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What Do We Do When the Internet Mob Is Wrong?
New submitter cornicefire writes "By now most people have heard the news and seen the picture of the boy who was killed over the new Nike sneakers. There are Facebook pages devoted to fist-shaking protests about materialism and greed. Yada yada yada. But while the scuffles over the shoes were real, the death was not. The photo was just a stock photo of some kid in a lab. We know this because of some old school reporters — Steve Earley and Justin Fentin of the Baltimore Sun. In the rush to celebrate crowdsourcing, many of us pooh-pooh the old media as 'gatekeepers,' but there are times when keeping that gate locked is a good idea. After all, if one of the crowd discovered the error, the signal would barely rise above the noise. There are people claiming that anyone questioning the facts is being disrespectful. Is there something we can do about the mobocracy? How can we support the best traditions of journalism while fixing the worst? How can we nurture accuracy?"
Nurturing accuracy will require a cultural change, from our schools up.
You should be out selling them hot dogs. That's what mobs are for.
Deleted
We had a similar event earlier this year near where I live. A kid, in that case, did die. Everyone thought the lad had over-dosed and died and the followed two weeks were a blur of cries for tougher drug control, better drug programs, editorials on how irresponsible youth are, etc etc etc. But a few of us, having read the report, noted the cause of death probably wasn't really drug related and the autopsy confirmed this. However no one wanted to hear it. Any comment about what really happened was shouted down in the anti-drug fervor.
There isn't much you can do against a mob, even one which is obviously wrong. Just wait it out and quietly try to educate people one at a time I suppose.
the people who immerse themselves in social media, who believe rumors without question, who only worry about other's opinions and so are easily swayed, are just dumber than sack of shit regardless of how high their IQ. Over half the populace is like that, very scary
Your local newspaper is regulated by law to check it's sources and it's facts before printing.
Looks very much like a PR stunt from Nike to me, to get out the message "our shoes are so good that people are fighting and killing each other to get them".
The real issue is whether Nike was behind the hype. Nike isn't that cool any more, and Michael Jordan is a has-been jock. They're the parties that would benefit from this. Follow the money.
...reputable editors distil information.
In case it's not obvious, the Internet mob is a "crowd", not an "editor".
Rustle up an internet mob to punish this despicable lack of accuracy!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
run if they are armed with pitchforks and torches. We try to reason if they are equipped with long range weaponry and ignore otherwise. This is about responsibility of those that create or publish the information. The mob got it wrong because someone told them something wrong. That is about people checking one source and taking that as absolute true. That's comfortable and easy. To think we must search and digest new information based on what we already know. Never take info for granted, mainly when it is too good to be true. The less people joining the mob (meaning you can avoid joining having a mind by yourself) the lesser the problem will be.
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
People who have been proven right time after time, such as Snopes or the Bad Astronomy guy, are frequently cited as rebuttals.
Having an internet-wide identity, such as Open ID (and specifically not FaceBook or a government supplied ID), allowing people to gain reputation, and override other peoples' posts, or at least be placed higher, is really the only way to do this everywhere.
Just as with slashdot moderation, it will be possible to game the system, if you respond rationally everywhere except one issue where you feel strongly about. And it would be nice if your reputation could be classified so that you can have a good reputation on some subjects, but automatically junkpiled on other topics.
As it stands, fact checkers who don't have an axe to grind are the only voices of reason, and you basically have to educate people about the fact checker being cited, but not so much that it looks like you are unquestioning of their lack of bias.
Making the internet personal again, so you are talking with actual people (virtually, not their real identities necessarily). Not arguing with text on a page.
Journal organizations need to practice credibility. Credibility is built over time with trustworthy news reporting. The problem is most organizations have fallen to the dark side of profit and tabloidism and can never come back. Their credibility is lost for good.
Individuals need to practice skepticism and critical thought. Then they can identify credible news sources by paying attention. Alternatively, by recognizing logical fallacies an individual can read between the lines and extract newsworthy data embedded in the half truths and agenda driven news we see today.
There is no legal solution to this problem. Principled individuals have to stand up and decide to make things better.
-- Mean People Suck
Even if this story is false, the sheer amount of violence over Air Jordan's over the years has been staggering. I remember as a kid living in a rust belted inner city and there were people shot and robbed of their Shoes.
Astroturfers are easy to spot... they have a high follow count but a low follower count. Nike needs to get better advertising staff... just jamming twitter/facebook updates with their ad may lose more customers than it gains.
The rush to get a story out first is hardly anything new, nor is the inevitable occasional false reporting. "Dewey Defeats Truman", Chicago Tribune, 1948. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman.
What do we do about this? Wrong idea. Each one of us does something about it individually. You think for yourself; you vet things yourself; you don't worry about the rest of the "crowd" and how they might be deceived. Evolution only has you socially rigged up to truly affect about 150 people, max, anyway.
But, if everyone carries out that solemn responsibility, things will be fine. Problem is, because of a lingering reliance on big media, most people don't. And it was a serious problem back in the days before crowdsourcing too, because the "gatekeepers" have told some whoppers over the last century or so. This was especially true around the time of Goebbels and WW II, and it has never recovered since, despite all the best intentions of journalistic integrity. The journalists did their best to hold the lie machines at bay, but that time has long since passed. A few decades ago, by my reckoning.
So, the horse has been out of the barn for at least that long, and we are talking about shutting the gate? Now? What the hell, folks? Mass media is a lie machine, and it functions because it is a lie machine, and all we've done is given the keys to the lie machine to everyone, instead of only the "gatekeepers." That, by my yardstick, is a profoundly good thing, although it will take a period of adjustment to become used to it.
Personal responsibility and a ready supply of grains of salt is all we have left. Don't believe everything you read. Since CGI advances, don't believe everything you see either. Welcome to the Brave New World. IMHO, it's a "good thing," but you have to be careful what you choose to believe these days.
Flip side of the coin is the "old guard" burying stories because it doesn't serve their corporate masters and/or because the truth about a news story isn't sensational or lurid enough. Old journalism used to be relatively honest, because lets face it, there's always been plenty of corrupt/stupid/greedy corporations/politicians/public figures, and exposing them was sensational enough to sell copy without sacrificing integrity. That integrity can no longer be assumed and so "old" journalism has just as much upside & downside as "new" journalism. It's up to us to learn to separate the signal from noise when the name of the game is to bury us in noise.
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
How can newspapers prioritise accuracy and fairness when its patrons prioritise sensationalism and shock? The fact that nuances in the lives of celebrities can, at times, be more valuable to people than current events around them pronounces this. This element of our society needs to change first before we can begin talking about ways of nurturing accuracy.
Welcome to sociopolitical science 101. This behavior is called tyranny of the majority, and it so worried Thomas Jefferson and others who founded the United States that they crafted a new variant of democracy intended to discourage it. At least in politics....
Nurturing accuracy will require a cultural change, from our schools up.
Perhaps it is more important to teach not believing everything that you read. Especially on the internet where there is little barrier to being published.
To instill some sort of ability to judge credibility. For example, two people make conflicting medical claims. One is an unknown but licensed medical doctor who trained at a well regarded university and the other is a famous and popular actress. That the actress' lack of relative credibility would require extraordinary evidence of her claims.
... and what do we do when the traditional gatekeepers fail us? Same damned thing. Read critically. Read multiple points of view, including those who disagree with you, and draw your own conclusions. Nobody can do that for you, and no system will do that for you.
The problem lies not with the "internet mob", nor traditional media reporting, but with the viewership. People are been conditioned to guzzle up any oversensationalized content. It's like when you're used to beating off to increasingly shameful porn, regular old T&A doesn't do it anymore. Well the average "news" consumer has been flooded with the equivalent of japanese torture scat, and barely notices when something perfectly reasonable occurs, or in this case: when a loaded prank gets shoved down their gullible throats. This steady diet of hype and hyperbole is ruining the frail mind of the common imbecile, and since those imbeciles are now all over the internet via Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, they are empowered to spread their unchecked bullshit in geometric fashion.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
...and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
That level of dumbfuckery is normal. Too bad for the rest of us.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Righteousness.
Set up a paypal account with the title "Parents against Nike violence against small children."
Deleted
You should be out selling them pepper spray. It's a food product essentially.
That seems to be the new export of the US. The question is, after clearing the obfuscations and outright lies what do we have left to offer? Whatever it is, wear high boots and don't count on it boosting the GDP long after the hot air escapes. Tech IPOs, Real Estate Bubbles, rigged markets and shiny baubles built on 40 year old sweat equity. The future's so bright, I gotta wear blinders.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
I'm a bit puzzled as to why this is a story. Old media isn't any better as a whole at gatekeeping than the internet mob is. For example, most news articles are reprints with absolutely no effort to check that the reprint was accurate. And some "old media" are so biased and/or incompetent that I don't consider them a news source such as CNN or Fox News.
And for the old media sources that do real news reporting, such as the Washington Post, BBC, etc, we also have people in the internet mob doing their own fact checking as well.
For example, Slashdot does a fair job of real time fact-checking. If you're depending on You Tube (and You Tube comments!) for your news, then there is something very wrong with you.
It's just something that comes with freedom of information. I don't want other people deciding what I get to know about, so if I have to endure some falsities so be it.
Bad information will also correct itself on the Internet. (like, umm, now) because anyone can refute that too and not everyone subscribes to the mob mentality.
I never want to go back to gatekeepers like Rupert Fucking Murdoch controlling information, thank you.
There isn't much you can do against a mob, even one which is obviously wrong. Just wait it out and quietly try to educate people one at a time I suppose.
Doesn't work.
I shut up. Let folks stay ignorant - they won't believe you otherwise. And use their ignorance to manipulate them.
I'm not alone. Just look at what's happening in the Republican primaries. Here you have relatively well educated people spewing non-sense, lies and misinformation to pander to the ignorant masses. Does anyone really think Newt Gingrich is as stupid as he appears? Or Bachman? Cain? Perry (- Ok, maybe Perry is that stupid.)
I don't.
I see them as manipulating the public , using the public's own ignorance and contempt of facts and rational thinking and praying on their emotions.
That's what it has come to: emotional indulgence and the inability or lack of desire to gather the facts and look at an issue rationally. Careful study and self-education is out of the question. People want to be told what to believe. They don't want ugly truth - truth that's always a shade of gray and never black and white - right or wrong - good or evil - or any other childish binary thought.
Emotion and ego are like a drug. "I'm right - you're wrong and there's no two ways about it!" has become our society's mantra and it's leading us to a downfall. And some, Rupert Murdoch for one, have become quite rich and powerful taking advantage of this.
This has always been a balancing act, the same questions were raised about allowing non-landholders to vote, allowing women to vote, etc. There need to be editors and judges. But in just as many cases, we need the twittering mob to correct editors who get it wrong.
Gently reply
Yup, crowdsourcing gets it wrong a lot. However, traditional media has a long history of not only getting the facts wrong as well, but also for manipulating the facts to generate ratings.
The original post asked, "What can we do when the internet mob is wrong?" Forget it; most people don't care. Thi8s discussion about the kid who got killed over new Nike shoes came up at work last night. some of the talkers were so outraged that they ranted for over half an hour. When I tell them today that it was a hoax, they will just go, "oops" and continue on as if they didn't waste their time and emotional energy for nothing. Five years from now they will be saying, "Do your remember that time the kid got killed...?" and will have forgotten that it wasn't true.
In the long term it will mean nothing. What matters is when there are consequences in the short term. Crowds have beaten and killed people when they mistakenly thought a person ran over a little kid, or was a molester, or robbed someplace etc., etc,.. Some sociologists are claiming that Obama go elected on the basis of crowd think and internet mob-ism. (This is not scientific, but I've asked lots of people over the years why they voted for Obama, and NOT ONE of them could tell me anything about his voting record in Illinois or Washington.) Cultural biases are affecting our lives. Friends tell me it was very uncomfortable being a middle eastern person in the USA after 9/11. This type of bias may fade, but when? And how much harm does it do in the meantime?
Bryan Caplan, and Economist, wrote a book called, "The Myth of the Rational Voter" http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Rational-Voter-Democracies-Policies/dp/0691129428 , in which he points out that cultural biases against free markets and foreigners, and toward make-work and pessimism are exploited by politicians everywhere.
I doubt that there is anything we can do to offset the influence of sensationalism and propaganda except expose the facts as well as we can. (Ooops! Pessimism, right?)
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Parenthetically, I'm a little surprised that this didn't solve itself, and I suspect it would have eventually. There are those of us who deal with stock photos daily, recognize them, and can follow them to their source. That a news story is a hoax is news, in and of itself, and in lots of cases the reveal travels faster than the original hoax.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It's the government's job to give everyone a ladder of success.
It's the person's own job to actually climb it.
Wikipedia is a mobocracy, but if even its own members fail to live up to their own policies, what hope is there for any other mobocracy? They are good at gathering information, but have yet to discover a basic mechanism with which to achieve accuracy by automatically weeding out errors...
The reason the rich should be taxed is that they can best afford it.
Also, the filthy rich tend to be powerful enough to push others around. Lopping the canopy off of the social ladder might not be such a bad idea after all.
Migrate all major news and news aggregation sites to slashcode.
If you need me for anything else, I'll be playing Edgeworld.
What better quality of life is that? Our poor people have cell phones, cars, cable television, and too much food (poor americans are fat!) for christ sakes. You really cant get an 'enormously better quality of life' yet. Our poor are rich by any standards but the warped bullshit ones.
They're not fat because they have too much food, they're fat because the cheap food is all terrible for you.
A family of four can go to McDonald's and eat dinner for $15. They're consuming 2,000 empty calories in a single sitting. A 2-liter of Coke is $1.29. A gallon of orange juice is $6. See the problem?
Anyone that's actually made a conscious effort to eat better and lose weight quickly realizes how ridiculously fucking expensive it is to do so, and that ignores the time element involved. It takes far more time to prepare a proper meal than it does to hit the drive-through. When you're a wage slave you're not working 9-5, you're working two jobs just to live in the manner we call "first world". That means when you get done your 12-16 hour day at work, the last fucking thing you want to do is spend an hour in front of the stove. So what do you do? Break out the Hot Pockets. Two minutes and here's your dinner, kids.
It's easy to point fingers when you're on the other side of the fence. I grew up poor. I had Peanut Butter and Jelly for dinner more often than I can count, and believe me, it wasn't because my mother wasn't working hard. She worked 14 hours a fucking day and was so tired a lot of the time she would sometimes literally fall asleep standing in front of the stove making us Macaroni and Cheese. But hard work doesn't equal success. And success, in this world, definitely does not equal hard work.
As for the rest of the things you take objection to, let's see. Cell phones? How many people have a land line these days? Better yet, if you don't have good credit (as most poor people don't, how can you have good credit if you can't even get credit?) how the hell do you pay the phone company their $300 deposit to get the service turned on in the first place? You don't, so cell phone it is. Could you live without a phone? Could you function in today's world? But somehow, poor people are supposed to be able to? Please.
Cars? How the fuck else are they gonna get to work? Take the bus? What if the bus doesn't go where they work? I mean, the whole country isn't New York City. Most of us don't even have access to that kind of infrastructure. Shit, a lot of cash strapped cities are cutting back on their public transportation systems. So it's either get a car (usually a fucking beater that gets 3 miles a gallon when you're lucky enough to get it running) or not work. Believe me, I wish I lived in one of those places where I could realistically take public transportation. It would take me over an hour, one way, to get to work by bus, with all the transfer points. One hour by bus, less than 15 minutes by car. Not even exaggerating. Maybe you have the time to spare but I'm not lucky enough for that.
And cable, frankly, I call bullshit all over that one. I know hardly anyone that has cable anymore, and of those people that do, almost all of them have it because it's bundled with their internet service. Internet connectivity is almost as necessary to getting by in this world as having a telephone is. My bank, for instance, doesn't even do paper statements anymore. What few things are not primarily online-based are moving that way. I know people that pay their damn rent online now.
But, ignoring all that, if we're going to start holding up the poor of third-world countries and say "Shut up and be grateful for what you have!" than I say it's time to do the same thing for the rich. How many multi-billionaires do you think Somalia has produced? How about Indonesia? Why can't the wealthy here be happy with what the wealthy over there have?
Oh, I see. It's okay to be entitled if you're wealthy. Poor people should just be glad they're not forced to catch stray dogs and cats to eat.
Its Christmas Eve and I am really busy, so I only had time to skim the summary, but thats horrible that some kid got killed for his Nikes!!! Especially during this season its important we honor those killed so needlessly - even tho I am very busy, I am taking the time out to tweet in his honor, and post on Facebook my outrage at this kind of senseless violence! You all should do it too.
Word game?
I like the ambiguity of the parsing in that sentence. "This just in: parents who are against Nike violence have been found to also be against small children!"
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I seriously, seriously hope that someone out there isn't taking Jennifer Government for an instruction manual.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
"the warped bullshit ones" include medical care. Most personal bankruptcies are due to medical costs.
In the book "Ender's Game", Orson Scott Card envisioned Internet forums that are invitation-only. One gets to belong to the more respected forums only by being invited, and that only happens if one proves one's worthiness by contributing quality ideas and information.
Things sure have not turned out that way. Indeed, today we have a kind of mobocracy. Things are too flat. It is good that the old gatekeepers can be sidestepped, but it is not good that there is so much noise that it is hard to decide what to trust.
Even worse, the old gatekeepers are back: paid promotion is alive and well on the Internet.
Turning information into entertainment is a genius move for crowd monitoring/control. Further exacerbation of the situation occurs when profit motives encourage and contribute to the misinformations.
Bad information is worse than no information at all, IMO.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
Traditional media is about on-par with the new media, in terms of accuracy-> "Locking the gate" serves no purpose, about as useful as pushing the 'close door' button on an elevator.
And if you consider the current traditional media's accuracy, which in my humble opinion, is producing lies so transparent even their staff have trouble stomaching it, you realize just how bad things are.
For some odd reason, people look back to the past as the golden era of journalism, when they reported 'the truth.' History reminds us otherwise: "yellow journalism" is a well-known term from a former era, worth reading about if you have the time. People are just nostalgic about their childhood, when they were brainless, spineless automatons who believed anything they were told; they're having trouble coming to grips with reality -> people lie, often and for no discernible reason; and even the good reasons are pretty terrible, but tradition outweighs common sense, and the people who employ lying the most tend to be the people with the least qualms about murdering people that disagree with them.
Consider, for your pleasure, the current holiday: Christmas. Parents lie to their kids about a guy in a big red jumpsuit, climbing down a chimney, riding around on a flying sleight with magical reindeer, and dispensing presents on the basis of a metric ("Naughty / Nice") which appears to conform with cultural norms of morality: people celebrate lies, and bury the truth. They love the lies their parents taught them so much, that many of them go on to teach them to their children. Just try telling someone else's kids that Santa is a lie; see if you aren't vilified.
That's not even touching on the holiday's origins itself. It's turtles all the way down!
I am John Hurt.
Eat less. Works every time.
Eating 1,500 calories a day at McDonald's instead of 2,500 isn't going do much good at all. Believe me, I wish it was as easy as eating less. My nutritionist probably does, too. It would probably save her a lot of time and energy explaining to people day in and day out "It's not how much you eat, it's what you eat."
Eating healthy costs more than eating crap. I don't think anyone that buys groceries on a regular basis could dispute that. I really wish it were not so...trust me, I do.
Until or unless gene therapy goes a lot further than it has...
"You can't cure stupid."
I think what's going to happen first is sex-, service- and menial-robotics and other game-changing vehicles for technological plenty and comfort will come along and (further) pacify the crowd; they'll be no less hungry for gossip, but they'll be even less willing to disturb the status quo that is serving them up said comforts than they are today. We won't see superstition go away until or unless it becomes a form of child abuse to let your child be born and/or raised stupid, and/or gullible, and/or without critical thinking abilities. Just an IMHO.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Enormously better quality of life? Being able to live how you choose, where you choose, when you choose. Being treated with respect by the kind of fuckwads who judge you by your bank account. Being able to shrug off ordinarily crippling financial crises like the car you use to travel to work breaking down. Being able to afford dental treatment when you're in severe pain. Being able to afford a doctor who *isn't* a cretin. Buying that dress and those shoes. Eating how you please as opposed to whatever you can afford.
That's just a start. You've never been poor, have you? You have no idea whatsoever of what you're talking about, but you just couldn't resist expressing your opinion.
For your own safety, always assume Internet mobs, mass media, marketing divisions, religious zealots, terrorists, the Iraqi information minister, and slashdot summaries are wrong.
You're talking about local gossip among fairly ignorant people who don't want their preconceived notions challenged.
Internet mobs out the lies far more quickly, witness this very case. Yes, we'll get some wrong obviously, but we amplify truth so much that lies mostly get acknowledged by the attacking communities.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
There are invitation-only discussion forums, they're private and clearly you've not been invited to one. Sorry.
The internet is never wrong. Misled yes, but never wrong. "wrong" is determined by the opinion of the majority (maybe not in politics, but on the internet yes). As you defined it, the internet mob IS the majority. Even if the death was not real, there opinions are still valid.
Note –this should all be quallified with "in the US". In the UK, it's easily possible to eat healthily cheaper than visiting McDs', but certainly in the US this is not so.
The rest of the post is bullshit.
Why?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
It's probably as valid to say that the newspapers value sales, which they can get by sensationalism. If at the same time they're owned by someone who has something he doesn't want discussed critically, they can get strongly encouraged to become the "News of the World".
Conversely, if a newspaper gains a reputation for digging deeply into the facts and reporting honestly, they can make good sales on that basis.
Where I live we have three papers, one of the first type, and two of the latter. The two who nourish accuracy and fairness hold opposing political views, and so many people subscribe to both. I buy one and read the other in the coffee-shop (:-))
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
I went right to the facebook page dedicated to perpetuating the story and posted a comment for that lil bwa R. I. P. son!
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
There was research published this year on the "wisdom of the crowds". The idea being that if you ask enough people a question with a numerical answer, and average their results it gets pretty accurate at over 100 people, unless those people are allowed to communicate. While the research was done specifically on numerical questions/knowledge (quantitative), I suspect the same might be true of non-numeric/qualitative information. Certainly anyone who uses the internet as a news source (qualitative information) needs to especially careful about this, because the one huge advantage 'old media' has over the internet is slower feedback mechanisms, which means a wider and more diverse sample set for each unit of information ("fact").
Gatekeepers who control the information, so we only see accurate, to-the-point data. You know, like they have in North Korea.
With all due respect, I think I'll defer to my doctor. She's given me no reason to question her abilities, and the methods she's prescribed have been very successful thus far.
Apologies if this has been said before, but it's worth repeating: if you value the objectivity and research of the best of the 'old' journalism, consider subscribing to an organization that still practices it.
Then you should post something about that, in response to the question, "What do we do when the Internet Mob is Wrong?" - unless these private forums are too few and insignificant that they don't really matter.
Excuse me, but right after the "docoumentary" "Supersize Me" came out, someone decided to test what would happen if you went to McDonald's and made healthy choices. They ate only at McDonald's for 30 days, just like Morgan Spurlock did, except that they used a different set of rules than he did (for example they did not supersize a meal just because the cashier asked if they wanted to). At the end of the 30 days, their cholesterol had dropped and they had lost weight. Look into the documentary "Me and Mickey D."
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The rest of the post is bullshit.
Translation: I cannot refute your points or the reality you have presented so I'm just going to go right wing radio host and shout over you until you go away.
What better quality of life is that?
That would be not only never worrying about where their next meal is coming from, but never having to worry how much it costs. The sure knowledge that even if their health declines, they will get the best care there is for as long as needed. The certainty that they can get fired tomorrow (if they even actually work anymore) and just declare it early retirement if they like. No sweating the rent payment, ever. The ability to just go get another car if needed, not even a need to check the bank balance first. No rich people hanging out on the golf course at 3PM on a Wednesday chortling to their chums about your sense of entitlement as you sweat your ass off fixing their divots for them.
Tell them to read https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
Casteism
This is EXACTLY the plot of a 2003 novel called "Jennifer Government" by Max Barry, the novel literally opens with a Nike executive arranging for the deaths of some kids to drum up hype for a new sneaker brand.
It's so crazily bang-on I did a double take when learning about this story. Talk about life imitating art.
GREAT book too, highly recommended. Time called it an "ad-world version of Dr Strangelove" and that is an apt description. He even did a pretty good job with the tech jargon.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
as soon as I read 'yada, yada, yada' I stopped reading. What terrible writing. Stop this dreadful descent into Seinfeldism.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
That's the simplified version you teach 3rd graders because they're not ready to grasp all of the complexities.
If you eat 2000 calories worth of food, actually convert 1500 to use and expend 1750 you will lose weight.
If you consume 2000 calories worth of food and convert 1950 to use and still expend 1750, you will gain weight.
If you consume 1500 calories worth of food but it's all the sort that weighs on your stomach like a brick, you will remain seated and only burn 1450 calories that day. So you gain weight. Same 1500 calories but quickly digested, you'll feel up for a walk after dinner, burn 1600 calories, and lose weight.
Yes, because we all know that there are at least 3 dozen different choices for internet at any given address!
[quote]A family of four can go to McDonald's and eat dinner for $15. They're consuming 2,000 empty calories in a single sitting. A 2-liter of Coke is $1.29. A gallon of orange juice is $6. See the problem?[/quote]
Is this actually reality in the US? I get the feeling you're intentionally misrepresenting prices. I am far from rich by any means, but I manage to save by relentlessly cutting the costs of food (my biggest expense after rent, easily.)
I can buy four chicken breasts for £4 UK, ($6.20). Those are fresh, not frozen chicken breasts, so you can do cheaper.
To cook them you throw them in the oven and watch TV for 25 minutes.
Buy some random vegetables for £1-2 max. The vegetables you drop into a pan and go and watch TV for 15 minutes.
There is your meal for 4 for £6, I'm not even trying, and those prices are without even making an effort to find cheaper.
On juice:
Coca-Cola £2/2L
http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=254857167
Orange Juice £1.24/2L
http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=255595820
The OJ works out at $3.66 per US gallon. I would be very surprised if the US has more expensive groceries than the UK.
I am shocked --SHOCKED!-- to learn that I something on the internet might be incorrect.
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
If rich are to pay taxes to a point where they are on par with upper middle class, or anywhere close to it, then you would not have any rich people at all. There is no incentive to work hard and be filthy rich. No innovation... no competition... no big tax contributions (27%)... Thus, statement you said comes to effect - "the system would be incredibly broken."r>
People who work hard to get rich and/or have had their parents or grandparents work hard to ensure their kids and grand kids would not have to, is fine to me... as long as their fortunes are accumulated though working hard or being smart and not cheating and looting and stealing - in which case they should be in jail (like some people on wall street).
There is nothing wrong with being filthy rich. There is nothing wrong paying 27% or 30% or even 35% of taxes either... but the "MOB" has to be aware that every change just like in any ecosystem in nature bring about changes. Those changes might be - these rich people moving out of USA and moving to Canada, or Switzerland, or Germany, or Australia, or Japan, or UK... or anywhere else where taxes are reasonable and where they can retain most of their wealth without giving it to government. Then USA would really be screwed... so you be careful for what Obama brainwashes you with...think for yourself and don't follow the mob.
Note – I didn't say I necessarily agreed with this point, instead that it was the counter argement to the parent. My actual view is somewhere in the middle. Also note –this doesn't assert that these people are paying 27% of their income as tax –it asserts that those 1% are paying 27% of the total tax burden of the nation. Given that these people earn about 10-20 times more than the middle classes, but appear to foot roughly 1.5 times the burden while being a 10 times larger segment of the population, it seems that they pay roughly the same proportion of their wages in the end.
To me that suggests that we're swung a little towards the poorer end of society paying the burden (you'd expect that the rich should pay a greater proportion of their wages, not the same). That said, I don't buy the "zomg, the rich should pay 80% of their wages and be as poor as everyone else" argument either – as you said, that just results in a lack of motivation.
Why did you use appeal to sympathy" instead of ad misericordiam?
May I remind the readers of the famously fake plastic turkey of President Bush? Which was a real turkey, not fake, and which reverberates to this day among supposedly edited journalists? Gatekeepers my hiney.
The problem with that in reality is that it's too easy to create sock puppets.
For a good discussion forum, you'd need to use your real name, and proof that you are you.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I don't think it's all that hard to determine what sources to trust and which not. At the moment the much-reviled mainstream media uses actual journalistic standards -- the reports have sources for the information, where they can they identify the sources. Where they can't, they ID them as anonymous, but there's actually someone who served as a source and several editors who trust the reporter to have accurately reported and represented that source. There are usually two levels of editor who guide the writing and make sure of the sources. Large publications employ a fact checker who makes sure the names are spelled right and other factoids. Those standards developed slowly (compared to journalism of, say, the 1700s -- a kind of Fox news for journalism (heh, heh, heh -- OK, that shows my bias...). Which is all to say that, with some experience of comparing the reading of articles, magazines & newspapers over time, we come to know who we can trust and that standards are in place to back the information given. We may not agree with the slant or bias, but the facts are generally agreed upon. In spite of standards and protocols being in place, the vast information output of the Internet is not at that stage yet. I can think of only a few Internet-only publications that meet those standards (and even then I'm not sure -- but let's say Slate, Wired and perhaps a few others). The rest is caveat emptor. Because they don't have the revenue, they can't afford the levels of experienced editing, fact checking etc. So I tend to use these two information sources for very different things. The print world for news and analysis of events. The Internet world for crowd sourced type stuff: reviews of books, gizmoes, very fast reporting of events (but with the full knowledge I'm only seeing raw footage which may have its own bias and who's source I don't know if I can trust to be a representation of events). Still, very often dramatic, compelling and worth watching. Just not useful for considered analysis of events. That may change with time but Internet reporting will require more money to support the infrastructure to ensure reliable information. George
I'm sure "traditional media" can get a story about a dead kid and his shoes right; there is, after all, little at stake and it isn't exactly complicated.
That doesn't mean reporters or "traditional media" are qualified, unbiased, or helpful when it comes to reporting on politics or economics.
What'll really bake your noodle is when you realize that they're both lying to you.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Bullshit. I'm so tired of seeing this bullshit argument. Let's take an example of an absurdly high taxation rate for the rich, say 80%. Someone with a revenue of $1 million is still netting $200,000 there, significantly more than the vast super majority of people can ever earn (even before taxes!). I actually do fairly well for myself, being a skilled knowledge worker and making a few times what the average family of four makes, but I would trade up to that income with an 80% tax rate without the slightest hesitation and I suspect everyone else making under $250,000 would as well. I would make that trade, or even "work hard", to achieve that income level even if offered a 0% tax rate to stay at my current income.
I doubt I need to continue to expound on this for you to see my point. Once the input numbers are high enough, the magnitude of the percentage rate becomes unimportant, relatively speaking. With a high enough income, even grossly unjust taxation rates still yield financial outcomes wildly better than even the most skilled and experienced member of the working class can ever achieve. So yes, there's still plenty of incentive to "work hard" and "compete". Back in reality though, reasonable people aren't demanding that the rich pay some ridiculous 80% of their income in taxes. Just that they pay something proportional to their income as compared with the rest of the populace (i.e. less income inequality).
In case it isn't blindingly obvious, I say "work hard" and "compete" because I reject the notion that anyone not rich enough to build houses out of $100 bills simply isn't working hard enough. I wouldn't be caught dead suggesting that someone struggling to make a living off two jobs simply isn't working as hard as me in my 40-hour-a-week desk job.
> They're consuming 2,000 empty calories in a single sitting. A 2-liter of Coke is $1.29. A gallon of orange juice is $6. See the problem?
No:
1) diet coke won't give you 'empty calories'
2) in France you can ask for (tap) water in any restaurant and it is usually *free*.