"Statistical analysis shows that authoritarian regimes become progressively more unstable (and democratic transitions more likely) once income rises above $1,000 (PPP) per capita. When per capita income goes above $4,000 (PPP), the likelihood of democratic transitions increases more dramatically. Few authoritarian regimes, unless they rule in oil-producing countries, can survive once per capita income hits more than $6,000 (PPP)."
There are plenty of advanced countries where privacy isn't considered a god given right, and they aren't turning authoritarian. I once tried to explain to a group of japanese businessmen the america idea that guns are meant to counteract the potential tyranny of the government. They looked at me like I was insane.
In my limited experience in France (so I may be wrong here), people didn't seem to really have a concept of police not being allowed on private property.
We in America live in a complete lala-land when it comes to the government going evil - and more broadly the fascination with apocalypse (but that's a larger issue)
I can't tell if you're joking to make a point. Japan and Germany aren't "modern" societies?
And now you're just shifting the goalposts. You never mentioned anything about democracy in the grandparent post. I would also note that Germany is democratic.
I said: "No advanced society (past a certain GDP) has slipped back into tyranny"
I bring up Japan and Germany. I assumed you were not talking about modern Japan and Germany, and you were referring to WW2 Japan and Germany. Japan was a monarchy that turned into some kind of fascist monarchic bureaucracy and Germany was a failed state that turned fascist. Neither represent a modern society turning tyrannical. And yes, when I say modern I mean democratic and with a degree of respect to civil liberties (which is basically true for all wealthy countries in the world, save some oil states). There is no use comparing the US to China - that's apples to oranges.
Because unless they're democratic, they're no true Scotsman right?
I guess my problem is that whenever examples are provided which contradict the model as you proposed it you decide to "clarify" the definitions so as to exclude those examples. Maybe that's the argument you originally intended to make, but it's not actually what you said.
"No advanced society (past a certain GDP) has slipped back into tyranny"
The only reason I need to clarify things is because when I say "advanced society past a certain GDP" you think China and early 20th century dictatorships are great example. Then you pretend that in the original post you were talking about modern Japan and Germany, which given the context made no sense
The only clarification I made that sorta moved the goal posts is excluding oil rich countries from my argument, which frankly is a corner case.
Warrants are required in the UK, though there are special exceptions such as when a serious or dangerous incident, agreed its open ended but the onus is on the Police officer to prove it and entering without one is unheard of in my experience, the source below provides more detail, and is a reliable source:
The problem with bonuses is that you aren't attracting talent with them. Say on paper you're offering a new hire 80K. At the end of the fiscal year they end up costing you 80K + the bonus. Sure you'll have happier workers, but your getting lower quality people.
We have the same problem at the company I work at. We have a ~20% 401k (not matching, just on top of you salaray - it's an ESOP). So your effective salary is 20% higher then your listed one. However, would you rather get 100K and 20K in a 401k, or a taxable 120K? Most young developers would say 120K - I have student loans to pay off!
So weird benefits packages, like large semi-random bonuses, are kind of bad because you can't compare them to straight up money.
For a non-public company, offering the company's own stock as the only retirement plan is borderline fraudulent in my opinion. For a public company, at least stock is as good as cash. But for a startup, that's akin to paying your employees in lottery tickets and in any case where you can't sell the stock, it's an unacceptable level of risk--if the company goes south, you lose your job and your nest egg disappears?
Doing an ESOP as a startup would be weird. You'd be buying common stock (?) at the valuation for cash (?), which would really complicate things. If you were a seed stage company, $20k in common stock could actually be >99% of the company (!!!). It might be a cute way to let someone buy $1.00 or so in stock inside his 401k (0.1%?) and then $19999 worth of S&P500. If it's post-A or post-B it would be a lot more sane, but still $20k might be a lot. If I were an engineer with 0.1% of a company hired at a midway-between-A-and-B company, and I could get $20k in free money, I might put $5k into buying extra company stock if that got me 0.3%, particularly since it would let me sell it and use the gains to invest tax-deferred for the next ~40 years.
There is an utterly batshit insane thing called a "Rollover As Business Startups" where you roll your own 401k over into a 401k in your newly-formed business which then buys its own stock and use that to capitalize your business. This basically lets you 1) use your 401k as capital when you can't raise (useful for franchises and traditional small businesses) 2) tax advantages. The IRS hates it, although it's fundamentally legal; they go after it on nitpicking detail compliance, which people often screw up. It's about $50-100k in 401k balance before it makes sense to do, since plan costs are about $10k to set up. I thought you could do it with Roth 401k, but it appears you may not be able to (if that could be done, it would be amazing.)
I'm also not a lawyer, but I think you wouldn't be able to make an ESOP for a startup. The value of the stock which you buy from the pool is determined by an outside auditor that evaluated the company. My guess is that startups are too volatile to evaluate and simply no one would do it.
Also, the ESOP I work for doesn't have the 401k invest back into itself. lol. That sounds super shady. It's a normal 401k through a 3rd party company, where you choose to invest in different funds. I don't really touch it and just keep it in the default fund b/c I see the whole things as gambling.
Does your company's 401k have matching, or is it just there for you to invest your own money? I worked at a place much like the one you describe and they did zero 401k match, just the ESOP, which is much as you describe with the outside auditors but still super sketchy in my opinion. If you don't do a 401k match but you do provide ESOP, then the only retirement benefit you actually provide is ESOP, which is frankly really shitty since it encourages your employees to make bad decisions. And outside auditor or not, a private company with no investors means the stock's value is, if anything, even more fictitious than a startup's valuation.
I think the equivalent of 5% of your salary is put to buying ESOP stock from a pool (I'm not entirely clear how the pool works exactly)
Then separately an amount equivalent to about 20% of your salary is put by the company into a 401k which is vested after working there for two years. There is NO matching or anything. You don't put any of your money into the 401k.
The exact 401k percentage is based on that year's profits, so it allows the company some flexibility financially speaking. If we have a bad year then you get less in your 401k, but your base salary stays the same. If it gets really really bad then people's salaries get cut (that's happened only twice in the company's ~30 history)
Bonuses, dividends and ISOP [incentive stock options plan] shares (these are actual voting shares) are also handed out partly based on yearly profits.
The whole company operates on different contracts and the market is pretty volatile (I rather not say which one, but maybe you can guess), so the system allows a measure of stability for everyone involved.
I'm not sure what the benefit of making bad decisions would be.. maybe you can elaborate on that?
Career people that have been with us for 20+ years have huge amounts of capital tied up in ISOP and ESOP shares (as well as massive 401k's) and they effectively run the company. They often retire kinda early because they are making more from dividends than from their salaries. While I really love the system and I think it's significantly better than the other currently used systems in the tech industry (which are frankly outdated), the way old careerists run the show is rather anachronistic and I think hurts the company in a lot of ways. New hires don't feel as vested in the company and the most dynamic/in-demand people at the company are probably not the people that end up staying for 20 years. I mean in SV working for more than 4 years at one company is considered the signs of a bad programmer! However, on the other hand the old-timers are the people with the most experience and that really shows at certain times.... At the end of the day I get paid well and the organization is super flat (in a ~100 employees org I'm two levels down from the CEO)
Having a 401k that's around 20% of base (on top of base I assume) is a decent benefit. I've just seen ESOP used in lieu of any employee-sponsored 401k benefit at all, i.e. only used as an option to deduct from your payroll into it.
For the individual employee, it's a very bad idea to have a significant chunk of retirement savings in your employer's stock. If your employer takes a turn for the worse, your job and your nest egg are both in jeopardy. So I would be skeptical of any stock benefits that don't allow the employee to immediately[1] sell stock and reinvest elsewhere. If it's granted on top of a proper retirement package and the main benefits are profit sharing and shareholder rights, that's fine. If its used in lieu of any real retirement benefit that's a problem.
[1] "Immediately" being relative. Some companies have insider trading policies that restrict you to trading windows, but that's an unavoidable and separate issue.
Regarding your example about 100k and 20k 401k vs taxable 120k, it's probably not fiscally responsible to choose the latter except for certain fringe cases.
Without going into the deep financials, it's much easier to live below your means now in your 20s then when you are raising a family later on in life. It would therefore be wiser to live below your means (even if this means living like a college student in San Fran or NYC) and choose 100k, be relatively frugal, and put away that extra 20k without tax. Starting a solid 401k in your early 20s is one of the most fiscally sound decisions you can make.
I don't mean to criticize your reasoning, I'm just offering another perspective.
It's great to say that (and it may be technically correct), but it's a generalization of cashflow > revenue at startups. If you're established and have a buffer, it's safe to optimize for revenue. Early on, you optimize for cashflow.
If I were a 22 year old with 120k in college debt, I'd probably prioritize building a cash hoard. Plus, there are actually investments in operational stuff which will give you a higher return than even compounded 401k gains, and making those early might make sense. e.g. spending $500 to learn a key technology, living in a place which exposes you to the cofounders of your first startup or your future spouse, etc.
401k > college loan repayments above the minimum, probably generally true -- loan repayments are risk free, but it would depend a lot on the rate. If it's a 9% college loan, and you're in a 22% marginal tax bracket, and can get 3% return on your money, yeah. If you financed your college education on credit cards, ...
I'd love having a marginal dollar in tax advantaged vs cash, but I see your point. It is probably the responsibility of the hiring manager to walk candidates through the offer. If you are hiring from your network, you might even be able to advise the candidate on his other offers as well (showing that our total package of 150k is better than the other job with a total package of 120k, but is less than the bigco offer at 200k, but there are these other non financial considerations too).
I think this gets even harder when you have employees in multiple offices and potentially multiple countries. I've seen posted wages for jobs where "Asians" got 1.37/h and "Western" got $20.45/h, posted on a sheet in the actual workplace wall.
If this became an issue then the laws would have to be changed to accommodate the new technology. We shouldn't reject new technology because our current laws aren't suited for it.
I wonder what the Russian's cut is. Since they are the only people that can send astronauts to space right now, they can charge basically any price they want.
They used to have a huge markup some 15 years ago. No longer. It's hard to determine price of a crewed Soyuz mission, but an unmanned Proton rocket, when ordered to launch Russian military satellites (which obviously can't bear much markup because it is the parts of the same system buying from each other, large markup only means increasing taxes) is 1.5x the price of a Falcon 9 launch, with a low orbit payload about 1.5x Falcon's and GEO orbit payload about 1.1x Falcon's. So any and all price advantage Russian rockets used to have over American is now eroded due to increased salaries (an aerospace engineer got about $500-$1000 a year 15 years ago and about $10K a year now) and lower SpaceX prices.
I remember doing the math in my undergraduate physics studies. Air molecules actually do not move very far when a vibration (ie. sounds) goes through them. Amazingly, high frequency sounds move air back and forth only a few angstroms.
I can't find a link describing the calculation. This link talks about how the change in pressure is equivalent to "140 molecules for every million molecules"
http://www.silcom.com/~aludwig/musicand.htm
So there is no way you are going to create a bubble of vacuum!
Not trying to create a bubble of vacuum (though that was my old idea =).. then I realized what you lost gained by low density you paid for in high velocity).
Also, the idea here isn't involving high frequency sound.
To play devil's advocate:
(and this isn't to excuse the US's actions, but to illustrate a major difference between what happened and what you're talking about)
The big difference in this case is that we have tacit (or maybe even explicit) consent from the Yemeni government to hunt Al Qaeda. So the representatives of the people of that country are allowing us to kill these people basically on their behalf. (which doesn't make it OK, but is a major differnce)
It's not just that we are bullying Yemen into allowing us to bomb people in their country - it's that the Yemini authorities (and probably most of the population) don't want these people operating in their country but they lack the resources and infrastructure to stop them themselves; and that's where we come in.
Bare in min that we also give Yemen a lot of military aid so that we DON'T HAVE TO come in and do their law enforcement for them. In this case that wasn't sufficient and we intervene on their behalf
To make your example comparable you would need to have a person that is evading US authorities, operating in the US, and that we are completely incapable of stopping (and only some other country could do it for us?)
Here is why: Yemeni government != Yemeni people. The authorities, probably, don't mind letting US drones kill people, simply because it won't be them getting killed.
Imagine the US military firing tear gas and water cannons on protesters in Turkey and saying "It's OK, your government gave us permission". The major problem in the Middle East is that, the governments can get away with not giving a fuck about the people.
"Imagine the US military firing tear gas and water cannons on protesters in Turkey and saying "It's OK, your government gave us permission". "
I think you're having reading comprehension issues. It's not just that the gov't are requesting help. The reason we are involved in Yemen is because the Yemini gov't is incapable of exerting it's own will b/c they are weak and poor. Their interests are also strongly tied to our interests - so that's why we intervene.
Your example has is not at all analogous. The Turkish gov't is not incapable of tear gassing and water cannoning protesters, so they fail the first criteria of being incapable of carrying out their will. The example also fails the second criteria for intervention - that it's strongly in the US's interest.
"Yemeni government != Yemeni people"
Who else can you appeal to in Yemen to get permission to operate drones?
And are you seriously suggesting that the Yemeni people are supporting Al Qaeda? If they are, then they become the "enemy".
The way it works for other nations is we tell them:
1 - You will fight Al Qaeda in our country
2 - If you are incapable, we will help you do it by providing military aid.
3 - If you are still incapable we will us our own armed forces to make sure you are able to.
4 - If you are not willing to fight Al Qaeda or are actively defending them they we will intervene anyways.
The last point either leads to the case of the Taliban where we destroy them because they are defending Al Qaeda, or to Pakistan where they are forced to accept our help.
Come on. The PK government is perfectly happy to say one thing to its population, another to the US and a third to the Talibans. It's just like European governments acting incensed at the notion of extraordinary renditions (like they didn't know about before) or at NSA spying (like they don't do the same thing). It's called "hypocrisy" and it's a common policy tool.
I am not aware about now, but there was a while when Pakistan authorities denied US land crossing its territory in its way to supply Afghanistan. That divergence seemed pretty real.
My understanding of arsenic poisoning is that it binds to some proteins that inhibit some processes in cells. This means it eventually gets cleared from the system. So as long as you don't get a lethal dose it shouldn't cause long term damage. There is arsenic in apples seeds and I've never heard of long term issues from eating a few of those.
Lead on the other hand builds up in your system and causes permanent damage.
If not there should be. You send X amount of bitcoins to a middle man who then gives you X amount back. Technically they will be different coins and they'll go to a different account #, so you can't trace anything.
I don't have a direct link to a study, but I'll quote this article
http://thediplomat.com/2013/02/13/5-ways-china-could-become-...
"Statistical analysis shows that authoritarian regimes become progressively more unstable (and democratic transitions more likely) once income rises above $1,000 (PPP) per capita. When per capita income goes above $4,000 (PPP), the likelihood of democratic transitions increases more dramatically. Few authoritarian regimes, unless they rule in oil-producing countries, can survive once per capita income hits more than $6,000 (PPP)."
There are plenty of advanced countries where privacy isn't considered a god given right, and they aren't turning authoritarian. I once tried to explain to a group of japanese businessmen the america idea that guns are meant to counteract the potential tyranny of the government. They looked at me like I was insane.
In my limited experience in France (so I may be wrong here), people didn't seem to really have a concept of police not being allowed on private property.
A quick google search says that in the UK they don't need warrants, not to mention guns are almost completely illegal. http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=2010033008545...
We in America live in a complete lala-land when it comes to the government going evil - and more broadly the fascination with apocalypse (but that's a larger issue)