Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48451404

Points: 77

# Comments: 20

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48420481

Points: 35

# Comments: 15

No thank you, I’ll stay in Manhattan and not get kidnapped and murdered by monsters tyvm.

Who's to say they didn't drug you, and you performed the "field audit" on a psychedelic trip from within a padded cell controlled by the nefarious cabal of do-gooders?

Frankly, if you believe your own eyes and ears aren't lying to you, you may be a touch naive.

Too many people use this as an excuse to throw up their hands and say “well I guess I have no choice but to keep all my money for myself and donate nothing, damn, darn, totally not the conclusion I was secretly hoping to reach, not at all, oh man, damn.”

Zimbabwe, we’re talking about the one that had China, USSR and SA providing weapons and training up until the end of Rhodesia around 1980? Then IMF/World Bank imposed market liberalization in the 90s, then sanctions from 2002-2024?

Truly, can’t understand why they’d be in bad shape, must be all their own fault. My brilliant white brain thinks it must be something genetic, if you know what I mean, nudge nudge wink wink.

Read more about the history of the continent.

Given the leaks recently that they’re all aiming for an IPO asap, is this a strong signal that their investors feel this is the peak of their valuation for the near if not indefinite future?

I understand it’s impossible to know anything for sure, least of all how the market will react regardless of the motivations of these players, but I’m curious to get some perspectives.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48237521

Points: 9

# Comments: 12

US CPI 3.8% as of April, EU HICP 3.2% as of April.

IMF projects 2.3% growth US vs 1.1% growth EU in 2026.

Not sure I would say the EU is in a borderline catastrophic economic situation and the US is not?

If both are in catastrophic situations (it seems one could fairly make that assessment in either case), then again we’re back to “all societies are unstable, would we like to be pragmatic and compassionate during our brief moment of stability or vindictive and self destructive?”

I think I am making a shrewd decision here if my math and equine knowledge holds.

Updated the quote to the historically accurate 99 vs 1.

> This system is inherently unstable and unsustainable.

The countries cited are extremely stable. Arguably far more stable than the US.

That said, we can bring in the rest of Western Europe if 5 countries aren't enough of an example. They have union participation rates between 10% and 50%, median around 20%. The thing is, they have much larger proportions of their workforces covered by collective bargaining agreements - France for example is at 10% union participation yet 98% of labor covered by bargaining agreements.

Western Europe and the Nordics combined = ~400 million people, bigger population than the US, and far more diverse, so the common refrain of "small homogenous population" doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Of course, all societies so far have eventually been unstable.

We can just choose whether our unstable society will be a vindictive one that prioritizes punishing wrongdoers over the wellbeing of the whole, or a pragmatic and (as a nice bonus) compassionate one which prioritizes the wellbeing of the whole over a puritanical urge to purge the unworthy.

The nordics are anywhere from 50% - 90% of all labor unionized and they absolutely destroy the US on every standard of living metric.

It seems to me a case that echoes “better to let 99 guilty men go free than to execute an innocent man”. Of course, in this case, the ratios are actually reversed. Should we execute 99 innocent men to make sure that 1 guilty guy gets punished?

There will be some free riders, just like there will be some welfare queens, just like there will be some voter fraud.

That said, these cases represent a vanishingly small minority of the whole, and the cure is far worse than the disease.

If you’re honest, you know it’s evil, but it’s pretty undeniable that all the affordances this provides us are useful (to the beneficiaries) and that we all contribute to it daily.

I think the real argument is just staying employable. Companies are expecting faster and faster turnaround, and it’s simply becoming impossible to meet these deadlines with fully handwritten code. Even before outright mandates on AI usage. If you refuse to use AI, they’ll bring on someone who will, whether or not the quality drops, high quality code is not the primary goal of the business.

Dogshit, hideous vibe coded messes are launching daily and reaching 6-7+ figure ARRs while leaking customer data. Nobody cares in this environment.

If you’re a freelancer it’s even worse, the expectations are that producing a fully functional moderately complex app shouldn’t take a single person more than a couple months, and ideally one.

Expectation for a contractor coming into an enterprise codebase that’s been running for 11 years with a dozen+ internal devs and a mishmash of legacy and new tech -> they want you to implement a totally new feature which touches half a dozen systems in the app ready to demo in 6 weeks and launch to the public in 8.