Even the short article at Wikipedia on corporations can place the birth of corporations anywhere from the 6th century onward over the next thousand years. (I'd been taught that, in roughly the form we know them, they started in 16th-century Venice, but that's another story.)
In my experience, and from reading, small businesses tend to be more sensitive to local feedback; generally, if they defraud their customers they don't last long. I reason that a small company is formed and worked by locals who are subject to peer pressure if nothing else. Whereas corporations, in the nature of the beast, try to achieve sufficient lock on markets near and far so as to be above the vagaries of consumer satisfaction and the petty vexations of local, even national, law and recourse. We even have the recent example of a handful of banks causing the economy of an entire planet to stumble - with a few individuals profiting handsomely and without serious impediment or consequence to themselves.
While you and I and likely everyone here can cite an example showing otherwise, I think in the main that you're going to have to come up with a better explanation for the existence of corporations. For example, when I was a lad the general beginner's explanation was that a corporation allowed the gathering of capital beyond the ability of any single investor and that it enjoyed legal protections to safeguard that capital and its use within defined condition.
On the matter of Airbnb, as I read the first forty or so comments following the article none made the simple observation that what it and similar ventures have done is put into use idle resources, whether of place, item, or service. Many comments bemoaned the loss of tax revenues, yet none stopped to consider that beyond breathing, almost everything we do is taxed in some fashion; those revenues are not lost, but mostly shifted around a bit.
Finally, there were some points made concerning local profits of existing proper businesses or on observance of various ordinances, and a landlord brought up his potential liability issues.
If the local Hilton is built with a thousand rooms in a convention city and half of them are idle for much of the year, perhaps they might consider competing rather than seeking governmental intervention on their behalf, while they examine their possibly flawed occupancy predictions. How many of those ordinances serve to protect individuals as distinct from protecting a business or business sector? Given our litigious society, the matter of liability is valid, yet how much of that is already fairly well-covered?
Had an uncle who paid cash for everything. Car, house, and, 16 years after he started there, the place where he worked. He wasn't a tightwad - he and his family had good and sufficient food and clothes, for instance - but he was scrupulously frugal and he saved. Oh, how he saved. My aunt worked half-time at the local hospital as an LPN and later as an RN after the youngest was in school, so that definitely helped. He didn't talk much either, come to think of it.
I have the advantage of English as milk tongue, but even so, I'd met all three of those words more than fifty years ago and it didn't take all that much reading to do so, maybe a few hundred books.
Interesting idea, but a silly scam nonetheless. The four-word mapping from Lat/Long above makes more sense, yet it's still as silly and only about as useful as vanity plates on one's auto.
1. Asked and answered several times upthread. 2. Please do consider the phrase "chilling effect" as has been done in the courts for at least over the course of the past hundred years or so, indeed, all the way back to the several conventions preceding the writing of the constitution. 3. What? Are ye daft?
My mind gagged when I first heard of the thing. It's not that it was a needed clue; I took it as a clincher nail, is all. That something so basic as protest was now to be sandboxed....
Reading what you wrote earlier, on the natural progression of governments, I mused that a revolution in the traditional sense might not happen or be needed. The specific issue might not matter, but whatever it will be would result in a withdrawal of support, an ignoring of 'the government'; after the national government becomes sidelined, whether or not it thoroughly collapses, the DoD would step up and impose sufficient martial law to preserve interstate commerce - ports, refineries, rails and roads to keep fuel, food, and goods flowing. There's also the matter of what the various states might do. What happens makes a good guessing game. Nice plot for a novel somewhere in there, too, I think.
"the courts still act like the first amendment is valid sometimes"
Ouch.
That's one of the simpler, truer, and sadder comments I've read in a while. Jesus wept, but we're screwed so badly when it's come to this. I hope (however irrational that hope may be) that the lawsuit has a good outcome for us.
Aye, but left out of the article itself was any mention of specifics as to amount of electricity generated. I think it's nifty to get some use out of under-utilised waste heat (in some factories it's used for pre-heat or low-temp process heat; in most it's simply wasted.) I'd like some idea of how much juice is generated per a given size of cell against temperature difference. Enough to light a light bulb? Recharge a cell phone?
Thank you, most especially for that second link. Vinge has long been one of the writers of sci-fi whose books I enjoy; and of the few of the talks I've read so far, no less them as well. (I followed a link back to a page where he lists a half-dozen or so talks and papers. I'm currently listening to his presentation at the Long Now Foundation.)
Nicely done, thanks. Those with a strong engineering background can dig it, 'cuz it's piecework all the way. Nothing fancy at all. Take a bit of doing but once established it'd make a handy place for water and its components.
Didn't look at the delta-v chart yet, but I suspect Ceres is also well-placed for general solar system maneuvering; easy to get to, easy to leave, centrally located. Sunward is easy; can use light sails for steering.
The self-assembled nanostructures change the way light travels through glass, modifying polarisation of light that can then be read by combination of optical microscope and a polariser, similar to that found in Polaroid sunglasses.
For the rest, whatever else might be stored against future contingency, store all known culture - not just Aristotle and Shakespeare, but Asimov, Bacon, Cicero, all the way through to Howdy Doody and Flash Gordon; take good scans of the arts, all of it. Let whomever see all that we did, and let them guess at all that we didn't, and why. It might be instructive, even useful to someone. Meanwhile, if the Louvre got nuked, we'd at least have the happy snaps.
From the article:
The research is led by Jingyu Zhang from the University’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) and conducted under a joint project with Eindhoven University of Technology.
“We are developing a very stable and safe form of portable memory using glass, which could be highly useful for organisations with big archives. At the moment companies have to back up their archives every five to ten years because hard-drive memory has a relatively short lifespan,” says Jingyu.
“Museums who want to preserve information or places like the national archives where they have huge numbers of documents, would really benefit.”
"You could say the same about any other country too."
That's rather the point of the study, I thought.
"And it's not that hard to afford an internet connection."
Ahh. Unsupported assertion, methinks, without meaning offense. Relative, and all, to be sure, but in fact from my own observation, yes, for some, it _is_ that hard to afford an Internet connection - along with their own computer, knowledge, skill, wherewithal, electric capacity, etc., and to safely maintain said system to use the connection at all. There are several people in the house whose computers I help fix and maintain for somewhere between free and barter (a sandwich or so; for the guy with a car, a trip to the store, and I let him access my wireless for his school work.) That leaves, in the same house, at least five people I know who would be incapable, could they afford it, to manage a computer of their own no matter how much help I gave them. (As a reference point, I've successfully worked with, trained, coached developmentally disabled people at Goodwill Industries. Success defined as the work was well done and no one lost fingers.) Yes, it's anecdotal, so only has any worth if my perceptions and conclusions are correct and I'm telling truth.
"Interesting how adding a few economically marginal people to the internet is supposed to be such a big deal."
To each individual who can get that access that I've seen, yes, it is a big deal. Some can get info they need to find a clinic, to see a doctor, to access the EPIC system, to get help with taxes, to file unemployment, to seek and apply for jobs, to look things up for whatever reason, to get an email account that helps them do some of the above and gain an avenue for communication with friends and relatives. This and more, just from what I've seen with my own eyes or have been told directly by such people. That access certainly helped me when I was homeless and had no computer and no personal access.
(As an aside, and please forgive me if my memory is totally borked, but I seem to recall you once posted a remarkable story of how you went essentially "from rags to riches" - it was inspiring, I thought, and I applaud and am happy for you. However, I think that to sneer at those less fortunate, or who could not replicate your success, is a bit... unseemly. Just because some may be lazy or drug-addled is to me no reasonable reason to tar all with such a wide brush, nor deny them access.)
For, say, a local library to set up a couple dozen surplus computers for public access at marginal cost to allow such access is a reasonable thing to do. Multiply that planet-wide. That's the whole point. Do we deliberately forbid access to those less fortunate or do we at relatively marginal cost and effort allow entry to what the Internet may offer them?
Again with the Netflix. It runs fine from Ubuntu, anyway, and I figure most Debian-based distros. See Compholio. It's a Wine patch, and it works. I've posted this four or five times now in the past month or so; but a search on "netflix linux" brings it up readily.
For drivers? Sometimes. These days, I get about equal problems with Windows as Linux. Open source drivers for gaming is a no-go. Oddball wi-fi can be problematic. Mouse, yeah, LInux doesn't generally offer much customization, although I've found it at least plays nice with a raft of touchpads OK. I haven't seen copacetic mouse exhilerators since my Atari ST.
If a program needs Windows, use Windows. Else one might use a vm on a Linux host, or Wine/Crossover.
I've already put on my fucking asbestos. Flame away.
For what? Speaking simple truth and making sense? If that's flame-worthy, then ok, so what? There used to be a sentiment, "truth will out" from somewhere, my betters will one of them know, but I no longer trust that to be so.
There are a number of simple easily done things that require no huge new laws or undertakings that would act in large measure to improve things. Single-payer health care, 30hr./wk. = full time, and end to derivatives and electronic trading, programmed trading, and so on.
Didn't care for those ads then, even less now. The whole mental shift of turning people into ciphers, while nothing new, has been accelerating abrogating whatever gains had been made in those same intervening decades. As best I can see more companies are assholes today than they were then also. Our wonderful Congress people and those in the executive have, since Carter, been on the same kick.
If you're working that should automatically put you above the poverty level by virtue of enough income, preferably at the 30-hr. week considered to be full time. For it to be less means we have failed.
Yet you'll note that for all of the arrogant sneering social Darwinists who speak of the natural order and such, none speak from a current position of poverty, though some brag on how they personally bootstrapped themselves out of it to making six-figure per year jobs because they're such wonderful human beings - and the tens or hundreds of thousands left behind are obviously lazy no-counts who aren't really real humans anyway. To them and the other evangelical elites, if you're poor then you're obviously a defective sinner who deserves whatever misfortune comes your way and the world is better off without you. So, just die, already.
Problem is, the poor don't "just die, already." Takes 'em a while. That being so, if we are to consider ourselves moral critters, and mindful of "there but for the grace of God" or whatever similar phrase is suitable, we have to decide if the many poor who do have jobs will participate as full tax-paying upstanding citizens. Pay 'em a decent wage or look in the mirror and have the balls to admit to yourself you like being a smug superior real human.
Then again, maybe they are. "I'm a beta. I like being a beta. I'm glad I'm a beta. I don't like deltas. Deltas smell funny. I'm glad I'm not a delta." [bad paraphrase, proper sentiment]
I think not. I think that's a distraction and a rather shallow one at that.
In the '70s wage was commensurate with work done. There was some skew - some union jobs were getting out of whack and that didn't help - but even on minimum wage one could rent for less than a third of income, own a car (usually used), eat three squares a day, have sufficient clothes, and have enough left over for a record player, TV, and maybe some skis and an annual discount trip to Vail (well, maybe not Vail, precisely).
For a married couple, very much the same; rent or mortgage was less than a third of net, a car for each (still often used, but still), have a low-key but comfortable home, even support a child or two - things could get very tight, but it was doable.
One of the big wrenches in the gears was lack of good provision for health care - just as now, major medical could wipe out this nice situation. Not good.
Every round of recession since, biz and corps have been able to squeeze wage and get more work for it. This is the deliberate destruction of what used to be a big part of the [lower] middle class. Now it is almost guaranteed that a two-earner household (and most all of the middle class) is in perpetual debt and at the mercy of its rulers.
Tax policies helped make certain the sucking up of all profits into ever more concentrated hands. It's not about trinkets, although it's true that some have eyes bigger than their wallets; this is not new.
Yup, but for the intractability of Congress and insufficient push by Obama, single-payer is the way. What the House gets is what we get or vice versa; the People's house, doncha know.
See the post below viz. Nixon. For all the crazy things ol' Tricky Dick got up to, he had a good head on his shoulders otherwise. Also worth mentioning, his wage and price freeze took the wind from the sails of a shitty situation and allowed time for some other stuff to work. Worst part was when Congress over his objections voted to borrow against OASDI revenues to apply to the general fund - and they've never paid and revoked those instruments - we're still paying for that bit of aggrandizement.
Thanks, man. Interesting how the 1/10 of the 1% which could potentially be movers and shakers of a good future are now culturally predisposed (and perhaps not having the mental horsepower as well) to be the sand in the gears of making useful change. Privilege being as seductive and corrosive as power is ugly. I've met both kinds of wealthy also and the bad ones are scary indeed. The ingrained callousness was a real eye-opener for this naive boy.
Dunno how legit it was but one of the brokers I was associated with in real estate used 1099 since commission came through the office. I also had to do the SE and sched C stuff, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
To which time are you referring?
Even the short article at Wikipedia on corporations can place the birth of corporations anywhere from the 6th century onward over the next thousand years. (I'd been taught that, in roughly the form we know them, they started in 16th-century Venice, but that's another story.)
In my experience, and from reading, small businesses tend to be more sensitive to local feedback; generally, if they defraud their customers they don't last long. I reason that a small company is formed and worked by locals who are subject to peer pressure if nothing else. Whereas corporations, in the nature of the beast, try to achieve sufficient lock on markets near and far so as to be above the vagaries of consumer satisfaction and the petty vexations of local, even national, law and recourse. We even have the recent example of a handful of banks causing the economy of an entire planet to stumble - with a few individuals profiting handsomely and without serious impediment or consequence to themselves.
While you and I and likely everyone here can cite an example showing otherwise, I think in the main that you're going to have to come up with a better explanation for the existence of corporations. For example, when I was a lad the general beginner's explanation was that a corporation allowed the gathering of capital beyond the ability of any single investor and that it enjoyed legal protections to safeguard that capital and its use within defined condition.
On the matter of Airbnb, as I read the first forty or so comments following the article none made the simple observation that what it and similar ventures have done is put into use idle resources, whether of place, item, or service. Many comments bemoaned the loss of tax revenues, yet none stopped to consider that beyond breathing, almost everything we do is taxed in some fashion; those revenues are not lost, but mostly shifted around a bit.
Finally, there were some points made concerning local profits of existing proper businesses or on observance of various ordinances, and a landlord brought up his potential liability issues.
If the local Hilton is built with a thousand rooms in a convention city and half of them are idle for much of the year, perhaps they might consider competing rather than seeking governmental intervention on their behalf, while they examine their possibly flawed occupancy predictions. How many of those ordinances serve to protect individuals as distinct from protecting a business or business sector? Given our litigious society, the matter of liability is valid, yet how much of that is already fairly well-covered?
Had an uncle who paid cash for everything. Car, house, and, 16 years after he started there, the place where he worked. He wasn't a tightwad - he and his family had good and sufficient food and clothes, for instance - but he was scrupulously frugal and he saved. Oh, how he saved. My aunt worked half-time at the local hospital as an LPN and later as an RN after the youngest was in school, so that definitely helped. He didn't talk much either, come to think of it.
"It's not our fault, but maybe we could have done more to prevent this. And so it goes..."
That's how it happened.
See Zorin OS, on the fly switch between look-alike XP and 7. Don't know if there's still a light-weight version, tho.
I have the advantage of English as milk tongue, but even so, I'd met all three of those words more than fifty years ago and it didn't take all that much reading to do so, maybe a few hundred books.
Interesting idea, but a silly scam nonetheless. The four-word mapping from Lat/Long above makes more sense, yet it's still as silly and only about as useful as vanity plates on one's auto.
1. Asked and answered several times upthread.
2. Please do consider the phrase "chilling effect" as has been done in the courts for at least over the course of the past hundred years or so, indeed, all the way back to the several conventions preceding the writing of the constitution.
3. What? Are ye daft?
"free speech zone"
My mind gagged when I first heard of the thing. It's not that it was a needed clue; I took it as a clincher nail, is all. That something so basic as protest was now to be sandboxed....
Reading what you wrote earlier, on the natural progression of governments, I mused that a revolution in the traditional sense might not happen or be needed. The specific issue might not matter, but whatever it will be would result in a withdrawal of support, an ignoring of 'the government'; after the national government becomes sidelined, whether or not it thoroughly collapses, the DoD would step up and impose sufficient martial law to preserve interstate commerce - ports, refineries, rails and roads to keep fuel, food, and goods flowing. There's also the matter of what the various states might do. What happens makes a good guessing game. Nice plot for a novel somewhere in there, too, I think.
Or...
We're already in jail. Now we're just negotiating terms with our jailors.
"the courts still act like the first amendment is valid sometimes"
Ouch.
That's one of the simpler, truer, and sadder comments I've read in a while. Jesus wept, but we're screwed so badly when it's come to this. I hope (however irrational that hope may be) that the lawsuit has a good outcome for us.
Aye, but left out of the article itself was any mention of specifics as to amount of electricity generated. I think it's nifty to get some use out of under-utilised waste heat (in some factories it's used for pre-heat or low-temp process heat; in most it's simply wasted.) I'd like some idea of how much juice is generated per a given size of cell against temperature difference. Enough to light a light bulb? Recharge a cell phone?
Thank you, most especially for that second link. Vinge has long been one of the writers of sci-fi whose books I enjoy; and of the few of the talks I've read so far, no less them as well. (I followed a link back to a page where he lists a half-dozen or so talks and papers. I'm currently listening to his presentation at the Long Now Foundation.)
Nicely done, thanks. Those with a strong engineering background can dig it, 'cuz it's piecework all the way. Nothing fancy at all. Take a bit of doing but once established it'd make a handy place for water and its components.
Didn't look at the delta-v chart yet, but I suspect Ceres is also well-placed for general solar system maneuvering; easy to get to, easy to leave, centrally located. Sunward is easy; can use light sails for steering.
Frequency.
Gosh, somebody who gets it. The shock... I'm gonna have to lie down for a bit.
Left out: for the reading of the data
The self-assembled nanostructures change the way light travels through glass, modifying polarisation of light that can then be read by combination of optical microscope and a polariser, similar to that found in Polaroid sunglasses.
This.
For the rest, whatever else might be stored against future contingency, store all known culture - not just Aristotle and Shakespeare, but Asimov, Bacon, Cicero, all the way through to Howdy Doody and Flash Gordon; take good scans of the arts, all of it. Let whomever see all that we did, and let them guess at all that we didn't, and why. It might be instructive, even useful to someone. Meanwhile, if the Louvre got nuked, we'd at least have the happy snaps.
From the article:
The research is led by Jingyu Zhang from the University’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) and conducted under a joint project with Eindhoven University of Technology.
“We are developing a very stable and safe form of portable memory using glass, which could be highly useful for organisations with big archives. At the moment companies have to back up their archives every five to ten years because hard-drive memory has a relatively short lifespan,” says Jingyu.
“Museums who want to preserve information or places like the national archives where they have huge numbers of documents, would really benefit.”
"You could say the same about any other country too."
That's rather the point of the study, I thought.
"And it's not that hard to afford an internet connection."
Ahh. Unsupported assertion, methinks, without meaning offense. Relative, and all, to be sure, but in fact from my own observation, yes, for some, it _is_ that hard to afford an Internet connection - along with their own computer, knowledge, skill, wherewithal, electric capacity, etc., and to safely maintain said system to use the connection at all. There are several people in the house whose computers I help fix and maintain for somewhere between free and barter (a sandwich or so; for the guy with a car, a trip to the store, and I let him access my wireless for his school work.) That leaves, in the same house, at least five people I know who would be incapable, could they afford it, to manage a computer of their own no matter how much help I gave them. (As a reference point, I've successfully worked with, trained, coached developmentally disabled people at Goodwill Industries. Success defined as the work was well done and no one lost fingers.) Yes, it's anecdotal, so only has any worth if my perceptions and conclusions are correct and I'm telling truth.
"Interesting how adding a few economically marginal people to the internet is supposed to be such a big deal."
To each individual who can get that access that I've seen, yes, it is a big deal. Some can get info they need to find a clinic, to see a doctor, to access the EPIC system, to get help with taxes, to file unemployment, to seek and apply for jobs, to look things up for whatever reason, to get an email account that helps them do some of the above and gain an avenue for communication with friends and relatives. This and more, just from what I've seen with my own eyes or have been told directly by such people. That access certainly helped me when I was homeless and had no computer and no personal access.
(As an aside, and please forgive me if my memory is totally borked, but I seem to recall you once posted a remarkable story of how you went essentially "from rags to riches" - it was inspiring, I thought, and I applaud and am happy for you. However, I think that to sneer at those less fortunate, or who could not replicate your success, is a bit... unseemly. Just because some may be lazy or drug-addled is to me no reasonable reason to tar all with such a wide brush, nor deny them access.)
For, say, a local library to set up a couple dozen surplus computers for public access at marginal cost to allow such access is a reasonable thing to do. Multiply that planet-wide. That's the whole point. Do we deliberately forbid access to those less fortunate or do we at relatively marginal cost and effort allow entry to what the Internet may offer them?
Again with the Netflix. It runs fine from Ubuntu, anyway, and I figure most Debian-based distros. See Compholio. It's a Wine patch, and it works. I've posted this four or five times now in the past month or so; but a search on "netflix linux" brings it up readily.
For drivers? Sometimes. These days, I get about equal problems with Windows as Linux. Open source drivers for gaming is a no-go. Oddball wi-fi can be problematic. Mouse, yeah, LInux doesn't generally offer much customization, although I've found it at least plays nice with a raft of touchpads OK. I haven't seen copacetic mouse exhilerators since my Atari ST.
If a program needs Windows, use Windows. Else one might use a vm on a Linux host, or Wine/Crossover.
Zorin; distro can look like XP or 7, been out for at least three years
I've already put on my fucking asbestos. Flame away.
For what? Speaking simple truth and making sense? If that's flame-worthy, then ok, so what? There used to be a sentiment, "truth will out" from somewhere, my betters will one of them know, but I no longer trust that to be so.
There are a number of simple easily done things that require no huge new laws or undertakings that would act in large measure to improve things. Single-payer health care, 30hr./wk. = full time, and end to derivatives and electronic trading, programmed trading, and so on.
Didn't care for those ads then, even less now. The whole mental shift of turning people into ciphers, while nothing new, has been accelerating abrogating whatever gains had been made in those same intervening decades. As best I can see more companies are assholes today than they were then also. Our wonderful Congress people and those in the executive have, since Carter, been on the same kick.
If you're working that should automatically put you above the poverty level by virtue of enough income, preferably at the 30-hr. week considered to be full time. For it to be less means we have failed.
Yet you'll note that for all of the arrogant sneering social Darwinists who speak of the natural order and such, none speak from a current position of poverty, though some brag on how they personally bootstrapped themselves out of it to making six-figure per year jobs because they're such wonderful human beings - and the tens or hundreds of thousands left behind are obviously lazy no-counts who aren't really real humans anyway. To them and the other evangelical elites, if you're poor then you're obviously a defective sinner who deserves whatever misfortune comes your way and the world is better off without you. So, just die, already.
Problem is, the poor don't "just die, already." Takes 'em a while. That being so, if we are to consider ourselves moral critters, and mindful of "there but for the grace of God" or whatever similar phrase is suitable, we have to decide if the many poor who do have jobs will participate as full tax-paying upstanding citizens. Pay 'em a decent wage or look in the mirror and have the balls to admit to yourself you like being a smug superior real human.
Then again, maybe they are. "I'm a beta. I like being a beta. I'm glad I'm a beta. I don't like deltas. Deltas smell funny. I'm glad I'm not a delta." [bad paraphrase, proper sentiment]
I think not. I think that's a distraction and a rather shallow one at that.
In the '70s wage was commensurate with work done. There was some skew - some union jobs were getting out of whack and that didn't help - but even on minimum wage one could rent for less than a third of income, own a car (usually used), eat three squares a day, have sufficient clothes, and have enough left over for a record player, TV, and maybe some skis and an annual discount trip to Vail (well, maybe not Vail, precisely).
For a married couple, very much the same; rent or mortgage was less than a third of net, a car for each (still often used, but still), have a low-key but comfortable home, even support a child or two - things could get very tight, but it was doable.
One of the big wrenches in the gears was lack of good provision for health care - just as now, major medical could wipe out this nice situation. Not good.
Every round of recession since, biz and corps have been able to squeeze wage and get more work for it. This is the deliberate destruction of what used to be a big part of the [lower] middle class. Now it is almost guaranteed that a two-earner household (and most all of the middle class) is in perpetual debt and at the mercy of its rulers.
Tax policies helped make certain the sucking up of all profits into ever more concentrated hands. It's not about trinkets, although it's true that some have eyes bigger than their wallets; this is not new.
Yup, but for the intractability of Congress and insufficient push by Obama, single-payer is the way. What the House gets is what we get or vice versa; the People's house, doncha know.
See the post below viz. Nixon. For all the crazy things ol' Tricky Dick got up to, he had a good head on his shoulders otherwise. Also worth mentioning, his wage and price freeze took the wind from the sails of a shitty situation and allowed time for some other stuff to work. Worst part was when Congress over his objections voted to borrow against OASDI revenues to apply to the general fund - and they've never paid and revoked those instruments - we're still paying for that bit of aggrandizement.
This.
Thanks, man. Interesting how the 1/10 of the 1% which could potentially be movers and shakers of a good future are now culturally predisposed (and perhaps not having the mental horsepower as well) to be the sand in the gears of making useful change. Privilege being as seductive and corrosive as power is ugly. I've met both kinds of wealthy also and the bad ones are scary indeed. The ingrained callousness was a real eye-opener for this naive boy.
Dunno how legit it was but one of the brokers I was associated with in real estate used 1099 since commission came through the office. I also had to do the SE and sched C stuff, of course.