topic of this post. What I do take issue with is the making of what I would call "meta-money". People making money by doing little more than manipulating the money of others. Warren Buffet just happens to be a great example of this. If you think of the world as producers and consumers, then what is it that Warren Buffet produces? What is he doing to add value to the world such that he is justified in making billions of dollars doing that?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he is a bad person or that he is not highly intelligent or even shouldn't be successful. What I am saying is that it's hard to justify that he has added proportional value to the world that is worth the money he has made. To each his own, but if this were a world full of people who only wanted to benefit upon the production done by others, then this would be a troublesome world. Just imagine, could Linus Torvalds have chosen to turn Linux into a profitable venture? Could he have been all about the money and not about producing a truly great OS that people could build upon? I just don't think it's wise to put Warren Buffet as a success story above, say, Linus because he made so much more money. I'd rather live in a world of mostly Linus' than a world of mostly Buffet's.

Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. They have, and do, sell products and services. Celebrating Warren Buffet is analogous to celebrating someone who was a provider of capital to Microsoft rather than the people who provided the products and services. The people who found and build companies are "Makers". Warren Buffet is not a "Maker", he profits off of "Makers".

>Warren Buffett getting rich doesn't automatically mean somebody somewhere else is losing out.

I guess my point wasn't that somebody else was losing out. But that Warren Buffet could have made 1/1000th the amount of profit as he did and the world itself would not have lost out. Only Warren Buffet gains, not the world as a whole. Ultimately what value does Warren Buffet's success in terms of dollars bring to the world? Again, ignoring his eventual philanthropic choices.

So I should have said, a benevolent Gordon Gekko.

I'm probably gonna be downvoted for this, but what the heck. I watched the Warren Buffet documentary on HBO with my 11 year old daughter. Now, I've raised my daughter to have an entrepreneurial mindset and to always look at ways to add value to the world. The major points of the documentary that stood out to her were that he has lots of money. He owns pieces of companies who do well, and in turn he does well. His wife didn't feel that was an ideal way to live her life and left to provide value to actual people.

I didn't really know what to say, because she is right. Warren Buffet is good at picking companies who are undervalued and making money from that. That's a skill I guess. But do you want a country filled with Warren Buffets? Is there any reason to value this kind of parasitic success? The guy isn't really much different than the mafia or a loan shark. He loans money to companies he thinks will succeed, and wants interest paid back to him. At least Bill Gates provided value (and he was predatory in doing so) and his work changed the world. Aside from his eventual philanthropy, it's hard to see how Warren Buffet has changed the world.

Maybe I'm missing something. But how do you inspire a young person to be like Warren Buffet. And more importantly, should you?

Here's alternative way to think about this. If you consider the fact that a lot of states are oppressive to their people(minority suppression, anti-choice, anti-environment, etc.) you see that people who can't live under those rules move elsewhere. Often to larger states/cities. The problem with this is that it only sways the electoral college more in the direction of the oppressors. Non-oppressive states get bigger, more inclusive and more open. Oppressive states push a single minded, and often single party, mentality. This essentially locks the power of the electoral college into the hands of the more oppressive states.

Big fan of Leonard Cohen, big loss. I think his Isle of Wight performance is one of the greatest of all time considering what was going on the crowd and how he used his showmanship and calming music to turn things around:

https://vimeo.com/56002315

The checks and balances are a republican controlled congress (House and Senate). And a supreme court where republicans will be able to select a majority of the members. The only check and balance left is via a Democratic filibuster.

A sub-category I find is the "scientist" programmer vs the "engineer" programmer. With the scientist programmer being these category-three people. An engineer will use existing frameworks, technology, standards, etc. to solve a problem. And a scientist wants to develop new frameworks, technology, standards, etc. to solve a problem.

On larger teams, you want some commonality with your code. You want to be able to look at code written by others and at least have common style, strategy, and idioms. Engineering style devs tend to follow this nicely and it all works fairly well in a team dynamic. Whereas, scientist developers are often looking for new ways to do everything. When they see things done in a common and consistent way, they tend to look for unique solutions and tend to do more of "research" style development.

Don't get me wrong, both styles have their benefits. But on a typical largish development team, the scientist are often a more negatively-impacting developer to the overall productivity of the team.

The really scary thing happens when these scientist type developers become architects. And then you end up with what is often called an "architecture astronaut".

I'm a bit of a germaphobe, so I may be over-sensationalizing the risk. But high human density seems to be a dangerous living condition in terms of illness. History has shown numerous plagues that have wiped out vast numbers of people living in dense human areas. With the continued resistance and misuse of antibiotics, it seems highly likely that we will see some sort of plague that will impact people in direct proportion to their direct contact with other humans.

Yeah, that's my point. You're talking about a retirement plan that impacts retired people who vote in droves. For the considerable future, those retirement age people will be baby boomers. They also happen to run the government. So why would it be unreasonable to expect them to pass laws that are favorable to them during their retirement as opposed to our retirement in 20/30/40 years.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-baby-boomers-retir...

I don't really see it as a stark contrast. Pensions and social security may be accounts where money is coming from someone else in the future. But a 401k is only semantically different. You do not own your 401k account in a real sense. That money is locked and kept away from you. You can only withdraw that money according to the rules in place at the time of the withdrawal. If you wanted to take that money out now, you would be paying the penalties in place that exist today. In 20+ years from now, when you intend to withdraw, you will be doing so with the laws in place at that time. And what those laws will be are unknown at the time. The same as current conditions were unknown to partakers in pension funds and social security a generation, or two, ago.

I highly doubt it would be that direct. A realistic way to do this would be to change the tax structure based on age. Meaning, the only way to extract the money without incurring severe penalty would be to do so after some advanced age. Then put in place a rule that any funds left after death become part of a new social security style safety net. Likely for the ever-increasing number of baby boomers who are retiring and living longer than ever.

But weren't all of these vehicles put in place by the baby boomer generation? And said generation will be retiring more and more in the future and also living longer. This would seem to mean that those people will be moving their retirement money from stocks to bonds or withdrawing it completely. Would this not require an equal amount of investors to take their place? Additionally, if this generation of baby boomers lives longer and runs out of money, is it naive to think that some kind new laws would be required to support them in old age?

They could realistically change the tax structure or even the retirement age(s) at which you could withdraw the funds. But if there were another mega-stressor to the financial system in the future, it seems that this pool of trillions of dollars would be ripe for the picking. Let's face it, lobbyists get what they want. Not the people. So if the bank's risky investments cause a panic and the only thing preventing an economic meltdown is the re-purposing of 401k funds....well...

How is that any different from social security though? Social security taxes are being taken out of every american's paycheck as we speak. Yet, anyone under the age of 40 or so has no illusions that social security will be solvent by their retirement age.

401k plans typically consist of employee and employer matching contributions. But in any case, the things that stops you from fully accessing this money of your own free will are laws. Laws can be changed. I'm just wondering if today we're being as naive about 401k realities as people were about social security and pensions a generation, or two, ago.

Since the 401(k) laws are federal laws within the IRS, couldn't that law be changed at any time by the federal government? Based on history, it seems naive to think that trillions of dollars sitting in retirement accounts would not be eventually re-purposed.

Tangential question, but is anyone else worried that the rules of 401(k)'s can be changed at a later time. History has shown that retirement funds are highly valuable sources of money that companies and governments eventually eat away at. Pensions funds were eventually raided by companies. And social security has been used for alternate means by the government. Is there anything that prevents the government from changing the rules of 401(k) plans at a later time that allow them to be misappropriated as well?

Is that really the problem though? In my circle, plenty of people are doing the boring crud apps at random big company. The problem is that they're paid very well. So taking a job that is more challenging often involves taking less money, for more risk, with a small possibility of a payoff. Is there really a surplus of highly interesting tech positions with better than average pay that are desperately looking for people? If you're struggling to find talent, you're probably not paying enough.

Yep, and this really becomes a problem has you advance in years. I'm a programmer and have been for almost 20 years. When you're younger, you are always negotiating upwards. When you're at a job making 70k and you leave, you go to a new job and ask for 80k. But then you're 40 and making a lot more. Now the question as to what you are offered is different. If they're paying you to be a "programmer", can they really justify that huge salary? They can hire multiple college grads for what they're paying you. So it's not so much about your direct programming skill, but your experience/knowledge/wisdom that they are paying for. And each company is going to value that differently.

Your options really come down to whether you want to truly remain a "programmer" in which you may have to make some concessions to compete with the other programmers in the market. Your responsibilities remain that of a programmer. Or you have to take on a manager/director/architect role which is less programming skill and more people management skill with a lot more responsibility.

As someone who is a programmer in finance, but not trading, it is difficult for me to wrap my head around this as well. If this is specifically targeting programmers and companies who are interested specifically in the trading aspect of finance, then I guess it could make some sense. I don't know, that isn't my world. But in the other areas of finance, things are heavily regulated. Both within the company and from outside. You want people with clean backgrounds (no history of financial issues/bankruptcy, no criminal record) who can write solid code to reliably transfer billions of dollars around the world on a daily basis.

I was born and raised in the town next to Robbins. My family still lives there. Robbins is the worst of many notorious, small, south-side suburbs (Markham, Harvey, Phoenix, etc.). It is next to an oil refinery. It has an abandoned incinerator. And plenty of other nasty corporations covering the place in pollutants. You will find plenty of burned down houses not closed off, etc. It just gets worse and worse:

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/December-2014/The...

Of course, as with any "no true scotsman" argument, it isn't as bad Flint in every way.

I assume you are strictly referring to within the city limits. If you include the burbs, then check out Robbins: https://goo.gl/maps/ompv1Df5aqT2

And this whole thing came full circle once Paul Graham stepped away. YCombinator was initially cool because it was a hack on the incubator/vc scene and a successful one. Now it seems more like an MBA-esque scheme replete with spreadsheets.

> Wear a sleep mask. If you can open your eyes and see any sliver of light or a distinguishable shape, you need something different.

But couldn't this cause the opposite problem? In the morning, the rising sun levels tell your body to start waking up. I'm not an expert, but I would guess that this also stimulates (or de-stimulates) certain chemicals or hormones in the body needed for normal waking. So without your eyes seeing the sunlight increasing as a cue to wake up, doesn't that just cause a different problem?

This isn't data, but this post and the comments are one point of reference. This in on the frontpage btw.

https://voat.co/v/news/comments/147052

I work at a company that was in bad shape during the financial crisis. A temporary CEO was put in charge. Ultimately, a number of companies were merged to create one company that could survive. In the end, one of the CEO's of the merged companies became the CEO of the final company. His first act as CEO was to offer everyone in the company a tenure-based package to leave the company. I don't know the full numbers, but nearly everyone in the IT department took the deal. And I am aware of many people in other departments who took the deal as well. Rumors were that between 30 and 40 percent of staff took the deal. Once this happened, the company got rid of that CEO and had to then offer alternative packages to people to stay. Basically the same amount you would have received if you left, but paid out to you over a few years to guarantee you'd stay.

It was unclear what his intentions were. To determine loyalty to the company, possibly. But what actually happened was that people who were good at their job, and could find work elsewhere, left. So they would have had all of the top talent leave the company and the remaining employees would be the people who did just enough to get by. The company is still trying to make amends with the employees.

I was in the same boat. The comparison should really be about the long-term downsides. Sure, the sedentary lifestyle of computer work could cause various ailments. But the farm lifestyle will cause its own long-term ailments. Everyone is built differently, so there is no guarantee of health on either side. Eventually, both forms of work will catch up with you. It's just a matter of which one you can personally handle better. ie. carpal tunnel vs slipped disks. Not to mention the difference in possibility of serious injury or death. There is a lot of opportunity on a farm to get injured temporarily or permanently. If serious, you either die or are unable to continue farming. I find this piece very short-sighted.

This is actually easier than you think currently. Most muscle cars (like mustangs/camaros) allow you to change your rear end gearing. Different size rear end gear ratios are different factory options. There are programmers that allow you to tell your computer what gear ratio you running so your speedometer is correct. There are also changes that can be made for bigger/smaller diameter tires. You could change the computer's gear ratio setting and tire size setting. Your speedometer would be way off but you'd also be accumulating fewer miles. It's not directly modifying the mileage of the car, but over time the numbers of miles on the car would be far lower than what they really were. Then once you sell or trade-in the car, just set the settings back to the original ones.