"Proscribe" is correct word here, as in forbidden by law.
Actually, I don't think that's what GGP was saying. Here are the sentences:
You test doctors for legal drugs that effect their performance as surgeons. There are many legally proscribed drugs that make it illegal to drive or do all sorts of other things. A doctor on a heavy dose of legally proscribed opiates should not be doing operations.
If we accept your interpretation, the first sentence "We test for LEGAL drugs" doesn't match the next two. Effectively, the passage becomes: "We test for LEGAL drugs used in performance of a job. There are many illegal drugs that affect normal duties. A doctor on a heavy 'dose' illegal drugs should not be doing operations."
That makes no sense. Why start a passage talking about testing for legal drugs and then have two sentences about how bad illegal ones are? And why refer to the "proscribed" (illegal) drug usage of opiates as a "dose," which would more typical as a term for a prescription?
The passage makes a lot more sense if you replace with "prescribe." But, whatever -- this is all a stupid argument anyway. This is the internet: grammar and typos abound. Why not focus on what GGP was actually saying, rather than being pedantic about homophone usage?
"Pants" For those unfamiliar, US pants == UK trousers and UK pants == US underwear. Subtle differences, but unending hilarity.
That's just the beginning.
UK knickers/pants = US panties
UK panties = US lingerie (sort of)
US knickers = UK ?? (golf trousers, i.e., short pants like boys wore in the 1920s)
US suspenders = UK braces
UK suspenders = US garters
US braces (i.e., for teeth) = UK brace
UK Garter (usually short for "Order of the Garter" or associated stuff) = US a high public honor
UK knock up = US wake someone up
US knock up = UK impregnate (often unintentionally)
Still stuck to my "never an individual stock. Always funds. Always index funds". [snip]
Well, that is why he is a billionaire and I am a code monkey.
One is never going to become a billionaire by investing in index funds (unless one already has many, many millions to invest). The whole point of index funds is to distribute risk by going with the direction of the overall market. So, if things get better, your finances get better along with them. If the market tanks, you lose, but not more than other investors on average.
Index funds are a way to "follow the herd," which is a relatively low-risk strategy for investments.
People who get rich tend to take greater risks, which can lead to a bigger payday -- or lead to bankruptcy. It really is like playing the lottery or going to a casino, though there's perhaps a slightly greater level of "skill" rather than blind luck.
And I do mean "slightly" -- I remember seeing a graph a few years back that showed the annual return for five years (I think) for the top couple hundred fund managers ranked in order. Then I saw the same graph from the next five years, and it was all over the map -- people who "won big" one year often lost a lot or came out in the "middle of the pack" the next year. That's pretty typical -- and these were the TOP financial fund managers in the business.
I'm NOT saying there isn't skill involved in investments. But there's a lot more luck than most people would care to admit when they are honest about it and look at actual statistics. Generally, to really get ahead, you need a combination of knowledge and luck (which involves things like "being at the right place at the right time," etc.).
Anyhow, the vast majority of investors (even professional finance guys) are deluded when they think they can significantly beat the market year after year. Hence, the reason why investing in index funds makes sense for most people. Doing otherwise is mostly an elaborate form of gambling... and like all gambling, it sometimes pays off. (I'm setting aside the scenarios of expert "card counting" where people invest their lives into following the game and "play the long game," along with scenarios where the game is "fixed." Neither of these scenarios -- in their Wall Street equivalent -- is likely to benefit the average armchair investor.)
And just like my dad remembers those few times he came home "with several hundred dollars" from the casino, but ignores the much greater number of times where he's lost a couple hundred, most investors convince themselves that they are doing better than average... even though it's a statistical tautology that most people can't "beat the market" all at the same time.**
[**Oh, and please don't bother to try to "educate" me on the difference between means and medians or how not all distributions are normal distributions. Obviously all of that is true -- I'm speaking here in generalities, and the vast majority of investors who shove their money into various stocks rather than index funds are just increasing volatility, not significantly beating the market long-term. But hey, it works out for some people.]
I seek out stores with self checkout. Who wants to stand in a line of people who realize after everything is totaled that they need to pull out their checkbook and start writing a check.
If I'm only buying a handful of items, I prefer self-checkout too. It's really only when I have a cartful of stuff that a cashier is necessary. Self-checkout is like having multiple "10 items or less" lanes open.
Alternatively, you could adopt systems that make checkout more efficient. Take Aldi. They are known for having super-efficient cashiers: they often put multiple scanning codes on labels so the items can scan faster, and they place items directly in a cart (without bagging -- you do this yourself). It's shocking how fast they can check you out if you haven't seen this before -- it's almost like a "waterfall" of items gliding past the scanner. There are plenty of times I have half a cartful of goods, and I barely have time to move my cart down and get out my wallet before the cashier is done with the check-out. (Aldi generally pays its employees reasonably well and thus tends to have long-term employees who get more efficient at this, rather than the typical supermarket with a bunch of clueless teenagers running things.)
Anyhow, because they are so efficient, they often only have one cashier on duty.
A few times I have been there, and you have a person who simply doesn't understand how to behave like a rational shopper at check-out. A little while back, I remember this woman with half a cart-load of items who didn't put anything on the conveyor belt. She waited until it was her turn, and then handed items one at a time directly to the cashier... often taking a moment to think between picking up each item. Then -- of course -- when it came time to pay the bill, out came the change purse and the pennies.
Aldi has a second employee around who will eventually come and open a second lane when it starts backing up, but all it takes is one ridiculous person, and the whole system backs up. (I think at least 15 people checked out during the time it took for this one person -- I was unlucky enough to have been right behind her and already had my stuff on the conveyor before I realized what this was going to be like.)
Now -- I'm not arguing that Aldi should necessarily have self-checkout, since their cashiers are so efficient most of the time. But good customer service says there should be a "bypass" in the event that you get a few of these people holding up the lines.
Self-checkout is often an easy way to do that. I don't have a problem with it as long as they also have enough cashiers on duty to deal with people who don't want to or can't do self-checkout easily.
There seems to be a correlation with boys doing better too. Of course correlation is not causation, but anecdotally teachers say that girls being more engaged in maths helps the whole class.
Reminds me of a few studies done some years ago on gender-segregated classrooms for math. Girls in "all girls" classrooms did better than girls in mixed classrooms. But boys in "all boys" classrooms did NOT do better (and in fact did slightly worse, if I remember correctly).
At the time, I believe the study explanation was that girls (particularly at adolescent ages) tend to be more reserved in the presence of boys, so they didn't tend to ask as many questions when they were struggling in mixed classrooms. But in "all boys" classrooms, there just tended to be more goofing off and general tomfoolery going on, hence the worse results.
I would imagine that "less progressive" societies often tend to segregate boys from girls more and/or have classrooms where boys dominate everything (due to gender norms about girls being more submissive) and effectively turn mixed classrooms into "all boys" classrooms.
Now -- I mention all this knowing that there have been plenty of studies since then, and some have challenged or complicated these results. But given general adolescent behavior, it doesn't surprise me if having mixed classrooms with girls more engaged translates to boys doing better too.
I thought we invented money to fix the problems with barter?
Actually, not really. This is a myth made up by economists (well, specifically Adam Smith, though it ultimately goes back to Aristotle). Anthropologists have disputed this with exhaustive surveys for at least a century. It's really only economics textbooks that keep telling this fairy tale.
Money emerged in most societies as tokens to deal with pre-existing systems of credit. There's no historical evidence that barter in the classic sense (e.g., "I'll give you ten chickens for those two goats!" "Nah, but if you throw in twelve chickens and that nice basket, I'll take it!") has been a predominant form of exchange within a human society. It relies on a myth that people in primitive cultures would stockpile goods they didn't really need, ready to trade when a buyer arrived... but that sort of thing doesn't tend to happen in primitive societies. It also tends to depend on this weird idea that two people would always have exactly what others wanted -- e.g., "I'll give you bread for meat," but what if you don't need bread? So then you need a third or fourth or fifth party in this transaction until everybody gets something they want.
By the time you get people able to stockpile goods, you usually have a pretty elaborate system of credit going. Money then emerges as a way of denominating that credit. (Societies not advanced enough to have stockpiled goods generally just depend on gift transactions with elaborate notions of levels of indebtedness or rely on leaders to divvy up goods and resolve disputes, rather than requiring bartering for goods.)
Anthropologists have usually observed barter mainly in unusual transactions taking place BETWEEN societies, e.g., with a neighboring tribe you may not have much contact with and therefore can't trust within your usually systems of indebtedness. Barter sometimes also emerges on a limited scale in more advanced societies (who are used to money) when currency becomes scarce, though generally an alternative currency emerges and/or credit and debt-recording systems actually take over pretty quickly for most transactions.
Whether money emerged as a way of standardizing private debt transactions or as a leader/government-imposed way of regulating debt instruments is probably dependent on the society... but there's really no evidence that a full-fledged "barter economy" ever existed.
(If you think I'm making all this up, there are plenty of articles and books out there -- mostly not written by economists, but by historians or anthropologists -- about this. A recent article in the Atlantic is perhaps one place to start. One reason this probably hasn't caught on among economists is that it challenges fundamental notions of capitalism, which rely on the idea that "free markets" will work correctly because we're all just "bartering" in the end, with currency as a medium of exchange... and like these mythical bartering transactions, monetary imbalances should ultimately level out to fair "markets" without intervention. If currency instead emerges as a debt standardization instrument, sometimes related to government intervention or regulation, that's a vastly different story to the beginning of economics.)
That being said, if services are free I am sure google has a sentence, somewhere in the fine print, that allows them scan and analyze.
The issue is that at UC Berkeley (and a number of other colleges), students were explicitly told that their email would NOT be scanned for commercial purposes.
So, regardless of what Google did, there was some miscommunication here. If Google told college officials that they were scanning email, but the college told students they were NOT, then the students should be suing Berkeley instead of Google -- and this lawsuit should be dismissed.
But since this has gotten this far, I'm assuming this is NOT the case and that Google at some point misrepresented the situation to Berkeley administrators, as well as the students. If they had solid documentation that Google actively misled the college and supported these assertions that email would not be scanned... the "fine print" may not matter as much, even if it was buried there somewhere.
The not-so-funny issue with this is that this is along the same lines as why a 2013 attempt to sue over the same issue failed. See the Washington Post's coverage of the current case from back in February of this year:
And a previous lawsuit, in 2013, alleged that Google was illegally scanning students' emails, mirroring the Berkeley students' claims.
But the earlier case -- which was filed in the same federal court -- was framed differently, as a class-action suit on behalf of virtually all users of Google's Apps for Education. It ended in 2014, when a federal judge declined to certify the class, ruling that -- because each school is responsible for its own privacy explanations and disclosures -- users at some universities might have consented to the scanning of their emails.
I haven't looked into the legal details of the previous case, but this seems again like an abuse of the court systems of late to refuse to certify class action suits for random reasons. If the WaPo description is accurate, what difference does it make in a lawsuit against Google what the universities told their students in privacy disclosures, etc.? The only facts should be what Google claimed, either to the public directly or to administration folks at these universities, about what their email should be used for. On the face of it, this seems a rather silly reason to disqualify a class action. (That is, unless they have proof that some students involved had actually signed a waiver from their university saying, "As a student here, you consent to having your email used by Google for commercial purposes." It seems really unlikely any university would ever make a student sign such a waiver, since it would probably be considered a significant FERPA violation.)
Anyhow, the present suit is restricted to one college, because Berkeley explicitly told students that their email wouldn't be scanned for advertising purposes. Again -- all of this seems irrelevant to a lawsuit against Google. If Google told university administrators that they WOULD scan email, and the university told students it WOULD NOT scan email, then the students should suing Berkeley instead of Google.
But if the situation was misrepresented both to the university AND to the students, and the students all were harmed in a similar fashion by the exact same mechanism, I can't see how it makes sense to force them all try separate cases here.
If you want to get out of jury duty, standard procedure is to admit being an engineer at voir dire. The result in this example is a jury that is not competent to try the case.
Actually, I'd say it's broader than that -- lawyers generally want jurors who aren't capable of independent, rational thought.
There's a common perception that lawyers are looking for stupid people for juries. That's not generally true. Lawyers don't want people who are so stupid that they don't understand what's going on and thus will make random decisions in the end. They want people who are intelligent enough to follow along, but NOT ones who are capable of critiquing complex arguments.
Why? Because in most trials at least one side realizes that they have what might be perceived as a weaker set of facts. Thus, they will depend on convincing a jury to follow an argument through steps A, B, C, and D -- while there might be a bunch of things that make steps B and C rather murky from a strict logical standpoint. Lawyers want people who can overlook those conclusions and go along the chain from A to D if it "feels right" and "makes sense" to them.
Engineers, scientists, other lawyers, philosophers, etc. generally have training about how NOT to fall into misleading traps of argument. So they are more likely to follow the facts, no matter where that leads them -- and that's distressing to lawyers, who sometimes call such people "rogue jurors," since they are less susceptible to "herd mentality" and insist on thinking for themselves.
Also, I've heard (from lawyers) that there's a perception among many lawyers that "experts" are bad people to have on juries. The reason seems somewhat irrational: they often believe that experts are "too biased" by their own understanding of a case to make an impartial judgment. That makes little sense to me in most cases, though I can see that an expert who ALSO has strong preconceived views might be a greater problem than a layman with preconceived views (if nothing else, for the way the expert might sway the rest of the jury due to expertise).
But in most cases, I think it's a combination of what I said above (experts in an area may have more critical thinking skills in that area to pick apart arguments) and that lawyers recognize it's harder to present an "air-tight" argument to an expert, particularly given that many lawyers are not subject matter experts on cases they are trying.
I expect that soon cable companies will just increase the price of internet service by the amount a basic tv subscription costs and say that basic tv service is "free" with an internet plan.
Don't want tv? Fine, but it won't lower your bill.
This was true where I was living from roughly 2000 to 2008 or so. In fact, it was actually $5-10/month CHEAPER to have cable internet with bundled "basic cable" than to have internet alone. I could never get anyone to explain to me how this made any sense, but that's what they did... I think they hoped in that area to get people "hooked" on cable TV, so they'd eventually upgrade to a better package, whereas the "cord cutters" (who were around even back then; I was one of them) likely would never buy a cable TV package otherwise.
Anyhow, those sorts of deals disappeared for a while, though now I get barraged with offers to cut my (internet-only) bill if I bundle in TV -- just only for a year or whatever.
This pretty well seems to be the cable business response, to the Internet business making cable well obsolete. They went around and used their rights of way to make sure they were the Internet providers so they could make sure to get you coming or going.
It's also, frankly, NOTHING NEW. I recall signing up for cable internet 15 years ago and it was $10/month cheaper to get a "bundle with basic cable" than to get internet alone. That was true in at least one local cable market for quite a few years. Gradually, as I recall, the "basic cable" with that bundle gradually dropped channels, going from maybe 50 or 60 channels to only about 15 channels, and eventually the extra fee was dropped for some reason so internet alone was no longer more expensive.
But "cord cutters" have been penalized by cable companies for well over a decade. With my current ISP, I've been berated with advertisements and phone calls multiple times per year to bundle in cable TV, while meanwhile they keep raising my monthly internet charge again and again. At this point, there are a slew of TV/internet packages I could sign onto and get cheaper than internet alone, though those prices might only be guaranteed for a year or a couple years. I just refuse to pay for cable TV on principle now, until they offer unbundled packages where I can get what I want (which I doubt they ever will). I watch too little TV to care, and I can't stand broadcast TV with commercials anymore.
So this is nothing new -- just another strategy to penalize cord cutters.
I've actually never had a problem getting a job. What matters is relevant degrees, relevant certifications, and, most of all, a reputation that you're damn good at what you're doing, and there is NEVER a shortage of offers.
That's all great if you're in a profession with high demand. It's also fine if you're relatively young and there are a lot of easy places "low on the ladder" to jump to if you're not satisfied.
If your profession happens to go through harder times, or too many people start getting degrees in your field, labor becomes cheaper and better jobs become harder to find. And once you get beyond a certain age in most professions, you're too old to just start "entry level" any more -- so you have to wait to find a job that's your level, because you're "overqualified" for other things... and depending on your profession and how common it is for people to switch jobs when they're 45 or 50 or whatever, that can be hard.
Of course if you are generally just goofing off on the job and your employer is better off without you, well, you have to endure the yelling.
I've seen jobs in some fields that have had more than 100 applicants, the majority of which were all perfectly qualified. Yes, this was in a profession where too many people are getting degrees, and there's a backlog of qualified underemployed people from the financial crash a few years back.
I agree with you that the TOP people in most fields will always be able to find a job. But if you're not talented enough (or lucky enough to land good jobs early on to put on your resume and demonstrate experience) to be in the top 5% or whatever, but you're still a hard worker in the top 1/3 of your field, it can get really hard when jobs are less plentiful to just quit and find something new.
Basically -- you want people to be available to deal with stuff at other hours? PAY them to do so. Nothing hard about this.
While this is a nice plan, it would be illegal in France. There's regulations about the number of hours one can work.
Umm, so you don't actually know anything about French labor law, do you?
There's this myth that no one in France can work more than 35-hour weeks, but that's simply not true. They just set that as the threshold where overtime pay has to kick in, and (unlike, say, the U.S.) the overtime laws generally apply to white-collar salaried workers as well as blue-collar wage workers.
So, it's definitely possible in France to pay people to work overtime beyond 35 hours/week. There are a few different thresholds about overtime hours and how much extra you need to be paid, as well as maximum limits on hours/day or how many weeks you can have overtime beyond a certain threshold, etc. And once you get to a certain amount of overtime, you have to compensate employees with extra "rest days."
Anyhow, the system is complex, but there's nothing preventing a company from paying overtime for employees to handle most reasonable issues outside normal business hours.
AND -- guess what? If you can't staff your business for enough hours with the employees you have under the law, that's a clue maybe it's time you have to pay to hire ANOTHER employee! (Weird how that works....)
Even if other countries adopt this policy, it won't work because of time zone differences. China is six hours ahead of France, the USA is 6 to 9 hours behind France. Conducting international business becomes impossible.
No, it just requires a more specific solution. Just a few that occur to me immediately:
(1) Unless the business is especially urgent, just have a policy that emails will be replied to within 24 hours. That's pretty reasonable for most circumstances, except for emergencies or if you're actually providing a 24-hour service of some sort.
(2) If you are providing a 24-hour service of some sort, you just hire different employees with different effective business hours to cover all hours of the day. Or if your company opens a new division dealing with a business 6 hours different, change the effective business hours of a few employees to handle those transactions.
(3) If you need someone to deal with emergencies, presumably you could pay them "overtime" or something like that for their time... which is what businesses really should be doing when they require people to do stuff outside of business hours.
Basically -- you want people to be available to deal with stuff at other hours? PAY them to do so. Nothing hard about this.
And the idiots trying to change the nature of minimum wage from a "minimum" to one that can support a family deserve this slap upside the head. If you are on minimum wage you should not be breeding. Wait until you have the financial stability to be able to devote time and resources to raising a child..
End of story.
You know, I used to feel as you do -- only idiots and people trying live behind their means end up in a screwed up situation trying to get by on minimum wage.
Then, the first summer during college, I worked on a high-speed assembly line of sorts. Made better than minimum wage, but not a lot better. Anyhow, most of the folks there were college students or young people who didn't yet have experience to get anything better, along with a few middle-aged women who were bored sitting at home, so they could come to work and do a non-stressful job while chatting with their friends.
And then there was Mike. I came to find out that Mike had a bachelor's degree, was reasonably intelligent, and was in his mid-40's. One time during a break he told me what he was doing there.
After college, he had a some white-collar office job (I forget). Anyhow, he did quite well, but then some crap happened at the company, and he was laid off. By that point he was married, had 2 kids, had a mortgage, etc. He tried desperately to find a job, but the economy wasn't doing great at that point, and after about 6 months, it was time to "suck it up" and just take what he could get.
For about 10 years he worked at the company I was doing the summer at, mostly as a handler who delivered stuff to the assembly line (which was paid more). He didn't make good money, but the place had good benefits which he needed for his family. And the company used to have a tendency to promote from inside, so he had been hopeful to get a promotion to a foreman or manager of that section... but the company stopped promoting from inside around that time, and started hiring people with business degrees instead.
Just about that time, Mike turned 40-ish, and he started having back problems. So eventually he couldn't do that job anymore, and he ended up working on the line... the most boring, stupid job in the world, with crappy pay. But he had benefits, and he had time in the company -- no longer a path toward management, but leaving there meant finding a better option. But he had been out of his field for so long that nobody would likely hire him (and he was too "old" to start as entry level again).
He was stuck. Not in a minimum wage job, but a pretty low paying job for the skills and intelligence he clearly had. But his family had been through some rough times, and this was a secure job for him (despite the boredom and low pay).
There are a lot more people out there like Mike. Stuff like this happens more than you think, once you get out in the "real world" and start finding out the stories of "poor people." There are all sorts of reasons that people on minimum wage end up having to try to support others or end up in difficult financial positions -- maybe someone has health problems and medical bills, maybe a parent had problems and needed to retire early, etc.
And what about people who go through a divorce, not of their own choice? The spouse abandons them and the kids, and what are they supposed to do? They thought they had a stable family and income, but not all things last. (And child support, etc. doesn't always solve those problems.)
There are lots of stories for why minimum wage people might have to support others. Some of these could be solved by having better social services to deal with some issues and a better "safety net" for these people, if you wanted to go that route. But if you actually talk to many of these people, you might be surprised how many are NOT just ignorant "breeders" who are popping out kids without considering the consequences.
Hate to break it to you but this is false. Since the 90s shareholders can sue the senior executives for failing to maximize the profit of the company.
Actually, that policy really dates back to at least 1919, though you're not quite interpreting it correctly.
That case, along with more recent court rulings, basically affirm that directors and executives have a duty to the corporation and to the shareholders, which does generally involve a focus on profit. But legal precedent usually gives rather broad discretion to directors as long as they don't try to strongly usurp the will of the shareholders overall. For example, most companies could make more profits if they took greater risks, but that would also generally increase risks of failure and subsequent bankruptcy. Some corporations may tolerate a higher or lower risk threshold, which will affect ability to make profits -- and that risk level is dictated in part by general company policy.
Generally, the threshold in modern court cases is that a director acted "in bad faith" or was "negligent" in failing to consider prudent business decisions to make a profit. A lawsuit which could not prove one of those would likely fail. Otherwise, executives are generally authorized to make reasonable business decisions in line with the company goals, as long as the shareholders (as a group) agree.
There are certain types of incorporation that will allow you to bypass this, such as incorporating as a B corp as opposed to an S corp, but this is not common.
Yes, and these were designed to offer further protection to corporations that want to avoid even the possibility of being sued for promoting charitable causes or social good in addition to making profits. But that doesn't mean that a normal (usually C or S) corporation has a duty to maximize profits AT ALL COSTS. In the normal course of business, courts are generally reluctant to second-guess directors' decisions (again, unless there is a clear case of gross negligence or bad faith).
B corporations, in contrast, are explicitly allowed by law to follow their mission and prioritize it above profit-making. That gives additional protection to directors, but the existence of B corporations does NOT imply that directors have no ability to make mission-related decisions in other types of companies.
And contrary to what someone else commented, these loans do not prey on poor people. This isn't an income problem, it's a cashflow problem. You can be poor (low income) and never need a payday loan (income > expenses, and have sufficient savings to tide you over to next paycheck in the event of an emergency). These loans prey on people living paycheck-to-paycheck.
THIS. A lot of people who take out these loans are poor people who have "gotten by" pretty well for a while, but they are hit by a sudden issue where they need a chunk of cash quickly. If they don't have an emergency reserve, payday loans may be their only option.
And I think it's important to note that we don't solve these persons' problems just by shutting down the payday loan industry through regulation (or by Google not running ads for them). This is the economic catch-22 of credit regulation -- everytime you introduce more regulation to "protect" some group of consumers, you generally end up driving the most desperate people to even more desperate ends.
What no one likes to talk about here, for example, is how payday loan numbers have soared since federal credit card regulation was increased significantly in 2010. Now, those regulations were good for most people, and they seemed like common sense: credit card companies could no longer increase your rates very quickly for minor reasons, for example. Things like that would prevent the "debt spiral" effect that occurs as it becomes more and more difficult to pay things off.
The problem is that those regulations generally hurt people who actually USED credit cards responsibly. At the time, I had a 5.99% FIXED credit card rate on one card, because I had a long credit history and excellent score. I was actually carrying a balance on that card (long story why... but it was originally someone else's debt whom I had helped out), but with those regulations, my rate suddenly went up to 13% overnight. Well, I had the means to close the account and just pay off my debt from some of my investment accounts, but most people with such balances would have just been stuck.
A member of my extended family had an even more dire situation happen -- she was young and had made some poor choices (as many do), so she had quite a bit of credit card debt. But she had things under control for about two years, was financially stable, and was gradually paying off her debt. But with the federal regulation, the card companies freaked because they would lose their ability to jack up her rate later if they wanted, so they just jacked it up before the regulations came into effect... and suddenly she was in an unsustainable position where she couldn't make ends meet. Luckily her parents had the resources to step in at that point and help her out, but many people don't have such a network.
I'm NOT saying these regulations were bad -- I'm saying that the credit industries do in many cases charge more from people who are riskier investments. And when you introduce additional regulation, you'll inevitably drive the industry to (1) outright deny to lend further to the riskiest people, and (2) try to make up the profits by maximizing their lending terms on the remainder of people, often punishing those who used these products responsibly before.
I think payday loans are a TERRIBLE idea, but I also recognize that for a large percentage of borrowers, they are about the only place they have to turn now, since they can't get credit cards with the new regulations (and they often don't have collateral to take out a regular loan from a bank). And for some percentage, they do pay these loans back -- perhaps they need to take out a few more, but over a couple of months, they stabilize their finances again. If you regulate the industry and say they can't charge more than 36% annual interest or whatever, most of those payday loan shops will just shut down.
But then where do these people end up? Now rather than looking at an annoying debt cycle
The more genes you have, the more likely you'll get indoctrinated like a good little slave.
Actually, if this were a generation ago: "The more jeans you have, the more likely you'll get indoctrinated like a good little slave."
Sorry, couldn't resist the pun.
[Explanation, for those not old enough: Denim used to be the marker of uneducated laborers and field workers. My grandfather was a union blue-collar guy who worked on machines every day, but he wore dark pants (not jeans) and a button-down shirt -- pressed and starched by my grandmother -- to work every day. As a person in the skilled trades, he dressed significantly nicer than most "white-collar" office workers today.]
Just to be clear to all the idiots who have already replied to me pointing out that intelligence IS known to have genetic factors AND intelligence !=educational attainment, I KNOW THIS ALREADY.
I was responding to a post that implied TFA was just a "news at 11" meaningless study adding to the fact that intelligence is genetic. That isn't what the study concludes at all -- it doesn't conclude much about intelligence directly at all, and what it does conclude is that educational attainment (which is known to correlate with intelligence) has only a SMALL genetic component, compared to environmental factors.
Yes, you're absolutely correct, in which case the post I was responding to was off-topic and completely irrelevant... since this whole discussion is about a study concerning educational attainment and genetics.
Oh, but wait, the study actually addresses this and notes the correlation between educational attainment and "cognitive performance" (which would probably come closest in their various considerations to "intelligence"). Not surprisingly, there is in fact a correlation between educational attainment and "cognitive performance," and the genetic information they found seems to account for a significant percentage of that in a few cohorts they had data to make a comparison.
Whatever. Either you conclude that the post I was replying to was off-topic, or you look at the study and realize they did consider correlations between educational attainment and other cognitive measurements. I assume this study was on educational attainment rather than intelligence because it's quite easy to get large-scale data on educational attainment (the study had total cohorts coming to n=~300,000 people), but it's harder to get access to a large genetic cohort like that who has also all taken the same IQ tests or whatever.
Lets cut through all this BS and finally admit that intelligence is genetic and heritable.
I can't tell whether you're trying to be funny or not. TFA suggests the opposite conclusion to what you suggest, even in its title: "Scientists found 74 genetic variants linked to education level -- but their impact is miniscule" with the subheading "Looking for genetic effects 'seems pointless' ".
As TFS says, the total effect of all the genetic variants they found explains less than 0.5% of the total variance for educational attainment. And from the actual Nature study conclusion:
Studies of genetic analyses of behavioural phenotypes have been prone to misinterpretation, such as characterizing identified associated variants as 'genes for education'. Such characterization is not correct for many reasons: educational attainment is primarily determined by environmental factors, the explanatory power of the individual SNPs is small, the candidate genes may not be causal, and the genetic associations with educational attainment are mediated by multiple intermediate phenotypes
Bottom line -- this study is pointing out a TINY factor that is genetic, and subject to all sorts of environmental influences.
Humans, by and large, are terrible at operating motor vehicles, and can't be removed from the road soon enoug.
Agreed -- as soon as AI cars are significantly better than human drivers, their widespread adoption should save many lives.
Unfortunately, I think it's pretty much a given that the Dunning Kruger effect is going to dominate here and the last people to have the steering wheels pried from their hands will be the worst drivers.
I don't think it's a competency issue as much as a control and perception issue. Sure, many people will doubt the competency of the AI systems early on. But compare people's fear or cars vs. fear of planes. It's not just that a plane is flying through the air: people fear their lack of control, and they fear flying because the perception of large plane crashes captures their imaginations on the news... even if many, many more people die each day driving than flying.
Widespread adoption will require people to relinquish their feelings of control to the AI car. And they'll only be able to do so if they feel safer than if they (or another human) were driving. If one or more high-profile incidents occur in early years of adoption where people die, that could delay widespread adoption by a long time... even if AI cars are already much safer.
I would imagine that its going to be the insurance/legal industry that is going to dictate acceptance in the USA (and also for most western countries).
Agreed. All it takes is one "disaster scenario" where a self-driving car gets stuck in an unexpected situation and ends up causing multiple deaths, and this could cripple the industry if liability hasn't been properly worked out ahead of time.
This sort of thing is going require a radical change in their thinking EG if a self driving car fails and causes a death, who is responsible: the owner? the car company? the engineer who signed off on the safety tests? The guy who performed the last software update? Whose insurance pays: the owner? the car company? the bureau that certified the car as safe?
Yes. And that doesn't even get into the more murky moral waters of potential real-life trolley problems. If an autonomous car is faced with a scenario of either killing its owner or potentially killing more people, what should it decide? If a car is ever programmed to kill its owner (even in a dire scenario), will that stop early adopters from buying it -- particularly if an incident happens early on? If a car is programmed to save its driver at all costs, will it ever contribute to a school bus full of kids going off a bridge or something, in which case, will these cars be banned by regulators?
Are these sorts of scenarios unlikely? Sure. But when driving in poor weather on roads that have altered since the last Google Maps survey or whatever, an AI car could very well end up in a situation with complex choices.
But rather than perhaps jailing one person for making a poor choice (as we would do now with human drivers), the results of a high-profile AI car failure could easily push back widespread adoption by decades... particularly in the U.S. where we're driven (pun sort of intended) by irrational fears, a litigious culture, and a media that will take any excuse to pump up our emotions. Even if the AI did as well or even better than a human would in similar circumstances, the perception might not matter. ("Evil Robot Car Runs Schoolbus Off Cliff! President Calls for Ban of AI 'Death Cars'! News at 11!")
This is exactly what everyone thinks it means today. So I'm failing to see the point of your rant.
Far, far, FAR from "everyone." Only in philosophy journals, and among certain older lawyers.
If you read the link in my "rant," you'll discover that everyone else in the world (including educated people, editors at the New York Times, etc.) thinks the phrase means something like "raise the question." Do I like the old usage? Sure, I'm a pedant. But I'm also a realist, and if you try using your meaning before a general audience or even an educated audience that isn't mostly logicians, your meaning will likely be lost.
Slashdot Mirror
"Proscribe" is correct word here, as in forbidden by law.
Actually, I don't think that's what GGP was saying. Here are the sentences:
You test doctors for legal drugs that effect their performance as surgeons. There are many legally proscribed drugs that make it illegal to drive or do all sorts of other things. A doctor on a heavy dose of legally proscribed opiates should not be doing operations.
If we accept your interpretation, the first sentence "We test for LEGAL drugs" doesn't match the next two. Effectively, the passage becomes: "We test for LEGAL drugs used in performance of a job. There are many illegal drugs that affect normal duties. A doctor on a heavy 'dose' illegal drugs should not be doing operations."
That makes no sense. Why start a passage talking about testing for legal drugs and then have two sentences about how bad illegal ones are? And why refer to the "proscribed" (illegal) drug usage of opiates as a "dose," which would more typical as a term for a prescription?
The passage makes a lot more sense if you replace with "prescribe." But, whatever -- this is all a stupid argument anyway. This is the internet: grammar and typos abound. Why not focus on what GGP was actually saying, rather than being pedantic about homophone usage?
"Pants" For those unfamiliar, US pants == UK trousers and UK pants == US underwear. Subtle differences, but unending hilarity.
That's just the beginning.
UK knickers/pants = US panties
UK panties = US lingerie (sort of)
US knickers = UK ?? (golf trousers, i.e., short pants like boys wore in the 1920s)
US suspenders = UK braces
UK suspenders = US garters
US braces (i.e., for teeth) = UK brace
UK Garter (usually short for "Order of the Garter" or associated stuff) = US a high public honor
UK knock up = US wake someone up
US knock up = UK impregnate (often unintentionally)
I could go on; there's a lot of this nonsense...
Still stuck to my "never an individual stock. Always funds. Always index funds". [snip]
Well, that is why he is a billionaire and I am a code monkey.
One is never going to become a billionaire by investing in index funds (unless one already has many, many millions to invest). The whole point of index funds is to distribute risk by going with the direction of the overall market. So, if things get better, your finances get better along with them. If the market tanks, you lose, but not more than other investors on average.
Index funds are a way to "follow the herd," which is a relatively low-risk strategy for investments.
People who get rich tend to take greater risks, which can lead to a bigger payday -- or lead to bankruptcy. It really is like playing the lottery or going to a casino, though there's perhaps a slightly greater level of "skill" rather than blind luck.
And I do mean "slightly" -- I remember seeing a graph a few years back that showed the annual return for five years (I think) for the top couple hundred fund managers ranked in order. Then I saw the same graph from the next five years, and it was all over the map -- people who "won big" one year often lost a lot or came out in the "middle of the pack" the next year. That's pretty typical -- and these were the TOP financial fund managers in the business.
I'm NOT saying there isn't skill involved in investments. But there's a lot more luck than most people would care to admit when they are honest about it and look at actual statistics. Generally, to really get ahead, you need a combination of knowledge and luck (which involves things like "being at the right place at the right time," etc.).
Anyhow, the vast majority of investors (even professional finance guys) are deluded when they think they can significantly beat the market year after year. Hence, the reason why investing in index funds makes sense for most people. Doing otherwise is mostly an elaborate form of gambling... and like all gambling, it sometimes pays off. (I'm setting aside the scenarios of expert "card counting" where people invest their lives into following the game and "play the long game," along with scenarios where the game is "fixed." Neither of these scenarios -- in their Wall Street equivalent -- is likely to benefit the average armchair investor.)
And just like my dad remembers those few times he came home "with several hundred dollars" from the casino, but ignores the much greater number of times where he's lost a couple hundred, most investors convince themselves that they are doing better than average... even though it's a statistical tautology that most people can't "beat the market" all at the same time.**
[**Oh, and please don't bother to try to "educate" me on the difference between means and medians or how not all distributions are normal distributions. Obviously all of that is true -- I'm speaking here in generalities, and the vast majority of investors who shove their money into various stocks rather than index funds are just increasing volatility, not significantly beating the market long-term. But hey, it works out for some people.]
I seek out stores with self checkout. Who wants to stand in a line of people who realize after everything is totaled that they need to pull out their checkbook and start writing a check.
If I'm only buying a handful of items, I prefer self-checkout too. It's really only when I have a cartful of stuff that a cashier is necessary. Self-checkout is like having multiple "10 items or less" lanes open.
Alternatively, you could adopt systems that make checkout more efficient. Take Aldi. They are known for having super-efficient cashiers: they often put multiple scanning codes on labels so the items can scan faster, and they place items directly in a cart (without bagging -- you do this yourself). It's shocking how fast they can check you out if you haven't seen this before -- it's almost like a "waterfall" of items gliding past the scanner. There are plenty of times I have half a cartful of goods, and I barely have time to move my cart down and get out my wallet before the cashier is done with the check-out. (Aldi generally pays its employees reasonably well and thus tends to have long-term employees who get more efficient at this, rather than the typical supermarket with a bunch of clueless teenagers running things.)
Anyhow, because they are so efficient, they often only have one cashier on duty.
A few times I have been there, and you have a person who simply doesn't understand how to behave like a rational shopper at check-out. A little while back, I remember this woman with half a cart-load of items who didn't put anything on the conveyor belt. She waited until it was her turn, and then handed items one at a time directly to the cashier... often taking a moment to think between picking up each item. Then -- of course -- when it came time to pay the bill, out came the change purse and the pennies.
Aldi has a second employee around who will eventually come and open a second lane when it starts backing up, but all it takes is one ridiculous person, and the whole system backs up. (I think at least 15 people checked out during the time it took for this one person -- I was unlucky enough to have been right behind her and already had my stuff on the conveyor before I realized what this was going to be like.)
Now -- I'm not arguing that Aldi should necessarily have self-checkout, since their cashiers are so efficient most of the time. But good customer service says there should be a "bypass" in the event that you get a few of these people holding up the lines.
Self-checkout is often an easy way to do that. I don't have a problem with it as long as they also have enough cashiers on duty to deal with people who don't want to or can't do self-checkout easily.
There seems to be a correlation with boys doing better too. Of course correlation is not causation, but anecdotally teachers say that girls being more engaged in maths helps the whole class.
Reminds me of a few studies done some years ago on gender-segregated classrooms for math. Girls in "all girls" classrooms did better than girls in mixed classrooms. But boys in "all boys" classrooms did NOT do better (and in fact did slightly worse, if I remember correctly).
At the time, I believe the study explanation was that girls (particularly at adolescent ages) tend to be more reserved in the presence of boys, so they didn't tend to ask as many questions when they were struggling in mixed classrooms. But in "all boys" classrooms, there just tended to be more goofing off and general tomfoolery going on, hence the worse results.
I would imagine that "less progressive" societies often tend to segregate boys from girls more and/or have classrooms where boys dominate everything (due to gender norms about girls being more submissive) and effectively turn mixed classrooms into "all boys" classrooms.
Now -- I mention all this knowing that there have been plenty of studies since then, and some have challenged or complicated these results. But given general adolescent behavior, it doesn't surprise me if having mixed classrooms with girls more engaged translates to boys doing better too.
I thought we invented money to fix the problems with barter?
Actually, not really. This is a myth made up by economists (well, specifically Adam Smith, though it ultimately goes back to Aristotle). Anthropologists have disputed this with exhaustive surveys for at least a century. It's really only economics textbooks that keep telling this fairy tale.
Money emerged in most societies as tokens to deal with pre-existing systems of credit. There's no historical evidence that barter in the classic sense (e.g., "I'll give you ten chickens for those two goats!" "Nah, but if you throw in twelve chickens and that nice basket, I'll take it!") has been a predominant form of exchange within a human society. It relies on a myth that people in primitive cultures would stockpile goods they didn't really need, ready to trade when a buyer arrived... but that sort of thing doesn't tend to happen in primitive societies. It also tends to depend on this weird idea that two people would always have exactly what others wanted -- e.g., "I'll give you bread for meat," but what if you don't need bread? So then you need a third or fourth or fifth party in this transaction until everybody gets something they want.
By the time you get people able to stockpile goods, you usually have a pretty elaborate system of credit going. Money then emerges as a way of denominating that credit. (Societies not advanced enough to have stockpiled goods generally just depend on gift transactions with elaborate notions of levels of indebtedness or rely on leaders to divvy up goods and resolve disputes, rather than requiring bartering for goods.)
Anthropologists have usually observed barter mainly in unusual transactions taking place BETWEEN societies, e.g., with a neighboring tribe you may not have much contact with and therefore can't trust within your usually systems of indebtedness. Barter sometimes also emerges on a limited scale in more advanced societies (who are used to money) when currency becomes scarce, though generally an alternative currency emerges and/or credit and debt-recording systems actually take over pretty quickly for most transactions.
Whether money emerged as a way of standardizing private debt transactions or as a leader/government-imposed way of regulating debt instruments is probably dependent on the society... but there's really no evidence that a full-fledged "barter economy" ever existed. (If you think I'm making all this up, there are plenty of articles and books out there -- mostly not written by economists, but by historians or anthropologists -- about this. A recent article in the Atlantic is perhaps one place to start. One reason this probably hasn't caught on among economists is that it challenges fundamental notions of capitalism, which rely on the idea that "free markets" will work correctly because we're all just "bartering" in the end, with currency as a medium of exchange... and like these mythical bartering transactions, monetary imbalances should ultimately level out to fair "markets" without intervention. If currency instead emerges as a debt standardization instrument, sometimes related to government intervention or regulation, that's a vastly different story to the beginning of economics.)
That being said, if services are free I am sure google has a sentence, somewhere in the fine print, that allows them scan and analyze.
The issue is that at UC Berkeley (and a number of other colleges), students were explicitly told that their email would NOT be scanned for commercial purposes.
So, regardless of what Google did, there was some miscommunication here. If Google told college officials that they were scanning email, but the college told students they were NOT, then the students should be suing Berkeley instead of Google -- and this lawsuit should be dismissed.
But since this has gotten this far, I'm assuming this is NOT the case and that Google at some point misrepresented the situation to Berkeley administrators, as well as the students. If they had solid documentation that Google actively misled the college and supported these assertions that email would not be scanned... the "fine print" may not matter as much, even if it was buried there somewhere.
And a previous lawsuit, in 2013, alleged that Google was illegally scanning students' emails, mirroring the Berkeley students' claims.
But the earlier case -- which was filed in the same federal court -- was framed differently, as a class-action suit on behalf of virtually all users of Google's Apps for Education. It ended in 2014, when a federal judge declined to certify the class, ruling that -- because each school is responsible for its own privacy explanations and disclosures -- users at some universities might have consented to the scanning of their emails.
I haven't looked into the legal details of the previous case, but this seems again like an abuse of the court systems of late to refuse to certify class action suits for random reasons. If the WaPo description is accurate, what difference does it make in a lawsuit against Google what the universities told their students in privacy disclosures, etc.? The only facts should be what Google claimed, either to the public directly or to administration folks at these universities, about what their email should be used for. On the face of it, this seems a rather silly reason to disqualify a class action. (That is, unless they have proof that some students involved had actually signed a waiver from their university saying, "As a student here, you consent to having your email used by Google for commercial purposes." It seems really unlikely any university would ever make a student sign such a waiver, since it would probably be considered a significant FERPA violation.)
Anyhow, the present suit is restricted to one college, because Berkeley explicitly told students that their email wouldn't be scanned for advertising purposes. Again -- all of this seems irrelevant to a lawsuit against Google. If Google told university administrators that they WOULD scan email, and the university told students it WOULD NOT scan email, then the students should suing Berkeley instead of Google.
But if the situation was misrepresented both to the university AND to the students, and the students all were harmed in a similar fashion by the exact same mechanism, I can't see how it makes sense to force them all try separate cases here.
If you want to get out of jury duty, standard procedure is to admit being an engineer at voir dire. The result in this example is a jury that is not competent to try the case.
Actually, I'd say it's broader than that -- lawyers generally want jurors who aren't capable of independent, rational thought.
There's a common perception that lawyers are looking for stupid people for juries. That's not generally true. Lawyers don't want people who are so stupid that they don't understand what's going on and thus will make random decisions in the end. They want people who are intelligent enough to follow along, but NOT ones who are capable of critiquing complex arguments.
Why? Because in most trials at least one side realizes that they have what might be perceived as a weaker set of facts. Thus, they will depend on convincing a jury to follow an argument through steps A, B, C, and D -- while there might be a bunch of things that make steps B and C rather murky from a strict logical standpoint. Lawyers want people who can overlook those conclusions and go along the chain from A to D if it "feels right" and "makes sense" to them.
Engineers, scientists, other lawyers, philosophers, etc. generally have training about how NOT to fall into misleading traps of argument. So they are more likely to follow the facts, no matter where that leads them -- and that's distressing to lawyers, who sometimes call such people "rogue jurors," since they are less susceptible to "herd mentality" and insist on thinking for themselves.
Also, I've heard (from lawyers) that there's a perception among many lawyers that "experts" are bad people to have on juries. The reason seems somewhat irrational: they often believe that experts are "too biased" by their own understanding of a case to make an impartial judgment. That makes little sense to me in most cases, though I can see that an expert who ALSO has strong preconceived views might be a greater problem than a layman with preconceived views (if nothing else, for the way the expert might sway the rest of the jury due to expertise).
But in most cases, I think it's a combination of what I said above (experts in an area may have more critical thinking skills in that area to pick apart arguments) and that lawyers recognize it's harder to present an "air-tight" argument to an expert, particularly given that many lawyers are not subject matter experts on cases they are trying.
I expect that soon cable companies will just increase the price of internet service by the amount a basic tv subscription costs and say that basic tv service is "free" with an internet plan. Don't want tv? Fine, but it won't lower your bill.
This was true where I was living from roughly 2000 to 2008 or so. In fact, it was actually $5-10/month CHEAPER to have cable internet with bundled "basic cable" than to have internet alone. I could never get anyone to explain to me how this made any sense, but that's what they did... I think they hoped in that area to get people "hooked" on cable TV, so they'd eventually upgrade to a better package, whereas the "cord cutters" (who were around even back then; I was one of them) likely would never buy a cable TV package otherwise.
Anyhow, those sorts of deals disappeared for a while, though now I get barraged with offers to cut my (internet-only) bill if I bundle in TV -- just only for a year or whatever.
This pretty well seems to be the cable business response, to the Internet business making cable well obsolete. They went around and used their rights of way to make sure they were the Internet providers so they could make sure to get you coming or going.
It's also, frankly, NOTHING NEW. I recall signing up for cable internet 15 years ago and it was $10/month cheaper to get a "bundle with basic cable" than to get internet alone. That was true in at least one local cable market for quite a few years. Gradually, as I recall, the "basic cable" with that bundle gradually dropped channels, going from maybe 50 or 60 channels to only about 15 channels, and eventually the extra fee was dropped for some reason so internet alone was no longer more expensive.
But "cord cutters" have been penalized by cable companies for well over a decade. With my current ISP, I've been berated with advertisements and phone calls multiple times per year to bundle in cable TV, while meanwhile they keep raising my monthly internet charge again and again. At this point, there are a slew of TV/internet packages I could sign onto and get cheaper than internet alone, though those prices might only be guaranteed for a year or a couple years. I just refuse to pay for cable TV on principle now, until they offer unbundled packages where I can get what I want (which I doubt they ever will). I watch too little TV to care, and I can't stand broadcast TV with commercials anymore.
So this is nothing new -- just another strategy to penalize cord cutters.
I've actually never had a problem getting a job. What matters is relevant degrees, relevant certifications, and, most of all, a reputation that you're damn good at what you're doing, and there is NEVER a shortage of offers.
That's all great if you're in a profession with high demand. It's also fine if you're relatively young and there are a lot of easy places "low on the ladder" to jump to if you're not satisfied.
If your profession happens to go through harder times, or too many people start getting degrees in your field, labor becomes cheaper and better jobs become harder to find. And once you get beyond a certain age in most professions, you're too old to just start "entry level" any more -- so you have to wait to find a job that's your level, because you're "overqualified" for other things... and depending on your profession and how common it is for people to switch jobs when they're 45 or 50 or whatever, that can be hard.
Of course if you are generally just goofing off on the job and your employer is better off without you, well, you have to endure the yelling.
I've seen jobs in some fields that have had more than 100 applicants, the majority of which were all perfectly qualified. Yes, this was in a profession where too many people are getting degrees, and there's a backlog of qualified underemployed people from the financial crash a few years back.
I agree with you that the TOP people in most fields will always be able to find a job. But if you're not talented enough (or lucky enough to land good jobs early on to put on your resume and demonstrate experience) to be in the top 5% or whatever, but you're still a hard worker in the top 1/3 of your field, it can get really hard when jobs are less plentiful to just quit and find something new.
Basically -- you want people to be available to deal with stuff at other hours? PAY them to do so. Nothing hard about this.
While this is a nice plan, it would be illegal in France. There's regulations about the number of hours one can work.
Umm, so you don't actually know anything about French labor law, do you?
There's this myth that no one in France can work more than 35-hour weeks, but that's simply not true. They just set that as the threshold where overtime pay has to kick in, and (unlike, say, the U.S.) the overtime laws generally apply to white-collar salaried workers as well as blue-collar wage workers.
So, it's definitely possible in France to pay people to work overtime beyond 35 hours/week. There are a few different thresholds about overtime hours and how much extra you need to be paid, as well as maximum limits on hours/day or how many weeks you can have overtime beyond a certain threshold, etc. And once you get to a certain amount of overtime, you have to compensate employees with extra "rest days."
Anyhow, the system is complex, but there's nothing preventing a company from paying overtime for employees to handle most reasonable issues outside normal business hours.
AND -- guess what? If you can't staff your business for enough hours with the employees you have under the law, that's a clue maybe it's time you have to pay to hire ANOTHER employee! (Weird how that works....)
Even if other countries adopt this policy, it won't work because of time zone differences. China is six hours ahead of France, the USA is 6 to 9 hours behind France. Conducting international business becomes impossible.
No, it just requires a more specific solution. Just a few that occur to me immediately:
(1) Unless the business is especially urgent, just have a policy that emails will be replied to within 24 hours. That's pretty reasonable for most circumstances, except for emergencies or if you're actually providing a 24-hour service of some sort.
(2) If you are providing a 24-hour service of some sort, you just hire different employees with different effective business hours to cover all hours of the day. Or if your company opens a new division dealing with a business 6 hours different, change the effective business hours of a few employees to handle those transactions.
(3) If you need someone to deal with emergencies, presumably you could pay them "overtime" or something like that for their time... which is what businesses really should be doing when they require people to do stuff outside of business hours.
Basically -- you want people to be available to deal with stuff at other hours? PAY them to do so. Nothing hard about this.
And the idiots trying to change the nature of minimum wage from a "minimum" to one that can support a family deserve this slap upside the head. If you are on minimum wage you should not be breeding. Wait until you have the financial stability to be able to devote time and resources to raising a child..
End of story.
You know, I used to feel as you do -- only idiots and people trying live behind their means end up in a screwed up situation trying to get by on minimum wage.
Then, the first summer during college, I worked on a high-speed assembly line of sorts. Made better than minimum wage, but not a lot better. Anyhow, most of the folks there were college students or young people who didn't yet have experience to get anything better, along with a few middle-aged women who were bored sitting at home, so they could come to work and do a non-stressful job while chatting with their friends.
And then there was Mike. I came to find out that Mike had a bachelor's degree, was reasonably intelligent, and was in his mid-40's. One time during a break he told me what he was doing there.
After college, he had a some white-collar office job (I forget). Anyhow, he did quite well, but then some crap happened at the company, and he was laid off. By that point he was married, had 2 kids, had a mortgage, etc. He tried desperately to find a job, but the economy wasn't doing great at that point, and after about 6 months, it was time to "suck it up" and just take what he could get.
For about 10 years he worked at the company I was doing the summer at, mostly as a handler who delivered stuff to the assembly line (which was paid more). He didn't make good money, but the place had good benefits which he needed for his family. And the company used to have a tendency to promote from inside, so he had been hopeful to get a promotion to a foreman or manager of that section... but the company stopped promoting from inside around that time, and started hiring people with business degrees instead.
Just about that time, Mike turned 40-ish, and he started having back problems. So eventually he couldn't do that job anymore, and he ended up working on the line... the most boring, stupid job in the world, with crappy pay. But he had benefits, and he had time in the company -- no longer a path toward management, but leaving there meant finding a better option. But he had been out of his field for so long that nobody would likely hire him (and he was too "old" to start as entry level again).
He was stuck. Not in a minimum wage job, but a pretty low paying job for the skills and intelligence he clearly had. But his family had been through some rough times, and this was a secure job for him (despite the boredom and low pay).
There are a lot more people out there like Mike. Stuff like this happens more than you think, once you get out in the "real world" and start finding out the stories of "poor people." There are all sorts of reasons that people on minimum wage end up having to try to support others or end up in difficult financial positions -- maybe someone has health problems and medical bills, maybe a parent had problems and needed to retire early, etc.
And what about people who go through a divorce, not of their own choice? The spouse abandons them and the kids, and what are they supposed to do? They thought they had a stable family and income, but not all things last. (And child support, etc. doesn't always solve those problems.)
There are lots of stories for why minimum wage people might have to support others. Some of these could be solved by having better social services to deal with some issues and a better "safety net" for these people, if you wanted to go that route. But if you actually talk to many of these people, you might be surprised how many are NOT just ignorant "breeders" who are popping out kids without considering the consequences.
Hate to break it to you but this is false. Since the 90s shareholders can sue the senior executives for failing to maximize the profit of the company.
Actually, that policy really dates back to at least 1919, though you're not quite interpreting it correctly.
That case, along with more recent court rulings, basically affirm that directors and executives have a duty to the corporation and to the shareholders, which does generally involve a focus on profit. But legal precedent usually gives rather broad discretion to directors as long as they don't try to strongly usurp the will of the shareholders overall. For example, most companies could make more profits if they took greater risks, but that would also generally increase risks of failure and subsequent bankruptcy. Some corporations may tolerate a higher or lower risk threshold, which will affect ability to make profits -- and that risk level is dictated in part by general company policy.
Generally, the threshold in modern court cases is that a director acted "in bad faith" or was "negligent" in failing to consider prudent business decisions to make a profit. A lawsuit which could not prove one of those would likely fail. Otherwise, executives are generally authorized to make reasonable business decisions in line with the company goals, as long as the shareholders (as a group) agree.
There are certain types of incorporation that will allow you to bypass this, such as incorporating as a B corp as opposed to an S corp, but this is not common.
Yes, and these were designed to offer further protection to corporations that want to avoid even the possibility of being sued for promoting charitable causes or social good in addition to making profits. But that doesn't mean that a normal (usually C or S) corporation has a duty to maximize profits AT ALL COSTS. In the normal course of business, courts are generally reluctant to second-guess directors' decisions (again, unless there is a clear case of gross negligence or bad faith).
B corporations, in contrast, are explicitly allowed by law to follow their mission and prioritize it above profit-making. That gives additional protection to directors, but the existence of B corporations does NOT imply that directors have no ability to make mission-related decisions in other types of companies.
And contrary to what someone else commented, these loans do not prey on poor people. This isn't an income problem, it's a cashflow problem. You can be poor (low income) and never need a payday loan (income > expenses, and have sufficient savings to tide you over to next paycheck in the event of an emergency). These loans prey on people living paycheck-to-paycheck.
THIS. A lot of people who take out these loans are poor people who have "gotten by" pretty well for a while, but they are hit by a sudden issue where they need a chunk of cash quickly. If they don't have an emergency reserve, payday loans may be their only option.
And I think it's important to note that we don't solve these persons' problems just by shutting down the payday loan industry through regulation (or by Google not running ads for them). This is the economic catch-22 of credit regulation -- everytime you introduce more regulation to "protect" some group of consumers, you generally end up driving the most desperate people to even more desperate ends.
What no one likes to talk about here, for example, is how payday loan numbers have soared since federal credit card regulation was increased significantly in 2010. Now, those regulations were good for most people, and they seemed like common sense: credit card companies could no longer increase your rates very quickly for minor reasons, for example. Things like that would prevent the "debt spiral" effect that occurs as it becomes more and more difficult to pay things off.
The problem is that those regulations generally hurt people who actually USED credit cards responsibly. At the time, I had a 5.99% FIXED credit card rate on one card, because I had a long credit history and excellent score. I was actually carrying a balance on that card (long story why... but it was originally someone else's debt whom I had helped out), but with those regulations, my rate suddenly went up to 13% overnight. Well, I had the means to close the account and just pay off my debt from some of my investment accounts, but most people with such balances would have just been stuck.
A member of my extended family had an even more dire situation happen -- she was young and had made some poor choices (as many do), so she had quite a bit of credit card debt. But she had things under control for about two years, was financially stable, and was gradually paying off her debt. But with the federal regulation, the card companies freaked because they would lose their ability to jack up her rate later if they wanted, so they just jacked it up before the regulations came into effect... and suddenly she was in an unsustainable position where she couldn't make ends meet. Luckily her parents had the resources to step in at that point and help her out, but many people don't have such a network.
I'm NOT saying these regulations were bad -- I'm saying that the credit industries do in many cases charge more from people who are riskier investments. And when you introduce additional regulation, you'll inevitably drive the industry to (1) outright deny to lend further to the riskiest people, and (2) try to make up the profits by maximizing their lending terms on the remainder of people, often punishing those who used these products responsibly before.
I think payday loans are a TERRIBLE idea, but I also recognize that for a large percentage of borrowers, they are about the only place they have to turn now, since they can't get credit cards with the new regulations (and they often don't have collateral to take out a regular loan from a bank). And for some percentage, they do pay these loans back -- perhaps they need to take out a few more, but over a couple of months, they stabilize their finances again. If you regulate the industry and say they can't charge more than 36% annual interest or whatever, most of those payday loan shops will just shut down.
But then where do these people end up? Now rather than looking at an annoying debt cycle
The more genes you have, the more likely you'll get indoctrinated like a good little slave.
Actually, if this were a generation ago: "The more jeans you have, the more likely you'll get indoctrinated like a good little slave."
Sorry, couldn't resist the pun.
[Explanation, for those not old enough: Denim used to be the marker of uneducated laborers and field workers. My grandfather was a union blue-collar guy who worked on machines every day, but he wore dark pants (not jeans) and a button-down shirt -- pressed and starched by my grandmother -- to work every day. As a person in the skilled trades, he dressed significantly nicer than most "white-collar" office workers today.]
Just to be clear to all the idiots who have already replied to me pointing out that intelligence IS known to have genetic factors AND intelligence !=educational attainment, I KNOW THIS ALREADY.
I was responding to a post that implied TFA was just a "news at 11" meaningless study adding to the fact that intelligence is genetic. That isn't what the study concludes at all -- it doesn't conclude much about intelligence directly at all, and what it does conclude is that educational attainment (which is known to correlate with intelligence) has only a SMALL genetic component, compared to environmental factors.
Educational level != intelligence
Yes, you're absolutely correct, in which case the post I was responding to was off-topic and completely irrelevant... since this whole discussion is about a study concerning educational attainment and genetics.
Oh, but wait, the study actually addresses this and notes the correlation between educational attainment and "cognitive performance" (which would probably come closest in their various considerations to "intelligence"). Not surprisingly, there is in fact a correlation between educational attainment and "cognitive performance," and the genetic information they found seems to account for a significant percentage of that in a few cohorts they had data to make a comparison.
Whatever. Either you conclude that the post I was replying to was off-topic, or you look at the study and realize they did consider correlations between educational attainment and other cognitive measurements. I assume this study was on educational attainment rather than intelligence because it's quite easy to get large-scale data on educational attainment (the study had total cohorts coming to n=~300,000 people), but it's harder to get access to a large genetic cohort like that who has also all taken the same IQ tests or whatever.
Lets cut through all this BS and finally admit that intelligence is genetic and heritable.
I can't tell whether you're trying to be funny or not. TFA suggests the opposite conclusion to what you suggest, even in its title: "Scientists found 74 genetic variants linked to education level -- but their impact is miniscule" with the subheading "Looking for genetic effects 'seems pointless' ".
As TFS says, the total effect of all the genetic variants they found explains less than 0.5% of the total variance for educational attainment. And from the actual Nature study conclusion:
Studies of genetic analyses of behavioural phenotypes have been prone to misinterpretation, such as characterizing identified associated variants as 'genes for education'. Such characterization is not correct for many reasons: educational attainment is primarily determined by environmental factors, the explanatory power of the individual SNPs is small, the candidate genes may not be causal, and the genetic associations with educational attainment are mediated by multiple intermediate phenotypes
Bottom line -- this study is pointing out a TINY factor that is genetic, and subject to all sorts of environmental influences.
Because it's an actual problem that my computer does not print 'HELLO WORLD' on bootup?
GP obviously misses that voice that said "WELCOME!" when you logged into AOL in the 90s. :)
Humans, by and large, are terrible at operating motor vehicles, and can't be removed from the road soon enoug.
Agreed -- as soon as AI cars are significantly better than human drivers, their widespread adoption should save many lives.
Unfortunately, I think it's pretty much a given that the Dunning Kruger effect is going to dominate here and the last people to have the steering wheels pried from their hands will be the worst drivers.
I don't think it's a competency issue as much as a control and perception issue. Sure, many people will doubt the competency of the AI systems early on. But compare people's fear or cars vs. fear of planes. It's not just that a plane is flying through the air: people fear their lack of control, and they fear flying because the perception of large plane crashes captures their imaginations on the news... even if many, many more people die each day driving than flying.
Widespread adoption will require people to relinquish their feelings of control to the AI car. And they'll only be able to do so if they feel safer than if they (or another human) were driving. If one or more high-profile incidents occur in early years of adoption where people die, that could delay widespread adoption by a long time... even if AI cars are already much safer.
I would imagine that its going to be the insurance/legal industry that is going to dictate acceptance in the USA (and also for most western countries).
Agreed. All it takes is one "disaster scenario" where a self-driving car gets stuck in an unexpected situation and ends up causing multiple deaths, and this could cripple the industry if liability hasn't been properly worked out ahead of time.
This sort of thing is going require a radical change in their thinking EG if a self driving car fails and causes a death, who is responsible: the owner? the car company? the engineer who signed off on the safety tests? The guy who performed the last software update? Whose insurance pays: the owner? the car company? the bureau that certified the car as safe?
Yes. And that doesn't even get into the more murky moral waters of potential real-life trolley problems. If an autonomous car is faced with a scenario of either killing its owner or potentially killing more people, what should it decide? If a car is ever programmed to kill its owner (even in a dire scenario), will that stop early adopters from buying it -- particularly if an incident happens early on? If a car is programmed to save its driver at all costs, will it ever contribute to a school bus full of kids going off a bridge or something, in which case, will these cars be banned by regulators?
Are these sorts of scenarios unlikely? Sure. But when driving in poor weather on roads that have altered since the last Google Maps survey or whatever, an AI car could very well end up in a situation with complex choices.
But rather than perhaps jailing one person for making a poor choice (as we would do now with human drivers), the results of a high-profile AI car failure could easily push back widespread adoption by decades... particularly in the U.S. where we're driven (pun sort of intended) by irrational fears, a litigious culture, and a media that will take any excuse to pump up our emotions. Even if the AI did as well or even better than a human would in similar circumstances, the perception might not matter. ("Evil Robot Car Runs Schoolbus Off Cliff! President Calls for Ban of AI 'Death Cars'! News at 11!")
This is exactly what everyone thinks it means today. So I'm failing to see the point of your rant.
Far, far, FAR from "everyone." Only in philosophy journals, and among certain older lawyers.
If you read the link in my "rant," you'll discover that everyone else in the world (including educated people, editors at the New York Times, etc.) thinks the phrase means something like "raise the question." Do I like the old usage? Sure, I'm a pedant. But I'm also a realist, and if you try using your meaning before a general audience or even an educated audience that isn't mostly logicians, your meaning will likely be lost.