Author: Joel Gross

Joel Gross is the CEO of Coalition Technologies.

On Spanking

Washington state law on corporal punishment of children (check your own nation or country as applicable):
Use of force on children—Policy—Actions presumed unreasonable.
It is the policy of this state to protect children from assault and abuse and to encourage parents, teachers, and their authorized agents to use methods of correction and restraint of children that are not dangerous to the children.
… read more “On Spanking”

Tesla Stock Valuation Question

Disclosure: I don’t own any Tesla and am not short Tesla… no affiliation in any way.

Question from my friend: “Thoughts on Tesla?”

My answer: “Vastly overpriced, sell it if you own it.
GM did $137b revenue last year and has a $60b market cap. Each $1 of market cap buys $2 revenue.
Tesla did $25b revenue last year and has a $768b market cap.… read more “Tesla Stock Valuation Question”

The most important problem of our time

How can we dismantle calcified, bad institutions? Special interests fight as hard as possible to prevent the dismantling of institutions that are either outdated, have failed, or are just inefficient compared to other possibilities.

It used to be that bad corporations would end up in bankruptcy and would be dismantled and make room for better new companies.… read more “The most important problem of our time”

Building Better Company Tools

—— Important principles to understand
I used to work as a Business Analyst and do not feel that a person in that role knows enough about either side (programming or the needs of the user) to be effective.
A programmer working alone and just doing the requests he sees coming from a user is somewhat effective, but often misses key principles and ideas about how things could work, and cannot recommend the ideas that only a programmer would understand because he doesn’t know those user principles.… read more “Building Better Company Tools”

How to avoid Griffin or Kate dying

A letter to my wife.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsr1804754#:~:text=When%20we%20examined%20all%20deaths,20%25%3B%202469%20of%2012%2C336).

  1. Automobile accidents… as much as possible, don’t drive them around. Don’t let them ride with others. 20% of deaths.
  2. Firearm accidents (59% homicide, 35% suicide, 4% unintentional). 15% of total deaths. Never let them touch guns without intensive supervision and training. Have gun safes that even a teenager or adult cannot crack.
… read more “How to avoid Griffin or Kate dying”

How to protect against predatory privatized prisons

I think prisons are a serious problem both on the public side and private side. Unfortunately, private prisons tend to be even worse than public ones. My suggestion for private prisons would be to set up a nationwide prison system based on rewarding prisons based on their recidivism rate, the average market pay of prisoners who are released, and most importantly – allow the prisoners to select the prison company of their choice.… read more “How to protect against predatory privatized prisons”