You seem to be making a number of mistakes, including thinking that people serving a market don't have convictions, and that liberals are necessarily young or don't have money. Do you think David Korn's only interest is the check he picks up for writing? Keith Oberman pursued his political mania until it ruined him. Slashdot is often innudated by howls about whatever "outrage" the Koch brothers are claimed to have engaged in while practically nobody acknowledges their spending is dwarfed by that of rich liberals and progressives. Being liberal is a state of mind, not an indicator of either wealth or age.
I'm not sure you've addressed anything I'm even talking about. We're like talking about two completely different things. I made the point that conservatives are a market and that businesses like to cater to them because they are generally older and have money. (they also have more free time) All of those are quite intuitively true. I never talked about spending by liberals or koch brothers or whatever. So I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. They may all be true. I'm just telling you what makes Fox and others successful in a media market.
I think you're making an unintuitive leaps of logic. Your mistake is that you're still defining political buckets for those who are exploiting them. There is no political bucket, it's just business. The conservative demographic is much more likely to open their wallets than liberals because liberals tend to be younger and have less money.
It's content that makes something worthwhile, if you dress it up in fancy "21st century technology", you've only changed the packaging not what people read. Your most valuable resource was those writers and editors.
Very sane post. I loved this criticism of Democrats:
"The Democrats tend to create social programs, then forget to check up on them to see if they're actually working as intended, and just assume that they are. The Republicans also tend to not check up on them, but complain that they're not working as intended, even if they are."
I don't mind social programs. But they need to be checked. There are a lot of unintended consequences that happen with them and they can both be abused or micromanaged. I tend to prefer giving money to people who know how to do it correctly and from a local perspective. I would totally gut the welfare state and start over.. although not now, too many crazy conservatives around. It's important that we have a very large middle class while making sure people don't slip into poverty. If we want to have healthy small businesses or even be able to create small businesses that is where it needs to be. We need to de-emphasize large corporations.
That's because we've created a bunker mentality on both sides. One side has gotten so extreme that every one of these things has turned into a war of ideas. The media has encouraged this because it drives people to watch and watch their ads. The media is neither right wing or left wing, they are simply people interested in peddling fear, uncertainty and doubt as a business model. That is exactly what Fox is. They picked the conservative part because you know that's where the money is.
Stop watching 24 hour news, watch your local ones. Stop giving money to large corporations using your eyeballs. Hell, just quit watching cable, that's another place they are fleecing. This entire country is wired to watch television. I wonder with all those millions of dollars of political buy ads, that are put on the TV, where does all that money go?
I don't listen to NPR for the political commentary. Mostly stuff like Car Talk, and some of the insightful pieces for instance on Katrina or things that national media have stopped focusing on.
Fleecing conservatives of their money is in fact a market. Those guys will open up their wallets if you say all the right sweet things. Even better they'll go around repeating it. There is an entire eco-system in right wing political systems doing this. Since a lot of these people trend to being older, they are both susceptible to fear and they have money. The young, can also be susceptible, but they don't have money so there is no market.
It won't work out that way in the U.S. Plus central control of the company is still in the hands of the Japanese.. You won't see Sony outsourcing its CEO to an American for instance.
Indeed. Obama is more of an old time republican (which is fine, the whole country moved right) and not any kind of socialist. People just use that label to mean "bad", it literally has no meaning anymore. It doesn't refer to socialism at all because people don't really know what socialism is or what it stands for. Hell, I doubt they even know what capitalism is.
I await when CEO jobs can also be outsourced 'elsewhere' since I'm sure they can be paid a lot less for their leadership skills than they can in the U.S. Funny, outsourcing is only for the lower ranks but not in higher management. Are you saying that someone from these other countries can't do as good a job as a U.S. corporate management team?
Price of oil is coming down.. speculation finally breaking up. Plus, Saudi is getting pressure from fracking and is trying to get gas cheaper. I think it is too late. I think we are going to see an ideological split away from oil for transportation.
this is happening quite well. I have an electric car, and I'm able to go to the coast and get a nice charge. If I had a damn chademo adapter I can get my car up to what is needed in less than 30 minutes. 30 minutes is absolutely perfect for a family to checkout the local restaurant, shop or whatever. It is a great magic marketing number and that means that you are a captured audience.. that alone should be enough for business to do the same thing and put high speed chargers in their place of business.
Congestion. At least in teh urban areas, having a public transport system is really really fast, will get cars off the road. It will also generate density around each of the stations. Greater density is actually excellent for the free market, as people congregate around these areas. Great choice, greater everything. The problem is that most people believe in the car economy. The effects of the 'pioneer spirit' of individual ruggedness is what propagates the car economy or even guns. They are pillars of most rural and even urban thought. So, of course things like high speed transport is relatively foreign and hard for people to get their minds around. When people think of public transport in the U.S., it's usually a place where the mentally ill, the alcoholics, junkies congregate, especially during the nocturne hours. So, there is also the fact at least in urban area that it is not a respectable way to travel. In Portland, the Max is quite popular and is continually to gain ridership. But it really needs to be a lot faster in order to support the growth of people in this area. Portland and the surrounding areas are getting mroe crowded and the roads are not able to cope. Even if you expand the roads, it just puts more people on the roads and you just end up having even more people on the roads, leading to more congestion.
A good rail network will give you more bang for buck on the same set of land. It might be interesting to reclaim some of the roads as high speed rail and see if that gets us anywhere. Sadly, Europe and Japan are ahead because they had a devestating world war that destroyed most of the infrastructure and they were able to get the kind of infrastructure that is scalable. The U.S. did not have that, and it would be very difficult to do what I envision in the first paragraph.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to be making a number of mistakes, including thinking that people serving a market don't have convictions, and that liberals are necessarily young or don't have money. Do you think David Korn's only interest is the check he picks up for writing? Keith Oberman pursued his political mania until it ruined him. Slashdot is often innudated by howls about whatever "outrage" the Koch brothers are claimed to have engaged in while practically nobody acknowledges their spending is dwarfed by that of rich liberals and progressives. Being liberal is a state of mind, not an indicator of either wealth or age.
I'm not sure you've addressed anything I'm even talking about. We're like talking about two completely different things. I made the point that conservatives are a market and that businesses like to cater to them because they are generally older and have money. (they also have more free time) All of those are quite intuitively true. I never talked about spending by liberals or koch brothers or whatever. So I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. They may all be true. I'm just telling you what makes Fox and others successful in a media market.
as in Right wing? or something else?
I think you're making an unintuitive leaps of logic. Your mistake is that you're still defining political buckets for those who are exploiting them. There is no political bucket, it's just business. The conservative demographic is much more likely to open their wallets than liberals because liberals tend to be younger and have less money.
It's content that makes something worthwhile, if you dress it up in fancy "21st century technology", you've only changed the packaging not what people read. Your most valuable resource was those writers and editors.
"The Democrats tend to create social programs, then forget to check up on them to see if they're actually working as intended, and just assume that they are. The Republicans also tend to not check up on them, but complain that they're not working as intended, even if they are."
I don't mind social programs. But they need to be checked. There are a lot of unintended consequences that happen with them and they can both be abused or micromanaged. I tend to prefer giving money to people who know how to do it correctly and from a local perspective. I would totally gut the welfare state and start over.. although not now, too many crazy conservatives around. It's important that we have a very large middle class while making sure people don't slip into poverty. If we want to have healthy small businesses or even be able to create small businesses that is where it needs to be. We need to de-emphasize large corporations.
That's because we've created a bunker mentality on both sides. One side has gotten so extreme that every one of these things has turned into a war of ideas. The media has encouraged this because it drives people to watch and watch their ads. The media is neither right wing or left wing, they are simply people interested in peddling fear, uncertainty and doubt as a business model. That is exactly what Fox is. They picked the conservative part because you know that's where the money is.
Stop watching 24 hour news, watch your local ones. Stop giving money to large corporations using your eyeballs. Hell, just quit watching cable, that's another place they are fleecing. This entire country is wired to watch television. I wonder with all those millions of dollars of political buy ads, that are put on the TV, where does all that money go?
Again, conservatives are loud and they have money.
I don't listen to NPR for the political commentary. Mostly stuff like Car Talk, and some of the insightful pieces for instance on Katrina or things that national media have stopped focusing on.
Fleecing conservatives of their money is in fact a market. Those guys will open up their wallets if you say all the right sweet things. Even better they'll go around repeating it. There is an entire eco-system in right wing political systems doing this. Since a lot of these people trend to being older, they are both susceptible to fear and they have money. The young, can also be susceptible, but they don't have money so there is no market.
They need to create an index for conservatives.
Naw someone took the rap, (e.g. Jesus part deux, electric bugaloo)
It won't work out that way in the U.S. Plus central control of the company is still in the hands of the Japanese.. You won't see Sony outsourcing its CEO to an American for instance.
That's because you guys managed to get Harper re-elected again.. You need to make sure he is gone next election.
Indeed. Obama is more of an old time republican (which is fine, the whole country moved right) and not any kind of socialist. People just use that label to mean "bad", it literally has no meaning anymore. It doesn't refer to socialism at all because people don't really know what socialism is or what it stands for. Hell, I doubt they even know what capitalism is.
Gosh, I must have ended up in the abuse department..
I await when CEO jobs can also be outsourced 'elsewhere' since I'm sure they can be paid a lot less for their leadership skills than they can in the U.S. Funny, outsourcing is only for the lower ranks but not in higher management. Are you saying that someone from these other countries can't do as good a job as a U.S. corporate management team?
When will start putting together planets in the solar federation?
Yet they exist. Almost like a religion.
Price of oil is coming down.. speculation finally breaking up. Plus, Saudi is getting pressure from fracking and is trying to get gas cheaper. I think it is too late. I think we are going to see an ideological split away from oil for transportation.
Hah, I know. It seems people seem to forrget that there are things exploding inside that ICE engine.
this is happening quite well. I have an electric car, and I'm able to go to the coast and get a nice charge. If I had a damn chademo adapter I can get my car up to what is needed in less than 30 minutes. 30 minutes is absolutely perfect for a family to checkout the local restaurant, shop or whatever. It is a great magic marketing number and that means that you are a captured audience.. that alone should be enough for business to do the same thing and put high speed chargers in their place of business.
Congestion. At least in teh urban areas, having a public transport system is really really fast, will get cars off the road. It will also generate density around each of the stations. Greater density is actually excellent for the free market, as people congregate around these areas. Great choice, greater everything. The problem is that most people believe in the car economy. The effects of the 'pioneer spirit' of individual ruggedness is what propagates the car economy or even guns. They are pillars of most rural and even urban thought. So, of course things like high speed transport is relatively foreign and hard for people to get their minds around. When people think of public transport in the U.S., it's usually a place where the mentally ill, the alcoholics, junkies congregate, especially during the nocturne hours. So, there is also the fact at least in urban area that it is not a respectable way to travel. In Portland, the Max is quite popular and is continually to gain ridership. But it really needs to be a lot faster in order to support the growth of people in this area. Portland and the surrounding areas are getting mroe crowded and the roads are not able to cope. Even if you expand the roads, it just puts more people on the roads and you just end up having even more people on the roads, leading to more congestion.
A good rail network will give you more bang for buck on the same set of land. It might be interesting to reclaim some of the roads as high speed rail and see if that gets us anywhere. Sadly, Europe and Japan are ahead because they had a devestating world war that destroyed most of the infrastructure and they were able to get the kind of infrastructure that is scalable. The U.S. did not have that, and it would be very difficult to do what I envision in the first paragraph.
We pay less taxes, so nyah! That trumps everything!
Thanks, jedidiah!
Make sure you also write a manifesto and grow your beard.
I want a home with secret passage ways.