My point doesn't rest on the fact that climate change is the sole cause of extinction. As long as we've got evidence that it is a nontrivial contributor and/or will become a nontrivial contributor in the future, we should take reasonable precautions against it.
At our current rate, we are already on track to wipe out an immense amount of life on Earth, which is hugely concerning all on its own, even disregarding the possible catastrophic ecosystem collapse that could impact human food supply. We know from the geologic record that climate change CAN cause mass extinction, although our information is limited - rate of change, absolute beginning and ending values, size of change would all be expected to influence the outcome. Many mechanisms of this extinction are well understood - ocean acidification for starters. So what's the reasonable thing to do in the face of large uncertainty and huge downside risk?
I don't see how you can look at this evidence and conclude that everything is fine and we should continue operations as normal with no regard for the consequences. I don't have any particular pet policies, just things that I think would be effective and economically practical - like a carbon tax, or a streamlined nuclear power approval process. If there is another, more effective way to reduce carbon emissions, I would advocate for it. I would also advocate for policies to reduce extinctions from other causes.
I have only gone 7 miles so far, so obviously I cannot be on a 100 mile journey. Despite the fact that I am traveling at 60MPH and my foot is on the gas pedal. These arguments are getting so weak, you must be trolling.
Tell me, what do you THINK a mass extinction event would look like? Do we start to get concerned after 10, 20, 50, 75% of species are gone in a period of time that amounts to a single instant, geologically speaking? Or should we maybe consider the rate of extinction, which shows us in the running for the very worst event ever?
Within each category of products that can be substituted for each other, products generally already emit the minimum amount of carbon needed to produce a product in that category.
Where do you come up with this stuff? There is zero evidence for this, and it's trivially easy to provide a counterexample: a beer brewed with coal power vs a beer brewed with solar power. Apply the same concept to any item that uses energy in its manufacture... I'm sure you can come up with a few.
We don't really depend on the ecosystem that much. I like nature and would hate to see much of it destroyed, but we don't really depend on it any more.
I honestly can't tell if you're joking. Without pollinating insects, agricultural production would come to a screeching halt. Without the complex ecosystems of microorganisms that keep the soil viable, none of our food would grow. It's an incredibly complex system, and there are many potential points of failure.
I don't know if you've spent much time learning about agriculture or even trying to grow something yourself, but the basic idea is still just as it's always been - put some stuff in the ground, add some water, and let nature do its thing. Hope that the environment cooperates so that your entire crop isn't wiped out by hail / flood / drought / pest infestation / some weird fungus. It's not nearly as thought out or sophisticated as you would think. We are still very much dependent on nature.
Except of course, that pesky, nasty science which studied the plants for greenhouse environments and made it clear that optimal concentrations of CO2 for optimal growth are much, MUCH higher than what we currently have in the air.
Having more CO2 doesn't help you if you don't have enough water, or nutrients, or generally fertile soil to support that additional growth. Production is limited by your most scarce resource, and water supplies worldwide are already getting stretched thin.
You actually make the patently absurd claim that we are somehow responsible for managing the entire system to prevent the natural progression of DNA based life.
If we aren't responsible for keeping our environment survivable for us, who is? It has nothing to do with controlling evolution, it's about not destroying the ridiculously abundant world that's been handed to us. Who's to say that getting our act together and being stewards of the planet isn't the "natural progression of DNA based life" anyway? This particular DNA-based lifeform is saying that you need to wake the fuck up and take some personal responsibility. I for one don't believe I should shit in my own bed and then expect it to be magically cleaned up for me. We ARE responsible for our messes, and our actions ARE having a massive impact on the future that we're leaving to our kids and grandkids - apparently it's no longer fashionable to give a shit about anyone except ourselves? I reject this bullshit consumerist attitude that personal convenience and primate status displays are the best and highest aspiration in life, and to hell with the consequences. We need to build a future that we can be proud of, and that our kids and grandkids will be proud of.
Wrong. If you add carbon taxes, products with MORE carbon will increase more in price
Yes, which is pretty much all products, since energy and labor are the two major inputs to almost all products.
Pretty much all products have MORE carbon than... pretty much all products?
Reading comprehension... try it. Some products use more carbon than others. High-carbon products will be more expensive than low-carbon products (to a greater extent than they already are) if a carbon tax is instituted.
Read your own reference: our current extinction event doesn't meet the definition of a "mass extinction".
We've ALREADY lost about 7% of species. Hundreds more species go extinct every year, possibly thousands. If that continues for a thousand years (a geological eyeblink), then we will have surpassed the Permian extinction, the worst event in the planet's history.
"Played a role" is irrelevant, the question is whether climate change causes mass extinctions. Since there have been many instances of rapid climate change without mass extinctions (or even significant extinctions), it's clear that climate change doesn't cause mass extinctions.
That's similar to saying that there have been many asteroid strikes and volcanic eruptions that didn't cause extinction. While technically true, it's completely misleading - large enough asteroid strikes and periods of massive volcanic activity HAVE caused extreme extinction events. And so has climate change. It's in the goddamn article I already linked.
The whole "think of the other species" narrative is a mix of ignorance of how animal husbandry and edible plant selective breeding worked combined with primeval nature worship.
Just because we've been able to make vast improvements in agricultural yields in the past doesn't mean that we'll continue to be able to do so in the future, and it doesn't mean that we will be able to survive something like a sudden ecosystem collapse. For one, the yields of technological progress are not infinite - food production is still constrained by the laws of physics, and most of the low-hanging fruit of agricultural productivity has already been realized. We can't count on technology to save us from gross mismanagement or massive ecosystem upheaval. If we had a die off of critical pollinators, or disruption of organisms involved with soil fertility, or if permanent climate-related drought causes all our fertile farmland to become unproductive desert, we could easily find ourselves in an untenable scenario. Soil doesn't improve overnight, and the soil that is freed up by climate change may not have the fertility or local infrastructure to replace the farm land that gets lost.
The permian extinction killed off ~95% of all species. Some estimates indicate that we've ALREADY killed off as many as 7%, and I really don't expect that curve to be linear - there's every chance that the relationship between temperature increase and extinction rate is closer to quadratic or exponential. I highly doubt that an Earth with 95% of its species gone will be livable for apex predators like ourselves, which are usually some of the most sensitive species to ecosystem disruption. Even if we are - what kind of world is that to live in?
We cannot afford to gamble on such a complex and unpredictable system, especially when the consequences are so dire. The best evidence we have suggests outcomes ranging from Pretty Bad to Apocalyptic, and we need to respond accordingly.
Now, you raise a different question, namely whether a rapid rise in global average temperatures by 4-5C would lead to mass extinctions. There have been many such temperature increases in the past, and they were not usually associated with mass extinctions. Mass extinctions are extremely rare and seem to require multiple factors to coincide.
We have limited information about the cause of past extinction events, but we've got some good evidence that climate change played a major role in some of them. When the ocean heats up and stores more CO2, it gets more acidic, and shells get weaker for many sea creatures. That can lead to extinctions at the bottom of the food chain, and those can quickly propagate through the rest of the ecosystem. In the case of the Permian extinction, 96% of all species went extinct. And we've got some good evidence to suggest that climate change was a major contributor to that event.
We definitely have the ability to live on a planet that's 5C hotter. But it will require global dislocations of nearly all of the population which will disrupt commerce, disrupt agriculture and cause famines, provoke wars... it will be hellish
Just because we CAN doesn't mean that we WILL. Remember, we as a species have the technological capability to wipe ourselves out with nuclear weapons, and the kind of social disruption we're talking about will challenge existing power structures - wars and conflict (more than we already have) are almost inevitable in this scenario.
Even then, though, avoiding extinction for ourselves is hardly a goal to get excited about. We're already seeing species go extinct at a rate that qualifies the present time as one of the worst extinction events in the planet's history... if we're looking at another Permian extinction event, as some evidence suggests, our descendants will live in a world where 90% of the species we know today are gone. Who knows if that decimated ecosystem will be able to support a top predator like homo sapiens?
We're not currently seeing mass extinctions, but such a severe transition in climate could certainly trigger such an extinction.
Overall there's a lot of good content in this post, except for this statement. We ARE in fact in the middle of a mass extinction event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Some estimates suggest that 7% of all species have ALREADY gone extinct, and the pace of extinction is only increasing. It's easy to miss that we're in the middle of one because extinction events are defined on geological timescales - 1000 years is an eyeblink, geologically speaking. If we don't get things under control, though, we may end up becoming the worst extinction event in the planet's history.
And if you impose additional carbon taxes, it really changes very little, since pretty much all prices for all products will go up.
Wrong. If you add carbon taxes, products with MORE carbon will increase more in price, and there will be a bigger market incentive to produce and buy low-carbon products. If you believe in free market economics, a carbon tax (without loopholes) is the best way to deal with this.
You imagine, as a single example, that LeBron James will do what he does for $58K/yr, just like thetwenty-something kid who claims he can't work and gets an identical $58K/yr?
Will Apple engineers work for the exact same wages as the barista in the company coffee shop?
You picked some kind of bad examples. Being great at anything, be it basketball or engineering, means that you are passionate about it. Being able to hold a top role in the field is a reward all its own, so I think even if the compensation was considerably less for basketball players as a whole, LeBron would still be playing. And many engineers would continue to be engineers even if they weren't as well compensated. For me, personally, if money was no object, I might work on different projects, or I might teach some engineering courses, but I sure as hell would continue writing software and designing things, as evidenced by the fact that I (and many engineers I know) spend free time doing just that already.
Overall, though, I don't think the OP's point was that we should lower salaries to $58k - it was to explain just how much wealth is present in our society. We can make sure that nobody earns less than $12k, and still have tons of money left.
Actually my argument was that even with a UBI we'd still have a lot of people in distress and would probably need to deal with that.
There will always be addicts, irresponsible people, the mentally ill, and other folks who end up homeless regardless of financial policy. So what? Your defense amounts to saying "things will never be perfect, so why try?".
It's unreasonable to compare a given policy's impact to perfection. Instead we should compare it to existing policies, or other proposed policies. UBI gets rid of a couple major problems: 1. People being homeless through no fault of their own. 2. Large and complicated welfare allocation rules, and large bureaucracies to ensure compliance to those rules. 3. The disincentive for people on welfare to work.
There will still be homeless people, but frugal, responsible, mentally healthy folks will have a significant safety net to prevent that from happening. A huge amount of convoluted bureaucracy will be removed. Many people who are currently "stuck" on welfare because working a job would cause them to have less money will be freed up to rejoin the workforce. So while UBI doesn't instantly create a utopian society, it's still a massive policy improvement compared to the existing system.
At the end of the day, that's why capitalism (and socialism, and feudalism, and all other -isms exist). One says that financial self-interest is the best way to encourage contribution, some say that community responsibility is the best way, totalitarians would say that fear of death and/or other punishment from the state is the best way.
Ultimately, capitalists contend that the size of your income and your net worth are good approximations of that net contribution to society that you speak of. There are, obviously, many problems with the idea that financial success is completely equivalent to social contributions - the concept totally fails to account for things like open source software, which are massive contributions to productivity but typically are not financially lucrative.
Still, of all the options that have been tried, capitalism with a good helping of social obligation seems to be a winning combo historically. That said, each system provides different levels and mechanisms of stability, equality, and prosperity, along with differing failure modes. Unfettered capitalism doesn't seem to have a good mechanism for reigning in excess inequality, and inequality seems to be inversely correlated with stability. Heavily socialized government bureaucracies often don't have a good mechanism for limiting government growth, or getting rid of ineffective/inefficient laws, agencies, or policies. Top-down governance (as typically implemented by communists) seems to be much less flexible and effective than bottom-up governance (associated with democracies and free market economics).
I for one would love to see some new social models - we're in a new era of productivity, and there's no reason to think that the same old resource allocation approaches will continue to be optimal. Unfortunately, that type of change has typically involved massive social upheaval, along the lines of wars and revolutions... and that's not something I look forward to.
I'm not going to rationally turn on the lights and try to have a discussion with a criminal who has just broken into my home to ascertain what their intentions are.
Just because it's legal doesn't make it right. In addition to the fact that this is morally indefensible behavior (they entered my home without permission, therefore murder them!?), this kind of impulsive response has often led to someone mistakenly shooting a friend, family member, or police officer. You should ALWAYS be certain of your target before firing, or even bringing a weapon to bear.
Oh, right...this is CA, where you can't really own a gun much anymore.
You say that as though it would be better if this kid (who is admittedly an idiot) had died. Not every crime is worthy of the death penalty. This kid deserves consequences for his actions, but it would've been an injustice if he got his head blown off for this.
Too bad that totally disagrees with your assertion. You claimed 92% of media supports Democrats. The reality is, from your own goddamn link, 7% of journalists are Republicans, 28% are Democrats, and the vast majority are independent.
It's a fact just a FYI
Your claim: "The media is a propaganda arm for the Democratic party". The facts: "The media" is NOT a monolithic entity. SOME reporters are biased towards Democrats, and SOME reporters are biased towards Republicans. Your own links show this, and agree with the link I posted showing a distribution of biases among media orgs.
Or the reporters who went to John Podesta's house for dinners?
Ooh... spooky. Guess what - I've had dinner with reporters, and I'm not a Republican or a Democrat! Reporters are just humans, and having dinner with someone is not a crime, or proof of bias.
There IS a slight leftward lean among media as a whole, but it is minimal and there are several mainstream (and reputable) media sources with a rightward lean that you can read if you prefer. Instead, Republicans scream "MSM BIAS!"to indiscriminately dismiss any piece of reality that isn't comfortably aligned with their political preferences. It's a war on the press, a war on truth, and a war on the simple idea that facts matter more than opinions. And YOU are defending it.
Democrat supporting media entities (hint: 92% of journos)
Citation needed.
The media and the Democratic party are almost one and the same. At best, the media is a propaganda arm of the Democratic party.
Naked assertion. You've got nothing whatsoever to back this up. Third-party fact checkers and unaffiliated international organizations show that while a completely objective news source doesn't exist, there is a distribution of biases across the political spectrum: https://www.marketwatch.com/st...
If you had an ounce of integrity, you would recognize that the very fact Donna is still around after what she pulled is indicative of a deep level of corruption.
Your link is blocked by my work internet filters (great sign of credibility there...) . That said... what the hell are you talking about? The conversation was about your ridiculous persecution complex with respect to the media - mentioning a Democrat that you feel is corrupt doesn't directly relate. If you were trying to make a point that the media doesn't report on bad behavior by Democrats, a moment of searching has shown plenty of reporting from major media outlets about controversial campaign practices by this lady... so you've once again failed to defend your claim.
Have you tried falsifying your own theory? (Specifically, the theory that media outlets don't call bad Democrats, Democrats?) If you haven't, you aren't really trying to be rational - you're just trying to create a narrative that's intellectually comfortable for you and that won't challenge any of your preferences.
On the other hand, let's take Roy Moore is always labeled with republican. And that type of lie-by-omission has been going on for quite a while.
Bullshit. This may have happened in a couple cases, but the media goes out of their way to rag on liberals when they get the chance because they work hard to try to achieve balanced reporting. That's tough to do because the GOP of late is so consistently stupid and/or evil that journalists have to really dig to find liberal stories that begin to compare.
Example: In ALL of these articles from the "MSM", Al Franken is declared prominently as a Democrat.
Your contention that the media doesn't label bad democrats as democrats is just wrong. The Republican media persecution complex is disgusting. Any evidence that contradicts your worldview is immediately dismissed as a biased product of the "MSM" conspiracy. If you don't want reporting on your politician's misdeeds, don't choose pedophiles, adulterers, and blundering idiots to lead your party.
I used a high-end Sony mirrorless recently, and while it was an improvement on EVFs of the past, it was still very limited compared to the optical viewfinders you'll find on a true full-frame DSLR. You need tremendous resolution to be able to manually focus on the fly, or even to really confirm focus visually. And a magnify button is just a bandaid - you have to choose between seeing the full frame or having enough resolution to confirm focus. And what if your subject isn't centered in the frame?
There ARE situations where seeing exactly what the sensor sees is convenient, but for that, DSLRs already have the problem solved with the back LCD. Overall, the EVF seems to be an inferior solution.
Slashdot Mirror
My point doesn't rest on the fact that climate change is the sole cause of extinction. As long as we've got evidence that it is a nontrivial contributor and/or will become a nontrivial contributor in the future, we should take reasonable precautions against it.
At our current rate, we are already on track to wipe out an immense amount of life on Earth, which is hugely concerning all on its own, even disregarding the possible catastrophic ecosystem collapse that could impact human food supply. We know from the geologic record that climate change CAN cause mass extinction, although our information is limited - rate of change, absolute beginning and ending values, size of change would all be expected to influence the outcome. Many mechanisms of this extinction are well understood - ocean acidification for starters. So what's the reasonable thing to do in the face of large uncertainty and huge downside risk?
I don't see how you can look at this evidence and conclude that everything is fine and we should continue operations as normal with no regard for the consequences. I don't have any particular pet policies, just things that I think would be effective and economically practical - like a carbon tax, or a streamlined nuclear power approval process. If there is another, more effective way to reduce carbon emissions, I would advocate for it. I would also advocate for policies to reduce extinctions from other causes.
So, not a mass extinction.
I have only gone 7 miles so far, so obviously I cannot be on a 100 mile journey. Despite the fact that I am traveling at 60MPH and my foot is on the gas pedal. These arguments are getting so weak, you must be trolling.
Tell me, what do you THINK a mass extinction event would look like? Do we start to get concerned after 10, 20, 50, 75% of species are gone in a period of time that amounts to a single instant, geologically speaking? Or should we maybe consider the rate of extinction, which shows us in the running for the very worst event ever?
Within each category of products that can be substituted for each other, products generally already emit the minimum amount of carbon needed to produce a product in that category.
Where do you come up with this stuff? There is zero evidence for this, and it's trivially easy to provide a counterexample: a beer brewed with coal power vs a beer brewed with solar power. Apply the same concept to any item that uses energy in its manufacture... I'm sure you can come up with a few.
We don't really depend on the ecosystem that much. I like nature and would hate to see much of it destroyed, but we don't really depend on it any more.
I honestly can't tell if you're joking. Without pollinating insects, agricultural production would come to a screeching halt. Without the complex ecosystems of microorganisms that keep the soil viable, none of our food would grow. It's an incredibly complex system, and there are many potential points of failure.
I don't know if you've spent much time learning about agriculture or even trying to grow something yourself, but the basic idea is still just as it's always been - put some stuff in the ground, add some water, and let nature do its thing. Hope that the environment cooperates so that your entire crop isn't wiped out by hail / flood / drought / pest infestation / some weird fungus. It's not nearly as thought out or sophisticated as you would think. We are still very much dependent on nature.
Except of course, that pesky, nasty science which studied the plants for greenhouse environments and made it clear that optimal concentrations of CO2 for optimal growth are much, MUCH higher than what we currently have in the air.
Having more CO2 doesn't help you if you don't have enough water, or nutrients, or generally fertile soil to support that additional growth. Production is limited by your most scarce resource, and water supplies worldwide are already getting stretched thin.
You actually make the patently absurd claim that we are somehow responsible for managing the entire system to prevent the natural progression of DNA based life.
If we aren't responsible for keeping our environment survivable for us, who is? It has nothing to do with controlling evolution, it's about not destroying the ridiculously abundant world that's been handed to us. Who's to say that getting our act together and being stewards of the planet isn't the "natural progression of DNA based life" anyway? This particular DNA-based lifeform is saying that you need to wake the fuck up and take some personal responsibility. I for one don't believe I should shit in my own bed and then expect it to be magically cleaned up for me. We ARE responsible for our messes, and our actions ARE having a massive impact on the future that we're leaving to our kids and grandkids - apparently it's no longer fashionable to give a shit about anyone except ourselves? I reject this bullshit consumerist attitude that personal convenience and primate status displays are the best and highest aspiration in life, and to hell with the consequences. We need to build a future that we can be proud of, and that our kids and grandkids will be proud of.
Yes, which is pretty much all products, since energy and labor are the two major inputs to almost all products.
Pretty much all products have MORE carbon than... pretty much all products?
Reading comprehension... try it. Some products use more carbon than others. High-carbon products will be more expensive than low-carbon products (to a greater extent than they already are) if a carbon tax is instituted.
Read your own reference: our current extinction event doesn't meet the definition of a "mass extinction".
We've ALREADY lost about 7% of species. Hundreds more species go extinct every year, possibly thousands. If that continues for a thousand years (a geological eyeblink), then we will have surpassed the Permian extinction, the worst event in the planet's history.
"Played a role" is irrelevant, the question is whether climate change causes mass extinctions. Since there have been many instances of rapid climate change without mass extinctions (or even significant extinctions), it's clear that climate change doesn't cause mass extinctions.
That's similar to saying that there have been many asteroid strikes and volcanic eruptions that didn't cause extinction. While technically true, it's completely misleading - large enough asteroid strikes and periods of massive volcanic activity HAVE caused extreme extinction events. And so has climate change. It's in the goddamn article I already linked.
The whole "think of the other species" narrative is a mix of ignorance of how animal husbandry and edible plant selective breeding worked combined with primeval nature worship.
Just because we've been able to make vast improvements in agricultural yields in the past doesn't mean that we'll continue to be able to do so in the future, and it doesn't mean that we will be able to survive something like a sudden ecosystem collapse. For one, the yields of technological progress are not infinite - food production is still constrained by the laws of physics, and most of the low-hanging fruit of agricultural productivity has already been realized. We can't count on technology to save us from gross mismanagement or massive ecosystem upheaval. If we had a die off of critical pollinators, or disruption of organisms involved with soil fertility, or if permanent climate-related drought causes all our fertile farmland to become unproductive desert, we could easily find ourselves in an untenable scenario. Soil doesn't improve overnight, and the soil that is freed up by climate change may not have the fertility or local infrastructure to replace the farm land that gets lost.
The permian extinction killed off ~95% of all species. Some estimates indicate that we've ALREADY killed off as many as 7%, and I really don't expect that curve to be linear - there's every chance that the relationship between temperature increase and extinction rate is closer to quadratic or exponential. I highly doubt that an Earth with 95% of its species gone will be livable for apex predators like ourselves, which are usually some of the most sensitive species to ecosystem disruption. Even if we are - what kind of world is that to live in?
We cannot afford to gamble on such a complex and unpredictable system, especially when the consequences are so dire. The best evidence we have suggests outcomes ranging from Pretty Bad to Apocalyptic, and we need to respond accordingly.
Now, you raise a different question, namely whether a rapid rise in global average temperatures by 4-5C would lead to mass extinctions. There have been many such temperature increases in the past, and they were not usually associated with mass extinctions. Mass extinctions are extremely rare and seem to require multiple factors to coincide.
We ARE currently living in the middle of a mass extinction event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
We have limited information about the cause of past extinction events, but we've got some good evidence that climate change played a major role in some of them. When the ocean heats up and stores more CO2, it gets more acidic, and shells get weaker for many sea creatures. That can lead to extinctions at the bottom of the food chain, and those can quickly propagate through the rest of the ecosystem. In the case of the Permian extinction, 96% of all species went extinct. And we've got some good evidence to suggest that climate change was a major contributor to that event.
Summary: http://www.iflscience.com/envi...
Some real science: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
We definitely have the ability to live on a planet that's 5C hotter. But it will require global dislocations of nearly all of the population which will disrupt commerce, disrupt agriculture and cause famines, provoke wars... it will be hellish
Just because we CAN doesn't mean that we WILL. Remember, we as a species have the technological capability to wipe ourselves out with nuclear weapons, and the kind of social disruption we're talking about will challenge existing power structures - wars and conflict (more than we already have) are almost inevitable in this scenario.
Even then, though, avoiding extinction for ourselves is hardly a goal to get excited about. We're already seeing species go extinct at a rate that qualifies the present time as one of the worst extinction events in the planet's history... if we're looking at another Permian extinction event, as some evidence suggests, our descendants will live in a world where 90% of the species we know today are gone. Who knows if that decimated ecosystem will be able to support a top predator like homo sapiens?
We're not currently seeing mass extinctions, but such a severe transition in climate could certainly trigger such an extinction.
Overall there's a lot of good content in this post, except for this statement. We ARE in fact in the middle of a mass extinction event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Some estimates suggest that 7% of all species have ALREADY gone extinct, and the pace of extinction is only increasing. It's easy to miss that we're in the middle of one because extinction events are defined on geological timescales - 1000 years is an eyeblink, geologically speaking. If we don't get things under control, though, we may end up becoming the worst extinction event in the planet's history.
And if you impose additional carbon taxes, it really changes very little, since pretty much all prices for all products will go up.
Wrong. If you add carbon taxes, products with MORE carbon will increase more in price, and there will be a bigger market incentive to produce and buy low-carbon products. If you believe in free market economics, a carbon tax (without loopholes) is the best way to deal with this.
If cramming code with bugs increases security, the code I write is incredibly secure.
Do you have any idea how stupid this sounds?
You imagine, as a single example, that LeBron James will do what he does for $58K/yr, just like thetwenty-something kid who claims he can't work and gets an identical $58K/yr?
Will Apple engineers work for the exact same wages as the barista in the company coffee shop?
You picked some kind of bad examples. Being great at anything, be it basketball or engineering, means that you are passionate about it. Being able to hold a top role in the field is a reward all its own, so I think even if the compensation was considerably less for basketball players as a whole, LeBron would still be playing. And many engineers would continue to be engineers even if they weren't as well compensated. For me, personally, if money was no object, I might work on different projects, or I might teach some engineering courses, but I sure as hell would continue writing software and designing things, as evidenced by the fact that I (and many engineers I know) spend free time doing just that already.
Overall, though, I don't think the OP's point was that we should lower salaries to $58k - it was to explain just how much wealth is present in our society. We can make sure that nobody earns less than $12k, and still have tons of money left.
Actually my argument was that even with a UBI we'd still have a lot of people in distress and would probably need to deal with that.
There will always be addicts, irresponsible people, the mentally ill, and other folks who end up homeless regardless of financial policy. So what? Your defense amounts to saying "things will never be perfect, so why try?".
It's unreasonable to compare a given policy's impact to perfection. Instead we should compare it to existing policies, or other proposed policies. UBI gets rid of a couple major problems: 1. People being homeless through no fault of their own. 2. Large and complicated welfare allocation rules, and large bureaucracies to ensure compliance to those rules. 3. The disincentive for people on welfare to work.
There will still be homeless people, but frugal, responsible, mentally healthy folks will have a significant safety net to prevent that from happening. A huge amount of convoluted bureaucracy will be removed. Many people who are currently "stuck" on welfare because working a job would cause them to have less money will be freed up to rejoin the workforce. So while UBI doesn't instantly create a utopian society, it's still a massive policy improvement compared to the existing system.
At the end of the day, that's why capitalism (and socialism, and feudalism, and all other -isms exist). One says that financial self-interest is the best way to encourage contribution, some say that community responsibility is the best way, totalitarians would say that fear of death and/or other punishment from the state is the best way.
Ultimately, capitalists contend that the size of your income and your net worth are good approximations of that net contribution to society that you speak of. There are, obviously, many problems with the idea that financial success is completely equivalent to social contributions - the concept totally fails to account for things like open source software, which are massive contributions to productivity but typically are not financially lucrative.
Still, of all the options that have been tried, capitalism with a good helping of social obligation seems to be a winning combo historically. That said, each system provides different levels and mechanisms of stability, equality, and prosperity, along with differing failure modes. Unfettered capitalism doesn't seem to have a good mechanism for reigning in excess inequality, and inequality seems to be inversely correlated with stability. Heavily socialized government bureaucracies often don't have a good mechanism for limiting government growth, or getting rid of ineffective/inefficient laws, agencies, or policies. Top-down governance (as typically implemented by communists) seems to be much less flexible and effective than bottom-up governance (associated with democracies and free market economics).
I for one would love to see some new social models - we're in a new era of productivity, and there's no reason to think that the same old resource allocation approaches will continue to be optimal. Unfortunately, that type of change has typically involved massive social upheaval, along the lines of wars and revolutions... and that's not something I look forward to.
Kid guilty of minor crime dies needlessly? If that isn't injustice, what is?
I'm not going to rationally turn on the lights and try to have a discussion with a criminal who has just broken into my home to ascertain what their intentions are.
Just because it's legal doesn't make it right. In addition to the fact that this is morally indefensible behavior (they entered my home without permission, therefore murder them!?), this kind of impulsive response has often led to someone mistakenly shooting a friend, family member, or police officer. You should ALWAYS be certain of your target before firing, or even bringing a weapon to bear.
Citations:
https://www.thetrace.org/2018/...
http://www.orlandosentinel.com...
https://www.vibe.com/2017/04/d...
....to get shot.
Oh, right...this is CA, where you can't really own a gun much anymore.
You say that as though it would be better if this kid (who is admittedly an idiot) had died. Not every crime is worthy of the death penalty. This kid deserves consequences for his actions, but it would've been an injustice if he got his head blown off for this.
Citation needed.
Given.
Too bad that totally disagrees with your assertion. You claimed 92% of media supports Democrats. The reality is, from your own goddamn link, 7% of journalists are Republicans, 28% are Democrats, and the vast majority are independent.
It's a fact just a FYI
Your claim: "The media is a propaganda arm for the Democratic party". The facts: "The media" is NOT a monolithic entity. SOME reporters are biased towards Democrats, and SOME reporters are biased towards Republicans. Your own links show this, and agree with the link I posted showing a distribution of biases among media orgs.
Or the reporters who went to John Podesta's house for dinners?
Ooh... spooky. Guess what - I've had dinner with reporters, and I'm not a Republican or a Democrat! Reporters are just humans, and having dinner with someone is not a crime, or proof of bias.
There IS a slight leftward lean among media as a whole, but it is minimal and there are several mainstream (and reputable) media sources with a rightward lean that you can read if you prefer. Instead, Republicans scream "MSM BIAS!"to indiscriminately dismiss any piece of reality that isn't comfortably aligned with their political preferences. It's a war on the press, a war on truth, and a war on the simple idea that facts matter more than opinions. And YOU are defending it.
I think slashdot ate them as part of the "undo moderation" prompt.
Here:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politi...
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/0...
https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/16...
Also, what's "ironic" about broken links in this context? Are you sure you understand the word?
Democrat supporting media entities (hint: 92% of journos)
Citation needed.
The media and the Democratic party are almost one and the same. At best, the media is a propaganda arm of the Democratic party.
Naked assertion. You've got nothing whatsoever to back this up. Third-party fact checkers and unaffiliated international organizations show that while a completely objective news source doesn't exist, there is a distribution of biases across the political spectrum: https://www.marketwatch.com/st...
If you had an ounce of integrity, you would recognize that the very fact Donna is still around after what she pulled is indicative of a deep level of corruption.
Your link is blocked by my work internet filters (great sign of credibility there...) . That said... what the hell are you talking about? The conversation was about your ridiculous persecution complex with respect to the media - mentioning a Democrat that you feel is corrupt doesn't directly relate. If you were trying to make a point that the media doesn't report on bad behavior by Democrats, a moment of searching has shown plenty of reporting from major media outlets about controversial campaign practices by this lady... so you've once again failed to defend your claim.
As I replied to GP: Bullshit.
Have you tried falsifying your own theory? (Specifically, the theory that media outlets don't call bad Democrats, Democrats?) If you haven't, you aren't really trying to be rational - you're just trying to create a narrative that's intellectually comfortable for you and that won't challenge any of your preferences.
3 counterexamples that show you're wrong, from 10 seconds of googling:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politi... [nbcnews.com]
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/0... [cnbc.com]
https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/16... [cnn.com]
On the other hand, let's take Roy Moore is always labeled with republican. And that type of lie-by-omission has been going on for quite a while.
Bullshit. This may have happened in a couple cases, but the media goes out of their way to rag on liberals when they get the chance because they work hard to try to achieve balanced reporting. That's tough to do because the GOP of late is so consistently stupid and/or evil that journalists have to really dig to find liberal stories that begin to compare.
Example:
In ALL of these articles from the "MSM", Al Franken is declared prominently as a Democrat.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politi...
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/0...
https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/16...
Your contention that the media doesn't label bad democrats as democrats is just wrong. The Republican media persecution complex is disgusting. Any evidence that contradicts your worldview is immediately dismissed as a biased product of the "MSM" conspiracy. If you don't want reporting on your politician's misdeeds, don't choose pedophiles, adulterers, and blundering idiots to lead your party.
I used a high-end Sony mirrorless recently, and while it was an improvement on EVFs of the past, it was still very limited compared to the optical viewfinders you'll find on a true full-frame DSLR. You need tremendous resolution to be able to manually focus on the fly, or even to really confirm focus visually. And a magnify button is just a bandaid - you have to choose between seeing the full frame or having enough resolution to confirm focus. And what if your subject isn't centered in the frame?
There ARE situations where seeing exactly what the sensor sees is convenient, but for that, DSLRs already have the problem solved with the back LCD. Overall, the EVF seems to be an inferior solution.