Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | yesUgotit's comments login

This is just more proof that a federalized society is untenable.

The wealth of the elders is due to many years of printing money.

Of course tacit ageism against the youth to protect old people who cannot do the work of keeping themselves alive is perfectly acceptable.

Everyone everywhere being on the hook to prop up dying people will never be an equitable system.

Deference to the past needs to go. I don’t owe believing other peoples grannies are worth the value printed on government totems of power (coins) and private bank statements (scripture of power with no real power if we don’t accept their validity).

It’s hilarious anti-government types are perfectly accepting of their spreading the gospel of the dollar; that somehow is not government conspiracy to co-opt agency.

Cancel the past. Their spoken traditions need not be ours.


Can you expand a little more on how having young students owe money to old people's pension funds instead of just forgiving those debts helps combat "the wealth of elders"?


This makes very little sense. Kind of ironic that there is a sarcastic complaint against ageism when this seem to be quite ageist itself.

Are you saying we should strip old people of political power? Bring back death panels?

Flowery wording is fun (I use it a lot myself) but brevity is also the soul of wit. Speak clearly and unambiguously!


>Bring back death panels?

Death panels were never a thing. That was just Republican propaganda.


The idea of them was a thing. Which is what I am referring to.


It occurs to me I see this term bandied around, but I've never actually seen it defined. Perhaps I'm too young, idk. Is it the thing when you need a medical treatment to live but a panel of accountants working for your employer's health insurer decides they won't fund it? Or is it the thing where you need insulin to live but a panel of businessmen from a cartel of companies all agree to charge multiples of your daily wage per day for it? Or are we talking about something else?

Could you explain what you mean by "death panels"?


Then again, all the stuff people put together in the past is pretty convenient.

Maybe we should consider keeping the good stuff.


[flagged]


You don't intend on ever becoming an aged meat bag?


> a federalized society is untenable.

Just to make sure: what is your definition of "a federalized society"?

Also, what would you suggest in its stead?


Amazon subscribe and save is the same thing.

I use it for toiletries and other routine consumables at home. Amazon trucks are going to be on the road anyway; may as well save my car trips for actually interesting trips.


I don't trust Subscribe & Save because of Amazon's dynamic pricing. The discount doesn't matter if the base piece tripled because of Amazon pricing shenanigans.


That's a totally valid concern, but Amazon gives you a bunch of opportunity to avoid surprises. They send an email a few days before finalizing your upcoming deliveries, and you can review the price to see if it changed, and either skip a delivery, skip a single product in a delivery, or cancel a subscription entirely.

As a real example: my subscriptions are on a 2 month cycle, and get delivered roughly on the 3rd, which gives me until the 26th of the preceding month to make changes. On the 24th they send an email with all the prices that will be charged if I don't change anything. With almost no friction, I can change or cancel anything up until the 26th.


I have had the price change between the review day and the shipment day. It was less than $2, so I never bothered trying to get the old price. I've since canceled my Prime for a number of reasons, so it's all irrelevant now


I don't trust Subscribe & Save because of how they've tried to dupe me into it for products that clearly aren't subscription-worthy, and how it's pre-selected on items. I can't recall what I was purchasing one time that had "subscribe & save" preselected, but it was something absurd like a dog bed or a nose-hair clipper.


On the flip side when they do that, can't you just take the discount and then cancel the subscription? I think I've done that before.


Has this ever actually happened?


What? Amazon changing prices? It happens every single day. I had something like 25 items in my Saved for Later and every time I logged in at least one and usually 3 or 4 of them had changed price.


No, I'm asking about the situation you described: Do you know of a situation where somebody started a subscription and had the base price triple. I'm not talking about the price of a box of tide pods going up by $1, I mean the situation you're describing where somebody effectively gets bait-and-switched with a 3x price increase.


Yup, at first it seems wasteful to order delivery, but if you go shopping yourself you still end up driving.


I drive car wagon with a large spacious rear area. I limit my shopping trips, I buy in bulk.

You have to be very disciplined to get as efficient with Amazon. It's probably not really possible.


I have 6 neighbors in my cul-de-sac. The Amazon truck probably visits 5 out of 7 days a week. I never worried about whether my Amazon purchases were wasteful based on trucks and fuel. They were quite wasteful in the sense that I bought a lot of cheap crap I didn't actually need.


This is the worst thing about it. Holding something and deciding if it's worth your money is a much longer process than clicking "buy now", and you've probably don't even remember doing it when the goods show up in front of your door.


Just shop with a list and don't break the rule of not buying anything not on the list.


Amazon day is probably similar. There's a designated day of the week where they deliver everything I've ordered that week. I don't have hard data, but it makes sense that if more than one person in my building/block/etc does the same (thus sharing the same delivery vehicle), it's probably less driving/gas overall.


I prefer it, did not even notice the change until I saw it called out elsewhere online… relativity confirmed… again!


I don’t see the point in debating protocols when “the suckiness” always comes down to UI/UX

UX that works for async comms and real time comms can be “backed by” HTTP. One does not literally need the data model to conform to the presentation in mind.

“Email” view might be a good default. “Chat view” could be a toggle for when the group is online at the same time.

UX needs a rethink in general. What a designer finds trendy in the moment is user hostile. I want flexibility and customization at the presentation layer. Give me an API key and I’ll build my own UX in Docker containers, thanks.


Op did call out exceptions for “egregious externalities.”

A factory could reasonably be considered to have egregious externalities.

But filtering out egregious externalities is… “zoning” so their logic seems circular.


Doesn't seem circular to me, they are against current zoning because it goes beyond what they consider "egregious". Lighter zoning that only dictated limits for sound levels and chemicals used would probably fit their definition of good zoning.


Limits like 'no metal dumps within 1000 feet of residential areas' are fine. They're not zoning, as no pre-existing zone is set up. According to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning), zoning is when a city divides land up into zones and then dictates use. Limits like these are just externality captures. They're good and necessary for good urban life.

As an example, I was going to buy land in a rural town to develop into a nice little mini tiny home resort. It was going to be super cute. However, the zoning meant I couldn't do it. Not because there wasn't something just like it next door (like other resorts). No, just beacuse the letter next to the property in the registry wasn't the right one, and changing it would be a nightmare. Why? As long as I'm not dumping heavy metals onto neighbor's property, the water, or the air, why do these letters hold so much sway? Exactly why do we need 'recreational-only' property right next to an existing vacation business? It only serves to entrench existing competition, and make new ventures more difficult.


Semantic wank aside; it’s not really up to one poster on HN to dictate what is and is not acceptable within a community.

Satisfying their definition is not an obligation.


Yeah? The Walmart model works; start low, inflate prices to make up margins as interest/competition falls off.

You expect the owners to adapt?


Why do we care about attracting investors?

Why does human agency have to be coupled to the patronizing view some white trash ape in a suit who “is wealthy” due to some past choices of dubious truth?

Can we break the mental model of needing missionaries spreading the appropriate spoken traditions and gospels?

Coins as totems of power and bank statements as scripture; to the flames with such thinking. I don’t owe deference to the sensibilities and figurative identity of some far off Ferengi babbling about their rules; I have no obligation to whatever set of principles grip their sensibilities.

The world is not “a vacuum”. Other people are not abstract agents to gather into a flock… sorry corporation… and dictate utilitarian effort to.


We care about attracting investors because the country is full of people dying due to not enough monetary resources both for the state and for individuals.


Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: