Cliffhanger. His unfinished concept of comparing money to a chair leaves readers "confused, disoriented and exploitable" enough to pitch his newsletter signup at the end.
Gates is supporting many good solutions but this quote about trees is false. As outlined in the book The Treesolution, it's just "2 billion hectares of trees to disconnect all present and past CO2 what is produced through fossil fuels." [1]
and furthermore
"Pieter Hoff says that we can replant a hectare for approximately 2,500 USD. We need 2 billion hectares of trees to disconnect all present and past CO2 what is produced through fossil fuels. The total investment to clean the air from the CO2 pollution is therefore 5 trillion USD. This investment is smaller than the costs of saving the bank system since 2008. Both USA and Europe spent over 6 trillion USD to save their banks."
Note: it's an investment, not an expense. ie profitable.
Yes people need to pushback against the overly politically-correct.
I think the pressure to enforce covid lockdowns is as ridiculous as these people wanting to censure Dr Seuss. Where I'm at we're back to lockdowns on Sundays only, so stupid.
Basically we need to get on with life and ignore the overly-anxious who want to control/censure everyone.
Care to explain or elaborate? I'm in utter confusion at every hacker news discussion that touches on unions. I live in a country that is heavily unionised. Its almost unheard of to not be in one. And, y the benefits are so prevalent, that I'm just confused reading the things I read on hacker news. It's just, weird. I have my suspicious, but I'd have to keep those to myself due to the guidelines here.
Key word in your comment: “different country.” Unions in the US tend to have an image of bureaucracy and not actually helping. For example, I worked at a union grocery store job a few years back and the union did jack squat for quite a lot of us. No benefits, minimum wage (well, 10¢ or so over), etc.
My experience is obviously not representative of unions as a whole, but experiences such as these do taint one’s view of them in a bad way. Especially if they’re your first experience.
Surely that is the fault of that union, and not the concept of it in of itself? There seems to be such a heavy effort put to make unions look bad, that I don't doubt for a second that it isn't effective.
But the basic idea of it is that the employees have a lot more negotiation power collectively than alone. The whole goal is to have a fair compensation for work. Why would anyone work for a wage that isn't livable? It's more a hypothetical mind you, but with a collective bargaining power, no one would. I don't think there is a minimum wage in my country, but I'm pretty sure store clerks make enough to live a decent life.
> Surely that is the fault of that union, and not the concept of it in of itself? There seems to be such a heavy effort put to make unions look bad, that I don't doubt for a second that it isn't effective.
For sure: it’s the union, not the concept. But humans are a finicky bunch and let single experiences affect our view of the bigger thing. Such as when an employee at a grocery store is rude and you blame the whole company. Maybe you and I don’t do that, but some do.
When a union takes ~5-10% of your paycheck but then provides nothing of value (that you see), you aren’t going to go “well maybe there’s something behind the scenes?” If you already had a bad view of unions (possible due to the vast majority of the GOP), and then your union is bad, your negative opinion is going to be reinforced with “they’re doing nothing! Unions as a whole suck!”
Ok. I once took a massive pay cut to go from piece-work to union hourly wages. The days were longer and overall crew production was around 1/3 of what it should be. Work availability was based on seniority within the union instead of performance.
Unions are all about receiving more for doing less, and are very detrimental to businesses.
In my experience union workers are a lazy bunch that talk more then they work, killing time is their main job description.
And union administrators are just parasites. It's all political. I've seen teachers unwillingly have to go on strike for months then be stuck with a worse deal afterwards.
Anyways I think if people aren't happy with their job they should go work somewhere else or better yet start their own business.
Data point: wages are higher in the US than most other countries, even for equivalent jobs. I routinely see development jobs in Europe offering 40-50k Euros that would pay double that in dollars in the US, and the US also tends to have lower taxes.
How does your country's wages compare? I do think the US works more hours (look at OECD data for this) but I think US companies are managed better in general, and the general non-unionization of the US workforce (only about 15% overall, with the majority working for government) is a big part of why pay is higher.
What unusual metrics and arguments. What do you mean wages are higher? I took a quick look, and there are indeed laws for minimum wage, but depends on fields, and various criteria (education level, etc), but generally speaking at around 25 usd.
Taxes is a confusing point, because, paying taxes can (should?) distribute wealth. We are after all talking about minimum wage here... General high taxes is something that benefits this group of people the most. You pay comparatively less of income as tax, and you get to spend it on other things than health care, or education (as its mostly handled by tax money).
I work at Amazon. My father-in-law is a union pipefitter. We both make 100k a year. Except he has a pension and I have to pay into a 401k.
Further, the culture at Amazon is such working harder would require sacrificing physical and mental health. Especially on the retail and warehouse side.
Bueno. Thanks for sharing your perspective. You seem to be making relatively decent money there. If you want more, make some moves.
I should have been more clear in that while I'm against unions I'm all for paying workers twice the going rate. And firing them if they don't perform.
And my comments about working harder for more money was about pay based on performance. ie produce more, make more. Go hard or go home. Not sure how that can fit into retail and warehouse there exactly but it probably could be done.
Pensions, 401K. Not my cup of tea. I prefer to watch trees grow. And have you seen how easy it is to launch a product these days? Well, actually nothing's easy.
Is it training, or is it convenience? Personally, I don't like soaking beans 24 hours before cooking. In fact, any additional time is too much for me, as bad as that may be. A article in the NYT called The Tyranny of Convenience really crystalized this for me: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/opinion/sunday/tyranny-co...
Home-cooked beans can taste a lot better, and they spare you the estrogen-mimicking chemicals in can linings. A pressure cooker makes quick work of them. We make a batch and freeze them in pint containers, ready to thaw when we need them.
They are not replacement for each other. Canned ones taste completely differently. You cook different foods from them.
Less important point is that you dont need to soak them 24 hours in advance, that is excessively long. A day before is primary convenient time when to do it for people who soak them for that long.
It's enough to soak overnight, rather than for 24 hours.
This lines up well with cooking the beans in a slow cooker, which in turn lines up well with working from home. Some evenings, i think "oh, i'll cook beans tomorrow", and put a pan on to soak (one minute's work). The next morning, i boil them for ten minutes to kill the PHA (if necessary for that variety), then load them in the slow cooker with whatever other ingredients seem good, and set it to run for eight hours.
It only involves a little bit of planning ahead, and very little actual work. In fact, it's nice to be able to front-load the work, so i do it in the morning when i'm still coming up to speed, rather than in the evening when i'm tired.
But I was certainly trained to buy peanut butter instead of putting peanuts in a blender.
When the only source of food are giant super markets 95% filled with aisles of packaged processed products (be they generic or otherwise) then yes people are trained from birth to buy them.
The pre-soaking is supposed to help with digestability (I can't find the exact name of the substance it removes) a pressure cooker of course cooks it faster but it is not very convenient (also you can cook them without a pressure cooker - pre-soaking helps with this as well)
But yeah canned beans are easier. There are also some vacuum packed ones
"Canned doesn't taste as good" you still have to season them
"Convenience" is such a funny way to put it. As if the time spent making food is worthless, and saving hours of labor is only useful because it provides this abstract property of "convenience".
That seems to be a cultural difference. Where I live there are some turkish supermarkets which stock that stuff bagwise. Similar for supermarkets catering mostly for russian/east-europeans. Apart from that their range of conventional products is just different but interesting! Been in a smaller turkish supermarket about a week ago and got nice stuff there, some 'Cheetoz' out of Iran https://dinafood.com/en/snack/ , several other snacks(roasted corn in hot and BBQ), Black Tea with Cardamom from https://www.ahmadtea.com/ , Turkish Honey/Delight with pistachios and pomegrenade (Yummie!), fruit juices, pickles, and so much more. All stuff that the normal markets don't have in stock. And interestingly the only acceptable Sri Racha is cheaper there, also! Also more varieties of that russian Kwas.
It's always a little adventure, to discover new things there. I guess I have a need to substitute for the lack of real hunting :-)
> Has anyone ever paid the individual price for an article?
For various business interests I have paid full price to read scientific studies quite a few times. And I felt foolish about it later once I learned about Sci-Hub. I'm sure there are many other entrepreneurs that could admit the same. Sci-hub is great and a very important service.
>If they are effective then you would expect Peru to not have the second highest fatality rates after 8 months of strict lockdown.
Yes the strict lockdowns in Peru were ridiculous and accomplished nothing except damaging the economy and putting the country in debt. Covid still got around both during and after the cuarentena.
Shopping malls have been back to near normal capacity for quite some time, movie theaters are finally reopening with a 40% capacity limit but discos still closed. [1]
< Though its somewhat complex to outsiders, those within the military fully understand what they need to do to grow as a soldier (or officer). There's no ambiguity for what's needed to grow from E1 to E2 or from Lieutenant to Major.
Various benchmarks: time-in-grade (ex: 6-months as an E1 makes you eligible for a promotion to E2). For E4, there are two paths: Corporal (Non-commissioned officer, a leadership role) or Specialist (non-leadership, but a more specialized set of skills).
More importantly: these promotion requirements are well regulated, checked-and-double-checked for consistency. Everyone in the ranks knows what to expect. Leadership knows when to promote. A sense of fairness exists, etc. etc.
What is he selling? Just spit it out already.