shantanubala

I think programmers tend to underestimate the difficulties involved with becoming a good programmer because once you're good, you only see the even steeper learning curve ahead of you.

Some of the smartest people I know work in other domains: biology, chemistry, and even physics. They are sometimes baffled by tasks that seem trivial to me, and I'm under no impression that I'm more intelligent than them. I simply specialized and focused only on programming, while they program to accomplish other tasks in their domain of expertise.

Can this last forever? Of course not, nothing lasts forever. But wondering why the wealthiest corporations in the world pay their workers high salaries is perhaps like wondering why water is wet. Software has a low marginal cost, and the rest is basic incentives for the corporations.

You're right. I wasn't in any way trying to imply that the Chinese government was acting fairly - they are stealing and ought to be punished.

My confusion stems from the American companies who readily jumped at the opportunity to heavily depend on supply chains inside of a country with 1) a relatively short history in the WTO 2) a previous history of market manipulation and 3) rampant human rights abuses

And let's not mention that the entry into the WTO itself constituted a major overhaul of the Chinese economy, which should in itself be considered an experiment.

I'm disappointed that the risks of trade in China have been understated for so long. And systematically underestimated by American firms.

Or to put it a different way: how surprising is this situation? And does it belie a lack of proper enforcement and a lack of understanding of the risks of doing trade with China?

It feels silly to only examine the narrative where the Chinese government is at fault because that narrative is obvious. What about the culpability of our own government for advocating for China's entry in the WTO? Or the immediate handoff of trade by American corporations when the decision produced short-term gains without examining how many rapid changes China was making to its economy?

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I'll express a counterpoint - viewing the same situation through a different lens.

Put simply, the Chinese understand why American companies outsource their labor to China. Chinese labor is cheaper, and they are under no illusions - this outsourcing means that their own country experiences many of the negative externalities of Western consumption, including pollution.

It's fair for American businesses to distrust Chinese companies and distrust the Chinese government, but can't we all agree that they brought it on themselves?

Which multinational corporation reasonably expects that the Chinese government cares about their bottom line at all? And why do many ordinary Americans experience such outrage on behalf of these multinationals? Of course, I understand why their shareholders (and thus, many Americans) may be upset.

If anything, I'm angry they jumped at the opportunity to eradicate their domestic workforce to a point where China has the opportunity to steal in the first place.

But how do you conduct a background check without a database of reports from people who have experienced harassment?

Unfortunately, most of the time, this gets swept under the rug. This way, at least that background check will actually reveal information once the relevant data is collected.

Kalanick is still a very successful founder - not that I necessarily think he should be emulated.

Regardless of what you think of Uber, Travis Kalanick started a very large company, and Uber is as entrenched as ever.

So perhaps this actually is evidence in favor of the parent comment. Did Uber really suffer much at all? Or did they just reshuffle management, pay Kalanick billions to (kind of) leave, and continued business as usual?

I'm not a doctor, but I know Adeel (the doctor who wrote this post), and can't say enough positive things.

More often than not, doctors use printed pages to give instructions, and those pages subsequently get thrown in my trash can. As an occasional patient, I want my doctors on Medumo.

This sounds like a great way to manipulate the price of Bitcoin