JavaBatman

> First is that "Reality has a well-known liberal bias".

Uh...what? Where is the proof of this?

There should be a legal requirement for companies to publicly post the salary band for every role. Otherwise, how do employees know where to start negotiations? This opaqueness only helps the employer, who already has much more leverage. Price assymetry goes against free market principles. The price of labor is like any other price of a good or service. People should know how much something costs before buying.

I learned that working on a project you care about is the best tutorial you can do in order to learn a particular technology or framework.

> "Automotive semiconductors will continue to be a limiting constraint on the automotive market through the first half of 2022, but barring any unforeseen shutdowns or semiconductor manufacturing issues, supply should gradually improve through the second half of the year," she said.

Probably a good idea to wait til the end of the year to buy a new car then. The market is simply and truly insane right now. The best price you can get for a used car is now the MSRP of the new version. And the best price you can get for a new car is $5-6k over MSRP. It's just insane. If you're spending $40k on a RAV4 or CRV, you might as well just spend that same $40k and get a Tesla.

Polarization is due to cultural issues, not economic ones. And no, those cultural issues don't stem from economic issues either. That's a Marxian base/superstructure analysis of the situation, which isn't accurate.

Furthermore, inequality will always be with us. Pareto principle is an actual thing and is mathematically sound when it comes to economics. Generally, the top 20% will hold 80% of the wealth. Many phenomena exhibit this distribution.

Even if we transition to a multipolar world order and renewed great power competition, America will still be the strongest and most secure global power. It has hegemony in the western hemisphere through its enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine; it is protected by the two largest oceans; it has historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to two regional powers on both sides of the ocean (UK and Ireland in Europe, Australia and NZ in the Asia Pacific, Five Eyes, etc.); it is by far the leader in soft power (music, movies, TV, technology, English language, etc.); and most importantly, it has the strongest military by far. Despite strategic defeats in the Middle East and South Asia, US officers gained tons of battlefield experience and the ability to test its weaponry. So even if the US now has to deal with a hegemonic challenger in East Asia (China) and more assertive one in Europe (Russia), its geography and demography give it advantages no other great power has.

> All the MAANG companies use algorithmic and system design style questions as their main metric for hiring candidates. The internal justification for doing so is likely a combination of “this is what everyone else does” and “it’s a quick way to evaluate someone’s skill”.

They argue that this is the only way to weed out all these candidates. It is MAANG's version of the SAT.

> the best solution is to have trial work periods. There’s no better way to see how someone performs at the job than having them actually do the job.

Agreed. But how do they implement this?

Businesses that are highly leveraged with debt would either go bankrupt or raise prices to account for higher debt costs, which wouldn't address the problem.

A lot of this is due to fuel prices. The price of fuel affects the price of everything else. It's a benchmark since everything requires fuel. Manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, etc. It all requires fuel. It doesn't help that OPEC refuses to increase production in order to make up for their budget shortfalls last year. Also doesn't help that the US government is sending signals that it is no longer on board with fossil fuels. The shutting down of pipelines, ending of fossil fuel leasing, etc. sends a market signal to producers and traders that the US is hostile towards the industry, leading the producers to cut production and maintain their profits.

Best option would be to have a diverse portfolio of energy production: oil, natural gas, solar, wind, hydroelectric, and nuclear. Don't go all in on one, that's how you arrive at the situation we are currently in.

You are smart enough to know that intentionally coughing on someone is not what I meant.

That also doesn't work because that same precedent can be used for other preventative health issues such as obesity. "Well, you shouldn't have been eating all those cheeseburgers, sorry"

There is no right to not receive another's germs. If we take your argument to its logical conclusion, then the flu vaccine would be mandated. But it's not. So if you say that Covid is different, then what is your threshold or cut-off for when a medical procedure should be mandated?

The problem with "Don't Be Evil" is that it assumes everyone agrees on what the definition of "evil" is. But that is absolutely not the case. We live in a post-Christian/post-religious society where - aside from the basic human instinct of survival - no one agrees on First Principles. The dominant ideology in society now is Liberalism. And I don't mean American liberalism. I mean actual Liberalism - freedom of speech, expression, assembly, religion, etc. Because of this, there is a diversity of thought and moral relativism, so "evil" means different things to different people. A rural, socially conservative Christian's idea of "evil" will likely be very different than an urban, secular, and progressive definition of "evil." Without a dominant ideology guiding society using a set universal moral code, there will always be conflicts regarding First Principles, different sets of facts, etc.

Makes sense at face value. Generally speaking, religious minorities tend to perform better economically than the majority religious group(s) since they have to work harder to overcome institutional and historical hurdles placed in their way. So when they are persecuted, their economic productivity is reduced. Quite simply, they are either killed, flee, or are reduced to poverty. All of these affect economic performance. We see this today with the Christian minorities in the Middle East and Near East (Copts in Egypt, Syriacs in Syria, Assyrians in Iraq and Turkey, Armenians in Turkey, etc.).

> Apparently, there are many other major religious persecutions that are not well-known today.

Yup, like the Coptic Christians of Egypt. Or Christians in the Middle East/Near East more generally.