mircea_popescu: which is the problem.
mircea_popescu: <kanzure> kids out of school are making $90-$100k in the bay area <<< sure. but the 10 year veteran is not making 5-10mn.
MisterE: considering how we treat each other
MisterE: not that they were fit for college before enlisting
MisterE: few soldiers come off the front lines fit to enter college
MisterE: with the retarded lurch
MisterE: no only the slow lumbering ones
MisterE: yea GI Bill (too bad an education is worth so much less now) and the home loan are good
decimation: this used to be the custom, in fact: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_of_commissions_in_the_British_army
asciilifeform: there are intangibles. quite a few people would - pay - to fight in a war.
asciilifeform: the military folks aren't only being paid in money
MisterE: unless they can work for a private contractor
truffles: one of u painted vets as having a rosy time of it, not the reality for most afaik
MisterE: one trumped up conflict between now and passing of a budget and that is all out the window
MisterE: history is not on the side of downsizing
MisterE: by the time congress hacks it up military spending will increase
asciilifeform: everyone loves the $500 hammer. but how many people who laugh at the hammer have ever built a one-off prototype of anything?
decimation: "The Pentagon is also mounting a new attempt to cut travel costs. Specifically, that effort will reduce per diem rates for troops on extended travel. It will also eliminate reimbursements for laundry services, bottled water and other ?incidental? expenses. Officials could not immediately provide details of the new per diem rates."
ozbot: 2015 budget released: How the cuts affect pay, BAH, per diem and Tricare | Military Times | military
MisterE: can barely stop QE without blood all over the floor it's a shaky house of cards
asciilifeform: growing mil budget does not necessarily translate to more pig slots at the trough.
truffles: guess we will see in the coming years
MisterE: US can not afford to downsize the military industrial comples jobs program
MisterE: heh you seen their budget? is it downsizing?
truffles: arent they downsizing
decimation: the number who end up cannon fodder are very small
truffles: <MisterE> now with middle class in the dump it's looking better and better>>> to join the US military?
kanzure: why didn't DPR blackmail the fbi?
MisterE: now with middle class in the dump it's looking better and better
asciilifeform: he's essentially a more physically-fit version of the palo alto programmer
decimation: with the possibility of converting to a well-paid contract position upon 20 years of "service"
decimation: in my experience the rich around the DC area are mostly military http://usmilitary.about.com/od/2013BHA/a/13bahwdepofDC.htm
truffles: do they even make 30k?
truffles: but ppl sign up to join the military daily..
gribble: FIRE economy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_economy>; Official FIRE Economy site: <http://www.fireeconomy.com/>; FIRE Economy Definition | Investopedia: <http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fire-economy.asp>
asciilifeform: truffles: which is precisely why it is reserved for the folks who agreed to the conditions of indenture
asciilifeform: likewise, one man's 300k may buy a palace (in costa rica), another's - a converted garage in palo alto
asciilifeform: in the sense that if you have to live in a particular place, or worse, become a certain kind of person, to earn it, you are in fact very poor
asciilifeform: 'I wouldn't be willing to develop in javascript for $300k' << this goes back to the original point i was trying to make, when i mentioned hunting for flat (i generally don't discuss crap like this without a good reason) -
kanzure: well, yes, but i stole it from the book
kanzure: and why the product is 18 months behind
decimation: he wouldn't of course; but when he retires the next young gun trying to cut the bottom line would
kanzure: (except it wasn't indians, it was vietnamese, and they were actually very good)
kanzure: because i've managed 20 indians and my quality and quantity of output was still better at the same itme
decimation: at some point the harvard MBA is going to ask "Why are we paying this guy $300k when we could hire 20 Indians for the same?"
asciilifeform: decimation: this does appear to be the way it works, where i live.
asciilifeform: but they aren't 'employees' in any sense
kanzure: is it possible that there are people that are getting paid relative to the value that they create?
asciilifeform: or sucking the right cocks
asciilifeform: decimation: the parsimonious hypothesis is much simpler - some people get access to what drips from the money printer pipeline by having the right friends
kanzure: so wait, your thesis is that all highly-paid individuals are getting screwed?
asciilifeform: i've yet to see a living case of this that wasn't in the 'pay 250 to live in range of the 300' territory.
decimation: there are many details missing here, but it seems to me that kanzure is basically saying that big gov't/corps are willing to pay $100x to get what they could otherwise pay $x to get
kanzure: and then selecting those companies more carefully so that the solutions happen to be things that wont bore you to death
kanzure: it's more like.. finding companies with lots of money, and then solving their problems using what you know.
asciilifeform: kanzure: the way i understand it, this is not how markets actually work. if i'm the only one who knows how to build xxx, i don't get to collect $maxint for building an xxx. simply, xxx doesn't get made.
asciilifeform: i don't dispute that there live unique specialists who are paid $xxx k for something that could be described as 'engineering.' but most of them are on some kind of physical leash, however long.
kanzure: where their open source projects, blogs, conference talks/videos, whatever, serves as a way of directing traffic to them
asciilifeform: with the latter defined by 'doing anything that you would not do if you didn't have to'
kanzure: knowing even just a little bit of programming puts you beyond the hope of most job sites
asciilifeform: i've often had 'interesting' conversations with people to whom i suggested calculating their wage 'per hour of actual work'
decimation: I guess I just don't see the offers on dice.com or whatever
asciilifeform: kanzure: if you're the kind of hero who can demand 300k without ever having to physically meet a client, attend a whatever board, deliver physical samples in person, etc - more power to you
kanzure: also you have to be able to provide actual value. no coding an airplane into the ground.
kanzure: at least one person (namely the person who would be paying you)
kanzure: and you don't have to know the right people in advance, but you do eventually have to meet someone
decimation: kanzure, are you implying that one with suitable skills can easily make $300k without "knowing" the "right people"?
kanzure: the only problem with this conversation is that i can't figure out why would you want to be employed (of all people)
mikaeldice: So, this guy who said that people who put money on an exchange are stupid sheep and that the next MtGox fiasco 'is coming' is now opening his own exchange.
asciilifeform: kanzure: you're in mp's weight class, then.
asciilifeform: engineers, typically, sit in 'gravity wells' - because so long as you are bound to some geographic location, even a very large one, the folks with the shears come out
asciilifeform: except in the wonderful case described earlier, where a chumper pays $250k to live near 300k job
decimation: these same $300k vp's famously conspired to underpay said engineers
kanzure: asciilifeform: i would say it could be useful for the idiot calibration
asciilifeform: 300k vice president of widgets inc. is not a member of the same profession as his engineer.
asciilifeform: kanzure: the poll (even if we assume that every answer was truthful and representative of something) isn't particularly useful, because it lumps in things which are quite unlike.
decimation: okay, let's pretend that 15 year veterans are all making $300k - when a reasonable home is $1 mil, they are still pretty poor
kanzure: here is the survey i did,
kanzure: at *minimum* the metric is +$1k/month per year of experience
asciilifeform: incidentally, we are close to a useful definition of 'rich' - fellow is 'rich' if he can tell the man with the shears to go to hell, and make it stick.
decimation: kanzure: how much do they make 15 years in?
asciilifeform: 100k won't buy you a garret to starve in, there.
kanzure: kids out of school are making $90-$100k in the bay area
decimation: but they make $100k
decimation: no rational engineer would work there for less than $300k per year
decimation: yeah silicon valley is at least 2x worse than the DC area
asciilifeform: high talent individuals go to silicon valley << world-renowned chumpatron. leaving aside the question of whether the folks there 'work' (in the sense of producing anything valuable) - they get sheared very properly, for much of what they make - at least the ones who wouldn't care to commute 4 hrs/day
tg2: education and healthcare heavily subsidized, then high talent individuals go to silicon valley and work there
decimation: right, my only point is that they are all fractional reserve banks on the British model. The bezzle follows you everywhere
tg2: but the reverse
asciilifeform: 'you grew up in our glorious motherland? still want to leave, bastard? fine - pony up $1mil, to cover the cost of building you'
gribble: Republikflucht - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republikflucht>; Crossing the Line: Republikflucht between Defection and Migration ...: <http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199243280.001.0001/acprof-9780199243280-chapter-3>; Republikflucht - Wiktionary: <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Republikflucht>
chetty: exactly, I don't blame the outside banks at all, its prudent
asciilifeform: now let's say they stop honouring renunciations
chetty: yeah doesn't stop much, but mostly lets you open bank accounts (banks outside us are afraid of americans these days)
decimation: "oh, you've become an American now? good on ya - you sail for the King now"
asciilifeform: just as the escapee can't say 'i do not want to be in any database' and make it stick
asciilifeform: the fun part is, no one will force the buggers to honour the renounciation, if they don't want to
asciilifeform: the fellow who bought my 'urbit dukedom' for 4.5btc publicly burned his u.s. passport.
chetty: when they actually build that border fence you know you are trouble
decimation: yeah, this is true. I wonder what all the europeans who came over in the 1800's would have made of this outcome?
decimation: well, the us today is pretty much an enormous chumpatron
asciilifeform: there is, for instance, a kind of gristly and sinewy chump that grinds apart in the chumpatron very reluctantly
asciilifeform: decimation: i never said i wasn't a chump. but there are different species of chump.
decimation: ascii I think to some extent living near a major metro area in the US is a chump's game
moiety: not the construction being free asciilifeform but it was paid for by the money from the people occupying the land for him, which is actually part of the terms. win win
decimation: I suspect most "free land" in scotland is either on a cliff or in a moor
asciilifeform: not to mention other interesting nuances (see herr orlov's blog, not me, for detail) - e.g. dry-docking regularly to patch/repaint the damn thing
moiety: asciilifeform: one guy claimed 50 hectares, started to build, got some people occupying the land at a rented rate, paid for the build. free house, lots of land
asciilifeform: decimation: last i checked, marina fee + utilities was close to the cost of small flat
ozbot: Prince George's County Public Schools - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
asciilifeform: tg2: the folks who 'bought' during bubble peak, etc. are still doomed
tg2: there needs to be some recourse for home owners that get "reevaluated" at 10% more when their house has not inreased in value
tg2: property tax is the biggest scheme
asciilifeform: tg2: more interesting than that. you can easily 'buy' the shark with the 'goldfish' price - because you are also paying with your arse virginity in that scenario
decimation: which people just roll into the "how much do I have to pay per month" calculation
asciilifeform: 'fish is what we don't have over at the fish counter'
moiety: you can't get a credit card in the uk without a credit rating
asciilifeform: moiety: in u.s., folks with money traditionally keep credit cards, which are paid off as soon as they are used, for 'x percent back' crap.
chetty: moiety, but thats the whole bankster trap, in a nutshell
mircea_popescu: moiety thats just the contemporary implementation of "every man needs a lord"
asciilifeform: chumper 'buys' a house, wants to move, discovers that he'll be stuck paying for the rest of his natural life for a house he isn't living in
mircea_popescu: what the fuck difference does it make what he paid.
asciilifeform: moiety: in the u.s. (no idea about elsewhere) - they have 'special' credit offers for the freshly bankrupt. with 40% interest, etc.
decimation: yeah that's the other population. obviously, neither is interested in paying anything for property maintenance
moiety: i would like to know how they expect you to build a credit rating when you can't get credit when you don't have a credit rating in the first place.
asciilifeform: actually, my understanding is that many of them are 'civilians' who went 'underwater'
decimation: yeah in my experience most "landlords" are real estate agents who generally are happy with a zero cashflow - they write off the depreciation against their income
asciilifeform: they exist, but tend to be 'for students' (even when hours away from any kind of school) and full of antiquated crap
decimation: the assumption is that only lowlifes with no credit rent
decimation: ascii I do agree with your point about rental property. I recently moved from a house to a rental, and when I told the agent about my credit score she said " you should be buying"
chetty: hahaha save the man some travel $$
decimation: ascii you should just rent a room in the marriott across from fort meade
decimation: I thought you were talking about that. as I recall it was because they used substandard adhesive
ozbot: imgur: the simple image sharer
asciilifeform: so, there i was, checking out a potential replacement for my flat, and saw this, alive:
mircea_popescu: but no, these were just poorly maintained state highways
mircea_popescu: which was the first time i heard of that sort of shit.
mircea_popescu: anyway, back in 2004 mass was fighting like 3 separare wrongful death suits arising out of chunks of concrete coming off the road and flying into people's cars
decimation: the engineer who designed that bridge is probably crying
mircea_popescu: it shocked me what poor state of repair the infrastructure was
decimation: yeah the infrastructure is getting very spotty
decimation: fred reed money quote: "My wife Violeta, a Mexican, describes the United States as a Third World country with a First World infrastructure (un pais tercermundista con infraestructura primermundista)"
mircea_popescu: seriously, that's all they have to say about taki, that he called some simian looking jew "homely" and that fascists taking over greece'd be an improvement over the current sort of socialists ?
mircea_popescu: decimation that wikipedia article is perhaps the best indictment of the "wikipedia" notion of an encyclopedia one could devise.
jborkl: It is the same density as gold
MisterE: I dunno why it looks like lead underneath, it says right on the bar 99.9% fine
jborkl: Just don't assey them
decimation: yeah the same guy
ozbot: High life » The Spectator
jborkl: Lol they are selling kilo bars?
mircea_popescu: decimation you mean taki of the spectator ?
decimation: fred reed is good too: http://takimag.com/article/the_soul_of_a_curmudgeon_fred_reed
mircea_popescu: but the silver ain't cool enough for school.
mircea_popescu: i like how the gold bars get etching and shit
gribble: The operation succeeded.
mircea_popescu: vragnaroda, whom only the eldest perhaps still remember, was famously accused by some derp of "being a grammer naxi that corecteing people 24/7"
MisterE: or the "world's premiere site for foo"
moiety: mircea_popescu: anyone having their own opinion tends to be sock-accused in my experience
kakobrekla: theres a few things i must finish to make it completely automagic, after that trades will show as soon as they are closed (refreshed every 10 min or so)
ThickAsThieves: admittedly this hostility came after I linked her to https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikihow.com%2FUse-There%2C-Their-and-They%27re&ei=E8ZAU76RAY-wsAT4hYHYAw&usg=AFQjCNFUDz_wqUzyiVCDFekwBoaqO20NWQ&sig2=0XULb0AYQMcseS7VzgO9Rg&bvm=bv.64125504,d.cWc
ThickAsThieves: to which she says (remember she's done commenting!) "I'm sure they will definitely be there to help me! Unfortunately they can't pick and choose who they help....I'm sure you would be on the NO help list!"
ThickAsThieves: i replied "I do appreciate officers and their service. The law is an ever-evolving thing, with precedents and incidents defining its meaning constantly. I'm not calling them evil, but I am saying that NCs might be out of bounds. Your malice towards me is unfortunate, as no matter how much I we disagree, I do hope someone is there to help you anytime you may need it."
ThickAsThieves: that the community uses
ThickAsThieves: upon inspection of her page, there is a baby photo, wearin a Sheriff badge
ThickAsThieves: "I'm no longer commenting on the dumbest topic I've heard in my life! This is ignorant! One day you will need the police for something and I hope they are not there to help you! You don't deserve the kindness that they put out in the community everyday! Go to court, hire a lawyer do whatever you want but plez post what happens when they laugh you out of there!"
ThickAsThieves: moderators are asking if i can move it to a "rants" area now that it has 150 posts and is dominating the feed
ThickAsThieves: my post on "Narcotic Checkpoints" is now the hottest thing in the Facebook community page
gribble: The operation succeeded.
cryptolemming: in the sense that we are allowing bankrollers yes, and offering a game of chance
cryptolemming: nothing afaik, I'm launching something similar, these topics are thus more interesting atm
cryptolemming: i don't think there's anything to worry about
chetty: just a lot of nuts out to pump the drama
cryptolemming: really, guess the wording was a bit strong
mircea_popescu: "with some element of threat" ; " the attention will begin to trickle down", to not even go into teh forum reddit etc.
cryptolemming: haven't noticed much panic, although haven't spent much time here either, everything seems fine otherwise
cryptolemming: it does make sense they'd talk to you about it yeah
mircea_popescu: i have no idea what all the panic is all about.
mircea_popescu: sec is just trying to find its place in this new world, it's just common sense they'd come to talk to me about it.
mircea_popescu: tbh, it'd seem the vast majority of the internet population is sorely legally illiterate and otherwise quite psychotic.
cryptolemming: can't help but assume the attention will begin to trickle down to entities such as just-dice, don't know enough to know if they'd even really care about something so relatively small.
mircea_popescu: it wouldn't be political to issue threats in any case. i guess they didn't get what they wanted and are considering their options.
cryptolemming: Evening / morning, Mircea mind if I ask what became of the SEC situation, did they simply leave it be or leave it with some element of threat to return? was an interesting situation.
mircea_popescu: it's kinda funny that just as bitcoin organises one end of the spectrum towards individualism,
mircea_popescu: The committee also criticises the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraphfor placing heavy reliance . . . on the ability of their readers to distinguish between fact and opinion on climate science.
mircea_popescu: see kakobrekla ? eastern europe is not the issue here.
mircea_popescu: "Let's not succumb to this collectivist Eastern Europe sucks mentality. Eastern Europe is not the issue here. Best Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp is operated from Slovenia and second best, BTC-e is run from Bulgaria."
MisterE: sounds like CCS was set up just to offload the blame for that retarded $9mil USD XP support contract.
mircea_popescu: just absolutely incredible, i mean people may occasionally get the idea that their car doesn't need gasoline to run, not really. so they run it on whatever, toluene
mircea_popescu: it was beyond the believable, it literally said, "take the string from the url and put it in the db as is"
kakobrekla: the amt of coin aa managed to fuck up is amazing
mircea_popescu: Mats_cd03 were you thinking of the bitbet overpay last month ?
mircea_popescu: possibly my favourite incompetence story in the history of btc. that and the early polish dudes.
mircea_popescu: mike_c he sounds quite admirable, especially when he's doing the narration. third parties... well more of a mixed bag.
mircea_popescu: and you know, talk to them bout repping, why not.
mircea_popescu: punkman: farming's hard work for most people << not harder than a good workout at the gym. except instead of paying for membership, you get paid.
mircea_popescu: this is what the uk comissariat imagines buying more xp means.
mircea_popescu: Crown Commercial Service (CCS) - a new cabinet office department that handles public sector purcasing and commercial operations - said in a statement, "By combining demand, on behalf of Central Government departments and the wider public sector, Crown Commercial Service has demonstrated the benefits of government working as a single customer to achieve best value for the taxpayer, whilst continuing to build good worki
mircea_popescu: then it micropays for you as needed
mircea_popescu: as more worthwhile sites implement it eventually you'd prolly have a centralizer site, select all you want from there
mircea_popescu: pankkake in a mid to long term perspective i suspect the trilema system may actually work
pankkake: I regreted what I wrote but - I mean an easy to use service to pay by the page
mircea_popescu: his is a clever system, you aren't paying to read the article forever; you're paying for the request to the server (which might happen multiple times per article if you keep going back to re-read) << actuallyt, you can reload the article x times and it won't cut further credits.
mircea_popescu: it's from all the pickles.
mircea_popescu: i'm not eeven the only oine btw, for some reason dill is fucking popular with finance people.
mircea_popescu: kakobrekla just for that i pulled up the only twelve or so pages where i had misspelled it and FIXED IT
mircea_popescu: revels/reveals is the butt :D
mircea_popescu: "A Long Time Product Tester Revels the Secrets to Getting FREE Products"