It's not an idiotic question. It is a situation that could come up.
However, it does need to be put into perspective. As you say, the extreme cases rarely comes up. As well, will the AI do as good or better than the average human.
Far too often when a new technology comes up, people spend their time worrying about every potential issue with it rather than asking how well does it stack against the current system.
Most people just don't react that well in extreme scenarios.
Here's a strange one I remember being in the news about a woman who stops on the highway to avoid some ducks... causes the death of two people.
Quite frankly, the big gains in safety from autonomous cars aren't going to come from these extreme cases, but from making regular day to day driving safe. Every single one of my close calls or actual accidents has been my stupidity (not paying attention, trying to drive too aggressively when I was younger...)
Whatever the AI chooses in these extreme cases; you can guarantee that a significant number of human drivers would make the same choices; probably even worse ones.
Heck, even leave it as a toggle if you really want to. Err on the side of the drivers safety vs err on the side of potential victims.
Lower costs of education, childcare, probably crime...
The cost of supporting 'old people' in terms of healthcare and retirement based on younger workers sounds like a reason to have more kids... but last I checked, jobs in general are a problem in most countries.
It's not magical young people that pay taxes... it's young people with good jobs.
And if the government is going to be spending money to create jobs for young people and stimulate the economy, are you really in any worse position to just spend that money taking care of old people directly.
You have issues with a falling population. But it's not kind of automatic crises. Certain industries will face problems. There are powerful lobbies as well.... banking, housing, mortgages... that depend on population growth as well.
The issue is not 'religion' causes people to do bad things.
Religion is a 'strong belief' and it is 'strong belief' that causes people to do evil things.
When you have a strong belief, you end up with all the 'bad' things associated with religion.
Many of us have beliefs or preferences, but to a large extent, most of us aren't really that serious about our beliefs. I say that as a good thing.
So many groups talk about oppression or utopias or great struggles, but for the most part, people don't take it too seriously. You can rant about global warming, but most people aren't out there blowing up oil rigs. You can rant about government oppression, but most aren't blowing up government buildings. You can rant about homosexual morality, but most people aren't killing gays.
It is when you really take your beliefs seriously to the point where you can think the end goal justifies some extreme action that evil manifests itself.
Communism as you rightly point out manifested great evil as people took it too seriously as an ideology to bring about utopia. Gotta kill or jail millions of people... just think about the end goal!
I don't know if you can ever get rid of strong belief, but it is where the danger lies. It impacts all sides of any discussion and creates a lot of blind spots. Capitalism, feminism, communism, environmentalism, religion...
People kind of mock the shallowness of people who just want to watch tv or talk about celebrities, or watch sports... the older I get, the more I actually appreciate these people.
This impacts much more than Agile. The modern day is amazed at the success at 'science'.
If only we had: -evidence based policy -agile projects -no politics -transit systems based on reports...
And 'ideally' it is true most of these are great if you're dealing with competent, well meaning people, honest, cooperative people all operating within that system, you'd get amazing results.
But of course, that is the whole question of humanity isn't it? If we all operated by those traits, we'd have utopia regardless of Agile or not.
And we don't operate inside that system in isolation. Business, QA, Product, accounting, portfolio management, sales, architecture, security, finance... are all there. Like it or not, most of that is still project based; much more suited to waterfall and heavy upfront design.
Agile, like evidence based policy or the rest above... cannot and should not be used to escape humanity. You cannot escape politics.You cannot escape 'the public'. You cannot escape You cannot escape the struggles for money and power.
Since developers, like scientists are pretty bad when it comes to games of power/politics (as I am), the result is predictable when you throw in a game of Agile that is essentially, putting you directly in the ring.
You have to have some strong leaders that have created a company of Agile for it to work. Most often this from the company founders building in that way or a really really really strong company wide initiative. If you don't have that, you're going to end up worse than Waterfall. You're going to end up in a mess.
I find internal marketting is a big reason for this.
My old firm had a web app. It was maintainable and slow. Nothing to do with the nature of web apps or anything. The front end requirements were pretty basic (text boxes, lists....)
But the internal marketing became: We need Native. Native is faster. Native is better. Basically, the failure to write a good web app was blamed on the technology.
So a whole new division was formed for Android and IOS apps, writing everything native.
Of course, this was hugely costly and became hard to maintain. To top it off, they still had to maintain the old webapp for Windows, BB users.
So a genius decided we should use common components (HTML 5, Angular!). And so we're back full circle with huge parts of the app being rewritten in angular and embedded in webviews. I imagine most of the app will be web within webviews in short time.
It's not so much that people only want so much. People's wants are virtually infinite.
However our desire to WORK for our wants definitely varies.
For example, the goods and services of what we would call the industrial age are things people really do want to work for. We've seen this pattern in the West and continue to see it in Asia/Mexico... Things like electricity, running water, basic healthcare, supermarkets, roads... are such huge improvements over rural living that most people are willing to work hard for these things. It's why workers are industrializing economies are willing to work 12 hours days in grueling factory work. It's not that it is great. But it's much better than their rural life.
Whereas once you have the goods and services of the industrial age, your desire to work for your wants drops dramatically. The industrial age gets your pretty comfortable.
Who of us is going to work 12 hour days in a gruelling factory 200 km from home so we can get the next iphone? We don't really care that much. We still want the next iphone, but we don't really want to work for it.
What we have in most of the West today is basically discretionary spending. It's an attitude of: While I am making money to live, I might as well get X,Y,Z.
I work a corporate job right now. If I could work a casual laborer job like in a warehouse (as I did in high school) and still live my middle class life, I'd do it in a second. It just doesn't come with the stability needed to pay the mortgage, taxes...
I really suspect, this is one of the reasons most western economies have grown to *love* the housing market. It's the one thing from the industrial age that they can still drive the price up (low interest rates, land scarcity policies, immigration...). And people are willing to work hard and pay for a home in a good area.
Even myself, aside from a home, I really don't spend more on goods than my friends who earn 1/2 of what I do. Did the banks sucker me in? Probably. But like I said, what else am I going to do with the money I am earning? Graduated school and started working at the wrong time. Just in time to see home prices skyrocket (in the Toronto area). So the money goes there and in some investments.
I don't get it either. I know it is illegal, but I still mainly bicycle on the sidewalk (in Canada). I'll go on the road if it is a quiet street, but in general the sidewalk is the best.
Are there possibilities of hitting pedestrians? Probably. When walking, I once had a cyclist bump into my rear end, but not much damage. I can definitely see it though, but a bicycle is simply not a car. Collisions like that are simply not that dangerous. You have to be aware you're driving on the sidewalk.
The other issue that I've heard mentioned is cyclist on the sidewalk are harder to see when cars are backing out of the drive way. That's probably true. I tend to be a little more careful, but again... this would be a relatively low-speed collision. I'll take the risk.
Dedicated bike lanes? Yeah I'll use them, but I prefer them to be next to the side walk instead of a section of the road.
Of course this is a matter of preference. If you're a awesome cyclist can pull of 40 kph on the road and don't want to deal with the side walk. More power to you. I'm sure there are law sticklers out there, but in general, the world continues. Those who want to ride on the sidewalk too. Those who want to ride on the road do too. Unless you're being nuisance, the police largely leave it alone.
Progressive: Why are people voting for Trump? They must be uneducated, racist, idiots!
Yep, that's going to have them voting progressive!
Not to mention that modern politics completely ignores huge swaths of the population. When they voice their concerns, they are simply dismissed. It is why Bernie Sanders and Trump are even in the running.
Dare to question free trade as you have lost your job! Modern politician: That's just free trade. A natural good thing.
Dare to worry about immigration (jobs, services, community). Modern politician: You must be a racist!
People aren't voting for Trump because they are amazed at his policies. They're voting for Trump because he's the only one (aside from Bernie) actually speaking about issues people want addressed instead of dismissing their concerns.
If progressives/liberals actually began addressing the concerns of people. In the stereotyped Trump supporter case, poor white people, they might get somewhere. Instead probably the only message poor white people hear from the left is... you have white privilege.
I wish corporations saw people as people. How low we've sunk where being seen as a resource is a noble goal:)
On the greater point, I completely agree though. Few things throw your perspective into flux when good hardworking talented people are just thrown away by corporations.
We all get it. No money assigned to their division or project. It just reeks.
I get the basic income and its really not a bad idea. But what I don't get is if you look at the current world, we see two trends.
1. People working really hard 2. A lot of people needing work
Sounds like a recipe for work to be shared. Fewer hours per worker.
Now I get it, not all jobs can be shared. But there are a lot that can. There's also a lot where you can just double up on labor to have a more resilient system or have people with assistants.
I work hard as a software developer. My wife is an account and somehow is always working hard. There are people willing to work who could offload some of our tasks. Yet, our economy is not managed that way for a variety of reasons.
We could start off small by changing the tax code removing the penalty for job-sharing. Get rid of payroll taxes or provide an equivalent tax credit for companies who hire more people. It should be a wash at the very least if a firm hires 1 person 100k versus 2 at 50k.
Heck, it should be in favor of hiring two people.
From there, reduce the work week and maybe even legislate more.
The way it is phrased, you would think that if these super rich CEOs merely had their income/wealth redistributed that we'd all be okay. I just don't see how this works.
let's use Walmart as an example. CEO of Walmart earns roughly $20 million a year Walmart has roughly 2 million employees. If the CEO of Walmart was taxed at 100% and took home nothing and gave it all to employees, it would result in a staggering $10/YEAR per employee, basically nothing.
It even fails the thought experiment test. We live in a capitalistic system. If CEOs were driving down worker wages and funnelling it all into profits, then another company could do the same, take less profits, and end up with more marketshare.
I'm not saying CEO and other wealthy people don't make a lot of money and it many cases it morally stinks, but redistribution from them is not going to solve anything.
What looks like a lot of money for one person to have doesn't work out to be a lot of money when spread out. This even works with wealth instead of income.
If there is redistribution to be had, it's going to massively involve the middle and working classes. That 50-120k worker is going to have to have to share. This normally hurts as these are the grunts who work day to day. Which is one of the reasons why I'm in favor of work distribution in addition to income/wealth redistribution.
Instead of having one engineer/teacher/police officer making 70k, have 2 making 35k with each having more free time. Keep splitting jobs as work is available. There's huge questions of deflation, monetary policy... it's massively complex. But that's my view as a general trend. I do think you're going to face issues with a guaranteed income in the current world where work is quite hard for many people. Theoretically, companies will make work nice if it happens.
Whenever things like this come up, I always defer to the idea of what is 'reasonable' for a person to do.
Yeah electricity, phone, cable... what would a rural person have to do if the electric company didn't provide service to their area? Yeah, their ability to use appliances and communicate drops dramatically... maybe even disappears.
What does a person do if Amazon doesn't offer same day shipping? They umm... you know... wait a day. The 'cost' not just in terms of money, but time, availability... is simply not that great.
And this changes as society does. If for example society starts functioning mainly under the assumption of high speed internet access. Then maybe high speed internet in rural areas becomes more of a need.
Maybe in the future, local stores are scarce and most things are done through delivery like amazon, so you can't stop by the local store and pickup soap, tampons... whatever your fancy. In that case yeah same day shipping might be considered non-luxury.
But the way the world is now, same day service is a definite luxury. I've never tried it personally as I just don't have such a great need.
I think it is good when regulated industries are challenged. This is not to say they should always win, but it is a good thing.
When an industry is regulated, they typically give reasons for the regulations. Safety is normally a big one. In exchange, the regulated industry typically gets certain things outside the 'market'... be it high pricing or monopolies of some kind...
It is always useful to see if the 'unregulated' world is really as dangerous and scary as they say it is. It is equally as important to find out if the regulated world is as safe it is.
I'm from the developing world where informal taxis are quite popular. They were not a big deal. You had a lot to fear from both legal and informal taxis.
Now is there a possibility you will be robbed, sexually assaulted, or just taken a longer route for a larger price? Of course there is.
Here's a better question. Do regular Taxis prevent this. In Toronto recently, it made the news that an Uber Driver sexually assaulted a person.
But people in regulated professions sexually assault people all the time (doctors, teachers...)
And hey, a quick news google search reveals cases in Toronto where regular cab drivers have committed crimes. http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/toro...
For me and countless others, I don't see the purported benefits of regulated taxis. Uber has worked well for me and countless other people. The supposed problems of unregulated taxis just haven't turned up.
It clearly is not an inferior service. People use it and love it and the rating system is pretty good as well.
Again, this is not anti-regulation post. It is on a case by case and industry by industry situation. Building regulations have a huge benefit. If anyone has lived in a country without building regulations, they know the issues of building collapses and fires.
But taxis, hair stylists (yes, Ontario decided these need to be regulated as well for some reason)... these are the kinds of industries that need to be challenged.
This really needn't be a problem except for the whole religious accommodation mindset.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't accommodate religion. Many of our rules can be changed or are not really needed for a specific purpose. Yet, it does mean the accommodation we do shouldn't be based on religion.
For example, in this case, the prisoner is seeking privileges to wear religious attire and have weekly services.
But why can't that request be made generic to all prisoners. 1 hour per week of moral or spiritual services. It still needs to be define moral or spiritual, but it makes it more general.
Alternatively, these people are in prison. How about just 1 hour of week for any activity deemed not harmful. Want to use that hour to go in a room and twirl... go ahead.
Just recently the US army relaxed uniform rules, so sikhs with beards and turbans can participate. Again, there is no need to tie this to religion. Why should the US army ban beards or turbans. If there's a safety reason, then that should remain and you don't accommodate the religious request. If you want to make sure it is the army colors, then keep that. Wear a turban in army colors... go ahead. Wear a baseball cap in army colors... go ahead.
It should be pretty straight forward. If you can't make it generalized, the accommodation should not take place.
Again, there is such a thing as 'good faith,' which I think can still apply in areas where practicality is concerned. For example, various religions have diet restrictions. Should prisons have to accommodate all of them? I don't know. I guess it is good. But if someone comes up and says their religion only allows them to eat 28 day old aged steak.... well do they really believe in that religion or are they just making it up to get better food? What was their diet before being in prison?
Yes, you'll almost always get into gray areas where the court will need to define something, but in general, it doesn't need to.
While I can't relate too well with government level secrecy, as a developer, I have been on numerous 'classified' projects where an NDA applies. Basically... don't talk to anyone outside the project about it.
And I'm sure just like the government, there are different levels of classified. Heck, I've been on classified projects where someone from marketting already leaked the project and it's public... but we still can't talk about it. Some are secret projects against competitors. Some are to hide a relationship with a vendor.
The sad reality is this. People at my place of work probably take more care with all of our nuanced classified than Clinton took on hers. We would never use a private email server for classified stuff. We would avoid any potential 'shortcuts' we might do for regular projects...
There is almost never a thing as an absolute right.
But it will definitely be interest. If the stats show more women are assaulted by men in these ride sharing services, there for it is a safety issue to have a women only service.
At first glance, it seems plausible, but the easy test is to just replace the criteria.
If the stats show more whites are assault by blacks in service X, is there a safety issue that would allow a 'whites' only service?
So where in my post do you see me talking about Public Health Care? It's a pretty specific statement on prevention as a cureall for healthcare costs. You don't. But you see you've just proven what I was saying.
You're so involved in your political ideology, you don't even see the reality in front of you. Facts, reality... all go out the window.
The part that intrigues me, and I can't be too sure of it, is that today we supposedly rely on intellectualism/rational thinking.
Yet, that too has become a movement. Just look at the examples taken in the article. It is all anti-intellectualism from a particular political perspective. Climate change, cigarettes, Donald Trump.
Now, some might suggest... well duh... that's because that political perspective has science/rationality on its side!
Except it doesn't. You'd be hard pressed to see all these people harping about anti-intellectualism jump on science which harms their own political perspective.
For example. Let's take a common 'progressive' idea in the world right now. Healthcare cost issues can be solved by prevention.
Healthy people actually cost more to treat over their lifetime. They live longer. Have more illnesses. Spend more time in old age. Smokers and obese people are actually cheaper to treat. They might get one big dose of cancer or a heart attack, but then they die.
To give a political spin on it. I'm in Toronto and recently our obese crack smoking Mayor passed away. Rob Ford. He died in his 40s. I'm sure his treatment was pricey, but it's done now.
Almost every health study confirms this. Most healthcare costs are in old age and in the last years of life.
About the main thing you can do to control healthcare spending in that respect is rationing or as they got labelled in the US 'death panels'.
Yet, we sit and watch as pretty much every progressive politician and group touts prevention as the cure for increasing healthcare costs.
Where is this example in our anti-intellectualism article? It's not there. How about science regarding gender differences? Anything to do with racial sensitives? Not there...
Basically intellectualism as a 'movement' suffers from the same crap that the most bible thumping anti-intellectual movement suffers. They just use science to further their own policies that they've already decided they want.
Now are there pure intellectuals who genuinely just use science to figure out what is best? Probably. But they're not the movement and rarely do they speak up.
Vague regulation is horrible. I'm going to take this on a slight tangent. There is real desire for some people to get away from the rule of law.
I was watching the Democratic debate between Hilary and Sanders. There was a tidbit on gun control where
Bernie voted against a law that would allow people to sue Gun Manufacturers if say a person legally buys a gun and then shoots up a school... for what reason. I couldn't figure it out.
Hilary was all over it. She was saying Gun Manufacturers should be responsible for the kinds of guns they produce and who they market to...
It was really a contrast to me. Because I don't see how you as a gun manufacturer could survive in Hilary's world. What the hell is legal? What the hell is illegal? I have no idea. Hilary doesn't even have an idea. But if something bad happens... you get sued for billions.
The law should do whatever it wants with respect to gun control. If you can get the votes, ban types of gun. Heck, ban all guns and get rid of the industry if you think it is too toxic. Increase identification requirements. Whatever, I don't know. But they should be clear and easy to enforce.
Financial regulation faces big problems, where the government is unwilling to ban practices yet they don't really know how to regulate it, so it ends up in a very vague zone of regulation. Regulations that are simply hard to enforce and you end up with a lot of subjectivity.
In fact, I would argue by 'regulating' things that are not really regulated, you harm the system. If things are not regulated, they aren't giving the 'stamp of approval' and it causes people to stay away.
Who of us banks at a bank that is not FDIC insured? We do it because we trust it because we assume the federal government is regulating and doing things to keep our money safe.
Now the financial world is just a strange place. A lot of things are given 'stamps of approval' by the SEC, Freddie/Fanny, rating agencies... and so much of this is subjective and filled with conflict of interest.
A lot of this needs to be cleared up with more clear laws instead of trying to regulate it. Maybe public rating agencies should be banned? And don't let people think laws can't be made reasonable.
A lot of laws have phased in gradually. And some laws do require companies to improve their internal systems. That's okay too.
It's simply not that that APIs only describe what is done; not how it is done. By in large, APIs do inform huge parts of the implementation. There is differentiation in terms of APIs and the choice of APIs is a huge part in the success of a product. Heck, in many cases, people choose a product based on the best API and not neccessarily the best implementation.
There are cases where you can draw this big gap between the API and it's implementation. For example, you have an API with to search a container for an element and then fill in the search with some implementation of search.
But that is not the case for all the API for something as large as Java; much less any library out there. There is a huge spectrum out there.
Should APIs be copyrightable? Just as much as anything else. There might be a higher bar, but APIs can certainly be unique, well designed, innovative...
It won't do that, but I'm pretty sure there's some environment impact to massive wind farms. It probably does change wind patterns to some extent. It might even impact the local climate somewhat.
We'll probably find these impacts as more development comes in.
Of course, this is not a reason to stop. Our current fossil burning also impacts things.
I agree with your general sentiment that IT workers tend to live in some kind of libertarian paradise that doesn't exist sometimes. Many even don't want government funding for projects and companies. That might be an ideal (depending on your political ideology), but there's no point a martyr industry. Healthcare, education, law, medicine... mega bucks by government and regulations. So what if try to keep a piece of the pie to ourselves.
The problem is that unionizing doesn't work for private sector workers as we have free trade.
Unionization has only ever worked when you are able to capture a large amount of the workers under the same conditions/contract. Go ahead and unionize your blue collar job... they can just setup shop in Mexico, China, India...
There are far larger structural changes that go beyond just unionization that would need to keep bluecollar or IT workers in good conditions. Changing free trade laws. Reforming how unions work (like in Germany...). Accepting public dollars more in tech companies. Maybe making it more of a profession, so the job HAS to be done in country (like law, medicine, teaching...)
Slashdot Mirror
It's not an idiotic question. It is a situation that could come up.
However, it does need to be put into perspective.
As you say, the extreme cases rarely comes up.
As well, will the AI do as good or better than the average human.
Far too often when a new technology comes up, people spend their time worrying about every potential issue with it rather than asking how well does it stack against the current system.
Most people just don't react that well in extreme scenarios.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Here's a strange one I remember being in the news about a woman who stops on the highway to avoid some ducks... causes the death of two people.
Quite frankly, the big gains in safety from autonomous cars aren't going to come from these extreme cases, but from making regular day to day driving safe. Every single one of my close calls or actual accidents has been my stupidity (not paying attention, trying to drive too aggressively when I was younger...)
Whatever the AI chooses in these extreme cases; you can guarantee that a significant number of human drivers would make the same choices; probably even worse ones.
Heck, even leave it as a toggle if you really want to. Err on the side of the drivers safety vs err on the side of potential victims.
Everything has ups and downs.
Is a falling population a tragedy.
Lower costs of education, childcare, probably crime...
The cost of supporting 'old people' in terms of healthcare and retirement based on younger workers sounds like a reason to have more kids... but last I checked, jobs in general are a problem in most countries.
It's not magical young people that pay taxes... it's young people with good jobs.
And if the government is going to be spending money to create jobs for young people and stimulate the economy, are you really in any worse position to just spend that money taking care of old people directly.
You have issues with a falling population. But it's not kind of automatic crises. Certain industries will face problems. There are powerful lobbies as well.... banking, housing, mortgages... that depend on population growth as well.
The issue is not 'religion' causes people to do bad things.
Religion is a 'strong belief' and it is 'strong belief' that causes people to do evil things.
When you have a strong belief, you end up with all the 'bad' things associated with religion.
Many of us have beliefs or preferences, but to a large extent, most of us aren't really that serious about our beliefs. I say that as a good thing.
So many groups talk about oppression or utopias or great struggles, but for the most part, people don't take it too seriously. You can rant about global warming, but most people aren't out there blowing up oil rigs. You can rant about government oppression, but most aren't blowing up government buildings. You can rant about homosexual morality, but most people aren't killing gays.
It is when you really take your beliefs seriously to the point where you can think the end goal justifies some extreme action that evil manifests itself.
Communism as you rightly point out manifested great evil as people took it too seriously as an ideology to bring about utopia. Gotta kill or jail millions of people... just think about the end goal!
I don't know if you can ever get rid of strong belief, but it is where the danger lies. It impacts all sides of any discussion and creates a lot of blind spots. Capitalism, feminism, communism, environmentalism, religion...
People kind of mock the shallowness of people who just want to watch tv or talk about celebrities, or watch sports... the older I get, the more I actually appreciate these people.
This impacts much more than Agile.
The modern day is amazed at the success at 'science'.
If only we had: ...
-evidence based policy
-agile projects
-no politics
-transit systems based on reports
And 'ideally' it is true most of these are great if you're dealing with competent, well meaning people, honest, cooperative people all operating within that system, you'd get amazing results.
But of course, that is the whole question of humanity isn't it?
If we all operated by those traits, we'd have utopia regardless of Agile or not.
And we don't operate inside that system in isolation.
Business, QA, Product, accounting, portfolio management, sales, architecture, security, finance... are all there. Like it or not, most of that is still project based; much more suited to waterfall and heavy upfront design.
Agile, like evidence based policy or the rest above... cannot and should not be used to escape humanity. You cannot escape politics.You cannot escape 'the public'. You cannot escape You cannot escape the struggles for money and power.
Since developers, like scientists are pretty bad when it comes to games of power/politics (as I am), the result is predictable when you throw in a game of Agile that is essentially, putting you directly in the ring.
You have to have some strong leaders that have created a company of Agile for it to work. Most often this from the company founders building in that way or a really really really strong company wide initiative. If you don't have that, you're going to end up worse than Waterfall. You're going to end up in a mess.
Lol,
I find internal marketting is a big reason for this.
My old firm had a web app. It was maintainable and slow.
Nothing to do with the nature of web apps or anything.
The front end requirements were pretty basic (text boxes, lists....)
But the internal marketing became:
We need Native. Native is faster. Native is better.
Basically, the failure to write a good web app was blamed on the technology.
So a whole new division was formed for Android and IOS apps, writing everything native.
Of course, this was hugely costly and became hard to maintain. To top it off, they still had to maintain the old webapp for Windows, BB users.
So a genius decided we should use common components (HTML 5, Angular!). And so we're back full circle with huge parts of the app being rewritten in angular and embedded in webviews. I imagine most of the app will be web within webviews in short time.
It's not so much that people only want so much.
People's wants are virtually infinite.
However our desire to WORK for our wants definitely varies.
For example, the goods and services of what we would call the industrial age are things people really do want to work for. We've seen this pattern in the West and continue to see it in Asia/Mexico... Things like electricity, running water, basic healthcare, supermarkets, roads... are such huge improvements over rural living that most people are willing to work hard for these things. It's why workers are industrializing economies are willing to work 12 hours days in grueling factory work. It's not that it is great. But it's much better than their rural life.
Whereas once you have the goods and services of the industrial age, your desire to work for your wants drops dramatically. The industrial age gets your pretty comfortable.
Who of us is going to work 12 hour days in a gruelling factory 200 km from home so we can get the next iphone? We don't really care that much. We still want the next iphone, but we don't really want to work for it.
What we have in most of the West today is basically discretionary spending. It's an attitude of: While I am making money to live, I might as well get X,Y,Z.
I work a corporate job right now. If I could work a casual laborer job like in a warehouse (as I did in high school) and still live my middle class life, I'd do it in a second. It just doesn't come with the stability needed to pay the mortgage, taxes...
I really suspect, this is one of the reasons most western economies have grown to *love* the housing market. It's the one thing from the industrial age that they can still drive the price up (low interest rates, land scarcity policies, immigration...). And people are willing to work hard and pay for a home in a good area.
Even myself, aside from a home, I really don't spend more on goods than my friends who earn 1/2 of what I do. Did the banks sucker me in? Probably. But like I said, what else am I going to do with the money I am earning? Graduated school and started working at the wrong time. Just in time to see home prices skyrocket (in the Toronto area). So the money goes there and in some investments.
I don't get it either. I know it is illegal, but I still mainly bicycle on the sidewalk (in Canada). I'll go on the road if it is a quiet street, but in general the sidewalk is the best.
Are there possibilities of hitting pedestrians? Probably. When walking, I once had a cyclist bump into my rear end, but not much damage. I can definitely see it though, but a bicycle is simply not a car. Collisions like that are simply not that dangerous. You have to be aware you're driving on the sidewalk.
The other issue that I've heard mentioned is cyclist on the sidewalk are harder to see when cars are backing out of the drive way. That's probably true. I tend to be a little more careful, but again... this would be a relatively low-speed collision. I'll take the risk.
Dedicated bike lanes? Yeah I'll use them, but I prefer them to be next to the side walk instead of a section of the road.
Of course this is a matter of preference. If you're a awesome cyclist can pull of 40 kph on the road and don't want to deal with the side walk. More power to you. I'm sure there are law sticklers out there, but in general, the world continues. Those who want to ride on the sidewalk too. Those who want to ride on the road do too. Unless you're being nuisance, the police largely leave it alone.
Don't you love it when people claim you're inventing or uninventing thing and think they're making a point, when the real issue is they cannot read.
If you read the post, you will notice I give Bernie a thumbs up as the exception as someone actually speaking to people's concerns.
This is absolutely true.
Progressive:
Why are people voting for Trump? They must be uneducated, racist, idiots!
Yep, that's going to have them voting progressive!
Not to mention that modern politics completely ignores huge swaths of the population. When they voice their concerns, they are simply dismissed. It is why Bernie Sanders and Trump are even in the running.
Dare to question free trade as you have lost your job!
Modern politician: That's just free trade. A natural good thing.
Dare to worry about immigration (jobs, services, community).
Modern politician: You must be a racist!
People aren't voting for Trump because they are amazed at his policies. They're voting for Trump because he's the only one (aside from Bernie) actually speaking about issues people want addressed instead of dismissing their concerns.
If progressives/liberals actually began addressing the concerns of people. In the stereotyped Trump supporter case, poor white people, they might get somewhere. Instead probably the only message poor white people hear from the left is... you have white privilege.
Just lolling at your wording.
I wish corporations saw people as people. How low we've sunk where being seen as a resource is a noble goal :)
On the greater point, I completely agree though. Few things throw your perspective into flux when good hardworking talented people are just thrown away by corporations.
We all get it. No money assigned to their division or project. It just reeks.
I really wonder why job sharing is missed?
I get the basic income and its really not a bad idea. But what I don't get is if you look at the current world, we see two trends.
1. People working really hard
2. A lot of people needing work
Sounds like a recipe for work to be shared. Fewer hours per worker.
Now I get it, not all jobs can be shared. But there are a lot that can. There's also a lot where you can just double up on labor to have a more resilient system or have people with assistants.
I work hard as a software developer. My wife is an account and somehow is always working hard. There are people willing to work who could offload some of our tasks. Yet, our economy is not managed that way for a variety of reasons.
We could start off small by changing the tax code removing the penalty for job-sharing. Get rid of payroll taxes or provide an equivalent tax credit for companies who hire more people. It should be a wash at the very least if a firm hires 1 person 100k versus 2 at 50k.
Heck, it should be in favor of hiring two people.
From there, reduce the work week and maybe even legislate more.
As opposed to those who say education and innovation are going to provide mass jobs?
(yes, this is a not so veiled progressive reference)
The way it is phrased, you would think that if these super rich CEOs merely had their income/wealth redistributed that we'd all be okay. I just don't see how this works.
let's use Walmart as an example.
CEO of Walmart earns roughly $20 million a year
Walmart has roughly 2 million employees.
If the CEO of Walmart was taxed at 100% and took home nothing and gave it all to employees,
it would result in a staggering $10/YEAR per employee, basically nothing.
It even fails the thought experiment test.
We live in a capitalistic system. If CEOs were driving down worker wages and funnelling it all into profits, then another company could do the same, take less profits, and end up with more marketshare.
I'm not saying CEO and other wealthy people don't make a lot of money and it many cases it morally stinks, but redistribution from them is not going to solve anything.
What looks like a lot of money for one person to have doesn't work out to be a lot of money when spread out.
This even works with wealth instead of income.
If there is redistribution to be had, it's going to massively involve the middle and working classes. That 50-120k worker is going to have to have to share. This normally hurts as these are the grunts who work day to day. Which is one of the reasons why I'm in favor of work distribution in addition to income/wealth redistribution.
Instead of having one engineer/teacher/police officer making 70k, have 2 making 35k with each having more free time. Keep splitting jobs as work is available. There's huge questions of deflation, monetary policy... it's massively complex. But that's my view as a general trend. I do think you're going to face issues with a guaranteed income in the current world where work is quite hard for many people. Theoretically, companies will make work nice if it happens.
Extreme arguments are not 'the same thing'.
Whenever things like this come up, I always defer to the idea of what is 'reasonable' for a person to do.
Yeah electricity, phone, cable... what would a rural person have to do if the electric company didn't provide service to their area? Yeah, their ability to use appliances and communicate drops dramatically... maybe even disappears.
What does a person do if Amazon doesn't offer same day shipping? They umm... you know... wait a day. The 'cost' not just in terms of money, but time, availability... is simply not that great.
And this changes as society does. If for example society starts functioning mainly under the assumption of high speed internet access. Then maybe high speed internet in rural areas becomes more of a need.
Maybe in the future, local stores are scarce and most things are done through delivery like amazon, so you can't stop by the local store and pickup soap, tampons... whatever your fancy. In that case yeah same day shipping might be considered non-luxury.
But the way the world is now, same day service is a definite luxury. I've never tried it personally as I just don't have such a great need.
What's wrong with a wild taxi?
I think it is good when regulated industries are challenged. This is not to say they should always win, but it is a good thing.
When an industry is regulated, they typically give reasons for the regulations. Safety is normally a big one. In exchange, the regulated industry typically gets certain things outside the 'market'... be it high pricing or monopolies of some kind...
It is always useful to see if the 'unregulated' world is really as dangerous and scary as they say it is. It is equally as important to find out if the regulated world is as safe it is.
I'm from the developing world where informal taxis are quite popular. They were not a big deal. You had a lot to fear from both legal and informal taxis.
Now is there a possibility you will be robbed, sexually assaulted, or just taken a longer route for a larger price? Of course there is.
Here's a better question. Do regular Taxis prevent this. In Toronto recently, it made the news that an Uber Driver sexually assaulted a person.
But people in regulated professions sexually assault people all the time (doctors, teachers...)
And hey, a quick news google search reveals cases in Toronto where regular cab drivers have committed crimes.
http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/toro...
For me and countless others, I don't see the purported benefits of regulated taxis. Uber has worked well for me and countless other people. The supposed problems of unregulated taxis just haven't turned up.
It clearly is not an inferior service. People use it and love it and the rating system is pretty good as well.
Again, this is not anti-regulation post. It is on a case by case and industry by industry situation. Building regulations have a huge benefit. If anyone has lived in a country without building regulations, they know the issues of building collapses and fires.
But taxis, hair stylists (yes, Ontario decided these need to be regulated as well for some reason)... these are the kinds of industries that need to be challenged.
This really needn't be a problem except for the whole religious accommodation mindset.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't accommodate religion. Many of our rules can be changed or are not really needed for a specific purpose. Yet, it does mean the accommodation we do shouldn't be based on religion.
For example, in this case, the prisoner is seeking privileges to wear religious attire and have weekly services.
But why can't that request be made generic to all prisoners.
1 hour per week of moral or spiritual services. It still needs to be define moral or spiritual, but it makes it more general.
Alternatively, these people are in prison. How about just 1 hour of week for any activity deemed not harmful. Want to use that hour to go in a room and twirl... go ahead.
Just recently the US army relaxed uniform rules, so sikhs with beards and turbans can participate. Again, there is no need to tie this to religion. Why should the US army ban beards or turbans. If there's a safety reason, then that should remain and you don't accommodate the religious request. If you want to make sure it is the army colors, then keep that. Wear a turban in army colors... go ahead. Wear a baseball cap in army colors... go ahead.
It should be pretty straight forward. If you can't make it generalized, the accommodation should not take place.
Again, there is such a thing as 'good faith,' which I think can still apply in areas where practicality is concerned. For example, various religions have diet restrictions. Should prisons have to accommodate all of them? I don't know. I guess it is good. But if someone comes up and says their religion only allows them to eat 28 day old aged steak.... well do they really believe in that religion or are they just making it up to get better food? What was their diet before being in prison?
Yes, you'll almost always get into gray areas where the court will need to define something, but in general, it doesn't need to.
This is it right here.
While I can't relate too well with government level secrecy, as a developer, I have been on numerous 'classified' projects where an NDA applies. Basically... don't talk to anyone outside the project about it.
And I'm sure just like the government, there are different levels of classified.
Heck, I've been on classified projects where someone from marketting already leaked the project and it's public... but we still can't talk about it. Some are secret projects against competitors. Some are to hide a relationship with a vendor.
The sad reality is this. People at my place of work probably take more care with all of our nuanced classified than Clinton took on hers. We would never use a private email server for classified stuff. We would avoid any potential 'shortcuts' we might do for regular projects...
There is almost never a thing as an absolute right.
But it will definitely be interest.
If the stats show more women are assaulted by men in these ride sharing services, there for it is a safety issue to have a women only service.
At first glance, it seems plausible, but the easy test is to just replace the criteria.
If the stats show more whites are assault by blacks in service X, is there a safety issue that would allow a 'whites' only service?
So where in my post do you see me talking about Public Health Care? It's a pretty specific statement on prevention as a cureall for healthcare costs. You don't. But you see you've just proven what I was saying.
You're so involved in your political ideology, you don't even see the reality in front of you. Facts, reality... all go out the window.
Thanks for proving the point though.
It's not new.
The part that intrigues me, and I can't be too sure of it, is that today we supposedly rely on intellectualism/rational thinking.
Yet, that too has become a movement. Just look at the examples taken in the article. It is all anti-intellectualism from a particular political perspective. Climate change, cigarettes, Donald Trump.
Now, some might suggest... well duh... that's because that political perspective has science/rationality on its side!
Except it doesn't. You'd be hard pressed to see all these people harping about anti-intellectualism jump on science which harms their own political perspective.
For example. Let's take a common 'progressive' idea in the world right now. Healthcare cost issues can be solved by prevention.
Sounds nice. Has a nice intuitive sound to it.
Yet, It is generally false.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technol...
Healthy people actually cost more to treat over their lifetime. They live longer. Have more illnesses. Spend more time in old age. Smokers and obese people are actually cheaper to treat. They might get one big dose of cancer or a heart attack, but then they die.
To give a political spin on it. I'm in Toronto and recently our obese crack smoking Mayor passed away. Rob Ford. He died in his 40s. I'm sure his treatment was pricey, but it's done now.
Almost every health study confirms this. Most healthcare costs are in old age and in the last years of life.
About the main thing you can do to control healthcare spending in that respect is rationing or as they got labelled in the US 'death panels'.
Yet, we sit and watch as pretty much every progressive politician and group touts prevention as the cure for increasing healthcare costs.
Where is this example in our anti-intellectualism article? It's not there. How about science regarding gender differences? Anything to do with racial sensitives? Not there...
Basically intellectualism as a 'movement' suffers from the same crap that the most bible thumping anti-intellectual movement suffers. They just use science to further their own policies that they've already decided they want.
Now are there pure intellectuals who genuinely just use science to figure out what is best? Probably. But they're not the movement and rarely do they speak up.
Absolutely.
Vague regulation is horrible.
I'm going to take this on a slight tangent. There is real desire for some people to get away from the rule of law.
I was watching the Democratic debate between Hilary and Sanders. There was a tidbit on gun control where
Bernie voted against a law that would allow people to sue Gun Manufacturers if say a person legally buys a gun and then shoots up a school... for what reason. I couldn't figure it out.
Hilary was all over it. She was saying Gun Manufacturers should be responsible for the kinds of guns they produce and who they market to...
It was really a contrast to me. Because I don't see how you as a gun manufacturer could survive in Hilary's world. What the hell is legal? What the hell is illegal? I have no idea. Hilary doesn't even have an idea. But if something bad happens... you get sued for billions.
The law should do whatever it wants with respect to gun control. If you can get the votes, ban types of gun. Heck, ban all guns and get rid of the industry if you think it is too toxic. Increase identification requirements. Whatever, I don't know. But they should be clear and easy to enforce.
Financial regulation faces big problems, where the government is unwilling to ban practices yet they don't really know how to regulate it, so it ends up in a very vague zone of regulation. Regulations that are simply hard to enforce and you end up with a lot of subjectivity.
In fact, I would argue by 'regulating' things that are not really regulated, you harm the system. If things are not regulated, they aren't giving the 'stamp of approval' and it causes people to stay away.
Who of us banks at a bank that is not FDIC insured? We do it because we trust it because we assume the federal government is regulating and doing things to keep our money safe.
Now the financial world is just a strange place. A lot of things are given 'stamps of approval' by the SEC, Freddie/Fanny, rating agencies... and so much of this is subjective and filled with conflict of interest.
A lot of this needs to be cleared up with more clear laws instead of trying to regulate it.
Maybe public rating agencies should be banned?
And don't let people think laws can't be made reasonable.
A lot of laws have phased in gradually. And some laws do require companies to improve their internal systems. That's okay too.
It's simply not that that APIs only describe what is done; not how it is done.
By in large, APIs do inform huge parts of the implementation.
There is differentiation in terms of APIs and the choice of APIs is a huge part in the success of a product.
Heck, in many cases, people choose a product based on the best API and not neccessarily the best implementation.
There are cases where you can draw this big gap between the API and it's implementation.
For example, you have an API with to search a container for an element and then fill in the search with some implementation of search.
But that is not the case for all the API for something as large as Java; much less any library out there. There is a huge spectrum out there.
Should APIs be copyrightable? Just as much as anything else. There might be a higher bar, but APIs can certainly be unique, well designed, innovative...
So what you're saying is in the private sector there is something called supply and demand?
Tell me more of this new age concept!
Not everyone can mandate their wages via government fiat no matter how many people are qualified to enter the field.
It won't do that, but I'm pretty sure there's some environment impact to massive wind farms. It probably does change wind patterns to some extent. It might even impact the local climate somewhat.
We'll probably find these impacts as more development comes in.
Of course, this is not a reason to stop. Our current fossil burning also impacts things.
I agree with your general sentiment that IT workers tend to live in some kind of libertarian paradise that doesn't exist sometimes. Many even don't want government funding for projects and companies. That might be an ideal (depending on your political ideology), but there's no point a martyr industry. Healthcare, education, law, medicine... mega bucks by government and regulations. So what if try to keep a piece of the pie to ourselves.
The problem is that unionizing doesn't work for private sector workers as we have free trade.
Unionization has only ever worked when you are able to capture a large amount of the workers under the same conditions/contract. Go ahead and unionize your blue collar job... they can just setup shop in Mexico, China, India...
There are far larger structural changes that go beyond just unionization that would need to keep bluecollar or IT workers in good conditions. Changing free trade laws. Reforming how unions work (like in Germany...). Accepting public dollars more in tech companies. Maybe making it more of a profession, so the job HAS to be done in country (like law, medicine, teaching...)