“The number of pageviews on your website and the number of likes on your tweets are fun to look at and sound impressive, but optimizing for them completely misses the point if they don’t lead to something more important (e.g. profit).”
Profit is fun to look at and sounds impressive, but optimizing for it completely misses the point if it doesn't lead to something more important (e.g. human flourishing, or net societal gain)
Profit is useful. Views, likes and comments have zero value. That's why e-celebs with millions and millions of "followers" can't sell more than a dozen coffee mugs when they try to make money from it.
I had an interesting conversation with someone many years ago, possibly Brent Yorgey. We were thinking of arrays in quite different ways. To me, it was a data structure, with a specific memory layout: a contiguous block of memory containing a sequence of objects of all of the same size, specifically to support constant-time indexing. To him, it was an API, a mapping from non-negative numbers to values, and the underlying implementation could have been a hash table or whatever.
I think we're seeing a similar disconnect here. Some people think a string is a contiguous block of bytes, perhaps with a sentinel value on the end (C string) or a fixed-size count on the front. Others think of it as an API for storing text. These used to overlap, but in recent decades they have diverged substantially. The argument here is about the meaning of the word, not the technical reality of the thing it refers to, so it has no objective resolution.
It's just poor editing. The author started with one idea about the audience, before he realized that it might not be possible to write this article for that audience.
As far as I can tell the relevant statute is 31 USC §5112, and it does not require the minting of all authorized coins:
“(a) The Secretary of the Treasury *may mint* and issue only the following coins: ... (6) ... a one-cent coin that is 0.75 inch in diameter and weighs 3.11 grams.”
(Emphasis mine)
There may be another clause somewhere that requires the Treasury to issue all coins, but that seems unlikely to me. The _number_ of coins to issue of each type is left to the discretion of the Treasury; why wouldn't that include the option to issue none?
I addressed in another reply that "'none' is all that's necessary" is probably a defensible interpretation of the law (the more relevant portion being in 5111 rather than 5112), but the penny being explicitly listed makes it clearly not the intention of congress. That's why I said it's a "shaky" and not "baseless" legal ground. The law is clearly written with the expectation that there will be some, which is why Congress felt the need to pass the Coinage Act of 1857 to phase out the half cent.
I think we should get rid of the penny, but it's Congress's responsibility to do that, and they haven't. I'm opposed to Congress abdicating its power and responsibility like that.
5111(a)(1) says “shall mint and issue coins” but qualifies it explicitly with “in amounts the Secretary decides are necessary to meet the needs of the United States”. This is a clear delegation of authority.
If you don't think zero pennies is a permissible amount, what about one penny? Two? What minimum number are you arguing for here, and what's your justification for it?
If Congress had wanted to set a minimum number, they could have done so.
Reading it as ”shall mint” is wrong, I think. “Shall” qualifies the whole clause “mint in amounts the Secretary decides (etc.)”.
Understood that way, 5111 makes it unlawful to mint any pennies if the Secretary decides that none are necessary.
> If Congress had wanted to set a minimum number, they could have done so.
I don't think this is necessarily a sound argument. The current presidency is full of examples of aspects of laws being used in ways no president previously had. Those laws existed, but I don't think it follows that congress intended for those powers to exist.
If Congress had wanted to get rid of the penny, they would have done so, since they specifically have the power to “coin money” under Article 1, Section 8.
In fact they have introduced a bill to do just that, that has not passed yet, which means they have not done that.
Dennis Ritchie (co-inventor of the C programming language) had a page on his personal web site called “My other lives” with a list of other Dennis Ritchies.
“Outside of my main professional career, I have accumulated other WWW-recorded accomplishments and have other interests. Generally I pursue these interests using separate mail addresses, SS#, and DNA.”
Profit is fun to look at and sounds impressive, but optimizing for it completely misses the point if it doesn't lead to something more important (e.g. human flourishing, or net societal gain)
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