Is there a country with an economic system other than capitalism that is even remotely competitive with the US?
Saying there's a crisis in capitalism because some people are poor is like saying the Warriors are in crisis because their bench players aren't getting much playing time.
And here, I thought war (hot or cold) was competition.
I get that momentum is hard to overcome, but I think a sufficiently competitive system will overcome that barrier and eventually outcompete capitalism as we know it; we haven't found that system yet, though it's theoretically possible we've tossed out some better systems that weren't better enough to overcome the first-mover-after-WWII advantage.
I think the major innovation of the next paradigm shift will relate to how groups of people handle intergenerational wealth (and perhaps some related structural questions), as I think this is the most glaring inefficiency of the American system. This is a minefield of a problem with a lot of naive, popular answers.
But if the number of players on the bench keep increasing while those on the field keep decreasing, you might start to wonder if there's a problem, or if the Warriors will be back to play next season.
Having grown up in Sweden, I'd say that's mostly history by now.
It used to work a lot better, but they've been privatizing and monetizing non-stop during my life so far and it's mostly same ice cream/different flavor these days from what I can see.
Which category is bigger?
1. Citizens who want to invest their money
2. Citizens who work in the financial services industry
It's #1, by several orders of magnitude. I would still argue that it's not a mistake, but that's because a mistake would mean they didn't intend to help category #2.
Most other industries are allowed to sell products that are contrary to their clients' interests. I don't see why wealth management should be any different. If my mechanic can try to sell me a bunch of services I don't really need every time I go in for an oil change, I have no problem with the financial industry doing the same.
The difference is that your mechanic isn’t acting as your agent with regards to all things automotive, they represent the shop they work for. That differentiation of who’s responsible for what makes a huge difference.
A financial advisor is much more akin to a lawyer, you pay them to represent your interests. And it is absolutely against the rules for your lawyer to not protect your best interests to the upmost extent of the law.
Agreed. Standard lawyer jokes aside, I used to routinely advise clients against filing lawsuits which would have benfitted me and my firm financially. In many cases, it would have been a waste of time and money for the client. I'm surprised that financial advisors think it's acceptable to advise against a client's interests. Not surprised that they would do it, but surprised that they publically state that there is nothing wrong with it.
I think high finance has deluded itself into thinking that they’re irreplaceable, and therefore they don’t have to pay an ounce of attention to their public image. In minor cases they might be right, but I think they’re underestimating the risks of mass scale legislation or reorganization directly caused by their malfeasance.
Because weath managers don't clearly differentiate between their advisory and sales roles and exploit ignorant people. If the result was fee only advisors were the only ones left that would be a good thing
But nobody makes trips to the gas station to refuel. Re-fueling is something that's done on the way at a convenient gas bar, and typically takes only 2–3 minutes.
I’m very skeptical about 2-3 minutes. Maybe if you disregard lost momentum and don’t keep track of your mileage or wait for a receipt or have to go around once or twice to find a spot or...
Because I keep track of my mileage and have to carefully babysit the process (likes to overflow) I’d say I lose at least 10 minutes every time I get gas, and that’s every 130 miles or so.
Well, the speed depends entirely on how fast the pump is. Some are faster than others, but I never have to wait for a spot, and printing a receipt takes 5 seconds. Maybe diesel pumps are faster? I sometimes use the truck pumps at freeway service centres, and it comes out like a firehose.
Only 130 miles? Is that normal? My car can easily go 600 miles on a 15 gallon tank (diesel), but I've had it for so long I don't remember what other cars are like.
Now I'm curious how long it actually takes. Next time I fill up I'll time it.
No, 130 is definitely not normal. Theoretically I can go 200, which itself is pretty terrible, but my fuel pump sensor is shot and I just prefer to play it safe.
This is accurate in my experience. Pay at pump takes ~2.5 minutes for the whole process. I note mileage and reset OBC when I do this - included in the time. I typically buy around 50 L.
If the ev car companies got their shit together, they could have used swappable battery packs.
You can wait around for 12h to charge, or you can turn in your cores and pay for 100% capacity batts now. And the swap would be quicker than standing around filling up a tank.
But no. Each ev is different and proprietary. The chargers aren't even the same.
I mean the battery technology for EV companies is their special sauce. If they are all the same that takes away their differentiator. I agree it would be better for customers but it's understandable why that isn't something they want to do.
Much like swappable batteries in a smartphone, there are tradeoffs to such a scheme. And an electrical “pump” is vastly simpler to implement than something that would allow swapping out a car-sized battery.
Sure, but one can argue that a EV could be designed/optimized for faster battery replacement. While it would still need at least a forklift to move the batteries, I believe the time needed for battery swapping could be greatly reduced with a proper design.
I’d much rather have an EV optimized for efficiency, battery endurance, etc. given that battery swaps would only really be useful for long distance road trips.
But you’d still need to have expensive batteries in stock on location, technicians and equipment. I can’t see that ever being done at scale.
Tesla did that for a while. They abandoned the plan. Batteries are big and heavy. It turns out to be far more important that engineers have the ability to fit them around the other parts (suspension...) than the ability to swap a standard battery.
Yep, the batteries are ridiculously heavy and they’re used as structural elements in the car.
So swapping batteries is hard to do, and unnecessary for most drives. Sure, you’d want to be able to swap batteries in five minutes like pumping gas. But who’s going to ship batteries out to the middle of Kansas, build infrastructure, and pay technicians just for people on a road trip who want to swap batteries?
I agree this news is pretty sad. The Guardian has no objectivity any more. I wish it were possible for newspapers to survive as non-partisan entities, but it's looking less and less likely that'll ever be true.
A $10 billion fine for the Cambridge Analytica "scandal" would be so far beyond reasonable as to merit criminal charges against Joseph Simons. $3 billion is already insanely ridiculously high.
There's no way this is actually a genuine question. It's the same reason anybody wants a job anywhere: because they'll eventually become homeless if they don't find a job.
It's pretty shoddy journalism for the title of the article to assert this as fact even though it's just an allegation that hasn't even been investigated yet.
But they did investigate. They interviewed sources who confirmed that unionizing was planned before people were fired, which is the title. And they read the lawsuit and talked to the lawyers, who obviously said the same thing.
The title allows the reader to infer a causation that hasn't been proven or investigated. Given that the people making the allegation are bitter ex-employees who have a financial incentive for it to be true, it's an allegation that should be met with a healthy dose of skepticism.
You probably don't see the bias in the article because you support unionization. If the article was instead titled "Sexual harassment complaints double after NPM staff unionize," you'd probably be complaining about bias the same as I am.
> Google confirmed it found fake ad clicking on all 6 apps, and said ad fraud was against Play store policy. So why aren't you removing the apps, I asked. They said they banned them from ad products and were still investigating. Really? Finally, not long ago, Google removed them.
What's wrong with this guy? Does he not understand what investigating means? God forbid Google actually investigates claims of malfeasance.
Hi! I'm the author of the story and want to note that I only asked Google why it wasn't removing the apps after their investigation confirmed a major policy infraction. By then their investigation was close to a week old.
Google confirmed that these apps were committing ad fraud, and told me that ad fraud is against Play store policy. Yet the company was going to keep the apps in the store. That didn't make sense to me. Fortunately, they reversed their position.
(Also, in case it matters, I didn't submit my story here. But I always appreciate the interesting threads on my ad fraud stories.)
In all cases Google basically said it takes action against specific apps found violating policy. It seems unwilling to take action against a developer as a whole and ban them. I would also add that I suspect the Play store is not equipped to enforce a ban. People can easily create a newco and get back into the store. This is definitely a much larger issue. So I think that among other things these stories show that you can be a clear bad actor and still do business in the Play store.
Yes. Google prioritizes themselves, business partners over end consumers. I have seen many high ranked apps, which clearly violate Google Play store policy (For instance, placing ads on user lock screen)
Yet, those apps are being ranked higher than other honest apps, which are doing business in honest way.
These day, Google is not willing to do the right thing, unless being pressured by press media, or EU.
If we take the paragraph at its word, Google had already “found” fake ad clicking, with a high enough level of confidence that they both “confirmed” it to a journalist and banned the apps from ad products. It was reasonable to wonder why the same level of confidence was not enough to remove the apps. There are some potential valid answers to that question, to be sure (e.g. want to be more careful before taking actions that affect users), but also potential invalid ones (they just didn’t care much about ad fraud and only removed the apps due to the pressure).
That's no longer a reliable way of trusting the credibility. There's been many Pulitzer Prize news reporting which have come out to be completely false.
Corporate taxes shouldn't exist in the first place. They're just a sneaky way of double-taxing people.
Corporations are really just groups of people. Those people already have to pay taxes on the income they receive from the corporation. They shouldn't have to pay taxes on it again when the corporation reports it as income.
I'm sympathetic to the argument in principle, but it hinges on the system for assessing income of/collecting taxes from individuals being adequately rigorous and efficient.
The presence of loopholes, tax havens and other mechanisms (including corporations themselves) for hiding personal income means the bucket is very leaky.
Given that corporations have to maintain complete records of their cashflows and disclose them to investors and authorities anyway, using this data for intermediate tax collection seems reasonable.
Saying there's a crisis in capitalism because some people are poor is like saying the Warriors are in crisis because their bench players aren't getting much playing time.