Greed is what drove Intel to produce the i4004 microprocessor.
The universe has long proven the value of balance. Greed can be sustained for long periods of time as long as it sustains a finite and reasonable limit.
The greed we now have today is ruthless obscene greed. The kind of greed that knows no bounds. The kind of greed that drives billionaires to need to become trillionaires. The kind of greed that ultimately created the massive imbalance of wealth and power in the world today, which cannot be sustained.
We will eventually be consumed by it. Eat the Rich will become more than a proverb.
Greed really is the plague of the new humanity. Once and indispensable personnality trait for survival in the savage, barbarian world we evolved from, it has now become the cancer of civilization.
I agree. We must Solve for Greed. Otherwise, we will perish.
Problem is, it is so deeply entrenched in our genetic make-up that we'll fight it in vain for thousands, if not millions of years to come, if our species lasts that long.
Our species won't last that long. The machines that Greed will ultimately create will ironically put us out of our misery long before then.
How many millions of man hours are lost each day to Facebook addiction? How may YouTube data centers running 24/7/365 warehouse nothing but the digital equivalent of cat videos? How many millions have been pissed away every year by the US Mint who still mints pointless pennies at a loss?
Hard to pin the blame on bitcoin when we have so many examples of pointless waste today.
Bitcoin is a malignant development because Greed is a disease. Stop supporting valuations based on hype and bullshit. This applies to every industry. Being reasonable about valuation will likely send bitcoin values plummeting, which would curb the absurdity of the bitcoin mining addiction.
Have they cured your selective hearing or own sampling bias? The advice has always been clear, if you have diabetes you need to lose weight to help manage it. Same for high blood pressure.
It's painfully obvious why the industry profiting from perpetual treatments avoids the word "cure" like the plague. Even you own words of "manage it" implies that once a person is afflicted with diabetes, it could never actually be cured permanently with proper diet and exercise to maintain a healthy weight. Previous studies are also rife with this same legal-speak to avoid damaging revenue streams.
Just pretending that advice wasn't there and then spitting out some dollar figure doesn't make it so.
I never pretended that advice wasn't there. Advice can easily exist. It can also be easily ignored or suppressed. For decades, doctors have been quick to prescribe a perpetual treatment for diabetes instead of giving advice that could ultimately cure it permanently. It's one hell of an ethical Catch-22 when the "wrong" advice could damage a $375 billion dollar revenue stream that sustains the very industry a doctor is employed in.
You may want to consider the fact that advice is often given for no other reason other than to check a box in the legal liability category.
I'm not sure if you're trolling or if you really believe that the vast majority of doctors actually want their patients to remain fat and unhealthy. If the latter, that's a pretty twisted worldview.
Ethics have become irrelevant in business because of Greed. The Medical Industrial Complex is no exception to this rule. In fact, they are more of an example. The world is twisted, but Capitalistic Greed is downright fucked. Doctors don't have to worry about the majority of their patients being fat and unhealthy. That happens naturally in a society where marketing poisonous food is the norm. Their advice to maintain a healthy weight to avoid ailments like diabetes is heard about as well as a whisper in a jet engine factory. My point is more centered around the fact that doctors are trained to throw a perpetual and profitable treatment at ailments first and foremost. Cures are not profitable in the long term. Treatments are.
Where have these "watershed" studies been hiding all these years?
They haven't been hiding. People who don't live their lives viewing the world through conspiracy goggles have been aware of them for a long time. For example, it took me about 38 seconds to pull up this study from 2008 that surveyed other studies from as far back as 1966. The take-home:
Results of these studies indicated that intentional weight loss reduces the risk of developing diabetes in the long term and those participants with T2DM often have reduced clinical symptoms and mortality risk.
Hard to label this a conspiracy when there's $375 billion a year pouring in as evidence. I also noticed the take-home avoided using the word "cure" at all costs, because that might cause irreparable damage to current and future revenue streams. My previous point stands regarding how our white-coat healers are trained, and why 50-year old studies rife with common sense but lacking in perpetual revenue streams are often ignored.
> then expect a funding result about as good as getting them to pay taxes today
When you look at it, it's just another income distribution scheme. Somebody's losing wealth and having it given to someone else.
That's not necessarily evil, by the way. UBI solves some of the problems with traditional welfare systems - like being locked in because income quickly cuts your welfare to the point it's easier to not work. It removes some of the stress of poverty because you know you'll always be able to afford food and a warm bed. It saves money because there's less need to police the system for fraud.
I agree that it could provide some benefit. However, reducing policing jobs will not be welcome. We've privatized prisons and worked hard to earn the dubious Incarcerated States of America moniker. Also, those with wealth will fight distribution as they always have fought it. The chasm between the 1% and the 99% continues to widen, as they distance themselves from giving a shit about the irrelevant masses.
In a society that is so productive that it doesn't need large portions of its population to work, UBI is probably the best way to prevent obscene concentration of wealth.
Greed N. Corruption is the CEO of America right now. Again, I fully expect any plan to attack or dissolve obscene behavior will be fought. And Greed will ultimately win, as it has for a very long time now. Greed maintains Control.
>...I can think of a dozen ways corporations weasel out of paying their fair share.
Yeah... our tax systems suck. I don't think corporations should pay taxes on income as a general rule - it all gets passed on to the consumer as a hike in price of items or services anyway. I do think they need to be taxed to internalize costs - a company that pollutes should be paying taxes to cover the cost society bears dealing with cleanup and health issues. A company that produces anything tangible should be taxed to cover recycling costs. And of course they should be taxed to cover land and municipal services to their offices, just like any other land owner.
It's a good concept due to the environmental impact, but I fail to see why you believe internal costs won't ultimately be passed on to the consumer. If business expenses go up, then the MSRP goes up. It's the only way to maintain a profitable business and ensure CEOs continue to earn obscene salaries and bonuses.
Of course, you still have to find a way to tax the owners or they'll just keep everything in the company and control their wealth indirectly while avoiding their social tax obligations... and ultimately the required tax laws will have to apply to everyone else. It gets complicated quickly.
Other than something extreme like a flat tax, corporate tax laws don't have to apply to "everyone else", because everyone else is not running a for-profit business. And it hardly has to get "complicated". Simplify the hell out of corporate taxation and close the damn loopholes. If corporations continue to avoid their obligations, then they can find themselves heavily fined, dismantled, or outright banned from doing business in the US.
Greed is often found to be very unethical and can cause massive damage and disruption, but it's hardly ever punished to prevent history from repeating itself. A good example of this is the financial meltdown of 2008. There's not a damn thing in place to really prevent that from happening again. If a corporation can make a billion dollars doing unethical and greedy shit and only get fined $50 million for it, then unethical behavior is proven to be profitable, and becomes the business mantra. Wells Fargo is a more recent example. Even with a $185 million dollar fine, they likely still profited from their cross-selling bullshit, and stock value was hardly affected at all. Sadly, over 5,000 "little" people were fired while the CEO was afforded a lavish retirement.
If you expect to tax the worlds richest corporations to fund UBI, then expect a funding result about as good as getting them to pay taxes today.
Offshore tax havens, tax loopholes, political contributions...I can think of a dozen ways corporations weasel out of paying their fair share. What money you might manage to get from them to feed to the unemployable masses in the future will be the bare minimum, and not a penny more.
Ironically, large corporations are fueled by the very individuals they intend to starve in order to hog their wealth. When the masses cannot afford to buy anything other than food, all that extra unnecessary shit vendors peddle becomes rather pointless. They won't be able to even sell the precious data they capture to anyone, because it will quickly become worthless from a marketing standpoint.
It's time for Hollywood's free cash cow to dry up. There's absolutely no reason cable TV should cost $100+.
I remember a time when cable cost $30 a month for about 60-70ish channels. Maybe their overpaid actors and production staff will take a pay cut if they want to survive/sarcasm
What do you mean you "remember a time"? My package deal right now runs about $100/month for 100Mb internet, home phone with unlimited long distance calling, and cable TV with over 400 channels. That's essentially paying around $33/month for over 400 HD channels, including a DVR. I remember a time when just the long distance bill was $30 a month.
Yes, that package is offered at an introductory price that's good for a year (normal price is around $130), but after a year I'll simply pressure my current provider with the competitor's introductory price.
And Hollywood is only getting greedier. Today's cable bill is tomorrows streaming providers who continue to fracture content across a dozen+ services to force you to "only" pay $9.99/month for each. The future is more revenue, not less.
One generations cable bill is another generations unlimited smartphone bill. This isn't about cost. It's about priorities.
And as online streaming services continue to fracture content and offer exclusive content, I have a feeling consumers are going to be shelling out essentially a cable bills worth of money to get what they want. The laughable irony here is watching the cable-cutting generation pay for 400,000 channels of streaming shit they'll never watch in order to get the 100 channels they want, which was essentially the entire fucking argument against bundled cable service.
What would they debunk? Their own advice that a major contributor to Type 2 diabetes is weight gain? The evil MIC has been providing this very advice here for many years.
But hey, big pharma baaad.
They told you to not gain weight because it can cause diabetes.
They avoid telling you how to cure diabetes. They instead chose to treat that problem with never-ending pharma solutions.
And there are over $375 billion reasons why in the US, with billions more growing every year.
..this common sense approach to curing diabetes to be fully debunked by the Medical Industrial Complex. Those profiting from this affliction wouldn't have it any other way.
As much as I love watching you conspiracy tards go off on your rants, you may want to stop and consider the fact that the medical community has been telling people for decades to stop getting fat because it causes type 2 diabetes, amongst other health problems.
Yeah, their advice resembles the "don't drink and drive" sign hanging in a bar. You may want to consider the fact that advice is often given for no other reason other than to check a box in the legal liability category.
Where have these "watershed" studies been hiding all these years? Oh that's right. Cures are verboten in medicine today. Only solutions that create perpetual treatments and never-ending revenue streams are supported now. Why tell someone to simply lose weight and eat right to cure them permanently when you can create a permanent revenue stream instead. Diabetes generates over $375 billion every year in revenue in the US, a business that is expected to grow by billions every year.
...this common sense approach to curing diabetes to be fully debunked by the Medical Industrial Complex. Those profiting from this affliction wouldn't have it any other way.
That said, I also fully expect people to be lazy enough to not put forth the effort to lose weight to cure their ailments either. The underlying cause and prevalence of diabetes in society still needs to be addressed. Unfortunately, there's no easy cure for I-don't-give-a-fuck disease.
You might as well give up on trying to convince the masses that they should suddenly start giving a shit about privacy or security. Based on the products they worship, they obviously no longer care.
System got hacked? Oh well, buy a new one. Identity theft? That only happens to someone else.
The masses gladly give up their digital soul in exchange for a free service. Pathetic, but so true there's no way anyone can deny it.
Paying $3 for a cup of coffee every morning for 40 years = $43,800
$43800 in 40 years will be worth about $100 due to inflation. Is that worth spending 40 fucking years worrying about making coffee every single day?
And what is the cumulative stress effect of counting coffee savings every single day for 40 years?
Saving $3 a day for 40 years at 6% interest compounded annually works out to over $160,000. Extend that to 50 years (a more realistic career length), and it works out to over $310,000.
This is advice. Financial advice.
And it's pretty shit. Better advice would be to get a STEM education and never worry about the price of coffee again.
The best job in the world isn't worth dick if you fail to understand the value of saving and investing. Plenty of lottery winners, ex-celebrities, and sports stars are dead-ass broke today, and they earned a lot more than any STEM job.
Sure, until you realize that, since you're writing in USD, many people need to save somewhere in the order of a million dollars over that time to be able to pay for retirement. In such a comparison, the $3 coffee is not such a big deal.
Plus what's the big deal? You could make the same argument about going for a beer.
For some people, the difference is huge. For others, it's miniscule. For example, let's say that you are paid not on salary, but hourly? Then sometimes paying other people to do stuff for you can definitely be worth it, economically speaking.
Extend my 40-year estimate to 50 years or more, which is the more likely length of a working career.
$3 a day for 40 years at 6% interest compounded annually works out to over $160,000 Extend that to 50 years, and it works out to over $310,000.
And that's just eliminating one expense (coffee) from your life. Do that two more times, and you've made a million just cutting extra expenses. That's not including what you could also save from contributing more towards a retirement plan from working.
he said, while using an electronic device worth several thousand coffees
My laptop enables me to perform my job, which has considerable value-add towards productivity.
Other than caffeine addiction, (and perhaps diabetes based on Starbucks "coffee" drinks), coffee adds little or no actual value towards productivity, and creates a considerable financial impact over the long-term. Zombie coffee addicts would of course disagree ("I can't function without it!"), but there are millions of people who don't drink coffee that have no issues being productive.
It gets better. I just punched this into a compounding interest calculator: $3 a day for 40 years at a modest 6% outputs $172,526.71. Enough to have a major impact on one's lifestyle in during retirement.
Not really. And certainly not 40 years form now.
If you are willing to live an entire life of deprivation, you can indeed save a lot of money. But then again, if you can live a life of deprivation, you don't need that money anyway!
Here's another conundrum - if everyone took this "smart" advice about living frugally and saving every penny, nobody would have a job!
There is only room for a few parasites to work the system.
The financial advice is for the smart people who value it. Because of this, there is no "conundrum" to worry about, because there aren't that many smart people armed with common sense in the world. Starbucks revenue alone makes that very clear.
...Europe is falling far behind the United States in productivity and wealth.
No, this is why Europe has a different definition of "wealth".
Wealth gained from unrealistic productivity goals become pointless if you ultimately end up pissing it away fixing the medical issues caused by pushing yourself too hard. Retirement goals also become pointless if you're dead before then.
Even TFS makes the detriment to health very clear, and I have zero fucking desire to hand over half a century of retirement nest egg to the Medical Industrial Complex. I guarantee that maintaining good physical and mental health will become your most valuable asset later in life.
Besides, humans better start accepting a 20-hour workweek as normal, especially as automation and AI march on to decimate human employment.
Given that you brew coffee like some kind of barbarian I see where you're coming from. But why not compare apples to apples?
Step out of the train, stand in line for 5min at a store, walk away 2min later with a nice latte (note: NICE latte instantly rules Starbucks out of the equation, but then we're talking about coffee shops not that abortion of a business).
Done in 7min
vs
Getting up 15min earlier (because my morning routine isn't that long). Turning on machine, doing other things while I wait for the machine to reach temperature, pre-flush to warm group handle and cup, dry group handle, grind beans, discard first few seconds to clear out machine, load fresh beans, grind beans, tamp put group handle in, pour shot, discard the used puck, flush machine to clean out coffee, and clean group handle, wait a minute to warm up to steaming temperature, flush steaming wand, froth milk for a minute, pour coffee.... shit I'm finally done. but wait... I can't leave it like this. Get wet rag, clean off frothing wand, flush machine, go to sink, wash out milk cup, and final.... FINALLY after 10min of work (excluding initial warm up time which already cost me 15min of my sleep) I may get out the door.
No one stands in line for brewed coffee.
Apples to apples? OK. Paying $3 for a cup of coffee every morning for 40 years = $43,800 vs. paying 20 cents for a cup of coffee every morning for 40 years = $2,920
With sound investing, the time "wasted" with DIY would likely lead to retiring a year or two earlier.
As far as my barbaric process, I don't drink coffee. I must be some kind of monster.
Not buying anything you don't need is how you save up money. And having money is very helpful when you want to get rich.
If you look at the history of Kevin, Mark, and Robert on Shark Tank, the best way to get rich is to get lucky and start a company at the right time (beginning of a bubble) and have it bought for millions.
And if you look at what they sacrificed in order to get their companies off the ground, you would find crappy houses, shitty cars, and 20-cent coffee.
No one is doubting they struck gold at some point in their career, but they got started by being frugal, unlike what most people do.
And a pretty easily proven one. He's talking about $850 a year. That's not going to make or break anyone's investment portfolio. It's like that schmuck in Australia who told the young uns the could afford a house in Sydney if only they'd give up avocado toast. It's nonsense the aristocracy tells it's workers to excuse stagnant and falling wages. Don't fall for it.
Paying $3 for a cup of coffee every morning for 40 years = $43,800
Paying 20 cents for a cup of coffee every morning for 40 years = $2,920
That's a difference of over $40 thousand dollars. It's a hell of a lot more than that if you took that money and invested it over a 40-year span.
Hell, $40K is about $40K more than the average Starbucks-addicted Millennial has saved up for retirement.
That's just the man's personality. As someone once said about writing code in a certain scripting language, there is more than one way to do it.
Paying $3 for a cup of coffee every morning for 40 years = $43,800
Paying 20 cents for a cup of coffee every morning for 40 years = $2,920
That's a difference of over $40 thousand dollars. It's a hell of a lot more than that if you took that money and invested it over a 40-year span.
This is advice. Financial advice. And the hipster masses perpetually carrying around a caramel-drizzled fuckachino bitching about always being broke would probably be wise to listen.
It's really the "convenience" explosion. You pay for the convenience of not having to fool with it.
Decades ago, they made this machine that would automatically brew a hot cup of coffee at whatever time you set the coffee alarm to, so that people could wake up to a hot cup of coffee ready and waiting for them.
The true stupidity is listening to the Starbucks generation dealing with store lines, drive thrus, and obscene prices, claiming their way is somehow more convenient.
Can it detect irregular heart rhythms? YES... but probably with terrible specificity (false positive).
This device is a single lead EKG. It has potential to save lives... but it also potential to scare the bejezus out of a ton of folks and get them in for unneeded ER visits...
I'm sorry, but you appear to be mistaking this as a unintended design feature. A ton of folks generate a ton of revenue.
Slashdot Mirror
Greed is what drove Intel to produce the i4004 microprocessor.
The universe has long proven the value of balance. Greed can be sustained for long periods of time as long as it sustains a finite and reasonable limit.
The greed we now have today is ruthless obscene greed. The kind of greed that knows no bounds. The kind of greed that drives billionaires to need to become trillionaires. The kind of greed that ultimately created the massive imbalance of wealth and power in the world today, which cannot be sustained.
We will eventually be consumed by it. Eat the Rich will become more than a proverb.
Greed really is the plague of the new humanity. Once and indispensable personnality trait for survival in the savage, barbarian world we evolved from, it has now become the cancer of civilization.
I agree. We must Solve for Greed. Otherwise, we will perish.
Problem is, it is so deeply entrenched in our genetic make-up that we'll fight it in vain for thousands, if not millions of years to come, if our species lasts that long.
Our species won't last that long. The machines that Greed will ultimately create will ironically put us out of our misery long before then.
Sadly, we probably deserve nothing less.
How many millions of man hours are lost each day to Facebook addiction? How may YouTube data centers running 24/7/365 warehouse nothing but the digital equivalent of cat videos? How many millions have been pissed away every year by the US Mint who still mints pointless pennies at a loss?
Hard to pin the blame on bitcoin when we have so many examples of pointless waste today.
Bitcoin is a malignant development because Greed is a disease. Stop supporting valuations based on hype and bullshit. This applies to every industry. Being reasonable about valuation will likely send bitcoin values plummeting, which would curb the absurdity of the bitcoin mining addiction.
Have they cured your selective hearing or own sampling bias? The advice has always been clear, if you have diabetes you need to lose weight to help manage it. Same for high blood pressure.
It's painfully obvious why the industry profiting from perpetual treatments avoids the word "cure" like the plague. Even you own words of "manage it" implies that once a person is afflicted with diabetes, it could never actually be cured permanently with proper diet and exercise to maintain a healthy weight. Previous studies are also rife with this same legal-speak to avoid damaging revenue streams.
Just pretending that advice wasn't there and then spitting out some dollar figure doesn't make it so.
I never pretended that advice wasn't there. Advice can easily exist. It can also be easily ignored or suppressed. For decades, doctors have been quick to prescribe a perpetual treatment for diabetes instead of giving advice that could ultimately cure it permanently. It's one hell of an ethical Catch-22 when the "wrong" advice could damage a $375 billion dollar revenue stream that sustains the very industry a doctor is employed in.
You may want to consider the fact that advice is often given for no other reason other than to check a box in the legal liability category.
I'm not sure if you're trolling or if you really believe that the vast majority of doctors actually want their patients to remain fat and unhealthy. If the latter, that's a pretty twisted worldview.
Ethics have become irrelevant in business because of Greed. The Medical Industrial Complex is no exception to this rule. In fact, they are more of an example. The world is twisted, but Capitalistic Greed is downright fucked. Doctors don't have to worry about the majority of their patients being fat and unhealthy. That happens naturally in a society where marketing poisonous food is the norm. Their advice to maintain a healthy weight to avoid ailments like diabetes is heard about as well as a whisper in a jet engine factory. My point is more centered around the fact that doctors are trained to throw a perpetual and profitable treatment at ailments first and foremost. Cures are not profitable in the long term. Treatments are.
Where have these "watershed" studies been hiding all these years?
They haven't been hiding. People who don't live their lives viewing the world through conspiracy goggles have been aware of them for a long time. For example, it took me about 38 seconds to pull up this study from 2008 that surveyed other studies from as far back as 1966. The take-home:
Results of these studies indicated that intentional weight loss reduces the risk of developing diabetes in the long term and those participants with T2DM often have reduced clinical symptoms and mortality risk.
Hard to label this a conspiracy when there's $375 billion a year pouring in as evidence. I also noticed the take-home avoided using the word "cure" at all costs, because that might cause irreparable damage to current and future revenue streams. My previous point stands regarding how our white-coat healers are trained, and why 50-year old studies rife with common sense but lacking in perpetual revenue streams are often ignored.
> then expect a funding result about as good as getting them to pay taxes today
When you look at it, it's just another income distribution scheme. Somebody's losing wealth and having it given to someone else.
That's not necessarily evil, by the way. UBI solves some of the problems with traditional welfare systems - like being locked in because income quickly cuts your welfare to the point it's easier to not work. It removes some of the stress of poverty because you know you'll always be able to afford food and a warm bed. It saves money because there's less need to police the system for fraud.
I agree that it could provide some benefit. However, reducing policing jobs will not be welcome. We've privatized prisons and worked hard to earn the dubious Incarcerated States of America moniker. Also, those with wealth will fight distribution as they always have fought it. The chasm between the 1% and the 99% continues to widen, as they distance themselves from giving a shit about the irrelevant masses.
In a society that is so productive that it doesn't need large portions of its population to work, UBI is probably the best way to prevent obscene concentration of wealth.
Greed N. Corruption is the CEO of America right now. Again, I fully expect any plan to attack or dissolve obscene behavior will be fought. And Greed will ultimately win, as it has for a very long time now. Greed maintains Control.
>...I can think of a dozen ways corporations weasel out of paying their fair share.
Yeah... our tax systems suck. I don't think corporations should pay taxes on income as a general rule - it all gets passed on to the consumer as a hike in price of items or services anyway. I do think they need to be taxed to internalize costs - a company that pollutes should be paying taxes to cover the cost society bears dealing with cleanup and health issues. A company that produces anything tangible should be taxed to cover recycling costs. And of course they should be taxed to cover land and municipal services to their offices, just like any other land owner.
It's a good concept due to the environmental impact, but I fail to see why you believe internal costs won't ultimately be passed on to the consumer. If business expenses go up, then the MSRP goes up. It's the only way to maintain a profitable business and ensure CEOs continue to earn obscene salaries and bonuses.
Of course, you still have to find a way to tax the owners or they'll just keep everything in the company and control their wealth indirectly while avoiding their social tax obligations... and ultimately the required tax laws will have to apply to everyone else. It gets complicated quickly.
Other than something extreme like a flat tax, corporate tax laws don't have to apply to "everyone else", because everyone else is not running a for-profit business. And it hardly has to get "complicated". Simplify the hell out of corporate taxation and close the damn loopholes. If corporations continue to avoid their obligations, then they can find themselves heavily fined, dismantled, or outright banned from doing business in the US.
Greed is often found to be very unethical and can cause massive damage and disruption, but it's hardly ever punished to prevent history from repeating itself. A good example of this is the financial meltdown of 2008. There's not a damn thing in place to really prevent that from happening again. If a corporation can make a billion dollars doing unethical and greedy shit and only get fined $50 million for it, then unethical behavior is proven to be profitable, and becomes the business mantra. Wells Fargo is a more recent example. Even with a $185 million dollar fine, they likely still profited from their cross-selling bullshit, and stock value was hardly affected at all. Sadly, over 5,000 "little" people were fired while the CEO was afforded a lavish retirement.
...than Welfare 2.0, plain and simple.
If you expect to tax the worlds richest corporations to fund UBI, then expect a funding result about as good as getting them to pay taxes today.
Offshore tax havens, tax loopholes, political contributions...I can think of a dozen ways corporations weasel out of paying their fair share. What money you might manage to get from them to feed to the unemployable masses in the future will be the bare minimum, and not a penny more.
Ironically, large corporations are fueled by the very individuals they intend to starve in order to hog their wealth. When the masses cannot afford to buy anything other than food, all that extra unnecessary shit vendors peddle becomes rather pointless. They won't be able to even sell the precious data they capture to anyone, because it will quickly become worthless from a marketing standpoint.
It's time for Hollywood's free cash cow to dry up. There's absolutely no reason cable TV should cost $100+.
I remember a time when cable cost $30 a month for about 60-70ish channels. Maybe their overpaid actors and production staff will take a pay cut if they want to survive /sarcasm
What do you mean you "remember a time"? My package deal right now runs about $100/month for 100Mb internet, home phone with unlimited long distance calling, and cable TV with over 400 channels. That's essentially paying around $33/month for over 400 HD channels, including a DVR. I remember a time when just the long distance bill was $30 a month.
Yes, that package is offered at an introductory price that's good for a year (normal price is around $130), but after a year I'll simply pressure my current provider with the competitor's introductory price.
And Hollywood is only getting greedier. Today's cable bill is tomorrows streaming providers who continue to fracture content across a dozen+ services to force you to "only" pay $9.99/month for each. The future is more revenue, not less.
One generations cable bill is another generations unlimited smartphone bill. This isn't about cost. It's about priorities.
And as online streaming services continue to fracture content and offer exclusive content, I have a feeling consumers are going to be shelling out essentially a cable bills worth of money to get what they want. The laughable irony here is watching the cable-cutting generation pay for 400,000 channels of streaming shit they'll never watch in order to get the 100 channels they want, which was essentially the entire fucking argument against bundled cable service.
fully debunked by the Medical Industrial Complex
What would they debunk? Their own advice that a major contributor to Type 2 diabetes is weight gain? The evil MIC has been providing this very advice here for many years.
But hey, big pharma baaad.
They told you to not gain weight because it can cause diabetes.
They avoid telling you how to cure diabetes. They instead chose to treat that problem with never-ending pharma solutions.
And there are over $375 billion reasons why in the US, with billions more growing every year.
..this common sense approach to curing diabetes to be fully debunked by the Medical Industrial Complex. Those profiting from this affliction wouldn't have it any other way.
As much as I love watching you conspiracy tards go off on your rants, you may want to stop and consider the fact that the medical community has been telling people for decades to stop getting fat because it causes type 2 diabetes, amongst other health problems.
Yeah, their advice resembles the "don't drink and drive" sign hanging in a bar. You may want to consider the fact that advice is often given for no other reason other than to check a box in the legal liability category.
Where have these "watershed" studies been hiding all these years? Oh that's right. Cures are verboten in medicine today. Only solutions that create perpetual treatments and never-ending revenue streams are supported now. Why tell someone to simply lose weight and eat right to cure them permanently when you can create a permanent revenue stream instead. Diabetes generates over $375 billion every year in revenue in the US, a business that is expected to grow by billions every year.
...this common sense approach to curing diabetes to be fully debunked by the Medical Industrial Complex. Those profiting from this affliction wouldn't have it any other way.
That said, I also fully expect people to be lazy enough to not put forth the effort to lose weight to cure their ailments either. The underlying cause and prevalence of diabetes in society still needs to be addressed. Unfortunately, there's no easy cure for I-don't-give-a-fuck disease.
...Calling it a "digital soul" is melodramatic - nobody's going to hell over this, or whatever your metaphor is trying to imply.
Tell that to the people going through the hell of having their identity stolen. I guarantee you they would confirm my metaphor.
You might as well give up on trying to convince the masses that they should suddenly start giving a shit about privacy or security. Based on the products they worship, they obviously no longer care.
System got hacked? Oh well, buy a new one. Identity theft? That only happens to someone else.
The masses gladly give up their digital soul in exchange for a free service. Pathetic, but so true there's no way anyone can deny it.
Paying $3 for a cup of coffee every morning for 40 years = $43,800
$43800 in 40 years will be worth about $100 due to inflation. Is that worth spending 40 fucking years worrying about making coffee every single day? And what is the cumulative stress effect of counting coffee savings every single day for 40 years?
Saving $3 a day for 40 years at 6% interest compounded annually works out to over $160,000. Extend that to 50 years (a more realistic career length), and it works out to over $310,000.
This is advice. Financial advice.
And it's pretty shit. Better advice would be to get a STEM education and never worry about the price of coffee again.
The best job in the world isn't worth dick if you fail to understand the value of saving and investing. Plenty of lottery winners, ex-celebrities, and sports stars are dead-ass broke today, and they earned a lot more than any STEM job.
Sure, until you realize that, since you're writing in USD, many people need to save somewhere in the order of a million dollars over that time to be able to pay for retirement. In such a comparison, the $3 coffee is not such a big deal.
Plus what's the big deal? You could make the same argument about going for a beer.
For some people, the difference is huge. For others, it's miniscule. For example, let's say that you are paid not on salary, but hourly? Then sometimes paying other people to do stuff for you can definitely be worth it, economically speaking.
Extend my 40-year estimate to 50 years or more, which is the more likely length of a working career.
$3 a day for 40 years at 6% interest compounded annually works out to over $160,000 Extend that to 50 years, and it works out to over $310,000.
And that's just eliminating one expense (coffee) from your life. Do that two more times, and you've made a million just cutting extra expenses. That's not including what you could also save from contributing more towards a retirement plan from working.
he said, while using an electronic device worth several thousand coffees
My laptop enables me to perform my job, which has considerable value-add towards productivity.
Other than caffeine addiction, (and perhaps diabetes based on Starbucks "coffee" drinks), coffee adds little or no actual value towards productivity, and creates a considerable financial impact over the long-term. Zombie coffee addicts would of course disagree ("I can't function without it!"), but there are millions of people who don't drink coffee that have no issues being productive.
It gets better. I just punched this into a compounding interest calculator: $3 a day for 40 years at a modest 6% outputs $172,526.71. Enough to have a major impact on one's lifestyle in during retirement.
Not really. And certainly not 40 years form now.
If you are willing to live an entire life of deprivation, you can indeed save a lot of money. But then again, if you can live a life of deprivation, you don't need that money anyway!
Here's another conundrum - if everyone took this "smart" advice about living frugally and saving every penny, nobody would have a job!
There is only room for a few parasites to work the system.
The financial advice is for the smart people who value it. Because of this, there is no "conundrum" to worry about, because there aren't that many smart people armed with common sense in the world. Starbucks revenue alone makes that very clear.
...Europe is falling far behind the United States in productivity and wealth.
No, this is why Europe has a different definition of "wealth".
Wealth gained from unrealistic productivity goals become pointless if you ultimately end up pissing it away fixing the medical issues caused by pushing yourself too hard. Retirement goals also become pointless if you're dead before then.
Even TFS makes the detriment to health very clear, and I have zero fucking desire to hand over half a century of retirement nest egg to the Medical Industrial Complex. I guarantee that maintaining good physical and mental health will become your most valuable asset later in life.
Besides, humans better start accepting a 20-hour workweek as normal, especially as automation and AI march on to decimate human employment.
Given that you brew coffee like some kind of barbarian I see where you're coming from. But why not compare apples to apples?
Step out of the train, stand in line for 5min at a store, walk away 2min later with a nice latte (note: NICE latte instantly rules Starbucks out of the equation, but then we're talking about coffee shops not that abortion of a business). Done in 7min
vs
Getting up 15min earlier (because my morning routine isn't that long). Turning on machine, doing other things while I wait for the machine to reach temperature, pre-flush to warm group handle and cup, dry group handle, grind beans, discard first few seconds to clear out machine, load fresh beans, grind beans, tamp put group handle in, pour shot, discard the used puck, flush machine to clean out coffee, and clean group handle, wait a minute to warm up to steaming temperature, flush steaming wand, froth milk for a minute, pour coffee. ... shit I'm finally done. but wait... I can't leave it like this. Get wet rag, clean off frothing wand, flush machine, go to sink, wash out milk cup, and final .... FINALLY after 10min of work (excluding initial warm up time which already cost me 15min of my sleep) I may get out the door.
No one stands in line for brewed coffee.
Apples to apples? OK. Paying $3 for a cup of coffee every morning for 40 years = $43,800 vs. paying 20 cents for a cup of coffee every morning for 40 years = $2,920
With sound investing, the time "wasted" with DIY would likely lead to retiring a year or two earlier.
As far as my barbaric process, I don't drink coffee. I must be some kind of monster.
Not buying anything you don't need is how you save up money. And having money is very helpful when you want to get rich.
If you look at the history of Kevin, Mark, and Robert on Shark Tank, the best way to get rich is to get lucky and start a company at the right time (beginning of a bubble) and have it bought for millions.
And if you look at what they sacrificed in order to get their companies off the ground, you would find crappy houses, shitty cars, and 20-cent coffee.
No one is doubting they struck gold at some point in their career, but they got started by being frugal, unlike what most people do.
And a pretty easily proven one. He's talking about $850 a year. That's not going to make or break anyone's investment portfolio. It's like that schmuck in Australia who told the young uns the could afford a house in Sydney if only they'd give up avocado toast. It's nonsense the aristocracy tells it's workers to excuse stagnant and falling wages. Don't fall for it.
Paying $3 for a cup of coffee every morning for 40 years = $43,800
Paying 20 cents for a cup of coffee every morning for 40 years = $2,920
That's a difference of over $40 thousand dollars. It's a hell of a lot more than that if you took that money and invested it over a 40-year span.
Hell, $40K is about $40K more than the average Starbucks-addicted Millennial has saved up for retirement.
Wake up and smell the math.
That's just the man's personality. As someone once said about writing code in a certain scripting language, there is more than one way to do it.
Paying $3 for a cup of coffee every morning for 40 years = $43,800
Paying 20 cents for a cup of coffee every morning for 40 years = $2,920
That's a difference of over $40 thousand dollars. It's a hell of a lot more than that if you took that money and invested it over a 40-year span.
This is advice. Financial advice. And the hipster masses perpetually carrying around a caramel-drizzled fuckachino bitching about always being broke would probably be wise to listen.
It's really the "convenience" explosion. You pay for the convenience of not having to fool with it.
Decades ago, they made this machine that would automatically brew a hot cup of coffee at whatever time you set the coffee alarm to, so that people could wake up to a hot cup of coffee ready and waiting for them.
The true stupidity is listening to the Starbucks generation dealing with store lines, drive thrus, and obscene prices, claiming their way is somehow more convenient.
Can it detect irregular heart rhythms? YES... but probably with terrible specificity (false positive).
This device is a single lead EKG. It has potential to save lives... but it also potential to scare the bejezus out of a ton of folks and get them in for unneeded ER visits...
I'm sorry, but you appear to be mistaking this as a unintended design feature. A ton of folks generate a ton of revenue.