hunterpayne

"the most important two reasons to join the EU"

You misspelled NATO

Serbia has been basically ruled by gangsters for the last several decades. So no, I don't think the academic environment has people like who the Serbian government has to deal with.

Honestly, its not the hubris. Politicians are a pretty arrogant group of people. Its the lack of life experience and lessons learned from negative consequences that they lack. The hubris just makes it more galling and thus makes for better sound bites.

I've worked and known many, many academics in my life. I'm sorry, but if you think this is anti-intellectual, then there are some basic things you don't understand about people.

Academics really are naive and out of touch people. In a weird sort of way, being an academic means sacrificing your personal growth for either a) a deep love of their area of research or b) love of teaching. This means that the wider life skills one gains as an adult, they never get. They get to avoid consequences for being wrong but at quite a price. One of the worst things I have seen are what happens to academics who leave for the private sector later in their career. When they can't make it in the private sector, it is pretty crushing to many of them.

That being said, one of the prices of being an academics is being very "out of touch" with the rest of society. And that will take away your ability to read political situations or govern things well. Academics injecting themselves into such situations will almost always be disastrous as a result. Its just a consequence of how academia works. It doesn't have to be that way, but unless academia changes profoundly, it will be.

Fun fact: The US has only had one academic hold the presidency. He is also considered to be the worst US president in history.

Academics don't have a great track record in politics or governance pretty much anywhere at anytime in history.

Its the EU and the UK pushing for this stuff. Take your meds...

You realize you posted this on a site run by a US located tech VC firm right? Or maybe you just forgot the /s?

Paris actually isn't that dense compared to some US cities. NYC for example has far more people in the same space as Paris. Not that that is a goal to shoot for but there you go. That being said, at the moment Paris isn't a very nice place to be with all the smoke and looting and all.

"Self expiring legislation would very likely end up the same way."

Most laws in most countries (including the US) have sunset clauses. They are incredibly common and have existed for centuries.

Ironically, the thing we learned in the US about public housing is that it can't be in high-rise apartments. It has to be duplexes or small 1/2 story apartment buildings. It also must minimized all public space so that each part of the land "belongs" to one unit. If you don't do this, the public areas get messed up really quickly. This tends to lead to the rest of the residents being less willing to take care of the area and it all spirals from there.

The Soviet solution to this was 3 ft thick concrete walls but the crime and other problems that get created by public housing were never addressed there.

Given the rent required to live in Berkeley, its basically the nightmare scenario that we are all talking about. The only people who benefit from Berkeley's laws are the landowners/landlords. Everyone else suffers including the local businesses and especially the renters. Even taxpayers in other states are penalized as lots of federal money is used to subsidize poor renters which ends up both increasing the rental prices even more while benefiting the landowners even more. Basically, whatever Berkeley is doing, do the opposite and you will be fine.

Then why do they have the nice schools? Somehow, suburbs both have the best amenities and the lowest taxes but they are unsustainable? That link is a word salad BTW. In reality, since suburbs have low crime, the policing is cheap. And policing is by far the biggest expense in most cities. Most incorporated suburbs have balanced budgets. Mine does. It also has the best schools in the county. But somehow the large city next door, with billions in debt and all the jobs (and thus the payroll taxes) has terrible services and terrible schools. I think you just don't like suburbs and will twist your logic into knots to claim a rational reason for it. Truth is, you just don't like suburbs. Most people do, get over it.

I see the GCP marketing staff has found HN.

I've worked for a UK financial institution before. If you knew, you would keep your money under a mattress.

Two things:

1) 4b queries a year is nothing. 4b queries is less than an hour for some of the software I have written.

2) The banner was a joke referencing the fact that the EU has a terrible track record with privacy.