On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find
interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups.
If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be:
anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Please don't submit comments complaining that a
submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think
something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its
page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will
see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag
something, please don't also comment that you did.
This is no mere political news, but an ominous sign of the times - of today's broken system. It might/will directly affect more than half of the hackers and indirectly all of us.
In what sense is "mere political news" distinct from an "ominous sign" of "today's broken system" that will "indirectly [affect] all of us?"
These submissions are getting really tiresome, not least because of the way discussions proceed: the article is submitted, it's silently upvoted by people who agree with it, and everyone who disagrees posts comments explaining why. This was the pattern on the "Why I'm Not Hiring" submission a while ago; nearly every comment explained the many idiotic deficiencies of the article, but it was still a highly upvoted submission because of people who agreed with its substance.
Very annoying.
edit: And now I'm getting silently downvoted too, in the mirror image of the above phenomenon. Excellent.
Countries have been breaking the basic economic law - income >= spendings - for a long time.
There are several ways to get rid of the debt, eg inflation or nationalization. All of them are unethical and are basically stealing from all but a select few at the top.
That's what this article is about.
If things come as far as the author writes, it will affect all of us here at Hacker News. There is a lot of people here trying to create something, to enrich the others and thus to get rich. It will all be in vain if our governments decide it's time to rob us.
I could have been less emotional and more specific about this. Thank you for challenging me.
This is exactly why I think this kind of article is appropriate for HN. If you know as an entrepreneur that you are operating in a closing window of opportunity before the big crash comes, how does this affect your startup decisionmaking? Are you building with the people on Flippa.com in mind or the fine folkds at the Long Now?
It doesn't exist at 1900 karma for sure. I think if we allowed downvoting on submissions there would be a lot less about Google and Apple, and perhaps less Zed Shaw, and definitely less politics, less Ruby/Rails, because then the wishes of non-fans would be weighed more in comparison to their fans. Heck, non-fans have no weight presently at all actually.
Except it was just as "broken" under Bush (debt and deficit spending) but the Repubs didn't care then. Now that we have a Dem president they suddenly care. Lately they appear to have a coordinated Message about how we can't afford to spend anymore -- but only on things they don't like such as health care or unemployment, whereas military spending and Iraq and Afghanistan or tax cuts for the rich are just peachy keen aokay.
It is the number one issue affecting business in America today, and this is a particularly interesting economist weighing in with very strong language.
Disclaimer: I actually agree with the opinion in this article, but I don't want politics with my tech news.