So, you'll stop in 2000, when Pope John Paul II formally apologized for what was done to Galileo?
Or you'll stop in 1992, when the same stated: "Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo... understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the... planetary system."?
Or you'll stop in the 19th century, when Pope Pius VII acknowledged that Galileo's findings were fact?
Exactly what year is it in your time? I'd like to know how long we have to wait.
Anyway, I am not trying to convince anybody in anything in terms of believing or not believing here, that's not the purpose of the story though it's easy to degenerate this story into that kind of a discussion.
I suggest you don't do that, stay on topic, and the topic is...
You are the one who went off-topic with the anti-religion flamebait, by asking "When was the last time that religious followers needed a self-consistent, non-contradictory, logical message?"
The GP responded by pointing out that many people think their philosophies through to make sure their beliefs are self-consistent, non-contradictory (which is redundant) and logical. Even atheists ought to do the same, and often don't, e.g. believing in an entirely material universe and also believing in free will, or believing that torture is bad when other countries do it but okay when yours does.
So please, take your own advice, and focus on the "forcing your beliefs on others is bad" bit, instead of trying to show off how you're clearly superior to all those other billions of people.
That's just sour grapes. The jobs are only "crappy ones" because Apple and companies like it prefer to maximize their profits rather than support the societies that made their existence possible. They could easily bring those jobs back and just accept smaller executive bonuses and higher prices in stores. Maybe people can only afford a 16 GB iPad instead of a 32 GB one, but at least their neighbor will be able to find a job.
You want to believe everything's okay, but it's not. It took decades of fighting to secure a decent quality of life for the middle class, and that is evaporating before our eyes due to corporate greed. If it goes away, it will not come back in our lifetimes.
Prices wouldn't triple. Once you account for shipping costs, manufacturing things in the US would only add ~10% to the cost of most goods. Maybe for exceptionally cheap goods, like those little 5 cent American flags, making them in America would triple the price. But in those cases, are people really going to notice or care?
No, in America the company would actually pay its employees enough to afford homes, and they would buy land in the surrounding area (you've already stated that the factories are built in places where land is cheap), and next thing you know a nice, middle class community would spring up. More people would move in to run the various shops to support the community, and tens of thousands of people would get to enjoy a decent quality of life while making something of value.
Instead, we get Chinese companies paying its employees just enough to scrape by on, while keeping them utterly dependent on the corporation for survival. Since they are so dependent, they have no choice but to work 12 hours shifts at short notice and no overtime pay. It's no different from what corporations did to American workers a hundred years ago, but we had the benefit of a liberal government that allowed workers to unionize and gain a decent quality of life. The Chinese have an authoritarian government that benefits greatly from keeping its people quietly desperate. Meanwhile, working conditions all across the world continue to deteriorate by being forced to compete with near-slavery.
It's a bad situation, and to write it off as a mere cultural difference is foolishness.
Nope, they don't have an obligation to do that either. Corporations are inherently immoral, and are generally run by psychopaths. We have an obligation to force them to behave morally, by financial incentives (e.g. tariffs on imports from countries with poor working conditions) and the threat of punishment (e.g. jail time for CEOs of companies that commit crimes).
If we as a society are stupid enough to trust in the good intentions of psychopaths, then we deserve what we get.
You're misunderstanding how tariffs work. They are not a tax on American consumers, they're a tax on businesses that rely on overseas manufacturing. I know that the media would have you believe that all taxes on businesses get passed along to the consumer, but that's not true.
Businesses set the cost of their devices to the highest price the market will bear. When they get taxed, they can't simply raise their prices to protect their profits, because (at least) one of their competitors will choose to accept the loss of profits by keeping prices the same, and people will buy from that competitor.
The only problem with tariffs is that any country we impose them on will in turn impose them on us. But since the US is a net importer, we'd come out ahead.
In the US, company towns and payment in scrip didn't end until the late 40s / early 50s. So we've got 70 years of this to look forward to? We won't survive half that long.
We need tariffs on imports from countries with poor working conditions. There is no other hope for a solution.
I've been to the Philippines. I've seen the plywood and corrugated steel shanty towns stretching out as far as the eye can see. I know what most people there live like.
So if it's so easy for the poor and unemployed to move to find work, and lack of will to do so is just a "first world problem", then why is your country such a hell hole? Why don't all those people in the shanty towns just up and move somewhere better?
You're one of the lucky ones. Most people don't get the chance to do what you've done. The fact that you don't realize that is sickening.
Let any atheist still holding that their beliefs are different from religion take note. There are people among you every bit as intolerant, authoritarian, and bigoted as you would find in any religion.
You're the one who brought the Sahara desert into it.
But alright, I'll let you move the goal posts. If we get lucky enough that a huge change in the global climate only shifts the basket by a couple hundred miles, and if we're lucky enough that the new arable land doesn't turn out to be the Rockies or the Appalachians, we will still have to suffer years of crop failures before the farmers realize they're not just having a run of bad luck. And that's just the agricultural consequences. We haven't even talked about how major cities might find their new climate unbearable.
So why are we taking this risk? It's not because the science is in doubt. The scientific community is quite clear on what's happening. It's because some very rich and influential people stand to gain even more wealth and power by maintaining the status quo. those people pump out the FUD, and hundreds of millions lap it up.
What makes them think that new media won't want to protect their copyrights just as much as current media?
People will always want laws benefiting themselves. The problem is that the government is too open to corporate bribery. If politicians couldn't take money from industry, and had to sign non-competes upon taking office, then laws like SOPA wouldn't even get started.
I'm sure I'll get modded down for this, because people hate rationality when it comes to issues they care about, but...
The fact that a person with Condition X did amazing things does not mean that Condition X is not a defect. Stephen Hawking should be all the counterexample you need, but you'd probably try to argue that his condition isn't mental in nature, so I'll also include John Nash ("the guy from A Beautiful Mind", as you likely know him).
And for the record I fully support homosexuals being extended every right available to heterosexuals, and even went out an volunteered to help pass the so-called "Everything But Marriage" act. But in addition to valuing equality, I also value logic and honesty.
Let's say the new arable land is in the Sahara. Do you think all the midwestern American farmers will be happy to abandon their lives to go move to a foreign country? Or are we going to basically have a massive spike in unemployment while simultaneously waiting for natives of the area to learn the trade?
How much will it cost to move all of the machinery to the new farms? And what about top soil? That doesn't grow overnight. Even if the climate in the Sahara makes it arable, that doesn't mean we'll be able to grow anything there for at least a few years.
And how about distribution? How long will it take to replicate the American interstate highway system in a patchwork of third world countries?
And how about the new cost of food, which has to be shipped to the US from overseas after centuries of us being able to feed ourselves?
How about the plant species themselves, which have been selectively bred to thrive in certain environments which might not match the environments around the new farms?
Even a few years of this would bring our country to its knees. Please try to actually think a position through before taking it. (And that goes double for you mods!)
Because farms can't be built in a day. If the world's arable land shifts to new locations, the global supply chain will face an upheaval the likes of which have never been seen in human history. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, will starve.
We didn't "just dodge" an event over a millennium in the future. Wrecking our arable land over the next century by turning up the heat will kill actual people. Let the people of 3000 AD worry about an imminent ice age, if humanity manages to live that long.
Funny that that's the one climatology study you trust...
Somewhat humorously, the A and B connectors are different so that you know which device is upstream and which is downstream. So they keyed the direction of the cable, but not the way you plug it in.
The only reason that's true is because of our veneration of the Most Holy Lord, Our God, The Dollar.
Jobs and technology are being shipped overseas. Anyone with a brain can see where this road leads, but the people walking us down that path don't give a shit, because they'll retire and live like kings before we get there.
Those same robber barons are simultaneously fighting tooth and nail for economic policies that favor the rich. Median wages have stagnated for decades while theirs have quadrupled. If the new wealth had been divided more equitably, median wages would have gone up ~33% since 1980 (that's post inflation).
And in order for those robber barons to win the fight, they need hordes of easily manipulated people to vote their way. So they make sure that their media puppets and pocket politicians create plenty of wedge issues designed to make Americans despise one another, and that includes the vilification of intellectuals (now a pejorative in the US).
So you're left with a populace that is poor, anti-intellectual, and so desperate for employment that they'll abandon all the workers' rights that their parents and grandparents won for them.
The robber barons are a cancer on the nation. They're killing us. They have been for 30 years, and within another 30 the deed will be done.
And you think they want to go away? Of course not. They try their best, and still occasionally fail. But when the government does the same, we're supposed to view it as this evil thing that needs to be torn down.
People who want the government to shrivel up and die hold it to an impossibly high standard, all so that they have a pretense to bring it down.
Your EXACT words were: "habeas corpus was just invalidated with the infinite detention act".
That means that there is an act which invalidates habeas corpus. I suspect you're referring to the NDAA (which means you're parroting lies you've heard from other people on this site), but it's possible you're talking about a different bill. Either way, if there is an act that invalidated habeas corpus, you should be able to point it out.
So do so. Or admit that you were just lying to get people outraged, and who cares if one of them goes out and shoots a cop as a result.
Then you'd go bankrupt within a year. The piracy-as-advertising strategy works with Windows and Photoshop because it gets people used to using their software so that businesses hiring those people need to buy copies. That all goes out the window in a world without copyright, as the businesses would just pirate copies as well.
Slashdot Mirror
So, you'll stop in 2000, when Pope John Paul II formally apologized for what was done to Galileo?
Or you'll stop in 1992, when the same stated: "Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo ... understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the ... planetary system."?
Or you'll stop in the 19th century, when Pope Pius VII acknowledged that Galileo's findings were fact?
Exactly what year is it in your time? I'd like to know how long we have to wait.
Anyway, I am not trying to convince anybody in anything in terms of believing or not believing here, that's not the purpose of the story though it's easy to degenerate this story into that kind of a discussion.
I suggest you don't do that, stay on topic, and the topic is...
You are the one who went off-topic with the anti-religion flamebait, by asking "When was the last time that religious followers needed a self-consistent, non-contradictory, logical message?"
The GP responded by pointing out that many people think their philosophies through to make sure their beliefs are self-consistent, non-contradictory (which is redundant) and logical. Even atheists ought to do the same, and often don't, e.g. believing in an entirely material universe and also believing in free will, or believing that torture is bad when other countries do it but okay when yours does.
So please, take your own advice, and focus on the "forcing your beliefs on others is bad" bit, instead of trying to show off how you're clearly superior to all those other billions of people.
I think I'd probably want to punch someone who refused to believe in gravity.
That's just sour grapes. The jobs are only "crappy ones" because Apple and companies like it prefer to maximize their profits rather than support the societies that made their existence possible. They could easily bring those jobs back and just accept smaller executive bonuses and higher prices in stores. Maybe people can only afford a 16 GB iPad instead of a 32 GB one, but at least their neighbor will be able to find a job.
You want to believe everything's okay, but it's not. It took decades of fighting to secure a decent quality of life for the middle class, and that is evaporating before our eyes due to corporate greed. If it goes away, it will not come back in our lifetimes.
Prices wouldn't triple. Once you account for shipping costs, manufacturing things in the US would only add ~10% to the cost of most goods. Maybe for exceptionally cheap goods, like those little 5 cent American flags, making them in America would triple the price. But in those cases, are people really going to notice or care?
That's not a quote at all. You don't just get to add loaded words like "bitterly" and still call it a quote.
Fucking liar.
No, in America the company would actually pay its employees enough to afford homes, and they would buy land in the surrounding area (you've already stated that the factories are built in places where land is cheap), and next thing you know a nice, middle class community would spring up. More people would move in to run the various shops to support the community, and tens of thousands of people would get to enjoy a decent quality of life while making something of value.
Instead, we get Chinese companies paying its employees just enough to scrape by on, while keeping them utterly dependent on the corporation for survival. Since they are so dependent, they have no choice but to work 12 hours shifts at short notice and no overtime pay. It's no different from what corporations did to American workers a hundred years ago, but we had the benefit of a liberal government that allowed workers to unionize and gain a decent quality of life. The Chinese have an authoritarian government that benefits greatly from keeping its people quietly desperate. Meanwhile, working conditions all across the world continue to deteriorate by being forced to compete with near-slavery.
It's a bad situation, and to write it off as a mere cultural difference is foolishness.
Nope, they don't have an obligation to do that either. Corporations are inherently immoral, and are generally run by psychopaths. We have an obligation to force them to behave morally, by financial incentives (e.g. tariffs on imports from countries with poor working conditions) and the threat of punishment (e.g. jail time for CEOs of companies that commit crimes).
If we as a society are stupid enough to trust in the good intentions of psychopaths, then we deserve what we get.
You're misunderstanding how tariffs work. They are not a tax on American consumers, they're a tax on businesses that rely on overseas manufacturing. I know that the media would have you believe that all taxes on businesses get passed along to the consumer, but that's not true.
Businesses set the cost of their devices to the highest price the market will bear. When they get taxed, they can't simply raise their prices to protect their profits, because (at least) one of their competitors will choose to accept the loss of profits by keeping prices the same, and people will buy from that competitor.
The only problem with tariffs is that any country we impose them on will in turn impose them on us. But since the US is a net importer, we'd come out ahead.
In the US, company towns and payment in scrip didn't end until the late 40s / early 50s. So we've got 70 years of this to look forward to? We won't survive half that long.
We need tariffs on imports from countries with poor working conditions. There is no other hope for a solution.
I've been to the Philippines. I've seen the plywood and corrugated steel shanty towns stretching out as far as the eye can see. I know what most people there live like.
So if it's so easy for the poor and unemployed to move to find work, and lack of will to do so is just a "first world problem", then why is your country such a hell hole? Why don't all those people in the shanty towns just up and move somewhere better?
You're one of the lucky ones. Most people don't get the chance to do what you've done. The fact that you don't realize that is sickening.
This was modded +5.
Let any atheist still holding that their beliefs are different from religion take note. There are people among you every bit as intolerant, authoritarian, and bigoted as you would find in any religion.
You're the one who brought the Sahara desert into it.
But alright, I'll let you move the goal posts. If we get lucky enough that a huge change in the global climate only shifts the basket by a couple hundred miles, and if we're lucky enough that the new arable land doesn't turn out to be the Rockies or the Appalachians, we will still have to suffer years of crop failures before the farmers realize they're not just having a run of bad luck. And that's just the agricultural consequences. We haven't even talked about how major cities might find their new climate unbearable.
So why are we taking this risk? It's not because the science is in doubt. The scientific community is quite clear on what's happening. It's because some very rich and influential people stand to gain even more wealth and power by maintaining the status quo. those people pump out the FUD, and hundreds of millions lap it up.
What makes them think that new media won't want to protect their copyrights just as much as current media?
People will always want laws benefiting themselves. The problem is that the government is too open to corporate bribery. If politicians couldn't take money from industry, and had to sign non-competes upon taking office, then laws like SOPA wouldn't even get started.
So "a couple years" without widely available grains doesn't strike you as potentially problematic?
I'm sure I'll get modded down for this, because people hate rationality when it comes to issues they care about, but...
The fact that a person with Condition X did amazing things does not mean that Condition X is not a defect. Stephen Hawking should be all the counterexample you need, but you'd probably try to argue that his condition isn't mental in nature, so I'll also include John Nash ("the guy from A Beautiful Mind", as you likely know him).
And for the record I fully support homosexuals being extended every right available to heterosexuals, and even went out an volunteered to help pass the so-called "Everything But Marriage" act. But in addition to valuing equality, I also value logic and honesty.
You clearly haven't thought this through.
Let's say the new arable land is in the Sahara. Do you think all the midwestern American farmers will be happy to abandon their lives to go move to a foreign country? Or are we going to basically have a massive spike in unemployment while simultaneously waiting for natives of the area to learn the trade?
How much will it cost to move all of the machinery to the new farms? And what about top soil? That doesn't grow overnight. Even if the climate in the Sahara makes it arable, that doesn't mean we'll be able to grow anything there for at least a few years.
And how about distribution? How long will it take to replicate the American interstate highway system in a patchwork of third world countries?
And how about the new cost of food, which has to be shipped to the US from overseas after centuries of us being able to feed ourselves?
How about the plant species themselves, which have been selectively bred to thrive in certain environments which might not match the environments around the new farms?
Even a few years of this would bring our country to its knees. Please try to actually think a position through before taking it. (And that goes double for you mods!)
Because farms can't be built in a day. If the world's arable land shifts to new locations, the global supply chain will face an upheaval the likes of which have never been seen in human history. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, will starve.
We didn't "just dodge" an event over a millennium in the future. Wrecking our arable land over the next century by turning up the heat will kill actual people. Let the people of 3000 AD worry about an imminent ice age, if humanity manages to live that long.
Funny that that's the one climatology study you trust...
Somewhat humorously, the A and B connectors are different so that you know which device is upstream and which is downstream. So they keyed the direction of the cable, but not the way you plug it in.
The only reason that's true is because of our veneration of the Most Holy Lord, Our God, The Dollar.
Jobs and technology are being shipped overseas. Anyone with a brain can see where this road leads, but the people walking us down that path don't give a shit, because they'll retire and live like kings before we get there.
Those same robber barons are simultaneously fighting tooth and nail for economic policies that favor the rich. Median wages have stagnated for decades while theirs have quadrupled. If the new wealth had been divided more equitably, median wages would have gone up ~33% since 1980 (that's post inflation).
And in order for those robber barons to win the fight, they need hordes of easily manipulated people to vote their way. So they make sure that their media puppets and pocket politicians create plenty of wedge issues designed to make Americans despise one another, and that includes the vilification of intellectuals (now a pejorative in the US).
So you're left with a populace that is poor, anti-intellectual, and so desperate for employment that they'll abandon all the workers' rights that their parents and grandparents won for them.
The robber barons are a cancer on the nation. They're killing us. They have been for 30 years, and within another 30 the deed will be done.
And you think they want to go away? Of course not. They try their best, and still occasionally fail. But when the government does the same, we're supposed to view it as this evil thing that needs to be torn down.
People who want the government to shrivel up and die hold it to an impossibly high standard, all so that they have a pretense to bring it down.
Your EXACT words were: "habeas corpus was just invalidated with the infinite detention act".
That means that there is an act which invalidates habeas corpus. I suspect you're referring to the NDAA (which means you're parroting lies you've heard from other people on this site), but it's possible you're talking about a different bill. Either way, if there is an act that invalidated habeas corpus, you should be able to point it out.
So do so. Or admit that you were just lying to get people outraged, and who cares if one of them goes out and shoots a cop as a result.
Then you'd go bankrupt within a year. The piracy-as-advertising strategy works with Windows and Photoshop because it gets people used to using their software so that businesses hiring those people need to buy copies. That all goes out the window in a world without copyright, as the businesses would just pirate copies as well.
Photoshop would not exist without copyright.
As we all know, no private business ever wastes money. They have a 100% success rate on all investments.