|
Within the scale of the democracy, if a cooperative exists within a wider capitalist system, then the wider system is not democratic, even if the internal democracy of the cooperative were to be. If it were to get successful on the scale of a modern megacorp then you'd be reasonable to argue it's doing an imperialism if it doesn't devote a sizeable part of its resources to creating more cooperatives or expanding itself to knock out parts of the capitalist system it exists in. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Nov 5, 2019 |
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 20:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 08:21 |
|
|
Cicero posted:What if a co-op is phenomenally successful? Does it have to be democratic at the level of a nation state or the entire world? Literally the only way you can get really super rich is by exploiting the labour of others, so how exactly would a co-op be able to pull that one off? You'd have to involve the labour of people not in the co-op somehow, and then you're no longer democratic.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 20:41
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:Can you think of anything faster that can also be distilled down to a sequence of simple steps that can be quickly explained? Or is even this too optimistic? I can describe the steps as I seem them to go from zero to highly-paid software engineer if it helps. Have you considered the fact that it is literally impossible for society to function if a significant portion of people worked high-paying "knowledge economy" jobs (and that if this even started to happen it would just depress wages). This is the sort of thing that should be immediately obvious to anyone who isn't a complete idiot. Most jobs that need to be worked for society to function are ones that do not pay well in our society and economic system. oliveoil posted:I'm pretty sure this is all doable with enough optimism. But I see lots and lots of pessimists these days. That's just being a genuinely stupid person. Like it's not even an ideological thing; this is the sort of belief that is indicative of a person being unusually stupid if they're older than ~21/22. Cicero posted:If you can get good at solving leetcode problems, you can probably get into at least the tier of companies below FB/Google, like Amazon and MS. And at that level, saving money to move is less of an issue since they'll cover it. You have a distorted perception because you've either coasted down the path to those jobs or gotten unusually lucky at some point along the way. As another poster mentioned, it generally isn't possible unless someone has gone to the right schools or just got extremely lucky. If someone has the aptitude to become a half-decent programmer (which is honestly pretty rare and difficult to self-teach past college-age) they're still not going to be able to get the kind of jobs you're thinking of. If they're willing to move, they could feasibly get something like a high 5-figure job at a large company that isn't a "tech company" (FedEx is probably the biggest programmer employer where I live, for example), but the sort of thing you're thinking about isn't normally accessible. This reminds me of a college friend who was convinced that his skill and attitude got him his first good job instead of the internship at a hedge fund he got through nepotism during his sophomore year. When almost everyone you know and work with comes from a similar background, those common factors become invisible and you start to convince yourself that difference in aptitude, personality, etc are what actually mattered. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Nov 5, 2019 |
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 20:46
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:You have a distorted perception because you've either coasted down the path to those jobs or gotten unusually lucky at some point along the way. As another poster mentioned, it generally isn't possible unless someone has gone to the right schools or just got extremely lucky. People from top schools are definitely disproportionately represented, especially as new grad developers, but they're nowhere close to a majority. quote:If someone has the aptitude to become a half-decent programmer (which is honestly pretty rare and difficult to self-teach past college-age) they're still not going to be able to get the kind of jobs you're thinking of. quote:This reminds me of a college friend who was convinced that his skill and attitude got him his first good job instead of the internship at a hedge fund he got through nepotism during his sophomore year. When almost everyone you know and work with comes from a similar background, those common factors become invisible and you start to convince yourself that difference in aptitude, personality, etc are what actually mattered. Yes obviously some jobs are still got through blatant nepotism, and having former coworkers put in a good word for you can be very useful, but at least at the big companies connections mostly just get you an interview, then you have to pass the coding interviews. If all it took was nepotism I would've gotten my brother at job at Google by now, but they don't seem to give a poo poo about our relationship.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 21:31
|
|
|
down n out posted:Jeff Bezos had his parents give him $250,000 back in 1995. Bill Gates’ father was a partner in a law firm and his grandfather was a businessman. Warren Buffett’s dad was an investor and US Congressman. Also the parents at Bill Gate's school bought the class a computer so they could learn to program. In 1968 Also FIRE people are loving hilarious, because they've correctly identified a load of genuine problems (needless consumption, the pointless busywork of most jobs etc etc) but have decided to game the system instead of organising to fix it. It's like entirely self-centred leftism.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 21:34
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:What does it take? If you could actually reliably take random college grads and convert them into coders making $150k a year, you'd be able to charge through the nose for such a useful school and earn tons more than $150k, so the question is why aren't you?
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 21:40
|
|
|
down n out posted:Jeff Bezos had his parents give him $250,000 back in 1995. Bill Gates’ father was a partner in a law firm and his grandfather was a businessman. Warren Buffett’s dad was an investor and US Congressman. bill gates' father was not just "a" partner at a law firm, he was one of the name partners (i.e. so important that the name of the firm includes his last name) of a firm that formed one of the current largest firms around, K&L Gates the number of living lawyers who are name partners at a firm that size, especially ones who are close enough to the front that their name is actually used when referring to the law firm, are - well, there are not a whole lot.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 21:55
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:What does it take? People have to like coding to be good at it and get to that level. Lots of people don't enjoy thinking in programming. It bothers me that people just assume programming is a switch that can be turned on in everyone's brain.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 22:01
|
|
|
You don't have to like coding to be good at it. The same kind of gunners who go into med school for the money exist for programming too (and if you're capable of getting into Google or similar companies, it's a way better deal financially than becoming a doctor). If you're intelligent and extremely self disciplined you can just push through it, though that sounds fairly miserable to me. But hey, same thing's true for doctoring, working 70 hour weeks doing something you don't give a poo poo about has gotta suck.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 22:03
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:What does it take? Hey. Hey buddy. Why do you think you are better than the rest of us?
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 22:13
|
|
|
1) Accumulate enough money or be financially secure enough to start investing money in projects. (Having rich parents / other backers helps) 2) Take financial risks and succeed in them. (Having rich parents / other backers helps) 3) Take time to learn skills which improve your career prospects. (Having rich parents / other backers helps) 4) Connect with role models and people who can mentor you or help you out in some way (Having rich parents / other backers helps) 5) Make sure people see you as someone reliable and who they can believe in (Having rich parents / other backers helps) 6) Raise money from investments and property 7) Continue raising money until you die
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 23:23
|
|
|
If you're starting from nothing, join the US military and risk death/maiming/psychosis so you can take full advantage of the benefits and get an education on the government's dime and the creepy admiration of the kind of older people who make hiring decisions after you've completed the minimum term of service. If everything breaks your way you'll be mostly intact and in the upper middle class in like 10 years, assuming you don't get yourself or others pregnant or become clinically depressed or an addict or something. From there just look at what Pete Buttigieg did and copy that. Absolutely nobody should do this.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2019 23:49
|
|
|
sean10mm posted:If you're starting from nothing, join the US military and risk death/maiming/psychosis so you can take full advantage of the benefits and get an education on the government's dime and the creepy admiration of the kind of older people who make hiring decisions after you've completed the minimum term of service. If everything breaks your way you'll be mostly intact and in the upper middle class in like 10 years, assuming you don't get yourself or others pregnant or become clinically depressed or an addict or something. From there just look at what Pete Buttigieg did and copy that. Also at some point you will be tempted by the daemon Dodgius Daeler who will say "Buy a charger, buy a charger, use your sign on bonus to buy thy charger and ride forever in glory" Do not buy a dodge charger.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 00:02
|
|
|
God there's so much here responding to everyone is gonna be like when you really don't want to write a long paper but you have to but I'm gonna wait a little bit Or maybe we should just use this thread for inspiration? We can do stream of consciousness stuff and see if we find any diamonds in the rough. In the meantime https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/world-has-gone-mad-system-broken-ray-dalio?articleId=6597520880811724801 Is anyone opposed to just literally printing money and giving it to poor people instead of printing money and using it to make rich people richer? This is the kind of thing that makes me think IPOs are scams- if you're an entrepreneur you should be trying to gather the votes (I e., Money) of ordinary people by offering them stuff they want to pay for. Give them money and then they can vote for what's important to them personally with their wallets instead of having a small group of politicians decide. Maaaaybe central banks' market manipulation that triggers asset price inflation should be paired with an equivalent wealth tax but that seems so complicated compared to just throwing money at poor people and letting them decide that healthcare and housing gets funded instead of fart app start-ups... evilweasel posted:If you could actually reliably take random college grads and convert them into coders making $150k a year, you'd be able to charge through the nose for such a useful school and earn tons more than $150k, so the question is why aren't you? Very good question. I hadn't considered doing that. I just thought all the code schools were scams managed by idiots and it never occurred to me that I could make a better one. I'm not sure if I'd get rich as fast as I want that way but it could be very good. Maybe especially if I make it a self-taught class so I don't have to do any work.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 00:11
|
|
|
Either you're the smartest person in the world who has figured out the one weird trick to guaranteed wealth, or there actually are more things standing between people and being rich than you believe. Which of these two possibilities do you think is more probable.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 00:15
|
|
|
1. Be born rich. Or 2. Marry somebody who was born rich.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 00:24
|
|
|
Cicero posted:If you can get good at solving leetcode problems, you can probably get into at least the tier of companies below FB/Google, like Amazon and MS. And at that level, saving money to move is less of an issue since they'll cover it. Learning to code is solid career advice for a lot of people and the OP isn't wrong that if you're independent and healthy then it's one of the better established yet reliable paths toward financial independence. What is unclear is why the op appears to attribute great political significance to the fact that an able bodied person with good health, no obligations and little to no debt has a fairly high chance of achieving financial independence if they follow a decent career plan. The OP doesn't really seem to have a good understanding of the difference between what is possible for a well positioned individual and what is possible for society at large, nor do they seem to appreciate that the purchasing power of a well paid worker is necessarily predicated on the costs (including labour costs) of various services that the worker consumes being pushed as low as possible. Were everyone as well compensated as a high level programmer the result would be very inflationary for the economy. Everyone would be using their newly increased salaries to try and buy the same goods and services, increasing prices. Perhaps production would increase as a result of the new demand but its impossible to imagine that the US economy could ramp up production to the point that everyone lives the kind of life that the average super affluent tech worker lives. So after a point the result of everyone having so much more money would be inflation, which is why not everyone can be equally well compensated. Somebody has to make do with less so that someone else can have more. Thus, by keeping most wages and salaries comparatively low you have space for some privileged workers to make much more. After a certain point it thus becomes impossible to improve the life of one worker under capitalism without necessarily making some other worker relatively worse off. If you raise the wage floor then a lot of labour intensive services will become more expensive and now the affluent professionals must pay more to access them, which effectively means a cut in their wages/salaries even if the nominal amount they earn does not decrease. Conversely, if you give huge wage increases to one sector while keeping everyone else's compensation the same then people in the boom sector will use their higher wages to outbid everyone else for scarce goods like housing. That will raise prices, and for people working in the sectors that didn't see a wage increase this effectively means they have less money to spend than they did previously. You can try to achieve a sort of balance of forces through various measures: redistribution and regulation, rapid growth, exploitation of foreign workers, etc. However, you can't just magically give everyone a high paying job (or alternatively, a basic income that is equivalent to a high paying job) at the same time because in order for a job to be high paying there must necessarily be other jobs that pay less.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 00:25
|
|
|
sean10mm posted:If you're starting from nothing, join the US military and risk death/maiming/psychosis so you can take full advantage of the benefits and get an education on the government's dime and the creepy admiration of the kind of older people who make hiring decisions after you've completed the minimum term of service. If everything breaks your way you'll be mostly intact and in the upper middle class in like 10 years, assuming you don't get yourself or others pregnant or become clinically depressed or an addict or something. From there just look at what Pete Buttigieg did and copy that. Veterans' benefits alone aren't going to get you into Harvard and Oxford. Pete Buttigieg went to one of the top Catholic private prep schools in the nation. He's another case of well-off parents giving a big boost to their kid's early opportunities, opening up career paths that would have been closed to most.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 00:51
|
|
|
Cicero posted:Nah, you're greatly exaggerating the difficulty here. I'm working in Google's Munich office and hardly anyone has gone to top 10 or 20 CS schools. Did they go to German CS schools, and if so, which ones?
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 01:07
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:I want to live in ridiculous luxury while also never having to work or obey anyone telling me how to live my life - whether that's a manager or someone who thinks that a certain amount of stuff is enough for someone to have. Having worked for people who live in ridiculous luxury, I can only tell you that you are going to be completely and utterly miserable. Enjoy!
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 01:30
|
|
|
sean10mm posted:If you're starting from nothing, join the US military and risk death/maiming/psychosis so you can take full advantage of the benefits and get an education on the government's dime and the creepy admiration of the kind of older people who make hiring decisions after you've completed the minimum term of service. If everything breaks your way you'll be mostly intact and in the upper middle class in like 10 years, assuming you don't get yourself or others pregnant or become clinically depressed or an addict or something. From there just look at what Pete Buttigieg did and copy that. I did the first part, but it turns out the second part only works if you're already part of a well-off family, maybe part of some military family legacy of some sort and you're an officer or something. So I went from nothing to nothing with a bachelors degree and a myriad of physical and mental health issues and horrible moral regret for participating in the military and the only work I can find is the same kind of factory work I could've got fresh out of high school. So yeah absolutely nobody should do this.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 03:29
|
|
|
Also, as a former software developer who might have possibly had a shot at a job with a top-tier company, you're missing one very important thing if this is the key to success: lots of people don't want to do that poo poo. I don't actually want to do that poo poo, that's why I didn't aim for it when I had the opportunity, and that's why I've gotten further away from it now. I may have been richer had I done that, but I don't honestly think I'd be happier. I'd have a bunch of money and a job I hate; I'll take my current status of "have enough money, and a job I like" instead.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 05:29
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:I want to live in ridiculous luxury while also never having to work or obey anyone telling me how to live my life - whether that's a manager or someone who thinks that a certain amount of stuff is enough for someone to have. You're going to need an order of magnitude more money than you'll make as a software developer for Facebook then. Devs aren't gods anymore, they're trivial to outsource to India for gruntwork.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 07:16
|
|
|
Venomous posted:Did they go to German CS schools, and if so, which ones? Oh, I guess I know a bunch of current engineers who went to the CS school in Lübeck, they had gotten acquihired as Nik software (Snapseed). Liquid Communism posted:You're going to need an order of magnitude more money than you'll make as a software developer for Facebook then.  Are you coming from Slashdot circa 2005 or something Cicero fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Nov 6, 2019 |
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 07:49
|
|
|
Cicero posted:loving Nah, I'm coming from a tech company who struggles with offshore teams writing tooling without ever checking it against use-cases for the people it's actually intended for.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 08:11
|
|
|
Liquid Communism posted:Nah, I'm coming from a tech company who struggles with offshore teams writing tooling without ever checking it against use-cases for the people it's actually intended for. If outsourcing to cheaper places was easy, Google wouldn't have its biggest Euro eng office in loving Zurich of all places
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 08:25
|
|
|
Cicero posted:If outsourcing to cheaper places was easy, Google wouldn't have its biggest Euro eng office in loving Zurich of all places pretty sure this is because the EU has different views on corporations and what laws apply to them than switzerland
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 08:58
|
|
|
redneck nazgul posted:pretty sure this is because the EU has different views on corporations and what laws apply to them than switzerland There is still a LOT of R&D in Switzerland. How much pharma R&D is done in Switzerland versus like, India? It doesn’t really matter where a chemical is made, if you could do it 10x cheaper in a secret lab in Bangalore, then companies would. Also I’m pretty sure OP also posted a similar and utterly naive / harebrained thread on this same subforum a year or two ago. Someone with archive access might have fun pulling that out. I’m almost positive it was the same poster, as it was written in just the same way, like a 15 year old who has just figured out life. OP also seems to be unaware that money has hugely diminishing returns vis a vis buying happiness for almost everyone.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 09:27
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:Very good question. I hadn't considered doing that. I just thought all the code schools were scams managed by idiots and it never occurred to me that I could make a better one. I'm not sure if I'd get rich as fast as I want that way but it could be very good. Maybe especially if I make it a self-taught class so I don't have to do any work. I see you've finally realized that the way to get rich is to do nothing yourself and just skim off the top from other peoples' hard work. This is very good, we're making progress here. Now you just have to figure out that this is actually a bad and unjust thing and we're golden.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 11:10
|
|
|
* Write a popular iPhone fart app * Scam the already rich people And the upside is that you're not exploiting the labor of others so 
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 15:34
|
|
|
Saladman posted:There is still a LOT of R&D in Switzerland. How much pharma R&D is done in Switzerland versus like, India? It doesn’t really matter where a chemical is made, if you could do it 10x cheaper in a secret lab in Bangalore, then companies would. Shadowrun mission prompt detected.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 17:54
|
|
|
Have you tried a pyramid scheme, OP? The reality is that you as an individual can't become a billionaire through your own efforts any more than you can win a billion dollars at the lottery by picking good numbers. But pyramid schemes work by exploiting the hope that there actually is a secret way to outsmart the system and become a rich without an enormous initial investment (surely you're the guy at the top, not a guy 50 levels down, right?).
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 17:59
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:Very good question. I hadn't considered doing that. I just thought all the code schools were scams managed by idiots and it never occurred to me that I could make a better one. I'm not sure if I'd get rich as fast as I want that way but it could be very good. Maybe especially if I make it a self-taught class so I don't have to do any work. alternatively, and i'm just throwing out ideas here, it's immensely more difficult than you think and if it was as easy as you think, even if you are too personally lazy to do it, one of the many code schools that exist would have tried doing it right and jacking up their tuition based on the demonstrated results they got
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 19:20
|
|
|
OP have you tried inventing a perpetual motion machine? It can't be that hard right, all the physicists are just scamming people.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 19:23
|
|
|
imagine if there was a system of money that was for attention, a renewable resource we all have access to
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 19:24
|
|
|
redneck nazgul posted:imagine if there was a system of money that was for attention, a renewable resource we all have access to I'm having trouble visualizing this, maybe we can develop an analogy to make it easier to understand. Let's imagine attention as a stream of, oh I don't know, ping pong balls being fired constantly at whatever object you're giving attention to. Yeah that sounds good, it would be a "ping pong ball" economy, so to speak. I'm amazed nobody has ever thought of that before.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 19:34
|
|
|
Helsing posted:I'm having trouble visualizing this, maybe we can develop an analogy to make it easier to understand. Let's imagine attention as a stream of, oh I don't know, ping pong balls being fired constantly at whatever object you're giving attention to. Yeah that sounds good, it would be a "ping pong ball" economy, so to speak. I'm amazed nobody has ever thought of that before. i've seen this ping pong show
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 19:57
|
|
|
Helsing posted:I'm having trouble visualizing this, maybe we can develop an analogy to make it easier to understand. Let's imagine attention as a stream of, oh I don't know, ping pong balls being fired constantly at whatever object you're giving attention to. Yeah that sounds good, it would be a "ping pong ball" economy, so to speak. I'm amazed nobody has ever thought of that before. I think we need to stream a skype conversation about this.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 20:21
|
|
|
Helsing posted:I'm having trouble visualizing this, maybe we can develop an analogy to make it easier to understand. Let's imagine attention as a stream of, oh I don't know, ping pong balls being fired constantly at whatever object you're giving attention to. Yeah that sounds good, it would be a "ping pong ball" economy, so to speak. I'm amazed nobody has ever thought of that before. Maybe we can base it on depositing the balls into a series of buckets that are further and further away.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 20:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 08:21 |
|
|
Say a direct copy of the ball nearest the bucket is sent to the back of the line of balls and takes the place of the first ball. The formerly first ball becomes the second, the second becomes the third, and the fourth falls into the bucket. Wealth works the same way.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2019 20:46
|
|