If it was just general allegations about sexual behaviour at the workplace, I would be a bit skeptical. However when they provide concrete factual examples, it seems somewhat unlikely that it would be completely made up.
With this (edit: and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14346174) you're recreating the very dynamic on HN itself that stories like this describe happening in the workplace, which leave so many of us shaking our heads in disbelief. I don't mean the disbelief of 'that never happens' but the disbelief of 'who does this'. No, it is not "perfectly normal". It's gross and beyond the pale.
Since we just had a whole conversation with you about bad HN comments and the very next day you come out with this, I've banned this account.
If you work in the US, you are describing what lawyers will call a 'hostile workplace' when your employers are, based on your description alone, successfully sued for discrimination.
This is not perfectly normal in any professional setting. More and more often, it has real professional and legal consequences.
I would say hiring strippers and escorts for office parties is not "perfectly normal". I don't think that there would really need to be any other representation for that to be viewed negatively.
If your office has a place to sleep, your company is probably taking advantage of you. If it's renting strippers, it's probably a pretty misogynist culture, as well.
Sounds like an exhausting and terrible place to work, frankly.
I am not sure why everyone should feel comfortable with everyone else's choices. Do people think everyone should like the movie that most people are going for ?
How people feel is irrelevant; but based on federal law, the US Constitution, whatever local laws there may be & decades of judicial precedent, what you describe would expose any US employer to an enormous amount of liability. Its not normal or legal--& it can be very expensive.
Sorry. I do not think people commenting on some document has anything to do with democracy that might be mob or troll rule but it isn't democracy (not that I am a fan of democracy either).
Personally I agree with FCC's stand and keeping governments and elites who want everyone else to pay more for their "fair use" out of the equation looks like a good thing for me. I don't have time to comment on that document because I agree with administration.
It's a shame you're being downvoted for sharing your opinion. Personally I think you're delusional, but it's not like downvotes are going to change your mind.
Thanks for being a voice of reason and free speech. I also do not agree in the slightest with the OP, but non the less being down-voted to hell is a bit harsh imho.
That is not how democracy should work. We should counter his (missing) arguments. Sadly he/she/it did not provide anything substantial on that one could base a valid argument.
> Thanks for being a voice of reason and free speech. I also do not agree in the slightest with the OP, but non the less being down-voted to hell is a bit harsh imho.
> We should counter his (missing) arguments. Sadly he/she/it did not provide anything substantial on that one could base a valid argument.
The last part is really the point though, isn't it?
"Free speech" is continually misused, in the sense that people expect everyone else to listen to mad ramblings. Presenting a "counterpoint" (on whichever platform/venue/outlet) in the quest to be fair when the original point is simply a fact isn't fair coverage, it's pandering to lunacy.
Sorry for the harsh language, but that's fucking ridiculous in this context.
Free speech? Free speech doesn't exist so that people can make ridiculous comments like 'taking comments from the public into account when making policy is mob rule'. Free speech exists so that people can make those comments on policy and have them heard.
You're wrong too --- but only in my opinion. What free speech really "exists for" is hard to pin down[1].
It's actually an interesting legal perspective. These are unelected officials, appointed by an indirectly elected official (albeit confirmed by directly elected ones) interacting directly with the public. It's a bizarre reversal of the Jeffersonian republic, like a direct democracy nested deep inside a republic. The fact that the poster is totally wrong does not alone make the idea worth censoring.
If you don't listen to people who disagree with you, how can you hope to engage them in debate? Case in point: you got downvoted so many times you were [flagged] and [dead], and I vouched for you. 1) You didn't deserve it. 2) I wanted to bring you back so I could make the point that, under your idea of free speech, you'd still be [dead].
> Free speech? Free speech doesn't exist so that people can make ridiculous comments like 'taking comments from the public into account when making policy is mob rule'. Free speech exists so that people can make those comments on policy and have them heard.
You are flat out WRONG.
Free speech exists for all sort of speech including mocking, ridiculing and being outright stupid and retarded too.
> Free speech exists so that people can make those comments on policy and have them heard.
Free speech has nothing to do with policy, government, state or laws. It is an independent right that exists for no specific purpose other than itself.
And in this case it appears to be "free speech for you as long as you voice your support for me".
I am the OP. I don't even bother to look at downvotes and the fact that an opinion is unpopular does not really say anything about the merits of the argument.
I am pretty sure HN crowd will hound anyone who claims to agree with FCC on this point which I do.
One thing that can ease the pain of death is by probably discussing the benefits of it.
I wish people could sell their organs after their death. Putting grandkids through college or paying for the mortgage etc. could make it easier for people to talk about death.
In the end, is it truly that much different than the prevailing economic structure disproportionately forcing the poor into high-risk or hard-labor occupations that result in significantly degraded lifespan and/or quality of life?
Putting organs on the market might make certain ethical dilemmas about economic inequality more obvious to the casual bystander, but the same sort of ethical quandaries are already structurally woven into the global economic system.
>In the end, is it truly that much different than the prevailing economic structure disproportionately forcing the poor into high-risk or hard-labor occupations that result in significantly degraded lifespan and/or quality of life?
It's not different at all. We're not different from the Aztecs: our economy has become an elaborate system of human sacrifice to false gods.
Putting organs on the market will make those existing structural ethical dilemmas (which I fulminate about here pretty regularly, going back a long time) more obvious because it makes them worse. Making things worse is not, in my experience, the first step in making things better. How many innocent people do you propose to sacrifice on the altar of your intellect in order to persuade the 'casual bystanders' to adopt your position?
This sounds little different than the failed Marxist strategy of 'sharpening the contradictions of capitalism' in hopes of awakening class consciousness among the proletariat. Your eschatology seems to suffer from some glaring ethical flaws from where I'm sitting.
There's only one place I'm aware of on earth where organs can be sold: Iran. Here's an interview with an economist who helped set up that market, which does seem to function fairly efficiently and has some safeguards in place to prevent coersion.
> In the end, is it truly that much different than the prevailing economic structure disproportionately forcing the poor into high-risk or hard-labor occupations that result in significantly degraded lifespan and/or quality of life?
You are right but I am unable to see why might think it is bad. Poor people taking more risks to come out of poverty is very natural and should be encouraged. Why do you think I left my homeland, left my parents, friends and Gods to come to Silicon Valley ?
If you are not going to allow poor people to take risks and make hard choices you are keeping them in perpetual poverty.
You're taking risks to advance your own economic power by serving the interests of a system that is an aspect of the very thing that keeps you poor int he first place. Liberation is something that begins in the mind, not the pocketbook; economics is a useful theory but it's far from being a totalizing philosophy.
> rich leeches to force poor people into "voluntary" deaths
What is wrong in rich people parting their wealth to help poor people while benefiting their family members ?
The voluntary part however is very important and in a country like USA that part can generally be achieved much better than say India or China. Give instant green-cards to the family members of organ donors from India and China instantly and USA will not have a problem of organ donation queue while helping millions of Chinese and Indian people live a better life.
I'm sure Indian and Chinese people must be delighted by the prospect of being 'voluntary' livestock to produce meat to replace the failing body parts of wealthy Americans, and that no financial or emotional pressure will be brought to bear on anyone to participate.
While it might sound bad to you for millions of Indians and Chinese it is totally worth a Kidney. As long as they are making that choice themselves I do not see the problem.
> What's wrong is that life and health should be a right to everybody, not just to those who can buy it out.
I am unable to see how life and health can be right without justifying force and violence. If someone needs a Kidney and if it is a right then it must be forcibly taken from someone else without that you can not call it a right.
>I am unable to see how life and health can be right without justifying force and violence. If someone needs a Kidney and if it is a right then it must be forcibly taken from someone else without that you can not call it a right.
Or you know, it can be either taken from a donations pool where everybody has access to, or the person may just not have it.
Prioritizing the rich to live is not really ethical in my book.
I paid off my mortgage by 44, and I don't have kids. Who is going to want my 78.94 year old organs?
My personal feeling is that if humans would quit wasting their time bullshitting on the Internet all day, and we figured out a way to collectively be more productive, we could cure cancer, create artificial organs, extend life by a few healthy decades, eliminate poverty, etc then die peacefully in our sleep around 120.
I have no idea how we could accomplish this, but I have notice over the years, that we seem to repeatedly have the same conversations, and they don't add anything to our understanding or advancement in any way.
> "My personal feeling is that if humans would quit wasting their time bullshitting on the Internet all day, and we figured out a way to collectively be more productive, we could cure cancer, create artificial organs, extend life by a few healthy decades, eliminate poverty"
You just wasted time on the internet telling people not to waste time on the...internet. Let's not take from the importance of the internet and how much we accomplished in the past years just from being able to ask strangers about our problems and receive answers...among many other things.
You can't add/multiply intelligence. Even if 1,000,000 researches work on curing cancer compared to 1,000 it might still be solved around the same time. In other words, putting 1000 people bad at math together in a room doesn't mean they are going to bring any new algorithm out.
It's all a symbiotic process and things need to move in all directions just so you can tackle certain issues at the right time with the right tools.
Yes, I get that every time I make the observation. I waste a lot of time on the Internet too, much less than in the past. i'm certainly as guilty as the next person. However, I'm trying to be more self-aware about it. Thirty years ago I thought all the Internet conversation would amount to more.
I didn't offer a solution to the problem. I simply threw it out there for others to ponder. Yeah, I know i'll get a bunch of answers that start with "you can't..."
Still, collectively we waste a lot of time, which i see as untapped potential. We're going to get self-driving cars and we'll probably just get an early start on HN.
Finally, the observation that you missed as you rushed to tell me that I was wasting time too, and it can't work because... is that we need to collectively figure out a way to capture the wasted time of millions of people.
Thirty years ago I thought all the Internet conversation would amount to more.
Thirty years ago (reading Marc Stiegler's book "David's Sling" [1]), I expected that the Internet would enable us to more effectively communicate, and enable us collectively to make better and smarter decisions as a society.
And... that's not exactly what happened. We've instead made it even easier to find groups of people who will reinforce our existing beliefs, and easily exclude inconvenient truths. Sigh
The Internet does make information easy to get. It is truly wonderful in that regard.
What I was expecting with the Internet is that it would lead to a widespread increase in correct beliefs and (eventually) wisdom as well.
Certainly, some individuals do use the increased information availability to great benefit. But this isn't nearly as widespread as I predicted and hoped it would be.
> is that we need to collectively figure out a way to capture the wasted time of millions of people.
This is the topic worth discussing. The time I spent on HN e.g. today, bitching about Uber, would not likely contribute anything to curing cancer if I were doing anything else with it. It would be great to have more ways to capture little amounts of unskilled effort from many people and channel them into something good. But besides working more to give more to charity, I'm out of ideas.
I'm with you 100% on this. I often think of what the human race is technically and intellectually capable of accomplishing right now, if only the incentive / will / organization existed.
> Professor James Neuberger, associate medical director of NHS Blood and Transplant, said: "The belief that there is some sort of age limit on becoming an organ donor is a complete myth.
> "Organs are successfully transplanted from people in their 70s and 80s, and the oldest cornea donor recorded was 104 years old.
I agree with your sentiment that people should talk about benefits to dying. But your comment really says a lot about where the United States is at as a society. Selling organs to put grandkids through college. Wow.
I have value in life, why can't I have value in death? While I'm living, I am free to give the results of my value to anyone I choose. Why not in death?
The problem with this is that today, individually, it may seem like a worthwile thing to do with your dying body. Fast-forward 20+ years, and it'll become expected part of life, and college funding will become conditioned on grandparents dying early enough.
You generally don't want to start going that road.
That is a very valid concern. But your concern also has an answer.
> Fast-forward 20+ years, and it'll become expected part of life,
Yes. I think people will probably have a reverse mortgage like thing where they will be able to borrow (but lot less) money today with a promise that they will have to donate their kidney when the time comes. People with certain ethnicity, blood group, genetic makeup etc. will become more valuable and hence will be able to derive more value and hence "rare type" will stop being rare type. This is a great outcome.
At the moment rich people from developed countries hunt for organ donors in Mexico, China, India and Africa bringing a lot of misery to those countries and money for the politicians and smugglers. Do you really like little Indian kids kept in a basement forever only to be killed like chickens later for their organs ? Or would you like to see the American justice system being applied to maximise individual freedom with full protection of law ?
Your argument is fallacious. You allude to indian children being held in awful conditions for organ harvesting so as to hold people emotionally hostage to your proposal, but the outcome you refer to to is not an inevitability but the result of a moral and political failure on the parts of the actors involved. You are in effect absolving them of ethical responsibility by saying they can't help it because they are powerless to resist the temptation to make all that money so we should just accept that it's going to happen unless we create a market for it.
They are not powerless to resist the ethical incentives. They are ethically corrupt and your implicitly endorsing their corrupt behavior by treating it as an inevitability that is better commercialized than eliminated.
There's an argument about what they should do vs. what we can actually make them do. If we can make those people behave ethically, great. But if we can't? Sometimes it's easier to make bad things unprofitable and let their own lack of ethics steer them away from doing bad things.
That's fine for things like victimless crimes, but less so where the activity we're considering commercializing involves inflicting an injury on one party by removing one or more of their organs. I'll cut to the chase by saying I'm a deontologist rather than a utilitarian.
In any case, it seems far more likely that some combination of medical technologies is likely to lead to lab-grown organs before the establishment of a fleshy stock exchange.
Didn't think of that this way. You make an interesting observation; I need to think more about it because I still feel like there might be big market failures in such a system. I'm worried about ways people could be coerced into dying "before their time".
Personally, I hope genetics will soon advance to the point the organs can be grown, thus rendering the whole issue moot.
It was the sell organs to pay for college that I was referring to. What a terrible society to live in where people think this reasonable. Perhaps society should just properly fund college education so that the harvesting of organs from people isn't considered reasonable.
How about harvesting organs so the kids could use that money to create their next Javascript based startup ? Should the society then also fund their Startup ?
College education is an example. People will spend resources on whatever they think is useful. Who are we to judge ?
People are free to spend on what they want, within the bounds of the law. I think you fail to see how badly society is doing when selling organs to pay for education seems reasonable. Education is a public good. A startup is not. Education is something that reasonable societies provide for its citizens.
We've gone so far away from proper notions of the purpose and meaning of a society that people are talking about selling organs to pay for public goods. I'm not talking about your proposal to sell organs. It's your proposal to do something so drastic to pay for something so basic.
I am an Indian citizen I am not American. Indians (and Hindus specifically) see death as merely one transition.
I find it weird that we are denying poor people an excellent opportunity to pull their family out of poverty instantly even after an unfortunate event. Here we are using nature's forces to force the "rich leeches" (as one person wrote above) to part with their wealth and help the poor family.
At the moment rich Americans fly to India and China where gangs (and government) illegally harvest organs for the benefit of world rich. If USA regulates the organ trade within USA we can avoid all that misery for poor Indians.
I suggest you want the Indian movie Ship of Theseus which dwelves on this topic.
You miss my point. The U.S. is a wealthy nation. Our notions of society, shared burdens, shared responsibilities has degraded so far that people are talking about harvesting their organs to pay for the education of their progeny. Reasonable societies that are wealthy provide education to their citizens. The concept of selling your organs to pay your child's education ought to be derided and unthinkable in a nation as wealthy as the U.S. Public goods should be paid for by the public (generally speaking).
My point has nothing to do with organ harvesting. It has to do with the U.S. being dysfunctional as a society that organ harvesting for something as basic as education is being talked about.
If it's such a great idea, why don't you set it up for Indian people in India and see how that goes first? Why do you think it's more appropriate to create the market within the richest country in order to attract would-be donors from the poor countries? It might be worth pointing out that the philosophical trend in western society has historically been about moving away from institutional caste systems and toward one of equalization. I really suggest that you expand your understanding of Western mores before making further proposals to market the living bodies of your erstwhile compatriots.
Good grief, is there nothing that people won't try to make into a commercial transaction? You won't cling to life any more effectively by making one last sale.
This sort of argument always seems eerily reminiscent of the King's morality advisor in the fable of the dragon-tyrant [1]. I don't think most people can grapple with thinking about the benefits of their own demise, much less accept that dying is ultimately the "better" option. I also don't think such a perspective is wrong.
I wish people could sell their organs after their death. Putting grandkids through college or paying for the mortgage etc. could make it easier for people to talk about death.
We're not ready to accept that money means life or death. Two people on waiting list for transplants: one has the money, the other doesn't.
Of course the person with the money still can go to another state /country and try to get in a smaller waiting list
And why is that a surprise ? The public schooling in USA has widely distorted the housing market creating ghettos where similar people will get clubbed together.
How is this a US problem? Everywhere I've ever visited, and I've been to as many countries as I have States, has quote on quote:
"Widely distorted the housing market creating ghettos where similar people will get clubbed together."
I think they call them neighborhoods. Rich people live in nicer houses than other people. Pretty sure it's been like this since one caveman had a bigger cave with bigger rocks to throw.
Sacasim aside I really think we need a national school system. In Georgia it varies by counties. Some counties compete on a national level others are dead last in the nation, if we aren't counting Mississippi.
You can certainly have flat spending per pupil independent of location. Which means that many inner city school districts get less money than they do today and many affluent suburbs get more.
I lived in a slum in India and went to a private school that catered to poor kids. Got scholarship and worked my way up to start living into a high-rise. The private school had a big role to play in it.
That is not possible for low income neighbourhoods for USA anymore. The mindless regulations make private schools expensive. It is not possible for a retired school teacher to run a class-room in a garage at night and call it a school. That teacher will end up in jail and sex offenders registry. The poor hispanic neighbourhoods of south San Jose will have to rely on the pathetic public schools and those schools will ensure their students flip burgers. Those kids will find it hard to move to Palo Alto.
Public schools not only distort the housing markets but they feed into that evil spiral of poverty. I would love to see department of education dismantled completely and money given to kids to chose their schools of choice and let entrepreneurs make money by catering to the needs of all kids.
India is/was a socialist state and I would expect social services to be spread more evenly than non-socialist countries. I also believe mobility is easier in developing nations and was better to some extent right after the Industrial Revolution and workers rights movements.
I am confused by your arguments. You're saying abolish public schools. Great idea then we could create pillar schools where only the elites attend like Yale and Harvard. Then the poor people will have to take out loans from the elite to attend good High Schools. Oh wait.
I'm a product of mobility. My father grew up in rural government housing in Georgia. Thankfully he went to GaTech and stayed in an environment with good public schools.
> India is/was a socialist state and I would expect social services to be spread more evenly than non-socialist countries. I also believe mobility is easier in developing nations and was better to some extent right after the Industrial Revolution and workers rights movements.
Saying "India is a socialist state" is, well, technically correct (it's in the Constitution) but a pretty misleading way to characterize the sort of social mobility in India that GP was talking about.
India is home to the longest-running continuously-serving democratically elected Communist government in the entire world. It's also home to what could be considered borderline anarcho-capitalist metropolises that are larger than many European countries.
As it turns out, the sort of mobility that GP is talking about is very rare in the states led by Communist and socialist parties, which have generally struggled economically[0]. It's most prevalent in the states (and cities) where the leftist governments never took hold, or where they were elected, but carried out very little of their vision in practice.
In any case, the scale of mobility and economic growth experienced in the economic hotspots of India (Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore) has been made possible by the end of imperial colonialism, and the concurrent rise of a global economy. No developed country like the US will ever be able to experience that same level of rapid growth.
[0] There is one exception, though in that state, 33% of the state's GDP comes from foreign remittances (mostly from expatriates living in the Gulf), which is incredibly high, and higher than any other state. There is definitely an object-lesson in mobility to be learned there, but it's not the sort of mobility GP was referring to.
Compare you're localized (hotspot) mobility to what the West experienced at the end of the 1800s. China is a much better example and I dislike China.
You're saying I am technically correct about India being socialist.
The reason India has mobility is the same reason black markets or black economies exist in Communist countries. Where there is a lack of government or public services, black markets will form to fill the gap, capitalism. See USSR, Yugoslavia, and North Korea. Difference is India seems to allow it. There is another comment below about staring schools in a garage for poor people. From what I've seen India has these shadow schools.
I think you missed my line
> I went to a private school that catered to poor kids.
I did not go to a public school. No one I knew went to a public school because they suck everywhere like in every socialist society. India is indeed a constitutionally socialist country.
> You're saying abolish public schools.
I do not see why government should run schools. People can run better schools than government. Government must also abolish most of the regulations that require schools to have playgrounds or toilets or some other things that are not the focus of education.
The school I went to ran in an abandoned building and did not have electricity. That is how the costs were low and I could afford to go there. The teachers however were good.
> Thankfully he went to GaTech and stayed in an environment with good public schools.
That is a sad choice every American parent has to make today. I don't see why your father could not get a check of $X every month and let him send you to whatever school you wanted to go.
I am not sure I agree with you. I grew up pretty poor in India, and there were hardly ANY private schools that cater to the poor. Private schools were expensive and public schools in India are a joke. As a result almost all of the poor families I know dropped out of schools and never completed beyond middle school. I love public schooling in the US. It at least provides an opportunity for poor kids to complete schooling. An education system purely relying on private schooling will be a complete disaster like India's, where poor students simply giving up on education, creating generational poor.
> It at least provides an opportunity for poor kids to complete schooling.
It is other way round actually. What I can see is that in areas like Palo Alto where Asian parents figuratively hold Principal's feet to fire the good teachers get transferred there. The South of San Jose on other hand gets all the worse teachers where the poor parents don't have much time to wonder about the quality of teachers.
Those kids are perpetually into poverty because of the lousy education. Give them a check of $500 month for schooling and they will chose better schools.
> Private schools were expensive and public schools in India are a joke.
The quality of education in private schools is higher and the expensive part is related to that. However in terms of "cost to society" private schools are way cheaper than public schools.
To give you concrete numbers. Goa spends 40K per student per year but a private school that spends 8k per student per year delivers better result. Goa could afford to educate 5 kids with better education only if the money was given to the kid or the private school.
> An education system purely relying on private schooling will be a complete disaster like India's, where poor students simply giving up on education, creating generational poor.
It conflicts with what you are saying. Private schools have better retention and better outcomes. Public schools are where students drop out. Don't you think if we have more students going to public schools more students will give up on education ?
I think you misinterpreted what I was saying a little bit. If you have only private schools that are not affordable to a significant portion of the population, then you will have an uneducated population. A well funded, and well run public education system actually works pretty well.
> A well funded, and well run public education system actually works pretty well.
Not it does not. Public schools by definition will be run by government which will always be incompetent and provide worse education. A typical public school in India spends 5x the money to achieve lower learning outcomes that private schools.
> If you have only private schools that are not affordable to a significant portion of the population,
Unless government creates regulations that prevents people from starting schools for poor people there will be more and better private schools for poor people as they are now.
The problem is local funding for schooling I think. If funding was state level or federal and funds would be allocated to schools that need it - I.e. schools with poor students (less help from home, perhaps language issues) will be given a lot more funding per student.
Without this, what happens is that affluent people move to good school districts. These districts then get students with better academic backgrounds, fewer parents with drug/legal problems, fewer students with lanugage problems. Its pretty obvious to be a system that spirals out of control in just a few generations, creating segregated patches.
But perhaps this is how the support for the public school system is upheld? Rich people accept the system, because they can game it? If that's the case then it might be a necessary evil. Politically viable alternatives such as voucher systems will create the same effect (I know from experience).
Without looking into any statistics I can bet that Asian dominated Santa Clara will have much higher life expectancy than Alameda which has different racial profile mostly with low wage (H1Bs etc) Asian population. Merced which is highly Hispanic will be scraping the bottom.
I don't think there is anything wrong in people making handsome bonuses out of this. In fact apriori I would love to invest in those companies. It is mostly the law firms I suppose.
I am not playing down the possible harassment of any employee but let us not be blinded by the allegations alone either.