having a generation of students that don't know how to use pointers seems, rather scary to me.
Just a quick googling reveals that Python has "list index out of range" errors. So. The difference is one of consequence, not of type. In C you get undefined behavior.
Yes, it would be good for the new generation to have some "to the metal" experience; but it's not that great a loss. If they have to go there, you can simply tell them that going out of range is much more of a PiTA. The new languages protect them somewhat; but the concepts are still there.
Not a bad point. Asymmetric warfare does indeed cause problems. Goooood morning Vietnam... but the geurillas in Vietnam were backed by somebody, and ISIS is getting hi-tech from... well... I've heard some interesting theories. Round up the usual suspects.
It's like a fulcrum I suppose. Asymmetric warfare has always involved leverage. The weight is bigger on both sides now.
Very well, In a system with no property tax, there would be no disincentive to [ synonyms: stockpile, store, store up, stock up on, put aside, put by, lay by, lay up, set aside, stow away, buy up; cache, amass, collect, save, gather, garner, accumulate, squirrel away, put aside for a rainy day; informalstash away, salt away
"they hoarded rations" ] please choose the preferred term which you regard as "unloaded". (synonyms courtesy of Google's dictionary).
If you get off on seeing people's wealth seized by force and redistributed,
That's all in your head of course.
Now, if you want to get to basics and discuss the pros and cons of allowing private ownership of what is called "real property" (basically land) in the first place, that is fair game.
OK, at the risk of this whole thing spiraling badly down the drain like my last back-n-forth with a libertarian, I'll bite.
Pro: Once you have the land, you don't have to worry about the government taking it away.
Con: Since you aren't paying property taxes, I see two possibilities: 1. The government gets the money some other way. 1a. Good for you, if you don't get caught up in the "some other way". 1b. Bad or neutral, depending on how expensive and/or inconvenient the "some other way" tax is. 2. The government doesn't provide the services customarily supported by property tax (e.g, schools, police).
Situation 2 is regarded as ideal by some people, and that's where I have a bone to pick. Why? Because if you don't pay the government tax, you pay what might be called the "natural tax" on the property. What's that? It's the cost of defending the land YOURSELF. IMHO, it tends to be much more expensive for most of us. It requires specialized skills most of us don't have--gunslinging, etc. Of course there are people willing to step in and do that for you. One of the most recognized organizations on the planet arose under just such a situation, where people were having a hard time defending their olive groves. This was in Sicily. I think you know where this is headed.
So, long story short, to paraphrase something often said about Unix: "Those who fail to understand government are doomed to reinvent it--poorly".
In a system with no property tax, there would be no disincentive to hoard property. This could have serious consequences for the economy. Imagine section after section of productive timber land being held simply on spec, while lumber prices soar..
If you're going to own real property, there's a general consensus that you should put it to productive use, or forfeit. Thus, that vacant lot in the city starts costing you... so you sell it off instead of holding it forever, and then somebody accumulates the lots, options an adjacent lot, gets plans approved for an apartment and... productive use.
Also, property tax is "progressive" in the sense that it's paid by people that have more wealth. Compare and contrast with sales tax which is "regressive"--taking a heavy toll on the poor.
Now of course all the "shrink government to the size of a thimble" people are going to come out of the woodwork. Sorry. It just isn't practical in the 21st century. We are not living in the days when bands of "Indians" with bow and arrow or colonists with muskets gave the British a run for their money..
The market adjusts the values of these properties accordingly. It's part of the reason real estate is so expensive in CA (there are other reasons, but prop 13 contributes). The problem is that new buyers have to pay those inflated prices, usually with a mortage. So what? Think about it. If you're not swinging a smaller mortage and paying higher property taxes, you're paying more interest on your debt rather than paying higher property taxes. Thus, money that used to go to the state goes to the banks
Once again, it's not the only reason the real estate is expensive. I don't mean to imply that throwing more money at state services is necessarily that answer either--for PEUs have captured the apparatus of government just as surely as the banks have.
It's just one of the many facets of the ways in which California is disfunctional; but the whole USA is disfunctional in one way or another these days. There is no real escape. There is no easy fix, even though many people would like you to think there is.
Yep, it's not the relative strength of the currency that causes problems. It's the stability of the currency that causes problems. Having 1 Yen == $0.0098 is not be a problem even though the Yen is weak relative to the dollar.
Having 1 Yen == $0.01 today, $0.001 tomorrow and then $0.005 the next day would be a problem. It's an obvious problem for people with Yen in their bank accounts because they lost a lot of purchasing power. It's also a problem for anybody trying to write a contract that involves payment, since you don't know what the payment will be worth when the contract is complete.
So. While people may be worried about the USD exhibiting that kind of instability, it hasn't. Bitcoin, OTOH...
Because, in America, we threw out the old, broken notion of a one-hour road test and just give licenses out if you can show that you can operate a motor vehicle.
This is part of a larger problem as exemplified by the Bullit County, KY exam questions for jr. high that were widely circulated a while ago. Most college students these days don't have the level of education required for those questions.
My mother told me how she got her license in Rhode Island in the 50s. I don't know how much driving time was required, but she had to parallel park on a hill with a stick. She'd always tell me about that, I guess because it was the hardest part of the test.
I used quite a bit of tech in my last gardening endeavor, but not in an "Internet of things" way. I used Craigslist to scrounge for everything except my tomato seedlings. I used bamboo that was growing by the side of the house to cage the plants. It was like a big scavenger hunt to see whether or not I could get "something for nothing". I even saved seeds for the next year; but I think they got lost in the move. I moved too late in the growing season and had too much else going on to garden this year; but I can't wait to get back into it. My new place has an almond tree, so at least I've got nuts. Ummm... let me rephrase that...
We have to agree to disagree at some point. We can't even agree on what it is we disagree on. I think this is also a fine example of how the Internet fails as a communication medium in some ways. If this were a conversation IRL, I think a lot of problems would be smoothed over by facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice, etc.
Of course I've had a *few* conversations IRL that were just as bad as some of these things that blow up on the Internet. A unionized teacher in a certain cafe comes to mind. Me: We won't really fix education until we bust the union. Him: Explosion, including all kinds of odd assumpitons about me such as, "you were raised in Marin County and know nothing about the inner city" when in reality I was raised 3000 miles away and have at least a passing familiarity with "the hood" of both a large city and a small town.
Anyway, let's just agree to disagree. I'm not what you think I am, and you're probably not what I think you are. If you're ever in Northern California, you're welcome to have coffee or a beer... but no 420. I've got long hair and people offer me free pot sometimes because "surely the hippie would like to toke with us", but I have no interest. That kind of stereotyping IRL gets dismissed quickly and politely. On the Internet it's a PiTA.
Anyway, I'm done. You sir (m'am?), may have the last word if you so desire.
You have to label ideologies in order to discuss them. It's the labeling of *people* that IMHO, is unconstructive and just leads to primitive tribal conflict.
You keep trying to label me, and you haven't hit the mark yet. If anything, I consider myself a "whatworksian". If it works, I'm for it. Now "works" is a subjective term. You know, there used to be some consensus in this country on what it meant for things to "work". Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan would tear each other apart; but they were both cut from similar cloth and if you asked either one of them they'd say they'd certainly agree they wanted to make America work.
All of this labeling... it isn't really very constructive. I don't think we should be striving towards any particular ideology. If some ideological strain starts leading us down a path that is contrary to our objectives, then it's time to abandon the ideology, not the objective.
You asked what we should do as a society, and the answer is pretty simple: go back to classical liberalism, the philosophy of the enlightenment and reason that this nation was founded on.
This is tantamout to my call to "restore integrity". I read "classical liberalism" as being very much laissez-faire, which we never totally had either (see, the Whiskey Rebellion, pretty early in the Republic).
I think we'd actually agree that a sparse regulatory regime accompanied by men of honor would do a fine job. I just don't think we have enough men of honor these days for that to work.
I don't recall that we were discussing Rent-Seeking at all. Our discussion seemed to center more around Regulatory Capture. I introduced Corruption as a new branch in the discussion. So like I said, the whole thing revolves around an ever-expanding Semantic Debate which perhaps you might see can be tiring after a while. We started on the semantics of Progressivism and it just started spiraling more and more out of control from there...
Sigh... words in my mouth, improper inferences, strawmen... most of it just not worth dealing with, as I feel it would just lead to an ever-expanding thread. So. I'll cherry-pick one:
Politicians crusade against corruption all the time, it gets them votes. Many of them may even seriously believe that they are doing something. But that doesn't change the fact that they fail.
And now I offer as an example of someone who didn't fail at fighting corruption, Fiorello H. La Guardia, who you might only know as the name of an airport. I'm sure you'll find some reason to hate him for his "statism", or say that it's not possible today, or that you can't do that kind of thing within today's major parties. I respectfully disagree.
LOL, Godwin's law much? Like all too many discussions on the 'net, this may have devolved into a pointless semantic debate too. It's almost like you vehemently agree with me... except that you hate Democrats and/or the label "Progressive" so much that you just *have* to identify it with nazis... and that doesn't seem very constructive to me.
The one little point of light here (if I may borrow that phrase) is that you agree that some regulation is necessary. You claim we're beyond it. I would submit that it's not a question of quantity, but of type. The bad type of regulation is written by regulators who walk through the revolving doors corp, gov, corp. It also occurs org, gov, org where "org" can mean unions. merger of corporation and state (fascism) is bad, but so is merger of union and state (communism) (see, California public employee unions where it's particularly bad).
I think our big difference is that you are keyed into the org, gov, org revolving door which is a big Dem problem, as opposed to the corp, gov, corp revolving door which is more GOP (although I think both parties are in on that one).
I offer for your consideration the idea that reducing regulation isn't the answer--restoring INTEGRITY is the answer. That's not an easy path; but IMHO it's the right one. I understand that India has been grappling with this lately. I don't know exactly what the status is; but I follow an Indian expatriate on Twitter and every once in a while he'll mention a guy over there who is crusading against corruption.
It may seem dark here; but if you read your US history you'll see that some of the past corruption was so egregious, it makes Watergate look like a little white lie.
That's a minority now, right? Where does this all end up when we have an approximate plurality in this country of White/Hispanic/Black/Mixed or Other?
If Google were really so hot, they'd offer free coding to POOR PEOPLE, since by definition they can't afford to pay for it. I don't see much justice in some young Black dude whose father makes $100k getting in ahead of a White girl who comes from a foster care background and is currently flipping burgers and couch surfing.
OK fine, but why mislabel it? In the Progressive movement, the state acts as a counter-balance to firms. It works until firms, usually via regulatory capture and/or loophole exploitation find a way around it. In fascism, they bypass the progressive stage and go straight to regulatory capture via tight binding with the state.
If a re-invigoration of some kind of progressive movement isn't your antidote to fascism, what is? Letting the firms do anything because somebody told you they would ride in on rainbow-colored unicorns if you did that?
It just never ceases to amaze me how some people (not saying you're in this class) actually prescribe laissez-faire as the antidote to fascism. It's literally like telling us to give them a mile in order to solve that pesky inch-taking problem.
If they are prevented from pooling their resources and government forces them to pay for the protection through an unaccountable private corporation, that is progressivism.
No. The merger of corporation and state is fascism.
I was all set to sell sturdy little folding multi-cup holders that folded up so you could fit them in a purse, pocket, or glove compartment. But wait, there's more. You also get the multi-cup holder that fits in your car's regular old cup-holder. That's a great deal, right? Wrong! Call in the next 10 minutes and get DOUBLE. That's right, you get two of each--the folding multi-cup holder and two folding multi-cup car holders. Operators are standing by.
Slashdot Mirror
Normal humans are excluded from writing good software. Abnormal humans are excluded by HR. Hence the complaint, "We have a shortage of programmers".
having a generation of students that don't know how to use pointers seems, rather scary to me.
Just a quick googling reveals that Python has "list index out of range" errors. So. The difference is one of consequence, not of type. In C you get undefined behavior.
Yes, it would be good for the new generation to have some "to the metal" experience; but it's not that great a loss. If they have to go there, you can simply tell them that going out of range is much more of a PiTA. The new languages protect them somewhat; but the concepts are still there.
I hear the pubic school system is also run by Foxconn beings. There takeover began when spell checkers was installed.
Well said. Mere ownership of property isn't hoarding. Hoarding is cornering the market.
Not a bad point. Asymmetric warfare does indeed cause problems. Goooood morning Vietnam... but the geurillas in Vietnam were backed by somebody, and ISIS is getting hi-tech from... well... I've heard some interesting theories. Round up the usual suspects.
It's like a fulcrum I suppose. Asymmetric warfare has always involved leverage. The weight is bigger on both sides now.
Very well, In a system with no property tax, there would be no disincentive to [ synonyms: stockpile, store, store up, stock up on, put aside, put by, lay by, lay up, set aside, stow away, buy up; cache, amass, collect, save, gather, garner, accumulate, squirrel away, put aside for a rainy day; informalstash away, salt away "they hoarded rations" ] please choose the preferred term which you regard as "unloaded". (synonyms courtesy of Google's dictionary).
If you get off on seeing people's wealth seized by force and redistributed,
That's all in your head of course.
Now, if you want to get to basics and discuss the pros and cons of allowing private ownership of what is called "real property" (basically land) in the first place, that is fair game.
OK, at the risk of this whole thing spiraling badly down the drain like my last back-n-forth with a libertarian, I'll bite.
Pro: Once you have the land, you don't have to worry about the government taking it away.
Con: Since you aren't paying property taxes, I see two possibilities: 1. The government gets the money some other way. 1a. Good for you, if you don't get caught up in the "some other way". 1b. Bad or neutral, depending on how expensive and/or inconvenient the "some other way" tax is. 2. The government doesn't provide the services customarily supported by property tax (e.g, schools, police).
Situation 2 is regarded as ideal by some people, and that's where I have a bone to pick. Why? Because if you don't pay the government tax, you pay what might be called the "natural tax" on the property. What's that? It's the cost of defending the land YOURSELF. IMHO, it tends to be much more expensive for most of us. It requires specialized skills most of us don't have--gunslinging, etc. Of course there are people willing to step in and do that for you. One of the most recognized organizations on the planet arose under just such a situation, where people were having a hard time defending their olive groves. This was in Sicily. I think you know where this is headed.
So, long story short, to paraphrase something often said about Unix: "Those who fail to understand government are doomed to reinvent it--poorly".
That's land value tax.
In a system with no property tax, there would be no disincentive to hoard property. This could have serious consequences for the economy. Imagine section after section of productive timber land being held simply on spec, while lumber prices soar..
If you're going to own real property, there's a general consensus that you should put it to productive use, or forfeit. Thus, that vacant lot in the city starts costing you... so you sell it off instead of holding it forever, and then somebody accumulates the lots, options an adjacent lot, gets plans approved for an apartment and... productive use.
Also, property tax is "progressive" in the sense that it's paid by people that have more wealth. Compare and contrast with sales tax which is "regressive"--taking a heavy toll on the poor.
Now of course all the "shrink government to the size of a thimble" people are going to come out of the woodwork. Sorry. It just isn't practical in the 21st century. We are not living in the days when bands of "Indians" with bow and arrow or colonists with muskets gave the British a run for their money. .
The market adjusts the values of these properties accordingly. It's part of the reason real estate is so expensive in CA (there are other reasons, but prop 13 contributes). The problem is that new buyers have to pay those inflated prices, usually with a mortage. So what? Think about it. If you're not swinging a smaller mortage and paying higher property taxes, you're paying more interest on your debt rather than paying higher property taxes. Thus, money that used to go to the state goes to the banks
Once again, it's not the only reason the real estate is expensive. I don't mean to imply that throwing more money at state services is necessarily that answer either--for PEUs have captured the apparatus of government just as surely as the banks have.
It's just one of the many facets of the ways in which California is disfunctional; but the whole USA is disfunctional in one way or another these days. There is no real escape. There is no easy fix, even though many people would like you to think there is.
Yep, it's not the relative strength of the currency that causes problems. It's the stability of the currency that causes problems. Having 1 Yen == $0.0098 is not be a problem even though the Yen is weak relative to the dollar.
Having 1 Yen == $0.01 today, $0.001 tomorrow and then $0.005 the next day would be a problem. It's an obvious problem for people with Yen in their bank accounts because they lost a lot of purchasing power. It's also a problem for anybody trying to write a contract that involves payment, since you don't know what the payment will be worth when the contract is complete.
So. While people may be worried about the USD exhibiting that kind of instability, it hasn't. Bitcoin, OTOH...
Because, in America, we threw out the old, broken notion of a one-hour road test and just give licenses out if you can show that you can operate a motor vehicle.
This is part of a larger problem as exemplified by the Bullit County, KY exam questions for jr. high that were widely circulated a while ago. Most college students these days don't have the level of education required for those questions.
My mother told me how she got her license in Rhode Island in the 50s. I don't know how much driving time was required, but she had to parallel park on a hill with a stick. She'd always tell me about that, I guess because it was the hardest part of the test.
Just use pneumatic or hydrolic actuators to raise a plat 45 degrees facing the cars at the stop line, goes down when the light turns green.
Finally, the impossible jumps seen during car chases in the movies will happen in real life.
I used quite a bit of tech in my last gardening endeavor, but not in an "Internet of things" way. I used Craigslist to scrounge for everything except my tomato seedlings. I used bamboo that was growing by the side of the house to cage the plants. It was like a big scavenger hunt to see whether or not I could get "something for nothing". I even saved seeds for the next year; but I think they got lost in the move. I moved too late in the growing season and had too much else going on to garden this year; but I can't wait to get back into it. My new place has an almond tree, so at least I've got nuts. Ummm... let me rephrase that...
We have to agree to disagree at some point. We can't even agree on what it is we disagree on. I think this is also a fine example of how the Internet fails as a communication medium in some ways. If this were a conversation IRL, I think a lot of problems would be smoothed over by facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice, etc.
Of course I've had a *few* conversations IRL that were just as bad as some of these things that blow up on the Internet. A unionized teacher in a certain cafe comes to mind. Me: We won't really fix education until we bust the union. Him: Explosion, including all kinds of odd assumpitons about me such as, "you were raised in Marin County and know nothing about the inner city" when in reality I was raised 3000 miles away and have at least a passing familiarity with "the hood" of both a large city and a small town.
Anyway, let's just agree to disagree. I'm not what you think I am, and you're probably not what I think you are. If you're ever in Northern California, you're welcome to have coffee or a beer... but no 420. I've got long hair and people offer me free pot sometimes because "surely the hippie would like to toke with us", but I have no interest. That kind of stereotyping IRL gets dismissed quickly and politely. On the Internet it's a PiTA.
Anyway, I'm done. You sir (m'am?), may have the last word if you so desire.
You have to label ideologies in order to discuss them. It's the labeling of *people* that IMHO, is unconstructive and just leads to primitive tribal conflict.
You keep trying to label me, and you haven't hit the mark yet. If anything, I consider myself a "whatworksian". If it works, I'm for it. Now "works" is a subjective term. You know, there used to be some consensus in this country on what it meant for things to "work". Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan would tear each other apart; but they were both cut from similar cloth and if you asked either one of them they'd say they'd certainly agree they wanted to make America work.
All of this labeling... it isn't really very constructive. I don't think we should be striving towards any particular ideology. If some ideological strain starts leading us down a path that is contrary to our objectives, then it's time to abandon the ideology, not the objective.
You asked what we should do as a society, and the answer is pretty simple: go back to classical liberalism, the philosophy of the enlightenment and reason that this nation was founded on.
This is tantamout to my call to "restore integrity". I read "classical liberalism" as being very much laissez-faire, which we never totally had either (see, the Whiskey Rebellion, pretty early in the Republic).
I think we'd actually agree that a sparse regulatory regime accompanied by men of honor would do a fine job. I just don't think we have enough men of honor these days for that to work.
I don't recall that we were discussing Rent-Seeking at all. Our discussion seemed to center more around Regulatory Capture. I introduced Corruption as a new branch in the discussion. So like I said, the whole thing revolves around an ever-expanding Semantic Debate which perhaps you might see can be tiring after a while. We started on the semantics of Progressivism and it just started spiraling more and more out of control from there...
Sigh... words in my mouth, improper inferences, strawmen... most of it just not worth dealing with, as I feel it would just lead to an ever-expanding thread. So. I'll cherry-pick one:
And now I offer as an example of someone who didn't fail at fighting corruption, Fiorello H. La Guardia, who you might only know as the name of an airport. I'm sure you'll find some reason to hate him for his "statism", or say that it's not possible today, or that you can't do that kind of thing within today's major parties. I respectfully disagree.
Good-night. I'm done.
LOL, Godwin's law much? Like all too many discussions on the 'net, this may have devolved into a pointless semantic debate too. It's almost like you vehemently agree with me... except that you hate Democrats and/or the label "Progressive" so much that you just *have* to identify it with nazis... and that doesn't seem very constructive to me.
The one little point of light here (if I may borrow that phrase) is that you agree that some regulation is necessary. You claim we're beyond it. I would submit that it's not a question of quantity, but of type. The bad type of regulation is written by regulators who walk through the revolving doors corp, gov, corp. It also occurs org, gov, org where "org" can mean unions. merger of corporation and state (fascism) is bad, but so is merger of union and state (communism) (see, California public employee unions where it's particularly bad).
I think our big difference is that you are keyed into the org, gov, org revolving door which is a big Dem problem, as opposed to the corp, gov, corp revolving door which is more GOP (although I think both parties are in on that one).
I offer for your consideration the idea that reducing regulation isn't the answer--restoring INTEGRITY is the answer. That's not an easy path; but IMHO it's the right one. I understand that India has been grappling with this lately. I don't know exactly what the status is; but I follow an Indian expatriate on Twitter and every once in a while he'll mention a guy over there who is crusading against corruption.
It may seem dark here; but if you read your US history you'll see that some of the past corruption was so egregious, it makes Watergate look like a little white lie.
That's a minority now, right? Where does this all end up when we have an approximate plurality in this country of White/Hispanic/Black/Mixed or Other?
If Google were really so hot, they'd offer free coding to POOR PEOPLE, since by definition they can't afford to pay for it. I don't see much justice in some young Black dude whose father makes $100k getting in ahead of a White girl who comes from a foster care background and is currently flipping burgers and couch surfing.
OK fine, but why mislabel it? In the Progressive movement, the state acts as a counter-balance to firms. It works until firms, usually via regulatory capture and/or loophole exploitation find a way around it. In fascism, they bypass the progressive stage and go straight to regulatory capture via tight binding with the state.
If a re-invigoration of some kind of progressive movement isn't your antidote to fascism, what is? Letting the firms do anything because somebody told you they would ride in on rainbow-colored unicorns if you did that?
It just never ceases to amaze me how some people (not saying you're in this class) actually prescribe laissez-faire as the antidote to fascism. It's literally like telling us to give them a mile in order to solve that pesky inch-taking problem.
If they are prevented from pooling their resources and government forces them to pay for the protection through an unaccountable private corporation, that is progressivism.
No. The merger of corporation and state is fascism.
Great. I'll probably have nightmares tonight about it malfunctioning in my pocket.
I was all set to sell sturdy little folding multi-cup holders that folded up so you could fit them in a purse, pocket, or glove compartment. But wait, there's more. You also get the multi-cup holder that fits in your car's regular old cup-holder. That's a great deal, right? Wrong! Call in the next 10 minutes and get DOUBLE. That's right, you get two of each--the folding multi-cup holder and two folding multi-cup car holders. Operators are standing by.