Considering I spend about $35 on two tickets plus concessions, $50 is not that bad to be able to watch new movies without leaving the house. I often see blockbuster movies with 2-4 friends or family members, so then its a bargain. And in my current situation I need a babysitter to see a movie in the theater, so this would cut the cost of a movie in half for my wife and I right now.
I certainly wouldn't call it cheap, but the price is about what I expected.
A better question rather than bringing up the exhausted "strawman" pejorative, is do you concur with him?
His strawman argument was the crux of his entire post, so there is no better response than calling that out. He didn't add any additional insight into the issue other than calling the article BS so there wasn't much else to build on. If he had actually given potentially valid points to discuss, as you just have, there could have been room for more discussion.
As in I find that it streche scredulity to a breaking point when he asserts how the Communist revolutions in Russia created equality for it's citizens. Could you make a good argument for the income leveling of the Great leap forward in China, which directly caused between 18 million and 55 million deaths by starvation? The dead were equal in a morbid manner, but I don't think Mao missed too many meals.
That is a very valid criticism of the article, since I agree his attempt to include these two Communist revolutions as examples of decreasing inequality damages his central argument. The only real problem I have with his statements is his claim that these revolutions "[leveled] inequality on an unprecedented scale". This is hard to believe when China's level of income inequality is nearly the same as the US, with China's income inequality being a little worse but wealth inequality being a little better. Both Communist revolutions probably did lower inequality for at least a short period, but it would require significant backup arguments and statistics to convince me it was unprecedented.
But I do stand by my assertion that Scheidel is an idealistic far left winger who cherry picks his source to fit his worldview.
This may be true, but in this case it is hard to disagree with the central argument that income inequality is very hard to fight without significant and drastic upheavals in society, such as revolution and war. While not true in all cases, "it takes money to make money" is still quite accurate in almost all cases. Compound Interest is the eighth wonder of the world and it overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy. Without drastic increases in wealth distribution this inequality will only accelerate in the future.
Your single outlier could be the one paper that has discovered and accounted for the previously unknown factor or discovered some other problem with previous research. You can't just conclude that since in the majority of cases this is unlikely therefore we can dismiss the outlier. You still have to look at it, have a discussion about it, and see whether or not it's worth considering or if it means the other 9 studies need to be rerun to account for new information.
All of that is certainly possible, but once again you have to go with what is more likely. And it is far more likely that the one study made a mistake than all nine studies made the same mistake. But of course 10 studies is not a very large sample size. For comparison early research into climate change consensus looked at over 10,000 research papers.
It will always be possible for one study to invalidate 10,000, but it certainly isn't likely. Even special relativity and quantum mechanics didn't throw out Newton's laws of motion, they just enhanced them in special circumstances.
agreed. But when 99% of the people have just read 1-2 papers, and there is "consensus", without anyone reproducing any of the experiments, the opinion of the 99% is worth about what my opinion is - aka nothing
I'm not sure what scenario you are describing here. No one cares about the consensus of the general public who read 0-2 scientific papers. It is the consensus of professional researchers who have read hundreds of papers and conducted their own experiments which matters.
If a published peer reviewed study states a 95% confidence in the results, but has a 60% chance of being wrong, on average, how many studies must be conducted before we have significant evidence?
Okay, lets say you have two independent papers which both come to the same conclusion. If they both independently have a 60% chance of being wrong, they only have a 36% chance of both being wrong. If you take 10 independent papers with 9 of them agreeing, it is far more likely that the 1 outlier is wrong than the 9 other papers, regardless of the reproducibility failure rate of each individual paper.
If most studies are wrong, then the consensus is guaranteed to be wrong,
No, if most studies are wrong, strong consensus is still very likely to be correct. Each incorrect paper just means that is one less piece of evidence that the consensus is correct; it doesn't provide evidence for the opposite conclusion. So if 95% of papers agree, you can easily throw out 70% of them and still have strong confidence in the consensus. Remember you can probably also throw out 70% of the papers which disagree, making the overall consensus percentage the same.
To put it into a car analogy, lets say you come up with 95 reasons to choose Car A and 5 reasons to choose Car B, and are therefore easily going to choose Car A. I then tell you 60 of your reasons to choose Car A are silly and 3 of your reasons to choose Car B are silly, but don't tell you which ones. Does this really impact your decision to choose Car A now that it is only 35 vs 2 instead of 95 vs 5?
I think you were being a bit unfair. I saw none of that in his comment. In fact - all I saw were statements regarding an individuals ability to replicate.
Either way, it's no wonder ordinary civilians have doubts.
It's obvious this sentence is a political attack on scientific conclusions many people choose not to believe. That is why I only said the post smells politically partisan, since he only used innuendo instead of direct statements.
Consensus without duplication of experiment, or at LEAST running your OWN models on the other person's RAW data (if it is too hard to duplicate the data) is herd following
If the consensus comes from independent experiments with independent data coming to similar conclusions, it arguably has more validity than the replication of a single study with the same potentially flawed data and procedures in place.
Science is not about consensus building. What you're describing is a political process not a scientific process.
True, but that could be said about any application of scientific conclusions. While it may not be part of the scientific process, there needs to be a way for scientists to gain funding or the public to create policy based on scientific results. That is when consensus comes in.
You seem to be saying that if a bunch of scientists agree that *this* (whatever *this* is) is the way it is, but none of the experiments that prove that *this* is the way it is are reproducible, then we should just go with the consensus?
No one is saying none of the experiments are reproducible. This article said about 70% of studies could not be reproduced. That means about 30% of them can.
Lets say you have 1000 papers and 950 of them come to the same conclusion (95% consensus). Lets say 665 of the consensus papers are the result of group think and only 285 are reproducible. On the flip side its just as likely that 35 of the "maverick" research papers are just as biased and only 15 are reproducible. None of this changes that 95% of the reproducible papers agree.
The reason consensus is so important is you can never trust any single research paper. Or any group of research papers written by colleagues. If you want to build confidence in controversial results it takes a diverse group of researchers to come to similar conclusions.
Making financial transactions more transparent and efficient has a huge social impact. Even if it's for traders/brokers. So thanks to you and your work:)
It's true I do take pride in my current work which usually involves taking 1+ week paper processes and automating them into near real-time transactions. But on the flip side sometimes I am forced to hold back some efficiencies out of fear the financial advisors we serve will get scared of us automating them out of the loop. Baby steps I guess. I think the vast majority of financial advisors are not long for this world, but perhaps we need to keep stringing them along until Fin Tech companies make them nearly unnecessary.
Because you're still on the hook for a $700 or $800 phone or whatever. The interest rate isn't the only factor to take into account.
The interest rate is the only factor when deciding whether to pay up front or with a payment plan (or nearly the only factor), which is they only question posed by the GP. Deciding whether a phone is worth $800 is another matter.
If you can't reproduce it, it's either fake or you were just being sloppy. Either way, it's no wonder ordinary civilians have doubts.
Or perhaps this is the reason why you need to build a consensus among many scientists with similar results before you put much validity in any cutting edge research. All research is going to include assumptions, specialized techniques, biases, random variability of data, and many other factors which can reduce the validity of its conclusions.
Your comment reeks of a double standard where if scientists cannot come to a consensus they are being fake or sloppy, but if they point out an overwhelming consensus they are not being scientific because a consensus shouldn't matter.
Out of curiosity, why are you doing a payment plan? My take is that if you can't afford to pay for a give phone outright, don't buy it. Same as buying shoes, why would anyone buy them on a payment plan?
Any time I get the opportunity to pay installments with 0% interest, I generally take that option. I could easily buy an $800 smartphone up front, but as long as Verizon is willing to give me an interest free loan why would I pass that up?
I don't understand posts like this. Why do you want to waste 40+ hours per week on a job that delivers little in the way of satisfaction or pleasure? Even if you're a well paid programmer, you're probably working on something that doesn't interest you, and therefore isn't particularly fun or rewarding. Wouldn't you rather have more free time to work on something that is of interest to you and that you believe would benefit other people? I worked as a programmer for a few years when I came out of university, but I concluded that my free time is far more valuable to me than a decent wage. I now work in a low paid part-time job, and while I have no money and no retirement plan, at least I can spend most of my time on projects that interest me.
I don't understand posts like this. You assume everyone has the same life priorities you do, and get satisfaction or pleasure from the same things.
My job isn't the perfect job I would create for myself if money was not a concern, but it is quite close. I get to solve complicated problems for companies and get to offload most of the grunt work to more junior staff members. While I may prefer to work on projects with more social impact than making financial transactions more efficient, I prefer providing well for my family more.
My children will attend arguably the best public school district in our state (paid for by my egregious property taxes), they won't need loans for even Ivy League colleges if they so choose, will have the option to take unpaid internships starting in high school instead of needing a part time job to pay for a car, and spend their childhood surrounded by other affluent families who will become their initial professional network once they become adults.
I'm not saying my priorities are better than yours, they are just different. So while I understand why you don't choose a similar life as I have, I still don't understand why you think your way is best for everyone.
Changing requirements aren't a problem. All you need is to define a language where they can be specified precisely, and hire someone who can translate your real world requirements into that language. Once you've got those, you can still do away with programmers because the new magic code generation tools will do everything else for you.
Sounds like you are describing a compiler.
Just as programming tools today are much better than those used in the 80s and 90s, the tools used by programmers a decade or two from now will make developers far more productive. IMHO we have already reached a point where the more valuable work is in requirements elicitation and architectural design as opposed to writing code. I imagine in 20 years writing code will be like being a CAD operator today in both the level of training required and pay scale.
My very first post was specifically discussing quality of life, especially arguing that making everybody equally poor doesn't make for a better society. And that is in fact what GP was arguing against, though admittedly my second post did go on a tangent, but that was because of the few points the article makes about civil equality (i.e. mention of voting rights.)
I understand what your point was, but it was refuting a strawman argument no one made. The article does not state the world is better off because wars reduced income inequality. It merely states the wars reduced income inequality. It then goes on to say it will be much harder to reduce inequality in peaceful times than it was in the middle of the last century. It does not make any claims that we are worst off because of this, only that we will need to work harder to reduce inequality without outside factors which made it easier in the past.
So you're telling me that we were all more equal before the civil rights era? Before gay marriage was a thing? Because that's what the article is saying.
Please read the article before your next post. The very first sentence makes it clear it is referring to income inequality, not equality in general.
Seriously this article makes it sound like life just after a devastating conflict is better than economic prosperity because most people are equally poor.
The article says nothing of the sort. It makes no contention that we are better off because wars reduced income inequality. It only contends that without similar struggles it will be far more difficult to reduce this inequality. That is a completely different viewpoint then the one you attribute to the article.
> gig work is a very good living to anyone worth "economic value" No. There are plenty of "worthy" gig workers that aren't making a "very good living".
Even for the laughable "worthy" metric in your head.
Who are you even quoting. I never used the word "worthy" in my post.
But you seem to be mixing together someone's inherent worth as a human being with their economic value to society. They are often very different, which is why a universal basic income is such an attractive way to close the gap.
A life-changing car accident. A cancer diagnosis. A pregnancy. The problems I describe are often in the realm of accidents, which no human can accurately predict when that may happen to them or how often, and have jack shit to do with workers being overvalued. This is also why so many of us value those critical insurance benefits, along with the stability of full-time employment; to not only prepare for when life happens, but also create a career that will hopefully fund the concept of retirement.
You can get insurance policies which aren't paid for by your employer. If you are self employed they are also tax deductible, just like they would be for a traditional employer. There are certainly gaps in our current insurance industry, especially for self-employed disability insurance, but a growing independent contractor / gig economy is likely to create a larger market for this kind of product.
The "gig" economy is a bullshit attempt to glamorize and hide the real issue, which is a population outpacing the availability stable employment that provides necessary benefits. And as the parent pointed it, this bullshit is a slippery slope we don't want.
Society needs to start coping with the reality you describe instead of pretending we can continue to force employers to pay people more than the economic value they can provide. I for one welcome the gig economy, along with a universal basic income, so we can allow employment opportunities to exist whenever there is a willing employer and employee.
Given the impacts I've pointed out, I won't have to say a damn word to those who seem to "like" this.
Life will eventually slap them in the fucking face, as wisdom and experience have taught many.
I know plenty of people with wisdom and experience who make a very good living as independent contractors. They have plenty of opportunities to find full time positions but vastly prefer their current arrangement.
The problems you mention seem to only be the case when current workers are being paid more than the economic value they provide.
Had someone actually died, it would match the definition of "depraved-heart murder", which is second-degree homicide in many states. Depraved-heart murder is killing someone through actions not actually *intended* to kill them, but by reckless disregard for their safety.
One really messed up part of our judicial system is that punishment is often more interested in the results of the perpetrator's actions instead of the intent. There is no sane reason why attempted murder and murder have different punishments, since the intent was the same. Similarly, there should be no difference in the punishment for depraved-heart murder and reckless endangerment.
If by, "primarily the responsibility of government not private investors" you mean, "what only governments seem to realize is important and has a high ROI" then sure.
Most investors don't have 50 years to wait for their investments to pay off. I'm only in my 30's and would be considered a long term investor, but I still need my retirement investments to be fairly liquid in 30 years. Probably more like 20 years so I can start re-balancing to a lower risk portfolio.
It is not the fault of short sighted investors that they won't invest in basic research. It really is something that is most suited for institutions that have the luxury of planning 50 years ahead instead of just 20. Sadly our governments rarely think 50 years ahead anymore.
The best way to handle it is to only allow modifications that are available to everyone, so we can create a large market for Chinese genetic conception tourism.
People need to face facts. With a new world government mandating these laws across the globe, you cannot stop the wealthy from finding some country which will allow it. If they can afford some $500k procedure to improve their children, do you really think they cannot afford a $10k vacation to China?
Slashdot Mirror
Considering I spend about $35 on two tickets plus concessions, $50 is not that bad to be able to watch new movies without leaving the house. I often see blockbuster movies with 2-4 friends or family members, so then its a bargain. And in my current situation I need a babysitter to see a movie in the theater, so this would cut the cost of a movie in half for my wife and I right now.
I certainly wouldn't call it cheap, but the price is about what I expected.
A better question rather than bringing up the exhausted "strawman" pejorative, is do you concur with him?
His strawman argument was the crux of his entire post, so there is no better response than calling that out. He didn't add any additional insight into the issue other than calling the article BS so there wasn't much else to build on. If he had actually given potentially valid points to discuss, as you just have, there could have been room for more discussion.
As in I find that it streche scredulity to a breaking point when he asserts how the Communist revolutions in Russia created equality for it's citizens. Could you make a good argument for the income leveling of the Great leap forward in China, which directly caused between 18 million and 55 million deaths by starvation? The dead were equal in a morbid manner, but I don't think Mao missed too many meals.
That is a very valid criticism of the article, since I agree his attempt to include these two Communist revolutions as examples of decreasing inequality damages his central argument. The only real problem I have with his statements is his claim that these revolutions "[leveled] inequality on an unprecedented scale". This is hard to believe when China's level of income inequality is nearly the same as the US, with China's income inequality being a little worse but wealth inequality being a little better. Both Communist revolutions probably did lower inequality for at least a short period, but it would require significant backup arguments and statistics to convince me it was unprecedented.
But I do stand by my assertion that Scheidel is an idealistic far left winger who cherry picks his source to fit his worldview.
This may be true, but in this case it is hard to disagree with the central argument that income inequality is very hard to fight without significant and drastic upheavals in society, such as revolution and war. While not true in all cases, "it takes money to make money" is still quite accurate in almost all cases. Compound Interest is the eighth wonder of the world and it overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy. Without drastic increases in wealth distribution this inequality will only accelerate in the future.
Your single outlier could be the one paper that has discovered and accounted for the previously unknown factor or discovered some other problem with previous research. You can't just conclude that since in the majority of cases this is unlikely therefore we can dismiss the outlier. You still have to look at it, have a discussion about it, and see whether or not it's worth considering or if it means the other 9 studies need to be rerun to account for new information.
All of that is certainly possible, but once again you have to go with what is more likely. And it is far more likely that the one study made a mistake than all nine studies made the same mistake. But of course 10 studies is not a very large sample size. For comparison early research into climate change consensus looked at over 10,000 research papers.
It will always be possible for one study to invalidate 10,000, but it certainly isn't likely. Even special relativity and quantum mechanics didn't throw out Newton's laws of motion, they just enhanced them in special circumstances.
agreed. But when 99% of the people have just read 1-2 papers, and there is "consensus", without anyone reproducing any of the experiments, the opinion of the 99% is worth about what my opinion is - aka nothing
I'm not sure what scenario you are describing here. No one cares about the consensus of the general public who read 0-2 scientific papers. It is the consensus of professional researchers who have read hundreds of papers and conducted their own experiments which matters.
If a published peer reviewed study states a 95% confidence in the results, but has a 60% chance of being wrong, on average, how many studies must be conducted before we have significant evidence?
Okay, lets say you have two independent papers which both come to the same conclusion. If they both independently have a 60% chance of being wrong, they only have a 36% chance of both being wrong. If you take 10 independent papers with 9 of them agreeing, it is far more likely that the 1 outlier is wrong than the 9 other papers, regardless of the reproducibility failure rate of each individual paper.
If most studies are wrong, then the consensus is guaranteed to be wrong,
No, if most studies are wrong, strong consensus is still very likely to be correct. Each incorrect paper just means that is one less piece of evidence that the consensus is correct; it doesn't provide evidence for the opposite conclusion. So if 95% of papers agree, you can easily throw out 70% of them and still have strong confidence in the consensus. Remember you can probably also throw out 70% of the papers which disagree, making the overall consensus percentage the same.
To put it into a car analogy, lets say you come up with 95 reasons to choose Car A and 5 reasons to choose Car B, and are therefore easily going to choose Car A. I then tell you 60 of your reasons to choose Car A are silly and 3 of your reasons to choose Car B are silly, but don't tell you which ones. Does this really impact your decision to choose Car A now that it is only 35 vs 2 instead of 95 vs 5?
I think you were being a bit unfair. I saw none of that in his comment. In fact - all I saw were statements regarding an individuals ability to replicate.
Either way, it's no wonder ordinary civilians have doubts.
It's obvious this sentence is a political attack on scientific conclusions many people choose not to believe. That is why I only said the post smells politically partisan, since he only used innuendo instead of direct statements.
Consensus without duplication of experiment, or at LEAST running your OWN models on the other person's RAW data (if it is too hard to duplicate the data) is herd following
If the consensus comes from independent experiments with independent data coming to similar conclusions, it arguably has more validity than the replication of a single study with the same potentially flawed data and procedures in place.
Science is not about consensus building. What you're describing is a political process not a scientific process.
True, but that could be said about any application of scientific conclusions. While it may not be part of the scientific process, there needs to be a way for scientists to gain funding or the public to create policy based on scientific results. That is when consensus comes in.
You seem to be saying that if a bunch of scientists agree that *this* (whatever *this* is) is the way it is, but none of the experiments that prove that *this* is the way it is are reproducible, then we should just go with the consensus?
No one is saying none of the experiments are reproducible. This article said about 70% of studies could not be reproduced. That means about 30% of them can.
Lets say you have 1000 papers and 950 of them come to the same conclusion (95% consensus). Lets say 665 of the consensus papers are the result of group think and only 285 are reproducible. On the flip side its just as likely that 35 of the "maverick" research papers are just as biased and only 15 are reproducible. None of this changes that 95% of the reproducible papers agree.
The reason consensus is so important is you can never trust any single research paper. Or any group of research papers written by colleagues. If you want to build confidence in controversial results it takes a diverse group of researchers to come to similar conclusions.
Making financial transactions more transparent and efficient has a huge social impact. Even if it's for traders/brokers. So thanks to you and your work :)
It's true I do take pride in my current work which usually involves taking 1+ week paper processes and automating them into near real-time transactions. But on the flip side sometimes I am forced to hold back some efficiencies out of fear the financial advisors we serve will get scared of us automating them out of the loop. Baby steps I guess. I think the vast majority of financial advisors are not long for this world, but perhaps we need to keep stringing them along until Fin Tech companies make them nearly unnecessary.
Because you're still on the hook for a $700 or $800 phone or whatever. The interest rate isn't the only factor to take into account.
The interest rate is the only factor when deciding whether to pay up front or with a payment plan (or nearly the only factor), which is they only question posed by the GP. Deciding whether a phone is worth $800 is another matter.
If you can't reproduce it, it's either fake or you were just being sloppy. Either way, it's no wonder ordinary civilians have doubts.
Or perhaps this is the reason why you need to build a consensus among many scientists with similar results before you put much validity in any cutting edge research. All research is going to include assumptions, specialized techniques, biases, random variability of data, and many other factors which can reduce the validity of its conclusions.
Your comment reeks of a double standard where if scientists cannot come to a consensus they are being fake or sloppy, but if they point out an overwhelming consensus they are not being scientific because a consensus shouldn't matter.
Out of curiosity, why are you doing a payment plan? My take is that if you can't afford to pay for a give phone outright, don't buy it. Same as buying shoes, why would anyone buy them on a payment plan?
Any time I get the opportunity to pay installments with 0% interest, I generally take that option. I could easily buy an $800 smartphone up front, but as long as Verizon is willing to give me an interest free loan why would I pass that up?
I don't understand posts like this. Why do you want to waste 40+ hours per week on a job that delivers little in the way of satisfaction or pleasure? Even if you're a well paid programmer, you're probably working on something that doesn't interest you, and therefore isn't particularly fun or rewarding. Wouldn't you rather have more free time to work on something that is of interest to you and that you believe would benefit other people? I worked as a programmer for a few years when I came out of university, but I concluded that my free time is far more valuable to me than a decent wage. I now work in a low paid part-time job, and while I have no money and no retirement plan, at least I can spend most of my time on projects that interest me.
I don't understand posts like this. You assume everyone has the same life priorities you do, and get satisfaction or pleasure from the same things.
My job isn't the perfect job I would create for myself if money was not a concern, but it is quite close. I get to solve complicated problems for companies and get to offload most of the grunt work to more junior staff members. While I may prefer to work on projects with more social impact than making financial transactions more efficient, I prefer providing well for my family more.
My children will attend arguably the best public school district in our state (paid for by my egregious property taxes), they won't need loans for even Ivy League colleges if they so choose, will have the option to take unpaid internships starting in high school instead of needing a part time job to pay for a car, and spend their childhood surrounded by other affluent families who will become their initial professional network once they become adults.
I'm not saying my priorities are better than yours, they are just different. So while I understand why you don't choose a similar life as I have, I still don't understand why you think your way is best for everyone.
Changing requirements aren't a problem. All you need is to define a language where they can be specified precisely, and hire someone who can translate your real world requirements into that language. Once you've got those, you can still do away with programmers because the new magic code generation tools will do everything else for you.
Sounds like you are describing a compiler.
Just as programming tools today are much better than those used in the 80s and 90s, the tools used by programmers a decade or two from now will make developers far more productive. IMHO we have already reached a point where the more valuable work is in requirements elicitation and architectural design as opposed to writing code. I imagine in 20 years writing code will be like being a CAD operator today in both the level of training required and pay scale.
My very first post was specifically discussing quality of life, especially arguing that making everybody equally poor doesn't make for a better society. And that is in fact what GP was arguing against, though admittedly my second post did go on a tangent, but that was because of the few points the article makes about civil equality (i.e. mention of voting rights.)
I understand what your point was, but it was refuting a strawman argument no one made. The article does not state the world is better off because wars reduced income inequality. It merely states the wars reduced income inequality. It then goes on to say it will be much harder to reduce inequality in peaceful times than it was in the middle of the last century. It does not make any claims that we are worst off because of this, only that we will need to work harder to reduce inequality without outside factors which made it easier in the past.
So you're telling me that we were all more equal before the civil rights era? Before gay marriage was a thing? Because that's what the article is saying.
Please read the article before your next post. The very first sentence makes it clear it is referring to income inequality, not equality in general.
Seriously this article makes it sound like life just after a devastating conflict is better than economic prosperity because most people are equally poor.
The article says nothing of the sort. It makes no contention that we are better off because wars reduced income inequality. It only contends that without similar struggles it will be far more difficult to reduce this inequality. That is a completely different viewpoint then the one you attribute to the article.
> gig work is a very good living to anyone worth "economic value"
No. There are plenty of "worthy" gig workers that aren't making a "very good living".
Even for the laughable "worthy" metric in your head.
Who are you even quoting. I never used the word "worthy" in my post.
But you seem to be mixing together someone's inherent worth as a human being with their economic value to society. They are often very different, which is why a universal basic income is such an attractive way to close the gap.
A life-changing car accident. A cancer diagnosis. A pregnancy. The problems I describe are often in the realm of accidents, which no human can accurately predict when that may happen to them or how often, and have jack shit to do with workers being overvalued. This is also why so many of us value those critical insurance benefits, along with the stability of full-time employment; to not only prepare for when life happens, but also create a career that will hopefully fund the concept of retirement.
You can get insurance policies which aren't paid for by your employer. If you are self employed they are also tax deductible, just like they would be for a traditional employer. There are certainly gaps in our current insurance industry, especially for self-employed disability insurance, but a growing independent contractor / gig economy is likely to create a larger market for this kind of product.
The "gig" economy is a bullshit attempt to glamorize and hide the real issue, which is a population outpacing the availability stable employment that provides necessary benefits. And as the parent pointed it, this bullshit is a slippery slope we don't want.
Society needs to start coping with the reality you describe instead of pretending we can continue to force employers to pay people more than the economic value they can provide. I for one welcome the gig economy, along with a universal basic income, so we can allow employment opportunities to exist whenever there is a willing employer and employee.
Given the impacts I've pointed out, I won't have to say a damn word to those who seem to "like" this.
Life will eventually slap them in the fucking face, as wisdom and experience have taught many.
I know plenty of people with wisdom and experience who make a very good living as independent contractors. They have plenty of opportunities to find full time positions but vastly prefer their current arrangement.
The problems you mention seem to only be the case when current workers are being paid more than the economic value they provide.
Had someone actually died, it would match the definition of "depraved-heart murder", which is second-degree homicide in many states. Depraved-heart murder is killing someone through actions not actually *intended* to kill them, but by reckless disregard for their safety.
One really messed up part of our judicial system is that punishment is often more interested in the results of the perpetrator's actions instead of the intent. There is no sane reason why attempted murder and murder have different punishments, since the intent was the same. Similarly, there should be no difference in the punishment for depraved-heart murder and reckless endangerment.
If by, "primarily the responsibility of government not private investors" you mean, "what only governments seem to realize is important and has a high ROI" then sure.
Most investors don't have 50 years to wait for their investments to pay off. I'm only in my 30's and would be considered a long term investor, but I still need my retirement investments to be fairly liquid in 30 years. Probably more like 20 years so I can start re-balancing to a lower risk portfolio.
It is not the fault of short sighted investors that they won't invest in basic research. It really is something that is most suited for institutions that have the luxury of planning 50 years ahead instead of just 20. Sadly our governments rarely think 50 years ahead anymore.
The best way to handle it is to only allow modifications that are available to everyone, so we can create a large market for Chinese genetic conception tourism.
People need to face facts. With a new world government mandating these laws across the globe, you cannot stop the wealthy from finding some country which will allow it. If they can afford some $500k procedure to improve their children, do you really think they cannot afford a $10k vacation to China?