Even if we love punishing the innocent to stop criminals, we'll have to amend the constitution before we can ban firearms or do anything similar.
Not really. All it requires is a creative interpretation by the Supreme Court. The Second Amendment reads "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." There are numerous ways to get around it. (Not saying any of these things are likely to happen or even that they should necessarily happen, just that it could be done)
First and most common argument is that the right to keep and bear arms is based upon the need for a Militia. Just rule that unless someone is in a militia they can't have a firearm. Anti-gun advocates commonly argue that the justification of the need for a militia is no longer relevant and thus the second amendment is effectively moot. (The courts so far have not agreed with this interpretation.
Second way around it would be to define "arms" in a restrictive manner. We don't allow people to keep nuclear weapons so clearly there is a line drawn regarding what is permissible and what isn't so we really are just arguing about where the line is. This line can be moved to restrict firearms more (or less) than they currently are.
Third way around it is to define what is meant by "infringed". It could easily be argued that people are allowed to own arms in a manner much more restrictive than they are currently by a court ruling that their rights are not infringed by doing so. Much like argument two above we don't allow anyone to own any kind of weapon (good luck buying a F22 fighter even if you are a billionaire) so there is some interpretation going on regarding what is infringing and what is not. This could easily be redefined.
How did they take it down to European levels in spite of every man having an assault rifle at home, courtesy of Swiss army? They forbade owning ammunition and mandated that gun itself is stored in completely disassembled state. They also forbade taking gun out of the house without special permit, which is difficult to get.
If you have no ammunition it's a little hard to see what the point of issuing an M16 to each household might be. The point of having a rifle in each house is to create a de-facto militia. Without ammunition however you have a militia effectively armed with doorstops. Unless they have some implausibly efficient ammunition distribution system they have very efficiently de-fanged the vaunted Swiss militia at a fairly significant cost. They could have saved a lot of money by not issuing the M16s in the first place.
On the other hand I've always thought that gun control measures were somewhat misplaced. Guns without ammo are useless so what gun control advocates really ought to be focused on is ammo control. Heck, one could even exert market forces by making ammunition very expensive.
Sure, why not? Don't like it? Amend the constitution.
Why not allow everyone to own a nuclear weapon? That might be the most unbelievably stupid statement anyone has made here on slashdot and that is saying something.
They aren't actually breaking the law now with metadata collection. The courts have ruled on that.
No they have not. The courts have punted on the issue by claiming that those who have brought suits lack standing. Basically because we cannot prove the classified activities of the NSA have harmed us the courts refuse to consider whether the NSA is violating the law. Basically the courts are saying that unless the NSA does something really stupid publicly, they can take away our civil liberties at will. This leaves us in limbo because Congress will not act for fear of appearing soft on terrorism and the Executive branch gains in power from the inaction of the other two branches.
No one is arguing that, or at least no one reasonable is arguing that. The problem is that those providing the "security" refuse to have a discussion with those they are charged with protecting regarding what constitutes reasonable surveillance. Instead we have a secret and unaccountable organization apparently running rampant over civil liberties and doing whatever they want in what seems to be blatant violation of at least the spirit of the Constitution if not the letter of it.
"the right of the people to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED" how is this not plain language? only to lawyer types is this NOT plain language.
The constitution outlines principles but those principles still have to be clarified with specifics. As the old maxim goes, the devil is in the details. What constitutes "arms"? Does that mean I can own a nuclear weapon legally? Is that reasonable? If it is not reasonable where is the line between what is a reasonable arm to carry and an unreasonable one? Are my rights infringed upon if I cannot keep a nuclear weapon? What constitutes "infringement" with regard to keeping and bearing arms? Does bearing arms mean that I can carry them in a manner that threatens others?
I'm not even a lawyer and it is pretty easy to point out that the second amendment needs a LOT of clarification to be useful in a civil society. Same for every other part of the US Constitution.
Profiling is just another form of indiscriminate metadata.
"Profiling" is a form of rational statistical analysis with a big social problem attached. If you have a known population of people with a propensity to behave in a certain way, then the rational thing to do is to look closely at that population. It is no different analytically than observing that white people are more prone to sunburns and thus have higher rates of skin cancer. If I worked for El Al Airlines security, it would be stupid to not look a little closer at people of Arab descent from a security standpoint because there is a known threat from some portion of that population. It doesn't mean that all Arabs are a threat (most are not) but it does make for a smaller haystack to search through. Profiling by itself is simply a rational form of analysis BUT there is a big problem with using it for policing purposes.
The problem with profiling is that it becomes a cover for overt racism. I know very few black people who have not at some point been harassed by police for no reason other than the color of their skin. Sometimes people do behave in ways that should draw attention from law enforcement but it has to be more than solely the color of one's skin or country of origin.
Is he doesn't know how to do his job without violating all our rights then he should be replaced.
The problem isn't with the mere fact that the NSA is looking for people with bad intentions. That by itself is fine up to a point. The problem is that the NSA and congress and the executive branch refuse to have an adult discussion with the electorate about boundaries and the fact that the NSA presently is not answerable to the electorate. "Trust us" is not remotely sufficient assurance that the NSA is not abusing their power, especially when every indication is that they are behaving badly.
Some surveillance is reasonable and appropriate but there are boundaries beyond which the government should not step without extremely strict oversight. We have the fourth amendment prohibiting unreasonable searches precisely because governments have a hard time restraining themselves. Ensuring judicial oversight is inconvenient for the government and that is precisely the point of that judicial oversight. Governments have proven time and again that they will abuse power. We understand the need for some reasonable surveillance but that doesn't mean we can or should give carte-blanche to the NSA to do whatever the hell they want. The electorate should have a say in exactly what constitutes "reasonable".
In a democracy the government is supposed to be ultimately answerable to the people. When you have a secretive branch of government, implementing secret policies, "overseen" by a secret (and apparently toothless) court, with secret findings that are never released to the public, then there is no way for the NSA to be answerable to the people. THAT is the problem.
Well, it's supposed to be cheaper on gas since the engine is pulling you forward instead of pushing.
You'll have to cite a source for that because the wheel doesn't know whether it is pushing or pulling and despite being an engineer I cannot think of any physics reason why pushing versus pulling would make a spec of difference in fuel economy. FWD cars are often less performance oriented which means they might be designed with fuel economy higher on the priority list but that isn't an inherent advantage of FWD over RWD.
But, I've been in a few North American cars which, despite being FWD, have a big hump going through the middle for no good reason, the same as if there was a drive shaft to the rear wheels.
Which ones? I can't think of any that fit that description and I'm kind of a car nut. Admittedly I'm not familiar with every car out there. The only reason this might happen is if the car is available in FWD and 4WD configurations. In cases like that you aren't going to design separate chassis.
I've also seen several cars which still more or less put in a rear axle (even if it's not a drive axle) when you'd be better using independent suspension. The Pontiac Aztec and I think some of the Dodge minivan type things are good examples of this.
The Aztec was available in FWD and AWD. To get AWD you kind of need a way of getting the power to the rear wheels. An axle is usually involved.
Why? FWD has better traction because more weight is over the drive wheels, and it's more stable (when rear drive wheels slip the car fishtails).
Depends on the weight distribution in the particular car. Drive something like a BMW where the weight distribution is close to 50/50 and you don't have such an advantage from FWD. The type of drive system (FWD, RWD, AWD, 4WD) only actually matters when accelerating. FWD works better for many people for exactly the reasons you mention but a RWD rear engine car (porsche 911) can get excellent traction for the same reasons. Really you want AWD or 4WD if traction under acceleration is a big concern. But a good set of snow/winter tires will make a MUCH bigger difference than the type of drivetrain ever will for most vehicles.
As for tire width, I never noticed that
Generally speaking wider tires often perform worse in snow all other things equal because they don't penetrate through the snow as easily. There are plenty of exceptions but they tend to float over the snow rather than penetrating down to pavement.
The cut of the tread is another matter.
It's not just the cut of the tread. It also is the rubber compound that matters. Snow tires don't get as hard in colder temperatures in addition to usually have different tread properties. They make a HUGE difference even in relatively modest amounts of snow. In many places a good all-weather tire can perform adequately but you will notice an improvement in sloppy conditions with a set of snow tires.
About the only problem I know of with FWD in slippery conditions is that the weight gets transferred to the rear when going uphill.
You'll always have the same problem when accelerating because the weight shifts to the rear tires when you accelerate. This is why FWD cars make rather bad dragsters. You don't typically notice in your boring family sedan because the car doesn't have enough power for it to matter much. Many RWD vehicles are poorly balanced in order to make them understeer so the weight distribution is too far forward. But it doesn't have to be that way and isn't in some RWD cars. I would actually argue (from my own experience) that a well balanced RWD car is easier to drive in the snow than many FWD cars.
You'd think being able to operate it by voice alone would be beneficial compared to older radio systems.
No I wouldn't. Voice control is somewhat like a command line interface. Potentially powerful if you are already proficient at it but inscrutable if you aren't already well trained. Furthermore there is no standardization between vehicles. Unlike buttons and steering wheels which are well standardized, voice interfaces have no such commonality between automakers. Each vendor rolls their own. This makes it basically impossible for me to just hop in any random car and do useful tasks. Furthermore few people are practiced in dictating to a computer. This requires you to compose your sentences before opening your mouth and not putting a lot of "ummm" and other pauses in the instruction. Additionally most voice interfaces require rather specific sequences of words to work which people are demonstrably bad at remembering to do.
I am of course ignoring the problems with accents, road noise, passenger noise, faulty software, bad interpretations of commands, and much more. Most voice interfaces are just bolt on additions to existing interfaces and they aren't well thought out, standardized and generally don't work very well.
Funny how they don't think throwing 10 billion down a toilet didn't further damage the economy.
If the only one that would have suffered the consequences of a GM liquidation was GM then you might have a point. In the real world however a GM liquidation would have destroyed the entire supply chain. GM doesn't exist in a vacuum. Ford would have gone bankrupt as well because they share the same suppliers. Even Toyota would have taken a hit. My company would have been out of business. $10 billion is expensive but compared to a GM liquidation it is money well spent.
Even if GM went out of business, which it wouldn't have, someone else would have bought the resources and done something with them.
Not without a SEVERE dislocation to the US economy. It wasn't just GM it was the entire supply chain that would have gone under. This notion you have that a GM bankruptcy would have no effects on any other companies could not be more incorrect.
Just flatly stating that 1 million jobs would have been lost is so deceitful.
Actually it probably understates things. Every employee that GM has is supported by around 6 employees in the supply chain. A GM liquidation would have resulted in many of the Tier 1 suppliers and a huge number of the Tier 2 and 3 suppliers going under. This would have dragged Ford into bankruptcy too because their supply chain overlaps heavily with GMs. Chrysler would likely have been liquidated rather than bought by Fiat because they too depend on the same supply chain.
If a company goes bankrupt, bondholders are among the last people to get their debts paid - payroll, suppliers, bank lines-of-credit, and retirees all get paid before bondholders see a dime.
I think you may be confusing bond holders with shareholders. Shareholders are the last to get paid in the event of a bankruptcy. Bondholders, particularly secured bondholders, are normally among the first in line to get paid in most cases because they some form of seniority claims. Typically the terms for bonds place them pretty close to the front of the line to get paid, usually in front of most if not all of the creditors you mentioned. I can assure you from first hand experience with the Delphi bankruptcy that suppliers are nowhere near the front of the line (we got screwed along with many others) and certainly not in front of most bond holders. Bank lines of credit would not generally be in front of bondholders either, particularly if they are unsecured lines of credit. Employees and retirees also typically do not have a senior claim to company assets over bond holders though sometimes they do.
That if GM had collapsed, it would have created a huge vacuum, that would have rapidly been filled with new startups.
No it would not have. You clearly have NO idea how much capital is required nor how much infrastructure is needed to build an auto company and the supply chain that goes with it. Furthermore you seem to be forgetting that in 2008 there was ZERO capital available. Nobody could get capital from the banks because there was no liquidity to be had. Your notion that a bunch of startups could even begin to fill the void left by a suddenly missing GM is laughable. Even if we could have magically waived a wand and provided the capital the engineering would take years. It takes many years to even build a very small auto company like Tesla.
GM isn't just an assembly line. It is the keystone in an entire supply chain. GM goes under and so does virtually every Tier 1 supplier as well as Ford and Chrysler. Even the CEO of Toyota admitted publicly that GM being liquidated would have hurt Toyota badly because they depend on many of the same suppliers. My company would have been out of business entirely and we are a Tier 3 supplier to GM. And we would have been just one of thousands of firms that would have collapsed. Even Tesla would likely have collapsed because the supply chain would have imploded. Tesla depends on many of the same suppliers who would now be bankrupt.
Has there ever been a time in history where the majority of the workforce could be replaced quickly and cheaply by a single technology?
Yes, though I disagree with your assertion that factory automation is cheap - it demonstrably is not. All you have to do is look at farming. 100 years ago farming employed the majority of the population. Now it employes less than 2% and much of that is due to automation, particularly devices like tractors, irrigation systems and similar technology. However the economy and the farming sector have both grown tremendously.
You're missing the point, and as an accountant, that's odd. Sure, you might be right in that it might actually mean more jobs. But it doesn't mean more jobs per widget (per month, or whatever).
Number of jobs per widget is an irrelevant measure unless it is related to profitability, particularly if we are only considering the company making the widget and not the rest of the supply chain. It's called productivity and it is a Good Thing. Remember companies don't exist in a vacuum. They have to compete and without productivity gains they will quickly go out of business. The average productivity of a worker in the US is much higher than in China but since China has 5X as many people that is a necessity.
The US manufacturing sector has increased in production sixfold since 1940 while absolute employment totals have declined slightly. As a percent of the workforce the number fell from about 25% to around 10% over the same period but the population grew so total manufacturing employment was closer to constant. Like farming, automation in manufacturing is reducing the percent of the workforce employed in the sector but that doesn't mean the sector is shrinking. Manufacturing has grown hugely and amounts for about $3+ Trillion annually in the US economy. The reason it is shrinking as a percentage is primarily because other (service) sectors are growing even faster.
But, similarly, you can't pretend that your factory of 10 employees is better in terms of "jobs" than a factory of 5 employees if your factory has 1000 times the productive output.
First off, your example is too simplistic to be reflective of the real world. Fewer employees in a more profitable larger company is not a bad thing and in the real world a big increase in productivity is also usually accompanied by a big increase in overall company growth, including employment. Furthermore more profits means more opportunities for investment and job creation. You also are not considering the supply chain effects. If a company is selling a lot more of widget that generally means that there are a lot of upstream and downstream jobs created to supply and consume and distribute that product. The jobs created might not be in the company that makes the product. Instead it might be with the distributor or retailer that sells it or the warehouse that stocks it or the materials supplier that provides the raw materials for it.
Yup, so then we end up paying for even more welfare, because low-wage, high-profit companies like McDonald's and Wal-Mart refuse to pay a decent wage.
Refuse? No. Cannot. They cannot raise wages that high even if they wanted to. While it is probably true that those companies could raise their workers wages some, they cannot raise them by more than a little bit unless everyone else is forced to do so as well. They are able to offer low prices in large part by keeping a lid on labor costs. Basically all their direct competitors do exactly the same thing. If they raise wages they have to raise prices and someone else gets the business. Go ahead and do the math. If those companies raise their minimum wages to $15 then ALL of their profits and then some will disappear faster than you can say "shareholder lawsuit".
Automation like this only benefits two groups, factory owners and the consumers of the product.
What about the engineers who program the device? The tooling makers who build the automation and fixtures? The more skilled (higher paid) workers needed to operate the machines? The workers who remain employed because their company remains competitive? The maintenance workers who service the machine? The bank which finances the equipment purchase? The workers who get hired on the next project because the company is more competitive? All these groups and more benefit from automation. You have an overly simplistic, short sighted and incorrect view of this issue.
It's a vicious cycle that's been going on for a century and we now have unheard of disparity between rich and poor.
Demonstrably nonsense. Income inequality fell until around the 1970s-80s. The disparities we are seeing recently are a recent phenomena and are due to a complicated mixture of the falling power of unions, globalization, and financial manipulation.
The big loser is the worker who is left without a job.
Sigh... I run a small manufacturing company and I'm a certified accountant as well as an industrial engineer. Automation does not mean fewer jobs, it means different jobs and in the long run it means more jobs. Automation happens when a product needs to be produced in sufficient volume or with quality and/or safety requirements such that employing humans to do the job is not economical. The "lost" jobs you are bemoaning would never exist in the first place or if they did they would exist in the location with the lowest labor costs. My company purchased automation for lead making (we make wire harnesses) that allowed us to produce subassemblies faster. This allowed us to hire MORE people than we would have without the automation. In fact without the automation we would have been bankrupt. There is NO possible way for anyone to produce 500,000 wire leads with good quality by hand for a competitive price even with Chinese labor rates.
I'll give you another example. We use automation to process a six conductor cable for a jumper harness. We make about 1000 of these each day. While it is technically possible to automate this with some very expensive robotics and vision systems, the volume requirements would have to be ten times what we are producing to even consider doing that. The automation would cost well over US$2 million (yes I've looked). So we have unskilled workers who don't get paid much doing the work. Because of the cost of this automation (we can't afford it) we have to charge higher prices for our services which means we lose out on bids for work and cannot hire as many people. Lack of automation actually hinders our ability to hire more people because it limits our competitiveness.
I am not a Luddite, but we need to think about how tech affect society. I think most engineers would agree that there are certain technologies that are unethical to work in. To me, this is one of them.
Factory automation is not in any way unethical. People are the most flexible and useful asset companies have. Why would you limit your people to doing boring, repetitive tasks when they are capable of so much more? I'm guessing you have never worked an assembly line. It is mostly dull, soul crushing work that pays badly and grossly underutilizes what people can do. Come work on our assembly line for a few days and you'll be whistling a different tune. Factory automation lets us get more work and hire more people and the people we hire can be paid more and do more. It's a positive cycle.
Furthermore, it is not a solution to the nuclear waste problem.
The nuclear waste problem is a tough one. Problem is that most people are asking the wrong question. The fossil fuel waste problem is just as tough if not worse. The real question is whether nuclear waste is preferable to fossil fuel waste. For the next 20-50 years at minimum we are going to have most of our power generation coming from those two sources (progress in renewables notwithstanding). So pick your poison. Arguing against one is by default an argument for the other. Both have very serious problems and there is no near term viable replacement available.
And it is not a solution as a long-time energy source.
Nuclear fission is approximately as long term an solution as fossil fuels is. A couple hundred years at least. After that, who knows...
the re-newable energy fraction have working machinery and also the energy storage problem is solvable, as we already have that technology even if it is not yet cheap, reliable or implementable everywhere
It is not remotely a given that the energy storage problem is solvable and unfortunately there is no evidence whatsoever that we are close to solving it now. While I agree that is MAY be solvable (and I hope it is), that is not remotely the same argument. We have to invent some totally new technology to store these vast amounts of energy. As a result we really need to be investing in solar/wind generation, battery technology, fusion, and a few other technologies. Research results are not predictable so we need to place a lot of big bets and see what happens.
However, these issues are easier to fix than come up with totally new technology.
So your argument is it is easier to come up with a totally new technology than it is to come up with some other totally new technology? Rather peculiar argument you have there. It is not remotely clear that coming up with a breakthrough in battery technology will be any easier than a breakthrough in fission or fusion.
The only human made structure with the potential to last 10000 years is Mt Rushmore
I'm sure the pyramids and sphinx in Egypt will be surprised to hear that. Never mind that Mount Rushmore isn't a structure (it's a carving) and receives regular maintenance to ensure the faces don't crumble and fall off.
Nuclear power is the most heavily subsidized power source.
No it is not. Fossil fuels are by a wide margin. There are some direct subsidies (lord knows why) which we all know about but there are also indirect subsidies. Fossil fuel plants do not incur the full cost of cleaning up their pollution. They mostly are able to simply dump CO2 and many other emissions into the air. Companies that using fracking for natural gas dump huge amounts of toxic chemicals into the ground which never get cleaned up. Plants that process petrochemicals can be seen burning away by-products. Etc, etc. As a result they effectively are receiving an enormous subsidy. It's a lot cheaper to produce power when you don't have to worry about dealing with the pollution in any meaningful way.
Today, the price point of solar depends on those subsidies. take them away and one of two things will happen:
It depends on MUCH more than just direct subsidies to solar. It depends on the subsidies provided for fossil fuels and nuclear. It depends on the fact that fossil fuel plants do not incur the full economic cost of their waste disposal. It depends on the local geography - if you have a nearby dam, electricity is probably pretty cheap.
Want a level playing field for solar? Make coal and natural gas plants actually have to pay for the cleanup of ALL their pollution rather than just dumping into the air. This includes the full cost of mining, delivering and processing of their fuel as well. I'm fairly confident that solar would become almost immediately competitive.
The more time, effort, and money we waste chasing nukes, the less we have for a real solution.
Alternate solutions ARE being chased but for the next 25-50 years your choices in most locations for base load power are fossil fuels or nuclear fission. Both have extremely serious downsides. Pick your poison. If you are anti-nuke you are de-facto pro fossil fuel until there is some form of breakthrough energy technology (like fusion or superconducting batteries) because that is the only alternative right now. Fossil fuels have serious, climate changing pollution problems which are not so easily contained as fission byproducts. Fission has highly toxic but concentrated waste products. Both cause serious geopolitical problems.
Nobody with half a brain is going to argue that nuclear energy is without some serious problems. The issue is really whether the downside of nuclear is an improvement over the downside of fossil fuels. Personally I favor using fission wherever the geopolitics and geography make it not insanely scary and then some fairly draconian pollution scrubbing technology on fossil fuel burning plants for the rest. Keep pumping money into solar and wind and fusion research. Not a perfect solution but maybe a least-worst solution for the next few decades.
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Even if we love punishing the innocent to stop criminals, we'll have to amend the constitution before we can ban firearms or do anything similar.
Not really. All it requires is a creative interpretation by the Supreme Court. The Second Amendment reads "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." There are numerous ways to get around it. (Not saying any of these things are likely to happen or even that they should necessarily happen, just that it could be done)
First and most common argument is that the right to keep and bear arms is based upon the need for a Militia. Just rule that unless someone is in a militia they can't have a firearm. Anti-gun advocates commonly argue that the justification of the need for a militia is no longer relevant and thus the second amendment is effectively moot. (The courts so far have not agreed with this interpretation.
Second way around it would be to define "arms" in a restrictive manner. We don't allow people to keep nuclear weapons so clearly there is a line drawn regarding what is permissible and what isn't so we really are just arguing about where the line is. This line can be moved to restrict firearms more (or less) than they currently are.
Third way around it is to define what is meant by "infringed". It could easily be argued that people are allowed to own arms in a manner much more restrictive than they are currently by a court ruling that their rights are not infringed by doing so. Much like argument two above we don't allow anyone to own any kind of weapon (good luck buying a F22 fighter even if you are a billionaire) so there is some interpretation going on regarding what is infringing and what is not. This could easily be redefined.
How did they take it down to European levels in spite of every man having an assault rifle at home, courtesy of Swiss army? They forbade owning ammunition and mandated that gun itself is stored in completely disassembled state. They also forbade taking gun out of the house without special permit, which is difficult to get.
If you have no ammunition it's a little hard to see what the point of issuing an M16 to each household might be. The point of having a rifle in each house is to create a de-facto militia. Without ammunition however you have a militia effectively armed with doorstops. Unless they have some implausibly efficient ammunition distribution system they have very efficiently de-fanged the vaunted Swiss militia at a fairly significant cost. They could have saved a lot of money by not issuing the M16s in the first place.
On the other hand I've always thought that gun control measures were somewhat misplaced. Guns without ammo are useless so what gun control advocates really ought to be focused on is ammo control. Heck, one could even exert market forces by making ammunition very expensive.
The first rule should be to not give easy access to firearms to the general public in the first place.
A better rule would be not to give them to governments since governments and their armies kill more people than the general public could ever hope to.
Sure, why not? Don't like it? Amend the constitution.
Why not allow everyone to own a nuclear weapon? That might be the most unbelievably stupid statement anyone has made here on slashdot and that is saying something.
They aren't actually breaking the law now with metadata collection. The courts have ruled on that.
No they have not. The courts have punted on the issue by claiming that those who have brought suits lack standing. Basically because we cannot prove the classified activities of the NSA have harmed us the courts refuse to consider whether the NSA is violating the law. Basically the courts are saying that unless the NSA does something really stupid publicly, they can take away our civil liberties at will. This leaves us in limbo because Congress will not act for fear of appearing soft on terrorism and the Executive branch gains in power from the inaction of the other two branches.
You cannot have complete security and freedom.
No one is arguing that, or at least no one reasonable is arguing that. The problem is that those providing the "security" refuse to have a discussion with those they are charged with protecting regarding what constitutes reasonable surveillance. Instead we have a secret and unaccountable organization apparently running rampant over civil liberties and doing whatever they want in what seems to be blatant violation of at least the spirit of the Constitution if not the letter of it.
"the right of the people to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED" how is this not plain language? only to lawyer types is this NOT plain language.
The constitution outlines principles but those principles still have to be clarified with specifics. As the old maxim goes, the devil is in the details. What constitutes "arms"? Does that mean I can own a nuclear weapon legally? Is that reasonable? If it is not reasonable where is the line between what is a reasonable arm to carry and an unreasonable one? Are my rights infringed upon if I cannot keep a nuclear weapon? What constitutes "infringement" with regard to keeping and bearing arms? Does bearing arms mean that I can carry them in a manner that threatens others?
I'm not even a lawyer and it is pretty easy to point out that the second amendment needs a LOT of clarification to be useful in a civil society. Same for every other part of the US Constitution.
Profiling is just another form of indiscriminate metadata.
"Profiling" is a form of rational statistical analysis with a big social problem attached. If you have a known population of people with a propensity to behave in a certain way, then the rational thing to do is to look closely at that population. It is no different analytically than observing that white people are more prone to sunburns and thus have higher rates of skin cancer. If I worked for El Al Airlines security, it would be stupid to not look a little closer at people of Arab descent from a security standpoint because there is a known threat from some portion of that population. It doesn't mean that all Arabs are a threat (most are not) but it does make for a smaller haystack to search through. Profiling by itself is simply a rational form of analysis BUT there is a big problem with using it for policing purposes.
The problem with profiling is that it becomes a cover for overt racism. I know very few black people who have not at some point been harassed by police for no reason other than the color of their skin. Sometimes people do behave in ways that should draw attention from law enforcement but it has to be more than solely the color of one's skin or country of origin.
Is he doesn't know how to do his job without violating all our rights then he should be replaced.
The problem isn't with the mere fact that the NSA is looking for people with bad intentions. That by itself is fine up to a point. The problem is that the NSA and congress and the executive branch refuse to have an adult discussion with the electorate about boundaries and the fact that the NSA presently is not answerable to the electorate. "Trust us" is not remotely sufficient assurance that the NSA is not abusing their power, especially when every indication is that they are behaving badly.
Some surveillance is reasonable and appropriate but there are boundaries beyond which the government should not step without extremely strict oversight. We have the fourth amendment prohibiting unreasonable searches precisely because governments have a hard time restraining themselves. Ensuring judicial oversight is inconvenient for the government and that is precisely the point of that judicial oversight. Governments have proven time and again that they will abuse power. We understand the need for some reasonable surveillance but that doesn't mean we can or should give carte-blanche to the NSA to do whatever the hell they want. The electorate should have a say in exactly what constitutes "reasonable".
In a democracy the government is supposed to be ultimately answerable to the people. When you have a secretive branch of government, implementing secret policies, "overseen" by a secret (and apparently toothless) court, with secret findings that are never released to the public, then there is no way for the NSA to be answerable to the people. THAT is the problem.
Well, it's supposed to be cheaper on gas since the engine is pulling you forward instead of pushing.
You'll have to cite a source for that because the wheel doesn't know whether it is pushing or pulling and despite being an engineer I cannot think of any physics reason why pushing versus pulling would make a spec of difference in fuel economy. FWD cars are often less performance oriented which means they might be designed with fuel economy higher on the priority list but that isn't an inherent advantage of FWD over RWD.
But, I've been in a few North American cars which, despite being FWD, have a big hump going through the middle for no good reason, the same as if there was a drive shaft to the rear wheels.
Which ones? I can't think of any that fit that description and I'm kind of a car nut. Admittedly I'm not familiar with every car out there. The only reason this might happen is if the car is available in FWD and 4WD configurations. In cases like that you aren't going to design separate chassis.
I've also seen several cars which still more or less put in a rear axle (even if it's not a drive axle) when you'd be better using independent suspension. The Pontiac Aztec and I think some of the Dodge minivan type things are good examples of this.
The Aztec was available in FWD and AWD. To get AWD you kind of need a way of getting the power to the rear wheels. An axle is usually involved.
Why? FWD has better traction because more weight is over the drive wheels, and it's more stable (when rear drive wheels slip the car fishtails).
Depends on the weight distribution in the particular car. Drive something like a BMW where the weight distribution is close to 50/50 and you don't have such an advantage from FWD. The type of drive system (FWD, RWD, AWD, 4WD) only actually matters when accelerating. FWD works better for many people for exactly the reasons you mention but a RWD rear engine car (porsche 911) can get excellent traction for the same reasons. Really you want AWD or 4WD if traction under acceleration is a big concern. But a good set of snow/winter tires will make a MUCH bigger difference than the type of drivetrain ever will for most vehicles.
As for tire width, I never noticed that
Generally speaking wider tires often perform worse in snow all other things equal because they don't penetrate through the snow as easily. There are plenty of exceptions but they tend to float over the snow rather than penetrating down to pavement.
The cut of the tread is another matter.
It's not just the cut of the tread. It also is the rubber compound that matters. Snow tires don't get as hard in colder temperatures in addition to usually have different tread properties. They make a HUGE difference even in relatively modest amounts of snow. In many places a good all-weather tire can perform adequately but you will notice an improvement in sloppy conditions with a set of snow tires.
About the only problem I know of with FWD in slippery conditions is that the weight gets transferred to the rear when going uphill.
You'll always have the same problem when accelerating because the weight shifts to the rear tires when you accelerate. This is why FWD cars make rather bad dragsters. You don't typically notice in your boring family sedan because the car doesn't have enough power for it to matter much. Many RWD vehicles are poorly balanced in order to make them understeer so the weight distribution is too far forward. But it doesn't have to be that way and isn't in some RWD cars. I would actually argue (from my own experience) that a well balanced RWD car is easier to drive in the snow than many FWD cars.
You'd think being able to operate it by voice alone would be beneficial compared to older radio systems.
No I wouldn't. Voice control is somewhat like a command line interface. Potentially powerful if you are already proficient at it but inscrutable if you aren't already well trained. Furthermore there is no standardization between vehicles. Unlike buttons and steering wheels which are well standardized, voice interfaces have no such commonality between automakers. Each vendor rolls their own. This makes it basically impossible for me to just hop in any random car and do useful tasks. Furthermore few people are practiced in dictating to a computer. This requires you to compose your sentences before opening your mouth and not putting a lot of "ummm" and other pauses in the instruction. Additionally most voice interfaces require rather specific sequences of words to work which people are demonstrably bad at remembering to do.
I am of course ignoring the problems with accents, road noise, passenger noise, faulty software, bad interpretations of commands, and much more. Most voice interfaces are just bolt on additions to existing interfaces and they aren't well thought out, standardized and generally don't work very well.
But Detroit is bankrupt and the GM workers are most likely not going to see any kind of pension.
Detroit != GM
One is a city and the other is a company. Detroit's bankruptcy has nothing to do with GM's bankruptcy.
GM pensioners are going to get paid just as public employees of Detroit are. The amount is a different but their pensions didn't just vanish.
Funny how they don't think throwing 10 billion down a toilet didn't further damage the economy.
If the only one that would have suffered the consequences of a GM liquidation was GM then you might have a point. In the real world however a GM liquidation would have destroyed the entire supply chain. GM doesn't exist in a vacuum. Ford would have gone bankrupt as well because they share the same suppliers. Even Toyota would have taken a hit. My company would have been out of business. $10 billion is expensive but compared to a GM liquidation it is money well spent.
Even if GM went out of business, which it wouldn't have, someone else would have bought the resources and done something with them.
Not without a SEVERE dislocation to the US economy. It wasn't just GM it was the entire supply chain that would have gone under. This notion you have that a GM bankruptcy would have no effects on any other companies could not be more incorrect.
Just flatly stating that 1 million jobs would have been lost is so deceitful.
Actually it probably understates things. Every employee that GM has is supported by around 6 employees in the supply chain. A GM liquidation would have resulted in many of the Tier 1 suppliers and a huge number of the Tier 2 and 3 suppliers going under. This would have dragged Ford into bankruptcy too because their supply chain overlaps heavily with GMs. Chrysler would likely have been liquidated rather than bought by Fiat because they too depend on the same supply chain.
If a company goes bankrupt, bondholders are among the last people to get their debts paid - payroll, suppliers, bank lines-of-credit, and retirees all get paid before bondholders see a dime.
I think you may be confusing bond holders with shareholders. Shareholders are the last to get paid in the event of a bankruptcy. Bondholders, particularly secured bondholders, are normally among the first in line to get paid in most cases because they some form of seniority claims. Typically the terms for bonds place them pretty close to the front of the line to get paid, usually in front of most if not all of the creditors you mentioned. I can assure you from first hand experience with the Delphi bankruptcy that suppliers are nowhere near the front of the line (we got screwed along with many others) and certainly not in front of most bond holders. Bank lines of credit would not generally be in front of bondholders either, particularly if they are unsecured lines of credit. Employees and retirees also typically do not have a senior claim to company assets over bond holders though sometimes they do.
GM did effectively go bankrupt.
GM didn't effectively go bankrupt. They DID go bankrupt.
That if GM had collapsed, it would have created a huge vacuum, that would have rapidly been filled with new startups.
No it would not have. You clearly have NO idea how much capital is required nor how much infrastructure is needed to build an auto company and the supply chain that goes with it. Furthermore you seem to be forgetting that in 2008 there was ZERO capital available. Nobody could get capital from the banks because there was no liquidity to be had. Your notion that a bunch of startups could even begin to fill the void left by a suddenly missing GM is laughable. Even if we could have magically waived a wand and provided the capital the engineering would take years. It takes many years to even build a very small auto company like Tesla.
GM isn't just an assembly line. It is the keystone in an entire supply chain. GM goes under and so does virtually every Tier 1 supplier as well as Ford and Chrysler. Even the CEO of Toyota admitted publicly that GM being liquidated would have hurt Toyota badly because they depend on many of the same suppliers. My company would have been out of business entirely and we are a Tier 3 supplier to GM. And we would have been just one of thousands of firms that would have collapsed. Even Tesla would likely have collapsed because the supply chain would have imploded. Tesla depends on many of the same suppliers who would now be bankrupt.
Has there ever been a time in history where the majority of the workforce could be replaced quickly and cheaply by a single technology?
Yes, though I disagree with your assertion that factory automation is cheap - it demonstrably is not. All you have to do is look at farming. 100 years ago farming employed the majority of the population. Now it employes less than 2% and much of that is due to automation, particularly devices like tractors, irrigation systems and similar technology. However the economy and the farming sector have both grown tremendously.
You're missing the point, and as an accountant, that's odd. Sure, you might be right in that it might actually mean more jobs. But it doesn't mean more jobs per widget (per month, or whatever).
Number of jobs per widget is an irrelevant measure unless it is related to profitability, particularly if we are only considering the company making the widget and not the rest of the supply chain. It's called productivity and it is a Good Thing. Remember companies don't exist in a vacuum. They have to compete and without productivity gains they will quickly go out of business. The average productivity of a worker in the US is much higher than in China but since China has 5X as many people that is a necessity.
The US manufacturing sector has increased in production sixfold since 1940 while absolute employment totals have declined slightly. As a percent of the workforce the number fell from about 25% to around 10% over the same period but the population grew so total manufacturing employment was closer to constant. Like farming, automation in manufacturing is reducing the percent of the workforce employed in the sector but that doesn't mean the sector is shrinking. Manufacturing has grown hugely and amounts for about $3+ Trillion annually in the US economy. The reason it is shrinking as a percentage is primarily because other (service) sectors are growing even faster.
But, similarly, you can't pretend that your factory of 10 employees is better in terms of "jobs" than a factory of 5 employees if your factory has 1000 times the productive output.
First off, your example is too simplistic to be reflective of the real world. Fewer employees in a more profitable larger company is not a bad thing and in the real world a big increase in productivity is also usually accompanied by a big increase in overall company growth, including employment. Furthermore more profits means more opportunities for investment and job creation. You also are not considering the supply chain effects. If a company is selling a lot more of widget that generally means that there are a lot of upstream and downstream jobs created to supply and consume and distribute that product. The jobs created might not be in the company that makes the product. Instead it might be with the distributor or retailer that sells it or the warehouse that stocks it or the materials supplier that provides the raw materials for it.
Yup, so then we end up paying for even more welfare, because low-wage, high-profit companies like McDonald's and Wal-Mart refuse to pay a decent wage.
Refuse? No. Cannot. They cannot raise wages that high even if they wanted to. While it is probably true that those companies could raise their workers wages some, they cannot raise them by more than a little bit unless everyone else is forced to do so as well. They are able to offer low prices in large part by keeping a lid on labor costs. Basically all their direct competitors do exactly the same thing. If they raise wages they have to raise prices and someone else gets the business. Go ahead and do the math. If those companies raise their minimum wages to $15 then ALL of their profits and then some will disappear faster than you can say "shareholder lawsuit".
Automation like this only benefits two groups, factory owners and the consumers of the product.
What about the engineers who program the device? The tooling makers who build the automation and fixtures? The more skilled (higher paid) workers needed to operate the machines? The workers who remain employed because their company remains competitive? The maintenance workers who service the machine? The bank which finances the equipment purchase? The workers who get hired on the next project because the company is more competitive? All these groups and more benefit from automation. You have an overly simplistic, short sighted and incorrect view of this issue.
It's a vicious cycle that's been going on for a century and we now have unheard of disparity between rich and poor.
Demonstrably nonsense. Income inequality fell until around the 1970s-80s. The disparities we are seeing recently are a recent phenomena and are due to a complicated mixture of the falling power of unions, globalization, and financial manipulation.
The big loser is the worker who is left without a job.
Sigh... I run a small manufacturing company and I'm a certified accountant as well as an industrial engineer. Automation does not mean fewer jobs, it means different jobs and in the long run it means more jobs. Automation happens when a product needs to be produced in sufficient volume or with quality and/or safety requirements such that employing humans to do the job is not economical. The "lost" jobs you are bemoaning would never exist in the first place or if they did they would exist in the location with the lowest labor costs. My company purchased automation for lead making (we make wire harnesses) that allowed us to produce subassemblies faster. This allowed us to hire MORE people than we would have without the automation. In fact without the automation we would have been bankrupt. There is NO possible way for anyone to produce 500,000 wire leads with good quality by hand for a competitive price even with Chinese labor rates.
I'll give you another example. We use automation to process a six conductor cable for a jumper harness. We make about 1000 of these each day. While it is technically possible to automate this with some very expensive robotics and vision systems, the volume requirements would have to be ten times what we are producing to even consider doing that. The automation would cost well over US$2 million (yes I've looked). So we have unskilled workers who don't get paid much doing the work. Because of the cost of this automation (we can't afford it) we have to charge higher prices for our services which means we lose out on bids for work and cannot hire as many people. Lack of automation actually hinders our ability to hire more people because it limits our competitiveness.
I am not a Luddite, but we need to think about how tech affect society. I think most engineers would agree that there are certain technologies that are unethical to work in. To me, this is one of them.
Factory automation is not in any way unethical. People are the most flexible and useful asset companies have. Why would you limit your people to doing boring, repetitive tasks when they are capable of so much more? I'm guessing you have never worked an assembly line. It is mostly dull, soul crushing work that pays badly and grossly underutilizes what people can do. Come work on our assembly line for a few days and you'll be whistling a different tune. Factory automation lets us get more work and hire more people and the people we hire can be paid more and do more. It's a positive cycle.
Furthermore, it is not a solution to the nuclear waste problem.
The nuclear waste problem is a tough one. Problem is that most people are asking the wrong question. The fossil fuel waste problem is just as tough if not worse. The real question is whether nuclear waste is preferable to fossil fuel waste. For the next 20-50 years at minimum we are going to have most of our power generation coming from those two sources (progress in renewables notwithstanding). So pick your poison. Arguing against one is by default an argument for the other. Both have very serious problems and there is no near term viable replacement available.
And it is not a solution as a long-time energy source.
Nuclear fission is approximately as long term an solution as fossil fuels is. A couple hundred years at least. After that, who knows...
the re-newable energy fraction have working machinery and also the energy storage problem is solvable, as we already have that technology even if it is not yet cheap, reliable or implementable everywhere
It is not remotely a given that the energy storage problem is solvable and unfortunately there is no evidence whatsoever that we are close to solving it now. While I agree that is MAY be solvable (and I hope it is), that is not remotely the same argument. We have to invent some totally new technology to store these vast amounts of energy. As a result we really need to be investing in solar/wind generation, battery technology, fusion, and a few other technologies. Research results are not predictable so we need to place a lot of big bets and see what happens.
However, these issues are easier to fix than come up with totally new technology.
So your argument is it is easier to come up with a totally new technology than it is to come up with some other totally new technology? Rather peculiar argument you have there. It is not remotely clear that coming up with a breakthrough in battery technology will be any easier than a breakthrough in fission or fusion.
The only human made structure with the potential to last 10000 years is Mt Rushmore
I'm sure the pyramids and sphinx in Egypt will be surprised to hear that. Never mind that Mount Rushmore isn't a structure (it's a carving) and receives regular maintenance to ensure the faces don't crumble and fall off.
Nuclear power is the most heavily subsidized power source.
No it is not. Fossil fuels are by a wide margin. There are some direct subsidies (lord knows why) which we all know about but there are also indirect subsidies. Fossil fuel plants do not incur the full cost of cleaning up their pollution. They mostly are able to simply dump CO2 and many other emissions into the air. Companies that using fracking for natural gas dump huge amounts of toxic chemicals into the ground which never get cleaned up. Plants that process petrochemicals can be seen burning away by-products. Etc, etc. As a result they effectively are receiving an enormous subsidy. It's a lot cheaper to produce power when you don't have to worry about dealing with the pollution in any meaningful way.
Today, the price point of solar depends on those subsidies. take them away and one of two things will happen:
It depends on MUCH more than just direct subsidies to solar. It depends on the subsidies provided for fossil fuels and nuclear. It depends on the fact that fossil fuel plants do not incur the full economic cost of their waste disposal. It depends on the local geography - if you have a nearby dam, electricity is probably pretty cheap.
Want a level playing field for solar? Make coal and natural gas plants actually have to pay for the cleanup of ALL their pollution rather than just dumping into the air. This includes the full cost of mining, delivering and processing of their fuel as well. I'm fairly confident that solar would become almost immediately competitive.
The more time, effort, and money we waste chasing nukes, the less we have for a real solution.
Alternate solutions ARE being chased but for the next 25-50 years your choices in most locations for base load power are fossil fuels or nuclear fission. Both have extremely serious downsides. Pick your poison. If you are anti-nuke you are de-facto pro fossil fuel until there is some form of breakthrough energy technology (like fusion or superconducting batteries) because that is the only alternative right now. Fossil fuels have serious, climate changing pollution problems which are not so easily contained as fission byproducts. Fission has highly toxic but concentrated waste products. Both cause serious geopolitical problems.
Nobody with half a brain is going to argue that nuclear energy is without some serious problems. The issue is really whether the downside of nuclear is an improvement over the downside of fossil fuels. Personally I favor using fission wherever the geopolitics and geography make it not insanely scary and then some fairly draconian pollution scrubbing technology on fossil fuel burning plants for the rest. Keep pumping money into solar and wind and fusion research. Not a perfect solution but maybe a least-worst solution for the next few decades.