Is the Amazon-Led Economic Boom Wrecking Seattle?

reifman writes: Seattleites are struggling with massive traffic, rising housing costs and declining diversity. Amazon's building and acquiring enough office space to triple its local headcount by 2020. Facebook, Google and many other tech companies are now expanding here as well — it's the San Franciscoization of Seattle. Downtown is filled with 75 cranes — some blocks look like mining towns. Amazon's hired so many white males that King County is now the whitest in the nation and hate crimes against gays have shot up in a formerly LGBTQ neighborhood. Politicians can't agree on reforming impact fees and taxes to address these issues." An interesting piece of recent advice from a long time Amazonian to the company's interns: avoid full-time employment there.

Comments

The Struggle

[One With Whisp]

Seattleites are struggling with [...] declining diversity.

What? What does this even mean? How does one struggle from declining diversity? Don't communities generally struggle with inclining diversity?

Re:The Struggle

[One With Whisp]

I've read the linked article, however it does not assert any causal link between "low diversity" and "anti-gay violence".

So, I reiterate my previous question: "What?"

Re:The Struggle

[sumdumass]

anti-queer violence? You mean bigots are getting beat up?

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

Yeah, good point. Seems pretty likely that a growing queer population has led to violence against queers. God, why won't the queers stop doing hate crimes to themselves!

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

Huh? People are doing violence against queers.

Re:The Struggle

[alvinrod]

So a growing gay population is a decline in diversity? What?

Re:The Struggle

[chipschap]

When I saw (in the article summary) the implication that there are too many white males, I was done with the article. I'm all for diversity --- I live in Hawaii, as diverse as it comes, and married an Asian --- but I'm SO tired of the "white males are the soul of evil" rhetoric.

Re:The Struggle

[sumdumass]

you sure you don't mean violence against people who are anti queer?

Re:The Struggle

[jader3rd]

You mean bigots are getting beat up?

After the recent Supreme Court decision you can tell Fox News knows it's happening somewhere. They just need someone to tell them about it, and they'll fly in the troops to 'report' on it.

Re:The Struggle

[ColdWetDog]

white males are the soul of evil

Wait. That can't be right. White males ain't got no soul.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

It isn't clear that I'm saying that decreasing diversity of sexuality is contributing to the rise in hate crimes against minority sexualities? Maybe the problem is that you're not actually trying to understand.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

That was sarcasm...

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

Yes, I'm sure I don't mean that.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

So-called "black on black crime" is not the same thing as "hate crime". Black people don't commit violence against other black people for being black. Likewise, queer people don't commit anti-queer hate crimes. They might commit other kinds of crime against each other, in some number which may be worth discussing if anyone wants to provide evidence worth discussing, but that isn't the topic thus far.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

The first person to mention evil is you. The post was lamenting declining diversity—a social quality the author values—in favor of increasing majority homogeny. You may not specifically value diversity, but those of us who do are not maligning the majority group.

Re: The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

It doesn't strike me as trolling, it strikes me as horribly misguided. You're assuming that being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered or queer is hereditary. If that were the case, don't you think your hypothesis would have come to pass long ago?

Re:The Struggle

[ganjadude]

i dont argue that. but sometimes when a non gay person attacks a non gay person, its not because he is gay, yet its still listed as a hate crime. so we dont know the real numbers but i digress. look at the actual numbers not just the "doubled" part and you will see its still a rounding error. its not a "thing"

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

diversity for it's own sake? That's a recipe for disaster.

It's not for its own sake. Diversity has the desirable quality of leading people to behave less like hateful shits. As a mental exercise, imagine if the world were composed entirely of Slashdot commenters. Good luck sleeping tonight.

Re:The Struggle

[ProfBooty]

Honkeys aren't homogeneous. Anyone who thinks so hasn't thought much about it at all.

Whites are diverse in religion. Some follow no religion at all.

Whites are diverse in country of origin, further there are a number of "white" regional cultures in the USA..

White Euro-Americans are diverse in ethnicity. Some of these ethnic categories are Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Gallic, Iberian, Italic, Greek, Germanic, Basque, Scandinavian, Hispanic, and Slavic.

White Americans are diverse in how long they or their families have lived in North America. Some families have been here for hundreds of years, but at least a third of all white American families have a grandparent who immigrated here from Europe.

White Euro-Americans are diverse in wealth. Over half of all the people in the United States who live below the poverty line are white Americans.

Whites have a wide variety of facial features and colours.

Re: The Struggle

[ArylAkamov]

Exactly why I don't see why people seem to care so much about them. If you don't like it, you just have to remind yourself these people are voluntarily removing themselves from the gene pool.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

I'd go even further and say that "whiteness" is entirely fabricated and only exists as a social construct. The biological and cultural reality is that race breaks down under many kinds of scrutiny.

Be that as it may, it's also a powerful social construct. "Whiteness" doesn't just convey a number of social privileges, it also provides a set of assumptions of belonging for a huge proportion of the people who can reasonable be described as "white". It provides none of those qualities for people who don't have the "whiteness" attributes.

It's easy to dissect social differences into absurdity, but it's a mistake to pretend that race isn't a strong force in many social issues. As such, while people of any given race have a wide range of experiences, beliefs, attachments and orthogonal social variations, their race also tends to have a huge impact on a certain range of experiences. For "white" people, one of the prevailing experiences is being dominant in many respects. This effect is amplified for people who were born with a penis, who are comfortable with a male gender role, and who are attracted to people who were born white, with a vagina, and comfortable with a female gender role.

The effect is not total, but it is generally observable. The effect also isn't universal, nor is it universally applied. It's not applied as strongly in less "white" places, though it tends to have a surprising residual presence in most of them.

The biggest exception to all of these power dynamics is access to wealth. Moderate access to wealth has the effect of making these other dominant attributes somewhat less potent. Access to extreme wealth eliminates many of the competing advantages. But not all of them.

Glad we had this overly specific discussion. I hope to press buttons that send electric signals into a series of electronic circuits that connect to wires and other such machines and eventually communicates data in the form of text to you, again in the future.

Re:The Struggle

[ganjadude]

no no no, thats gingers.

gingers have no souls

Re:The Struggle

[ganjadude]

says archie bunker.

not sure if intentionally funny or accidentally

Re:The Struggle

[lucm]

feceshole

Is that the new politically correct term so people with a colostomy bag don't fell ostracized?

Re:The Struggle

[caladine]

No no. We have souls, they're just not ours, uh, originally.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

sorry, i wrote non 2 times. im saying if you are at a bar and you get in a fight with someone, you dont know they are gay until after the fight. yet sometimes you will still get charged with a hate crime.

I understood your "point", I asked you to provide evidence of it, with specific instances where it has happened. You didn't do that. Please do that.

somewhere else in this threat it was said that there were 20 cases in 2014. Id hardly call that a "thing"

I don't know the actual numbers. What I know is that I live in a neighborhood that used to be a safe haven and isn't anymore. And that lack of safety is felt all around me. Not everyone in a targeted group needs to be directly affected by a hate crime to feel its intended terror. You don't see the significance of a rise in violence against queers in a historically queer neighborhood, presumably because you've never needed to seek refuge in such a place.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

im not sure ive ever seen that as what diversity was all about

I do. So we see it differently. That's probably why I value it more than you do.

you dont need to be diverse to not hate others

Of course not. It just tends to have that effect.

while one can want diversity SOOO bad, that one turns into one of the hateful people that you are speaking of

Lots of people can distort motives in lots of ways. What you're describing is not typical, it's a caricature of a stereotype. You've seen an article bemoaning the loss of Seattle diversity, taken it as a threat, and proceeded to post scattershot about how the problem is actually the opposite of what people's experiences are.

I realize it's pointless to argue with you, but your points are not based in fact, they're based in fear.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

I have a question for you since you support diversity in the workplace.

To be clear, I wasn't talking about the workplace. I know Slashdot hates reading the thing they respond to, but this is getting ridiculous. The post, and my comments, are about diversity (among other issues) in Seattle. I work here, but I also live here. I can change jobs, but changing cities is much harder.

Regarding workplace diversity, it's complicated. Between distortions of reality, you hint at some of why it is (and miss a lot of other reasons). But I think you miss the point of a discussion about diversity. You begin with the assumption that diversity is achieved by having a number of people-groups checked off on a list, but it isn't.

Inasmuch as diversity is a discrete goal, that goal is achieved when people with diverse experiences and roles in society are comfortably peers.

Re:The Struggle

[One With Whisp]

[...] and proceeded to post scattershot about how the problem is actually the opposite of what people's experiences are.

Except the experiences I've heard are the exact opposite, that homogeneous communities often have far less conflict than heterogeneous ones. Unless you back your asserted experiences, there's really no reason for me to take your word over anyone else's.

Re:The Struggle

[ganjadude]

i understand now, i dont have any specific links to go by, however I would argue that the woman who was sued for not baking a cake would be an example of someone being unjustly charged with a hate crime in one instance

I see your point and im sorry if thats how the way you see things is making you feel. however numbers dont lie, and only 20 examples in a city is a rounding error as I said, and not a "thing" it would be like if everyone in NYC lived their lives in fear of another airplane attack because it happened back in 2001, yeah it could happen but the odds are very slim

I sincerely hope the best for you and your area as 1 attack on another , regardless of the reasoning is a bad thing

Re:The Struggle

[chipschap]

Your post makes good points in an articulate manner. I don't doubt for a moment that there has been white male dominance during many times and in many places; that's a fact of history. What I do doubt is the generalization that some people make from this, that all or even a majority of white males today in Western society are the "enemy" or are "evil" or "bad" in some way.

I don't and won't apologize for being a white male. As I said above, I live in Hawaii (where white male dominance, by the way, is long a thing of the past) and I married an Asian. I love and would never give up either the diversity of this part of the world or the multicultural richness that my marriage has brought me. I also try to do everything I can to treat people fairly. Is it too much to ask to be treated fairly in return, and not be categorized and stigmatized because I happen to be a white male?

Re:The Struggle

[Chris Johnson]

Oh, you mean 'Seattle'?

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

You and I have been over this like four times today. As the queer population in Seattle is decreasing, violence against queers is increasing. My neighborhood is a homogenizing community with increasing conflict.

Re:The Struggle

[ganjadude]

there is no fear on my side, but we do see the idea of diversity differently. I dont believe there is a need for it. I enjoy it, i like learning about other cultures and being a part of them. However I disagree that it is something that should be forced onto people (not saying that you feel that way just explaining myself)

I see alot of people who as you said distort their motives, perhaps its a new york thing but the people who want the most diversity in NY, also seem to be the least tolerant people I personally know. i understand my anecdote does not mean that all people who are pro diversity are evil intolerant people, just that is what it seems like here in NY these days.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

What I do doubt is the generalization that some people make from this, that all or even a majority of white males today in Western society are the "enemy" or are "evil" or "bad" in some way.

Already addressed this in another comment. The only people calling white people evil are the people getting upset that anyone else values diversity. It's a straw man argument.

I don't and won't apologize for being a white male.

Good. Neither will I. No one asked you to.

I don't and won't apologize for being a white male. As I said above, I live in Hawaii (where white male dominance, by the way, is long a thing of the past) and I married an Asian. I love and would never give up either the diversity of this part of the world or the multicultural richness that my marriage has brought me. I also try to do everything I can to treat people fairly. Is it too much to ask to be treated fairly in return, and not be categorized and stigmatized because I happen to be a white male?

Do you feel you're being treated unfairly because here in Seattle we're talking about a problem that doesn't appear to be about you in any way? Has anyone said to you, as a white male in Hawaii, that you're responsible for hate crimes in Seattle? As a white male, who works in the tech industry, in Seattle, I am engaging this conversation as if it is about facts and the desire of people in my community. I don't feel like your defensive interjections are in the same spirit. Consider the possibility that this isn't about you.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

Lots of it yeah.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

i understand now, i dont have any specific links to go by

Not surprised.

however I would argue that the woman who was sued for not baking a cake would be an example of someone being unjustly charged with a hate crime in one instance

Since you're naming a specific incident, can you please link to it? I'm not aware of a baker being charged with a hate crime.

I see your point and im sorry if thats how the way you see things is making you feel. however numbers dont lie, and only 20 examples in a city is a rounding error as I said, and not a "thing" it would be like if everyone in NYC lived their lives in fear of another airplane attack because it happened back in 2001, yeah it could happen but the odds are very slim

This is a bullshit analogy. It'd be like if over 250 attacks (again I don't know if the number 20 is accurate, but taking it for granted, that's 8,406,000 population in NYC over 652,000 in Seattle, times 20) happened in NYC in the course of a year. This year.

I sincerely hope the best for you and your area as 1 attack on another , regardless of the reasoning is a bad thing

No idea what this means. Have another toke duder.

Re:The Struggle

[PopeRatzo]

I don't and won't apologize for being a white male. As I said above, I live in Hawaii (where white male dominance, by the way, is long a thing of the past) and I married an Asian. I love and would never give up either the diversity of this part of the world or the multicultural richness that my marriage has brought me. I also try to do everything I can to treat people fairly. Is it too much to ask to be treated fairly in return, and not be categorized and stigmatized because I happen to be a white male?

Slashdot stories that contain the word "diversity" bring out the best in everyone.

Re:The Struggle

[PopeRatzo]

homogeneous communities often have far less conflict than heterogeneous ones.

Unless your name happens to be "Hatfield" or "McCoy".

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

there is no fear on my side, but we do see the idea of diversity differently. I dont believe there is a need for it. I enjoy it, i like learning about other cultures and being a part of them. However I disagree that it is something that should be forced onto people (not saying that you feel that way just explaining myself)

You should stop and think about what you're saying. You created a straw man caricature of my views, tore it down, then told me you know that the straw man is not representative of my views.

I see alot of people who as you said distort their motives, perhaps its a new york thing but the people who want the most diversity in NY, also seem to be the least tolerant people I personally know. i understand my anecdote does not mean that all people who are pro diversity are evil intolerant people, just that is what it seems like here in NY these days.

Well at least your made up bullshit is an anecdote this time.

Re:The Struggle

[Gryle]

The only people calling white people evil are the people getting upset that anyone else values diversity. It's a straw man argument.

I recommend browsing this thread. There's whackjobs aplenty on both ends of the spectrum.

Re:The Struggle

[rworne]

Last I saw hestiaphobia was not considered a hate crime. The woman you mention was charged and convicted of unlawful discrimination.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

Oh I thought I was having this conversation, not one deliberately designed to caricature it.

Re:The Struggle

[ganjadude]

i think you are looking at what i write to you as im the enemy and therefore what I say is bull.

You should stop and think about what you're saying. You created a straw man caricature of my views, tore it down, then told me you know that the straw man is not representative of my views.

i did no such thing, you accused me of living in fear and other junk and i simply was making an argument based on my experiences

Well at least your made up bullshit is an anecdote this time.

I made up nothing. I stand by my statement. and the fact that you are as defensive as you are when i said nothing remotely offensive, and at the same time continue to talk down to me and anyone else who disagrees with you in the slightest, it adds to my data points that those who scream for tolerance are equally intolerant of others.

Have a nice day

Re:The Struggle

[sumdumass]

I'll tell you right now that your experience isn't typical. It's not even based on reality from my experience. I've worked at a lot of jobs doing a lot of things- most of these things are crap jobs most others do not want to do. I've had minorities work circles around me and I have had idiots who were basically place holders for quotas that caused me to work 3 times as much as I should have.

There are jobs run by incompetent management who value race, gender, and appearances over skills or performance specifically because it fits some magic number that they think stops them from being at risk for some lawsuits. It's like getting stuck working with the boss's relatives who only have a job because of their relation else they would have already been shit canned long ago.

Re:The Struggle

[rworne]

Well, the first thing that came to mind when the article mentioned "declining diversity" was yet another swipe at white males. The homophobia caused by the unmentioned boogeyman was yet another, this time at CIS white males.

Diversity as I hear it used nowadays typically means "we need more minorities". When our schools were predominately white, we needed diversity. So we bussed diversity in from minority neighborhoods. Demographics have changed over the years and now many of our schools are no longer predominately white, but 80-90%+ hispanic.

No one is asking for diversity anymore.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

see, this is the problem. I am sitting here not insulting you, trying to understand your side while offering my side of things.

No you're not. If you can't understand that, this is not going to be productive.

yet your side seems unable to do so without resorting to smugness.

I asked you to defend any of your outlandish claims with evidence, and you continued posting more outlandish claims and refused to provide any evidence. I'm not being smug, I'm being efficient with my use of Internet Debate Time.

What I said was in simple terms, "dont hurt people for...reasons" I dont care black white gay straight, you shouldnt be attacking someone for no reason.

I'm not attacking anyone at all. I came in here to defend.

As for the baker, you didnt hear about the baker being forced to pay over 100 grand to a lesbian couple because they refused to bake them a custom cake???? google is your friend, and for someone who is caught up on LGBTQDFHSDTHUA++ you should be well aware of that case

1. I'm aware of a number of contrived cases about "cakes". Please specify one, with a link to something anything. Your claim was not that someone was sued, but that someone was charged with a hate crime. This might be news to you, but some things are not the same as other things.
2. LGBTQDFHSDTHUA++ - Oh yeah, you don't want people to attack each other. You just literally mashed your keyboard because you couldn't be bothered to understand what the acronym is that represents several sub-sections of society whose concerns you can't stop taking time out of your day to dismiss. The amount of defensive disdain is palpable.

Look, do you want to have an honest, compassionate discussion about things you are actually self-aware enough to admit you don't understand? Stop acting like you're an equal in that discussion. I am not an authority on queer issues in Seattle, but I'm a queer in Seattle. I have more experience than you do as a not-queer in not-Seattle. If you want to understand my "side" of a discussion, stop putting straw men in front of me that queers are getting innocent bigots charged with hate crimes over cakes. It's not real, it's not true, it's a caricature, it's insulting, and it's not in the spirit of honest discussion.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

i think you are looking at what i write to you as im the enemy and therefore what I say is bull.

Nope. Just reading the words you post and responding as if you mean them.

i did no such thing, you accused me of living in fear and other junk and i simply was making an argument based on my experiences

But you did.

Setting up straw man and tearing it down:

there is no fear on my side, but we do see the idea of diversity differently. I dont believe there is a need for it. I enjoy it, i like learning about other cultures and being a part of them. However I disagree that it is something that should be forced onto people (not saying that you feel that way just explaining myself)

Admitting the straw man is not my view:

there is no fear on my side, but we do see the idea of diversity differently. I dont believe there is a need for it. I enjoy it, i like learning about other cultures and being a part of them. However I disagree that it is something that should be forced onto people (not saying that you feel that way just explaining myself)

I made up nothing.

You told me that someone was charged with a hate crime for not baking a cake.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

Literally nothing you said is true.

Re:The Struggle

[Gryle]

Dial it back a notch there Tex. I'm not calling you out and I'm not insulting you. I just left you a link.

Re:The Struggle

[rworne]

Really?

Forced busing LAUSD

90% plus hispanic schools

Re:The Struggle

[ganjadude]

ok, thats fine. lets both try and get back on the topic at hand and my original point of the fact that the number of attacks are a rounding error in the big scheme of things.

Im going to use a blog that shows seattle is the 3rd most "hate crime" city in america (somewhat the point you are making) while at the same time showing its a rounding error.

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/...

For every 100,000 Seattle residents, there were three hate crimes based on sexual orientation that year, the most recent data available. Among cities with at least 200,000 residents, only Washington, D.C., and Memphis, Tenn., have higher rates of anti-LGBT hate crimes.

so 3 for every 100K people in a city you said has 650K people which makes the numbers exactly what i said 19.66 attacks

19.66 attacks in a year in your city. that is a really REALLY small number.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

LOL okay thanks for the info

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

So basically, anyone who complains about how things are has to defend everything said or done by anyone else who also complains about how things are. The same standard is obviously not applied to people who defend how things are. COOL.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

Oh you're still fighting for Jim Crow. Never mind.

Re:The Struggle

[Gryle]

You're welcome. Go forth and do with it as you will.

Re: The Struggle

[MemeRot]

Who's doing anti GLBT hate crimes in DC? It's not white male techies.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

Need evidence of this.

Finally! For links, you can find a ton of positive attributes of a diverse society by googling "diversity leads to", but to be more direct:

Being exposed to different cultures can cause conflict, but it can also cause reflection. In a truly diverse society, where diverse members of the society are treated as peers, people are accountable for the way they relate to members of the community who are not of the same group. Accountability is a powerful equalizer. The cases where "diversity" is represented as conflict, it's absolutely not the case that the non-dominant members are peers.

I would caution that it's inappropriate to treat as "diversity" a scenario where a dominant group is intermixed with a subject group for their exploitation. Otherwise, the Antebellum South of the US was among the most diverse societies in history. I don't think anyone would ever claim this.

There'd be no rape, robbery, or violence. People would keep to themselves like social shut-ins tend to do.
Sounds fantastic.

People attack each other, shout slurs and publicly express wishes of others' death. Slashdot is overflowing with hostility and it's barely possible to have a coherent discussion. I can't think of another corner of the Internet where people hurl "nigger" or "fag" at each other more. I can think of few places so quick to ignore arguments and resort to generalized attacks about any perceived identity. Don't take this the wrong way, but this is one of the worst places on the Internet.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

That's true when considering the same crime. It's not true when considering robbery versus beatings and murder. Stealing from someone because they have something you want isn't the same as hanging them because you don't like who they are.

I agree that "hate" doesn't make the same crime worse. I don't agree that "black on black crime" is the same as a lynching or a gay bashing.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

You are telling me that you think words I say deserve violence against me? Why should I take your idea of human decency seriously?

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

You're right. The deliberate attacks designed to terrorize my community don't matter because you don't care about the actual 20 people affected in the last year, nor the thousands of people who are denied the safe haven they previously found in their community. Small potatoes. So, we should just take it? Stop talking about it? Let it get worse still? When is it okay with you, a person who isn't affected, for us to stand up for our community?

Re:The Struggle

[Chalnoth]

This is because the refusal to bake the cake was of minimal consequence to the size of the judgment. The size of the judgment was primarily about the harassment that the Kleins subjected the couple to after they lodged a discrimination complaint (the refusal to serve a couple because of their sexual orientation is illegal in Oregon).

See more here.

The article includes the following quote from the ruling:

The Agency's theory of liability is that since Respondents brought the case to the media's attention and kept it there by repeatedly appearing in public to make statements deriding Complainants, it was foreseeable that this attention would negatively impact Complainants, making Respondents liable for any resultant emotional suffering experienced by Complainants. The Agency also argues that Respondents are liable for negative third party social media directed at Complainants because it was a foreseeable consequence of media attention.

Re:The Struggle

[sumdumass]

It shouldn't be unlawful in the first place (and ultimately will be found unconstitutional if the woman raises enough funds to challenge it properly).

It wasn't that the woman refused to serve them, she refused to serve them in a way that went against her constitutionally protected freedom of religion. That is the discrimination involved here. But instead of the gay couple going to one of the hundreds of other bakers capable of making a wedding cake who have no issues at all with gay weddings, they are intolerant and sue knowing that it is a religious belief because they want to attack the religious.

And don't give me that but she is running a business bullshit. Soldiers can object and opt out of killing the enemy when we are at war because of religious freedoms and they openly entered into a profession that is somewhat of a known job requirement that you might have to kill someone. The first amendment says congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion- not that you lose your rights and freedoms if you open a business.

Re:The Struggle

[sumdumass]

Words are generally the catalyst of violence.

When is the last time a bar fight broke out when no words at all were said? How often does it happen?

Get real, live in the real world. Even the courts recognize that there are such things as fighting words.

Yes, he is saying that when you go around pissing people off, do not be surprised when they get pissed off and get violent. That is what some people do when they get pissed off and it's been a part of human nature and probably an evolutionary key to survival since we were apes. And yes, apes do get malicious and violent when pissed. It's even part of animal nature.

Re:The Struggle

[sumdumass]

I would suggest that if you say things neo-nazis say, you might be considered associated with them. Just like if you say things communist, or republican or fascist or whatever, people might connect you to them and think you support the crazy shit the crazy people say.

Now if you are complaining that there are not enough minorities or enough gays or whatever, then yes, you have to either defend or distance yourself from crap others like you say.

Re:The Struggle

[khallow]

Already addressed this in another comment. The only people calling white people evil are the people getting upset that anyone else values diversity. It's a straw man argument.

It's an argument based on the fact that there's handwringing here only over factors that concentrate so-called "whites" in one place. The author of the main story doesn't seem to care when other ethnic groups concentrate in one place.

Re:The Struggle

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

And then you failed to quote the section near the end of the summary describing a notable impact of the declining diversity: increased anti-queer violence.

You're telling me that neighborhoods getting richer because Amazon web developers move in leads to "increased anti-queer violence"? Are you serious?

People need to stop using gay men like me as a pretext to advance their bizarre politics. The article is bullshit, and you are repeating that bullshit uncritically.

Re:The Struggle

[Chas]

First, you provide evidence that every instance of a non-gay physically attacking a gay is rooted in the person BEING gay.

Until then, fuck off.

Re:The Struggle

[rworne]

You know nothing then.

The state of the schools in the LAUSD in the late 70's to mid-80's compared to today gives absolutely no insight on my attitudes towards segregation.

All I asked is: Why is no one is asking to integrate schools with a supermajority of hispanic students?

I then supplied proof that these schools do indeed exist and the 90%+ was not an exaggeration.

Re:The Struggle

[peragrin]

motorcycle riders who wear helmets are twice as likely to be injured in an accident as compared to those who don't wear helmets. Therefore wearing helmets on motorcycles is bad.

Of course the reality is those who don't wear helmets are just more likely to die in said accident.

Point of view is everything. Find a realistic one please.

Re:The Struggle

[serviscope_minor]

So let me get this straight:

The poster is asking for evidence that every crime against a gay person is recorded as a "hate crime" even when the orientation has nothing to do with it.

Your response is to ask him to prove that all crimes where the victim is gay is in fact a hate crime lest he otherwise "fuck off".

Did I get that right?

Re:The Struggle

[Mashiki]

The first person to mention evil is you. The post was lamenting declining diversityâ"a social quality the author valuesâ"in favor of increasing majority homogeny. You may not specifically value diversity, but those of us who do are not maligning the majority group.

They may have been the first person to mention "evil" in the context of the post. But there are a large number of social groups out there that cry that white men are evil, there are also a number of social groups out there engaging in sexism, writing about engaging in anti-male sexism or anti-white racism as well. If you haven't seen that in the news, you're not paying attention, if you need a dose let me recommend reading stuff by jessica valenti, anil dash, tauriq moosa or anything written on sites like jezebel or the mary sue.

Re:The Struggle

[Cederic]

I can't think of another corner of the Internet where people hurl "nigger" or "fag" at each other more.

Really? I'm clearly not browsing at -1 enough.

Re:The Struggle

[jedidiah]

> To be clear, I wasn't talking about the workplace.

The same issue apply to neighborhoods. You only have so many bourgeois blacks out there and only so many total. The same goes for any other nationality or ethnicity you want to fixate on.

Or do you want to subject yourself (and your family) to a festering hole with high crime, drug gangs, violence, neighbors who don't value education, and classmates that are thugs?

I fled my own childhood neighborhood for the same reasons I assume that my black neighbors fled theirs.

Re:The Struggle

[drinkypoo]

i understand now, i dont have any specific links to go by, however I would argue that the woman who was sued for not baking a cake

She was sued for releasing her customer's private information, which only a total shitbag would do. She deserved what she got, and not because it was straight-on-gay crime.

Re:The Struggle

[drinkypoo]

No no. We have souls, they're just not ours, uh, originally.

But it's like vampires, right? You have to keep stealing them, right? To survive, I mean.

Re:The Struggle

[drinkypoo]

I can't think of another corner of the Internet where people hurl "nigger" or "fag" at each other more.

Your naivete is adorable. But you clearly don't get around much.

Re:The Struggle

[DarkOx]

When people cry about a like of diversity 90% of the time what they mean is there are not enough other people LIKE me to be comfortable. They don't want diversity, they want to be less of a minority. Suppose you have a majority Orange city council. A Green person on the council wants to create a new at large position to "increase diversity" Now do suppose if the position is created and a Purple is elected they will be happy or did they really want another Green but just won't admit it.

Re:The Struggle

[DarkOx]

I doubt it. I bet many of them specifically target other blacks, with full knowledge that a legacy of racism means authorities are much less likely to look into the matter fully and they stand a better chance of getting away with it. Most criminals are dumb but not completely. They burgle the house in the shitty neighborhood because they know odds are their isn't a patrol car as near by if someone calls the cops as their would likely be in a more affluent neighborhood, even in the spoils of a successful job won't be as great.

There should be no such thing as a hate crime. The concept has no place in a just society. All victims should matter equally. Why you were victimized should not be a factor. If someone is murdered/raped/robbed etc society should put equal effort into securing justice no matter who the victim is. When it comes to punishing or rehabilitating the perpetrator those are serious crime the commission of which means at a very fundamental level the prep is deranged and needs to be handled accordingly no matter what their 'reasons'. If they formed intent to do those types of harms why isn't important.

Re:The Struggle

[DarkOx]

All the freaking time when some kisses the wrong girls or grabs an ass they should not have.

Re:The Struggle

[DiehardIndependent]

It isn't clear that I'm saying that decreasing diversity of sexuality is contributing to the rise in hate crimes against minority sexualities? Maybe the problem is that you're not actually trying to understand.

What's clear is you haven't spent any time looking into the matter beyond reading the summary. You seem to have taken select terms in the summary and conflated them to jump to your ridiculous conclusion. The only piece of hard data in any of the forwarded articles is:

"Seattle Police Department records show that "bias crimes" against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the first half of 2014 had already outnumbered those for the whole of 2013."

Stats from over a year ago with nothing more than the opinion of the article's author that the violence was caused by white male gay haters in the tech industry. But, you know, if there's one thing we can say for sure, it's that educated high income tech geeks have a long and storied history of gay bashing. Right?

As someone who spends a fair amount of time in Seattle, I can say that the gay community in Capitol Hill doesn't blame rampaging high testosterone white software developers for the violence against them. Tell you what, why don't you read this article, entitled "5 reasons for Capitol Hill’s hate crime ‘spike’". It was written by a guy on the ground in the neighborhood in question around the time the statistics cited in TFA were published.

Re:The Struggle

[KGIII]

I think the only relevant question is this...

Are you a lumberjack?

Re:The Struggle

[DiehardIndependent]

As the queer population in Seattle is decreasing, violence against queers is increasing. My neighborhood is a homogenizing community with increasing conflict.

The gay population in Greater Seattle is increasing, not decreasing. If you've got stats saying otherwise, let's see them.

Certain "gayborhoods" in Seattle have declining gay populations, and this is attributed to growing acceptance of LGBT in Seattle generally:

"In Seattle, the historically gay-friendly Capitol Hill neighborhood saw same-sex households dive by 23% from 2000 to 2012, while such households were on the rise in nearly every other neighborhood in the city as well as surrounding suburbs."

.

Re:The Struggle

[SMTB1963]

As the queer population in Seattle is decreasing, violence against queers is increasing.

That's odd, because in your post here, you say:

Seems pretty likely that a growing queer population has led to violence against queers.

So, honest question - is the LGBT community in Seattle growing or shrinking? Either way, a source backing up your position would be great.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

For fuck's sake how was that not obviously sarcasm? Only on fucking Slashdot do people think I seriously believe that queers are queer bashing.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

Declining as a proportion of the population as the population becomes less diverse.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

1. I live on the Hill in Seattle. I'm well aware of what is happening in this neighborhood.
2. The culture of Amazon's swelling ranks is not reflective of the overall tech industry. They hire so many young bros and shove money in their faces. The result is a whole bunch of rich man-children running around like they own the place. And increasingly, they do.
3. Regarding your article, it reinforces one of my points (the Hill's becoming less gay). The night life boom is absolutely a consequence of Amazon (and other tech) growth. It's frankly a disgusting scene. And it absolutely has all the ingredients to lead to increased violence toward queers in the neighborhood.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

I doubt it. I bet many of them specifically target other blacks, with full knowledge that a legacy of racism means authorities are much less likely to look into the matter fully and they stand a better chance of getting away with it. Most criminals are dumb but not completely. They burgle the house in the shitty neighborhood because they know odds are their isn't a patrol car as near by if someone calls the cops as their would likely be in a more affluent neighborhood, even in the spoils of a successful job won't be as great.

This is still not the same thing!

There should be no such thing as a hate crime. The concept has no place in a just society. All victims should matter equally. Why you were victimized should not be a factor. If someone is murdered/raped/robbed etc society should put equal effort into securing justice no matter who the victim is. When it comes to punishing or rehabilitating the perpetrator those are serious crime the commission of which means at a very fundamental level the prep is deranged and needs to be handled accordingly no matter what their 'reasons'. If they formed intent to do those types of harms why isn't important.

I agree that "hate crime" should not be used in determining punishment, but I strongly disagree that the concept should not exist. It is important, when trying to address a crime wave, to understand what is causing it. When the cause is bigotry, it's important to know that.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

I thought the absurdity of the claim, that queers are committing hate crimes against queers, would stand out enough. I guess I underestimated Slashdot. Thanks for explaining how to engage in jokes on the Internet tho.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

Not going to engage this racist shit.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that Capitol Hill was ever at any point all- or even majority-gay. Nope.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

https://google.com/?q=jessica+... - hmm nope
https://google.com/?q=anil+das... - nope
https://google.com/?q=jezebel+... - nope but there's some amusing stuff
https://google.com/?q=themarys... - more nope

Sorry, as an anti-racist, I'm already used to this accusation, and it's a stupid fantasy. While I'm sure that there are actually a few people who genuinely "hate white people", it's a straw man argument to set this up as the position of the author or defenders, when none have expressed it. It's just a way to easily dismiss anti-racist sentiment without actually talking about its genuine motivations.

Re: The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

they are not part of the genetic diversity that will get passed on to the next generation

Seems to assume heredity to me.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

I'm just saying what I see in my neighborhood. Also, as a queer, I am not "using gay men like you" at all. Shrug.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

I will not be pressured to provide evidence for a claim I didn't make.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

I'm being accused of being anti-white, based on "crap others like [me] say", except no one like me says any such crap. It's a made up boogey man, and none of the very few examples anyone's trotted out* hold any water.

* I've gotten one reply with supposed evidence of white-hating anti-racists. They named two authors and two publications, neither of which turned up anti-white sentiment when actually Googling for it.

Re:The Struggle

[sumdumass]

Maybe it is just natural to you and you do not see it. But you are in fact anti white male which you have shown in your comments about diversity. This article points white males out as a problem displacing diversity. You are commenting about how you want diversity and saying it is a problem too.

Now if you were actually encouraging minorities to move to Seattle and enjoy the prosperity, i wouldn't think twice about it. But it seems your problem is white males moving in at a faster pace than others. You as well as the article's author seem to be in the same boat.

Re:The Struggle

[Maxo-Texas]

Any large concentration puts the minority at a disadvantage. I know white male nurses who work in otherwise completely female and multi-racial departments and they are horribly discriminated against.

The problem is not white males per se. It's that there are so many of them and they are so young that they have reached a critical mass where bad behavior against minorities has arisen.

That kind of behavior is built into our genes. WIth mild prompting children who otherwise look the same will group into different eye color groups and come to think of certain traits being associated with certain eye colors. So it's a constant struggle to avoid racism: i.e. the belief that every member of a group automatically has certain traits, sexism, etc. When a larger group does this, it often abuses it's superior position at the expense of one or more minority groups.

Re:The Struggle

[ganjadude]

thats not in all what i said in the slightest. and i hope those people who did so get taken care of. but its not a national epidemic which some people are trying to make it out to be

same with air disasters, yes its tragic for those on the planes, however in the scheme of things not many people die in plane accidents.

Re:The Struggle

[tepples]

I guess a subset of a population is "diverse" if the proportion of the subset from the traditionally privileged caste is not substantially greater than the same caste's proportion in the whole population. For example, a set of people is "diverse" if the fraction who are white males does not greatly exceed the fraction of the population who are white males.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

I am a white male. I'm not against myself. You're projecting a straw man argument on me, and I'm not going to accept it.

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

It's a problem in my community. If you don't think it merits your attention, why do you keep spending time in the discussion?

Re:The Struggle

[ganjadude]

if its a problem in your community, why am i hearing about it in NY? what can I in NY do to help you? this is not something that should be national news as it affects your community, it should be local news is the point im making.

I keep talking about it because im sick and tired of non issues (in the scheme of things) taking up airtime on national networks where they could be talking about things that affect us all as americans instead

I might sound heartless but thats not my intent in the slightest. i think ive made myself perfectly clear and if i havent ill say it one more time

it sucks, it really does

but it is a rounding error, it is a non issue for the city you live in when 19.66 attacks take place in a year

i hope they get the scumbags who are harassing your people

have a nice day

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

So you're actually admitting that you're trying to silence this issue on Slashdot. Okay.

Re:The Struggle

[DiehardIndependent]

1. I live on the Hill in Seattle. I'm well aware of what is happening in this neighborhood.

Great! And the fact that there's been a spike in hate crimes in the area is beyond debate. But unless you work for the Seattle Police Department, you don't have any idea of the perpetrators' demographics.

Furthermore, there's been a concurrent spike in other crimes in the area...are overpaid Amazon frat boys responsible for those as well?

2. The culture of Amazon's swelling ranks is not reflective of the overall tech industry. They hire so many young bros and shove money in their faces. The result is a whole bunch of rich man-children running around like they own the place. And increasingly, they do.

How can you possibly know this? Do you work in Amazon's Human Resources department?

3. Regarding your article, it reinforces one of my points (the Hill's becoming less gay).

...yet the article makes no mention of Amazon or any other tech company as a factor in the spike in hate crimes. I can't find anything about tech employees committing hate crimes in The Capitol Hill Times either. How is it you are more informed on the situation than your community's news outlets?

The night life boom is absolutely a consequence of Amazon (and other tech) growth. It's frankly a disgusting scene. And it absolutely has all the ingredients to lead to increased violence toward queers in the neighborhood.

It is certainly possible that tech growth is a factor in the booming nightlife scene. But surely you know that there's plenty of young affluent people in Seattle that aren't in tech and view Capitol Hill as a nice place to live and/or party. I would bet that is as big or bigger factor than an increased tech presence downtown.

As far as your assessment of the nightlife in Capitol Hill, am I to assume you've spent a lot of time people watching at these new "disgusting" establishments? If so, how did you identify these homophobic Amazon employees? Were they all wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the Amazon logo?

The fact is, nobody knows the causes of the spike of hate crimes. That's why mayor Ed Murray (a Capitol Hill resident and a gay man himself) has set up a task force to look into the matter.

It may in fact turn out that tech employees committed some of these crimes. Until that is determined, your unsupported opinions only indicate some sort of bias or resentment on your part.

Re:The Struggle

[DiehardIndependent]

So now you're replacing your original claim with a new one. Fine. Do you have anything to support your new position, or do we have to take your word for this as well?

Re:The Struggle

[omfgnosis]

So now you're replacing your original claim with a new one.

No, but I perhaps poorly stated my claim in the first place. I suppose I can see how, out of context, my claim could be misunderstood.

Do you have anything to support your new position, or do we have to take your word for this as well?

Uhm, you linked it and quoted it.

Re:The Struggle

[AK Marc]

And when you wait outside a gay bar, and find a guy who walks out alone, or walks out with another guy, then drives home alone; you follow them, do s swoop and squat, or just bump them from behind. Then, when they get out to exchange data, you tie them up, and drag them behind your car until they are nearly dead, then carve "die faggot"on them, and leave them for dead, you'll sometimes get charged with a hate crime.

In general the fights in gay bars where the straight guy tells his friends (I'd say straight friends, but half of then are gay, but in the closet) he's planning on beating up some fags, then goes to a known gay bar, waiting for the first guy to talk to him, so he has an excuse to beat him up, that's an innocent misunderstanding as well?

Re:The Struggle

[DiehardIndependent]

Uhm, you linked it and quoted it.

Since you're having problems understanding the quote, let me repeat it for you:

"In Seattle, the historically gay-friendly Capitol Hill neighborhood saw same-sex households dive by 23% from 2000 to 2012, while such households were on the rise in nearly every other neighborhood in the city as well as surrounding suburbs."

Since you're also having problems remembering your claim, let me repeat it for you:

"Declining as a proportion of the population as the population becomes less diverse."

Sorry, I don't see how gays moving out of Capitol Hill to the suburbs shows that the proportion of gays relative to Seattle's general population is decreasing.

Care to try again?

Re:The Struggle

[AK Marc]

As for the baker, you didnt hear about the baker being forced to pay over 100 grand to a lesbian couple because they refused to bake them a custom cake????

Did you hear that the baker illegally gave out personally identifying information about the lesbian couple, and encouraged people to contact them to voice displeasure (or called for public harassment of the lesbians, depending on how you'd like to word it). The payment wasn't just for not making a cake, but for calling down death threats on innocent people. Or have you not figured out how to work that google thing yet?

Re:The Struggle

[AK Marc]

At the height of lynchings, the numbers were never much above 100 across the whole US. It isn't about killing the Niggers that needed killing, the law still did that. It was about killing some Niggers to prevent the others from getting out of their place. Focusing on the numbers indicates you have no idea what a hate crime is. Think of 9/11. About a month of traffic fatalities died. That's not even worth counting. If the numbers were all that mattered, we should have ignored it. But it's not the numbers that matter, it's also the statement about the hate crime. A Hate Crime is terrorism. No more, no less.

Re:The Struggle

[uninformedLuddite]

You spend a lot of time in drum circles right?

Re:The Struggle

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

I'm just saying what I see in my neighborhood.

You didn't say anything about what you see in your neighborhood.

Also, as a queer, I am not "using gay men like you" at all. Shrug.

But the author of the article is not gay. And as a gay techie who used to live in a gay neighborhood, I can tell you that the problem is not tech companies.

Re: The Struggle

[uninformedLuddite]

So you're saying that there isn't a gay gene? That it's a choice?

Re:The Struggle

[ganjadude]

if thats what you took from my post, sure. whatever

Re:The Struggle

[dave420]

Hate crimes are more about assessing the perpetrator's danger to society. It's completely different to attack someone for something they've personally done to you, compared to attacking someone for what they are. Someone who has no qualms in attacking other people simply for characteristics is clearly more of a danger to society than someone with a specific beef against a specific person. There is logic behind identifying hate crimes.

Re:The Struggle

[dave420]

A hate crime does not have to be terrorism. Terrorism is a motive - to induce fear in people in order to coerce them politically. A hate crime is targeting someone with specific qualities of their person (race, sexuality, etc.) because of those qualities. A hate crime can be terrorism, but it doesn't have to be. Just trying to kill as many people of a certain group isn't terrorism, but to do it in order to "send a message" certainly is.

Re:The Struggle

[dave420]

Well, white guys do generally hold most of the power in the western world, so if there are to be improvements in society, they are the most capable of effecting them. Expecting the under-represented minorities to affect change is ensuring progress is as slow as it can be. Being tired of something doesn't diminish its accuracy, and even if you are white you are not every other white guy out there.

Re:The Struggle

[dave420]

I think that speaks more of your motivations than it does of anyone else. You seem to be projecting.

Re:The Struggle

[dave420]

That's what it might mean to you, but to assume that's what it means to everyone is just, well, pathetic.

Re:The Struggle

[dave420]

One can redress a balance without favouring one constituent over the other. Hell, that's the very definition.

Re:The Struggle

[sumdumass]

Sure they can. But what does it suggest when someone is articulating that favoring by complaining about companies expanding and white males moving in for the employment opportunities.

It suggests they have a problem with white males moving in.

Re: The Struggle

[Grishnakh]

-1 Stupid.

Sorry to be blunt and possibly insulting, but think about it: how many gay people are born to other gay people? How many are born to (supposedly) heterosexual parents? Pretty much all of them come from hetero pairings.

If there's really a genetic component to it, most likely what's happening is that people who are bisexual (which is probably a much larger portion of the population than most people realize; it's just repressed) are breeding more bi and homo people while they're in hetero relationships.

Re:The Struggle

[SMTB1963]

For fuck's sake how was that not obviously sarcasm? Only on fucking Slashdot do people think I seriously believe that queers are queer bashing.

Do you have a problem with reading comprehension? I'm not talking about gay bashing, I'm talking about whether the LGBT population in Seattle is INCREASING or DECREASING. Your posts on the subject of trends in the community seem to be in conflict with one another...maybe I'm wrong on that.

Here is the question one more time: is the LGBT community in Seattle growing or shrinking? If you don't know, just say so. No need to get your knickers in a knot.

Re:The Struggle

[shutdown -p now]

Freedom of religion is not a blanket excuse for doing anything you want. If it were, you could, say, dodge taxes by claiming that your religion prohibits them (if I remember correctly, Jehovah's Witnesses tried that at some point).

Re:The Struggle

[shutdown -p now]

I think the point is that any hate crime effectively "sends a message", even if it's not intended to (and honestly, it's intended to in most cases, which is obvious when you find out what the attackers were saying during the assault). So it still makes sense to treat those as a more severe crime than regular assault, just because of those extra negative social effects.

Re:The Struggle

[ancientmyth]

As for the baker, you didnt hear about the baker being forced to pay over 100 grand to a lesbian couple because they refused to bake them a custom cake???? google is your friend, and for someone who is caught up on LGBTQDFHSDTHUA++ you should be well aware of that case

I am quite aware of the case and I find your use of "LGBTQDFHSDTHUA++" a tad insulting. Touche, you blasted back and got to hit some collateral damage (I'm a T and the B in that elongated insult). Bravo! Punitive damages don't always go to the plaintiff and the final amount is yet to be determined last i heard; second, it's still not classified as a 'hate crime', it's a discrimination suit. Nobody was arrested. They just lost the case in a civil suit that without the plaintiffs, would have amounted to no charges against the baker whatsoever. No hate, just ignorance.

As for your argument of comparing crimes where both parties are gay (or black); they're just crimes. About the only thing I can help to support your argument is that I don't have complete fandom from the LG community as being quite confident in their own sexuality lack understanding in mine. Indeed, there may well be a case of someone in those two communities attacking one in mine, but I have never heard of it,,,and i live here. As for being unjustly being charged because it turns out the ass you were fighting happened to be black or gay, perhaps you should just stay out of fights altogether; it might just be the way you talk that pisses people off,

Now pass that g**damn blunt before i hit you with one of my heels, mr. "ganja"dude! (if you cant take a 'toke joke', don't advertise your drunkenness)

Re: The Struggle

[Plumpaquatsch]

Who's doing anti GLBT hate crimes in DC? It's not white male techies.

White Republican politicians.

Re:Leftist propaganda article

[omfgnosis]

Including content from such noted leftist wacko publications as Bloomberg Business, no less...

Boom-Town Rats

[turkeydance]

or something like that.

Wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the framing of this is 100% accurate. I was born and raised here and Amazon and its asshole-geek army, who don't have ANY FUCKING MANNERS, have ruined what used to be a great place to live. Fuck Seattle and Fuck Amazon.

Re: Wrong.

[cthulhu11]

I have to laugh about the claim of a white demographic - are Indians considered white???

Wrong skin color

[Kohath]

According to this article, having too many people of a specific skin color in an area causes crime. Does Slashdot really want to endorse that kind of retrograde prejudice?

Re:Wrong skin color

[jader3rd]

According to this article, having too many people of a specific skin color in an area causes crime.

Actually, according to the article, it's claiming that by having too many rich people causes crime. The idea being that having someone move it and get a well paying job that must have only come from making someone else unemployed. So now there are a bunch of unemployed homeless people, and all of the housing has gone to over paid people. So home breakins has increased because now there's actually something worth stealing in houses.

Re:Wrong skin color

[Anonymous Coward]

The article does not say that too many people of one color cause crime; you said that. What the article does say, is that Amazon is hiring a primarily white male workforce at salaries far in excess of the average for the area. This correlates with, but it is not proven that it causes, a number of things stated in the article. The gender imbalance, may mean that there are a large number of men without female counterparts or potential mates. The implication in the article is that this is driving prostitution as these men seek sex they are hard-pressed to find in a relationship because there are not enough woman. The income imbalance means that Amazon employees can pay a premium for living space close to Amazon, and because they are the highest paid workers in the area, it is displacing other residents, many of whom happen to be the existing diverse people that current live there. The increased affluence of the area surrounding Amazon, it is implied, is leading to increased crime because wealthy new communities are a target for theft.

The article doesn't prove any of this. The white males that Amazon is hiring may have brought their wives with them, in which case, Amazon's hiring would not create a gender balance within Seattle. Regardless, it doesn't say that less racial diversity = crime. That's a dumb statement you made; not the article.

Re:Wrong skin color

[Dutch Gun]

Another anti-Amazon rant from reifman? Sigh... Same story, different slant. And predictably, Slashdot is promoting his click-bait nonsense just because a tech company is mentioned.

Sorry, Amazon has been good for Seattle. Jobs are a good thing. Taxes get paid. Rent gets paid. People can eat. They buy things from other local businesses, and the cycle continues. You know... all that sort of stuff. People used to celebrate when they saw that an area was vibrant and growing. 75 cranes in the area? I'd say that bodes well for Seattle's economic future. The Seattle Times calling the area with a massive construction boom "soulless" is pretty sad, and speaks more about their own prejudices than anything else. The article is a pure nostalgia-based puff piece.

Are Amazon, Microsoft, or other northwest tech giants saints? Hell no. Neither are the people who work for them, native Seattlites or not. They can't help that they're largely straight and white, and damn, that shouldn't exactly be held against them. But most of them are probably decent people. We just had a pride celebration after the Supreme Court decision, and an annual pride parade before that, and I didn't hear about Amazon employees lining up and throwing beer bottles at the marchers. Pretty sure I saw a group representing Microsoft in that parade as well. Wouldn't be surprised if there were Amazon participants as well.

Seattle is a pretty laid-back and tolerant area in general. Tolerance means trying to get along with people you don't necessarily like or agree with, not just other people like you. Honestly, it's sounding more and more like reifman is the intolerant and hateful one here. He needs to learn to relax, or he's never going to learn to fit in like a native.

Re:Wrong skin color

[x0ra]

We just had a pride celebration after the Supreme Court decision, and an annual pride parade before that, ...

Sounds like a bad place to have any kind of old-school religious faith.

Re:Wrong skin color

[Dutch Gun]

No one is forced to attend these events. People are still free to practice their faith in a law-abiding fashion as always, and there are many lovely churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship in the area.

Tolerance needs to go both ways to work, and most people in the area, at least in my experience, are fine with a "live and let live" philosophy.

Re:Wrong skin color

[Nethead]

Exactly. I just saw Neal Stephenson tout his new book at a church up on pill-hill.

Myself? I moved north to Tulalip and work tech in Everett for an aerospace firm. More people coming up here too. The whole I-5 corridor is getting slammed: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/planni...

Re:Wrong skin color

[argStyopa]

We all know that (in broadly applicable generalizations) it's not true of whites, likely untrue of Asians, possibly true of Hispanics, and certainly true of blacks, just nobody wants to say it out loud.

Hate the comment all you like, you know it's what everyone is thinking.

Re:Wrong skin color

[x0ra]

Calling out-of-state christian bakery to frame them is not what I call "live and let live".

Re:Wrong skin color

[Dutch Gun]

True. But I never claimed we don't have our share of intolerant people on both sides of any contentious issue. I only claimed "most".

Re:Wrong skin color

[Kohath]

The summary clearly associates an increase in people of a specific skin color with more crimes. You are correct that it doesn't say "causes", but the skin-color/crime association is clearly made. Making statements that associate skin color with crimes is called bigotry in other cases. It should be treated the same here.

Re:Ridiculous post ..shouldn't be on slashdot

[rmdingler]

I'm five nines certain a realist would sigh under her breath and occasionally accept articles she deems unworthy.

Like beauty and even competence, relevance is in the eye of the beholder.

After all, what are you going to do with your smart self? Troll on Voatse or Reddirt?

Re:Leftist propaganda article

[sumdumass]

Umm.. your confused. That was Harpo Marx not his retarded cousin Karl. Sorry, I know it's hard to tell the clowns apart but Harpo rarely spoke but had a lot to say.

Non-problems, except for traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon is great for Seattle. Property values are going up, and formerly seedy neighborhoods are getting developed and gentrified.

The media narrative about hate crimes and lack of diversity is just pandering to people who are upset by rising rents and evolving neighborhoods. Seattle's "whiteness" is not a issue unless lower crime rates and less nuisance behavior is somehow problematic. I'm not being racist, just calling a spade a spade here.

If it's a bar fight and one of the participants happens to be gay or trans-gender, then it becomes a hate crime. Boo hoo. This is just a convenient way to breed an "us versus them" mentality between groups that will always feel marginalized or oppressed somehow vs people climbing the economic ladder.

The only REAL problem is the traffic, and it is caused by too many cars on the road, and Seattle voters consistently voting against their own best interests.

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not being racist, just calling a spade a spade here.

Well played, sir!

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[93 Escort Wagon]

Yeah, I've lived and worked in/around Seattle since the 1980s - awful traffic is nothing new. Even back around 1990 it was ranked the 6th worst in the nation.

The people who think it's recently gotten much worse have likely moved here during the past five years or so. After the 2008 crash, traffic in Seattle improved a fair bit because a lot of people were out of work. It still wasn't great, but it was significantly better. Now that the economy is booming again, traffic sucks again.

I will say that, prior to the past year or so, northbound traffic jams heading out of downtown were a rarity... but nowadays they're pretty common. Thank heavens the U-Link light rail will be starting up soon.

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Metro Atlanta. We are constantly building - everything. We have an UGLY city. We have subdivisions the size of towns. And no matter how many roads are built, it's not enough. Old buildings are torn down for new in a heartbeat. The rational always given is that Sherman burnt all the old buildings down so who gives a shit. Can't stop "progress".

We have the worst traffic in the country - maybe second only to LA - even after all the new roads are built. Commute times are horrible. And if there's inclement weather, well, your 1 hour commute becomes 2+ hours - sometimes 12 hours or more.

Quality of life deteriorates with unrestricted development and economic growth.

Climbing up the economic ladder isn't all there is to life and if carried too far, actually degrades one's life. One's wellbeing and health suffers.

In the US, we have a huge drug and alcohol and obesity problem. It's a symptom of our shitty lives. It's because people are drinking, eating, drugging away this striving all work no play "work ethic". A minority of losers who have no lives work all the time (live to work to prove something) and ruin it for the rest of us: if you don't keep your nose to the grindstone 55+ hours a week and be 'reachable' 24/7 - even during vacation - well, you're unemployed.

Seattle is going to turn into a shit hole that no decent person will want to live because the quality of life will suck.

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[Billly Gates]

What about those who want to buy a home or rent?

That is not good at all as $400,000 for a starter home is great if you are a typical Linux programmer like many on here are who make $100,000 a year fresh out of college but many if not most are not. A lowly admin and senior desktop guy would need a room mate where 10 years ago could get a full 2 bedroom place by myself??

Also have we not learned in 2008 that too much of a good thing thanks to cheap free money by the FED pumping low interest rates due to housing? What comes up must come down since speculation not consumption are spiking demand. Eventually they will crash when interest rates have to rise making the mortgage rates much much higher and having the speculators then dumping them all at the same time.

In Houston we already surprised 2008 all over again and people are afraid to buy including me as I know it will crash again in a year or two. In the meantime my rent has gone up 3x the time of inflation!

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[ganjadude]

so... dont move to somewhere you cant afford? is that really that hard for people to figure out???

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[Billly Gates]

Uh yes we people did not get in before the fed jerked up the prices thanks to government debt.

There is no where you can afford an hour in every direction in New York, Seattle, LA, DC, etc unless you already got in years ago at the right time or you make $70,000 a year or more. That is not the median income by far yet that is supposed to be the median price for a home. That doesn't add up.

That is a bad thing as it means a coming crash for you home owners as that is unsustainable.

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[ganjadude]

living an hour from NYC i say BS,you can find a decent home for under a grand a month in rockland orange and ulster county if you want to own you can buy a nice single family on an acre or 4 for under 200 grand in orange county NY

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[russotto]

There is no where you can afford an hour in every direction in New York, Seattle, LA, DC, etc unless you already got in years ago at the right time or you make $70,000 a year or more.

Less than an hour from NY: Union City, East Orange, Orange, Irvington, and Newark, all in NJ.

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[hackertourist]

Property values are going up

You say that like it's a good thing. Sure, existing owners may like it, but making housing less affordable has all sorts of undesirable consequences. It forces less affluent people to find housing further away which increases their commute time and increases traffic. It creates an underclass of people who are too rich to live in rent-controlled housing but too poor to buy a house.

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[wbr1]

Calling a spade a spade is racist. Don't tell me you did not know the racial conditions of that term.

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[lonney]

Dont live in King County and dont try and drive to work and avoid using buses. Option one: There are a couple ferry options west to Kitsap County, some people I work with do this. Option two: Sounder train south (provided your office isnt too far from King St station (mine isnt)). We (wife, 2 year old daughter and I) relocated to Seattle just over a year ago for a senior desktop support job. We bought a nice house in Puyallup for around $210k on a nice quiet street street. My commute is a little on the long side, but my employer subsidized Orca card means I pay $15 a month total and the train is fairly comfortable and rarely late.

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[k6mfw]

We have the worst traffic in the country - maybe second only to LA - even after all the new roads are built. Commute times are horrible.

Speaking of traffic, there are times in Silicon Valley where traffic is really bad. Alrighty so lets create alternatives to roads and cars. Talking with someone (who is very pro uber) the other day who had compelling argument against high speed rail (very expensive and slow compared to airlines), against cabs (it's driven by lobbyists who are convincing govts to outlaw uber), and busses (most underutilized and made prohibitively expensive by the unions). I was thinking, "well crap, we will never get alternative transportations to the car or the airplane with this mode of thinking that shoots down any alternates (with exception of unobtainium concepts)."

Commerce whether it be transportation or high speed internet (which I've read Seattle is poor at both) is important. Kind of like logistics for military forces. Might have the best of the best but if not a good logistics infrastructure (all that boring stuff like food, water, fuel) then only good for parades.

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

I don't think Uber will really have a huge impact on over-all traffic, especially for people driving to work every day. Unless Uber starts doing multi-stop / multi-passenger trips (which will require far better software to do that) their not going to significantly cut the number of cars on the road over-all. Subways, light rail, Hyper Loop, flying drone cabs (?), is required to effectively cut the traffic.

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[MountainLogic]

With our Seattle transportation issues we only seem to talk about cars. There is another big side of this that we don't address with all our talk of ST3 and Metro. That is the ever growing truck traffic being driven by the ports of Seattle and Tacoma. The ports need to step up and take responsibility for their impact on the roads. The ports have the bonding authority to do just about whatever they can get wall street to finance. RIght now good can not get into or out of the ports. Our Washington state farmers can not get space on trains to get their wheat to the ports due to all of the space being leased up in bulk by coal trains. I-90 over Snoqualmie Pass is a often closed in winter for delivering trucking cargo that results in billions in delays. There is a fallow railroad bed, known as the old Milwaukee RailRoad that is in public hands. It runs from between the two ports in Renton, near I-90 just east of Issaquah and reaches all the way to south of Spokane. It has a very even 1.7 grade at that could easily be built out to 150 MPH. The planned expansion of eastside light rail will come very near to the Old Milwaukee line at Issaquah. The ports could easily restore the Old Milwaukee line and lease excess capacity to Sound Transit, Metro and Amtrak. Imagine how moving all of this truck traffic off our Seattle and Freeway roads would reduce congestion. Imagine how a two hour train ride to WSU, the Apple Cup and Spokane would unite the state, reduce congestion, carbon pollution. With a one hour trip from the massive cold war runway at Moses lake it would allow the port to push freight out of Seatac to open up more lucrative passenger plane slots. This would put the ports at a competitive advantage if they can guarantee containers will be in Spokane on railcars ready for trucks or further rail transports regardless of weather or traffic. Now imagine the Ports building out a high speed rail line along I-90 that leverages cargo and passenger service. By combining the cost and solutions of cargo and commuter transportation together we can solve both problems at lower cost. Win-WIn-WIn.

Re:Non-problems, except for traffic

[tepples]

so... dont move to somewhere you cant afford? is that really that hard for people to figure out???

It is when all the jobs in a particular industry are in high-cost-of-living areas and none allow working from home.

It really is

[Anonymous Coward]

The only anti-gay that crosses tech is from conservative male Indians, everyone else in tech embraces LGBTQ and generally IS it. Amazon and Microsoft are and have always been pretty accepting. I'll say Amazon has made poor decisions, I hate the South Lake Union area and refuse to go there (Hey lets build a big company right in the 'central park' of Seattle). The housing in Queen Anne and Capital Hill has been overpriced for over a decade, so nothing really new there. Queen Anne looks like a shitty old Boston neighborhood with no parking and Capital Hill is a dirty overrated Portland neighborhood. Please, everyone move there...

As for development, this is exactly the opposite of SF, the reason why SF is fucked is because of the NIMBYs like who wrote this article. Building denser is the only solution to more populace. Oh noes, no pretty skyline.

Traffic in and out of Seattle sucks more from bad geology/geography than anything. Its population density is incredibly low compared to other metros. I do think Amazon's choice of location is insane, and since they move all of their real logistics elsewhere, I guess they agree. Google has a bunch of offices around the area much like Microsoft smartly does and plans on expanding on east side, so I am not sure why they matter. Facebook is small and Oculus is east side too (until they still birth).

Re:It really is

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate the South Lake Union area and refuse to go there

Goddammit. When did they rename the South Lake Union Trolley to the South Lake Union Streetcar? :(
I lived in Seattle for 5 years, and I loved taking out of towners to ride the SLUT.

Re:It really is

[cmdr_tofu]

I'm a conservative male Indian ally. I definitely support equal rights for everyone and have very dear friends for whom marriage equality politics is quite personal.

Well.. I'm not socially conservative, and I'm not fiscally conservative either. Ok so I'm not really "conservative" at all, but my point is stereotyping is wrong.

I've never been to Seattle, but I love the pacific NW, and it seems like you have access to both city and nature in that area. It's too bad Amazon is not a great place to work. They seem much more Linux-friendly than the other big tech employer in the area (Microsoft)

Statistics

[jklovanc]

Seattle Police Department records show that "bias crimes" against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the first half of 2014 had already outnumbered those for the whole of 2013.

This statement is meaningless as it gives no contect.

In the first half of 2014, the Seattle Police Department reported 21 crimes such as assault or vandalism against LGBT people, compared with 19 for all of 2013.

This statement is more helpful as it points out that there were and extremely low number of incidents in 2013. Doubling a very low number is not difficult. Another thing I just noticed is that these crimes may have nothing to do with hate against LGBT. Just because the victim is LGBT does not mean it is a hate crime.

Re:Statistics

[ganjadude]

numbers confuse them its all about feelings now

Re:Statistics

[tompaulco]

They also make no mention of whether crime in general has gone up. I expect that it probably has, if they are cramming that many new people into a city. So if crimes are going up, then crimes against homosexuals also goes up. I find it odd that they even have such a statistic. What difference does it make if a crime is done to a homosexual or any other citizen? Why are the police asking? Are punishments for crimes against homosexuals different than crimes against anyone else? They shouldn't be. How would a criminal even know whether someone is a homosexual or not?

Re:Statistics

[dbIII]

How would a criminal even know whether someone is a homosexual or not?

A thing that still happens in my part of the world is that guys walking hand in hand and girls walking hand in hand get chased and beaten up by groups of drunken idiots late at night. Sometimes it's filed under assault, sometimes manslaughter. Sometimes the homeless are the victims instead. I don't know about Seatlle but the police reports are full of it in some other places.

Re:Leftist propaganda article

[zennyboy]

*you're

Re:Leftist propaganda article

[Kohath]

Yore

Simple fix: Move into MS

[Tablizer]

Just expand into Microsoft's buildings: they're still laying off.

Whiteness in King County

[jader3rd]

King County has always been super white. The article didn't say that King County was the whitest in the nation, but the whitest of the 20 most populous counties in the nation. I wouldn't be surprised if its always held that title.

Re:Whiteness in King County

[ColdWetDog]

That's because of the clouds. Nice and fluffy white. Seattle has lots of them.

Re:Leftist propaganda article

[ganjadude]

seriously. traffic is logical to complain about. even the rising cost of housing.

but literally everything else he complains about in here is a non issue. we shouldnt care one way or another who our neighbors are, if that means less diversity so what? all the nordic countries that the leftists love have little to no diversity so why should that matter?

and why the need to bring up "white males" Its as if the submitter wanted a flamefest

This kind of trolling does not belong here, and i dont usually complain about what should and shouldnt be on the front page

Invoking Betteridge

[lq_x_pl]

/discussion

Re:Leftist propaganda article

[ColdWetDog]

All Hail Marx and Lennon!

Great Scott!

[ArylAkamov]

"Amazon's hired so many white males that King County is now the whitest in the nation and hate crimes against gays have shot up in a formerly LGBTQ neighborhood. Politicians can't agree on reforming impact fees and taxes to address these issues."

Irreverent garbage completely unrelated to the article. Could we get something without painfully obvious bias?

"Oh no, too many white guys! Better fix that!"

But I thought race was a social construct? Or has that narrative changed?

Re:Great Scott!

[Billly Gates]

Wait ... it was .coms expanding right?

I thought you meant Indians in King Country

Re:Leftist propaganda article

[davester666]

touchedown!

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[cavreader]

Democrats are no different than Republicans. They are both terrible managers of the government. Populists and the so called Progressives are even worse. They tend to spout ridiculous policies that are so divorced from reality they should rename themselves the Fairy Tell party. If we could just get the extreme far right and extreme far left, which are pitiful minorities, to shut the fuck up maybe things could get better.The extremist of every strip just generate more screeching rhetoric and hyperbole while those living in the real world try to carry on as best they can.

Re:Leftist propaganda article

[Billly Gates]

If you think that there is always the drudge report which have nice far right wing news.

Slashdot is news for nerds. Not news for republicans where other sites cater to these needs

... as a former resident of the rainy city

[david_bonn]

Seattle was wrecked long ago. Amazon is merely defiling the carcass.

Re:Leftist propaganda article

[rtb61]

There is an old saying in geek world, "do not feed the trolls", apparently this needs to be updated with "or the threads they purposefully generate to flood page 1 of comments". Why would they waste this on a seeming non story, it seems like a practice run to see what they can get away with.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[Anonymous Coward]

ORLY? You'll see a lot more variations of skin color in any US city than you will in the 'Nordic' countries.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[ganjadude]

you know people might take you a little more serious if you didnt go ad hominem. you can make your point without belittling others

but thats the leftist way it seems, insult insult claim racism or sexism, and insult. thats ALL i seee from you guys these days

Cry Me A River

[Anonymous Coward]

Waaa our economy is booming and property values are increasing. Be 20 more years till that might happen where I live.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[epyT-R]

Yet, your post reads just like the conservatives' stereotypes of the modern left suggest. Quoting a left biased blog that tries to pass itself off as non-partisan is hardly an argument. The NYTimes on political issues? Seriously? Would you take studies from the Heritage Foundation seriously? I doubt it. Instead of just quoting sources, why not try to argue a point on your own?

You defend an ideology that builds bias and multilateral resentment into society (affirmative action law). It also misrepresents the parts of history that violate its narrative (reeducation/'social studies' vs history). It tears down any unapproved expression of individuality, especially if it doesn't come from the right class (gay rights good, men's rights bad). Then you speak of America's revolution, rights for everyone, and its fight against the whims of an oppressive state. Does not compute. Neither does your comment about failure projection. It's the left that constantly blames some group for the failures or misfortunes of individuals in another.

Sorry, I don't buy it. The last century has shown much evidence suggesting these kinds of ideologies are little more than well crafted destabilization tools for those looking for power grabs, whether it's out of simple lust or from severe insecurity and entitlement attitudes.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[Karmashock]

Nope... that's just the same bullshit you spew all the time. You tell us that the economy has recovered. You tell us that unemployment is down. You tell that healthcare costs are down.

After the ACA, my healthcare premiums DOUBLED. Fucking... Doubled.

And on top of that, you have companies left right and center canceling health insurance for employees or reducing the number of full time employees because you don't need to provide healthcare to part time employees.

So your bullshit isn't actually making it any better.

And I note you're not talking about the education system anywhere... no comment about that anywhere.

As to crime, tell me what program you put in place that had a positive impact on the crime rate? And I note... our prisons are fucking full of people. We have one of the most incarcerated populations in the world. So tell me again how proud you are of that.

Re:Leftist propaganda article

[Anonymous Coward]

"Amazon's hired so many white males that King County is now the whitest in the nation"

OK. So what? if King County was 80% black there would be no complaint about a "lack of diversity". if King County was 80% asian there would be no complaint about a "lack of diversity".

Diversity is simply the latest code word for anti-white male.

well, yes, it is...

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

It's ironic that the loudest whiners complainers it are the tech journalists who move into these cities. Look at GeekWire's article: an article by John Cook, a journalist without a technology background making money off the tech boom and living in Seattle, and he's working for a media company covering technology also located in Seattle. Sorry, John, but real techies tend to be quiet, unobtrusive, and frugal. The people who are wrecking neighborhoods and cities are people like you: tech hangers-on out to make a quick buck with technology, or making a career out of complaining about techies, or both.

Is Amazon wrecking Seattle? No...

[geekmux]

...reporting like this is.

According to TFS, the head of Amazon HR is also a leader in the KKK.

Boy, nothing like giving all the feels to a few thousand Amazon employees with this crap. And we thought gender bias was bad...

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[ranton]

You're obviously American, so I can make some allowances for your deficient education, but those "non diverse" Nordic countries are more diverse than you.

Ahhhh....more pig ignorant American cannon fodder. Gotta love 'em and their naivety.

That is laughable. Finland and Sweden are fairly diverse by European standards, but the entire European continent is not very diverse. A quick look at France, Germany, and Italy show they have over 90% of their population in their respective ethnicity. The United States largest ethnicity is German, with about 17%.

From Populstat.info:

Norway -> 96.4% Norwegian, 0.5% Laplander, 0.3% Finnish, 2.8% Other
Sweden -> 89.3% Swedish, 3% Finnish & Laplander, 0.8% Yugoslavian, 0.6% Iranian, 6.3% Other
Finland -> 93% Finnish, 6% Swedish, 0.1% Laplander, 1% Other
Iceland -> 98% Icelanders (Norweigian, Celts), 0.5% Swedish, 0.4% Danish
Denmark -> 97% Danish, 3% Other

United States -> 75% White (So much varied ethnicity the site doesn't try to list them all), 12% Black, 10% Hispanic, 3.3% Asian, 0.7% Native American

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[ganjadude]

thank you, I was having trouble finding the numbers to post in a nice simple view like the one you provided.

That Seattle broadband issue

[Applehu Akbar]

People from Seattle keep tellling me how badly broadband service sucks there. This would seem uncharacteristic of service in a high-tech city. Has the new tech expansion into the area resulted in better broadband?

Re:That Seattle broadband issue

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

doubtful, Seattle really fucked up their broadband deployment. "Gigabit Seattle" apparently was a horrible failure. Part of the problem was the law made "right a way" too hard to get for many condo units, apartment buildings, etc to the point the telco's had to track down owners overseas, big corps that just ignored them, etc. They never secured enough $$$ to roll-out piecemeal, the city eventually canceled the project. Why they ever thought they could have a privately backed "public partnership" roll-out without some serious bonds is beyond me. And letting it drag on for 10 years was ridiculous. "Gigabir Squared" is now getting sued by the City of Seattle over $52K+ unpaid bills.

Re:That Seattle broadband issue

[james_pb]

You realize 50k is lunch money, right?

Yes, broadband is getting much better. I'm in West Seattle and just got gigabit fiber from Centrylink.

So let me get this straight

[russotto]

Amazon, a large tech company, is hiring a bunch of highly-paid confederate-flag waving gay-bashing white men in Seattle, they're turning the whole county white, and they're going around beating up gay people and burning down gay bars?

Does this even pass the smell test? Of course not. Has anyone involved in this story ever worked for a large modern tech company, or talked to anyone who does? Of course not.

Check the actual references and you get a different story. First of all, King County is not the whitest in the nation. It's the whitest of the top 20 counties in the nation by population. But at 62.4% white non-Hispanic, it's just below at the national average for whiteness (63.7%). Second, "the county's fastest population growth is happening among Asian and mixed-race people."

Third, let's take a look at those attacks. The arson? Committed by one Musab Masmari. White tech company employee? Nope. Unemployed drunk raised by Libyan parents mostly in Libya. Race unclear; Arabs are usually counted as white but Libyans are mostly Berbers who are mixed. The other complaints don't mention the employment or race of the perpetrators, though none of them apparently were traced back to tech company employees.

As the Bloomberg article says, "an industry that's otherwise showering Seattle with jobs and money has become a scapegoat".

The simple answer

[dbIII]

That's an outlier caught in the net aiming to rein in gangs of idiots looking for someone homeless, gay or otherwise what they see as "the other" to beat the crap out of for a bit of fun. It used to happen a lot and still happens (turns out lesbians in the city I live in wear sensible shoes so they can run like hell away from drunken yobbos), so there is a law to try to deal with it.

There are no sides

[dbIII]

There shouldn't be a fucking side. It's a very simple situation of a law to deal with a specific problem. If it's misapplied then that's the fault of whoever applies it badly and nothing at all to do with gangs beating up specific groups. So then you can only have the "sides" for civilisation or against - fucking insane.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[Karmashock]

Its worse than that. Both parties are incoherent.

Why you're a republican or democrat doesn't appear to have anything to do with anything.

Why are libertarians right wing but hard core kill all humans and meat is murder green party people leftists?

Right and left doesn't mean anything. Republican and democrat doesn't mean anything.

They're just fucking flags at this point on arbitary factions that only agree that they want to oppose the other side but most of the time they've forgotten why.

Why are latino Catholics left wing but evangelical white Christians right wing? Go through the list of things they believe and they believe pretty much the same thing about everything.

There is no coherent glue that holds either party together besides arbitary opposition to the other side.

Its dumb. Both sides should just disolve and everyone should introduce themselves to everyone else... reform their factions on the basis of what they actually believe... and then see what happens.

The increasingly puritanical progressives are in most cases more simliar to the religious right than a lot of people.

My underlying desire... what drives me? I want to be left alone. That's it.

I just want everyone to stop presuming to tell me what to do. Do that and I'm happy. I don't really care what other people put in their bodies... who fucks who... or what for that matter. I don't care what people call themselves. Just leave me alone.

Hiring your clone sucks dogs balls

[dbIII]

It probably just means the hiring practises are fucked. If you only employ people who are very similar to yourself then the chance of being fucked over by something you never saw coming is high, especially if you limit the pool to social contacts. If you want to know why nobody in the south buys your stuff it's handy to have someone from the south you can ask.
For instance, if you have a multinational company with executives all from the same college tennis club the place will end up being run like a college tennis club (Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!) instead of a multinational company or other large org with talent from all over.
So it's not even a race issue, that's just the easiest way to spot whether someone is trying to hire their clone instead of whoever can do the job.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[dbIII]

Yes it is very clear that you are just here to play a petty little game.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[sackvillian]

You tell that healthcare costs are down. After the ACA, my healthcare premiums DOUBLED. Fucking... Doubled.

Hello over there, Americans! While you bicker about whether the ACA increased premiums or brought healthcare costs down (or both or neither), the rest of the developed world enjoys per capita overall spending that is a fraction of yours, and with much better overall health outcomes. Maybe you could simply agree that a truly "socialized" system of medicine would be a great improvement on either the pre- or post-ACA American healthcare system and drop the partisan crap?

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[Karmashock]

I haven't seen you in awhile... You don't call, you don't write.

I missed you!

*hugs*! :D

As to games I play... nah... I express my opinion on posts that I feel merit a comment.

If someone wishes to engage me afterwards then that either merits a honest response if they are engaging with me honestly... or if THEY are playing stupid fucking games... then I will of course accept their lead and respond with my slightly more sophisticated games.

Don't like it? Don't be such a fucking tool. I respond very well to honest and authentic discourse. Dishonest and disingenuous comments don't merit honesty than they display.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said sir!

I would add 'good' regulations would also help better healthcare. Transparent pricing should be at the top of the list. Instead many times you find out what something costs *WELL* after it is said and done. Instead we have them building regulations that not only help them but make it harder on everyone else to enter the market.

My mother was recently in a hospital. They charged her 3 grand for the room for 2 days. That was just the room. Everything had a fee (including every doctor/nurse visit). At the other end of it she was looking at 13,000 dollars for a 3 day stay for something one of their doctors caused. They want to charge her 500 dollars for 2 aspirin. I could buy a fucking lifetime supply for that.

Money thrown at these health organizations is not the answer for this. Transparent comparative pricing is and more competition. Both increase the ability for other companies to see it is lucrative to enter a market and the ease of entering the market.

Instead we pass things like the ACA and just hope it works out by giving them more money. I have read the thing (snore). It is one giant love letter to the insurance companies.

Are we talking about New Orleans or Seattle?

[aoism]

Lack of diversity? Rising house costs? Sounds like New Orleans, where 67% are black, and a post-katrina environment has seen housing costs rise from out of town hipsters buying property, which triggers a real estate feeding frenzy, which gentrifies neighborhoods and attracts more hipsters, driving housing costs up. What's so special about Seattle's "Lack of Diversity" where 69% are White? That's right. In America, when its a non white dominated area, it's quaintly referred to as names like "Chinatown" or "Little Gaza" or "Arabian Village", but when it's a White dominated area, it's a social justice bully / diversity police's wet dream.

Re:Are we talking about New Orleans or Seattle?

[Shados]

Don't forget that a an area with 65%+ Hispanic is "ethnically diverse".

Wtf.

Re:Are we talking about New Orleans or Seattle?

[russotto]

"Diverse" is just code for "Hispanic or non-white" for ethnicity (in tech, also "non-Asian"). In general it means "Hispanic, homosexual, transsexual, or non-white" (or, in tech, "female", and "non-Asian"). Otherwise individuals couldn't be "diverse" or "non-diverse".

Re:Are we talking about New Orleans or Seattle?

[Shados]

Yeah, and IMO its kind of a big deal. In the US, there's probably a bigger cultural difference between someone from San Francisco or NYC and an Australian, than there is between the formers and an Hispanic. Yet if you have a neighborhood full of australian, indians, french, swedish and english and not a single white...they'll still consider it non-diverse.

Seriously @.@

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[dunkelfalke]

Eh what?
12% of German population doesn't have a German citizenship, they are different ethnicities by definition. Same for France. Third generation immigrants usually have citizenships and count as Germans. 13% of German population have Polish surnames for fuck's sake.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[epyT-R]

So your entire argument is "just agree with me, thanks"? Brilliant. Considering how the EU is falling apart, I'm not sure I'd want my country to embrace your union's economic policies.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[Anonymous Coward]

United States -> 75% White (So much varied ethnicity the site doesn't try to list them all), 12% Black, 10% Hispanic, 3.3% Asian, 0.7% Native American

Except you seem to be comparing apples to oranges. In Sweden for instance there are no records of ethnicity whatsoever (it is in fact illegal) and this means that everyone who is born in Sweden counts as "Swedish" regardless if both of their parents are from Indonesia or if they consider themselves to be of "Asian" ethnicity.
If you are to make a comparison between the US and Sweden you'd have to count all Blacks, Hispanics and Asians with a US citizenship as "Americans" and then compare it.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[Calydor]

Europe had very little involvement with American slave trade and later liberation, the extermination of the indians, or the current political climate in the US.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[Anonymous Coward]

97% Danish can be naturalised or born Danes with non-white ancestry. Your stats are bullshit in their presentation. USA is 97% USian.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[serviscope_minor]

(gay rights good, men's rights bad).

Since when are men's rights a problem? Or are you confusing Men's Rights Activists (i.e. those whiny woman haters who have an edit difference of epsilon from PUAs, Red Pillers, MGTOW, A Voice for Men and etc) with actual men's rights?

Fascinating

[drolli]

How fast some LGQBT woud use predjudices to bias assumptions over the causality of independent events to a macroscopic economic development which they donâ(TM)t like.

Seriously, i would have expected more tolerance and unbiased views of a group who suffered intolerance and biased views much too long.

Any heterosexual who would complain that homosexuals are served or mainly served in some bars in his neighbourhood would be quickly seen as the idiot he is. A bar/restaurant/pub is a service. It is fine with me if they specialize for a specific group, and as long as they donâ(TM)t stop me from entering based on my religion, sexual orientation or skin colour, they can do whatever they want.

The idea that LGBQT need "special" parts of the towns to thrive and survive is utterly stupid and disgusting.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[Bartles]

What purpose does diversity serve? Who determines wheen the diversity goal has been met?

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[ranton]

Not that this changes your point but where did you your stats?

I quoted my stats as coming from populstat.info. It was just the first link that came up when looking for the first country on my list of nordic countries: Norway. It does appear their stats may be as old as 2002, but that doesn't change anything about my point. Their numbers would have to be off by a huge margin for any Nordic country to be as diverse as the US.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[ranton]

United States -> 75% White (So much varied ethnicity the site doesn't try to list them all), 12% Black, 10% Hispanic, 3.3% Asian, 0.7% Native American

Except you seem to be comparing apples to oranges. In Sweden for instance there are no records of ethnicity whatsoever (it is in fact illegal) and this means that everyone who is born in Sweden counts as "Swedish" regardless if both of their parents are from Indonesia or if they consider themselves to be of "Asian" ethnicity.

Well, somehow web sites have statistics of how many Finnish, Laplander, Yugoslavian, Iranian, and other nationalities are in the country. My guess is that sociologists can find a way to determine these numbers based on sample sizes smaller than a full census. Even if the numbers are off, I can't believe anyone would think Sweden is even close to as diverse as the US.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[ranton]

I listed my source. After looking it does appear the stats could be as old as 2002.

But even if the site only includes citizens, those countries still don't come close to comparing to the US in terms of diversity. Even if Germany is only 70% German, that is still over four times the concentration of the US's largest ethnicity.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[drinkypoo]

Democrats are no different than Republicans. They are both terrible managers of the government. Populists and the so called Progressives are even worse.

Democrats are better than republicans because they try to fuck you with social programs while republicans fuck you with corporations, and we could use more social programs but we have plenty of corporations thanks.

They're both part of the same system of fucking us, but if I had to choose one to make go away tomorrow, it wouldn't even be a contest.

Detroit Again!

[JimSadler]

Growth always leads to wreckage. It's sad but true. An area has some big attraction and then the money people start riding the wave and attracting ever more people. A dense population will demonstrate worse behaviour, drug addictions, alcoholism, mental health issues and eventually an exodus with huge debts and poverty left behind. Brooklyn, the Bronx, Detroit, and Flint Michigan as well as Miami Florida are all places once considered desirable but now are places best avoided. Right now no one sees the next big thing. But at some point the next big thing won't be anywhere near San Francisco and the death spiral will begin. The answer is in controlling population density and forcing popular businesses to locate a good distance from each other. Crwoding leads to really ugly living conditions.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[dunkelfalke]

You forget one important thing: Germany itself exists as a nation only since 1871, and, in fact, consists of several ethnicities which used to live in separate countries before that unification and even now, over a century later, may speak languages that are barely mutually intelligible. Same goes for France (Franks, Normans, breton Celts, Basques, Germans) and so on.

You really underestimate ethnical diversity in Europe.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[ChrisMaple]

Why are latino Catholics left wing but evangelical white Christians right wing?

A large portion of latino Catholics are recent (and usually illegal) immigrants from Mexico. Of those, a substantial fraction is here for the freebies promised by the political left.

I don't have a good explanation for why evangelical white Christians are right wing, but they are part of an identifiable cultural block that packages conservative political beliefs with their religion. Since leftist cultural leaders are generally atheistic and need to have an enemy so that they can tell their constituents that the reason the freebies aren't helping is because of the evil $enemy, and the evangelicals are the most diametrically opposed to the leftist leaders, the leftist leaders have chosen $enemy = evangelical. It makes about as much sense as all the different varieties of people hating Jews, but there it is.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[KGIII]

Err... Where do you think those people came from that did all those things?

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[KGIII]

Kind of... Well, they left of their own volition I suppose. Then we really should consider the Spanish...

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[mschuyler]

Who started the slave trade and ingrained it into colonial culture for a hundred years before the USA existed, when it was owned, lock stock, and barrel, by European companies? The UK abolished slavery in 1833, a whopping 30 some years before the USA, then took the position of how "enlightened" they were compared to the USA, when they started the whole thing in the first place. Hypocrites.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[el_chicano]

You obviously don't know biology -- monoculture is a bad thing in agriculture. It is also bad socially, for proof just look at the US Republican party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoculture

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[scoog]

OT, for sure and stomping on well flattened earth: Here, we use "black", African American", etc. For obvious reasons we do not use "nigger". That said, we should not use "laplander" for the previously hinted reasons. The word is "Sami".

Top Packers and Movers

[ManpowerFacility]

Packers and Movers Bangalore | Packers and Movers Chennai | Packers and Movers Delhi | Packers and Movers Faridabad | Packers and Movers Ghaziabad | Packers and Movers Greater Noida | Packers and Movers Gurgaon | Packers and Movers Hyderabad | Packers and Movers Mumbai | Packers and Movers Navi Mumbai | Packers and Movers Noida | Packers and Movers Pune | Packers and Movers Thane |

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

The rest of the planet pays less for healthcare because they aren't also funding the massive amount of medical research the USA is either. I'm not saying other countries don't do their own research, but almost every major surgery has been developed in a hospital inside the US. We also (for better or worse) do most of the pharma research and development, or at least used to until quite recently. So we're paying more to fund all this research, it's all amortized into the cost of the hospitals. Everyone else doesn't have similar level of facilities in their hospitals, and they just don't have the same level of associated costs. Much of this is changing / shifting, but for the last 100 years the US is the place most surgeries have been developed. Until Bush came along, we where on the forefront of most medical research, but his laws against stem cells have really hurt the over-all basic research and pushed this into other countries.

Interesting implications for Tacoma

[Peterus7]

I work up in Bellevue, (which means a crappy commute, but I can wfh a decent amount), and it's amazing how much cheaper Tacoma is than Seattle, where my brother who works for Amazon is stuck. Although that being said, it's also beginning to gentrify a lot, especially in the Hilltop area, which is really cleaning up from it's slum history. I bought a really nice three story house for under 200k in the winter, and it was recently valued at 250k. While Amazon probably won't be coming here, as transit options start to open up, (And they get that whole mess with the municipal fiber network fixed) I think Tacoma's going to start seeing a lot more tech. Also, a lot of smaller start ups are coming here, realizing they can get amazing prices on office space.

All in all, that makes me nervous. I grew up in Tacoma, then moved up to the Seattle area to find tech work, then once I was able to wfh a bit more, bought a house at the bottom of the market in Tacoma, but I'm worried about what will happen. Thus far Tacoma's kept a lot of it's gritty feel, which isn't for everyone but I've always liked, but more and more I'm seeing the signs of gentrification.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[Karmashock]

All of that is arbitrary. The political alliances don't make sense. You have too many people marching on both sides of the line that don't like the people they're marching with anymore than the people they're marching against.

I mean, how much do you think libertarians care about fighting gay marriage?

They don't.

Or on the left, how much do you think urban black voters are for Green legislation that will limit their job opportunities by closing factories and businesses in their communities? They're not.

The reality is that neither party makes any sense. The vast majority of people in both parties are just going through the motions.

Talk to democrats about what they feel about Hillary Clinton... most don't like her. She's clearly a hack politician. Talk to republicans about Jeb Bush... they don't like him either.

But the establishment of both parties have picked these people to be their person.

We're seeing the base of both parties go CRAZY... you have the republicans now fixating on Donald f'ing Trump for some reason... that is just baffling to me. And then you have the democrats fixing and Bernie Sanders.

This is a wasted effort and completely pointless. Neither of these people can be president. Which is only making the establishment picks stronger. Hillary is going to win if Sanders is the alternative in the democratic base.

And Jeb Bush is going to get the nod if Trump is the alternative.

The idiots in both parties don't get that they're ensuring that the last person they want to get the nod will get it by picking goofball candidates.

On the republican side they have about a million candidates. From what I can tell... Trump is literally the most stupid option. So... way to be idiots.

And amongst the democrats they have Martin O'Malley who whatever you might say about the guy is less damaged goods than Hillary.

So its all madness. The bases of both parties are really confused and really angry because they can't agree on anything internally and don't trust/like their establishments.

What should happen is that the establishment from both parties should merge into its own party. The establishment republicans and democrats pretty much agree on everything anyway. They're very much "business as usual" people.

And one they've merged, the issue is who wants to stand with the establishment and who wants to fight it.

THAT is the real left and right. That is what left and right used to mean. The right used to be the aristocracy in Europe. The left was everything that stood against it.

Left and right don't mean that anymore but they should. Have the establishment condense... and that can be the right.

Look at Occupy Wall street and the Tea Party... they basically were making the same point. They had more in common with each other than not. But because they were divided by arbitrary party lines they were ineffective. The establishment of both parties united to crush the opposition. While the rebellion movements were divided and ineffective.

The rebellion on the right and the rebellion on the left... have to join forces to overthrow the establishment.

Or we'll just be ruled by them.

Very few on the right or the left are open minded enough to see that that is the way forward. They are too much victims of their own propaganda. They've both mutually painted the opposition as evil. And they can't conceive of alliance.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[ranton]

You forget one important thing: Germany itself exists as a nation only since 1871, and, in fact, consists of several ethnicities which used to live in separate countries before that unification and even now, over a century later, may speak languages that are barely mutually intelligible. Same goes for France (Franks, Normans, breton Celts, Basques, Germans) and so on.

You really underestimate ethnical diversity in Europe.

Any of those more medieval ethnicities are also present in the US, but in even smaller numbers. So if I say 17% of the US is German, that also includes Franks, Normans, Breton Celts, Basques, etc.

I never said Europe has absolutely no diversity. It just seems that way when compared to the US.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[ranton]

I'm not saying one country is more diverse than the other (I don't even care)

I'm not sure why you are even posting then, because what you just said you don't care about is the only important factor in this discussion. I absolutely do not care if my statistics are precise, I only care if they are close enough to show that the US is far more diverse than Nordic countries. That is the only claim I was refuting.

Re:Leftist propaganda article

[ChrisMaple]

Bloomberg Business is owned, and its editorial direction set by, Michael Bloomberg, lately mayor of New York City and cited by conservative commentators as a major power hungry leftist wingnut. Among a multitude of problems, his third term as mayor was in violation of NYC's term limits law which set the limit at 2 terms.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[ranton]

Sorry, I was taught that terminology by a half Sami half Swedish close friend who immigrated when he was 3 in the 1970's. I had no idea it was derogatory as it was his preferred terminology to explain his own ethnicity.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[ranton]

No it's not varied, they are simply american. Guess what? Here in Europe we don't a third a guy living in Germany whose great-grandfather immigrated from France french or french-american, we call him german.

You guys are pretty much all american, accept it.

We just call everyone American here as well, except when discussing our ethnicity. Generally only people in small minorities are offended when asked where they are from, since they often feel the question insinuates they are less American than a non-minority.

Most people in the US still know their ethnicity as far out as at least their grandparents and usually their great grandparents. I have family that has been here since the 17th century (or so I was told), but they still are aware of their Spanish heritage. And the physical differences between my family with Spanish vs Nordic heritage is still quite pronounced, although you would have to be more knowledgeable to see any difference between my Norwegian, German, or Lithuanian family members.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[scoog]

Thanks. Your friend was no doubt kind and disliked ruffling feathers or explaining over and over.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[ranton]

Thanks. Your friend was no doubt kind and disliked ruffling feathers or explaining over and over.

I never even heard of these terms until I met him. I learned them from him.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[Karmashock]

Also true... though somewhat overblown.

This would mostly refer to our drug costs. From what I can tell, most of the drug costs are due to artificial scarcity. Also there is profit sharing between the doctor and the drug company.

If a doctor proscribes you an expensive drug he gets more money than if he proscribes a cheap drug.

There are a lot of drugs on the market that come in two versions. Literally a cheap one and an expensive one. Same drug. And the expensive ones are frequently proscribes because it makes the doctors/hospitals more money.

This is why people should do some research when they get proscribed something... especially anything expensive.

My parents had this happen to them a few times. Doctors they trusted that they had been seeing for years proscribed some very expensive drugs for them. And I researched them and found that there were effectively identical drugs that cost somewhere between a 10th or 100th of what the proscribed drugs cost.

Its a big problem. Its the worst with the psychotropic drugs that they proscribe for various emotional and mental conditions. But its evident in every drug category.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[uninformedLuddite]

modded down. Why am I not surprised?

Bias-motivated crime

[tepples]

Why are the police asking? Are punishments for crimes against homosexuals different than crimes against anyone else? They shouldn't be.

They are if the prosecution can show that the crime was "bias-motivated", such as the defendant's prior threats to commit crime against people of a particular sexual orientation.

How would a criminal even know whether someone is a homosexual or not?

I don't know in this particular case, but in general, a Wikipedia article describes bias-motivated violent crimes against gay or trans people in the USA.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[Karmashock]

I got modded up by 15 people and modded down by 20... so... its actually showing that my position is a popular one and the opposition has no lock on the issue.

Also... still excellent karma.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[cavreader]

Minorities can leverage the Internet to make themselves appear larger than they really are. And of course the majorities do the same thing which has led to soaring animosities between both peoples and states across the world. And make no mistake the government is a failure in every way that matters. If the Senators and representatives in Congress had a shred of decency and honor they would acknowledge the failure, step down, and allow special elections to select their replacements. Mid term elections happen all the time. A symbolic restart would go a long way towards solving the countries many problems.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[Jack Griffin]

Actually you have no idea what you spend on healthcare because its buried in your budgets.

You do know that a government budget is in a human readable format right?

The preferred method of dealing with this from a capitalistic stand point is to increase supply... that is the number of doctors

You wave your magic wand and more doctors appear? Please explain how this mechanism works that allows you to increase more doctors on demand? It can't be through any sort of subsidy because as you say, that is the work of the devil.

So prices go down or you go out of business and your competitors eat you alive.

So all those doctors you grew on the vine are now out of work? And this your version of a better society?

You're a socialist so you don't understand this... never mind that you trust and rely on these systems for nearly everything else. You rely on it to keep food prices low. You rely on it to keep clothing prices low. You rely on it to keep car or gasoline prices low.

But suddenly when it comes to healthcare you think something that works everywhere else doesn't work for healthcare? Your position is nonsense.

You rely on a socialist military that allows you to sleep at night. Do you understand that?

But if you want to live that way, then so be it. Unlike the Europeans that can't stop telling people how great their stupid systems are... even as Greece eats itself....

I'm not European, but even though my country has a lower GDP than the US, we enjoy cheaper healthcare, higher life expectancy, lower unemployment, lower crime and higher standards of living. We also seem to have a greater understanding of geographic diversity, and also understand that capitalistic and socialistic principles are not mutually exclusive. Any robust economy will embrace the best both and apply each where necessary for the greater good.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[Karmashock]

""You do know that a government budget is in a human readable format right?""

Which is why everyone knows what is in the budget and understands how much is being spent on what?...

Bitch please.

""You wave your magic wand and more doctors appear? Please explain how this mechanism works that allows you to increase more doctors on demand? It can't be through any sort of subsidy because as you say, that is the work of the devil.""

As to increasing supply, this is something we do all the time for lots of different things. That include labor. Even skilled labor can be generated simply by increasing the number of doctors put through the system. The current number of doctors we produce per year is strictly limited by the medical schools. We could do a lot of things to increase the numbers.

As to socialist militaries... I'm not even going to get into the many layers of idiot that it took concoct that argument... beyond of course for the first one where I point out that the state doing something does not mean it is socialist.

""Socialism is a social and economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy,[1][2]""

Who makes the missiles? The guns? The uniforms? The everything?

Private companies.

https://youtu.be/qiukc1yfzCI?t...

Re:Seattle Will Soon Implode

[james_pb]

Seattle's new "feel good legislation" will put the city in a huge turmoil/ quagmire within a few years. when the mandatory new $15 an hour minimum wage goes into effect, there will be massive small business layoffs.

If the minimum wage increase were going to cause major problems here, you'd be seeing it already. No one would start new small businesses here, and large businesses would already be ramping down.

It's not happening. Our economy is fantastic and getting better. It's a great example for the rest of the country - arguments against the minimum wage aren't doing well when faced with actual evidence.

Re: Leftist propaganda article

[Bartles]

I suppose Japan could be lumped in there too.

Re:Leftist propaganda article

[jwhitener]

Diverse means different than "the average" or "the status quo". In the work place, white male is the norm, the status quo.

Diverse isn't "anti" anything.... diverse is the correct word when someone or some thing isn't like the average someone or average some thing.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[Jack Griffin]

""You do know that a government budget is in a human readable format right?""

Which is why everyone knows what is in the budget and understands how much is being spent on what?...

Bitch please.

"Actually you have no idea what you spend on healthcare because its buried in your budgets" Just because you don't know, doesn't mean I don't.

As to increasing supply, this is something we do all the time for lots of different things. ...We could do a lot of things to increase the numbers.

Yes using things like subsidies and incentives and all the sorts of things you refuse to believe in.

As to socialist militaries... I'm not even going to get into the many layers of idiot that it took concoct that argument... beyond of course for the first one where I point out that the state doing something does not mean it is socialist.

No, but tell that to half of your country that actually think that it does (see Obamacare for millions of examples of this line of thought)...

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[Karmashock]

Give me your complete estimation for a single payer society's healthcare costs that takes into consideration all subsidies.

Any country you like. You choose.

As to whether I believe in subsidies... I don't mind them so long as they're efficient, are implemented rationally, and the reasons for them are not merely political gamesmanship/handouts to political backers/any other kind of cynical ploy to increase power indifferent to the supposed issues at hand.

As to your admission that your argument was stupid... thank you for admitting your argument was stupid.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[Jack Griffin]

Give me your complete estimation for a single payer society's healthcare costs that takes into consideration all subsidies.

Any country you like. You choose.

If you had even the simplest comprehension of economics you would know that isn't possible in the space here. I can only assume you are one of those immature keyboard warriors types who thinks everything they say is right, and that a discussion group is a place purely for them to try and prove that point to themselves.

As to your admission that your argument was stupid... thank you for admitting your argument was stupid.

QED.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[Karmashock]

*laughs*
You just conceded and you're too stupid to realize it. Where do you morons come from?

Fuck off. Either cite a country with that information or you can't claim to know the spending. You say single payer spends less? My point was you have no fucking way of even knowing what you spend. You contradicted me... I said show me the numbers... you say you can't... You lose, motherfucker.

You said YOU knew. But you clearly either didn't understand what I was asking for or lied.

Either way... I have no patience for you. Fuck off.

Re:So tired of these stupid articles

[Jack Griffin]

*laughs*

Is writing your emotions inside asterisks still a thing?

Insult, insult, insult... The most obvious sign that you are unable to argue your point coherently.