Caring with no significant action in prevention doesn’t really signal caring. Sure, it sucks, headlines get printed for a couple of months, then people forget and move on.
To put it in the most disrespectful and sad way, it looks like more people have been on the streets for Knicks games than most (any?) school shootings of the past decades.
I think your assumption of lack of caring is misplaced. The citizens clearly care, but have no power to do anything about it. Those in power are the ones that do not care or are paid not to care.
It's just harder to get the average joe charged up to fight a battle with anything meaningful on the line. Americans are used to living relatively cushy lives where they don't sacrifice their QOL to make the lives of their countrymen better. The closest thing to that are people in the military, and it's probably been a while since the US military is improving QOL, on average.
People will continue to be complacent on multiple fronts until it absolutely comes to a violent boil. I don't really see half measures or peaceful protests changing anything. And maybe I'm pessimistic, but I think the upcoming elections will either not change enough or be strongly manipulated to maintain the status quo.
>harder to get the average joe charged up to fight a battle with anything meaningful on the line
Doesn't this imply that on average people just don't care? So, school shooting preventions are just way down in the list of "things I care about", when you have "cushy lives where nobody wants to sacrifice their QOL".
It means they don't care enough to meaningfully make sacrifices for change. To deal with school shootings is to change the constitution. The American constitution is basically wired for school shootings. To change the constitution is basically a civil war.
Things aren't binary. Many people care deeply about school shootings. But they don't have the means or power to organize to stop them and, individually, they are powerless.
They’re not binary, but when an issue persists for decades, over the course of multiple administrations, and political landscape… it shows either the country is incompetent in terms of solving an issue, or the issue is not a priority.
I wholeheartedly believe US can solve issues when it’s an important one. And thus, I think, for an average American it’s not an issue.
Decades is a very long timeframe. Countries have achieved more in shorter periods.
My post was not disrespectful. It was matter of fact. And if the Petro Dollar only persists by use of force or perceived force, it's probably not a sustainable system for humanity. So hopefully we can go back to a soft power maintained Petro Dollar?
Because it has moved way beyond protests. Everyone agrees that school shootings are bad. Legislation has been passed. Policies have changed. Schools have changed their security tactics. There have been years and years of meetings across the country with school administrators and boards talking about how to improve safety and navigate these issues, and then the schools themselves implementing new practices.
If you are looking around and saying that because people aren't waving sign on street corners, then nobody cares, then you have utterly missed a couple decades of dedicated efforts by many people working around these issues.
The fact that shootings still happen is tragic. But it is not because people are just shrugging and saying they don't care.
Well they happen in schools and children don’t vote. If this had been a wave of senior center shootings, something would have been done a long, long time ago.
I get what you’re saying but in the last 20 years can you think of any mass protest that accomplished anything substantial? I don’t really blame people for giving up on it as a tool for change. TBH only truly effective one I can think of would be Jan 6
I can, just not in the US [0]. I always presumed this is linked to the health care being provided by employers rather than having a more robust safety net that allows for civil disobedience without having to fear existential risks. However, I also can’t forget that the French have their safety net not as a God given right, but because they fought for it via (often not just civil) protest. Reference also the statements MLK JR made concerning the willingness of white moderates to engage in actually effective disobedience, even when their financial situation allows for such.
I just checked and it's 54% in the US [0] vs 0% in France (cause basic public healthcare isn't tied to employment). So, unless you are referring to absolute numbers (not very helpful when comparing countries of different sizes), I'm not sure what you are referring to.
I will admit that my purely personal thesis on this front goes a bit beyond healthcare. I feel that a robust safety net, iron clad right to protest and a large, at least reasonably financially stable (meaning no existential financial fears for at least the majority of citizenry, i.e. above roughly 60% middle class for a given economy) are needed to allow for protests in such a manner that the citizenry are both capable, willing and informed sufficiently to protect their own interests and democracy as a whole. Having the right and ability to protests is needed, just as much as being comfortable enough to have the time to actually stay politically engaged (consistent financial strain being a reasonable cause for why one doesn't stay informed in my book). France or my home country of Austria (imperfect countries like any other, I will (un)happily admit) on that front are in the 65%-75% range, whereas the US appears to barely get above 50% purely by income along with higher health care costs in general and employer linked plans for as stated above the majority, so these are somewhat interlinked in my view.
Same reason, albeit less extreme, why in war-torn countries, long standing brutal dictatorships and the like, the citizenry rarely is able to create any proper action agains their oppressors, not because they are accepting of the status quo, weak, or anything of the sort, but because when one is starving and trying to help their family unit survive, even beyond the risk that action can pose, their often isn't any time to actually consider it. "A republic, if you can keep it", in my opinion is a high demand from the public. They need to have the tools, rights and resources to actively defend it. Not saying France is perfect here, but I will say that it is easy to just raise our finger at the US populous without considering the whole picture.
January Sixth was not a protest, it was an attempt to interfere with government processes to prevent Biden from being elected - so a really shitty attempt at a coup.
The author said nothing of the people but of the government itself. 12 years ago, elementary school children were slaughtered and even that wasn’t enough to ban guns.
there was. I think it was something with a key at a data center and a DNS config. You would think after that people would have learned to have their own website and POSSE everything outwards, but businesses in particular still think a Facebook/Meta presence is good enough.
6 hours a week is low, unless its the average spread across industries. I think I spend more time in Claude Code via the CLI versus any other app I have on my laptop.
Like others said, the frustration is when it gets something so wrong you just think "wow, how'd you mess that up?" but when it gets it right its kind of nice. I also dont like that I basically tell Claude what to do, and then either go to busy work or waste time on the internet.
I kind of enjoy exploring black boxes, trying how different inputs are mapping to differences in outputs. It's kind of like hacking. The problem is, they keep altering the box.
It feels like Greek mythology should have some metaphor for "apparently simple structure that is so complex it leads anybody that studies it into madness". But I can't think of any name to put there.
The third sentence got to what my objection was going to be. It's fun trying to make the thing do what you want it to do! That's why many of us like computers. It's the randomness that sucks and makes the process unsatisfying.
Working with AI is trying to reduce the probability it'll pick undesirable paths. It's an exercise in trying to avoid what you DON'T want.
I suppose it's the same as asking someone else to take care of a feature and hoping they understand what you have in mind. The difference is that there's a lot of context that's shared between you and a human developer that is simply absent with AI.
I wonder how many hours of old stye non-overhead that is. And by overhead I mean mostly meetings. Then again maybe generating paperwork is included so that eats bit into it.
>He would _always_ say "Let's find out together", and then proceed to find the answer in front of me, doing effectively LMGTFY but in a way that was extremely more helpful (by watching his workflow and allowing questions) and empathetic (by taking time politely and starting from what I knew, not what he knew).
I think part of the problem with the succession idea is that a lot of people in these positions worked these hard jobs to try and give their kids a better life. They encouraged their kids to go to school for their passions and now those kids are in careers far removed from what their parents did.
Instead of succession, I wonder if there is a way to make it easier for these people to sell their company when its time to retire to someone who is looking to start the next step of their career. A lot of software engineers joke about becoming farmers, but if they could instead make an easy transition into a small business by buying a small business, we could prevent PE from raiding things.
The vast majority of people can’t just go out and buy a machine shop or laundromat and then start running the business. It’s a risky asset, not like a house where you put down 20% and any bank will loan you the rest. I’d love to own a small franchise restaurant or something in my town but they cost millions that I don’t have.
And that’s before you even make it to the question of “can the person that manages to buy it actually live off of it as a lifestyle business?”
sure but a restaurant is always going to be a risky asset. I am thinking more in terms of a plumbing business. It's a business that will always have a need, no matter the economy because a bursting pipe doesnt care if its a recession or a booming market.
I guess what I would like to see is a pathway to making it easy to buy or start up crucial businesses like a plumbing business, HVAC company, etc. As the current generation of owners want to sell and retire, we should make it easier for people to be able to get in there and buy these companies before PE can.
A plumbing business doesn't have "assets" though; it's valuable because the owner is good at their job. You can't durably "sell" that brand value unless the new owner is also known to be great at their job, at which point they don't really need to buy your business.
Family businesses handle this by slowly getting the next generation involved, such that the intangible value has been transferred by the time the owner wants to retire. That works less well with a stranger. You really need high levels of trust to make that work fairly for both parties.
I wonder what would make it easier for a regular person to buy a mom-n-pop plumbing business, besides financial help? If the owner wants $5M for it, and you (or a PE firm) walk up to him with $5M, it's yours. The mechanics of buying the business aren't particularly hard--the hard part is obtaining the capital.
The thing is those businesses can't really be "sold" because they make enough money to support a few families, but they can't do the same AND carry the debt-load necessary to buy it.
So they can only really be inherited or given away (and they often are).
But if it's not to kids on death, it's moderately difficult to give away a business that has "paper value".
Yea, I occasionally go to estate sales, and a machine shop going out of business popped up on my radar. Went down there to buy a few power tools, chatted up the elderly owner, and asked him why he was selling everything. The shop had everything, and would have been a really cool business to own and operate! He said 1. his adult kid had no interest in running the business, and 2. he couldn't find anyone willing and able to buy it for more than he could get by "parting it out" and selling all the assets.
I'm sure there are tons of people in my local area who could happily and successfully run such a business, but nobody can swing it financially. The initial financial hurdle of going from "not a business owner" to "a business owner" is real.
Yep, and if you're starting on your own, you might as well get new equipment and such built and made for you.
Same thing happened with a restaurant - nobody wanted to buy the business so it shut down, even though you could have bought the whole business for the cost of the building, basically.
(There's a path for entrepreneurial "youngsters" - identify these businesses 10 years before, and become a valuable employee in such; I've seen them given away for a song to such. Of course, in some of them they also ended up with the daughter, so ...)
I think the other thing is the older generation are of the opinion that a steady paycheck is somehow safer than owning your own company, mostly because most of them never sat in the other side of the table.
This leads to them pushing their kids to be employees even though that's...really contradictory to their actual lived experience.
yea the side of the table they sat on is one that fluctuates month over month, year over year. They recognize that it can work out, but its a gamble whereas working for a steady company (pre 2026 I guess) is the better option for their kids.
I think you meant ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Program), not ESPP. I work for a 100% ESOP company and it’s been very beneficial to me and also the former owners were able to cash out without selling to the devil.
An ESOP is where a portion of or an entire company is sold to the employees. Our company took out loans to acquire the shares from the former owners and shares are disbursed to employees yearly instead of purchased by employees. It took 5 years to fully buy out the former owners, so we’re a 100% ESOP now and we just finished paying off the loans taken out to buy out the former owners.
An ESPP just gives employees of a company the option to buy shares at a discount.
You are correct ESOP was what I was thinking of. Thank you for the correction. Worked great for Bob’s Red Mill I believe. Glad to hear it’s been a success for you and your company.
seriously consider that book if you can fill it up with these types of stories. A book like this could be a huge hit, get this issue even more spotlight and maybe some fixes.
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