Objectively intelligent.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

2015 called. It wants it's "Detroit's status" back.

Seb's a sole firm, right Seb? We are really not getting the ideas we once got from meetings. Of course there were wasted time meeting, but actually there seem to be more now.

Yes and no. I have an affiliation with an office where I’ve handled things on a split. I also have a partner in a municipal finance/govt relations consulting company. And a split with a developer on warehouse projects. I also have my own firm.

Meetings are inefficient. Platforms for politicking in larger organizations. Most things can be done by phone. This Zoom shit is also annoying. I’d rather just talk.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

2015 called. It wants it's "Detroit's status" back.



Seb's a sole firm, right Seb? We are really not getting the ideas we once got from meetings. Of course there were wasted time meeting, but actually there seem to be more now.

At my place meetings are all about:

1. lawyer asks a question;
2. Gets input for 49 minutes and then explains why
3. Em’s gonna do what em wants anyway.

I don’t need 49 minutes of corona cough back in my life.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I was talking nationally. Nationally, tech displaces at a rate many multiples of that at which it creates. It also creates tons of shit "gig" jobs like Uber, Doordash, etc., which are not comparable to real jobs that come with benefits and living wages.

You've ignored mountains of data on those points every time we've had this discussion.

I'm not ignoring anything -- maybe you are thinking of Adder. Technology inexorably marches on, taking away a lot of decent jobs feeding and grooming and shoeing horses and creating a smaller number of great jobs building cars, concentrated in some place that most people don't get to live, like Detroit. Then it does it again. I happen to live in a place where a lot of great jobs are being created, except that it's not happenstance -- I moved here twenty-five years ago, and I didn't move to Detroit, no offense.

The current economy is creating lots of jobs in cities, and is leaving a lot of places behind. That sort of thing has been going on since, like, forever. The rest of the world is full of places like Bruges and Venice and Malacca that once were boomtowns and now try to get what they can from tourism.

What are you going to do about it? That's what I'd like to know. Many of us believe that government should act to protect the less fortunate, and to provide social insurance to ameliorate harms that are hard for any individual or family to manage, like what happens in a one-industry town when the one industry leaves. We run into opposition from the cynical and selfish, the people whose attitude is, I've got mine, who cares about you?, the people who don't really care if government tries to help. My question for you is, which side are you on?

The conversation about whether companies can be incubated or built remotely is a different one than the conversation about existing companies moving to partial work-at-home structures to save money.

I happen to agree with you. You can't start up a company without gluing together a team that works collaboratively, and that requires an office and people working together.

OK!

How is that a trade up?

If you sell your $1.5 million condo in San Francisco and buy a $1.5 million estate in, say, Pittsburgh, you are definitely trading up.

ETA: Start-ups will need offices. But as you know from the locations of many incubators, these aren't located in the high rent commercial locations where swanky office "palaces" are found. Sure, once they're well funded, they might get swanky space.

At least here, that's not right at all. The start-ups need to tap the labor market. In the Bay Area, that means they prefer to be in San Francisco, because that's where their workforce lives or can commute to. Rents are cheaper in places like Union City or Antioch, but that's because the people that start-ups want to hire don't live there and aren't looking to commute there.

The comm r/e I'm talking about is the super-pricey poorly designed space you find in city centers. The gleaming towers uncreative corporate sorts think they need to occupy to be legitimate.

The larger the company, the more challenging to manage, and the more the need to put everyone in the same physical space to do it.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I'm not ignoring anything -- maybe you are thinking of Adder. Technology inexorably marches on, taking away a lot of decent jobs feeding and grooming and shoeing horses and creating a smaller number of great jobs building cars, concentrated in some place that most people don't get to live, like Detroit. Then it does it again. I happen to live in a place where a lot of great jobs are being created, except that it's not happenstance -- I moved here twenty-five years ago, and I didn't move to Detroit, no offense.

The current economy is creating lots of jobs in cities, and is leaving a lot of places behind. That sort of thing has been going on since, like, forever. The rest of the world is full of places like Bruges and Venice and Malacca that once were boomtowns and now try to get what they can from tourism.

What are you going to do about it? That's what I'd like to know. Many of us believe that government should act to protect the less fortunate, and to provide social insurance to ameliorate harms that are hard for any individual or family to manage, like what happens in a one-industry town when the one industry leaves. We run into opposition from the cynical and selfish, the people whose attitude is, I've got mine, who cares about you?, the people who don't really care if government tries to help. My question for you is, which side are you on?



OK!



If you sell your $1.5 million condo in San Francisco and buy a $1.5 million estate in, say, Pittsburgh, you are definitely trading up.



At least here, that's not right at all. The start-ups need to tap the labor market. In the Bay Area, that means they prefer to be in San Francisco, because that's where their workforce lives or can commute to. Rents are cheaper in places like Union City or Antioch, but that's because the people that start-ups want to hire don't live there and aren't looking to commute there.



The larger the company, the more challenging to manage, and the more the need to put everyone in the same physical space to do it.

if you had moved to Detroit, well, you’d likely have been beaten, no offense. But your home would be worth more now that 5 years ago.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

I'm not ignoring anything -- maybe you are thinking of Adder. Technology inexorably marches on, taking away a lot of decent jobs feeding and grooming and shoeing horses and creating a smaller number of great jobs building cars, concentrated in some place that most people don't get to live, like Detroit. Then it does it again. I happen to live in a place where a lot of great jobs are being created, except that it's not happenstance -- I moved here twenty-five years ago, and I didn't move to Detroit, no offense.

OK. I still don't know how this addressed my original point, but I agree with it. It is true. But it also misses something. Tech is not like the automobile. Cars put buggy whip makers (a tiny piece of the economy, btw) out of business collaterally. The intent was not to eliminate the costs of buggy whips (indeed, cars were a bit pricier than horses and horse appliances). The express intent of many forms of tech - and how it makes the huge sums it does for the fortunate few - is to eliminate massive pools of labor by doing the work that labor does via robot, platform, or algorithm.

Many forms of tech prosper enormously because consumers pay the tech creators (let's say, 10 people in a tech firm), XXX dollars, which is a huge amount of money when split by so few, instead of paying the hundreds of workers who used to perform the service replaced by that tech XXXXXXXXXXXXX dollars in aggregate.

Tech makes its huge margins in this regard by diverting and eliminating wages that would otherwise be paid to people. In this regard, it is predatory.

NTTAWWT. That's how innovation works. But I never hear anyone in tech describe what they do in terms of paring labor costs and eliminating jobs. It takes people like me, responding to people like you, to force that concession.

The current economy is creating lots of jobs in cities, and is leaving a lot of places behind. That sort of thing has been going on since, like, forever. The rest of the world is full of places like Bruges and Venice and Malacca that once were boomtowns and now try to get what they can from tourism.

It is creating lots of jobs in certain sectors, many of which are located in a few cities.

What are you going to do about it? That's what I'd like to know.

Nothing. I'd vote for UBI. But that isn't happening. So I'll just do what I do. I'll avoid paying any assistants for work I can use tech to deliver.

Many of us believe that government should act to protect the less fortunate, and to provide social insurance to ameliorate harms that are hard for any individual or family to manage, like what happens in a one-industry town when the one industry leaves.

I'll rephrase that for you: "Many of us believe that our enormous profits at cost to the displaced workers should continue, but the entire country should subsidize a safety net for those we displace. I want the orthopedic surgeon to pay more in taxes to support the workers my tech firm puts on unemployment."

We run into opposition from the cynical and selfish, the people whose attitude is, I've got mine, who cares about you?, the people who don't really care if government tries to help. My question for you is, which side are you on?

I'd let it get ugly to the point that the pitchforks come for tech, finance, and everybody else who's profiting at cost to the little guy. Let a class war erupt. I can hide.

Nothing ever really gets fixed unless there's a terrible crisis. And crises provide profit opportunities. (By strange circumstance, I think my household might actually make money and be far stronger relative to others coming out of this pandemic.)

And I'm not preying on anyone. I don't demand that the family making $150k down the street subsidize my family's income by contributing to a safety net for out-of-work legal assistants or secretaries I've replaced with tech. I don't demand the out of work young law firm associates be supported with dollars from the medical sales exec next door to me.

You seem to think that increasing taxes has no victims. Where do you think the money comes from? The tech billionaire gobbling firms in your neck of the woods? It comes disproportionately from people who earn a good bit of money in places other than the bubble in which you live.

Am I willing to pay more taxes for UBI? Sure. But that's me. I'd sound quite pompous to dictate to others that they must do so. They might have worked a lot harder than I have to get what they have. How can I be such a clueless arse?

If you sell your $1.5 million condo in San Francisco and buy a $1.5 million estate in, say, Pittsburgh, you are definitely trading up.

But trading down in terms of experiences available to you.

At least here, that's not right at all. The start-ups need to tap the labor market. In the Bay Area, that means they prefer to be in San Francisco, because that's where their workforce lives or can commute to. Rents are cheaper in places like Union City or Antioch, but that's because the people that start-ups want to hire don't live there and aren't looking to commute there.

OK.

The larger the company, the more challenging to manage, and the more the need to put everyone in the same physical space to do it.

This makes no sense, for obvious reasons. One of which would be, if it were true, huge companies would have campuses in one location rather than own office space all over the place, as most of them do.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

if you had moved to Detroit, well, you’d likely have been beaten, no offense. But your home would be worth more now that 5 years ago.

What if I'd moved there in 1996? Turns out that was a good time to move to the Bay Area.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

OK. I still don't know how this addressed my original point, but I agree with it. It is true. But it also misses something. Tech is not like the automobile. Cars put buggy whip makers (a tiny piece of the economy, btw) out of business collaterally. The intent was not to eliminate the costs of buggy whips (indeed, cars were a bit pricier than horses and horse appliances). The express intent of many forms of tech - and how it makes the huge sums it does for the fortunate few - is to eliminate massive pools of labor by doing the work that labor does via robot, platform, or algorithm.

Cars were the tech of an earlier time. Buggy whip makers may have been a small part of the economy, but horses were lots of work for lots of people.

And you are not quite right about the express intent of many forms of tech. The idea is to "disrupt" by creating something new and better. Eliminating labor is a collateral effect, but not the objective.

Many forms of tech prosper enormously because consumers pay the tech creators (let's say, 10 people in a tech firm), XXX dollars, which is a huge amount of money when split by so few, instead of paying the hundreds of workers who used to perform the service replaced by that tech XXXXXXXXXXXXX dollars in aggregate.

Maybe so, but almost always there is a creation of new value, not just a shifting of labor costs to tech company owners. Uber hurt a lot of taxi drivers, but now you can use an app to get a car much faster.

Tech makes its huge margins in this regard by diverting and eliminating wages that would otherwise be paid to people. In this regard, it is predatory.

Were cars predatory because they eliminating buggy whip makers? No one says that.

NTTAWWT. That's how innovation works. But I never hear anyone in tech describe what they do in terms of paring labor costs and eliminating jobs. It takes people like me, responding to people like you, to force that concession.

I think we all want to focus on the value we are creating. Some of that is replacing things that don't work as well.

It is creating lots of jobs in certain sectors, many of which are located in a few cities.

Yes.

Nothing. I'd vote for UBI. But that isn't happening. So I'll just do what I do. I'll avoid paying any assistants for work I can use tech to deliver.

I'll rephrase that for you: "Many of us believe that our enormous profits at cost to the displaced workers should continue, but the entire country should subsidize a safety net for those we displace. I want the orthopedic surgeon to pay more in taxes to support the workers my tech firm puts on unemployment."

You like to talk about this problem, but you're not actually willing to do anything about it, are you? Except UBI, of course, the exception that proves the rule.

If you think tech should bear the burden for the safety for the rest of the country, explain how that should work.

I'd let it get ugly to the point that the pitchforks come for tech, finance, and everybody else who's profiting at cost to the little guy. Let a class war erupt. I can hide.

What does the class war accomplish?

Nothing ever really gets fixed unless there's a terrible crisis. And crises provide profit opportunities. (By strange circumstance, I think my household might actually make money and be far stronger relative to others coming out of this pandemic.)

You can't explain what a "fix" even is, unless you mean UBI. What do you think should be done?

And I'm not preying on anyone.

If you don't use tech, then you can be holier-than-thou about who pays. But you do. You want the benefits that tech creates for consumers, but you want to let someone else pay the costs.

This makes no sense, for obvious reasons. One of which would be, if it were true, huge companies would have campuses in one location rather than own office space all over the place, as most of them do.

Or, huge companies would have a lot of large campuses, like they do.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Cars were the tech of an earlier time. Buggy whip makers may have been a small part of the economy, but horses were lots of work for lots of people.

And you are not quite right about the express intent of many forms of tech. The idea is to "disrupt" by creating something new and better. Eliminating labor is a collateral effect, but not the objective.



Maybe so, but almost always there is a creation of new value, not just a shifting of labor costs to tech company owners. Uber hurt a lot of taxi drivers, but now you can use an app to get a car much faster.



Were cars predatory because they eliminating buggy whip makers? No one says that.



I think we all want to focus on the value we are creating. Some of that is replacing things that don't work as well.



Yes.



You like to talk about this problem, but you're not actually willing to do anything about it, are you? Except UBI, of course, the exception that proves the rule.

If you think tech should bear the burden for the safety for the rest of the country, explain how that should work.



What does the class war accomplish?



You can't explain what a "fix" even is, unless you mean UBI. What do you think should be done?



If you don't use tech, then you can be holier-than-thou about who pays. But you do. You want the benefits that tech creates for consumers, but you want to let someone else pay the costs.



Or, huge companies would have a lot of large campuses, like they do.

honestly, the "tech replacement" you two are arguing about was done by about 1995. Seb, what more is coming?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

What if I'd moved there in 1996? Turns out that was a good time to move to the Bay Area.

who is the benefactor on your life insurance? Guy like you, D 1996? Morte.

[Icky Thump]

And the dummy of 2020 award goes to: Sveden

[Tyrone Slothrop]

"A study of 96,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients found that those who received an antimalarial drug promoted by President Trump as a “game changer” had a *significantly higher risk of death compared with those who did not.*

https://twitter.com/SykesCharlie/sta...16616283738114

[LessinSF]

From Josh Blackman at Volokh -

"Today, President Trump visited the Ford factory in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Under state law, everyone in the factory was required to wear a mask. President Trump refused to wear a mask. The Michigan Attorney General said she would investigate Ford for letting the President visit the plant without a mask.

This Ford Factory is currently providing services under a Defense Production Act contract. Is the company a federal agent for purposes of the DPA? If so, are there any Supremacy Clause issues with prosecuting Ford for the President's behavior? Is this case like McCulloch v. Maryland, where the state of Maryland disciplined a federal bank employee?

We are living in a real-time final exam hypothetical."

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

honestly, the "tech replacement" you two are arguing about was done by about 1995. Seb, what more is coming?

The question is, what isn't?

Amazon's warehouses are moving toward full automation
Self-driving trucks
Robot surgery
Robot/algorithm tele-medicine (diagnostic)
Gig economy replacing almost any service provided by an employee with an independent contractor paid a fraction of what employee made
Algorithms eliminating traders and financial modelers/analysts
Direct online purchasing eliminating insurance agents and real estate agents
Automated kiosks eliminating every type of clerk that exists (bank, grocery, fast food, retail, etc.)

I don't know the significance of 1996, but tech is just getting started in terms of replacement or elimination of work that paid living wages.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

And the dummy of 2020 award goes to: Sveden

Think long, not short. We'll lap them 10X per capita in terms of deaths accruing from the coming financial disaster we're about to endure.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

https://twitter.com/SykesCharlie/sta...16616283738114

For the 40,000th time he's long on the drugmakers.