undefined | Better HN

0 pointsgiraffe_lady3y ago0 comments

Or haiti paying reparations to france until like 1950.

0 comments

These are rookie numbers!

Tom Scott has a video about bonds that are being serviced continuously for more than 370 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfSIC8jwbQs

kneebonian3y ago

Ya know it sounds funny but it seems to me that it is a fundamental principle they the larger a body of humans under consideration is, the slower everything will move. For example a small startup with 15 developers often is able to add features and move faster to capture a market than a massive lumbering blue behemoth.

Thus if we were to reframe our understanding of timelines considering organization size.

Less than a few hundred people could be measured in time scales of a few weeks.

Large organizations with thousands of people change and move on time scales of years or decades.

Then understandably nations would often move on the time scales of centuries to do things, simply because of inertial forces.

I wonder how much of the discontent and mudslinging that now happens is a result of everything in our personal lives suddenly becoming faster without the rest of the human organizations surrounding it being able to speed up as well.

vkou3y ago

It's not all that funny, considering that the reason they were paying those reparations was the 'damages' inflicted upon French slaveowners by slaves freeing themselves.

sofixa3y ago

It was all damages - lost property (land and slaves), deaths, lost profits, etc. It was a terrible but necessary sacrifice on the part of Haiti because it was the only way France would recognise their independence, which paved the way for other countries to do the same (but nobody was forthcoming on their own either out of fear of pissing of France or their own slaves/colonies rebelling).

1 more reply

concordDance3y ago

I thought there was also a lot of killing?

1 more reply

jazzyjackson3y ago

consider that some countries have a larger bureaucracy/democracy than others, it may be that dictatorships with few people in thr actual inner circle of power can adapt faster than those countries that have to persuade their constituency and find consensus before making a move.

flohofwoe3y ago

Well yeah, there's no doubt that dictatorships/autocracies are faster at implementing bad ideas. That's the whole point of democracies/bureaucracies: to have a chance to weed out the obviously bad ideas before people are harmed.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

cyberax3y ago

These are rookie numbers!

Tom Scott has a video about bonds that are being serviced continuously for more than 370 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfSIC8jwbQs

kneebonian3y ago

Thus if we were to reframe our understanding of timelines considering organization size.

Less than a few hundred people could be measured in time scales of a few weeks.

Large organizations with thousands of people change and move on time scales of years or decades.

Then understandably nations would often move on the time scales of centuries to do things, simply because of inertial forces.

vkou3y ago

It's not all that funny, considering that the reason they were paying those reparations was the 'damages' inflicted upon French slaveowners by slaves freeing themselves.

sofixa3y ago

1 more reply

concordDance3y ago

I thought there was also a lot of killing?

1 more reply

jazzyjackson3y ago

flohofwoe3y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse