IIIIIIIIIIII's comments

Works for me.

Whenever you have such a complaint - and choose to make it public - please include more details. What system, what browser, add-ons (adblocker) at least.

EDIT: Downvotes? For answering the question truthfully? It does work for me. The question was (is) "is anyone else unable to scroll on this page?" -- and I have no problem scrolling. I answered the question! The question was NOT "do you think the page is designed badly". If that is what was meant, that is why I said "needs more details". All the person asked was about "being able to scroll"! And the design issue does not prevent it. I answered the question that was actually asked! I assumed, and still do, that the person isn't able to scroll at all.

> just like the 10x CEO. They just make the right decisions and hence are compensated accordingly.

A lot of being a successful CEO is being at the right place at the right time (of course: in addition to actual qualities).

Anecdote time:

I once was a franchisee of a major (services) franchise that some time ago decided to expand to Germany (I sold my franchise years ago). I'll only talk about one person, but this happened throughout the network, it wasn't nearly as successful as hoped in this country.

So anyway, I personally know one of the guys who lead one of the best franchises in a major German city. He expanded, became responsible for the entire wider area (which allowed him a cut from all franchises in it in exchange for recruiting new franchisees and for advising them).

He had this exact opinion (and he was a former business consultant too, I think he even has an MBA), when a franchisee didn't do well that he just wasn't good enough. He himself was proof, after all, just do your customer acquisitions and all the necessary stuff,and success will eventually come! It worked for him!

When a franchisee failed he acquired their shop, it was in the same city and they seemed to be in very good areas, lots of businesses that fit the description of the target market. Not a big risk one would think given that his own shop was doing exceedingly well with the exact same demographics, just a few miles away.

Long story short, he ended up giving up the franchise for the area as well as the two additional shops he had acquired. Today he has just that one original location. Turned out that the exact same extremely successful guy only managed to be successful in one spot. Not even in very promising areas just a few miles away did it work out!

There were more stories like this, some of them I knew personally (through franchisee training at the beginning where I met many of them), all people who were formerly employed and "important people" in their jobs, and who all thought that it's all about you and the effort and skills you put in. Some of them managed to indeed build a successful business, but they all became much more humble over time, because they all found the large amount of randomness in their success when they tried to expand (area franchise or another shop).

So, tell me again about those successful CEOs, I'd like to learn more... the books are full of such people, successful in one place and time and failing in another place and/or time. Because they themselves are only one ingredient into what is needed for success, and not even the major one ("necessary but not [even nearly] sufficient").

> "Salary" and "organizational breadth" are pretty objectively measurable things, and are what I'm using as a measuring stick.

That is such a narrow world view. Nor does it change anything I wrote. Nor does you reply make sense, you wrote

> My MBA has had virtually no effect on my opportunities or employability.

That is inconsistent with what you just wrote, something completely different. I'm sure you are aware that humans come up with explanations after decisions? Shown in fMRI scan experiments. I'm not saying this explains what you just did, but it does seem to me that your brain came up with this "explanation" only after discovering my post.

I'm not sure that would help much. I think the risks and uncertainties of long-term R&D increase much faster than any tax incentive can compensate for. My favorite story is the (real) history of Silicon Valley. I once thought that was a proof for what private enterprise can accomplish. Turns out that SV is actually based on the unrestrained spending on R&D (of borrowed money, of course) by government during WWII. [0]

Private enterprise wants a level of certainty, long-term or not. Tax incentives don't reduce the uncertainty. I doubt that money is the major constraint. Look at some major corporations basically "swimming" in money, and they also should be able to borrow easily (and cheaply) at this time.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo

I think OP succumbed to the problem of shifting baselines. The brain adapts and sets the base to whatever your situation is, eventually. You live in a huge house? After a few months you stop noticing it and instead start seeing the small little issues. The rich guy and the poor guy are going to complain equally. Satisfaction and contentment go back to their equilibrium value. Having the Harvard MBA becomes the new normal, life seems equally hard, because you compare with your own new baseline, not with that of other people. Doesn't mean OP can't objectively be correct in his assessment that this MBA did nothing for his employability, because that depends on what he wants to do. But did his goals shift (upwards) too, setting a higher baseline? Seems very possible.

> I don't want to mention the name of the university.

Preposterous, given that you have total anonymity and anyone reading your extremely general rant without any details would have any idea who you are. I was willing to accept your comment as an opinion based on your personal experiences, but after this turn in the discussion I can't take you seriously, because it's obvious that you are creating a lot of drama that doesn't actually exist. Posting the name of the university is a non-issue - unless you fear people who are actually there might dispute your claims... given the very general and broad claims you made you must be incredibly well-connected to a lot of people in a lot of different departments at that university. Not easy to believe even without your refusal to give a simple name to the place.

As I said, I think the focus for the points of this discussion is the effect. No doubt everybody acts logically, I didn't suggest that everybody in those companies just lost their mind. This goes long the same lines as "For evil to triumph, all that is required is for good men to respond rationally to incentives." (so here it is the loss of ever more "market" in the "market economy" that we get as an effect, and it's questionable we get it back in economies of scale, judging by the popularity of Dilbert cartoons).

Not that I'm aware of in the context that my examples are from. They pay for independent(!) freelancer programmers and consultants, should be the same except for having just a single partner instead of many.

I can speak for a different market in a different country (but I also lived in the US for a decade): IT freelancing in Germany.

I get paid well, but there is something really strange going on: I can't get my contracts directly. I always have to go through a company whose sole business it is to be an intermediate between the (large) company that wants to hire a freelancer and the freelancer. Note that those freelancers are not employed by that company and the relationship is pretty loose. The business pays the intermediary and they pay you, it's a per-project contract.

The large companies won't hire someone directly even though they would save lots of money (and freelancers would get more). Suspicious as you guys are you probably think that well, there must be a logical business reason that it actually really is worth the additional money being spent on the intermediary. For example, finding and bundling lots of freelancer resumes. While that sure is a reason it isn't nearly sufficient for an explanation, not only because they actually do precious little for the money they keep. Also, the legal side can't be the reason either when I look at how the contracts between me and the intermediary are set up.

To give one example from a very large client I worked for for 1.5 years as a freelancer, the reason I was told they go through the intermediary is that it makes their accounting much easier. Since I once worked for that company and experienced the exact same thing I was not surprised: When I worked for them in Silicon Valley I saved the company a lot of money by looking for an apartment myself. I ended up sharing one with somebody else. However, the expensive all-inclusive one-bedroom apartment I had had in Mountain View had the advantage that there only was a single bill (paid by corporate Amex card). The (far cheaper) shared apartment I got instead produced a handful of different invoices (furniture rental, cheques for the rent instead of Amex, etc.), so the company told me they would have preferred to pay the much higher amount from a single source. Which I don't quite understand - I do have some business background and understand accounting, in the computer age, what's the big deal? In the freelancer scenario they said it just works better with their SAP system then having lots of individual contracts. That company also had a big program to "streamline" and centralize their purchasing, which of course means having significantly less firms to deal with as a goal that overrides other concerns.

So, it seems the large businesses prefer to work with other large businesses, no matter how much money they could save. We don't even need to argue whether and/or how much legal and business reasons are valid or not, I think the only thing that matters for the purpose of the discussion is that the effect exists, and that that means "market" is more and more a lie the more of a countries wealth creation is done by big businesses. You don't need to look for actual "monopolies" in the classical sense, those firms quite voluntarily restrict themselves (and again, the bottom line is that it exists, how justifiable it is from the individual firm's POV is a different question, let's assume they know what they are doing and that it makes sense for them).

I think the chance that it leads to lots of quick fixes rather than a redesign for the new demands and taking a long-term view is considerable.

That reminds me of this cartoon:

http://i.imgur.com/aI80YDO.jpg

From your previous comment, above, that I didn't respond to:

> that substantiates your earlier claim that "no one is ever forcibly removed by police and if they needed to be, it wouldn't require training".

Fortunately anyone can easily see what I wrote. Your style disgusts me.

The numbers for police actions comparing Germany and the US speak a clear language. Any kind of violence is on a far lower level than in the US. We don't need to talk about the reasons - policing in the US is harder - but your argument does not work. Nor does any of it contradicts my argument, I'm tempted to call yours "whataboutism" (that doesn't even have a basis). We certainly have our own issues, and things like profiling, the same (completely innocent) people getting controlled over and over wherever they go (darker skin, wrong haircut, etc. - who knows the criteria), but none of it pertains to this issue.

> he aggressively refused.

No comment necessary, you already did it yourself.

That does not change anything I wrote.

> Because when there are no options left, you only have force.

It actually makes it worse that you try to justify it. You used your brainpower to find a justification for what is. But there is none. This is a non sequitur - there is no reason to use force even when people don't cooperate! Also, the vast majority of such instances require no special level of competence to deescalate, only common sense and decency, including a lot of police incidents I had to read about (I myself never had an issue with US police, even though I encountered them a lot when in my youth I crossed the US sleeping in an old car that I had bought).

The entire "deescalation" that was required in this particular case was to just let it be. What training do you need? Not even the next step of offering just a tad more money needs any special training. You make it sound as if we are talking about hostage negotiation or something requiring skills.

> and they aren't as well trained as united employees

I'm really getting (maybe needlessly) a bit irate over the endless stream of "they didn't have the training" comments each and every time some employee attacks someone. For this incident too but also for many previous ones, in a lot of forums from reddit to local newspaper websites I found this line of reasoning or explanation.

I may get flak for this, but as a German who once (very happily) lived in the US for a decade, the stories as well as the comments seem to come mostly from this country, and I did not notice them (in this number) until this millennium. What's happened in the US, I wonder?

Let me make my position clear: It should be obvious that not attacking people does not require "more training"! That's just being a decent average human being. I don't know what I'm more worried about, the number of incidents (might just be because of ubiquitous smartphones and the Internet) - or that sooooo many people (US-Americans mostly?) seem to think that this is a "training" issue.

To me this seems like a large culture of "it's their fault", meaning "management". Part of it really is, since so much of the work culture (service jobs especially?) is designed to be extremely hierarchical. "Sorry, I can't use common sense, I have to call in a manager, he is allowed to use 1% of his brain but I'm not." (The higher level management is allowed to use ever more brain/judgement.) So it seems the success of this "education" of creating an obedient workforce unquestionably following procedures and rules is too great, it changed the way people think and look at everything, not just those jobs?

That demonstrates that there are no negative G forces. It doesn't demonstrate that it's 1G.

I'm a private pilot who has done aerobatics, exactly 1G doesn't work - and it's completely unnecessary (though you can stay pretty close to it, so that someone with their eyes closed would not know they were rolled).

But just about the video as "proof of 1G":

As long as you stay positive you are fine, even psychologically with passengers not used to it. The real turning point, in real effects as well as psychologically, is when you approach 0G, the feeling only starts at less than 0.5G when you begin to feel more and more weightless.

When you go even slightly negative it becomes a completely different matter, both in terms of real effects (fuel, oil, lose stuff flying around the cabin) as well as psychologically: Even though you made the harness extra tight with as much force as you could muster in preparation for an aerobatic flight with negative G forces, when you get here it feels as if you hang upside down in the harness and the seat is miles away from you, as if you dropped a few centimeters and now literally just hang in the airplane.

I (in my small and somewhat underpowered aircraft) go below 1G when I get close to the top, because if I tried to maintain 1G the nose of the airplane would have to drop (towards the earth in that position), and I want to keep that at a minimum, so that I don't end the roll with the nose in too much of a nose-down attitude from which I will have to pull out.

Here is an image from my flying some years ago, in a Grob 115C Acro (rented from Attitude Aviation, Livermore, CA, ca. 2002): http://i.imgur.com/Rd5VW3R.jpg (the inside of this airplane: http://i.imgur.com/4bwJn13.jpg)

EDIT: (after reading some comments) To me a roll is over when the airplane is back to straight and level, after 360 degrees. So my statements are for that interpretation of the word "roll". And my frame of reference for g-forces are the people on board the aircraft.

Somewhat related to this discussion - it's really worth the one hour:

Secret History of Silicon Valley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo

TL;DW The foundation for SV was laid during WWII by unrestrained spending (based on a huge amount of debt of course) by the US government on R&D. Private enterprise only came in once the foundation existed.

It's a good indicator for your intentions in this discussion that you only come up with ever new (and ever more ridiculous) "reasons" after being challenged. And "famous", what for exactly - and to whom? For existing?

I'm not sure what to make of your comment, it's a little.. "weltfremd" (unworldly says the dictionary, not sure if that conveys the same meaning as in German though). There are MANY ways around it. It is like lobbying: Bribes are clearly not allowed, and yet politicians can easily be bought without actually breaking any laws.

The problem with that attitude is that when you are looking for bad things you are looking for intent, which is really not necessary for bad things to happen. This is like looking at individual neurons and not finding psychopathy (or whatever else actually is a system outcome of the network's actions, not of individuals).