However you are right to point out there is a problem. Typically societies ( via governments ) try and fix by appropriately pricing the behaviours via regulation/laws ( fines or prison for the people doing it ).

However making regulation/laws is hard. What's your proposal to fix the problem you've identified?

Founders are only one stakeholder. There are employees ( I think they fall into that category ), customers, suppliers, and the wider society.

It all comes back to why does the company exist - and for which stakeholders. I think that's the point the original author is making.

I don't buy the argument that making money in the end is a perfect surrogate for overall good - it's not - it's an imperfect surrogate - and to pretend it is a perfect surrogate is just an excuse to behave like an arsehole.

To make that concrete, let's say you are a chemical company making paints - really important job, paints are needed the cheaper you can make them, the more people can have them etc, but if you knowingly pollute a local river just because you can get away with it and increase your profits - saying that increased profits justifies polluting the river based on the assumption that river pollution is correctly priced ( free ) is an obvious convenient excuse to be a selfish arsehole.

ie rather that zooming in on the content of interest, shrinking the content not of interest?

Long time ago I used to use https://www.windowmaker.org/ as my X11 window manager and one of the features I really liked was the ability to shrink a window to an icon and place that icon on the desktop for future retrieval ( a bit like having the whole desktop like the MacOS dock ).

I find such an interface easier to navigate than one where you zoom in and out - where the it's too easy to lose overall context, and where navigation is a bit too linear/hierarchical.

I think Apple had something in the region of 143 billion in revenue in the last quarter.

Not saying it will happen - just that there are a variety of business models out there and in the end it all depends on where consumers put their money.

eg sort a list.

What I was trying to say above is that having an unregulated space doesn't mean it's therefore naturally representative of the underlying population.

The key differentiator between a democracy and other systems is the idea that you have one person one vote, and power isn't distributed on the basis of money or some other feature.

All I'm saying is, in a totally unregulated online space you'll get dominance by fanatics with money ( if it's important ) .

ie unregulated != democratic.

And it's a mistake to think the opposite.

Do you start with the logical task first and structure the data second, or do you actually think about the data structures first?

Let's say I have a optimisation problem - I have a simple scoring function - and I just want to find the solution with the best score. Starting with the logic.

for all solutions, score, keep if max.

Simple eh? Problem is it's a combinatorial solution space. The key to solving this before the entropic death of the universe is to think about the structure of the solution space.

> Rule 5. Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.

If want to solve a problem - it's natural to think about logic flow and the code that implements that first and the data structures are an after thought, whereas Rule 5 is spot on.

Conputers are machines that transform an input to an output.

You mean one person, one vote. Or in the case of Twitter/X - one person one voice/account.

Don't spaces like these become dominated by fanatics or money, or fanatics with money? All trying to manufacture consent?

Unregulated != democratic

Just like unregulated != free market [1]

Sure it's difficult to get the balance right - but a balance is required.

[1] As the first step of anybody competing in an unregulated market is to fix the market so they don't have to compete - create a cartel, monopoly, confusopoly ( deny information required for the market to work ) etc etc.

Sure. But yesterdays mistakes can be punished today. ie all evolution happens in retrospect - a mutation haopens - the world tells you after the fact whether that was good or bad. Evolution is hindsight in action. In hindsight - taking antibiotics everyday might have been a bad idea.

> Eh, the main downside in the short run is that you are killing your gut fauna.

Sure - thus increasing your chances for being colonised by an unfriendly and antibiotic resistent bug - which may result in your death - which in hindsight was obviously a bad idea....

Ultimately in the UK system, the commons has the final say ( ignoring the monarch in the room here ), so most of the time what the Lords do isn't typically a big public issue - it's quiet revision, have you thought of this?, type stuff. Not that common to have a big conflict - though it does happen.

Again the current process does have an element of that - MI5 et al have a look at the list and say 'reputational risk'. "That's a very brave choice minster.."

However, as with Mandelsons appointment to the Lords and US ambassador, it's clearly being ignored - but then who better than the PM of the day to have the final say - the problem is somebody has to - and if you take it away from the PM - then it potentially becomes undemocratic.

Perhaps one improvement would be the removal of the tradition of exiting PM's creating a nomination list - when they no longer care about what the public think - a bit like Joe Biden outrageously pardoning his son.

Also large companies intrinsically know that in the end active recruitment is a bit of a zero sum game - you poach your competitors staff they poach yours - so there is a hesitancy in getting involved in that game.

I have seen people who are actively recruited ( hey we think your great please apply ), who are then forced to do these kind of HR screenings ( because that's the process ). This clearly doesn't make any sense and sends entirely the wrong signal.

You'd get party political trading - we will vote for your pick if you vote for our pick - but perhaps it will help at the margins - the obviously embarrassing would be harder to squeeze through.

The problem is the current process relied a bit too much on people being trustworthy - as you say that's kinda fallen away recently - and obviously the election of Trump show how dangerous it is for a process to rely on people being decent and not abuse the trust. Which is a shame as trusting people gives people the leeway to do the right thing.

In terms of JRM or Patel - while they are not my cup of tea, I think there is value in senior politicians becoming members of the Lords almost by default ( like senior judges or religious leaders ) - as to some extent it does reflect what people have voted for in the past and they have valuable experience. However perhaps it's too early in their cases.

An age limit has been talked about - but normally in terms of upper age - I wonder if it wouldn't be better as an age threshold - you have to have retired and be no longer 'on the make'. Sure that means no young people in the second chamber - but ultimately being representative is the commons role, the second chamber is for experienced people to tell the commons not to be hasty and do more work.

Elected - you have the problem of two chambers claiming legitimacy and potential deadlock, and also the problem of potentially having the same short term view as the other elected chamber.

Appointed - who gets to appoint, on what criteria, who are they beholden to ( ideally unsackable once appointed - I want them to feel free to say what they really think ).

Inherited - Very unlikely to represent the population. No quality filter. Potentially a culture of service built up - and free to say what they think.

Random. - More likely to represent the population. No quality filter.

You can obviously have a mix of all or any of the above.

In my view, the ideal second chamber would be full of people of experience, who are beholden to nobody (unsackable), that represented a broad range of views, with a culture of service.

I'm against a fully elected second house - as that's not really adding anything different to the first house. Appointed has worked quite well in the past, but it has become more and more abused recently as the elected politicians have two much control.

It's tricky - perhaps some sort of mix.

Large companies have the problem that they get 100's if not 1000's of applicants for a role, and so HR screen them before they even get to the hiring manager.

And whether HR screen via keyword search, AI CV reading, online tests, phone screens or AI interviews - it's always massively imperfect - as the HR recruiter doesn't have the expertise of the hiring manager.

It's like saying cars pistons are designed to wear out - because they do and as the car is perfectly designed ( the mistake ) then it must be for a reason.

Also take menopause - it happens a female has all the oocytes ( eggs ) they will ever have already at birth. Menopause happens when they run out.

What you are arguing is that the number at birth is optimised with a very indirect feedback loop - as oppose to a very direct one of how much resources do you put aside for eggs in terms of maximising number of direct children versus resources used. Occams razor suggests the latter is going to be stronger.

If what you say is true - think about it - old people wouldn't gradually crumble due to wear and tear, they would have evolved some much more efficient death switch. ie Women don't suddenly die post menopause.

ie what has driven human population growth - a fundamental change in availability of natural resources or a fundamental change in how humans exploited them?

I'd argue it's the latter, and that's driven by accumulated knowledge - and before writing - the key repository of that was - old people.