- freefaler parentJust install something like "Better touch tool" you'll get the functionality (and more) without the bloat.
- The great Scott Manley did a video about that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-YcVLq98Ew
basically it doesn't make sense with current technologiesa and even with Starship's proposed specs/price it won't be profitable.
Check it out...
- Well try to listen to a group theory lecture (for example on cohomology of groups) while doing chores :) But the lecture was indeed useful if you stop and rewind and see how the lecturer was explaining (there were some interesting graphs).
Your brain can't hold the context long enough to go to the required level of abstraction, while you're multitasking (may be walking or something deeply automated doesn't count.
- For serious lectures (not story telling like history or other humanities) you can't be doing anything on the side if you want to understand. Try listening to a math lecture, or chemistry lecture while doing dishes :)
I found the same to be true with audiobooks, nothing serious can't be "just listened to". I've tried to "listen" to a good biology non-fiction on how live evolved from the primordial soup. Shit, in the first chapters there were covalency chemistry and other stuff that I needed to sit down and write to understand.
Too stupid to do it while doing chores I guess...
- Check https://open-slum.org/ what's up in the shadow libraries world.
Anna's archive & Z-lib has mirrored all of Sci-hub and are indeed a viable alternative.
- 14 years ago, Cory Doctorow warned us about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI
The modern societies run via those devices and the enforcement will move to the mostly free Internet that was "a long time ago, when it didn't matter as much".
- Social networks aren't that social anymore. Around 65% of the facebook content is not shared/generated by your friends in your social graph. So they're all just a Tik-Tok clones basically. Short dopamine addiction info-snacks with more and more AI generated slop. (and some of the slop is interesting like Cold War military tech stories from books read and visualized by AI).
The network effects doesn't matter that much for the Tiktok's of the world.
- Free market countries are more abundant than non-free market ones because the system is brutally efficient. If you can't sell something for a profit, you might be forced to sell it for a loss and eat the difference. This is the way the system regulates itself. The business owners invest their resources and own the risk. Employees sell their work hours by a fixed price and this is calculated in the total cost for the business to sell. The price their work is bought by is also regulated by free market and is an input to the total price. They aren't forced to be paid less than the going market rate (may be short term until contract expires) so the prices and unforced cooperation based on price it shte "magic" that makes USA to have 100s of types of biscuits and Cuba to have empty stores.
- As Hayek proved the information in free markets is encoded by prices, so the value is up to the consenting parties. There is no "good" or "bad" or "improper" profit. If there is competition and willing parties that's where the profit will be. It will go down to something more or less sustainable for the market participants that are willing to work for that profit.
- It's not the social safety, but the bad enforcement of the law. When bad acts are not punished, this is the problem that occurs.
Some social systems like in Israel if you're ablebodied you are given a public service job, like cleaning the park and etc... so you aren't entitled to a check for doing nothing.
South Africa hasn't any meaningful social net and the wealthy people live in special "high security" enclaves with additional guards and fenced perimeters. If you have a lot of hungry people on the street they will be forced to survive somehow and you'd get more crime.
- A lot of people forget that going hungry is the default state of not doing a thing. The super rich and socially progressive societies redistribute the taxes they levy on the productive people to help the people who can not (elderly, ill) or won't (lazy bastards) work. It might be a better deal for the society as a whole, to offset the cirme that would ensue if there isn't any social net.
A lion in the plains of Africa is not entitled to a dinner, the farmer in not entitled to a crop yield. It is super rare that people can't do anything to better themselves and get more for their own skills or execution. Any buisness owner will gladly share a percentage of profit you generate for them if you can show them you're indeed generating such profit.
If you're in DPRK or Cuba then you'd need to check your free-market priviledge of having a market for your skills.
- We have used Hetzner for 15+ years. There were some outages with the nastiest being the network ones. But they're usually not "dramatically bad" if you build with at least basic failover. With this we had seen less than 1 serious per 3 years. Most of the downtime is because of our own stupidity.
If you know what you're doing Hetzner is godsend, they give you hardware and several DCs and it's up to you what you can do. The money difference is massive.
- > Obviously incorrect, since a company can pay their workers and make a loss.
It's not incorrect, it's a simplified model. For debt to occur this capital should be generated somehow. It's true that you can finance a business by getting the profit from some other entity that has generated the profit. So it's not wrong to assume that the money hasn't just appeared out of thin air to fund the salaries. No profitable business no capital to invest.
> Unfortunately, voters and governments don't actually have to make economic sense over periods of many years.
No matter how long the stupidity lasts that doesn't mean that this model is incorrect. No profits = no taxes in the grand scheme of things.
- > iPhone Pocket in the short strap design retails at $149.95 (U.S.), and the long strap design at $229.95 (U.S.).
Really? Lot's of value there...
Like a new OnePlus Nord N30 5G is around $250, and Samsung Galaxy A16 approximately at $200. And Samsung Galaxy A14 5G is between $120 to $160.
- It's a general trend with hired managers who optimize for their bonuses. Also many founder led companies when they got sold to the shareholders are also optmizing for that. Some founder led companies are optimizing for something else, not profits only, but that's rare and that's what Jobs had the leeway to do when he got back to the almost bankrupt company. Current minions will try to squeeze more profit from any screen the incentives are such that they'd do that.
Enshitification is possible where there is some kind of lock-in and the pain of leaving is greater than the level of annoyance of the product. Apple has one of the strongest lock-in ecosystems and it's rational for them to do so.
I'm not sure there is a better way, because max freedom = open source, but that equals mostly subpar experience for the average user. Let's hope for more platforms and data transfer from one to the other.
- Where do you think the tax comes from? If there is no profit, there is no business and there is no tax base?
Taxes currently are for both the busness and the employees.
On the producer side: - business pays tax on sales (or VAT)
- business pays tax on profit left
- business pays tax on each employee in the form of empolyers "contributions" (just another way to tax the work of the empolyees)
- persons pay income taxes and social contributions
- persons (owners) pay divident taxes
On the consumer side
- sales/VAT tax
- import duties on stuff you buy
- various local taxes on property, vehicles and etc
In EU many contries have on the producing side 35-39% and on consuming side around 20% VAT, e.g. the govenment takes about 50% of an average workers pay.
Who pays the worker? The business by making a profit.
- It's not a manifestation on anything. What's cheaper with better quality will be chosen by the consumer. To get cheaper economies of scale are needed.
My competitor has a contracting factory in Pakistan that has the same labor costs as me, but works for 50 hours, instead of 32 hours. He can produce 36% more per week, while paying the same cost of capital, opex and other costs, even if he pays the same per hour as me.
But if he has 1/10 of the cost of labor and labor is a high % of end product cost, I can't compete and my business is bust, my employees are on the street and we all live from 1. the taxes of the productive people in the society who can sell something competitively outside (to have currency to buy imports) 2. governmental loans to be paid in the future by the people from 1.
- Look at Germany, their highly profitable companies have moved so much outside of the country, because they can't produce a competitive product inside with the strong unions, well-meaning green taxes and giving too much to the unemployed imigrants coming as social security and benefits.
When you start overtaxing, you are just milking the cow and not feeding her enough. She'd last for some time but then't you won't have a cow and milk.
You're absolutely correct, but most people don't understand how even a simple "village-size" economy works. They think money is just "printed" and "government will enforce our standard of living".
- I've read a lot and I have been in the buisness since I was 21 years old, almost homeless student in a big city that had to postpone my degree to survive so I've had years to think from the both sides of the "inequality" divide and I got a degree in economics.
You assume that if there is a price on it than there is a free market for it. It's not true at all...
Compare the freedom of the markets that are inefficient in your example:
- housing: one of the most regulated and non-transparent markets with zoning laws and NIMBYism blocking new supply to the market
- healthcare: even more regulated market for practitioners (licence to heal), medical supplies (licences for medicines) and a brocken system that incumbents can't enter (check cost+drugs Mark Cuban's post about how shitty the system is and how far away from normal free market)
- enivronmental impact: that's what the taxes are for and to have a good tax base you tax the polutants, but it's not "the market" it's "the people who consume" in any market free or not you'll get the resources used. In non-free markets you will just use more resources, because the encumbents will extract +400$ for 8Gb ram upgrade of your macbook pro or 10000 USD for a broken leg, that could've done much more if it wasn't inefficiently extorted.
- enshittification: this happens only in the "ecosystems" with no markets inside.
If you go to the freeer markets you'll see that the prices got down, not up. (check the price of computers, electronics and clothes for example).
There are some areas where the market is not the answer, but there humanity hasn't found a better way to optimize resources and ensure freedom unless the people have the ability to change their goods freely without restriction of the third party.
- You can't feed poor people with "morals", you need a productive tax base and good redestribution system to do that.
If you have a farm, you can't kill your chicken to feed the starving neighbour if your own chidren are starving. You need to keep the chicken alive because they will feed you and if they produce enough eggs you can help your neighbour too.
When you overtax your companies you make them uncompetitive and you have less tax to redistribute. It's just simple mathematics, no morals are needed to understand that. No tax = no social safety nets. Tax comes from profit. Profit comes from margin. Margin is destroyed by higher costs. If you increase the cost, you need to close the border so all the companies can share the same cost of labor. You'll squeeze more from the companies and make more social payments but less capital for the companies to invest and hire more people. So you're just making the stuff companies produce more expensive for all. (because you need to close the border to remove outside competition)
It's not rocket science. When societies got rich then they started having social nets, not before.
- The free market could do that without unions. Doing so increases the cost of labor in the product as % of the total price. You're super highly valued employee, your employer will be more than happy to buy your work in packages of 4 days instead of 5 if it suits him and you. Also if this is not suitable for one party of the deal (either employee or employer) both can go and freely trade/buy their labour.
However, generally advocates propose a blanket "mandatory 35 hours week", which have many negtive consequences:
- Why do you need to "enforce" that to other people who can't or wan't earn the same way and are more than happy to work overtime because they need to say earn more to pay medical bills or want to save to buy a house? Isn't that limiting the amount I as a person can sell my own work hours to the business?
- How can the business compete on the local market when other companies aren't forced to do work with the same cost base for the labour component in the final product?
- How can the business compete with the Mexican company across the border who can do it for even cheaper?
Free markets are very brutal and at the first glance are bad for humans, but their efficiency gives the tax base for redistribution. Also they're inherently moral, because if you can do something for your fellow citizens and swap your labor for their money and back, then you shouldn't expect to be entitled to their surplus earning redistributed via the welfare system.
In tribes in the olden days, when a person got sick/too old, many tribes just left him to die, because they couldn't afford to feed him. Societies are much wealthier now, but we shouldn't forget that starvation and poverty are the default state, not the other way around.