But require significantly more planning and skill to do, which is why the number of bombs used for mass killings in the US is vastly out numbered by the number of mass killings using guns.
You can change the law you know? You just need enough people to agree. If enough people agreed to write a new amendment that outlawed Islam then you could do it; similarly if enough people agreed to ban guns you could do that too. The constitution isn't fixed and perfect forever document, it can and should adapt as the world and attitudes change.
Australia did it legally. The US could do it legally as well, it just requires a constitutional amendment. Sure it's not easy or straight forward, but if enough people said "enough is enough, we don't want to live like this and we value protecting people from gun violence more than we value the right to bear arms" then the amendment could pass and the government could remove the guns. Just because something isn't constitutional now doesn't mean it won't be constitutional in the future; or are you saying that the current version of the US Constitution is the final version and most perfect it could ever be no matter how circumstances change in the future?
That might be because stamp collectors do not have special privileges and tax breaks in society; they don't bitch about it when someone else asks that they be treated equally; they don't go around calling non-stamp collectors evil and immoral. If stamp collectors did start acting that way, then maybe the non-stamp collectors would start to talk about the evils of stamp collecting.
Atheism is a lack of belief in a gods, it is saying that nothing has convinced me so far to believe that gods exist. It is not a (on its own) statement that the atheist is certain that there is no god. There are people who take that position, they are gnostic atheists. i.e. they take that position that you can know for certain whether gods exists or not. Most atheists are however agnostic atheists, they take the position that you cannot know for certain, but that evidence isn't strong enough to convince them to believe the claims.
Not believing there is a god is logically the same as believing there is not a god.
Except functionally, not believing is a position that does not require a burden of proof whereas believing is one that does. You have to be able to justify your beliefs to yourself, otherwise they are no beliefs. I lack belief in a gods because there hasn't been sufficient evidence for me to establish a belief. I don't actively disbelieve in gods because I think it is an unanswerable question to rule out all possible god concepts. I do currently actively disbelieve the Christian god, because there is sufficient evidence for me that the claims made in the bible do not stand up to scrutiny.
Are you an atheist and stating that this is your position, or are you putting up a straw man?
As an atheist, my position is that no claim about the existence of a god has met a burden of proof strong enough for me to believe it. I lack any believe in a god. It is not an active belief that there are no gods or cannot be a god. I am what is usually called an agnostic atheist. Agnostic because I do not think that we can know with absolute certainty whether a god exists, and atheist because I have not been convinced by any argument that gods exist.
What it should have to say is nothing. Since the vast majority of software is going to be provided with these terms - i.e. "as is and without warranty"; then the law should be changed to say that unless otherwise specified all software is provided as is and without warranty etc. That should be the default. (or whatever we as society decide is a reasonable default for the majority of cases). Then only software that requires something else, such as that used to run critical systems will need more than the default terms and conditions or license - and the purchasers of that software will ask for such license terms.
We need to get to the point where the default covers the vast majority of cases. It's no longer the 70s where software was expensive and employing lawyers to draft licenses was a small proportion of the cost.
Actually what's needed is a standard set of terms and conditions that apply by default to all applications that everyone agrees is reasonable (consumer and producer) and then only where a developer wants to impose something different should they have to say where they vary from it. This is what happens in other scenarios where the public interact with companies.
You don't have to read a massive 'terms and conditions' contract when you check into a hotel since there are consumer protection laws about how hotels can treat their customers and laws to protect the hotel from abuses by customers such as theft of towels or trashing of rooms. Similarly when you buy a burger there are generally accepted conditions about the food being fit for human consumption and health departments who enforce it.
Otherwise we'd have to spend forever reading through terms and conditions every time we interacted with companies. As a society we decided that a level of standard regulation made life better for everyone. This is what we need for apps, for websites and for online services.
So complain about those practices and lobby hard to get those practices banned. GMO crops in general are neutral as far as that is concerned. Fight against the actual things you find objectionable, not against the general science.
I don't think anyone is saying that you won't be able to own a car. I'm sure that many people will. However you won't have to own a car. SDCs will open up the personal transportation market.
Yes, insurance companies won't need to get the data from Google, they will get it from the customer or directly themselves by aggregating claims and costs for SDCs vs HDCs.
Sure some people (probably most) won't want to share a ride, but for some the reduced cost would be mean that they are fine with. People share buses or trains now, this will be more like that.
I assume that you stop at least once during that journey. If the SDC didn't have enough range to get you there in one charge, you'd likely either want to stop for coffee or meal which would give it enough time to recharge, or if you truly are in a hurry (why didn't you get the express train instead?) then you probably swap at a service stop for fully charged SDC - after all you won't need to own the SDC it'll just be a service you pay for, giving you a vehicle that meets your requirements for the journey you are taking. You won't want the same vehicle for the daily commute as you would for a long cross country drive.
Why wouldn't they recharge themselves? It's pretty easy to design a charging station that a robotic car can attach itself to. You're still thinking in terms of the manual plug and cable that is designed for us humans to use easily. Robots won't need that.
Or make them single user smaller vehicles and create more lanes? How many people on their commute have one person in a large vehicle because as a family they need the capacity for the whole family a few times a week, but in the majority of cases it's only got one person in it? With SDCs you won't own it, you will request a vehicle that is suitable for the journey so for commutes it will be a small single user vehicle, or the weekend or family trips it will be a larger vehicle. You won't have to compromise on the form factor of the one vehicle you buy, you will pay for the service that they want when you want it.
Another advantage will be that SDC manufacturers will likely become SDC service providers and that then gives them an incentive to make the vehicle efficient and reliable. They will pay for any downtime or inefficiency rather than you since you're just paying for the service of having the vehicle available when you want it. So there will be much less "hey look how good our car looks and how much sex you could be having if only you owned one of our vehicles" and then finding that it breaks down just as soon as the warranty is over or ends up costing you a fortune in fuel/oil/whatever. Instead they will be packing in sensors and preemptively fixing problems before they get serious and expensive; they will be designing the vehicles to last longer and be serviceable easily and they'll want to get the best mileage for the fuel they supply.
Yes, you're absolutely right (oh wait, you were being sarcastic?).
Owning a car is a real pain that I would prefer not to do. It costs a lot of buy and then a lot to insure and then a lot to maintain and repair. I'm willing to pay for that at the moment for the convenience it adds to my lifestyle. A shared resource spreads all those costs and will probably be even more convenient. I won't need to worry about how to get my car home in the evening if I want to have a drink after work since I won't have taken it to work in the morning - that's freedom right there. I wouldn't be tied to my car. I don't need to worry about finding parking in the city. That frees up a lot of time, searching for a spot and walking from and back to the car park. That's freedom.
Also I don't need to worry about where to park it at night, I could convert my driveway to be a place that I can enjoy the use of. All those city streets packed with on road parking would be freed up - imagine how pleasant streets could be if they were jam packed with parked cars, more dedicated cycle lanes, more room for kids to play and more room for leafy trees.
I see no problem with expressing regret. We should all regret the horrible things that occur in a war. And we shouldn't be afraid of apologizing where apologies are appropriate. However, I think it's right that we don't apologize for things that we feel we either had full justification for doing or had no alternative but to do. In this case Obama is not going to apologize, so I don't see what the issue is. We've been at peace and allied with Japan for a long time now. Let's feel free to recognize that the past is the past, it was horrible, and that we are all much better off now working together for continued peace.
Sure there will be some cases of abuse of the system. There will always be inconsiderate idiots out there that make life unpleasant for the rest of us, but thankfully they are mostly quite rare. The question is will these be enough to make the system as a whole uncompetitive. As a private company, I'm sure that Lyft will closely monitor the situation and will want to set their prices and "cleaning surcharges" high enough to make a profit and be able to deliver a service that customers want. If they can't then they'll change what they offer.
Re:Hammerheads in Vermont
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There is no good solution to this, and I think it's good that you've thought about this (sincerely), we need more people to be looking at these problems and thinking about them without ideological blinkers. My view is that I don't think it would work quite as well as you think. The arguments I've heard against this is that for government "employer of last resort" type work you:
1) get rid of any current low paid work covered by government - for example street cleaning and rubbish collection, since you don't need to employ people to do that work any more since you're getting the unemployed to do it - unfortunately probably the people who were until recently doing the street cleaning and rubbish collection, but now are unemployed. Worse they are taking home less money than they were before, are more dependent on welfare programmes and additionally are stigmatised for being unemployed.
2) (most of) the work they would do is useless - otherwise it would have been being done before. The people doing these "make work" are likely unskilled, so you can't get them to do anything requiring skills, and they probably don't want to do it (they are essentially being coerced to do the job) and will do the minimum they can get away with - for example look at community service sentences for offenders who have to pick up litter to "pay back to their community", they do an extremely poor job of it and need constant attention from an supervisor (who could do all the work on their own more quickly and more effectively).
It's not as simple as just being unproductive though, not only do you need someone to supervise that the unemployed person is actually doing something to "earn" their $10/hour, you need to keep records. So it results in a net loss of productivity - you are taking a productive person and now putting them on an unproductive task and you are employing bureaucrats to administer the system. If the cost of the bureaucracy is more than the worth of the work then it's a net loss - you might as well just pay people to sit at home and it would cost less no matter how galling it feels to pay someone for doing nothing.
3) Finally, there is the issue that if companies can get away will paying less per hour then they will do. It will mean that more people end up needing welfare support and overall it just ends up costing the government more in welfare and companies giving more profit to their shareholders - who if it was all fair and equitable would end up being the ones who pay the additional taxes so that the government has the additional money to pay for the additional welfare. We all know that that is not how the tax burden would be distributed though, it will be the middle classes who suffer under that additional burden. Ultimately, the cost of the bureaucracy of the welfare programmes can be more than the that of administering the minimum wage and the loss of potential increase in productivity through having those additional jobs from work that is currently unproductive at the minimum wage level and so ends up as a net loss to the nations wealth.
It's a fine balancing act and as I said originally there is no good solution that can solve all the issues. We just have to try and find the best balanced solution - some level of minimum wage and some safety net programmes - without allowing ideology cloud our judgement (on either side).
I would have thought that a system of address verification between merchant and credit card issuer is they way to go. Merchant will only ship to addresses approved by the card holder via their card issuer. Then merchants won't ship to a random re-shipper address unless it's approved by the card holder. However we already have AVS which is a great start and I'm surprised that any merchants are willing will to take the hit of not doing it. All e-commerce systems I've worked on used AVS to verify shipping location, at least for the first few purchases for an account.
What GP meant was overall it's revenue neutral, but for those who emit large amounts of CO2, it represents a big tax increase. For those who emit no CO2 they get a large tax decrease. Overall the same amount of tax is collected as today. This provides a massive incentive to for big emitters to reduce their emissions. Over time, as the emissions reduce, the tax system will need to adjust to ensure that the total amount collected is the same, so when everyone is a low emitter their tax share will slowly get higher.
Or you know you could order the car with the child seats already fitted? Then you don't need to own child seats either. When I go on holiday I don't take my towels, I'm happy for the hotel to supply them, similarly sheets. Why wouldn't I be happy with a car service company providing a car with child seats and "kid kit" containing blankets and other supplies. You'll pay a premium over the "standard" commuter vehicle, but that might still be ultimately cheaper than owning your own car. Ultimately it will be a decision you can make yourself. No-one is saying that no-one will be able to own a car just that it looks like the service model might work well. If it doesn't for you then fine, maybe it won't actually work well for anyone and it won't take off.
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But require significantly more planning and skill to do, which is why the number of bombs used for mass killings in the US is vastly out numbered by the number of mass killings using guns.
You can change the law you know? You just need enough people to agree. If enough people agreed to write a new amendment that outlawed Islam then you could do it; similarly if enough people agreed to ban guns you could do that too. The constitution isn't fixed and perfect forever document, it can and should adapt as the world and attitudes change.
Australia did it legally. The US could do it legally as well, it just requires a constitutional amendment. Sure it's not easy or straight forward, but if enough people said "enough is enough, we don't want to live like this and we value protecting people from gun violence more than we value the right to bear arms" then the amendment could pass and the government could remove the guns. Just because something isn't constitutional now doesn't mean it won't be constitutional in the future; or are you saying that the current version of the US Constitution is the final version and most perfect it could ever be no matter how circumstances change in the future?
That might be because stamp collectors do not have special privileges and tax breaks in society; they don't bitch about it when someone else asks that they be treated equally; they don't go around calling non-stamp collectors evil and immoral. If stamp collectors did start acting that way, then maybe the non-stamp collectors would start to talk about the evils of stamp collecting.
Atheism is a lack of belief in a gods, it is saying that nothing has convinced me so far to believe that gods exist. It is not a (on its own) statement that the atheist is certain that there is no god. There are people who take that position, they are gnostic atheists. i.e. they take that position that you can know for certain whether gods exists or not. Most atheists are however agnostic atheists, they take the position that you cannot know for certain, but that evidence isn't strong enough to convince them to believe the claims.
Not believing there is a god is logically the same as believing there is not a god.
Except functionally, not believing is a position that does not require a burden of proof whereas believing is one that does. You have to be able to justify your beliefs to yourself, otherwise they are no beliefs. I lack belief in a gods because there hasn't been sufficient evidence for me to establish a belief. I don't actively disbelieve in gods because I think it is an unanswerable question to rule out all possible god concepts. I do currently actively disbelieve the Christian god, because there is sufficient evidence for me that the claims made in the bible do not stand up to scrutiny.
Are you an atheist and stating that this is your position, or are you putting up a straw man?
As an atheist, my position is that no claim about the existence of a god has met a burden of proof strong enough for me to believe it. I lack any believe in a god. It is not an active belief that there are no gods or cannot be a god. I am what is usually called an agnostic atheist. Agnostic because I do not think that we can know with absolute certainty whether a god exists, and atheist because I have not been convinced by any argument that gods exist.
What it should have to say is nothing. Since the vast majority of software is going to be provided with these terms - i.e. "as is and without warranty"; then the law should be changed to say that unless otherwise specified all software is provided as is and without warranty etc. That should be the default. (or whatever we as society decide is a reasonable default for the majority of cases). Then only software that requires something else, such as that used to run critical systems will need more than the default terms and conditions or license - and the purchasers of that software will ask for such license terms.
We need to get to the point where the default covers the vast majority of cases. It's no longer the 70s where software was expensive and employing lawyers to draft licenses was a small proportion of the cost.
Actually what's needed is a standard set of terms and conditions that apply by default to all applications that everyone agrees is reasonable (consumer and producer) and then only where a developer wants to impose something different should they have to say where they vary from it. This is what happens in other scenarios where the public interact with companies.
You don't have to read a massive 'terms and conditions' contract when you check into a hotel since there are consumer protection laws about how hotels can treat their customers and laws to protect the hotel from abuses by customers such as theft of towels or trashing of rooms. Similarly when you buy a burger there are generally accepted conditions about the food being fit for human consumption and health departments who enforce it.
Otherwise we'd have to spend forever reading through terms and conditions every time we interacted with companies. As a society we decided that a level of standard regulation made life better for everyone. This is what we need for apps, for websites and for online services.
So complain about those practices and lobby hard to get those practices banned. GMO crops in general are neutral as far as that is concerned. Fight against the actual things you find objectionable, not against the general science.
I don't think anyone is saying that you won't be able to own a car. I'm sure that many people will. However you won't have to own a car. SDCs will open up the personal transportation market.
Yes, insurance companies won't need to get the data from Google, they will get it from the customer or directly themselves by aggregating claims and costs for SDCs vs HDCs.
Sure some people (probably most) won't want to share a ride, but for some the reduced cost would be mean that they are fine with. People share buses or trains now, this will be more like that.
I assume that you stop at least once during that journey. If the SDC didn't have enough range to get you there in one charge, you'd likely either want to stop for coffee or meal which would give it enough time to recharge, or if you truly are in a hurry (why didn't you get the express train instead?) then you probably swap at a service stop for fully charged SDC - after all you won't need to own the SDC it'll just be a service you pay for, giving you a vehicle that meets your requirements for the journey you are taking. You won't want the same vehicle for the daily commute as you would for a long cross country drive.
Why wouldn't they recharge themselves? It's pretty easy to design a charging station that a robotic car can attach itself to. You're still thinking in terms of the manual plug and cable that is designed for us humans to use easily. Robots won't need that.
Or make them single user smaller vehicles and create more lanes? How many people on their commute have one person in a large vehicle because as a family they need the capacity for the whole family a few times a week, but in the majority of cases it's only got one person in it? With SDCs you won't own it, you will request a vehicle that is suitable for the journey so for commutes it will be a small single user vehicle, or the weekend or family trips it will be a larger vehicle. You won't have to compromise on the form factor of the one vehicle you buy, you will pay for the service that they want when you want it.
Another advantage will be that SDC manufacturers will likely become SDC service providers and that then gives them an incentive to make the vehicle efficient and reliable. They will pay for any downtime or inefficiency rather than you since you're just paying for the service of having the vehicle available when you want it. So there will be much less "hey look how good our car looks and how much sex you could be having if only you owned one of our vehicles" and then finding that it breaks down just as soon as the warranty is over or ends up costing you a fortune in fuel/oil/whatever. Instead they will be packing in sensors and preemptively fixing problems before they get serious and expensive; they will be designing the vehicles to last longer and be serviceable easily and they'll want to get the best mileage for the fuel they supply.
Yes, you're absolutely right (oh wait, you were being sarcastic?).
Owning a car is a real pain that I would prefer not to do. It costs a lot of buy and then a lot to insure and then a lot to maintain and repair. I'm willing to pay for that at the moment for the convenience it adds to my lifestyle. A shared resource spreads all those costs and will probably be even more convenient. I won't need to worry about how to get my car home in the evening if I want to have a drink after work since I won't have taken it to work in the morning - that's freedom right there. I wouldn't be tied to my car. I don't need to worry about finding parking in the city. That frees up a lot of time, searching for a spot and walking from and back to the car park. That's freedom.
Also I don't need to worry about where to park it at night, I could convert my driveway to be a place that I can enjoy the use of. All those city streets packed with on road parking would be freed up - imagine how pleasant streets could be if they were jam packed with parked cars, more dedicated cycle lanes, more room for kids to play and more room for leafy trees.
I see no problem with expressing regret. We should all regret the horrible things that occur in a war. And we shouldn't be afraid of apologizing where apologies are appropriate. However, I think it's right that we don't apologize for things that we feel we either had full justification for doing or had no alternative but to do. In this case Obama is not going to apologize, so I don't see what the issue is. We've been at peace and allied with Japan for a long time now. Let's feel free to recognize that the past is the past, it was horrible, and that we are all much better off now working together for continued peace.
Sure there will be some cases of abuse of the system. There will always be inconsiderate idiots out there that make life unpleasant for the rest of us, but thankfully they are mostly quite rare. The question is will these be enough to make the system as a whole uncompetitive. As a private company, I'm sure that Lyft will closely monitor the situation and will want to set their prices and "cleaning surcharges" high enough to make a profit and be able to deliver a service that customers want. If they can't then they'll change what they offer.
There is no good solution to this, and I think it's good that you've thought about this (sincerely), we need more people to be looking at these problems and thinking about them without ideological blinkers. My view is that I don't think it would work quite as well as you think. The arguments I've heard against this is that for government "employer of last resort" type work you:
1) get rid of any current low paid work covered by government - for example street cleaning and rubbish collection, since you don't need to employ people to do that work any more since you're getting the unemployed to do it - unfortunately probably the people who were until recently doing the street cleaning and rubbish collection, but now are unemployed. Worse they are taking home less money than they were before, are more dependent on welfare programmes and additionally are stigmatised for being unemployed.
2) (most of) the work they would do is useless - otherwise it would have been being done before. The people doing these "make work" are likely unskilled, so you can't get them to do anything requiring skills, and they probably don't want to do it (they are essentially being coerced to do the job) and will do the minimum they can get away with - for example look at community service sentences for offenders who have to pick up litter to "pay back to their community", they do an extremely poor job of it and need constant attention from an supervisor (who could do all the work on their own more quickly and more effectively).
It's not as simple as just being unproductive though, not only do you need someone to supervise that the unemployed person is actually doing something to "earn" their $10/hour, you need to keep records. So it results in a net loss of productivity - you are taking a productive person and now putting them on an unproductive task and you are employing bureaucrats to administer the system. If the cost of the bureaucracy is more than the worth of the work then it's a net loss - you might as well just pay people to sit at home and it would cost less no matter how galling it feels to pay someone for doing nothing.
3) Finally, there is the issue that if companies can get away will paying less per hour then they will do. It will mean that more people end up needing welfare support and overall it just ends up costing the government more in welfare and companies giving more profit to their shareholders - who if it was all fair and equitable would end up being the ones who pay the additional taxes so that the government has the additional money to pay for the additional welfare. We all know that that is not how the tax burden would be distributed though, it will be the middle classes who suffer under that additional burden. Ultimately, the cost of the bureaucracy of the welfare programmes can be more than the that of administering the minimum wage and the loss of potential increase in productivity through having those additional jobs from work that is currently unproductive at the minimum wage level and so ends up as a net loss to the nations wealth.
It's a fine balancing act and as I said originally there is no good solution that can solve all the issues. We just have to try and find the best balanced solution - some level of minimum wage and some safety net programmes - without allowing ideology cloud our judgement (on either side).
Mr. Powers said ....
Now that is a wonderful example of nominative determinism.
I would have thought that a system of address verification between merchant and credit card issuer is they way to go. Merchant will only ship to addresses approved by the card holder via their card issuer. Then merchants won't ship to a random re-shipper address unless it's approved by the card holder. However we already have AVS which is a great start and I'm surprised that any merchants are willing will to take the hit of not doing it. All e-commerce systems I've worked on used AVS to verify shipping location, at least for the first few purchases for an account.
What GP meant was overall it's revenue neutral, but for those who emit large amounts of CO2, it represents a big tax increase. For those who emit no CO2 they get a large tax decrease. Overall the same amount of tax is collected as today. This provides a massive incentive to for big emitters to reduce their emissions. Over time, as the emissions reduce, the tax system will need to adjust to ensure that the total amount collected is the same, so when everyone is a low emitter their tax share will slowly get higher.
Or you know you could order the car with the child seats already fitted? Then you don't need to own child seats either. When I go on holiday I don't take my towels, I'm happy for the hotel to supply them, similarly sheets. Why wouldn't I be happy with a car service company providing a car with child seats and "kid kit" containing blankets and other supplies. You'll pay a premium over the "standard" commuter vehicle, but that might still be ultimately cheaper than owning your own car. Ultimately it will be a decision you can make yourself. No-one is saying that no-one will be able to own a car just that it looks like the service model might work well. If it doesn't for you then fine, maybe it won't actually work well for anyone and it won't take off.