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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On April 13 2017 08:44 warding wrote:
The people who start companies are very often not super rich. Rich people usually don't have the hunger necessary to stay successful startups. Even if they do, once they're successful and need to scale they will need investment because by then we're talking of investments of millions our tens of millions. In the case of companies like Uber it's billions. So there's a mismatch the entrepreneurs and the capital. You paint it as something negative somehow but it is how it works and how silicon valley got built. Start a company, get investment, grow, sell and get rich, invest in other companies with the money you just got and mentor them, rinse repeat.
Few comments:
1. Silicon Valley was "founded" on the back of government investment in various defense projects - among them, the internet. That infrastructure was what allowed it to grow into the consumer software hub it is today.
2. What you are describing - a founder raising money to scale from the moneyed who want to make profit but don't want to spend that money on founding their own company (for whatever reason - not necessarily because "they aren't hungry") - is precisely the purpose of an institution that should be rather familiar to all of us: a financial market. Whatever Silicon Valley "one was" it is now a financial market of its own a la Wall Street.
3. The benefits and demerits of financial markets are well known. I'd say most Westerners can agree on the very least that financiers need to be put on a very tight leash because they can really fuck things up if you let them.
No thoughts on the larger point you're making.
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1. I'm not necessarily against government involvement in the investment for big audacious technological advancements. For sure many were key to today's tech boom. This isn't specific to silicon valley though, something else makes that land special and that something else is both the University and the moneyed veteran ecosystem.
2. Ok sure. Not sure what your point is. I'd add that these transactions are often not just about the money, as an observer of shows like shark tank would point out. Investors do often bring other intangibles.
3. Generally agree, but disagree on the 'well known'. Understanding of markets, much less of financial markets is relatively scarce in this contingent.
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@warding: you are right, I am not an expert on macroeconomics. I took some basic university courses, talked to my professors about the models we were taught and the answer to the question: "so where does this model work" has always been "it doesn't, but we'll examine another model that deals with the shortcomings of this one next". Then, at some point you ask the question whether there is an actual complex model that is proven to work and that can predict the economy. Turns out there isn't.
If you listen to the relevant economists that critizise our modern economic theories they will tell you that the field is stuck in its own ass, not questioning its very basic assumptions of human behavior and not taking into account that there are millions of people and goods in the world. Out of the impossibility to model so many variables economists have built up a fantasy world with few variables that simply is not good at representing or predicting our economy. Obviously, if you don't model the population individually you also don't care about distribution questions. They however seem to be of great importance as recent empirical research suggests.
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German prosecutors have said a man arrested after a bomb attack on a bus carrying the Borussia Dortmund football team is a member of Islamic State but there is so far no evidence he was involved in the incident.
The man, a 26-year-old Iraqi identified only as Abdul Beset al-O, arrived in Germany last year via Turkey, according to a statement from the prosecutor’s office.
The Borussia Dortmund (BVB) bus was hit by three explosions from pipe bombs as it drove from the team’s hotel to their home stadium in Dortmund on Tuesday night. Spanish defender Marc Bartra was injured by shrapnel, as was a police officer.
The Champions League match the team was due to play against AS Monaco was rescheduled and took place last night.
Abdul Beset al-O, who is believed to live in the western German city of Wuppertal, is due to appear before a judge on Friday morning as prosecutors seek to hold him for longer than 24 hours.
“The investigations have yet to result in any evidence that the suspect took part in the attack,” the prosecutor’s office said.
The statement said the man had been identified as an Isis member in Iraq, where he had led a 10-strong commando unit of fighters that had taken part in kidnappings, smuggling, killings and extortion. After his arrival in Germany, he is said to have maintained close contact with Isis members.
According to Spiegel, the man’s telephone was tapped by German intelligence, who just days ago monitored a conversation he had with an unknown person, who told him: “The explosive device is ready.”
Investigators are also focusing on another man, a 28-year-old German identified as Abdullah Al Z, from Fröndenberg, 26 miles (42km) east of Dortmund. According to Spiegel, police reportedly entered his house on Wednesday when he was sleeping with his child. The man was said to be in possession of a BVB umbrella from the team hotel.
The pipe bombs used in the attack were set off by military detonators that had been detonated remotely, probably via a mobile phone, according to some media reports on Thursday.
Three identical letters printed on single sheets in German, found near the scene of the attack, point to an Islamist motive, but investigators have said they are not typical of Isis writings, not least because they make concrete demands.
The letter demands the withdrawal of German Tornado surveillance planes from Syria, where they are involved in the military operation against Isis, as well as the closure of Ramstein, the US military air base in Germany. It also states that, with immediate effect, “all unbelieving actors, singers, athletes and all prominent personalities in Germany and other crusader nations are on an Islamic State death list”.
Two other claims of responsibility have been made, by a group of radical leftists as well as a far-right sympathiser. Investigators have said they are keeping an open mind.
Source
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The man, a 26-year-old Iraqi identified only as Abdul Beset al-O, arrived in Germany last year via Turkey, according to a statement from the prosecutor’s office.
Via Turkey? As refugee?
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On April 13 2017 15:41 Big J wrote:
@warding: you are right, I am not an expert on macroeconomics. I took some basic university courses, talked to my professors about the models we were taught and the answer to the question: "so where does this model work" has always been "it doesn't, but we'll examine another model that deals with the shortcomings of this one next". Then, at some point you ask the question whether there is an actual complex model that is proven to work and that can predict the economy. Turns out there isn't.
Right. Predicting the economy, it turns out, is incredibly difficult as economies are very complex with billions off variables. It's also not possible to conduct tests and isolate variables very well when you're trying to study the economy as a hole. To add to That, there's only a limited history and data available and every economic crisis seems to have been different. That, however, is only one of the many questions in the field. Economists can predict the impact of specific public policy with decent precision, they know what causes inflation, they have an understanding of what happens when you introduce price controls our when you increase interest rates. The fact that we still have not understood some complex questions in the field of economics is no reason to throw allthe knowledge we've amassed overboard.
If you listen to the relevant economists that critizise our modern economic theories they will tell you that the field is stuck in its own ass, not questioning its very basic assumptions of human behavior and not taking into account that there are millions of people and goods in the world. Out of the impossibility to model so many variables economists have built up a fantasy world with few variables that simply is not good at representing or predicting our economy. Obviously, if you don't model the population individually you also don't care about distribution questions. They however seem to be of great importance as recent empirical research suggests.
This kind of discourse borders anti-intellectualism and resembles the climate change deniers arguments. Economics does question itself and they are not in a bubble or echo chamber. There is tons of workbeing done on behavioral economics and other previously unstudied areas. What you shouldn't do is discard an entire field because some of the knowledge built by it seems to go against our own political narratives.
I don't follow your point on why it's obvious that economists don't care about distribution questions. I think your perception that economists don't care about distribution questions is caused by - in very general terms - the fact that economists understand the role of setting incentives by governments and that in order to have growth and human development then people need to have the right incentives to innovate. They also see that there really aren't free lunches and that many policies have downsides - subsidies, minimum wage, so on. So when it comes to redistributive policy economists may be a lot more reticent then those who aren't looking at all those factors. To rephrase: not looking at the economic impacts of politically motivated policy makes it easier to make decisions and be certain of their righteousness. It is also a dumb thing to do.
Also, here's a recent study on human preferences for equality vs fairness:
…despite appearances to the contrary, there is no evidence that people are bothered by economic inequality itself. Rather, they are bothered by something that is often confounded with inequality: economic unfairness. Drawing upon laboratory studies, cross-cultural research, and experiments with babies and young children, we argue that humans naturally favour fair distributions, not equal ones, and that when fairness and equality clash, people prefer fair inequality over unfair equality.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0082
This part of the debate is a moral one, not an economics one. While some people are very tuned to the moral value of equality - and they tend to align on the left - others may not be or they may weigh that moral value against others like fairness, community, and so on. Those who value equality over other moral values often tend to propose policy that would horrify individuals who place more weight on fairness, for example - 90% top income tax brackets would be an example. The work of Jonathan Haidt and others on politics and morality is fascinating: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory
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The line you're drawing between fairness and equality doesn't make much sense given that "equality" isn't a baseline justification in itself without reference to fairness (or some other justification). Most folks who prioritize equality do so at least in part due to its relation to fairness.
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something needs to be said about context here too; those metrics, fairness and equality, come with/in different values based on the freedom or limitation a context provides.
the more restricting the context(be it perceived or real), the more those terms lean towards sameness/uniformity and vice versa.
the wiggle room/human flexibility here is based on context/how the context is perceived.
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I like this theory:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/12/doughnut-growth-economics-book-economic-model
This is in fact the only one that makes the slightest bit of sense to me. But I am notoriously unburdened with education, so that's probably why.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Cw7MMw3.jpg)
This recognition of inconvenient realities then leads to her breakthrough: a graphic representation of the world we want to create. Like all the best ideas, her doughnut model seems so simple and obvious that you wonder why you didn’t think of it yourself. But achieving this clarity and concision requires years of thought: a great decluttering of the myths and misrepresentations in which we have been schooled.
The diagram consists of two rings. The inner ring of the doughnut represents a sufficiency of the resources we need to lead a good life: food, clean water, housing, sanitation, energy, education, healthcare, democracy. Anyone living within that ring, in the hole in the middle of the doughnut, is in a state of deprivation. The outer ring of the doughnut consists of the Earth’s environmental limits, beyond which we inflict dangerous levels of climate change, ozone depletion, water pollution, loss of species and other assaults on the living world.
The area between the two rings – the doughnut itself – is the “ecologically safe and socially just space” in which humanity should strive to live. The purpose of economics should be to help us enter that space and stay there.
As well as describing a better world, this model allows us to see, in immediate and comprehensible terms, the state in which we now find ourselves. At the moment we transgress both lines. Billions of people still live in the hole in the middle. We have breached the outer boundary in several places.
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On April 14 2017 18:43 farvacola wrote:
The line you're drawing between fairness and equality doesn't make much sense given that "equality" isn't a baseline justification in itself without reference to fairness (or some other justification). Most folks who prioritize equality do so at least in part due to its relation to fairness.
Those who advocate equality do believe it is the fairest outcome but there is a distinction between the two. If you focus on equality you focus on a preferential outcome where everyone ends up the same - any other outcome you deem as 'unfair'. However that overlooks the actual concept of fairness which focuses not on the outcome itself but in whether that came about in legitimate ways - if those who end up at the top 1% of an unequal income distribution do so based on perceived professoonal merit or as the outcome of personal risk taken, that's acceptable to those focusing on fairness.
I have no Idea what that model means our how it helps us make better decisions a_flayer. Also, George Monbiot is just unreadable.
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There is no "actual concept of fairness," there are a range of attitudes towards what fairness is and how it should operate relative to regulation. "Fairness as product of legitimate process" doesn't have some kind of sovereign claim to the essence of fairness in the way you're separating it out from competing concepts like fairness as outcome, naturalistic fairness, or fair relativism. Further, it seems clear we've just identified why "fairness" is a poor descriptor when it comes to describing economic attitudes because it almost always boils down into a covert claim of normative victory.
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Fairness is hard to measure, which is why we measure social mobility and income instead. It's no coincidence that societies with high social mobility are considered better places to live than places with lower social mobility. Farvacola, you seem to equate equality with equal outcome but the concept of equality is more of equality of opportunity. The rich children should not have more opportunity than the poor children. Countries with emphasis on equality such as high standards of public education and lack of informal unpaid internships do score higher on the social mobility scale.
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The same things I said about fairness apply to equality. Accordingly, I'm not equating equality with anything specific and am instead suggesting that, because equality operates like fairness in terms of lacking a stable connotation, it can be understood differently by different people. Definition problems notwithstanding, I definitely think equality of opportunity is the right overall focus, so no disagreement from me there.
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Farvacola you're right about the semantics of the terms. Is there a disagreement on the substance?
I think everyone agrees with equality of opportunity. Most opinions and arguments on equality are focusing on outcomes though.
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Norway28667 Posts
On April 12 2017 23:28 Velr wrote:
The left strugles in just about any western european country with "keeping" the workers. In fact they have lost them about ~20-30 years ago but still don't seem to realise it.
I talked with some local politicians about it, they are absolutely clueless about the reasons and don't even see a fault on their side. It was honestly scary how deluded these guys were. It reminded me of the "deplorables" comment by Hillary...
I told them i normally vote for their Party but cross out every Name on the list that is Teacher, Student, Lawyer (because there are allready enough lawyers in politics anyway) or anything that hasn't had a "normal" job. Which means like 80% of the List. They weren't amused :p
Why on earth would you cross out teacher? What 'normal' job makes you more suited towards being a politician?
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On April 14 2017 21:48 warding wrote:
Farvacola you're right about the semantics of the terms. Is there a disagreement on the substance?
I think everyone agrees with equality of opportunity. Most opinions and arguments on equality are focusing on outcomes though.
Probably not, I'm just sensitive to statements claiming to define fairness given how much bad fairness dialogue dominates shitty US media 
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On April 14 2017 21:52 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On April 12 2017 23:28 Velr wrote:
The left strugles in just about any western european country with "keeping" the workers. In fact they have lost them about ~20-30 years ago but still don't seem to realise it.
I talked with some local politicians about it, they are absolutely clueless about the reasons and don't even see a fault on their side. It was honestly scary how deluded these guys were. It reminded me of the "deplorables" comment by Hillary...
I told them i normally vote for their Party but cross out every Name on the list that is Teacher, Student, Lawyer (because there are allready enough lawyers in politics anyway) or anything that hasn't had a "normal" job. Which means like 80% of the List. They weren't amused :p Why on earth would you cross out teacher? What 'normal' job makes you more suited towards being a politician?
Well obviously, you need to be either a steelworker or a farmer. Anything else are not real jobs for real men.
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Norway28667 Posts
Also I think that equality vs fairness clarification mostly showcases that some people don't understand what others are advocating. I'm a consistent leftist and have been surrounded by leftists and leftist politicians all my life - I've never seen anyone advocate for complete equality. What people want is more equality because the current level of societal inequality is obviously unfair.
Basically, yes, fairness is obviously the key metric. It's just that by making this clarification, you're kinda strawmanning the opposition, because there's no significant crowd arguing for equality for the sake of equality. Everyone argues for more equality on the grounds of more fairness.
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You're right, equality absolutists are rare. I did basically say exactly what you did in the end that those who value equality equate it with fairness.
If my country was abundantly rich from a natural resource I'd place a very high priority on equality too. 
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On April 14 2017 21:52 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On April 12 2017 23:28 Velr wrote:
The left strugles in just about any western european country with "keeping" the workers. In fact they have lost them about ~20-30 years ago but still don't seem to realise it.
I talked with some local politicians about it, they are absolutely clueless about the reasons and don't even see a fault on their side. It was honestly scary how deluded these guys were. It reminded me of the "deplorables" comment by Hillary...
I told them i normally vote for their Party but cross out every Name on the list that is Teacher, Student, Lawyer (because there are allready enough lawyers in politics anyway) or anything that hasn't had a "normal" job. Which means like 80% of the List. They weren't amused :p Why on earth would you cross out teacher? What 'normal' job makes you more suited towards being a politician?
Everything from mechanic, accountant, clerk, driver, business owner, construction worker... I don't care, i just want people that have private sector jobs (the swiss parlament has nearly no professional politicians).
I have absolutely no issues with teachers, there are just too many in the party/parlament allready (kinda like lawyers and farmers on the right side).
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EPT
