It doesn't seem all that different from scaring a herd of buffalo into running off a cliff. No reason that we need to by flying to spring the trap on wild resources.
> Fish Farming seems more sustainable.
It does seem like any major market should be required to farm their resources rather than taking from the commons.
Machines are one of the only things most people are familiar with that don't hold to all the same values that living beings (humans, other mammals, most vertebrates) usually do. (You might call Ellison a "force of nature", but that might not play well for people who attribute an "eventually-consistent omnibenevolence" to nature.)
Really, without the metaphor, what's going on is that Larry Ellison has modified himself to hold the values that a corporation holds, in order to more efficiently drive said corporation toward optimizing on its corporate goals (i.e. increase share value, etc.) Where human values and corporate values are in conflict, Ellison has chosen to forget about his human values and, effectively, become the avatar of the corporation's interests. He's the "ideal CEO", in about the same way as Locutus of Borg is an ideal CEO.
I am seriously disliking the current debt-based economy now for this reason and more. There are other examples of its effects like Mozilla, Google, and VCs (I have several Twitter threads with @BrendanEich about that one). Sun and Oracle are probably worth mentioning here too, including Jonathan Schwartz.
> Really, without the metaphor, what's going on is that Larry Ellison has modified himself to hold the values that a corporation holds, in order to more efficiently drive said corporation toward optimizing on its corporate goals (i.e. increase share value, etc.)
Hmm. I wonder why this augmentation is newsworthy/nontrivial/frightening. Perhaps our human frailty makes this feat truly difficult even for an average CEO?
I suppose because (like the Paperclip Maximizer analogy mentioned in this thread) maximizing your immediate profits is not the same thing as maximizing shareholder value. It is unlikely that trying to get a professor sacked does anything but reduce your shareholder value. This kind of behavior does not make you the ultimate CEO and other humans know it, it makes you an asshole. So it's not difficult, it's just worse.
Why is it frightening for somebody to focus solely on accumulating lucre and not to care about other people or society at all? Because hurting people is bad.
Do you have further reading on these events? I agree with you 100% but I would argue that these growers are probably some of the lesser evils facing our public lands.
Search for "trespass grow" to find a lot of magazine articles and videos on the subject.
I may shake my head at clear-cutting and overgrazing but I'll say that I've never been chased off public land by a rancher nor fired upon by lumberjacks. The marijuana growers are ... unique.
You might be surprised by the scale. I know a few folks doing water management in California, and they've all independently brought up the exacerbating effects of unmonitored but significant water usage by illegal farms during the last few years of drought.
I hear you. The thing about a national forest is there are already roads, and already the sounds of logging. These are working lands. We set aside wilderness areas without roads, that are not even welcoming to horses, for those seeking peace.
I personally am drawn to this idea. $100k seems arbitrary though. I would like to see it adjusted for the COL of an average American family. Would you happen to have any reading material or studies related to this tax scheme?
I'll drop Indianapolis in here. It is becoming a midwestern tech haven with large companies such as Salesforce making headquarters there.
Speaking from personal experience it is also dirt cheap compared to any other cities mentioned here and the salaries have been higher than what I have been able to find elsewhere.
I think one great solution is housing coops. There is actually an organization that helps people start and maintain housing coops: http://coophousing.org/
Maybe, but the general acceptance process of needing to get approval by the existing neighbors seems to both be the pro & con that prevents more widespread availability of coops
Supply and competition. Vastly increasing supply would bring down prices. But of course that would eliminate the profits of property owners, so is not done.
I just wanted to highlight this comment. The rating review systems are becoming a trusted source of information more so than advertisements.
Reminds me of another comment on here that talked about how so much of tech is solving communication problems. In this case the communication of past human experiences to a current restaraunt goer.
> The rating review systems are becoming a trusted source of information more so than advertisements.
And this is also precisely why I don't have any moral reservations blocking ads. Ads are being obsoleted as a source of information so that it's increasingly hard to justify why we would need any of them to fulfil our needs.
It's interesting to read this. I wonder if you would change your mind if $5,000 would make or break your business. The odds of that happening are small, but still possible.
These odds of needing a full spec'd machine are also small but still possible.
Either way I guess I'm saying that an opportunity cost of ~$5,000 is significant.
Org-Mode is great but not perfect. I would be willing to pay a significant amount of money for anyone that can reproduce most of the features of org-mode outside of emacs in a light-weight format.
It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult but it hasn't happened yet. People seem to start replicating org-mode, realize how many complex features there are and give fall off before completion.
I'm wondering if it's possible to reproduce org-mode features outside of Emacs at all. I think it relies on the Emacs ecosystem a lot, and that what makes org-mode so great.
I mean, it's very consistent with the editor itself, it's intuitive to pick up and to navigate notes for anyone who's used Emacs before. Would it be comparable in other ecosystems (e.g. in a Web browser)?
> Fish Farming seems more sustainable.
It does seem like any major market should be required to farm their resources rather than taking from the commons.