Child pornographers. I notice none of these people asked the obvious question about the destructive potential of BitLocker on the science of computer forensics.
Simple video games that run ENTIRELY on the GPU- mainly for developers. Got 3 hours (or I guess it's now going on 7 hours) to wait for an ALTER statement to a table to complete, and you're bored stiff? Fire up this video game, and while your CPU cranks away, you can be playing the video game instead with virtually NO performance hit to the background CPU task.
Especially since the next version of Visual Studio seems to separate the work into Architect, Developer, Database Admin, and Web Developer positions (and probably more) if you can afford the $10,000/seat licensing fee.
I almost want to wait for slashcode to be fixed before continuing our discussion. I might move it into a JE for that reason.
Okay big advantage for the 1% and severe disadvantage for the 30%. What if it is a win situation for the other 69%? Is it okay then?
Then you have an interesting problem- and I'd suggest actually creating a border and splitting the community, so that the 31% can do what is best for them, and the 69% can live under different laws.
Or a select group. Aristocracies have been like this. The Soviet Union was like this. Actually most if not all governments are in the business of enriching the ruling class at the expense of everyone else. Regardless of economic system.
Yes, exactly. American Representative Democracy is no different on this score either.
Yes, in an economic sense you are correct. Some are certainly more important and harder to replace than others, but still it's true at the highest level. Once you start to dip down you see everything is based upon human relationships, without which nothing would function.
The problem is most of our economic systems create communities so large that we destroy human relationships. That is precisely what is wrong with the free market- but it's also what is wrong with any sort of national socialism or communism.
It is a big mistake to divorce economics from some sort of morality. That this is common place is rather unfortunate. Still it is an individual's right to make moral or immoral decisions and it is not my place to force another to either. I could go on about this, but the point is, greed is bad.
Now that I'm surprised to see- it makes me wonder if the broken slashcode is having me reply to a non-Austrian, to somebody else than I was formerly discussing this with. Yes, Greed is Bad- I agree. But I'd point out that human beings don't start out greedy- Greed is a symptom of a broken human relationship.
My own utopian delusion is a sort of "compassionate capitalism". This would not be forced upon anyone from above, but would spring naturally from all individuals. Again this is a delusion because it goes against human nature, which at its worst is shamelessly self-serving and at the expense of anything.
Check out distributism sometime- especially the works of Dorthy Day and the Catholic Workers Union. But like Marxism- it can only work with extremely small communities. The second you don't care what happens to one individual in your community, your community has grown too large.
From the macro level I suppose your right. Isn't there some intrinsic value to life though, regardless of economics, perhaps even in spite of economics?
Only in small, tribal and clan based communities. Once you get beyond a tribal level- you get to the problem you suggested above, where something might be good for 69% of the population and be very bad for the remaining 31%. If the 69% has no reason to care what happens to the 31%- then the 31% are better off starting a new community. What I'm really suggesting is that there is no value to larger communities- or to trade between communities- beyond the economic.
I don't play RPG games- I used to enjoy scifi but haven't read a novel since 1999. I spend *all* my time trying to keep my skill sharp so that my job doesn't migrate to some IIT graduate who DOES spend all his time keeping his skills sharp. Slashdot is a big part of that for me- it points out what I need to study. I'm not here for socialization.
Or that a skill that we are biologically programmed to acquire would be so fragile.
Some of us AREN'T. That's why we went into computers. I'm not programmed to aquire interpersonal skills- doing so is a strain for me, to the extent that a one hour party needs 12 hours of sleep to process.
I'd hardly say that slow/buggy websites are the fault of programmers. A CS major should have all the knowlege they need to understand the how and the reason behind making a solid website. If they aren't getting paid to do a solid site then they wont of course, but that's a management problem.
So who was the idiot who choose to use a 32 bit counter for slashdot MESSAGES!?!?!?!?!?
Maybe we've advanced to a point in technolgy that society will have to evolve or die. One could point out that the *need* for interpersonal skills is getting less with every generation.
That's not true. There are plenty of people who are both likeable and technically competent. Slashdot's (Be proud. I resisted the urge to write "/.'s":)
) readers glorify "troglodyte culture." Talking about how all there's nothing better than keeping your head down, stay out of the sun, and pound on your keyboard. That's fine to a point. But if you don't tell people what you're doing. Make them interested in what youre doing. Address their issues, and get them to address yours, you're a failure. No one respects the comic book guy. And no one respects the pretty boy either. You have to be a bit of both.
True- but that's NOT what the companies are asking for. They're asking for people to be TOTALLY both- a party-going pretty boy who *still* can tell you why refactoring in Microsoft Team Server Database Edition is a bad thing. Not just technically competent- technically guru level. And I'm saying THAT is an unrealistic expectation.
I know lots of nice pretty secretaries who are tecnically competent in Word and Excel- but they aren't the level of guru that you need when your server goes south because the router crashed during an Oracle replication of your SQL Express Database.
Bitching about how this isn't a technocracy based on standardized tests (except of course for those that complain about the standardize test and how they "don't need no educations or nor fancy degree.") gets you nowhere. Adjust. Evolve. Damn it.
I'd suggest that we're now at a point where society has to evolve to value all three. The pretty boys have their place too.
Sorry if this is a close dupe, but I've forgotten what I wrote the first time that didn't show up as a post, so it may be slightly different anyway.
What if what was best for the community was for 10% of the community to be executed outright
Two different questions that require two different answers. I actually support a real-world example of the first one. Illegal aliens are arguably 10% of my state's community- and they are not citizens, they are lawbreakers that don't belong here. They need to be deported and the border locked down to the point that even if they turn into a jackrabbit and try to cross it, they get killed.
and for another 30% to be reduced to bondage under another 1% of the community?
Now this- you have 1% benefit for 30% misery- is obviously the good of the individuals in the 1%, not the good of the community AS A WHOLE. So this would be an obvious case of bad engineering if your goal was the good of the community as a whole. But it's good engineering for capitalism or communism as we've seen it so far- because that's the good of the individual. (Note: Stalin and IBM are in the same camp as far as I'm concerned- we'll hit upon that in your next point which I actually agree with).
What in my opinion has been wrong with much of the social engineering is that it is so often contrary to human rights.
Granted- but then again, ALL of the social engineering I've seen so far has had as either a goal or an outcome the good of the individual, not the community. In other words, it's either been a bad goal or an engineering failure.
Is the individual simply a cog in the whole, a cog that can be replaced at the whim of the engineer?
That is a problem that comes in with any anonymous economic system. Once you remove the human relationship from the equation, yes, human beings are just cogs in the big machine. You can reduce this somewhat by having no replacement parts allowed- but that's dangerous too, because if a flood wipes out your only blacksmith or doctor, you've just lost an entire industry of products or services.
Does life not hold more value than that?
Not in any of the big, wide reaching systems. Some of the smaller, older systems like distributism and traditional tribalism have this concept, but no, capitalism and communism simply don't. And once you expand your free market into international trade, you lose even that- suddenly your entire system can be replaced by another system, business by business. There ain't no such thing as comparative advantage without the human relationship- absolute advantage takes over instead. You no more care about the political prisoner that stiched together your Air Jordans in Vietnam than he cares about you. Thus, my principle #3 above- you should always be able to physically assault the guy who cheated you.
Perhaps I am reading you incorrectly.
I think you're doing very well- you're just not quite as cynical as I am about information flow yet. And thus:
I am, at least to some extent one of those Austrians...;) That philosophy has its problems as well.
The main one being the one you've identified as the center of the problem of social engineering- anonymous markets, no matter how well regulated, destroy data, destroy the human relationship between you and the person who makes what you buy. Thus the natural order of supply and demand seek the least quality at the least wage- in everything. Comparative Advantage is as against human nature as communism- in a free market Absolute Advantage is the king of all.
What if what was best for the community was for 10% of the community to be executed outright and for another 30% to be reduced to bondage under another 1% of the community?
The first part I'll accept- in fact, I've argued for it (illegal immigrants are arguably a part of the community, but are enough of a suck on resources that I don't believe they belong here- ideally they should be shot crossing the border). The 2nd part is exactly what I'm talking about- enriching 1% of the community at the cost of 30% being in bondage is an economy engineered to benefit the INDIVIDUAL, not the community. Now, given Stalin and the Communist party in Russia, do you see why I consider Marx's engineering to be invalid?
What in my opinion has been wrong with much of the social engineering is that it is so often contrary to human rights.
Depends upon what you consider to be human rights. I say it's more often a tradeoff between PHYSICAL rights and MENTAL rights. A hermit is perfectly free- but has no connection to the resources of greater society.
Is the individual simply a cog in the whole, a cog that can be replaced at the whim of the engineer?
Unfortuneately, yes, for any system larger than the tribal village. It certainly is true in capitalism- where the corporations fire us and hire us at THEIR will, and human beings even on the C-level are mere resources. It's certainly true in the form of communism we've seen so far.
Does life not hold more value than that?
Only in non-anonymous systems, like distributism. But that's where #3 above comes in. Unless you know PERSONALLY who you are dealing with, in ALL business situations, then no, their life holds no more value for you than yours does for them. That's why free trade between nations doesn't work- because while you care about your family, you don't really give a shit about the poor Vietnamese political prisoner who was forced to stich your Air Jordans together. You can't have it both ways- luckily we have a few examples (distributism, isolationist tribalism) of other ways.
Perhaps I am reading you incorrectly.
No, you're reading me correctly- I'm just a bit further along and more cynical than you are.
I am, at least to some extent one of those Austrians...;) That philosophy has its problems as well.
It's primary problem you've already identified- it destroys the human portion of business relationships by making them multinational. When you destroy the human portion of the relationship, you destroy the full consideration needed for comparative advantage- and reduce it down to absolute advantage instead.
For a smart enough hacker- nothing that runs on the CLR or the Java VM is ever truly "compiled". All it means is that you have to hack the P-code instead.
I have worked for private companies my entire career, sure I have moved around a few times (never less than 2 years per). But thats OK, I have gotten my best pay increases when I have moved jobs, and working in different environments has broaden my view. My job security is doing the best job I can, staying current with my skills, and getting along with management and co-workers. Many of the moves I have made have come when someone I used to work with leaves for another company and then calls a year later to see if I would like to join them. Just my.02
I was like that once- then 2001 came around, and I didn't work for a paycheck again until 2003. Since then, I have to be able to TRUST the managment and co-workers, and I find that extremely hard to do.
Funny, I can spend my day writing a well-architected C++ OS library and then go out and bag the cute checkout girl.
Good for you- to a certain point. Though I doubt that a REAL guru would agree with you on the "well-architected" part, since you didn't spend every waking moment perfecting it.
. I must be superhuman or something. Or maybe you're just wrong. Go spend some time at a bar (learn to deal with shady assholes, identify good people, and have fun at the same time), get friends that know nothing about computers (learn to talk about something else), and a girlfriend that likes making you hang out with her family (learn to avoid touchy subjects and make people enjoy hanging out with you even when you'd rather be just about anywhere else). Learn by doing, those three things will teach you fast.
And in the mean time your computer skills will rot- you'll lose track of the bleeding edge and soon lose your job to the next bright up-and-coming young man who doesn't go to bars and doesn't waste time with a girlfriend.
Of course, I still try to not interact with anyone for a while if I've been marathon coding. For about 20 minutes after, I'm a little off.
If you were REALLY marathon coding, you'd be off for two days just catching up on the last month's worth of sleep.
Interpersonal skills are like any other skill. You can practice them to improve them. If this is your main sticking point, there are things you can do. Spend more of your free time socializing with strangers.
If you have free time to socialize with strangers, then you're NOT going to be the sharpest DBA on the block. If you are comfortable socializing with random strangers to begin with, then you haven't had enough screen time to be a good coder.
How can you say that with such assurance? It seems to me that one can be good at both of these skills if they work on developing them both. Why do you think someone could have one of these skills max?
Time. Somebody who is good at interpersonal skills has to spend a *HUGE* amount of time developing and maintaining those skills- time spent at parties and at bars and in social situations. Without that time spent, any human being's interpersonal skills will degrade- to the point that we consider a prisoner kept in solitary for a mere three weeks to be insane.
Likewise on the DBA side- time. It takes a HUGE amount of time to gain and maintain computer skills- starting as a teenager working on the computer in your parent's basement instead of going on dates, clear up to the guy who reads every word of the SQL user groups to keep up on the latest changes to the language in the five major dialects.
A SENIOR DBA is going to need to be the later, not the former. There are only 168 hours in the week.
What's this west of the Mississippi crap? I've never heard of that before. You have a reference. I'd be interested in learning some more about that.
It's something I heard a while back as an excuse for property taxes and the laws surrounding them. Previous to that, I had only heard about it in reference to water and mineral rights. I'm not real sure that it is real- but it refers to the fact that if you don't pay your property taxes once you DO pay off your mortgage, the government WILL reposess your land and house. It might take a while though- one open tax revolt preacher in Oregon went 16 years!
If I was out of work for 5-6 years, assuming my wife wasn't, then yes we'd still own it. If both of us lost our jobs and we were out of work for more than about three months we'd be in trouble right now. The upside is that she's a nurse and so that's pretty unlikely...
I'm in about the same boat- my wife does at home daycare, a pretty steady industry, except for it's work at home and has the same problems that I had with my business when it comes to getting paid.
I have to comment on your handle. The utopian fantasy that is Marxism is completely incompatible with human nature and as such is simply not a practical philosophy. How could you possibly count yourself as a Marxist?
Only as a starting point. Marx had a good ideal- but his engineering was all wrong (just read the manifesto! Now that's a bad bit of political coding!). Thus the second part of my handle- hacker. The economic system is basically an operating system for humans- I don't know of a single one that isn't a conciously engineered invention, despite what the free marketers and Austrian model free traders will tell you. The real question seems to be, who is it being engineered to benefit? I personally think there is a way to engineer that Utopia- but you have to: 1. Keep it small to keep the number of input variables down. You need producers of every possible good, but you don't need MULTIPLE producers of every possible good. 2. Since actually achieving utopia is contrary to human nature, you can't trust humans to build utopias. Luckily, we're really close to replacing bureaucrats with expert systems. In fact, for the Oregon Department of Transportation, that is my current job- examining the work the bureaucrats do, and making that work possible with fewer people, thus reducing the size and cost of actually governing. 3. Finally you need a justice feedback system- another argument for keeping it small. Citizens should have the right AND ABILITY to physically retaliate against those who would take advantage of the system- and for that you need a good way to legalize vigilantism.
Now rightly, anybody who is used to a "practical" system of good of the individual is going to have a problem with that- after all, you don't want people you cheat to come to your door to exact their vengance, do you? But what that comes down to is the purpose of the economy and the goal of your engineering- is the purpose of the economy the good of the individual or the good of the community? I'd argue that if it's the good of the individual, then I am under *no* moral compulsion to pay taxes to give you roads, electricity, or a hundred other little small services that government provides. But if the point is the good of the community, then you're under a moral compulsion to help make this government the best it can be for the widest number of individuals possible.
In reality of course, we have both types in the United States- and thus our engineered economy swings wildly between what is best for the community (the 1950s) and what is best for the individual (the 1990s) with points of failure every decade or so when it gets too far out of balance. Better engineering could actually provide small trading communities in the same country for all involved- then you'd only have to move to where your favored government is.
I am sorry, but working for the government is a soul sapping excercise in futile drudgery. The government civil service jobs are the WORST sort of dehumanizing union shop culture. U.S. civil service is a shining example of Socialist utopia. Merit and performance are completely irrelevant! The only way to get promoted is based on seniority and somebody above you retiring. Every GS 15 is paid exactly the same adjusted for the cost of living for the locale, so there is no reward for high performance.
This, however, is significantly better than merit and performance being openly punished because your boss is afraid of your ideas. Also- look at the name- I'll take a secure socialist utopia over the con artists in capitalism any day.
You could be the living god of programming and you will not make one dime more than the guy who plays solitare all day long nor will you be promoted first if the solitare player was hired first.
So what? Coding for a living is it's own reward.
Last and worst, there are no FUN jobs for the government. Everything fun is contracted out. The only government programming jobs left are report generation, auditing contractor's code, endless requirements reviews, witnessing endless acceptance tests, etc.
Those were the only jobs I could find in private industry as well, so no difference there. I'm not a good enough artist to work in the modern video game indutry, so the best I can do is find a novel algorithim for turning out some report that a C-level executive (or in the case of government, some legislator someplace) asked for. Data warehousing and mining has it's own beauty though.
If you want a job where it is practically impossible for you to be fired for any reason, just remember, you will likely be working exclusively with people who would have been fired at any other job.
True- but in that challenge is fun in and of itself- such people are as predictable as a CPU, and have about an equal amount of brains. Just make them think they've gotten what they want and they're happy.
Civil Service does have great vacation and retirement benefits though. Too bad the salaries kind of suck.
That is the big downside. It's hard to take the 20k hit to move. But it became far easier when outsourcing to India and back again made everybody else take the same 20k hit.
It also doesn't apply in any open source situation, or for that matter, even in a closed source but non-closeable language situation. For instance- any web application it's easy to pay the kid down the block to remove the time bombs.
Interpersonal skills and technical skills are mutually exclusive. A person with one by definition doesn't have the other. Someday the politics will adjust to account for that- but not yet.
Also, it may be easier to get a government job, but that may not be helpful long term if you plan to re-enter private business, because lots of businesses know that even years of experience in the government don't necessarily mean anything.
I'll never go back to private industry- the recession of 2001 proved to me that private industry is incompetant to provide me with the level of trust, benefits, and security I need to pay off a 30 year mortgage and raise a son with Cerebral Palsy.
Oh and by the way I work in the private sector and I own a house!
Do YOU own the house, or does the bank own the house (for those west of the Missisippi, substitute "bank or government" for bank, as your deed is only a 99 year lease from the government in reality)? If the bank owns the house and your private industry job goes bankrupt, will you still be able to make mortgage payments? What about if you're thrown out of work for 5-6 years, unable to find work, will you still own that house?
Slashdot Mirror
So when will that ALTER statement finish?
Child pornographers. I notice none of these people asked the obvious question about the destructive potential of BitLocker on the science of computer forensics.
Simple video games that run ENTIRELY on the GPU- mainly for developers. Got 3 hours (or I guess it's now going on 7 hours) to wait for an ALTER statement to a table to complete, and you're bored stiff? Fire up this video game, and while your CPU cranks away, you can be playing the video game instead with virtually NO performance hit to the background CPU task.
Especially since the next version of Visual Studio seems to separate the work into Architect, Developer, Database Admin, and Web Developer positions (and probably more) if you can afford the $10,000/seat licensing fee.
I almost want to wait for slashcode to be fixed before continuing our discussion. I might move it into a JE for that reason.
Okay big advantage for the 1% and severe disadvantage for the 30%. What if it is a win situation for the other 69%? Is it okay then?
Then you have an interesting problem- and I'd suggest actually creating a border and splitting the community, so that the 31% can do what is best for them, and the 69% can live under different laws.
Or a select group. Aristocracies have been like this. The Soviet Union was like this. Actually most if not all governments are in the business of enriching the ruling class at the expense of everyone else. Regardless of economic system.
Yes, exactly. American Representative Democracy is no different on this score either.
Yes, in an economic sense you are correct. Some are certainly more important and harder to replace than others, but still it's true at the highest level. Once you start to dip down you see everything is based upon human relationships, without which nothing would function.
The problem is most of our economic systems create communities so large that we destroy human relationships. That is precisely what is wrong with the free market- but it's also what is wrong with any sort of national socialism or communism.
It is a big mistake to divorce economics from some sort of morality. That this is common place is rather unfortunate. Still it is an individual's right to make moral or immoral decisions and it is not my place to force another to either. I could go on about this, but the point is, greed is bad.
Now that I'm surprised to see- it makes me wonder if the broken slashcode is having me reply to a non-Austrian, to somebody else than I was formerly discussing this with. Yes, Greed is Bad- I agree. But I'd point out that human beings don't start out greedy- Greed is a symptom of a broken human relationship.
My own utopian delusion is a sort of "compassionate capitalism". This would not be forced upon anyone from above, but would spring naturally from all individuals. Again this is a delusion because it goes against human nature, which at its worst is shamelessly self-serving and at the expense of anything.
Check out distributism sometime- especially the works of Dorthy Day and the Catholic Workers Union. But like Marxism- it can only work with extremely small communities. The second you don't care what happens to one individual in your community, your community has grown too large.
From the macro level I suppose your right. Isn't there some intrinsic value to life though, regardless of economics, perhaps even in spite of economics?
Only in small, tribal and clan based communities. Once you get beyond a tribal level- you get to the problem you suggested above, where something might be good for 69% of the population and be very bad for the remaining 31%. If the 69% has no reason to care what happens to the 31%- then the 31% are better off starting a new community. What I'm really suggesting is that there is no value to larger communities- or to trade between communities- beyond the economic.
I don't play RPG games- I used to enjoy scifi but haven't read a novel since 1999. I spend *all* my time trying to keep my skill sharp so that my job doesn't migrate to some IIT graduate who DOES spend all his time keeping his skills sharp. Slashdot is a big part of that for me- it points out what I need to study. I'm not here for socialization.
Or that a skill that we are biologically programmed to acquire would be so fragile.
Some of us AREN'T. That's why we went into computers. I'm not programmed to aquire interpersonal skills- doing so is a strain for me, to the extent that a one hour party needs 12 hours of sleep to process.
I'd hardly say that slow/buggy websites are the fault of programmers. A CS major should have all the knowlege they need to understand the how and the reason behind making a solid website. If they aren't getting paid to do a solid site then they wont of course, but that's a management problem.
So who was the idiot who choose to use a 32 bit counter for slashdot MESSAGES!?!?!?!?!?
Maybe we've advanced to a point in technolgy that society will have to evolve or die. One could point out that the *need* for interpersonal skills is getting less with every generation.
Unless of course, the original Aryans were Homo Neanderthalis.
Now THAT is a scary thought. Has anybody ever found a well preserved Neanderthal era corpse with the hair intact?
That's not true. There are plenty of people who are both likeable and technically competent. Slashdot's (Be proud. I resisted the urge to write "/.'s" :)
) readers glorify "troglodyte culture." Talking about how all there's nothing better than keeping your head down, stay out of the sun, and pound on your keyboard. That's fine to a point. But if you don't tell people what you're doing. Make them interested in what youre doing. Address their issues, and get them to address yours, you're a failure. No one respects the comic book guy. And no one respects the pretty boy either. You have to be a bit of both.
True- but that's NOT what the companies are asking for. They're asking for people to be TOTALLY both- a party-going pretty boy who *still* can tell you why refactoring in Microsoft Team Server Database Edition is a bad thing. Not just technically competent- technically guru level. And I'm saying THAT is an unrealistic expectation.
I know lots of nice pretty secretaries who are tecnically competent in Word and Excel- but they aren't the level of guru that you need when your server goes south because the router crashed during an Oracle replication of your SQL Express Database.
Bitching about how this isn't a technocracy based on standardized tests (except of course for those that complain about the standardize test and how they "don't need no educations or nor fancy degree.") gets you nowhere. Adjust. Evolve. Damn it.
I'd suggest that we're now at a point where society has to evolve to value all three. The pretty boys have their place too.
Only if you compile it native.
Sorry if this is a close dupe, but I've forgotten what I wrote the first time that didn't show up as a post, so it may be slightly different anyway.
;) That philosophy has its problems as well.
What if what was best for the community was for 10% of the community to be executed outright
Two different questions that require two different answers. I actually support a real-world example of the first one. Illegal aliens are arguably 10% of my state's community- and they are not citizens, they are lawbreakers that don't belong here. They need to be deported and the border locked down to the point that even if they turn into a jackrabbit and try to cross it, they get killed.
and for another 30% to be reduced to bondage under another 1% of the community?
Now this- you have 1% benefit for 30% misery- is obviously the good of the individuals in the 1%, not the good of the community AS A WHOLE. So this would be an obvious case of bad engineering if your goal was the good of the community as a whole. But it's good engineering for capitalism or communism as we've seen it so far- because that's the good of the individual. (Note: Stalin and IBM are in the same camp as far as I'm concerned- we'll hit upon that in your next point which I actually agree with).
What in my opinion has been wrong with much of the social engineering is that it is so often contrary to human rights.
Granted- but then again, ALL of the social engineering I've seen so far has had as either a goal or an outcome the good of the individual, not the community. In other words, it's either been a bad goal or an engineering failure.
Is the individual simply a cog in the whole, a cog that can be replaced at the whim of the engineer?
That is a problem that comes in with any anonymous economic system. Once you remove the human relationship from the equation, yes, human beings are just cogs in the big machine. You can reduce this somewhat by having no replacement parts allowed- but that's dangerous too, because if a flood wipes out your only blacksmith or doctor, you've just lost an entire industry of products or services.
Does life not hold more value than that?
Not in any of the big, wide reaching systems. Some of the smaller, older systems like distributism and traditional tribalism have this concept, but no, capitalism and communism simply don't. And once you expand your free market into international trade, you lose even that- suddenly your entire system can be replaced by another system, business by business. There ain't no such thing as comparative advantage without the human relationship- absolute advantage takes over instead. You no more care about the political prisoner that stiched together your Air Jordans in Vietnam than he cares about you. Thus, my principle #3 above- you should always be able to physically assault the guy who cheated you.
Perhaps I am reading you incorrectly.
I think you're doing very well- you're just not quite as cynical as I am about information flow yet. And thus:
I am, at least to some extent one of those Austrians...
The main one being the one you've identified as the center of the problem of social engineering- anonymous markets, no matter how well regulated, destroy data, destroy the human relationship between you and the person who makes what you buy. Thus the natural order of supply and demand seek the least quality at the least wage- in everything. Comparative Advantage is as against human nature as communism- in a free market Absolute Advantage is the king of all.
What if what was best for the community was for 10% of the community to be executed outright and for another 30% to be reduced to bondage under another 1% of the community?
;) That philosophy has its problems as well.
The first part I'll accept- in fact, I've argued for it (illegal immigrants are arguably a part of the community, but are enough of a suck on resources that I don't believe they belong here- ideally they should be shot crossing the border). The 2nd part is exactly what I'm talking about- enriching 1% of the community at the cost of 30% being in bondage is an economy engineered to benefit the INDIVIDUAL, not the community. Now, given Stalin and the Communist party in Russia, do you see why I consider Marx's engineering to be invalid?
What in my opinion has been wrong with much of the social engineering is that it is so often contrary to human rights.
Depends upon what you consider to be human rights. I say it's more often a tradeoff between PHYSICAL rights and MENTAL rights. A hermit is perfectly free- but has no connection to the resources of greater society.
Is the individual simply a cog in the whole, a cog that can be replaced at the whim of the engineer?
Unfortuneately, yes, for any system larger than the tribal village. It certainly is true in capitalism- where the corporations fire us and hire us at THEIR will, and human beings even on the C-level are mere resources. It's certainly true in the form of communism we've seen so far.
Does life not hold more value than that?
Only in non-anonymous systems, like distributism. But that's where #3 above comes in. Unless you know PERSONALLY who you are dealing with, in ALL business situations, then no, their life holds no more value for you than yours does for them. That's why free trade between nations doesn't work- because while you care about your family, you don't really give a shit about the poor Vietnamese political prisoner who was forced to stich your Air Jordans together. You can't have it both ways- luckily we have a few examples (distributism, isolationist tribalism) of other ways.
Perhaps I am reading you incorrectly.
No, you're reading me correctly- I'm just a bit further along and more cynical than you are.
I am, at least to some extent one of those Austrians...
It's primary problem you've already identified- it destroys the human portion of business relationships by making them multinational. When you destroy the human portion of the relationship, you destroy the full consideration needed for comparative advantage- and reduce it down to absolute advantage instead.
For a smart enough hacker- nothing that runs on the CLR or the Java VM is ever truly "compiled". All it means is that you have to hack the P-code instead.
I have worked for private companies my entire career, sure I have moved around a few times (never less than 2 years per). But thats OK, I have gotten my best pay increases when I have moved jobs, and working in different environments has broaden my view. My job security is doing the best job I can, staying current with my skills, and getting along with management and co-workers. Many of the moves I have made have come when someone I used to work with leaves for another company and then calls a year later to see if I would like to join them. Just my .02
I was like that once- then 2001 came around, and I didn't work for a paycheck again until 2003. Since then, I have to be able to TRUST the managment and co-workers, and I find that extremely hard to do.
Funny, I can spend my day writing a well-architected C++ OS library and then go out and bag the cute checkout girl.
Good for you- to a certain point. Though I doubt that a REAL guru would agree with you on the "well-architected" part, since you didn't spend every waking moment perfecting it.
. I must be superhuman or something. Or maybe you're just wrong. Go spend some time at a bar (learn to deal with shady assholes, identify good people, and have fun at the same time), get friends that know nothing about computers (learn to talk about something else), and a girlfriend that likes making you hang out with her family (learn to avoid touchy subjects and make people enjoy hanging out with you even when you'd rather be just about anywhere else). Learn by doing, those three things will teach you fast.
And in the mean time your computer skills will rot- you'll lose track of the bleeding edge and soon lose your job to the next bright up-and-coming young man who doesn't go to bars and doesn't waste time with a girlfriend.
Of course, I still try to not interact with anyone for a while if I've been marathon coding. For about 20 minutes after, I'm a little off.
If you were REALLY marathon coding, you'd be off for two days just catching up on the last month's worth of sleep.
Interpersonal skills are like any other skill. You can practice them to improve them. If this is your main sticking point, there are things you can do. Spend more of your free time socializing with strangers.
If you have free time to socialize with strangers, then you're NOT going to be the sharpest DBA on the block. If you are comfortable socializing with random strangers to begin with, then you haven't had enough screen time to be a good coder.
How can you say that with such assurance? It seems to me that one can be good at both of these skills if they work on developing them both. Why do you think someone could have one of these skills max?
Time. Somebody who is good at interpersonal skills has to spend a *HUGE* amount of time developing and maintaining those skills- time spent at parties and at bars and in social situations. Without that time spent, any human being's interpersonal skills will degrade- to the point that we consider a prisoner kept in solitary for a mere three weeks to be insane.
Likewise on the DBA side- time. It takes a HUGE amount of time to gain and maintain computer skills- starting as a teenager working on the computer in your parent's basement instead of going on dates, clear up to the guy who reads every word of the SQL user groups to keep up on the latest changes to the language in the five major dialects.
A SENIOR DBA is going to need to be the later, not the former. There are only 168 hours in the week.
What's this west of the Mississippi crap? I've never heard of that before. You have a reference. I'd be interested in learning some more about that.
It's something I heard a while back as an excuse for property taxes and the laws surrounding them. Previous to that, I had only heard about it in reference to water and mineral rights. I'm not real sure that it is real- but it refers to the fact that if you don't pay your property taxes once you DO pay off your mortgage, the government WILL reposess your land and house. It might take a while though- one open tax revolt preacher in Oregon went 16 years!
If I was out of work for 5-6 years, assuming my wife wasn't, then yes we'd still own it. If both of us lost our jobs and we were out of work for more than about three months we'd be in trouble right now. The upside is that she's a nurse and so that's pretty unlikely...
I'm in about the same boat- my wife does at home daycare, a pretty steady industry, except for it's work at home and has the same problems that I had with my business when it comes to getting paid.
I have to comment on your handle. The utopian fantasy that is Marxism is completely incompatible with human nature and as such is simply not a practical philosophy. How could you possibly count yourself as a Marxist?
Only as a starting point. Marx had a good ideal- but his engineering was all wrong (just read the manifesto! Now that's a bad bit of political coding!). Thus the second part of my handle- hacker. The economic system is basically an operating system for humans- I don't know of a single one that isn't a conciously engineered invention, despite what the free marketers and Austrian model free traders will tell you. The real question seems to be, who is it being engineered to benefit? I personally think there is a way to engineer that Utopia- but you have to:
1. Keep it small to keep the number of input variables down. You need producers of every possible good, but you don't need MULTIPLE producers of every possible good.
2. Since actually achieving utopia is contrary to human nature, you can't trust humans to build utopias. Luckily, we're really close to replacing bureaucrats with expert systems. In fact, for the Oregon Department of Transportation, that is my current job- examining the work the bureaucrats do, and making that work possible with fewer people, thus reducing the size and cost of actually governing.
3. Finally you need a justice feedback system- another argument for keeping it small. Citizens should have the right AND ABILITY to physically retaliate against those who would take advantage of the system- and for that you need a good way to legalize vigilantism.
Now rightly, anybody who is used to a "practical" system of good of the individual is going to have a problem with that- after all, you don't want people you cheat to come to your door to exact their vengance, do you? But what that comes down to is the purpose of the economy and the goal of your engineering- is the purpose of the economy the good of the individual or the good of the community? I'd argue that if it's the good of the individual, then I am under *no* moral compulsion to pay taxes to give you roads, electricity, or a hundred other little small services that government provides. But if the point is the good of the community, then you're under a moral compulsion to help make this government the best it can be for the widest number of individuals possible.
In reality of course, we have both types in the United States- and thus our engineered economy swings wildly between what is best for the community (the 1950s) and what is best for the individual (the 1990s) with points of failure every decade or so when it gets too far out of balance. Better engineering could actually provide small trading communities in the same country for all involved- then you'd only have to move to where your favored government is.
I am sorry, but working for the government is a soul sapping excercise in futile drudgery. The government civil service jobs are the WORST sort of dehumanizing union shop culture. U.S. civil service is a shining example of Socialist utopia. Merit and performance are completely irrelevant! The only way to get promoted is based on seniority and somebody above you retiring. Every GS 15 is paid exactly the same adjusted for the cost of living for the locale, so there is no reward for high performance.
This, however, is significantly better than merit and performance being openly punished because your boss is afraid of your ideas. Also- look at the name- I'll take a secure socialist utopia over the con artists in capitalism any day.
You could be the living god of programming and you will not make one dime more than the guy who plays solitare all day long nor will you be promoted first if the solitare player was hired first.
So what? Coding for a living is it's own reward.
Last and worst, there are no FUN jobs for the government. Everything fun is contracted out. The only government programming jobs left are report generation, auditing contractor's code, endless requirements reviews, witnessing endless acceptance tests, etc.
Those were the only jobs I could find in private industry as well, so no difference there. I'm not a good enough artist to work in the modern video game indutry, so the best I can do is find a novel algorithim for turning out some report that a C-level executive (or in the case of government, some legislator someplace) asked for. Data warehousing and mining has it's own beauty though.
If you want a job where it is practically impossible for you to be fired for any reason, just remember, you will likely be working exclusively with people who would have been fired at any other job.
True- but in that challenge is fun in and of itself- such people are as predictable as a CPU, and have about an equal amount of brains. Just make them think they've gotten what they want and they're happy.
Civil Service does have great vacation and retirement benefits though. Too bad the salaries kind of suck.
That is the big downside. It's hard to take the 20k hit to move. But it became far easier when outsourcing to India and back again made everybody else take the same 20k hit.
It also doesn't apply in any open source situation, or for that matter, even in a closed source but non-closeable language situation. For instance- any web application it's easy to pay the kid down the block to remove the time bombs.
Interpersonal skills and technical skills are mutually exclusive. A person with one by definition doesn't have the other. Someday the politics will adjust to account for that- but not yet.
Also, it may be easier to get a government job, but that may not be helpful long term if you plan to re-enter private business, because lots of businesses know that even years of experience in the government don't necessarily mean anything.
I'll never go back to private industry- the recession of 2001 proved to me that private industry is incompetant to provide me with the level of trust, benefits, and security I need to pay off a 30 year mortgage and raise a son with Cerebral Palsy.
Your mileage may vary with your personal risks.
Oh and by the way I work in the private sector and I own a house!
Do YOU own the house, or does the bank own the house (for those west of the Missisippi, substitute "bank or government" for bank, as your deed is only a 99 year lease from the government in reality)? If the bank owns the house and your private industry job goes bankrupt, will you still be able to make mortgage payments? What about if you're thrown out of work for 5-6 years, unable to find work, will you still own that house?
That's what I meant about my crack above.