I love Canadian health care. I have to wait longer then Americans do from time to time and it can get frustrating, but it works and it's nice knowing I can walk into any hospital, any clinic in the country and be seen just by showing a health card. Very rarely, there is a requirement to go to the US but usually those trips are paid for if there is a medical reason. A lot of people who complain just want to be seen faster, but they're not really taking into account what they would give up in the name of being seen faster.
Those things you listed are actually quite inexpensive ways to pass gobs of time. Heck I go with my family to the zoo for a day and it costs me half a video game console.
In either case, I think a 50% tax makes many businesses not viable
In true capitalism, businesses are supposed to fail all the time. There is supposed to be a regular churn of businesses failing and others taking their place. On the surface this seems bad for people working for these companies, but if the economy is healthy it is actually good because there is always another company that needs that employee and the employee probably makes more at the new company because they are ultimately leaner and better thought out.
Besides, if a company will fail from making an adequate contribution to society, why do we need it around in the first place?
It will make things more expensive, yes, but possibly not that much more so. Companies cannot raise prices more than people will allow by making purchases. It would be nice to see the open market system work for consumers for a change. The hit would be felt mostly by major shareholders.
People loathe Trump because it is fairly obvious it doesn't matter what he says. It's pretty clear he does what he wants when he wants to and that is exactly the type of person you cannot rely on. Vote for him and he will do the exact opposite. The sad part is the people who are behind him will probably still be there cheering him on. Also, we don't need his staff punching Putin in the face one day.
Just because the average temperature of the earth has increased overall, it doesn't mean you will see a higher temperature where you live. That's like not believing in an average increase in the crime rate because you haven't experienced crime personally.
The only thing that I see called global warming is the actual warming of the earth globally. No one calls the changes in local weather global warming. These are the effects of global warming, which we call climate change.
You disrupt industry by doing things in new and innovative ways, not by finding loopholes in law that let you bypass existing regulations.
I honestly wonder how many honest people thought of the whole ride sharing idea and were in the process of trying to build their business the legitimate way before Uber broke laws and sailed right by them. It goes to show you, the people who get the biggest rewards in capitalism are the ones who play closest to the line of dishonesty without getting arrested.
It still amazes me the difference in how copyright violations and uber are being handled.
Copyright violation: Kids want to ignore laws and set up pirate sites, let's sue them into oblivion.
Uber: A business is ignoring laws for the sake of technological improvement! Let's support them!
I'm quite surprised by the hostility of environmental pushers on Slashdot. Yes we have to convert to greener methods, but accepting things that are done in a stupid way and being hostile towards people who point out when things are stupid and suggest how it could be done better is not the way to go. Rarely are generalized requirements the best way to handle everyone.
This is nothing more then a common capitalist business cycle. When you come in you look good and everyone starts to use you because you're so good. Then when you have attracted a significant amount of business you tweak things so that you are no longer as good. In fact you may become similar to what was there before or slightly worse, but you work it so that enough people cannot go back then you profit.
When people talk about the greatness of capitalism, they usually only refer to the first phase.
You can still join them together and make a single large storage space. This is what I was kind of getting at originally.. I cobble things together constantly because I don't believe in throwing out electronics that work. Of course drives that are very old will be around the 20Gb range and a motherboard just doesn't have enough ports for it to be worthwhile and you're wasting electricity at that point, but 120-240Gb drives are still useful to someone. If you're willing to trash things I can see a desk like this working better for them because they just load it up once per year and trash everything that comes out.
With all the increased attention on electric cars and how well they will help the environment, I always wonder how many of these people are harming the environment by doing other things anyway.... such as trashing electronics that are still usable.
I agree with you that we haven't really seen anything tangible come out of the new AI movement, and in fact I have made the same kind of comments before. On the other hand, Google seems very confident that their cars will be safe enough to drive people around very soon even though they are still driving into buses in perfect weather conditions. Judging by the amount of money being thrown into it, people are very confident. I am kind of dubious about it as well, because there seems to be a virtually infinite number of edge cases that they will need to capture. And they haven't even considered snow and ice yet.
The bigger concern is robot semi-trucks. Robot cars will eliminate the taxi industry which is small compared to the trucking industry by an order of 1 to 100. Furthermore, efficiency is everything to the shipping business which is the greatest benefit that automation provides. There has already been a successful automated shipping test in Europe. There are 3 million truckers in the US alone with their jobs on the line.
My current life is currently average I would say, but the effects of the cloud are going to be hitting me soon. Currently it looks like my salary will be cut in half if I don't do something drastic about it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not 'living off the backs of others' if it is a government program created for the good of society overall.
I love Canadian health care. I have to wait longer then Americans do from time to time and it can get frustrating, but it works and it's nice knowing I can walk into any hospital, any clinic in the country and be seen just by showing a health card. Very rarely, there is a requirement to go to the US but usually those trips are paid for if there is a medical reason. A lot of people who complain just want to be seen faster, but they're not really taking into account what they would give up in the name of being seen faster.
Those things you listed are actually quite inexpensive ways to pass gobs of time. Heck I go with my family to the zoo for a day and it costs me half a video game console.
I had to post this:
https://science.slashdot.org/s...
THIS is what I was referring to.
In either case, I think a 50% tax makes many businesses not viable
In true capitalism, businesses are supposed to fail all the time. There is supposed to be a regular churn of businesses failing and others taking their place. On the surface this seems bad for people working for these companies, but if the economy is healthy it is actually good because there is always another company that needs that employee and the employee probably makes more at the new company because they are ultimately leaner and better thought out.
Besides, if a company will fail from making an adequate contribution to society, why do we need it around in the first place?
Maybe Woz is just honest enough to do his taxes at face value rather than run around and find every loophole that he can.
d) corporations aren't bound by national borders, yet people are.
You're a fool if you think companies pay the same percentage of tax as regular people. You're also a fool if you think absolute values mean anything.
It will make things more expensive, yes, but possibly not that much more so. Companies cannot raise prices more than people will allow by making purchases. It would be nice to see the open market system work for consumers for a change. The hit would be felt mostly by major shareholders.
People loathe Trump because it is fairly obvious it doesn't matter what he says. It's pretty clear he does what he wants when he wants to and that is exactly the type of person you cannot rely on. Vote for him and he will do the exact opposite. The sad part is the people who are behind him will probably still be there cheering him on. Also, we don't need his staff punching Putin in the face one day.
Just because the average temperature of the earth has increased overall, it doesn't mean you will see a higher temperature where you live. That's like not believing in an average increase in the crime rate because you haven't experienced crime personally.
The only thing that I see called global warming is the actual warming of the earth globally. No one calls the changes in local weather global warming. These are the effects of global warming, which we call climate change.
They'll take care of the cars until the taxi industry is completely obliterated and then they will stop.
You disrupt industry by doing things in new and innovative ways, not by finding loopholes in law that let you bypass existing regulations.
I honestly wonder how many honest people thought of the whole ride sharing idea and were in the process of trying to build their business the legitimate way before Uber broke laws and sailed right by them. It goes to show you, the people who get the biggest rewards in capitalism are the ones who play closest to the line of dishonesty without getting arrested.
It still amazes me the difference in how copyright violations and uber are being handled.
Copyright violation: Kids want to ignore laws and set up pirate sites, let's sue them into oblivion.
Uber: A business is ignoring laws for the sake of technological improvement! Let's support them!
I'm quite surprised by the hostility of environmental pushers on Slashdot. Yes we have to convert to greener methods, but accepting things that are done in a stupid way and being hostile towards people who point out when things are stupid and suggest how it could be done better is not the way to go. Rarely are generalized requirements the best way to handle everyone.
This is nothing more then a common capitalist business cycle. When you come in you look good and everyone starts to use you because you're so good. Then when you have attracted a significant amount of business you tweak things so that you are no longer as good. In fact you may become similar to what was there before or slightly worse, but you work it so that enough people cannot go back then you profit.
When people talk about the greatness of capitalism, they usually only refer to the first phase.
You can still join them together and make a single large storage space. This is what I was kind of getting at originally.. I cobble things together constantly because I don't believe in throwing out electronics that work. Of course drives that are very old will be around the 20Gb range and a motherboard just doesn't have enough ports for it to be worthwhile and you're wasting electricity at that point, but 120-240Gb drives are still useful to someone. If you're willing to trash things I can see a desk like this working better for them because they just load it up once per year and trash everything that comes out.
With all the increased attention on electric cars and how well they will help the environment, I always wonder how many of these people are harming the environment by doing other things anyway.... such as trashing electronics that are still usable.
I agree with you that we haven't really seen anything tangible come out of the new AI movement, and in fact I have made the same kind of comments before. On the other hand, Google seems very confident that their cars will be safe enough to drive people around very soon even though they are still driving into buses in perfect weather conditions. Judging by the amount of money being thrown into it, people are very confident. I am kind of dubious about it as well, because there seems to be a virtually infinite number of edge cases that they will need to capture. And they haven't even considered snow and ice yet.
The bigger concern is robot semi-trucks. Robot cars will eliminate the taxi industry which is small compared to the trucking industry by an order of 1 to 100. Furthermore, efficiency is everything to the shipping business which is the greatest benefit that automation provides. There has already been a successful automated shipping test in Europe. There are 3 million truckers in the US alone with their jobs on the line.
I'm now clear on the fact that I meant 'social democracy' not 'socialist'.
My current life is currently average I would say, but the effects of the cloud are going to be hitting me soon. Currently it looks like my salary will be cut in half if I don't do something drastic about it.
Why not try business ideas now in your spare time?
Obviously they're going to have to set the tax rate to something reasonable or the entire system will fail.