Other things being equal, more choice might be better. But other things aren't equal, thanks to (a) economies of scale, which make insurance cheaper for larger pools, and (b) favorable tax treatment for health insurance when it's part of employee compensation.
I'm not defending the story as a masterpiece of journalism or anything, and I'm sure it was pitched to the reporter by an interested party. But you shouldn't blame 'such clunkers as "To generate story 'angles,' explains Mr. Hammond of Narrative Science...." when Mr. Hammond has already been introduced earlier in the story' on PR agencies. They don't actually write the copy that runs in the NY Times. That particular clunker was probably imposed on the writer by the copy editor ("It's been a while since Hammond was referenced; we need to remind the reader who he is"), unless the author has internalized the style himself.
This story was provided, probably almost word for word, by a PR person to the NYT reporter.
Definitely not. The idea for the story was provided to the reporter, probably by a P.R. person. The reporter conducted interviews with representatives of the company, some of whom are quoted in the story and some of whom aren't. The reporter went away and wrote up the story himself. It was edited by at least one line editor and at least one copy editor. The reporter, line editor, and copy editor have all beaten many competitors to obtain jobs at the most prestigious company in their field.
If anyone at the New York Times were found to have submitted a story that was "provided ... almost word for word by a PR person" that person would be fired and the paper would issue a public apology.
Again, I'm not defending the story, and I'm sure the PR person who pitched it was thrilled by it. But, you know, Steve Lohr's byline is on this story, and you've accused him of pretty bad professional misconduct, and I don't think that's warranted.
Markoff once ran an article about MyWeb (yahoo's competitor to delicious) that basically took everything from PR instead of actually doing any research. No mention of competitors, let yahoo take credit for stuff other people invented, etc.
That doesn't surprise me at all. What would surprise me would be if he copied the actual text provided for him by a PR firm, as the OP suggested Lohr had done.
Like every other daily newspaper, the Times produces some rushed, lazy journalism (as well as some very good journalism). But there are certain lines they don't typically cross, and literally taking dictation from PR is one of them. You might argue that the difference isn't meaningful, and that rules like "Don't just copy out someone else's text" are a fig-leaf to hide bigger problems. I'd have a lot of sympathy for that argument. But if we're going to criticize the Times we should criticize them accurately, for the things they're actually doing wrong, rather than accusing them of doing things they haven't done.
The idea from the book that seems most obsolete to me is that a web startup founder could gain a competitive advantage by using Lisp. (Not that a Lisp might not be the best choice, but your competitors are more likely to be using it too, and if they're not they're using something much closer than they were in 2004.)
Oops. I don't know of anything that would have turned out for the worse without software patents. But I only know about a subset of uses of software. There might be cases in pharmaceuticals or manufacturing where patents helped protect individual inventors against big companies.
It seems pretty obvious that if instead of patent system we had a mandatory obligation to publish full specs (schematics and source code) for all marketed products the invention rate will grow exponentially. The development costs will be cut down because of possibility to incrementally improve on existing products.
I'm kind of playing devil's advocate here and kind of not: How can you justify spending $n to buy coffee for someone with a smartphone instead of donating $n to someone with fewer resources and greater needs?
Fair point. My goal is to figure out the dynamics of social giving in this fashion and create a similar sustainable model around items that are less "luxury" than coffee.
For example, I can imaging people paying for other people's groceries or medicine in a similar manner. Maybe I'm crazy, but it seems worth trying.
I don't go to Starbucks, but I just loaded up $10 because I'd really like to see this "succeed", whatever that means. It's gone already, so I guess the experiment is working? :P
Thanks for the response. My question wasn't really directed at you—I can see all kinds of ways you could justify the project, including just curiosity. My question was for the people who are putting money on the card.
I hope one of your other ideas works! Good luck! But I suspect a big part of the impetus behind the contributions is a feeling of reciprocity, which is a different impulse from charity.
Taking that logic to its natural end - I should be living a meager existence, eating and buying only what is necessary for my own continued survival, and donating any surplus to people who don't even have subsistence level living standards (and there are a lot of said people).
But do I really need to explain why that is undesirable, or why most people in the world don't do this?
just loaded $50 on the card, bought 10+ coffees for tech caffeine addicts, got a sweet tweet because I am looking for a tech co-founder for my funded cleantech startup. thinking outside of the box for recruiting... just saying. Oh, and if anyone is interested in joining wa.tt email me, james@wa.tt
this is an interesting concept. Retweet people, who added money to the card, with an advertisement or announcement of their choice. Only issue I see is people loading the card and just spending it on themselves.
Maybe they have to tweet you the advertisement, and then you can retweet, so you get more exposure in their twitter stream as well.
You could say that about almost anything. "How can you justify commenting on HN, when the money earned in the equivalent amount of time wasted here could save n Nigerians from starvation?" You can't, not really. But Jonathan's card still is one of the more ethical ways of spending money, so I'm all for it.
I comment on HN because I enjoy it. But I suspect that some people add money to Jonathan's Card because it gives them a feeling of virtue. I'd like to interfere with that feeling.
Honestly, why? You can't scold everyone into "real" virtuous behavior, so why not give them a taste of what it feels like and see if they can get hooked?
Do you believe that people putting money on this card would actually donate it towards a more deserving end?
I (think I) understand your goal here, but ultimately I think what you're doing is either ineffective in or outright harmful towards achieving it.
A meta-comment on the answers to this question: For various reasons, a disproportionate number of HN commenters are fans of "Austrian School" economics. You'll see links to papers from mises.org, books by Murray Rothbard, etc. Without passing judgment on any of this work, if you're new to economics it would probably be helpful for you to understand that it's outside the mainstream.
To answer your question more directly (although only partially): Wikipedia is quite good on the major economic concepts and figures. I'd imagine that the Wikipedia article on any of the subjects you mentioned would be a good, brief, thoroughly hyperlinked starting point. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation, for example.
I'll pass judgment on Austrian economics: it's terrible. It's just tarted up right-wing politics. They start with the assumption that free markets are magic and from that they conclude that free markets are magic. Seriously, they're against empiricism. They assume they're right and don't bother to check their work. That's why as a research program it's never gone anywhere.
Austrians are just rightwingers who chose an economics to suit their politics. If people want to be rightwing that's fine. There's no reason to drag bad economics from the 1930s into it.
Yeah, Wikipedia works to an extent. I feel it's easier to grasp a subject with videos rather than with reference material.
I've watched a few Khan academy videos about inflation/deflation, they're very accessible and explain the basics. I've read a few wikipedia articles but I think I've retained more from the khan academy.
Re your point one: This service wasn't for help with what an American would call term papers. It was for help with exams, which you have to write yourself (unless you hire someone to impersonate you, which I'm sure is not unheard of in big classes but is certainly riskier).
You're right, I misread that. At that point, why not just go to the professor or TA during office hours? Maybe other Universities work differently, but each class had office hours where I went to school, and most students didn't take advantage of that. And who writes out example exam questions anyway?
So yes, I stand corrected, Customer development would have uncovered those problems.
>And who writes out example exam questions anyway?
As a maths/physics student (though I did various other courses too) I pored over past papers, in part as an indicator of the papers to come (though they always caught one out) and in part for practice at recapitulating proofs and writing answers under time pressure. I certainly didn't spend the course working toward the exam but it would be silly not to attempt past papers on a course that has run unchanged for previous years.
Most of our papers had example answers with them though.
Personally I had my best exam results when I did exactly that, I wrote as much as I could for each historical exam question. I would research from book, lecture notes etc.
However, I wouldn't pay for this service when my lecturers and teaching assistants would do this for free and as they were the ones setting the exams I would prefer their advice than that of an unknown person.
