What's your argument here? For example, Typescript allows lots of operations on objects that cannot be known at compile time because it relies on the user to inform it of types accurately, anything can be coerced into anything without complaint with "as", and it allows for arbitrary operations on an "any" type without complaint.
I've heard it referred to it as an "optionally typed" or "gradually typed" system, which, having worked for years in Typescript and other languages like Rust and Kotlin, etc, I agree with.
I don't agree, though I guess it depends on how long long is. There are certainly some examples I can think of but I would argue most of them are actually natural monopolies in disguise, usually benefitting from network effects
I 100% grant that large organizations by their nature are less efficient than small organizations due to lossy communication. And some companies have a minimum size due to the nature of their work, which places inherent limits on their efficiency. But they're still subject to competitive pricing from other, similarly large companies.
> I don't agree, though I guess it depends on how long long is.
HP started the Grand Experiment two decades ago to determine how long it takes to destroy a large company if every decision is either incompetent or malicious, with little assistance from network effects… and the experiment is still running.
Some large companies acquire the characteristics of government (spending becomes remote from the source of funds; political cover from being too big to fail; lack of meaningful competition). So when large corporations become malign or inefficient, it can be because of how government-like they have become, and some kind of competition & markets authority should step in.
I would argue the pruning function becomes way more important (and way less used) the bigger a company gets and so there are very few large companies that are efficient, not none. Twitter comes to mind since they just had 70% plus of their workforce pruned as a likely efficient company (at least at serving social media pages, not at making money so far).
I also think this is why government is the most dangerous power structure (they almost never prune anything and they have theoretical claim to 100% of the country's GDP through taxation. It would be better for us all if they were heavily restricted or just figured out how to prune effectively instead of just raising taxes all the time to support inefficient program spending)
Government is just a makeup of workers who serve the population at large. The trouble is that the population at large can never come to agree on what to prune. I want this, you want that. You want me to give up this in the name of efficiency, I want you to give up that in the name of efficiency, but neither of us want to give up what we want so in the end we agree that if I can keep this, you can keep that, thus nothing gets pruned.
That reminds me why corporations have an easier time pruning, They're not democratic, they are basically feudal.
Like, there's a king on the top, he has his board of nobility, VP dukes, knight middle managers and the peasants who do all the work and own nothing. Whatever the king and nobility say is law, they're accountable to nobody (except for the pope/national government).
They are democratic, but usually of the weighted variety. Typically, he who owns more shares has greater say – although occasionally you will see other weighting methods. Government is more likely to consider each individual an equal shareholder, although not always.
Corporations likely also benefit here from the owners generally having more care for the organization and a greater desire to see it succeed. If there is something that needs to change they will work to ensure that it gets changed as soon as a problem is identified. Most government shareholders would rather sit back and just hope that things work out.
Right, this applies more to private held firms and late game startups than public corporations, but I would still expect that the higher you typically go, the more shares one owns on average, so the weighted average of that won't be too far off compared to the actual structure, minus external shareholders. We can imagine those as foreign kingdoms that the king owes money to :P
Plus there is upwards mobility, whereas in typical feudalism there is none, but it is still funny to think about the suspiciously odd similarities.
It is certainly not suspicious. It's all just people being people. It's questionable if it is even similar and not the exact same thing. Government isn't something magical. It's just a particular kind of business.
I feel like I should try and do business with you because you would be easy to take advantage of..... Workers serve their own interests and are contracted to serve a purpose mandated by government but the only guarantee they do so is the quality of their manager (who has the same problem). Once you get through the matryoshka doll of managerial layers you eventually hit a politician or committee of politicians who also serve their own interests (but more often than not lied to your face about supporting your personal interests in order to get elected). The reason nothing gets pruned in government is because the points in the decision tree that require pruning almost never get hit because there is low interest from a majority of politicians on addressing old problems when they have some new nonsense they are personally invested in that they want to push and they have growth in the economy (and the opportunity to raise taxes if there isn't enough growth) to fund the new nonsense. On top of that, it's harder to prune government workers because they usually have a strong union (because again, no one pruned that nonsense in the 80's and 90's when private enterprise mostly jettisoned theirs due to shareholder and competitive pressures).
> I feel like I should try and do business with you because you would be easy to take advantage of.....
Yet for some reason you haven't... You must, deep down, be worried that I will end up taking advantage of you?
> Once you get through the matryoshka doll of managerial layers you eventually hit a politician or committee of politicians who also serve their own interests
Of course, the cool thing about government is that you can literally tar and feather anyone who violates the wishes of the owners. That's usually a lot harder to pull off in a private business.
But you need people who care. That is a rare quality when it comes to the owners of government. It's a miracle when someone shows up just to hire the worker, let alone stay in contact with the worker after they have the job.
The last summit, known as COP15, was arguably much more important. During the event, held in 2022, nearly all countries of the world agreed on a groundbreaking new deal to halt biodiversity loss by 2030.
I know this is a big deal and I should feel happy that something is being done, but I always hate how the date in these kinds of agreements is always just far away enough for people to handwave not doing anything this year or next year or the year after that.
I think that as convenient as it would be, depression and the inability to not eat too much are not the same.
The fact is that you have much more control over one than the other.
I don't disagree that maintaining a healthy weight is a challenge in today's environment, but it's not impossible or inevitable, like so many in this thread are pretending.
> I think that as convenient as it would be, depression and the inability to not eat too much are not the same.
> The fact is that you have much more control over one than the other.
Why do you say that? Studies do not agree. How would you assess the difference? Or are you simply coming at this from the perspective of either someone who has never had a weight problem or was able to get out of a weight problem without issue? If the latter you're in the ~1% and your experience is not that of others in the same way as your experience as someone without depression does not align with that of someone who is depressed.
How would you measure your thesis? Certainly it cannot be based on results because, well, I cited them.
As someone who isn't addicted to cigarettes, it's pretty easy to not smoke. My experience does not align with those addicted to cigarettes, and I can appreciate that. Why do you not appreciate that the experience of those with obesity might be different than your own? I am not obese for the record, and I have never taken GLP-1s, but I have been obese and this just makes sense to me.
Just because you have full control over your diet and I have control over smoking does not mean that there are people out there who cannot control their diets and cannot control their smoking.
Maybe depression and obesity are more similar than you are giving credit. Especially since serotonin inhibits appetite and has an integral role in maintaining energy homeostasis.
I was very influenced by Kurt Vonnegut when I was a teenager. Coming of age is a perfect time to learn that the fact that life is absurd doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't laugh, just the opposite.
Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse Five are some of my favorite books of his.
As an adult, I've been very influenced by the late Daniel Dennett and his naturalist philosophy.
Books like From Bacteria to Bach and Back or Darwin's Dangerous Idea.
If you like Vonnegut, perhaps try the fiction of J.G.Ballard.
Empire of the Sun is rightly famous, it is autobiography - but read that too. If you are American, you might not know that other things happened at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor [Yes, it was 8 December 1941 in Hong Kong, but across the dateline, so contemporaneous. IIRC 8am Honolulu to 6am HK is +4 hours].
Vonnegut was such a genius. His books mostly light reading. Funny and fully of goofy sci-fi tropes. All building up to revelatory philosophical lessons about human nature. "We are what we pretend to be" hit me like a ton of bricks. Right up there with "We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different."
I've read Vonnegut sporadically and decided this year to read through all his books. Sirens of Titan is an old favorite I've read multiple times, but I reread it about two weeks ago, and Slaughterhouse Five a few months ago.
Is it really all that or you just disagree? Have to be kind and respectful of others - especially when they are not to you.
I think a lot of people are afraid to tell the truth. After years of pretending and keeping it bottled up inside there will be some unhealthy elements.
Keeping politics out of the workplace was been decorum for decades upon decades.
It's only your modern braindead right wingers that can't stfu as their brain is ruined by doomscrolling.
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