For anybody who is so strapped for cash that the cost is a deciding factor, they're better off playing games on a previous-gen system they got at a pawn shop. Graphics, ease of use, versatility, battery life, branding -- none of those things actually matter.
If cost is the deciding factor, PC wins hands down. You'll need a computer for school or work anyways*, so the hardware is already there**. As for the games, there are lot's of cheap ones on Steam during a sale. Then there's GoG with lots of classics at $1-2 each. Of course, piracy is always an option too. I doubt even the cheapest previous-gen console can beat $0.
* I've never tried to make presentations or write essays on a console, but I imagine it's rather tedious. ** Most games don't need an expensive PC. Integrated graphics works just fine for many popular games.
Copyright legislations are applied everywhere (like it or not) except online.
That's just wrong. The law might exist everywhere in theory, but in practice nobody bothers to enforce it.
I've not heard of any pen maker that verifies whether the pen they sold will be used to copy a book. Neither does printer or camera makers. In fact, I even recall a lot of CD, DVD and Video Cassette piracy before BitTorrent became a thing.
If anything, laws are better enforced now. Copyrighted content on YouTube has a much bigger chance of being taken down than DVDs passed to friends.
I used many Apple chargers and they are crap. Every once in a while they'd just stop charging for no reason. I've not had that happen to any other charger that came from the manufacturer of the device.
The bigger problem is management. Fake reviews makes Amazon money, because a bunch of people will be fooled into buying things they think will be great. Who's going to staff a project that, in the short term, harms the bottom line?
The simpler solution would seem to be one-way drop-doors like you find in mailboxes. The package deliveryman and just drop the package inside, and it'll fall into your garage or (for an apartment) a holding room.
That would require infrastructure changes, which wouldn't work in crowded locations. It's also expensive, ugly and limited in size.
So there's no simple one-shot solution to catching the crooks. You'd be entering a protracted arms race, where each side will try to one-up each other to catch / avoid being caught.
Yes there is. Simply booby-trap the boxes to go off when someone tries to move them. It can be done with a Raspberry Pi and an accelerometer, or just some strings glued to the porch if you're into low-tech. If they're going to steal the box, they can't get around moving it.
That's a non-starter. I'm not going to drive 30 minutes to pick up a package if it cost me more in gas, tolls and parking than simply having it shipped to my house (ignoring free shipping).
Are the wages comparable given there are labor laws in the EU with teeth? It's still cheap labor if you're asking for twice as many work hours for the same wage.
I was able to get 8 hours of productive time with an hour-long nap in between. I haven't tried doing 12 hours with 2 naps, though that might be possible.
I'll bet that doesn't fly at these 996 companies though.
You didn't refute GP's point. If fiction is not predictive as you say, then there's no reason to use them for prediction. This includes learning "lessons" from those predictions.
Read your own damn link. They don't get federal benefits until they've lived in the US as a legal permanent resident for 5 years. That's the same requirement as getting citizenship.
Undocumented immigrants may be eligible for a handful of benefits that are deemed necessary to protect life or guarantee safety in dire situations, such as emergency Medicaid, access to treatment in hospital emergency rooms, or access to healthcare and nutrition programs under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
That's not welfare. Even tourists get that. Even you get that if you got injured in another country, even in a lot of third world countries. I'll give you WIC, but at $5.3 billion, most of it going to citizens, it's not relevant to the discussion.
So then let's compare Helsinki and Los Angeles, the two largest cities. We find that Los Angeles is more expensive than Helsinki. Again, the facts are that if you do UBI in the US, you'll need to spend a lot more to have "parity" with this experiment. For the LA/Helsinki comparison, it would be about 35% more - so about $1000 per month to equalize the data.
What's wrong with Jackson, MS? Too cheap? There's even cheaper cities in the US, and even more cheap small towns. Also, LA is a lot smaller than NY.
If you wanted a cherrypicked city, you should've picked Menlo Park. UBI would have to be in the $10k / month range to support someone living next to Mr. Zuckerberg.
And let's say that of the 217 million 18-to-65 adults in the US, only 180 million are citizens. So we need to provide $90 billion a month in UBI. Guaranteed spending. Over $1 trillion annually. That's the plan?
Remember, the Federal Government took in $1.4 trillion total in income taxes in 2018. So we'll need to up the tax rates by a solid 80% - meaning your Federal income tax load just about doubled. Ready for that?
So you don't want to cut any existing programs? Seems like you're proposing a doomed-to-fail strawman plan just so you can win an argument.
UBI doesn't go into a black hole. It's subject to income tax. A lot of people would get UBI, but then immediately pay a third of it back in taxes. It's also subject to sales tax when it gets spent, and later on, when the store pays its employees, it's taxed again. You can easily stay revenue neutral by raising taxes just enough that on average nobody is getting any benefit from UBI (yes, the math works, just think about it for a second).
UBI is not magical, it's simply a transfer of spending power from the richest to the poorest. It's just more efficient than existing programs.
That's pretty misleading. They use it twice as often. It doesn't mean they're using twice as much. They also don't qualify for federal benefits until they're almost able to get citizenship, so it's not relevant to this discussion.
Cost of living is much higher in Finland than most of the US.
You need to compare different states. CoL in Mississippi is a lot lower than California. Since we're talking about federal UBI, nothing prevents those who find it too difficult to live on $500 / mo. in San Francisco from moving to Jackson.
Not to mention you completely excluded state welfare spending, which if converted to UBI as well would significantly reduce the need to spend it at the federal level.
So we're going to spend more at the State levels? Or is UBI to replace all existing welfare plans?
We already spend on welfare at the state level. That spending can be used by each individual to supplement UBI from the federal level to reach a livable income. E.g. if states already provides $200 / month in food assistance, then the federal government only needs to spend $300 for a combined total of $500.
Any study where the experimental group gets given *more* money is going to show some kind of positive effect. A tax cut would have done the same thing.
Not a tax cut, those people were already unemployed.
Honestly, I think this comparison is a sham until you agree to provide for them for life.
There's no guarantee it's for life even if the government super duper promises it with a cherry on top. How many pension funds are still in the black? Governments come and go, policy even more so.
I mean I could do things for one or three or five or ten years. But if that'd totally fuck my chances of ever getting back in a job as an old geezer with a ten year gap in his CV
You'd have to first endure living on the $500 or whatever it is you'd be getting with UBI for that long. Besides, if a lot of people have a 10-year gap in their CV, businesses might need to rethink their hiring strategy to include some refresher training.
There are about 217 million people between the ages of 18 and 65 - UBI recipients.
We're not giving anything to illegal immigrants and visa holders. Maybe not even to permanent residents (though some might naturalize anyways to get the benefit, which is not a bad thing).
Give each of them $630 per month (the equivalent to 560 Euros - as in this experiment)
It's not necessary to spend that much. Cost of living is much higher in Finland than most of the US. Not to mention you completely excluded state welfare spending, which if converted to UBI as well would significantly reduce the need to spend it at the federal level.
Is making sure everyone feels good about themselves (with dubious benefits from that) worth blowing another $1 trillion annually in spending?
Please define "benefit". Keep in mind that all material wealth become useless when you die.
Sweden implemented a very similar -- but not exactly the same -- program back in the 1970s. For practical purposes it was a UBI: if you were not working, you simply got a check from the government, basically no questions asked.
That's not UBI. The "U" means universal, which means you receive it even if you work.
The fake UBI that you described doesn't give anything to working people, which results in perverse incentives. Be a lazy bum and everything's good, but if you put in some effort, the system stops helping you. It actively discourages people from working.
If you hit something unintentionally at any speed (even at 1kph), it is ALWAYS true that you were driving too fast for the conditions. Sometimes the only safe speed is 0.
Actually strictly speaking, 0 is always an unsafe speed. If you were going grocery shopping, at some point you will starve and die because you couldn't reach the store in time.
This might sound like a silly argument, but if any accident is unacceptable, then the only solution is to ban all vehicles, which in the modern age would lead to mass starvation as people would be unable to get to work or acquire daily necessities.
Oranges are an infertile hybrid between mandarin and pomelo. So most oranges out there are propagated by grafting, which means they're actually the same plant. While it's possible to create new orange trees by hybridizing mandarin and pomelo, that's not commonly done.
Slashdot Mirror
For anybody who is so strapped for cash that the cost is a deciding factor, they're better off playing games on a previous-gen system they got at a pawn shop. Graphics, ease of use, versatility, battery life, branding -- none of those things actually matter.
If cost is the deciding factor, PC wins hands down. You'll need a computer for school or work anyways*, so the hardware is already there**. As for the games, there are lot's of cheap ones on Steam during a sale. Then there's GoG with lots of classics at $1-2 each. Of course, piracy is always an option too. I doubt even the cheapest previous-gen console can beat $0.
* I've never tried to make presentations or write essays on a console, but I imagine it's rather tedious.
** Most games don't need an expensive PC. Integrated graphics works just fine for many popular games.
Copyright legislations are applied everywhere (like it or not) except online.
That's just wrong. The law might exist everywhere in theory, but in practice nobody bothers to enforce it.
I've not heard of any pen maker that verifies whether the pen they sold will be used to copy a book. Neither does printer or camera makers. In fact, I even recall a lot of CD, DVD and Video Cassette piracy before BitTorrent became a thing.
If anything, laws are better enforced now. Copyrighted content on YouTube has a much bigger chance of being taken down than DVDs passed to friends.
I imagine Google will happily give 100% of their earnings from showing those snippets to news publishers.
Unfortunately for them, there are no ads on Google News, so that earning is $0.
To be fair, some people are just paying for the RL label. Or more accurately, bragging rights for having paid $400 for an $80 jacket.
I used many Apple chargers and they are crap. Every once in a while they'd just stop charging for no reason. I've not had that happen to any other charger that came from the manufacturer of the device.
The bigger problem is management. Fake reviews makes Amazon money, because a bunch of people will be fooled into buying things they think will be great. Who's going to staff a project that, in the short term, harms the bottom line?
The simpler solution would seem to be one-way drop-doors like you find in mailboxes. The package deliveryman and just drop the package inside, and it'll fall into your garage or (for an apartment) a holding room.
That would require infrastructure changes, which wouldn't work in crowded locations. It's also expensive, ugly and limited in size.
So there's no simple one-shot solution to catching the crooks. You'd be entering a protracted arms race, where each side will try to one-up each other to catch / avoid being caught.
Yes there is. Simply booby-trap the boxes to go off when someone tries to move them. It can be done with a Raspberry Pi and an accelerometer, or just some strings glued to the porch if you're into low-tech. If they're going to steal the box, they can't get around moving it.
That's a non-starter. I'm not going to drive 30 minutes to pick up a package if it cost me more in gas, tolls and parking than simply having it shipped to my house (ignoring free shipping).
Are the wages comparable given there are labor laws in the EU with teeth? It's still cheap labor if you're asking for twice as many work hours for the same wage.
I think they were already infected with socialism back in 1949. They might've developed an immunity.
I was able to get 8 hours of productive time with an hour-long nap in between. I haven't tried doing 12 hours with 2 naps, though that might be possible.
I'll bet that doesn't fly at these 996 companies though.
You didn't refute GP's point. If fiction is not predictive as you say, then there's no reason to use them for prediction. This includes learning "lessons" from those predictions.
False, they do get Federal benefits:
Read your own damn link. They don't get federal benefits until they've lived in the US as a legal permanent resident for 5 years. That's the same requirement as getting citizenship.
Undocumented immigrants may be eligible for a handful of benefits that are deemed necessary to protect life or guarantee safety in dire situations, such as emergency Medicaid, access to treatment in hospital emergency rooms, or access to healthcare and nutrition programs under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
That's not welfare. Even tourists get that. Even you get that if you got injured in another country, even in a lot of third world countries. I'll give you WIC, but at $5.3 billion, most of it going to citizens, it's not relevant to the discussion.
So then let's compare Helsinki and Los Angeles, the two largest cities. We find that Los Angeles is more expensive than Helsinki. Again, the facts are that if you do UBI in the US, you'll need to spend a lot more to have "parity" with this experiment. For the LA/Helsinki comparison, it would be about 35% more - so about $1000 per month to equalize the data.
What's wrong with Jackson, MS? Too cheap? There's even cheaper cities in the US, and even more cheap small towns. Also, LA is a lot smaller than NY.
If you wanted a cherrypicked city, you should've picked Menlo Park. UBI would have to be in the $10k / month range to support someone living next to Mr. Zuckerberg.
And let's say that of the 217 million 18-to-65 adults in the US, only 180 million are citizens. So we need to provide $90 billion a month in UBI. Guaranteed spending. Over $1 trillion annually. That's the plan?
Remember, the Federal Government took in $1.4 trillion total in income taxes in 2018. So we'll need to up the tax rates by a solid 80% - meaning your Federal income tax load just about doubled. Ready for that?
So you don't want to cut any existing programs? Seems like you're proposing a doomed-to-fail strawman plan just so you can win an argument.
UBI doesn't go into a black hole. It's subject to income tax. A lot of people would get UBI, but then immediately pay a third of it back in taxes. It's also subject to sales tax when it gets spent, and later on, when the store pays its employees, it's taxed again. You can easily stay revenue neutral by raising taxes just enough that on average nobody is getting any benefit from UBI (yes, the math works, just think about it for a second).
UBI is not magical, it's simply a transfer of spending power from the richest to the poorest. It's just more efficient than existing programs.
Actually, we do. In fact, immigrant households use nearly twice the benefits as citizens.
That's pretty misleading. They use it twice as often. It doesn't mean they're using twice as much. They also don't qualify for federal benefits until they're almost able to get citizenship, so it's not relevant to this discussion.
Cost of living is much higher in Finland than most of the US.
Actually, the costs are really quite similar.
You need to compare different states. CoL in Mississippi is a lot lower than California. Since we're talking about federal UBI, nothing prevents those who find it too difficult to live on $500 / mo. in San Francisco from moving to Jackson.
Not to mention you completely excluded state welfare spending, which if converted to UBI as well would significantly reduce the need to spend it at the federal level.
So we're going to spend more at the State levels? Or is UBI to replace all existing welfare plans?
We already spend on welfare at the state level. That spending can be used by each individual to supplement UBI from the federal level to reach a livable income. E.g. if states already provides $200 / month in food assistance, then the federal government only needs to spend $300 for a combined total of $500.
You know cities pay way more in taxes than rural areas right?
Any study where the experimental group gets given *more* money is going to show some kind of positive effect. A tax cut would have done the same thing.
Not a tax cut, those people were already unemployed.
Honestly, I think this comparison is a sham until you agree to provide for them for life.
There's no guarantee it's for life even if the government super duper promises it with a cherry on top. How many pension funds are still in the black? Governments come and go, policy even more so.
I mean I could do things for one or three or five or ten years. But if that'd totally fuck my chances of ever getting back in a job as an old geezer with a ten year gap in his CV
You'd have to first endure living on the $500 or whatever it is you'd be getting with UBI for that long. Besides, if a lot of people have a 10-year gap in their CV, businesses might need to rethink their hiring strategy to include some refresher training.
There are about 217 million people between the ages of 18 and 65 - UBI recipients.
We're not giving anything to illegal immigrants and visa holders. Maybe not even to permanent residents (though some might naturalize anyways to get the benefit, which is not a bad thing).
Give each of them $630 per month (the equivalent to 560 Euros - as in this experiment)
It's not necessary to spend that much. Cost of living is much higher in Finland than most of the US. Not to mention you completely excluded state welfare spending, which if converted to UBI as well would significantly reduce the need to spend it at the federal level.
Is making sure everyone feels good about themselves (with dubious benefits from that) worth blowing another $1 trillion annually in spending?
Please define "benefit". Keep in mind that all material wealth become useless when you die.
Sweden implemented a very similar -- but not exactly the same -- program back in the 1970s. For practical purposes it was a UBI: if you were not working, you simply got a check from the government, basically no questions asked.
That's not UBI. The "U" means universal, which means you receive it even if you work.
The fake UBI that you described doesn't give anything to working people, which results in perverse incentives. Be a lazy bum and everything's good, but if you put in some effort, the system stops helping you. It actively discourages people from working.
Not as much as Capitalism that's for sure.
Communism is a reaction to the horrors of being a poor worker under the Capitalist system. It wouldn't exist if Capitalism is all rainbows and ponies.
Even if that number is accurate, it's a lot better than Capitalism.
Public domain has been so thoroughly destroyed that I didn't even realize we have public domain memes until just now, like this one for example.
I could see buying a Porsche or similar mid to high-five figures sports car and never taking it more than five over the speed limit.
That's like buying a video game and only playing through the tutorial.
If you hit something unintentionally at any speed (even at 1kph), it is ALWAYS true that you were driving too fast for the conditions. Sometimes the only safe speed is 0.
Actually strictly speaking, 0 is always an unsafe speed. If you were going grocery shopping, at some point you will starve and die because you couldn't reach the store in time.
This might sound like a silly argument, but if any accident is unacceptable, then the only solution is to ban all vehicles, which in the modern age would lead to mass starvation as people would be unable to get to work or acquire daily necessities.
Oranges are an infertile hybrid between mandarin and pomelo. So most oranges out there are propagated by grafting, which means they're actually the same plant. While it's possible to create new orange trees by hybridizing mandarin and pomelo, that's not commonly done.