- Considering the amount of injustice, starvation, and people killed in wars we can assume that the programmers are indifferent to us , much as we would be indifferent to the millions of bacteria colonies killed off when we test a new antibiotic.
Why would you think that the programmers would care anything about us? If this is a simulation, we aren't real.
- We can infer that time runs much slower for the programmers (or perhaps that they are almost unimaginably long lived and patient) because why run a simulation that only runs in real-time?
The primary problem with this assumption is that it assumes that "time" exists outside of the simulation.
The FDIC has an interest in seeing to it that banks have an effective internal control to prevent fraud since the FDIC provides the depositors with insurance against loss of their deposits that does not extend to any company not under the regulation of the FDIC. So, your argument fails to explain why the government has an interest in people outside of that industry getting some minimum amount of vacation time.
One could argue that. I would disagree, but one could argue that. I would argue that it would be better for the government not to give out ANY corporate charters than to give them out on the basis of criteria which do not reflect any particular government interests.
First you are overlooking something in your argument, studies have pretty conclusively shown that taking vacations also improves productivity. So, while your assumption 3) may be correct, the market will deal with that since those companies which exploit workers for short-term financial benefit will pay a long-term financial penalty.
If there's a guy willing to work 60 hours per week for $200 per week flipping burgers and an employer willing to hire that person, should it be in discretion of the employer and employee only to decide if that is acceptable?
Then that makes it in the interest of the employer to offer vacation time, perhaps even enforce a certain amount of vacation time (I have worked for companies that forced employees to take a certain amount of time off each year). It does not explain why the government should force a company to take actions which are in the company's interest. According to your argument, companies which give their employees vacation time will be more successful than companies which do not. My observation is that the more the government interferes in the "market" the greater the amount of poverty. Historically, poverty for the majority is the norm. The exception to that is in those parts of the world where the free market has dominated.
Again, you have not explained why the government should mandate a minimum amount of vacation time. All you have done is explain why a company will be more successful if it gives a minimum amount of vacation time.
Nothing in your post explains WHY it is a government concern that people get some minimum amount of vacation time. You say that the government should mandate some minimum amount of vacation time because otherwise an employer might not offer any. But that begs the question by assuming that it is a government interest that people get some minimum amount of vacation time.
Well, that is interesting since most of the jobs I have held give vacation time. How did that happen? BTW, it has nothing to do with morality, or empathy for the condition of the rank-and-file worker. It has to do with getting workers who are productive and valuable. I have held several hiring position jobs (although in none of them did I have the ability to set wages). The places I worked as a manager which required the least skill in the workers actually paid the best for those workers. The reason was that in order to get people who were reliable to work those jobs we had to pay more because they were not very desirable jobs. Most of the people we got in those jobs were not worth minimum wage, when we got someone who was reliable enough to be worth employing, it was worth paying them significantly more than minimum wage in order to keep them (actually, we hired at significantly above the minimum wage in order to attract people who might be worth keeping. We ended up having to fire a significant percentage of those we hired because too many of them could not be relied upon to show up for work on a regular basis).
The poster you replied to did not specify what level of management had failed. He is correct that a regular 60 hour work week is a management failure. As previous posters have pointed out, numerous studies have shown that working more than 8 hours a day yields progressively lower productivity. So that a person working somewhere between 10 and 14 hours a day for any length of time is less productive than someone working only 8 hours a day (I no longer remember the number of hours a day where that change occurs).
Why SHOULD there be legally mandated vacation time? I do not understand why the government should interfere in my negotiations with my employer over things such as vacation time.
Just as with healthcare, this solution gets it backwards. First you need to address the skyrocketing costs, then you address the financing. The reason that this is the proper order to do things is because once you address the costs, you may discover that there is no reason to address the financing.
The cost of higher education is not "naturally high". It is high because we have lumped degrees in music studies in with degrees in engineering. This program will exacerbate that problem by making it so that those who get degrees in engineering will end up paying for the education of those who get degrees in music studies. The fact of the matter is that while there is value in a degree in music studies, there are only a very limited number of positions where such a degree will add value to the person employed. As a result, there is a surplus of people with degrees in music studies because those who get the degree do not spend any time considering whether it will add sufficient value to cover the cost. This program will make that worse because the person who receives the degree will not need to cover the cost if the degree does not provide sufficient monetary value.
No, they are not separate issues. If cost of tuition was not exorbitant, the expense of financing would not be an issue. The reason that the cost of student loans is an issue is because such a large number of students get a degree that does not provide them with a means of paying off the cost. Separating the cost of tuition from the cost of actually paying for tuition (by delaying that payment) is how we ended up in the situation we are in.
It does nothing to connect what colleges and universities charge for an education and the value of that education. It merely makes those who receive a more valuable education pay for the education of those who receive an education of no or little value at whatever rate the college or university chose to charge for it.
This program might be a good idea if colleges and universities ONLY received whatever funds those who graduated from those schools paid in this tax.
So, the question is, how would this work? Would it go into effect and only those graduates who got a free education would be subject to the tax? Or would the tax apply to all college graduates, even those who graduated before it started (and thus had to take on a large student debt)?
Either way, I don't think it is a good idea, but others have touched on the reasons so I will not go into that.
A couple of points. Hurricane Sandy was not bad because of its wind strength or because of the amount of rain it put down. The problem was how much area it covered. Most of the areas devastated by Hurricane Sandy would have done OK if it hadn't caused serious damage on the areas where they normally draw emergency support from as well. The second point is that the people who were devastated by Hurricane Sandy are not the one's making fun of the way the South is handling this winter storm, because they are busy digging out of the the same storm and understand that it is a pretty nasty thing to deal with.
So, in place of a law which protects the auto dealers' business model you are proposing a law which fails to do so and offers a competitive advantage to new auto manufacturers? If such a law was passed and existing manufacturers wanted to bypass the dealers, all they would do is create a new subsidiary company which manufactures cars but does not have any dealers. There would be a few expenses in setting it up, but it would not be that hard. It was not that long ago that GM created the Saturn brand and set up a whole new dealer network, it would not be even easier to create a new brand without a dealer network.
While Tesla is the only manufacturer who is attempting to sell cars without a dealer network, the dealers recognize that if Tesla is successful with this tactic other manufacturers will follow their lead. The car dealers are attempting to protect their business model. I hope the dealers fail because it is not at all clear to me that dealers add any value to the process. It appears that the dealers' association agrees with me. However, I am not positive that car dealers do not add value. If they do, and manufacturers are allowed to sell without them, we will quickly discover what value they add to the equation. In either case, this attempt to enshrine their existence into law is a bad idea.
Do you have facts to back up your assertion? I have seen several studies that indicate that the composition of the top 1% is rather fluid and changes constantly. Just as the composition of the bottom 25% does. For the most part the members of the 1% are in their 50s and 60s, as they enter their 70s and beyond they tend to fall out of it or die. They are replaced, again for the most part, not by those who received wealth from them by inheritance, but rather by those who have risen out of lower income brackets.
No, I do not have a source currently. However, I have never seen a study that has tracked the actual members of the 1% which did not show that the members changed. Do you have a source saying otherwise? You seem to be saying that the top 0.01% is rigidly fixed and are using that to suggest that the top 1% is rigidly fixed as well. If the top 1/100 of a percent is rigidly fixed (and that is a problem) that is different than if the top 1% is rigidly fixed.
If the gap between the top 1/100 of a percent and everyone else is widening than that is a different discussion than the discussion about the gap between the top 1% and everyone else. As I said, everything I have seen says that the members of the top 1% changes pretty comprehensively over 20 years.
I am not sure that you are correct, but if you are it is because of the way in which insurance companies write the auto insurance policies. It is likely that auto insurance policies are written that way because of the laws governing insurance policies. In the case being covered in the article (oil companies insurance against pollution) it is also a case of the laws being written that way. In addition, this is not a case of the oil companies taking out two insurance policies. It appears that the government took out one insurance policy with the oil company as the beneficiary (and with obligations on the oil company to spend that amount of money cleaning up the pollution) and the oil company taking out another insurance policy with themselves as the beneficiary (probably as required by law). The logic behind the way the laws were written was sound, but no one considered how the laws interacted with each other.
This story is not about how evil the oil companies are, rather it is an example about how laws can easily result in having consequences which actually encourage behaviors which those passing them would rather discourage.
Check his facts, black unemployment approached parity with white unemployment during the Reagan years. The gap between black unemployment and white unemployment has risen to historic levels under Obama. I do not know for sure on the black middle class numbers, but it is consistent with the unemployment numbers.
The problem with your logic is that the 1% is not a static group. The overwhelming majority of those in the 1% today were not in the 1% ten years ago and the majority of those who were in the 1% ten years ago are no longer in the 1%.
The reason it was stupid to go through with the transaction once it was mentioned that the buyer wanted to make the transaction in order to do something illegal is NOT because (or not just because) doing so made the other party complicit in the illegal behavior thus mentioned. The reason it was stupid is because when someone tells you that they want to buy something from you in order to do something illegal, it is likely that they are law enforcement attempting to catch YOU breaking the law.
In addition it seems to me likely that the reason law enforcement mentioned that they wanted to conduct an illegal operation with the bitcoins was because they suspected that a jury would not actually convict the guy on the other charges, not because he was not guilty, but because they would have thought the charges were silly and/or would not have understood them.
Slashdot Mirror
- Considering the amount of injustice, starvation, and people killed in wars we can assume that the programmers are indifferent to us , much as we would be indifferent to the millions of bacteria colonies killed off when we test a new antibiotic.
Why would you think that the programmers would care anything about us? If this is a simulation, we aren't real.
- We can infer that time runs much slower for the programmers (or perhaps that they are almost unimaginably long lived and patient) because why run a simulation that only runs in real-time?
The primary problem with this assumption is that it assumes that "time" exists outside of the simulation.
The FDIC has an interest in seeing to it that banks have an effective internal control to prevent fraud since the FDIC provides the depositors with insurance against loss of their deposits that does not extend to any company not under the regulation of the FDIC. So, your argument fails to explain why the government has an interest in people outside of that industry getting some minimum amount of vacation time.
One could argue that. I would disagree, but one could argue that. I would argue that it would be better for the government not to give out ANY corporate charters than to give them out on the basis of criteria which do not reflect any particular government interests.
If there's a guy willing to work 60 hours per week for $200 per week flipping burgers and an employer willing to hire that person, should it be in discretion of the employer and employee only to decide if that is acceptable?
Yes.
Then that makes it in the interest of the employer to offer vacation time, perhaps even enforce a certain amount of vacation time (I have worked for companies that forced employees to take a certain amount of time off each year). It does not explain why the government should force a company to take actions which are in the company's interest. According to your argument, companies which give their employees vacation time will be more successful than companies which do not. My observation is that the more the government interferes in the "market" the greater the amount of poverty. Historically, poverty for the majority is the norm. The exception to that is in those parts of the world where the free market has dominated.
Again, you have not explained why the government should mandate a minimum amount of vacation time. All you have done is explain why a company will be more successful if it gives a minimum amount of vacation time.
Nothing in your post explains WHY it is a government concern that people get some minimum amount of vacation time. You say that the government should mandate some minimum amount of vacation time because otherwise an employer might not offer any. But that begs the question by assuming that it is a government interest that people get some minimum amount of vacation time.
Well, that is interesting since most of the jobs I have held give vacation time. How did that happen? BTW, it has nothing to do with morality, or empathy for the condition of the rank-and-file worker. It has to do with getting workers who are productive and valuable. I have held several hiring position jobs (although in none of them did I have the ability to set wages). The places I worked as a manager which required the least skill in the workers actually paid the best for those workers. The reason was that in order to get people who were reliable to work those jobs we had to pay more because they were not very desirable jobs. Most of the people we got in those jobs were not worth minimum wage, when we got someone who was reliable enough to be worth employing, it was worth paying them significantly more than minimum wage in order to keep them (actually, we hired at significantly above the minimum wage in order to attract people who might be worth keeping. We ended up having to fire a significant percentage of those we hired because too many of them could not be relied upon to show up for work on a regular basis).
The poster you replied to did not specify what level of management had failed. He is correct that a regular 60 hour work week is a management failure. As previous posters have pointed out, numerous studies have shown that working more than 8 hours a day yields progressively lower productivity. So that a person working somewhere between 10 and 14 hours a day for any length of time is less productive than someone working only 8 hours a day (I no longer remember the number of hours a day where that change occurs).
Why SHOULD there be legally mandated vacation time? I do not understand why the government should interfere in my negotiations with my employer over things such as vacation time.
Except that this "good financing policy" will make the cost problem worse, so it is NOT a good financing policy.
Just as with healthcare, this solution gets it backwards. First you need to address the skyrocketing costs, then you address the financing. The reason that this is the proper order to do things is because once you address the costs, you may discover that there is no reason to address the financing.
The cost of higher education is not "naturally high". It is high because we have lumped degrees in music studies in with degrees in engineering. This program will exacerbate that problem by making it so that those who get degrees in engineering will end up paying for the education of those who get degrees in music studies. The fact of the matter is that while there is value in a degree in music studies, there are only a very limited number of positions where such a degree will add value to the person employed. As a result, there is a surplus of people with degrees in music studies because those who get the degree do not spend any time considering whether it will add sufficient value to cover the cost. This program will make that worse because the person who receives the degree will not need to cover the cost if the degree does not provide sufficient monetary value.
No, they are not separate issues. If cost of tuition was not exorbitant, the expense of financing would not be an issue. The reason that the cost of student loans is an issue is because such a large number of students get a degree that does not provide them with a means of paying off the cost. Separating the cost of tuition from the cost of actually paying for tuition (by delaying that payment) is how we ended up in the situation we are in.
It does nothing to connect what colleges and universities charge for an education and the value of that education. It merely makes those who receive a more valuable education pay for the education of those who receive an education of no or little value at whatever rate the college or university chose to charge for it.
This program might be a good idea if colleges and universities ONLY received whatever funds those who graduated from those schools paid in this tax.
So, the question is, how would this work? Would it go into effect and only those graduates who got a free education would be subject to the tax? Or would the tax apply to all college graduates, even those who graduated before it started (and thus had to take on a large student debt)?
Either way, I don't think it is a good idea, but others have touched on the reasons so I will not go into that.
A couple of points. Hurricane Sandy was not bad because of its wind strength or because of the amount of rain it put down. The problem was how much area it covered. Most of the areas devastated by Hurricane Sandy would have done OK if it hadn't caused serious damage on the areas where they normally draw emergency support from as well. The second point is that the people who were devastated by Hurricane Sandy are not the one's making fun of the way the South is handling this winter storm, because they are busy digging out of the the same storm and understand that it is a pretty nasty thing to deal with.
So, in place of a law which protects the auto dealers' business model you are proposing a law which fails to do so and offers a competitive advantage to new auto manufacturers? If such a law was passed and existing manufacturers wanted to bypass the dealers, all they would do is create a new subsidiary company which manufactures cars but does not have any dealers. There would be a few expenses in setting it up, but it would not be that hard. It was not that long ago that GM created the Saturn brand and set up a whole new dealer network, it would not be even easier to create a new brand without a dealer network.
While Tesla is the only manufacturer who is attempting to sell cars without a dealer network, the dealers recognize that if Tesla is successful with this tactic other manufacturers will follow their lead. The car dealers are attempting to protect their business model. I hope the dealers fail because it is not at all clear to me that dealers add any value to the process. It appears that the dealers' association agrees with me. However, I am not positive that car dealers do not add value. If they do, and manufacturers are allowed to sell without them, we will quickly discover what value they add to the equation. In either case, this attempt to enshrine their existence into law is a bad idea.
Do you have facts to back up your assertion? I have seen several studies that indicate that the composition of the top 1% is rather fluid and changes constantly. Just as the composition of the bottom 25% does. For the most part the members of the 1% are in their 50s and 60s, as they enter their 70s and beyond they tend to fall out of it or die. They are replaced, again for the most part, not by those who received wealth from them by inheritance, but rather by those who have risen out of lower income brackets.
No, I do not have a source currently. However, I have never seen a study that has tracked the actual members of the 1% which did not show that the members changed. Do you have a source saying otherwise? You seem to be saying that the top 0.01% is rigidly fixed and are using that to suggest that the top 1% is rigidly fixed as well. If the top 1/100 of a percent is rigidly fixed (and that is a problem) that is different than if the top 1% is rigidly fixed.
If the gap between the top 1/100 of a percent and everyone else is widening than that is a different discussion than the discussion about the gap between the top 1% and everyone else. As I said, everything I have seen says that the members of the top 1% changes pretty comprehensively over 20 years.
I am not sure that you are correct, but if you are it is because of the way in which insurance companies write the auto insurance policies. It is likely that auto insurance policies are written that way because of the laws governing insurance policies. In the case being covered in the article (oil companies insurance against pollution) it is also a case of the laws being written that way. In addition, this is not a case of the oil companies taking out two insurance policies. It appears that the government took out one insurance policy with the oil company as the beneficiary (and with obligations on the oil company to spend that amount of money cleaning up the pollution) and the oil company taking out another insurance policy with themselves as the beneficiary (probably as required by law). The logic behind the way the laws were written was sound, but no one considered how the laws interacted with each other.
This story is not about how evil the oil companies are, rather it is an example about how laws can easily result in having consequences which actually encourage behaviors which those passing them would rather discourage.
Check his facts, black unemployment approached parity with white unemployment during the Reagan years. The gap between black unemployment and white unemployment has risen to historic levels under Obama. I do not know for sure on the black middle class numbers, but it is consistent with the unemployment numbers.
The problem with your logic is that the 1% is not a static group. The overwhelming majority of those in the 1% today were not in the 1% ten years ago and the majority of those who were in the 1% ten years ago are no longer in the 1%.
Perhaps you fail to realize that government regulations have played a significant role in incomes remaining stagnant.
The reason it was stupid to go through with the transaction once it was mentioned that the buyer wanted to make the transaction in order to do something illegal is NOT because (or not just because) doing so made the other party complicit in the illegal behavior thus mentioned. The reason it was stupid is because when someone tells you that they want to buy something from you in order to do something illegal, it is likely that they are law enforcement attempting to catch YOU breaking the law.
In addition it seems to me likely that the reason law enforcement mentioned that they wanted to conduct an illegal operation with the bitcoins was because they suspected that a jury would not actually convict the guy on the other charges, not because he was not guilty, but because they would have thought the charges were silly and/or would not have understood them.