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[MrRoboto75]

its human resources, not human resources.

[Trekkin]

When you put on things that require being proper stewards of the commons, and of the actual wellbeing of the economy they are participating in. in that definition you make their tired excuses in that vein harder to state.

Maybe temporarily, but the excuses themselves were never the problem and parchment barriers are not sufficient to curb otherwise rewarding behavior -- and regulatory capture ensures that any attempt to legally define fiduciary responsibility altruistically will immediately devolve into exactly that, however punitive the language you insert. It doesn't change the game. It is the game, and their countermove is a purely rhetorical shift.

When you spectate a game that has whole industries dedicated to playing it, it's a safe assumption that the people paid to be at the table are better at it than you. It's best to theorize accordingly.

[SalmonGod]

When you spectate a game that has whole industries dedicated to playing it, it's a safe assumption that the people paid to be at the table are better at it than you. It's best to theorize accordingly.

This is something that doesn't get acknowledged enough.

[JoshuaFH]

I don't think that Wierd's idea of transparency could ever work. I speculate that only on the assumption that when people are dicks, you can't make enough rules to stop them from being dicks. If you try to totally remove all semblance of unfairness from this portion of the dickery machine, the dickgineers are going to build a better machine. Or in other words, just find some other way weeding people out based on whatever (biased & unfair or no) criteria they want. Perhaps when it looks like there's a large number of applicants that makes sorting through them fairly too cumbersome, a 'convenient accident' occurs that destroys their applications, and the company can't be blamed for it. Or if they have an overflow of 'technically qualified' candidates, but management actually doesn't want them but can't legally deny them, they get placed into "Man Killing" jobs that are legally kosher but definitely impossible; and subsequently force everyone in them to either quit or be destroyed in those positions.

[Rolan7]

When you spectate a game that has whole industries dedicated to playing it, it's a safe assumption that the people paid to be at the table are better at it than you. It's best to theorize accordingly.

This is something that doesn't get acknowledged enough.

Thirding that.  That's why I've always avoided any manual investment in the stock market (well that, and seeing other peoples' moods swing wildly based on it).  It doesn't generate money for free, and by the time news reaches a normal person, it's too late.  It's a game which begs to be cheated, and some subset of particularly incautious cheaters are always being caught, but even if it were fair...  It's a difficult and zero sum game, so the experts will win.  They're the "house" (well, also the brokerages which take another slice of everything).

Yet people feel an urge to gamble their cash on specific stocks.  I've never understood the gambling impulse, so maybe I don't get it.

There have been times when certain stocks did keep climbing impossibly steadily, but that was literally too good to be true.  Made a few well-connected experts very rich, when the bubbles inevitably burst.  It's not even blackjack, it's Russian Roulette with someone who knows where the bullet is.

Edit:  Diversified investment and low-risk stocks are a different story.  The whole thing works best as a way of crowdsourcing investment in return for *very* gradual net returns over years.

[wierd]

They do that NOW.

In addition to making job postings that exist exclusively so that can get H1B visa holders into the country on the cheap, with purposefully unsatisfiable job requirements (like 10 years experience with a technology that has only existed for 2).  The idea is to say "See! we TOTALLY tried! We REEAAALY DID! HONEST! So, I guess we have to import somebody for a fraction of the cost, without social security or insurance packages!"

And, for the ones that somehow manage to either fake it, or when the HR drone fails to make it suitably impossible to legitimately apply for and they are then compelled to hire locally, they make that person's life a living fucking hell until they quit-- THEN they get the outside labor.


Similar story for internal hires, where they are required to make token efforts to hire outside first, but they *REALLY REALLY* want to hire the CFO's idiot nephew, to keep him out of trouble.


At least, that was the business as usual for the fortune 500s I worked for. (In addition to demanding noncompetes that literally claim that your "know how" belongs to them. For real.)

[SalmonGod]

When you spectate a game that has whole industries dedicated to playing it, it's a safe assumption that the people paid to be at the table are better at it than you. It's best to theorize accordingly.

This is something that doesn't get acknowledged enough.

Thirding that.  That's why I've always avoided any manual investment in the stock market (well that, and seeing other peoples' moods swing wildly based on it).  It doesn't generate money for free, and by the time news reaches a normal person, it's too late.  It's a game which begs to be cheated, and some subset of particularly incautious cheaters are always being caught, but even if it were fair...  It's a difficult and zero sum game, so the experts will win.  They're the "house" (well, also the brokerages which take another slice of everything).

Yet people feel an urge to gamble their cash on specific stocks.  I've never understood the gambling impulse, so maybe I don't get it.

There have been times when certain stocks did keep climbing impossibly steadily, but that was literally too good to be true.  Made a few well-connected experts very rich, when the bubbles inevitably burst.  It's not even blackjack, it's Russian Roulette with someone who knows where the bullet is.

Edit:  Diversified investment and low-risk stocks are a different story.  The whole thing works best as a way of crowdsourcing investment in return for *very* gradual net returns over years.

I think about it more in terms of the disparity between activism and establishment politics.  Activists (unless employed by a non-profit or paid activist journalist or something) have day jobs and engage politics in their free time.  They do this to try and compete with the influence of people who engage in politics as their actual jobs.  This disparity doesn't get acknowledged enough when talking about what is likely going on in politics, and the realistic size of obstacles to challenging status quo.  For an abstract example, when someone suggests high level social engineering at play through media manipulation or what have you, it's common to see responses like "nahhh that's too cynical/paranoid and just run-of-the-mill stupidity/evil is a better explanation"... but when I see that I always think, "If us normies can think of that as a course of action through casual discussion on an internet forum in our free time, then why can't people who have training and a lifetime of experience and strategize with organizations that are literally called thinktanks as their full time jobs come up with them, too?  Why do you give them so little credit?"

[Egan_BW]

memes are to blame

[wierd]

When you spectate a game that has whole industries dedicated to playing it, it's a safe assumption that the people paid to be at the table are better at it than you. It's best to theorize accordingly.

This is something that doesn't get acknowledged enough.

Thirding that.  That's why I've always avoided any manual investment in the stock market (well that, and seeing other peoples' moods swing wildly based on it).  It doesn't generate money for free, and by the time news reaches a normal person, it's too late.  It's a game which begs to be cheated, and some subset of particularly incautious cheaters are always being caught, but even if it were fair...  It's a difficult and zero sum game, so the experts will win.  They're the "house" (well, also the brokerages which take another slice of everything).

Yet people feel an urge to gamble their cash on specific stocks.  I've never understood the gambling impulse, so maybe I don't get it.

There have been times when certain stocks did keep climbing impossibly steadily, but that was literally too good to be true.  Made a few well-connected experts very rich, when the bubbles inevitably burst.  It's not even blackjack, it's Russian Roulette with someone who knows where the bullet is.

Edit:  Diversified investment and low-risk stocks are a different story.  The whole thing works best as a way of crowdsourcing investment in return for *very* gradual net returns over years.

I think about it more in terms of the disparity between activism and establishment politics.  Activists (unless employed by a non-profit or paid activist journalist or something) have day jobs and engage politics in their free time.  They do this to try and compete with the influence of people who engage in politics as their actual jobs.  This disparity doesn't get acknowledged enough when talking about what is likely going on in politics, and the realistic size of obstacles to challenging status quo.  For an abstract example, when someone suggests high level social engineering at play through media manipulation or what have you, it's common to see responses like "nahhh that's too cynical/paranoid and just run-of-the-mill stupidity/evil is a better explanation"... but when I see that I always think, "If us normies can think of that as a course of action through casual discussion on an internet forum in our free time, then why can't people who have training and a lifetime of experience and strategize with organizations that are literally called thinktanks as their full time jobs come up with them, too?  Why do you give them so little credit?"

On the one hand, I am compelled to agree.... On the other, I have seen what comes out of those conservative thinktanks, and it makes my brain hurt that they would honestly think those are valid conclusions.

Like this doozy from the 90s, about the Dreaded EPA(tm).
https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/can-no-one-stop-the-epa

[Max™]

When you put on things that require being proper stewards of the commons, and of the actual wellbeing of the economy they are participating in. in that definition you make their tired excuses in that vein harder to state.

Maybe temporarily, but the excuses themselves were never the problem and parchment barriers are not sufficient to curb otherwise rewarding behavior -- and regulatory capture ensures that any attempt to legally define fiduciary responsibility altruistically will immediately devolve into exactly that, however punitive the language you insert. It doesn't change the game. It is the game, and their countermove is a purely rhetorical shift.

When you spectate a game that has whole industries dedicated to playing it, it's a safe assumption that the people paid to be at the table are better at it than you. It's best to theorize accordingly.

It is not a safe assumption though, when everyone at the table is an insane nonhuman intelligence driven by the singular goal of MOAR PROFITZ, because a corporation definitely isn't below the top level bosses which work within it.

We need to get rid of the idea the free market is good at anything except redistributing suffering so you don't have to look at it as much.

The incessant drive for more profits, to earn and acquire, along with the fucked up prosperity gospel bullshit slipping the idea that wealth and possessions are noble goals, but you have to do menial tasks for most of your life to even qualify as a halfway decent person and trying to find a way to live which doesn't involve a time card and paycheck is somewhere between impossible and absurd, bootstrap yourself up out of poverty, it isn't hard to succeed, I'm doing great and all I started with was the wealth and equity my parents parents passed down my way, yup, self-made man 100% here folks!

[wierd]

When you put on things that require being proper stewards of the commons, and of the actual wellbeing of the economy they are participating in. in that definition you make their tired excuses in that vein harder to state.

Maybe temporarily, but the excuses themselves were never the problem and parchment barriers are not sufficient to curb otherwise rewarding behavior -- and regulatory capture ensures that any attempt to legally define fiduciary responsibility altruistically will immediately devolve into exactly that, however punitive the language you insert. It doesn't change the game. It is the game, and their countermove is a purely rhetorical shift.

When you spectate a game that has whole industries dedicated to playing it, it's a safe assumption that the people paid to be at the table are better at it than you. It's best to theorize accordingly.

It is not a safe assumption though, when everyone at the table is an insane nonhuman intelligence driven by the singular goal of MOAR PROFITZ, because a corporation definitely isn't below the top level bosses which work within it.

We need to get rid of the idea the free market is good at anything except redistributing suffering so you don't have to look at it as much.

The incessant drive for more profits, to earn and acquire, along with the fucked up prosperity gospel bullshit slipping the idea that wealth and possessions are noble goals, but you have to do menial tasks for most of your life to even qualify as a halfway decent person and trying to find a way to live which doesn't involve a time card and paycheck is somewhere between impossible and absurd, bootstrap yourself up out of poverty, it isn't hard to succeed, I'm doing great and all I started with was the wealth and equity my parents parents passed down my way, yup, self-made man 100% here folks!

It was ONLY a SMALL LOAN of *JUST* 1 million dollars!  Everyone can get a loan like that from their parents! It's totally NORMAL! /s

[Trekkin]

"If us normies can think of that as a course of action through casual discussion on an internet forum in our free time, then why can't people who have training and a lifetime of experience and strategize with organizations that are literally called thinktanks as their full time jobs come up with them, too?  Why do you give them so little credit?"

Usually because coming up with the idea is the easy part. Visionaries are a dime a dozen, because it's easy to spout grandiose Utopian nonsense about what everyone should do without the slightest idea how to actually implement it. Actually thinking through how feasibly to make that happen is much more difficult and damnably tedious; it requires not only subject matter expertise but also a meticulous way of thinking that hardly ever comes naturally. Making it happen is more difficult still. You know the old saw about how amateurs study tactics while experts study logistics? It's an oversimplification, but it is true in a sense; an inordinate amount of effort goes in to just making sure everybody has what they need where and when they need it to even bring what you want to do into the realm of possibility, and that's without considering who's to pay for it all. The list goes on.

That's not to say that there aren't ever courses of action clear to the experts that newbies miss, but it's generally the case that theory is more permissive than practice, which is one of the drivers behind dismissing conspiracy in favor of stupidity via Occam's Razor: stupidity's a lot more robust to breakdowns in communication and general random events. Thus, I at least am usually giving the think tanks credit when I distrust conspiracy theories: I trust that the untenable or otherwise impractical exigencies they'd impose would be clear enough to them to discourage them from starting.

[Kagus]

A bit late to the party, but I think the optimal candidate is the skinny one because he's more difficult to hit with bullets.

The overweight fellow may have bludgeoning resistance, but that's just not something you can bank on with political assassinations. We're not in Rome anymore.

[JoshuaFH]

A bit late to the party, but I think the optimal candidate is the skinny one because he's more difficult to hit with bullets.

The overweight fellow may have bludgeoning resistance, but that's just not something you can bank on with political assassinations. We're not in Rome anymore.

If we ever decide to do the sane and rational thing and decide our presidents through nude gladiatorial combat, being fat will be a great boon to your odds.

[Mech#4]

A bit late to the party, but I think the optimal candidate is the skinny one because he's more difficult to hit with bullets.

The overweight fellow may have bludgeoning resistance, but that's just not something you can bank on with political assassinations. We're not in Rome anymore.

If we ever decide to do the sane and rational thing and decide our presidents through nude gladiatorial combat, being fat will be a great boon to your odds.

You'd think so but Kenshiro proved that wrong against Heart.