The possible result is an attack on all branches of the executive except the military. Replacement of Social Security and Medicare by virtually worthless vouchers, elimination of the departments of Education, Housing, and Energy. emasculation of the EPA. And on and on.

This could be as self-destructive as an armed uprising with fewer deaths (maybe).

Many of the issues are easy to fix. Remove the wage cap on Social Security taxes. Convert to health insurance to Medicare. Some of the unemployment issues can be mitigated by making the workweek 30 or 32 hours. Turning truck drivers into nurses or medical technicians takes a few years of training. Many of them are smart enough to do it. The current stumbling block is that they must have income support during the education period. Giving someone $100K to manage the transition doesnt seem like much to me.

Fundamentally increased productivity and wealth should lead to more leisure and a better standard of living for everyone. Eventually everyone should get a minimum guaranteed income so they have time to pursue their education, raise families, be artists or novelists.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome for an experiment on a guaranteed income.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13146650

Points: 38

# Comments: 61

When I was 14, more than half a century ago, I got into trouble for holding opinions that the people her would consider merely progressive. One of my daughters in high school got into insulting her peer group by using a vocabulary they didnt understand. They thought she was praising them. She is now in her thirties and very well adjusted. If she had done such a thing in middle school, I would have been very amused, but her mother would have been absolutely mortified. Probably best that she didnt.

I'm not sure. The Japanese tried very hard (remember 5th generation computing?) and failed. However, the idea of the historical analysis is intriguing enough that I have ordered a copy. If I can read fast enough, I will try to report back before the topic has migrated into oblivion.

We certainly need some concrete and philosophical changes. The rentier class cannot continue to siphon of all productivity increases to stash into their private asset accounts, without bringing the world to its knees.

My kids took a different route when faced with a truly incompetent high school calculus teacher. My wife convinced the high school to allow them to take courses at the local community college for both high school and college credit. The courses were approved by the University of California so there was no issue about transfer of credits.

Truly an inspiration to those of us who grew up with Erector Sets and Tinker Toys.

Cambria is in San Luisbo County which has an area of 3600 square miles and a population of over a quarter million but only 5 cities. California has a law that makes in almost impossible for a new city to incorporate. The new city must reimburse the county for any lost tax revenues caused by incorporation. If your GPS reports a city some distance away, it probably reporting the county seat of an unincorporated area.

Other aspects of the architecture were truly strange. There were no load or store instructions. They were a side effect of setting an address register. I was the lead developer for two of the PL/I compilers for the 6600. Much fun. For those interested in strange architectures, I recommend the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600.

It was very painful to read, because I made exactly the same decision. I was VP/chief developer at a company that withered on the vine after a 10 year roller coaster ride at a software company that I had co-founded. I had two paths: I could have looked for a VP/Director job or I could have continued on as a Developer/Consultant. The money was pretty much the same, so I took the consultant route. The money was pretty much the same and programming was more fun.

All went reasonably well until September 2008. I had just finished a very satisfying consulting gig, but I walked out into a very changed world. The day after was the banking crash. Even earlier a divorce had taken me to the cleaners. But far worse, small interesting companies had no use for older, still up-to-date, still competent developers. I found myself going from Finder to Implementer. Agile development, which had seemed like a boon, turned into a tool to lock everyone into two week death marches controlled by upper management. Technical decisions where made by people who didnt have a clue.

Just as in the linked article, a woman working for me in the 80s took the management route and was a VP in a major SV software company a few years later. Now she is quite well off. Good for her; we are good friends.

Moral? If you are a software developer, dont get old. (I'm still doing it because I like it.)

RFS on Jamaica at 10: " The very occasional physical attacks on journalists must be offset against this, but no serious act of violence or threat to media freedom has been reported since February 2009, a month that saw two cases of abuse of authority by the Kingston police."

Or even Ireland at 9: "... defamation lawsuits are common. Finally, interviewing police sources has been virtually impossible since the Garda Siochana Act of 2005, which bans police officers from talking to journalists without prior authorization."

Not a little biased are we? Amnesty for murdering journalists isnt my idea of freedom of the press, nor are defamation law suits, or a prohibition against interviewing the police.