throwaway_law (u/throwaway_law)

throwaway_law commented on Being a good guy boss left me £1.2m in debt bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan... · Posted by u/dustinmoris

rtkwe · 6 years ago

> and they should not be allowed to pull from the pension fund, they have to pull from their own money.

What's the pension's own money here? Everything they manage should nominally be part of the fund owed to their retirees. Where do you propose they actually draw money from?

throwaway_law · 6 years ago

The pension are presumably insured to cover their negligence and liabilities...including failure to properly notice employers/members of the fund in breach of their duty to do so, which resulted in damages. Otherwise it comes directly from the pension (which isn't just a fund made up of employer contributions, it is a business entity that takes fees from the fund itself)

throwaway_law commented on Being a good guy boss left me £1.2m in debt bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan... · Posted by u/dustinmoris

jermaustin1 · 6 years ago

It seems like the governments officials overseeing the scheme don't see anything wrong with Section 75:

> The Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said the rules were in place to ensure schemes were adequately funded.

> He said: "We have a duty to protect members in their retirement, ensure schemes are properly funded and work with those employers who remain in a multi-employer scheme.

It seems like a giant clusterf*ck was introduced in 2005.

1. It wasn't properly communicated to anyone

2. There was a loophole that allowed a company to exit the pension for £1

3. The remaining businesses to cover the share of the deficit for everyone who had exited the scheme.

4. Most of these businesses didn't learn of the deficit until 2016, a decade after the the new math went into effect.

If the pension didn't do their duty to warn businesses of the deficit in 2005, it should be on their heads to fund the deficit, and they should not be allowed to pull from the pension fund, they have to pull from their own money.

Had these businesses known 10 years ago, they could have been paying all along an increased pension rate for their employees.

throwaway_law · 6 years ago

>If the pension didn't do their duty to warn businesses of the deficit in 2005, it should be on their heads to fund the deficit

The irony is the Pension claimed they couldn't notice the employers at the time (which would have given the opportunity to buy out for 1 Euro) because they would have had to research the contact info for thousands of employers...yet the Pension seems to have no problem doing the research now and noticing these employers of their Million+ Euro liabilities.

throwaway_law commented on How to Build an Income Sharing Agreement Product moderntreasury.com/journa... · Posted by u/saarons

Mirioron · 6 years ago

But if that's truly the case then shouldn't people not go to college? If there aren't enough benefits then people should be able to realize that, no?

throwaway_law · 6 years ago

a Job isn't the only benefit of an education...an education is a benefit in and of itself. Society benefits from having an educated public. Society does not benefit from being in debt.

Your logic is as follows: if college degree doesn't get a job, then don't go to college.

Your logic breaks down because not going to college isn't going to get you a job either.

throwaway_law commented on How to Build an Income Sharing Agreement Product moderntreasury.com/journa... · Posted by u/saarons

Mirioron · 6 years ago

At first you mention how higher education doesn't get you a good job anymore, but then you mention support for a candidate who will make college free. Don't you see the contradiction here? The reason college graduates have difficulty finding good jobs compared to the past is because so many people have a degree. Even if you forgive all of the student loans and make college free, people still won't find jobs based on college. College might not even get you anywhere because it'll become a default requirement for every job. There will be some other criteria used instead and somebody's probably going to make money off of that too.

There just aren't enough jobs that require the qualifications of English literature majors or similar.

throwaway_law · 6 years ago

>Even if you forgive all of the student loans and make college free, people still won't find jobs based on college.

Having educated unemployed people is bad yes, but its an infinite improvement on millions of educated unemployed people saddled with debt they will never in their life times be able to pay off.

throwaway_law commented on Friended is a new social network that wants to get real techcrunch.com/2019/11/05... · Posted by u/nevaben

pavel_lishin · 6 years ago

Oh yeah, you're absolutely right. I don't think they can deliver on what they're promising.

throwaway_law · 6 years ago

I know its unfair and maybe even disparaging, especially my suggestion they would seed their own thing with bots...but the reality is the social network/SV startup well has been poisoned and so it would be my (our) own fault not to approach these things with a ton of skepticism.

>Today, a new social app is launching. Called Friended...Friended has raised a $500K seed round from investors...

That is what it is all about.

throwaway_law commented on Friended is a new social network that wants to get real techcrunch.com/2019/11/05... · Posted by u/nevaben

pavel_lishin · 6 years ago

> Just to send messages to people?

That's not what they're selling people. They're selling people a solution to loneliness.

throwaway_law · 6 years ago

>They're selling people a solution to loneliness.

I'll one up you, they are selling hope. Odds are this will be seeded with a bunch of bots, and these lonely people may or maynot get some sense of temporary relief thinking they are interacting privately with someone else, when its really just a bot.

throwaway_law commented on Flint’s Children Suffer in Class After Years of Drinking the Lead-Poisoned Water nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us... · Posted by u/pseudolus

sokoloff · 6 years ago

OK, so when the reporter specifically asks him if he'd drink the water in front of him, what's his least bad option? If he makes the speech he does, saying "I don't do stunts" asserting its safety and takes a sip, he's handling the situation as gracefully and productively as he can.

If instead he starts in with a lecture about how it's cumulative exposure, affects children more severely, and that is why he won't take a drink as a publicity stunt, he knows that all that will be reported is "Obama refuses to drink Flint water!"

This wasn't a planned stunt in my estimation (unless you think the reporter was "in on it").

throwaway_law · 6 years ago

>OK, so when the reporter specifically asks him if he'd drink the water in front of him, what's his least bad option?

Probably to laugh and say instead of "trying the water" he will see the water is sent to a lab for proper scientific testing and the results published to the public.

throwaway_law commented on “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups andrewchen.co/x-for-y-sta... · Posted by u/motiw

jandrese · 6 years ago

A more direct question would be "Why should a potential customer choose you over $established_competitor_x?"

If your best answer is "We are adding diversity to the marketplace", then you're probably doomed. If you aren't better in some way (faster, cheaper, better tech, etc...) then people are going to naturally gravitate towards the incumbent who has already shown some staying power and has infrastructure in place that you do not.

throwaway_law · 6 years ago

>If your best answer is "We are adding diversity to the marketplace", then you're probably doomed. If you aren't better in some way (faster, cheaper, better tech, etc...)

We have seen it over and over in tech though...some small time founder starts something and then a VC back startup eats their lunch and takes the market (of course rewriting history along the way to say they invented/disrupted the market).

The sad truth is the answer to why a customer will choose us over established competitor is because...VC capital/your money. We will use VC capital/your money to out spend/out market our competitor because they can only grow as fast as their revenue, whereas we can artificially grow using your VC money, even to the point we can subsidize the price of our widget which the established competitor can't, we will grow our market share, even if at a loss because at any time we can "flip the switch and its all profit."

throwaway_law commented on Uber Sinks to New Record Low as IPO Share Lockup Expires bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

tempsy · 6 years ago

It's still a 45B company...still the largest and most successful company to come out of SF this decade.

throwaway_law · 6 years ago

>still the largest and most successful company to come out of SF this decade.

That's a lot less reflective of UBER and more reflective of the type of startups SV is trying to take public. Look at any other SV Unicorn that IPO'd...take Twitter that IPO'd in 2013, it turned a profit one year since going public.

throwaway_law commented on How to Build an Income Sharing Agreement Product moderntreasury.com/journa... · Posted by u/saarons

pmiller2 · 6 years ago

Regarding student loans, yes, you are technically correct that they are dischargable in bankruptcy. However, the standard for federal student loans is that the borrower must be in a situation where there’s literally no hope of ever paying them back in order to qualify. This makes them _de facto_ nondischargable.

Private loans, IIRC, are dischargable with a lower standard, but it escapes me what the standard actually is.

throwaway_law · 6 years ago

>This makes them _de facto_ nondischargable.

I have gotten student loans ($100k+) discharged for clients.

My experience is most people who say student loans are not dischargable have never gone through bankruptcy and have no idea what the process is to discharge regular debts nor student loans. This is true of even some lawyers, who are more than happy to take your fee, but don't know what they are actually doing.