It's too hard to separate out interest expense for a bank.
Not a problem, it's all rent.
WRT Buffett, I said collecting dividends is not productive work. I never said it was impossible to have income from productive and non-productive activities. I did say people collecting only unproductive income are worthless lumps.
Well, there's the problem. The arbitrator needs to get paid. Inevitably, he is dealing with 2 parties. One that will likely never need arbitration services again and another that could just about fill his calendar single handed, if they like the results.
So you're saying we are perfectly free to huddle in a shack with no electricity, no telecommunication, no gas, no water, etc if we don't like the nearly ubiquitous clauses limiting recourse to the courts?
Actually, we're not, the shack would be condemned as uninhabitable without at least power and water.
Buffett has done productive things, but the dividends don't come from those and much of his fortune is not derived from productive work. Unlike some, he appears to know that. The productive work is probably worth 150-200K/year.
Your figures should include interest expenses (economic rent for the non-productive). "outside professional services" is likely far too complex to analyse for a simple discussion, so I'll grant that.
As for the Rockefellers, you're happy with the most inept and unproductive people on Earth living in luxury due to an accident of birth, but hesitate to make sure others have at least the basics to live on because it might impact the Rockefellers' caviar budget?
We all like to think that, but then we have tech support at any ISP, warranty service practically everywhere, insurance and their crazy rules and forms everywhere, private prisons lobbying for harsher sentencing, and when that's not enough actually bribing judges to send more juvenile offenders to detention for as long as the law allows, major banks helping drug lords and terrorists launder money, Diesel-gate, Wells Fargo, etc.
Yes, the bulk of the income. Someone sitting on their ass collecting interest and dividends is not being productive, they're sitting on their ass being a lump.
A bunch of glad-handing CEOs in a room are not being more productive than the thousands of employees putting in 10 hours a day, they're just being paid 800 times as much. Not claiming they're doing nothing, just that they're not exactly the best value for the buck.
As for the tendency for the fortune to fade over generations, that represents multiple generations of non-productive people living it up big dividing a one time windfall ever finer as they reproduce. David Rockefeller (passed in March) had 3 billion dollars. That is, enough to last hundreds of families a lifetime. Looks like another couple generations of non-producers that will never have to wonder what anything costs.
I was speaking to the more general case. However, there are some prejudicial factors that may not be considered in sentencing. A black box offers no assurances those factors were correctly left out of consideration. For all we know, the thing is using numerology.
In most cases, a breathalyzer fail isn't an automatic conviction (though a refusal is). So take the flawed test, and get two doctors to testify that the result is invalid.
Testify based on what? The sample was destroyed and the court is somehow OK with that. In many jurisdictions, no blood draw will happen even if the defendant asked for one. We are left with just that number and hearsay claiming it's accuracy in that particular instance.
As for the digital photo, in many cases I WILL be wanting the raw image data, not because I believe a random bit flip during compression somehow made a duck appear, but because the technical bar for shopping in a duck is quite low.
In other words, it influences the judge's determination of sentence without any ability to see it's 'reasoning'. And race is just an example of many factors that it would be illegal for it to consider. Others would include gender and poverty.
No, you can't. There's a great many medical conditions and simple genetic quirks that can throw a breathalyser off. Without opening the black box, you'd need a huge sample size to get even modest coverage of those cases where it wouldn't read true.
You still have to be quite careful if it's inferring race rather than having it input. Just because you imagine the former gang affiliate from Compton to be white doesn't mean the software does.
That makes it especially problematic since they then can't prove that the system didn't infer race and then use that in hidden variables to determine the sentence.
Sorry, but the Constitution contains no feasibility clause. The people, especially those who stand accused of a crime have a right to examine the evidence against them. That includes raising questions of it's trustworthiness in the particular circumstances of their case. The choice is simple. Want law enforcement to use your breathalyzer? Open the source. Otherwise it's not legally possible. Your choice. Faced with that, I'm guessing they will find a way to open it.
It's not a joke but it is EXTREMELY limited. So much so that I'm not convinced it can ever be used for anything but programs just slightly more complex than hello world.
Sometimes, that may be good enough for example, LabVIEW for handling tabletop experiments.
They're actually not that harmful, particularly when dispersed widely in the upper atmosphere. You'll be exposed to a lot more by drinking spring water.
It's massive stupidity though. For one, I find many conditions will clear on their own in a day or two. I don't need a doctor to tell me that. So, I can be sick for 24 hours in the comfort of home or I can go wait for hours on end at urgent care and share whatever I have with the waiting room while they give me what they have and cough a co-pay (along with that lung) just because some asshole stuffed into a suit wants to treat everyone like children.
Even in school, a parent's note is good enough.
On a side note, I recall an article some time ago where a doctor wrote the requisite excuse note and included a nastygram about wasting limited medical resources by requiring a doctor's note for every brief absence.
Slashdot Mirror
It's too hard to separate out interest expense for a bank.
Not a problem, it's all rent.
WRT Buffett, I said collecting dividends is not productive work. I never said it was impossible to have income from productive and non-productive activities. I did say people collecting only unproductive income are worthless lumps.
You think the more important utilities aren't using arbitration clauses?
Of course, internet service is becoming increasingly important if you want to find a decent job.
Go look up the term "contract of adhesion". Then consider that the competition will shove similar contracts under your nose.
Then you will understand why the situation bears no resemblance to anything you posted.
Well, there's the problem. The arbitrator needs to get paid. Inevitably, he is dealing with 2 parties. One that will likely never need arbitration services again and another that could just about fill his calendar single handed, if they like the results.
So you're saying we are perfectly free to huddle in a shack with no electricity, no telecommunication, no gas, no water, etc if we don't like the nearly ubiquitous clauses limiting recourse to the courts?
Actually, we're not, the shack would be condemned as uninhabitable without at least power and water.
Buffett has done productive things, but the dividends don't come from those and much of his fortune is not derived from productive work. Unlike some, he appears to know that. The productive work is probably worth 150-200K/year.
Your figures should include interest expenses (economic rent for the non-productive). "outside professional services" is likely far too complex to analyse for a simple discussion, so I'll grant that.
As for the Rockefellers, you're happy with the most inept and unproductive people on Earth living in luxury due to an accident of birth, but hesitate to make sure others have at least the basics to live on because it might impact the Rockefellers' caviar budget?
Absolutely. And they usually put more thought into the copy prevention than they did in the game play.
I have to say, I learned a lot doing that.
Intent + action where the action was ineffective can indeed be a crime. Attempted murder, attempted robbery, attempted hijacking, etc.
Government tends to be horrible at everything
We all like to think that, but then we have tech support at any ISP, warranty service practically everywhere, insurance and their crazy rules and forms everywhere, private prisons lobbying for harsher sentencing, and when that's not enough actually bribing judges to send more juvenile offenders to detention for as long as the law allows, major banks helping drug lords and terrorists launder money, Diesel-gate, Wells Fargo, etc.
Yes, the bulk of the income. Someone sitting on their ass collecting interest and dividends is not being productive, they're sitting on their ass being a lump.
A bunch of glad-handing CEOs in a room are not being more productive than the thousands of employees putting in 10 hours a day, they're just being paid 800 times as much. Not claiming they're doing nothing, just that they're not exactly the best value for the buck.
As for the tendency for the fortune to fade over generations, that represents multiple generations of non-productive people living it up big dividing a one time windfall ever finer as they reproduce. David Rockefeller (passed in March) had 3 billion dollars. That is, enough to last hundreds of families a lifetime. Looks like another couple generations of non-producers that will never have to wonder what anything costs.
Ideally, yes. There are jurisdictions that now accept the breathalyzer alone.
I was speaking of complexity, you are speaking of scale. Yes, it can be useful. It can be used for important things.
I was speaking to the more general case. However, there are some prejudicial factors that may not be considered in sentencing. A black box offers no assurances those factors were correctly left out of consideration. For all we know, the thing is using numerology.
In most cases, a breathalyzer fail isn't an automatic conviction (though a refusal is). So take the flawed test, and get two doctors to testify that the result is invalid.
Testify based on what? The sample was destroyed and the court is somehow OK with that. In many jurisdictions, no blood draw will happen even if the defendant asked for one. We are left with just that number and hearsay claiming it's accuracy in that particular instance.
As for the digital photo, in many cases I WILL be wanting the raw image data, not because I believe a random bit flip during compression somehow made a duck appear, but because the technical bar for shopping in a duck is quite low.
In other words, it influences the judge's determination of sentence without any ability to see it's 'reasoning'. And race is just an example of many factors that it would be illegal for it to consider. Others would include gender and poverty.
The problem is that the algorithm might have an illegal bias against some class of defendant.
No, you can't. There's a great many medical conditions and simple genetic quirks that can throw a breathalyser off. Without opening the black box, you'd need a huge sample size to get even modest coverage of those cases where it wouldn't read true.
You still have to be quite careful if it's inferring race rather than having it input. Just because you imagine the former gang affiliate from Compton to be white doesn't mean the software does.
That makes it especially problematic since they then can't prove that the system didn't infer race and then use that in hidden variables to determine the sentence.
Sorry, but the Constitution contains no feasibility clause. The people, especially those who stand accused of a crime have a right to examine the evidence against them. That includes raising questions of it's trustworthiness in the particular circumstances of their case. The choice is simple. Want law enforcement to use your breathalyzer? Open the source. Otherwise it's not legally possible. Your choice. Faced with that, I'm guessing they will find a way to open it.
It's not a joke but it is EXTREMELY limited. So much so that I'm not convinced it can ever be used for anything but programs just slightly more complex than hello world.
Sometimes, that may be good enough for example, LabVIEW for handling tabletop experiments.
They're actually not that harmful, particularly when dispersed widely in the upper atmosphere. You'll be exposed to a lot more by drinking spring water.
I soon discovered that cracking the game was more fun than playing it.
Just be sure to avoid setting your watch during an earthquake.
It's massive stupidity though. For one, I find many conditions will clear on their own in a day or two. I don't need a doctor to tell me that. So, I can be sick for 24 hours in the comfort of home or I can go wait for hours on end at urgent care and share whatever I have with the waiting room while they give me what they have and cough a co-pay (along with that lung) just because some asshole stuffed into a suit wants to treat everyone like children.
Even in school, a parent's note is good enough.
On a side note, I recall an article some time ago where a doctor wrote the requisite excuse note and included a nastygram about wasting limited medical resources by requiring a doctor's note for every brief absence.