Absolutely feels that way... but it may also be VITAL.
The first (really only) goal of a company is to not die. I call this the SHL rule - as it was recommended several times to SHL that he kill off Gumroad.
Who can kill a company varies over time. Initially, that is likely 100% the founders. Either giving up, feuding or running out of money. Then investors/debtors have the power to kill a company off. Finally, and every company should be so lucky to reach this level, acquirers/bankers/Government can kill off a company. Making sure you don't die - and knowing who has the power to kill you off - should be prioritised at (almost) any cost.
As an example, I once had a client who spent $X0K a month on AdWords for one keyword exact matched. It generated almost no revenue. The main investor would Google this one word, and if the site did not rank 1st both paid and organic, he'd threaten to pull all future funding. The company was loss making at that time, so that would have killed it off. I moved that one keyword into it's own AdGroup, called it "Investor Relations", never talked about it again, and years later the company was sold for $X0,000,000.
There is an idea many hold that we all knew how to fight COVID and for various reasons simply failed to implement it. The reality is that we didn't know much about it, there was no overt strategy forward, and like all good science, we need controls to understand what happened and what the affect of various policies are.
There are lots of variables at play here, and understand the affects of different policy is important.
Countries that did the exact same thing have a natural control for activity, meaning differences in outcome should be environmental, Milan vs Rome, structural, Norway vs Sweden, and/or genetic differences, Norway vs Vietnam. Things like population density, multi-generational homes can be better understood, as can racial and environmental differences (theories that some countries had a COVID-19 precursor that provided some immunity). This is also true for regions within a country, e.g. Milan vs Rome.
Where responses vary, we get a data point for the response's effectiveness. This is true right down to specifics e.g. a 50 person group limit vs 25.
Sweden is a different data point, and that is extremely valuable, not just short term but longer term as well. In 2-10 years, the death rate for COVID in Scandinavia vs GDP growth will be useful to compare.
I am thankful Sweden chose a different path. It took courage, as choosing a safe middle of the road path would teach us little, and given how little we know about pandemic response, the long term value of better understanding could potentially save millions over the next 100 or so years of human existence.
Are you saying you spend so long at work you don't have time to do these things after work hours? If not, why are work hours required to be spent on "being engaged citizens"?
> what happens when somebody does take that cash, spends it non-essentials
That's the least worrying aspect of a UBI, IMHO. Charities will always exist to fill some of these gaps, and the extremes are always there.
The most worrying aspect is that UBI likely exacerbates inequality, between those who are naturally driven and those who are not. It also likely leads to a recession, and fairly quickly at that.
> The net result on labor supply is the following:
> - Husbands reduced their labor supply by about 7% in the 3-year treatment group and by 12-13% in the 5 year treatment group.
> - Wives reduced their labor supply by about 15% in the 3-year treatment group and by 21-27% in the 5 year treatment group.
> - Single mothers reduced their labor supply between 15 and 30%.
The effects of a UBI on work likely mean an acceleration of automation. the > 10% drop in hours is likely most pronounced at the bottom, and many companies will replace that with robots, which leads to even less hours and trouble for many people even entering the workforce.
A UBI likely benefits people who have a short term problem in service of a long-term goal. Think college student studying law or medicine.
I think a UBI is ideal in Kenya, Uganda or the Congo, where many driven, capable people are held back by a system where almost no one succeeds. I think it is less likely to lead to a positive change in the west, and is likely to exacerbate inequality and lead to those who make just UBI, and those who make a lot more.
AFAIK there were no African slaves brought to Britain. In British colonies but not in Britain, and certainly not in numbers that lead their descendants being a significant minority of the overall population. Most black people in the UK are recent immigrants from either the Caribbean or Africa.
And that isn't splitting hairs as that is important in the context Cleese wrote about. Americans are hyperaware of and hypersensitive about slavery, whereas the British don't have day-to-day reminders, and slavery is not as defining in the culture as, say, 2 world wars and one world cup.
Think of it like Seattle vs New Orleans. The cultural consequences of geography and settlement/migration patterns creates a slightly different culture in each city, despite a shared US history.
In my experience, a lot of corporate entities have bad rules like "30 days to review patches before they go live", or "no patches not reviewed by team X" that slow down changes. These sorts of caveats are both hard to change, and even harder to circumvent, because big companies make change difficult as they usually have more to lose than to gain.
If you look at the article, it matches this idea:
> ... Mr. Smith referred to an “individual” in Equifax’s technology department who had failed to heed security warnings and did not ensure the implementation of software fixes that would have prevented the breach.
I doubt one individual is responsible for every patch in the organisation, and I reckon that Equifax likely has many individuals each responsible for different systems, all of whom have to deal with a central security department before they can, well, patch their system. I further bet the internal politics are off the chart, and the security team is a "no, you can't do that" department who makes things worse.
I put money on there being plenty of "individuals" who are each responsible for patching different systems at Equifax, and while this particular breach was in system X, A-W might, at another time, have been the epicentre of a breach for similar reasons related to internal processes that make moving fast nigh on impossible.
Now, while that's no excuse, I think the fault is likely not the individual who missed the patch, but the interaction between departments with different goals (political and practical) combined with an internal structure that makes changes glacially slow, and this sort of breach inevitable.
Are there two separate issues? Couldn't it be argued the term Google is generic, so therefore the trademark is redundant, but the use in a domain is confusing to people?
> – The numbers of hours worked by low-wage workers fell by 3.5 million hours per quarter. This was reflected both in thousands of job losses and reductions in hours worked by those who retained their jobs.
>
> – The losses were so dramatic that this increase “reduced income paid to low-wage employees of single-location Seattle businesses by roughly $120 million on an annual basis.” On average, low-wage workers lost $125 per month. The minimum wage has always been a lousy income transfer program, but at this level you’d come out ahead just setting a hundred million dollars a year on fire. And that’s before we get into who kept vs lost their jobs.
When laws with one goal achieve the exact opposite, we need to rethink the laws. Unfortunately, pyrrhic victories are rather common in politics.
Is any of this supported by evidence that "a big chunk of the economy (will be) powered by gigs"? I doubt it is true, and I believe your conclusion is likely off, even though I agree with (what I think are) your implied goals. Let me explain why.
> I wish the new tech entrepreneurs would find a better way to fix the low skill problem rather than find a way to reduce services/costs to the bone.
I doubt these low skill workers are the gig economy workers. Many people on AirBnB are doing fairly well, as no one wants to stay in the Ghetto, and the places with high take up are relatively well off places (London, NYC, SF). Ditto Uber, which requires a car under a certain age - is it 5 years? - not the sort of bombs truly poor people have.
> Just who are minimum-wage workers, anyway? ... people at or below the federal minimum are:
> Disproportionately young: 50.4% are ages 16 to 24; 24% are teenagers (ages 16 to 19).
> Mostly (77%) white; nearly half are white women.
> Largely part-time workers (64% of the total).
The problem isn't that minimum wage is unlivable - it is that some people can't get a job. Increasing minimum wage doesn't help people who can't get a job at all.
Similarly, the gig economy isn't reducing the cost of services for people who currently do it. Rather, it is an extra source for people who already make OK money. There aren't a lot of poor people living in the Haidt, or NYC, two places where I have taken AirBnB places, and there aren't a lot of people looking to rent a room in Gary, Indiana. Or Nairobi. Or Soweto.
That's the real issue - not the cost reductions in rich areas, but finding a way to engage people who don't have a way in to the economy at all. I'd say this is not even a low skilled issue, I'd almost say it os a no skilled, combined with a no history (as in no work history) workers' problem. The gig economy isn't really affecting these people, as it seems more likely to me to be a way to prop up middle class people and make their lives slightly better, rather than a way-in for these almost-no-skilled workers.
Just as an increase in minimum wage isn't the panacea to poverty alleviation, if it does much of anything at all, so addressing the gig economy, when so many of the means of making money have rather high barriers to entry, isn't going to fix much.
I have no answers BTW, I just think the suppliers to the gig economy aren't the group - poor, low skilled people - that is the common perception, and this mis-alignment of who we need to help and HOW we help them is sending people in the wrong direction.
The massive-growth-model of startups dictates "YOY, double revenue on a 50% cost increase. Rinse and repeat until profitable". As long as the funding holds out, this model is mathematically sound.
Uber is well on track for this from the (admitted dodgy) numbers I have seen - those being summarized here http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/14/technology/uber-financials/i.... Uber is (again, rumoured) to have doubled revenue in 2016, with a reported $6.5B net revenue, and a loss of $2.8B for ~$9.3B in costs. Double and 50% those numbers, and you get $13B, and about $12.2B, or ~$1B in profit.
Not "an", as in singular measure, no. But what about several? Is there a single metric for "heathy"? Someone can be OK in almost all ways but have a broken leg. Are they "healthy" by a single metric? What about diabetes that is managed? Can you think of any field in life where there is a singular metric for performance? If not, why does the non-existence of a singular metric in tech invalidate the idea?
And what about in reverse? What if, rather than finding the "best", we merely have a metric/s that weed out the worst? If I remove the bottom 15% effectively, and replace them with average performers, then the net gain is massive, especially as each extra bug introduced is a massive time sink for any team, and poor developers are a massive cause of that.
That's pretty rare! Almost all great teams have great players - and the teams that don't, usually have chronically underrated players, e.g. the Pistons with Ben Wallace - one of the greatest defenders ever.
HOWEVER, I will say that, rather than a great team, strategic / tactical innovation can cover for flaws. The Sydney Swans pioneered "flooding" and made a grand final with a sub-standard team. Next season though, the league caught up and the Swans did poorly. It wasn't the team or the players that got there, rather it was a tactical innovation, and that is usually short lived.
In similar ways, a coding change - new library, microservices etc can all be short term gains. Ultimately, though, when everyone starts using those tactics, what you want is the best people, fullstop.
It's not my claim, it is Tyler Cowan's claim. In case you are unsure who he is, pretty much everyone who is anyone holds Tyler as a hero, Malcolm Gladwell for one.
So not ridiculous, not held by a random internet nobody, but thanks for your input ;)
Scenario with a female founder: "Listen, I want to meet you but as we have an at least one woman present policy for any meetings with female founders, adn all the female partners are booked for the next week, I'm afraid I can't meet you".
Vs with a male: "Hells yes I'd love to catch up for coffee, I love your idea. Unfortunately, it will just be me as everyone else is busy".
> One example was the Americans With Disabilities Act, and we told the story of a Los Angeles orthopedic surgeon named Andrew Brooks. When a deaf patient came to him for a consultation, he realized that the A.D.A. required him to hire a sign-language interpreter for each visit if that’s what the patient wanted. The interpreter would cost $120 an hour, with a two-hour minimum, and Brooks wouldn’t be reimbursed by the insurance company:
> That would mean laying out $240 to conduct an exam for which the woman’s insurance company would pay him $58 — a loss of more than $180 even before accounting for taxes and overhead.
You are placing normative (meaning "you should do") moral judgements on a descriptive (meaning "this will happen") moral statement.
My prediction isn't what SHOULD happen, but what I think WILL happen. My personal opinion on what is morally right? As I'm not a VC, utterly unimportant and redundant.