Readit Newswickedwiesel commented on German Bundestag Passes Cannabis Legalization bundestag.de/dokumente/te... · Posted by u/2-718-281-828
The EU regulation was the central obstacle. It does not allow for commercial legalization of Cannabis beyond small trial projects. Originally, commercial legalization was the core of the German proposal, but it had to be revamped to only private and non-profit legalization because of legal concerns connected with EU law.
I am not a legal expert but I read that the case of the Netherlands proves this to be at least partially wrong. Retail sale is legal. Some municipalities have legalized supply chains.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-11/the-nethe...
> "Why is it not fine when a company is more or less breaking even but paying good salaries to its employees?"
Do you have a retirement plan that contains stock or get any options/stock grants as part of your compensation? Those shares are your ownership stake in corporations and your retirement quite directly depends on those shares increasing in price faster than inflation.
Your point is valid but also quite obvious. As soon as you own stock you will want them to increase in valuation. My point is a different one. Publicly traded stock companies have very specific (growth) and often bad (growth, disregarding other impact) incentives.
Other forms of ownership can provide a stake for talented employees and safeguard their financial Fortune. I believe a cooperative may better align everyone’s incentives for example.
> Why is it not fine when a company is more or less breaking even but paying good salaries to its employees?
Because this ignores reality. Especially at FAANG companies, growth is expected and the majority of compensation is stock. If you stop growing, and stop having a profit, your stock tanks, and future compensation - as well as compensation from years prior that is still in the form of company stock - becomes worth much less. You can't hire people who are as good because you're "in decline." Your products falter because talent leaves and you can't find new talent. Even if all the above is imagined (it's not) you now have real impacts in terms of declining application quality and shrinking user bases.
I was trying to point out that not every company ownership model is a publicly traded stock company. Your point is totally valid in the context you give.
One underlying problem with these PIP type programs at FAANG seems to be that they have very high barriers to entry in the interview process, and then act like 30% of the company is underperforming and subject to an annual 6% cull.
There are industries & companies that have grown fat & lazy and could use a few annual 6% culls, but you eventually run out of fat. If you have a very competitive interview process and high compensation to attract the best talent, it is unlikely you have so many underperformers lying about to cull annually.
So really it's overhiring BS that is then getting taken out on employees. Given that, I think as has been pointed out by another commenter - the old Wall St model of doing one cut in one afternoon, calling people into an office and giving a severance is far more humane. Everyone understood it was about the numbers not about your performance, generally. Seems better than year round psychological torture of being at risk of a PIP, and then if being put on one knowing the most likely outcome is being fired. So you feel dragged through the mud and then having doubly failed (put on PIP & failed the PIP).
I knew a guy who moved from Wall St to Amazon and described the performance management / compensation system to be pretty rough and had explicitly described the compensation cliff and how a lot of people in the good years were proactively leaving, cooling off, and then coming back to reset the compensation instead of going over the cliff.
I know you are sharing some interesting observations, but can we all stop talking about employees as the "fat" of companies and firing of employees as "culls".
> underperformers lying about to cull
is not just bad wording. By definition, there will always be underperformers. A profitable company only has "too many" employees if you think it has to pay a larger dividend to its owners / shareholders or that future growth is mandatory.
Why is it not fine when a company is more or less breaking even but paying good salaries to its employees?
Before social media we had rap music glorifying criminal activity, 16 and pregnant and other assorted reality TV, before that we had old MTV and metal music that glorified hedonism, before that we had girl magazines with "impossible beauty standards", the pressure to wear make up, before that we had the sexual revolution... It seems that for every generation there has been something corrupting it. The older people get their panties in a wad and the younger people become more self destructive.
America just has a culture of pushing limits and often those limits were there for a reason. Chesterton's fence and all that. All this social upheaval and people aren't happy. So much progress and everyone seems to be more and more miserable. So what is the solution? Ban Instagram filters? Make self esteem our golden bull? Begin goose stepping? I don't think anyone knows, and we are all just looking for someone to blame.
There is solid research out there suggesting that this is different. Large n, several years, multiple countries all pointing to all increase in tune with the advent of visual social media (Instagram, TikTok - not Facebook or WhatsApp). The time series analysis makes this not merely correlational.
I point to my sibling post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38201807
Visual social media like TikTok and instagram seem to be a different beast than TV, WhatsApp and other media.
> Clear and direct correlation between the rise in social media and teen mental health issues.
Correlation does not prove causation.
Check out this research https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34901571
It’s claiming exactly that: certain social media as a cause of mental health deterioration among teens especially girls
wickedwiesel commented on US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days asia.nikkei.com/Politics/... · Posted by u/baylearn
What still amazes me after 5 (?) years since Snowden's revelations it's how EU hasn't banned US social platforms yet.
Well, it kind of did. The EU's highest court, the European Court of Justice just passed its final ruling last month stating that the "Safe Harbor" agreements called Privacy Shield etc. that US companies use to be able to operate in the EU in compliance with EU privacy laws are inadequate given the widespread mass surveillance used by the US. [0]
That's not banning but it requires US companies to actually invest and change their modes of operation if they want to continue to operate in the EU without being fined.
[0]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/eu-court-again-rules-n...
wickedwiesel commented on Homeland Security Was Destined to Become a Secret Police Force newyorker.com/news/our-co... · Posted by u/jbegley
Related to these mysterious federal agents in unmarked cars, I've often wondered how private citizens are supposed to protect themselves against someone impersonating law enforcement.
In this case, the 'officers' were not even dressed as law enforcement, and either way, it is not very difficult to produce a reasonably convincing replica of a uniform. How can you make sure that you are dealing with actual law enforcement, when you submit yourself to them, they cuff you, take your stuff, drive you away, etc.?
"Can I see your badge?" doesn't seem very effective, given that a badge can easily be faked, but more importantly you'd probably, for good reason, be too afraid to even ask. Is America really such a police state now that you are just supposed to submit to anyone in a uniform? And does this not seem ripe for abuse to everyone else?
This might be interesting: how about a hundred years ago, a German Carpenter dressed up as a Prussian officer and got the local guards to hand over the town treasury. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23950138
"Walk without rhythm and it won't attract the worm."
https://youtu.be/iV2ViNJFZC8?feature=shared