p23 · HackerTrans

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

And even if some super rich guy has a tax rate lower than 10% measured in absolute dollars he probably still pays much more than you or I. I have yet to see any kind of justification that percentage based taxation without getting more in return when you pay more (in absolute dollars) is fair in the first place - even though somehow everybody seems to believe that.

p23

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

The problem is the stock market is somewhat disconnected from reality.

I need to elaborate this further because now it just seems to be some anti-capitalist snark (which I do not want it to be).

The way stocks were supposed to work is that you buy a part of a company keep it and make money by getting a part of their profits every year (called dividend). Todays problem is that we want to make more money, faster (which is not "wrong" intrinsically as some people might think, but it does not work with the "traditional" stock model). The reason it does not work is that it may take some time for a company to be profitable and even then they may want to keep some of their profits to invest in research etc. which keeps dividends small (sometimes even 0). The new way one tries to make money is to buy a stock while hoping to be able to sell it to someone else for more money in the future (nothing wrong about that either). The real problem is that this price is based on supply and demand/perceived value which might differ significantly from the actual value (worth of the company's physical assets, paid dividends, ...) - it is easier to see these differences on more tangible things like luxury watches, art, etc., which are nowhere priced for their physical value (a frame and some paint - does not seem to be worth much ...) but they are there for stocks, too.

Now to the "hyper efficient"-part: yes, that's true, the market is hyper efficient, as in it is not that easy to get money out, because that would mean that someone else leaves it on the table, but everything still happens in the "perceived value" point of view, in which you would have to compete, too, to make money with stocks.

The dilemma in which CEOs find themselves is that not all actions that are good for the company itself are good for the perceived value/stock price, at least not when you are forced to do "short-term thinking" (the CEO keeping his job, the trader making money now).

p23

vor 12 Jahrendiscuss

A valid reason to kill this one. But there seems to be the problem that controversial storys get flagged of the frontpage very fast, which then makes other people repost them. Probably because the story is relevant to them/they want to discuss it.

In addition to this, there seems to be a heavy penalty for posts that get more comments than upvotes, which sometimes kills quite inspiring discussions.

How about introducing a "controversial" tag that gets added on posts with lots of comments and flags and having a setting (similar to showdead) to make them invisible for people who don't like to discuss. This would also solve a part of the repost problem and the "censorship" accusations hn sometimes gets.

p23

vor 12 Jahrendiscuss

To 1) and 2) That was kind of the point I was trying to make here: Being a woman and being 40 or being a woman and being black is a characteristic of someone - having blue eyes is one, too. You only feel different when you look at it specifically and point out it is "important" (for example "being a woman" compared to "having blue eyes"). And then you feel alone because of it. So why make it "important" in the first place?

p23

vor 12 Jahrendiscuss

Ok, I'll probably get downvoted to death (therefore new account), but I am really interested in your opinion on this:

Things like "Try being the only woman over 40." for me sounds like desperately looking for an excuse for not wanting to work there without really having one - similar to "I'm the only tall guy with black hair and blue eyes - I can't work there".

Next, the "Halle Berry" thing: I'm not really into the specifics about her, but I'm not aware of anything negative. I only think of her as being really successful in her job. There is nothing about being a woman in there - when a guy with a huge beard would break the server there would be jokes like "Oh look, Gandalf broke the website today" which isn't bad either.

I do not understand their problem about "being different" - I think of it as one of the biggest reasons for having people to do the job instead of 1000 equal robots (only second to "robots are not that far yet"). In addition to this: Isn't the diversity thing one of ideas a lot of "feminists" preach to convince people to look for "women who could do this job" instead of "everyone who could do this job"?

And the last thing: In the article they complain about not getting a baby leave, which is totally valid, but doesn't that contradict the the other "we want to be treated equally" stuff?