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DHS Detains Mayor of Stockton, CA, Forces Him To Hand Over His Passwords
schwit1 writes: Anthony Silva, the mayor of Stockton, California, recently went to China for a mayor's conference. On his return to San Francisco airport he was detained by Homeland Security, and then had his two laptops and his mobile phone confiscated. They refused to show him any sort of warrant (of course) and then refused to let him leave until he agreed to hand over his password.
still has not won the *real* war on terror. The terror on 9/11 still inspires fear on the mind of Americans. So the real war is yet to be won.
Way to go, murica.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
The Supreme Court has ruled that warrants are not required or needed at border checkpoints. Fix that wording now editors.
I think that this is a good thing. Not the idea of people being searched without warrants. I think it's good that a government official, even a lowly one like the mayor of Stockton, suffered this. It is only when government officials are subjected to this outrageous breach of The Constitution, that there is any real hope of it being changed.
So long as it's only the sheeple complaining, illegal searches will continue to be "permissible". When congress critters start getting inconvenienced and their predilection for gay porn starts being made public, then things will change, for our safety.
I hope that many more government officials will be forced to endure these absurd detainments and searches.
I'm not a huge fan of the border search exception. Technically DHS and CBP can demand access to laptops or cell phones as part of entry into the country. They don't have the right to detain for passwords. They can hold the equipment and return it later.
A US citizen has an absolute right to re-enter the country.
The only three lines you need to learn:
"Am I being detained?"
"I would like my lawyer present."
"No comment."
Isn't their some law that gives border agents essentially unlimited rights to search and confiscate (no warrant required) so long as they are within 100 miles of any US border? I remember seeing something like that a few years ago and thought, gee, I wonder how many people live in houses that are within 100 miles of the border....
The recent rulings have been that laptop searches are unconstitutional. The courts have said this is so because a ) laptops and phones contain highly personal information, much more so that suitcases normally do, and b) customs is to be searching for things like products being smuggled in, or drugs. Hard drives can't contain drugs and wouldn't contain smuggled products. Two recent examples include:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ru...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
The Obama administration has argued that they don't need a warrant, but the courts have ruled against them.
Despite my general distaste for the tactics of the TSA, I understand; I find politicians suspicious, too.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I find politicians suspicious, too
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Hearts and minds, baby - that's where you win a war. And they've got us right where they want us.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
people would have missed a mayor. job blow of course not but when a day or 2 passes and the mayor hasnt made contact people will start searching. FBI most likely would have been called. Fox"News" would have reported it and it would have shed some light on the practice. he should have just sit still.
If the phone was encrypted, I can see why they might need a password for it. But PCs aren't difficult to access without the password, for example, by using the built-in administrator account (which by default has no password), or by physically removing the hard drive.
Constitutional issues aside, this seems pretty inept. to me.
The rest of us keep being treated routinely like criminals without the media getting interested, because we aren't the mayor of Stockton.
Why should this guy get special treatment (by the TSA or by the press) just because he's a minor elected politico?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
surrenders them to Chinese authorities without a peep of complaint, and brings them back to the US and is surprised when federal spooks demand to have a look at the physical and software surveillance devices that have been installed into it, isn't paying any attention to the world and has zero grounds to complain TLDR if you're important or powerful, don't willingly allow yourself to become an espionage attack vector for our first or second most powerful enemy
"Outdated business models" is code for "I don't like paying for things, but want them anyway"
was politely decline to give passwords without a warrant. Then, if he was not released in a timely manner, make life as difficult as possible for the bureaucrats in question. And if his devices are not returned in a timely manner, make life even more difficult for them. There are devious and not so devious ways to do this, and mostly it isn't difficult. Bureaucrats rely on cooperation from the sheep, and the sheep need to stop being cooperative.
It is a good thing when high profile and medium profile people get caught in these stupid things.
When celebrities, including political celebrities, get caught by government aggression it draws a spotlight on the programs that are harassing millions. With the spotlight on them, they tend to withdraw or become legally curtailed.
Sadly many of the abuses committed by government are against the dregs of society, the people already in trouble with the law, the despicable criminals, drug dealers, child abusers, rapists, murderers, and more. Most of society doesn't care when government abuses these people, which is why so many lawsuits are filed against agencies and officers that people dismiss as just another attempt to get out of being caught. If those same abuses were publicly made against people of celebrity status the programs would be quickly curtailed, or pushed further into the darkness of secrecy.
Good job DHS, keep targeting popular people. Best thing you can do for the country.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Coercing passwords where the law says you can't require the person to give up the passwords is un-American and may even be illegal (I am not a lawyer).
Coercing them instead of getting a court order requiring the owner to divulge the password when the law says you can get a court order is also un-American - use the courts, that's what they are there for (recent court rulings make me wonder if this sentence even applies anymore if the owner is an US citizen and the request is on US soil or made by US officials at a port of entry as the person is returning to US soil).
If you, as the front-line Homeland Security guys in the airport - have a legal justification to seize the laptop and your professional training and professional judgment says that there is really a problem that requires seizing it, just seize the laptop, but don't coerce the person to give up his passwords.
Ideally, you would go to a judge within 24 hours (or in a busy international airport, within 1 hour) of seizing it and explain why you need to keep it. If the judge rejects your argument give it back. If he accepts your argument, the owner should get a "de novo/start-from-scratch" second hearing as soon as his lawyer has had time to prepare a counter-argument.
By doing it this way, not only would you avoid coercing people, but your bosses would be under political pressure to make sure you, the front-line guys at Homeland Security, didn't abuse their discretion on seizing equipment because they - the bosses that is - know that too may unjustified seizures would eventually make the papers - and not in a good way. They also know that if the political winds turn a certain way, they or their bosses might be hauled in front of Congress to explain things just because some politician wants to score political points in front of the cameras.
Yes, I know this isn't going to happen this way any time soon. That's why I said "ideally." The closest we can expect any time soon is that law enforcement will stop asking for passwords but that the delays will be so long and the process to get the seized equipment back so onerous that most owners who think they have nothing to hide (and more than a few who naively believe they don't or who stupidly believe that law enforcement won't abuse the password to trawl for crimes unrelated to their initial suspicions) will offer to give them the password just to be on their merry way. Some or even most of them will be let go with their equipment once law enforcement determines that 1) the person is being cooperative and 2) their initial suspicions were unfounded. Word will get around "if they ask for your password, don't fight it, just give it to them."
Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you value "law and order" and "public safety" more than civil liberties) my hunch is that authorities know that this state of affairs - where the person they have inconvenienced knows that if they really are innocent it's very likely in their best short-term interests to "volunteer information without being asked to do so" - serves the interest of law enforcement in a way that makes it very, very difficult for the person to later claim they weren't acting completely voluntarily.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Welcome to the Stazi States of America. All your possessions are belong to us.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Sorry, are you telling me it's just as easy to gain utter control of a device over the interwebs as if you have unrestricted physical access to it? And also you think that the Chinese don't do this? With all that confident knowledge, you should be on the Secret Service. You could have let Obama know it was safe to stay in the Waldorf, because if the Chinese wanted to build an espionage apparatus there, they could have done it already via GoToMyPC !
"Outdated business models" is code for "I don't like paying for things, but want them anyway"
As much as I would love to say "be polite but never give any information to police beyond what is required by law if you think they have you on their radar," the reality is that it is frequently in your best short-term interest to do so if in fact you have not done anything wrong and can easily prove it.
I say "frequently" because there are obvious exceptions. If you think the cop really is out to get you personally or would be happy to find any unrelated reason to make your life miserable (as an example from the past that I hope doesn't apply today: If you have an out-of-state license plate and you've got a good reason to think the local cops are looking for a reason to shake down out-of-state residents) is the most obvious but there are others.
It should go without saying that it's in everyone's long-term interest if nobody cooperated with police under these circumstances and we as a country developed a "culture of non-cooperation" where it was simply expected that once you had any inkling that the police believed that you might be guilty of something - even a crime not related to the actual or ostensible reason they wanted to talk to you - that you would simply stop talking to them without your lawyer present, and as a result, they would not bother talk to people they suspected were guilty without either getting the person's lawyer or a court involved (such as a summons from a grand jury or a court-ordered deposition*) because it would be a waste of their time.
*In both cases a person who is actually guilty can "plead the fifth" but a witness who is a "on the police's radar" but who is innocent generally cannot.
--
Note - I realize this is slightly off-topic and that it repeats something I said earlier in this discussion, but it needed to be said and it's worth a stand-alone comment.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
... then he may rightfully be able to say "I have a duty to my employer to not reveal the password, I won't reveal it unless my supervisor or a court orders me to."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Hard drives can't contain drugs and wouldn't contain smuggled products
If you listen to Hollywood, hard drives can contain bootleg movies, which are "smuggled products" in the eyes of Hollywood's lawyers.
They can also contain smuggled trade secrets and for that matter, smuggled state secrets.
They can also contain smuggled physical goods. In theory - but likely not in practice - you could build a hard drive that had small quantities of illegal drugs inside the drive itself. The reality is that it's simply not cost-effective for drug dealers to try to smuggle drugs in this way.
Another possibility is that the hard drive itself is being smuggled. Again, this is likely not cost-effective unless it's something "bigger," such as industrial espionage where you steal an prototype drive from a competitor and put it in your laptop (and clone your original drive to it of course so everyone will assume it's the original unless they look closely or physically inspect it), then waltz back to your home country as if nothing had happened.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Also, they're investigating what happened to the motorcyle gang leader who ran headlong into a semi-truck at highway speeds.
Sad... we have become what we fought against...
This is no longer the land of the free, home of the brave...
R.I.P USA
if you're prepared to spend a night in jail to make your point!
My hope is that every American who loves our Constitution would be prepared to do just that.
My fear is that I, myself, am not.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Perhaps this example will serve:
The cops arrive at a bar fight. There are 20 people there. There is 1 person seriously injured an unconscious and a couple of people who were obviously involved who are not cooperating.
There is reason to believe that of the remaining people, a 1 or 2 others were involved and the cops intend to find out who they were and arrest them for disorderly conduct or possibly more serious charges if the facts warrant. The cops also believe that almost everyone saw what happened. For the sake of this example, there is no "duty to intervene" and there is no sign that anyone is legally drunk, so those who stood by and did nothing will not face any criminal charges and neither will the bar owner or his employees.
For this example, assume that the witnesses and those involved in the bar fight don't know each other and that their cooperation or failure to cooperate with the police won't have any "social consequences" one way or the other. Whatever choice they make, they will not be banned from that bar and they won't gain or lose any friendships or business relationships.
Also, assume the cops have a reputation for being professionals who act professionally (contrast to the Waco "Twin Peaks" incident).
The cops detain everyone on-site for questioning, with the intent of letting all of them except the few guilty ones go as soon as they get things sorted out.
It's getting late and people want to get home so they can get some sleep so they won't be tired at work the next day.
If everyone clams up, the police will probably keep everyone there for a few hours before "giving up" and will get everyone's name and address. All potential witnesses - including the as-yet-unknown guilty parties - will get summoned to a grand jury or to a similar proceeding if it's a misdemeanor offense, and eventually (unless people forget, innocent people lie, guilty people lie in a convincing manner, or innocent people fraudulently "plead the 5th" to keep from testifying) things will get sorted out and the facts will come out.
It is clearly in the short term interest of those who were not involved to cooperate and give accurate statements right then and there. If they do, those who were not involved will go home sooner and may avoid having to go to a grand jury. Those who were involved will spend the night in jail and will know they will likely lose at trial so they will probably plead guilty, which means the witnesses won't have to take a day off of work to testify at trial.
All in all, for the innocent-bystander witnesses, it's a clear-cut case in favor of cooperating with the police if they are only considering their immediate and short-term need to get home and not have to waste time in court in the future.
Note - this example probably has flaws in it. However, if you are smart enough to spot them, you are probably smart enough to come up with many better examples that show that, on the whole, it is better for a person who is both innocent and who has every reason to believe he is not "a target of an investigation" or "a target of the police" to cooperate.
As I said in an earlier post, there are situations where it is clearly NOT in a person's short-term interest to cooperate with the police. My list may have been incomplete. However, once it is complete the remaining situations will be common enough that, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), my general statement still stands.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm very disappointed that he capitulated. What about the privacy of everyone who's corresponded with him? Business plans for land use? Negotiations on zoning or leniency granted to companies for failure to comply with ordinances? Political strategies and information on opponents? Resumes, performance reviews, salary information of staff?
On the other hand, it looks bad if a politician can't be "clean enough" to hand over his computers to authorities. Even if those authorities are underpaid, undertrained thugs which demand all kinds of rights, but take no responsibility for their failure to protect people.
They put him in a very, very awkward position.
from SFGate article:
Silva was also told he had “no right for a lawyer to be present” and that being a U.S. citizen did not “entitle me to rights that I probably thought.”
If they had probable cause that he was working with or spying for China, they should have arrested and charged him openly; not detained him without telling him what he is suspected of and denying him access to legal council. If they didn't have probable cause, they should fuck off and leave him alone.
That goes for everyone, not just mayors of third-tier cities.
Imagine all the people...
According to the stories we have, he was never charged with a crime or told he was a suspect in criminal activity. And so we must proceed as if he is not a criminal and, from my casual knowledge of law and the situation, grant him his full rights and privileges as a citizen of the USA.
The thinking that "it's possible he's a suspect" just reeks of Bush43 thinking, excuses, and bad leadership decisions that got us unto this heavy-handed, unneeded, and counterproductive security state that we now have.
Stockton has a port. Getting cargo shipped to said port generates revenue from dock fees, import fees, transship fees, fees for trucks coming into the port not to mention all the working types. China is one of the worlds largest exporters - so yes, the mayor of Stockton has a reason to be in China, drumming up business.
"Unfortunately, they were not willing or able to produce a search warrant or any court documents suggesting they had a legal right to take my property. In addition, they were persistent about requiring my passwords for all devices,” Silva said.
I always get a big kick out of hearing the reactions of middle-class people when they run into law enforcement, and aren't treated like middle-class people. They're never prepared for the reality, because they were taught in school that they had "rights", and all that other baloney.
"Silva was also told he had “no right for a lawyer to be present” and that being a U.S. citizen did not “entitle me to rights that I probably thought.”
Yep. I tell ya, if middle-class people always got the same treatment as poor folk, it'd be a different country pretty quickly.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
By giving up his password, he is in violation of his city's computer security protocols. The same is true for probably just about everybody on slashdot. We have no right or authority to give over our passwords to anyone. We also have no right to allow anyone to view any information on our company's computer equipment. In some cases, anyone viewing that information may be in violation of state or federal laws. At my previous position, anyone viewing that information would first have to take an approved HIPAA training class and then sign a release and notify all of the affected parties.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
As long as they make Obama drag out his laptops and his Blackberry every time he re-enters the country, then I am fine with them doing that to mayors and to us, too. After all, a leader must lead by example, or he is no leader at all.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
America has won; it now does a better job of terrorizing its citizens than the Islamists everywhere else.
None of which has anything to do with border security and customs. Do you really think that anyone cares enough to spy on the mayor of a small town in rural California?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
No, it's based on making sure the many other people who labored to create those things get their fair share. Otherwise you'll have libertarian pseudo-heroes acting as if their 'great works' were accomplished single handed.
Which do you think is the lesser of two evils right now, the federal government or your state?
Socalism? Really? How about Capitulism? That is people destroying the planet and kicking workers for fun and profit.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Yeah, but don't expect capitalists to see that simple fact through the cognitive haze of being money drunk.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
...no warrant is required to search your person and property. Though there is a recent 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling saying this does not apply to digital content on an electronic device and that people can't be forced to provide passwords, I doubt it stands up when the Supremes rule, we'll see.
One of the big things the customs people look for on laptops and the like is child pornography. A lot of perverts travel to the far east to play with little boys and girls, taking pictures to remember their fun.
As far as I am concerned, if you are crossing a border, expect a thorough search and behave accordingly.
Define "fair share" please. Seriously, pick a percentage. Most business require significant capital, and choosing investments wisely is vital to the economy (see bubbles for why), so capital should get more than 0%, right? So what's the labor/capital ratio for pre-salary profits that seems right to you - what part to labor as pay, what part to capital as net profits? 80% labor? More?
Once you've committed to a number, look up total US corporate earnings as a percentage of total US salaries, and see if we're actually that different from what you think is fair (publically traded companies are about half of the US economy, and the P/E of the S&P500 is a good stand-in for that). Of course, most small business owners also work their asses off, so you might want to give them some credit (that's the non-public-stock half of the economy).
Willing to do the homework, or just want to rant in ignorance?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Actually, P/E is a terrible measure these days given the crazy valuations in the market. It would be fine with sane valuations. But I agree in principle that capital is worth more than 0.
But even minus a specific metric, it would stand to reason that pay should have scaled roughly with productivity in a fair system. But note that pay is stagnant for decades while productivity has risen steadily.
Another metric would be executive compensation to median wage. That has gone from 30 or so up into the hundreds.
Small business actually tends to be a bit closer to reasonable since the owner tends to also act as an employee (out of necessity).
It's funny you mention bubbles. We seem to have a lot of them. That would be capital sucking royally at it's job. What is supposed to happen when you suck royally at your job? When's the last time you saw a former investment banker asking "want fries with that?"?
Perhaps once the more egregious abuses are hammered out and the question can be discussed rationally and publically, we can settle on reasonable numbers. But first we need to get the thumbs off of the scale.
P/E is how you deduce earnings from valuations (which are no more crazy than they were since the invention of the publically traded corporation in the 1600s).
Another metric would be executive compensation to median wage
That has everything to do with envy and jealousy, and little to do with how much people actually get paid. If the CEO get paid 300x what the median worker does, but his company has 100,000 employees? Again, math.
It's funny you mention bubbles. We seem to have a lot of them. That would be capital sucking royally at it's job.
And almost always they're broke afterwards. Bailouts are the exception, not the norm.
Perhaps once the more egregious abuses are hammered out and the question can be discussed rationally and publically
So right, you don't actually care if it's already fair, you just want to parrot talking points like a poorly-written chatbot. Fair enough, you're normal for /. these days.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It is clearly not already fair. Perhaps you have Stockholm syndrome.
Executive compensation isn't a matter of envy, it's a matter of fairness. If the CEO is worth a million a year for 6 hour days and a retirement package that can support him for life, even if he gets fired for non-performance, why isn't the guy putting in 60 hr/week designing the products that the company can't stay in business without? Why not the people actually making the products that the company cannot bring in even a penny without?
As for the bailouts and such, how many times has Trump folded the tent in bankruptcy? He doesn't look broke to me.
Al Dunlap has a net worth estimated at $100 million. That after a lifetime of fraud and corruption earning him the 'award' of 6th worst CEO of all time (not to mention a number of lawsuits and SEC fines).That is the norm. The many many people he 'chainsawed' didn't fare that well. I would not call a net worth of $100,000,000 'broke'.
It is based on taking things by force from people that created or traded things through peaceful actions.
You mean like how all the extra wealth created by the advance of technology has gone into the hands of just a few people? And how corporations don't pay enough tax to support the infrastructure they enjoy? And how many corporations get special tax breaks and subsidies, some even paying no tax and getting refunds?
Thanks to technology, most working people produce much more than they did a few years ago. The job my mom had when I was growing up doesn't exist anymore since it is not needed. Yet, despite all these advances in productivity, most people cannot even get by on two salaries. Yet, one used to be able to have a small house on a decent lot with one salary.
Not paying people their fair value based on the work they do is a more pernicious form of stealing.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
"overpaid" exec here...chief information officer. If I got to work 60 hours it would be a blessing. Most executives work literally twice the hours, and cause 10x more to happen per given hour than any employee there. Then we go home and file dailies/weeklies and get 4hrs of sleep.
Outside of leviathan-esque companies this is mostly true
well, then it's lucky for all of us Bernie isn't pushing an actual "socialist" platform. He's an anti-corporatism all the way, to the point ALEC has been attacking him for several months already. By the logic of your post, I'd add "corporatism is financial psychopathy" as we're moving towards a corporate oligarchy here in the US quite quickly.
And corporations aren't "peaceful" in their actions by any means. They start wars to get to resources, have "accidents" all the time that kill hundreds (if not thousands) of people because they cheaped out somewhere. Outsourcing 10+ percent of your workforce every six months overseas is only "peaceful" to people (and their employees are people too) if your definition of peace is "!=personal physical violence". They poison entire ecosystems, poison their own employees, run entire countries...and it appears the WORST that ever happens is some fines.
You're supposed to outgrow "fair" by age 8 or so, you know. The world's not supposed to be fair, it's supposed to be righteous, or failing that, just. Fair is pretty lame: imagine a court system in which guilt or innocence was judged by a perfectly fair coin flip. Totally impartial, unbiased, fair, and stupid.
CEOs, movie actors, and professional athletes all get paid a lot, and for the same reason, but there are so few of each we're not getting less because of it. Is it just? Hard to say: they have a large audience, and when they do well at their jobs they do make a lot of people happy. The idiots get paid well too, but that's life for you.
But if you keep obsessing on targets of envy or outrage, you'll always be unhappy, as there will always be guys like that. Get over it, if you want to be happy. Better to focus on a system that makes your life better, most people's life better, than to focus on taking away from people. The more you learn to feel joy in the success of others, and the more you do to help others be successful (even those who don't deserve it), the happier you'll be.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
What about when a CEO fires "just enough" people to get their multimillion dollar bonus, even when it actually hurts the company down the road? The current corporate system has far more problems than just wealth re-distribution. Unethical outsourcing, environmental destruction, collisions to create bubbles, free-for-all commodities markets (like those that caused the mortgage crisis), no real repercussions for any of it. Yet too restrictive of regulatory systems causes competition in less restrictive areas to gain advantage; it's impossible to be "ethical" and still survive as a multi-national corp when your competition has factories in places that mandate suicide nets or employ under-age orphans as a routine business practice.
No one here on Slashdot could possibly come up with any workable policy on the fly anyway, I'm sure Bernie has quite detailed policies in mind for much of this already. He will still have to work mostly within the existing framework anyway, I have no idea just how much capabilities the Executive branch has in actually affecting real change...it can quickly send us into a war (at least for a while before Congress can even have a say), but didn't even prosecute bank employees who fraudulently changed loan contracts after they where signed.
If the labor agrees to a voluntary wage then they are getting their fair share. It takes a tremendous amount of capital to make a laborer as productive as they are in modern life. The laborer puts nothing on the line. If the company goes under they are just out of a job.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
The rest of us keep being treated routinely like criminals without the media getting interested, because we aren't the mayor of Stockton. Why should this guy get special treatment (by [...] the press) just because he's a minor elected politico?
Dog bites man isn't news. Man bites dog is news.
They slipped up and used the tactics they usually use on civilians on a civilian official. They don't usually do that, so the event was newsworthy.
Whether it leads to action against the TSA, just a little more care on their part to identify VIPs, or squat is yet to be seen.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"Cause to happen"? You mean "tell other people to do". I have no idea of the size of your company or your compensation, but I did say above that things are different in smaller companies.
Socialism focuses on giving "the rest of us" more of the benefits of our labor. It is more the people in opposition like you who seem interested in continuing to take away.
A few actors make boatloads of cash because they become stars. Most make very little. CEOs make a fortune because tyhey sit on each other's boards and vote each other raises on a quid pro quo basis. Same thing would happen if janitors were responsible for deciding what other janitors get paid.
As for the rest, it sounds a lot more like hipster cynicism than actual philosophy. Fair is actually hard wired into most people's brains.
The laborer agrees to a wage under the gun though. They can't afford to just withdraw from the job market nor can they import new employers from overseas if they don't like the jobs on offer. The playing field is consistently slanted through political manipulation.
Fundamentally, money attracts money, it's an unstable system that without correction tends to leave a few holding the bulk of it while the rest starve. The next step, of course is all the money loses it's value and the whole thing starts over. Really, that's not good for anyone concerned.
Correct me if I'm wrong but this sort of thing happens regardless of which country you came back from.
Define "fair share" please.
I can tell you what its isn't. It isn't executives getting paid the current exorbitant salaries- nobody is worth that. And they rarely seem to answer for failure. And it isn't living on $40K-$60K annual income in the US right now either.
You two seem to be arguing your positions on the premise that socialism and capitalism lie at exclusive and opposite extremes. The two can coexist. We have social security and free market economy, but both are in need of change. Here's some numbers you requested: http://www.deptofnumbers.com/i... and http://www.pewresearch.org/fac... and http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
I think they show it is getting harder out there for working stiffs. Would you agree executive salaries are out pacing worker gains?
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
... still has not won the *real* war on terror ...
Where the hell have you been??
America has _won_ the war on terror hands down, so much so that all of us are goddamn ***TERRIFIED BY OUR OWN FUCKING GOVERNMENT*** !!!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I don't know what all the outrage is all about. This is a good example of the DHS and a few other three-letter agencies performing their primary duty - prevent (and perpetrate) industrial espionage. Why do you think warrantless wiretapping the whole country is so important? It has nothing do do with terrorism, that doesn't even pass the giggle test. It's about serving US business interests.
By contrast, socialism is about making sure the labourers get to keep the fruits of their labours, rather than having the owning class confiscate them.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Sure, I know doctors who've done those hours for a couple of months running, actually "causing 10x more to happen per given hour" than you or I have even done, but they can't live like that in the long term and I'll bet you are not either.
Now that is where your misinformation is getting truly disgusting and where it can actually fool some of the kiddies with little life experience. You should be ashamed of yourself, but you are probably really some nineteen year old political intern doing "social media work" instead of being a CIO and feel no shame.
The USA's political system is intentionally based on something else.
Yes, it is. But the USA isn't a democracy. It's a constitutional republic. So the highest level concern isn't what the majority wants, instead, it is the constitutionality of the "want.". A concrete example: if the popular opinion, say 75% of the electorate, wants deep south-style-1800's style slavery, the government is prohibited from implementing it even so, by the over-riding authority of the constitution.
Democracy has been very accurately described as "3 wolves and 2 sheep voting on what's for dinner."
A republic such as ours is also vulnerable to this kind of problem if the representatives are poorly chosen. The USA is presently deep in the throes of exactly that; in fact, so deep in it that it has also infected the non-elected agencies and bureaus that the politicians control; and further, now the control inputs to the politicians are coming from a relatively small set of moneyed and otherwise powerful interests. This has turned the USA into a de-facto oligarchy.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yes, the healthcare system that congress implemented has had an effect on the economy. Congress-care, as it were.
Obama suggested single-payer. Congress made very sure he didn't get it.
Instead we got welfare for the insurance companies.
Same story, different day.
The president's own limited power can only really come into effect WRT foreign policy (which options include a broad, thought not unlimited, palette of military actions.) On other matters, you should probably think of him as the "suggester-in-chief."
Then again, there are executive orders, sigh.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What you are arguing here is that following the constitution is inconvenient for the government in that it makes some part of its job (catching contraband) more difficult.
Now go read the constitution. The entire bill of rights is an exercise in making things more difficult for the government. Can they restrict your speech? No. Doesn't matter if you're calling them a bunch of numb-nutted fucktards. They still can't. There are no exceptions. Can they infringe on your right to bear arms? No. Even if that means you walk into the courtroom with a sword on your hip. There are no exceptions. Can they require you to quarter soldiers in your home? No. No matter what. There are no exceptions.
Now, ask yourself: WTF is going on when a judge - at any level - or congress - says otherwise? It's as plain as day: They are violating the constitution.
There is not one word in the fourth that says, or in any way implies, "except at the border." Including the word "unreasonable", which simply is telling you that any process that does not comply with the fourth IS what is unreasonable. The fourth lays out the precise formula for reasonable:
"no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Anything else is unreasonable.
Otherwise, the fourth has no teeth whatsoever and might as well not be there at all. Which is straight-up absurdity.
Therefore, no such "at the border" exception actually exists.
Much less in a band of land extending 100 miles into the body of the country.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Mahatma Gandhi — 'I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.'
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Just so you know, your phone is almost certainly always on, as long as the battery is in place and holding a charge. The suggestion that you have to "turn it on" has no relation to what the phone will be doing before it is turned on, which is basically anything the software/firmware in place tells it to do. Turning it on means you get to see and interact with the UI, and not much else.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Socialism focuses on giving "the rest of us" more of the benefits of our labor.
You keep missing my entire point: you're already getting 90%+ of the benefits of your labor! There really is just a tiny slice of the pie left going to capital and management*. Socialism in practice works by borrowing money (not only Socialism, of course) to live beyond your means - not economically sustainable. The one exception being countries with huge net exports of natural resources, for them it's a good model (Norway: there's a reason they don't want the Euro).
As for the rest, I'm mostly quoting the Dalai Lama and the core beliefs of a large religion (and a few confused hippies in the US). He's quite a happy guy all things considered, and quite rational with thoroughly reasoned arguments for his beliefs (and perhaps the only theocrat in history to end his own theocracy). The bit about "righteous is better than just is better than fair" is a core Christian belief, but one shared by most adults.
*The big exception being "bailouts", which are the worst sort of government corruption, and threaten to destroy America out right if they become normal. We barely survived the Bushbama bailouts to the investment banks and GM, not sure we'd survive corruption at that scale again soon.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's funny, every week on Slashdot I see both
* The government is totally corrupted by corporations and no longer represents the people; and ... often in the same post! With the current system of elections, the government is useless in regulating except in the most basic and broad ways (way the are directly obvious to voters), and needs to be prevented from doing anything more, as it doesn't (and won't) act in our interests with an additional power.
* We need to give the government more power to regulate corporations
Also, your "they terk our jerbs" rant makes you look like a fool, just so you know.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I can tell you what its isn't. It isn't executives getting paid the current exorbitant salaries- nobody is worth that
Other than jealousy and envy, who cares? You're not making less because they're making more, same with pro athletes and movie stars.
The US GDP is about $60k per citizen right now. Total salaries of all US workers will always be close to GDP - that's just how it works (those retired on a government check get paid from those working, so that nets out). We're simply not that far off from perfectly equal distribution, which makes sense: what we produce is what we consume, give or take some net imports. Only by increased efficiency (technology) do we sustainable improve standard of living for all.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
How about this one.
The CEO or any directory level can only have a salary of 3x the average salary of their employees.
Investment should be rewarded. Having a valid P&L is important. Paying a majority of your employees minimum wage while you take the check for 100 Million a year is not fair.
love the taste, hate the texture
If you think labor is getting 90%, you are living in fantasy land. $5 worth of materials + $0.50 paid to labor becomes a $200 pair of shoes. Do you really think the lady chained to her bench in wherethefuckisthatistan got 90% of the value of her labor? In a properly free market, do you really think the most odious jobs would fetch the lowest pay?
Labor will capture it's fair share when unemployment is actually 0%. That is, everyone who needs or wants a job has one and if you want labor, you have to convince people to prefer you over their current employer. Meanwhile, corporate profits are way up even as wages remain flat.
So, even if they do 10 times the work and twice the hours they are making considerably more then 10 times the income: http://www.payscale.com/data-p...
If what you say is true, it explains why things are so bad. Elitists who don't think anyone else can do what they are doing so poorly. You don't get 100% when your putting in the hours and workload your talking about. Especially if the job is thinking, planning, and creative.
Cheap storage VM.
Corporatism and Managementism are not Capitalism!
Cheap storage VM.
Now that's way over the top bullshit and you know it - you really only get 120 hours of sleep a month and work 120 hours every week?
Stop making shit up. From his statement he gets 4 hours of sleep after going home, i.e. per *weeknight*, but he could get 10 hours' sleep per night on the weekends, for all we know. And he said execs work twice as much, so if most people work 40 hours, then he is has an 80-hour work week, not 120. Even if "most people" work 45 or 50 hours, he would be working 90 or 100 hours, still less than your 120.
Union Carbide Bhopal. It was actually the first thing that came to my mind on that September morning back a few years. 8000 people died overnight, thousands more over the years since then. By a cost-cutting cheap ass US company that has never been properly held to account for its actions.
Come off it - if his mythical week involves only getting four hours of sleep every work night that implies not being able to shift some work onto the weekend and get more sleep.
It's bullshit and if you cannot see it then I have a bridge to sell you.
You're supposed to outgrow "fair" by age 8 or so, you know. The world's not supposed to be fair, it's supposed to be righteous, or failing that, just. Fair is pretty lame: imagine a court system in which guilt or innocence was judged by a perfectly fair coin flip. Totally impartial, unbiased, fair, and stupid.
That is not the usual meaning of the word "fair" as you are presumably aware.
A "fair" justice system means that everyone is treated equally in the eyes of the law, not that you have to have an equal number of innocent and guilty verdicts.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you are regularly working 120 hours a week and getting 4 hours of sleep a night, you are not performing at anywhere near your best for most of the time.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You keep missing my entire point: you're already getting 90%+ of the benefits of your labor! There really is just a tiny slice of the pie left going to capital and management*.
Even if your numbers are correct, getting 10% from every working person makes a huge pot, especially as it's only shared by a small number of people.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
2. If you're working 120 hours a week, you are also working at the weekends, as that's still 17 hours a day over 7 days (over 5 days it would be, um, 24 hours a day and you're getting into Four Yorkshiremen territory there).
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The topic is the US, friend. Yes, East Elbonia sucks, but then those jobs are often the best available in-country, so there's no easy answers there.
In a properly free market, do you really think the most odious jobs would fetch the lowest pay?
Supply and demand, friend, supply and demand. Jobs that few people can do will pay more than jobs anyone can do, even if they'd only do it as a last resort. (Truly odious jobs do command a premium, of course, but only relative to similar, less-odious work).
Labor will capture it's fair share when unemployment is actually 0%. That is, everyone who needs or wants a job has one
You don't deserve a job as a reward for breathing. You must contribute something that others in society want or need enough to pay for. If you have no skills that enable you to do that (and that's a moving target, as automation progresses), you shouldn't expect a job. You could reasonably expect help with the cost of training, however, and the US is in this weird place where we encourage people who need vocational training to instead go to college and get no job skills and $50k in debt. That's certainly a serious issue we need to fix.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
More than half of Americans own stock, directly or indirectly. It was up to 2/3s before the 08 crash. I fully encourage others to invest as I have, to take ownership of the means of production (I've lived on half my take-home pay for nearly 20 years now, and it definitely adds up).
However, keep in mind that one equal portion of all the publicly traded stock in the US is only about the same as a year's median wage, and the earnings on that are only about 5%. That's not going to make a real difference.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The topic is the US, friend. Yes, East Elbonia sucks, but then those jobs are often the best available in-country, so there's no easy answers there.
Yes, it is, such as the U.S. corporation that sells the shoes for $200 a pair and refuses to employ a person from the U.S. to make them because they can chain a woman to a bench somewhere else and get it done for slave wages. So the U.S. worker that should be employed isn't and the lady from wherever gets nothing like the real value of her labor.
You don't deserve a job as a reward for breathing.
You may not mind stepping over the bodies of those who didn't get a job, but I have a problem with that. If you are going to make having a job necessary to live, you damn well better have jobs available that actually pay enough to live. Otherwise, they are well justified in defying any law necessary to make that living. Other than the disabled, everyone is capable of doing something useful, but there simply don't seem to be enough jobs available for them to all have one now. That condition will continue to get worse.
As for training, do you suggest they steal the money they need for tuition? Because that's pretty much their only option right now other than do without. Of course, you assume for some reason there will actually be jobs for all of them once they are better trained, but I see no reason to believe that is true. For those that do get employed that way, they will still be paid less than their productivity would justify, just like nearly everyone that does have a job.
On a per capita basis, highly developed capitalist economies pollute less. Explain that.
The US is one of the largest polluters on the planet, as I am sure you know. Explain that. China is instituting more strict laws now than the US because their air is unbreathable. Fracking has been exempted from clear air and water act provisions here in the US. So what is your point? The highly developed "capitalist" countries that pollute less per capita have much stricter pollution laws than in the US. But even in those countries, like Germany, you have VW going way out of its way to cheat on pollution.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Good luck with your Utopia where no one does productive work (but everyone has jobs). Why you'd make people do needless busywork instead of just giving them money is unclear, but hey, it's your Utopia. I'm sure it will work out as well all all the other Utopias man has tried.
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
But everyone should not be treated equally in the eyes of the law - the guilty should be treated differently than the innocent - that's rather the point, after all. There are many totally impartial and unbiased systems one could contrive (like flipping a coin) that would in no way serve justice, but would be perfectly fair.
And justice is hardly the ideal goal anyhow. The ideal goal is to do the right thing. Hard to get much agreement on what that is, of course, but for particularly egregious mismatches between the law and the Good we have jury nullification, for example.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Any thought of people doing un-needed busywork is your own fantasy since I certainly never proposed it. Personally, I think it would make a lot more sense to reduce the workweek to accommodate full employment. I also never claimed a utopia, just an improvement over the current situation. You *DO* favor improvement, don't you?
Exactly. More regulations born from our bought-and-paid corporate subsidiary government just stack the regulations in favor of the companies hiring the Congresscritters.
What we need is to get corporate money out of politics. The only corporate money to be handled by anyone in the government should be taxes, fines, and contracts to do things for the people. Less regulation helps the corporations. More regulation helps the corporations even more, because it favors the entrenched ones (taxi companies over Uber, cable TV monopolies over Netflix, Clearchannel over Spotify) over the ones doing the business of capitalism -- selling new, improved products that would compete better if given the chance.
Admittedly, I do buy the occasional bridge.