so you have to wait for a bad thing to happen first before you will regulate it?
Is this your backwards way of admitting, the things you must fight to prevent has not happened yet — despite hundreds of thousands of Uber/Lyft drivers on the road for years?
Can you look at all of the incidents where underinsured
Not having enough insurance is a potential problem for everyone and everywhere — whether you ride in a car (be it hired, your own, or a friend's), or walking on the street, or cooking a steak. Why must Uber's drivers and passengers be singled-out for concern — and regulations to alleviate it?
Darling, even when evidence is not to your little heart's liking, it is still evidence.
it sure looks like you hate black people, hate universities, hate Obama, hate towns that start their own broadband, and yeah, really hate black people!
Dats right mah man, mi be da racist for sure... Your grammar as wanting, though — in the context like this, the preposition "on" is mandatory: "hate on towns", "hate on Black people!", et cætera.
This is what you mean by hating!
No, actually, it is primarily the name-calling and the ad hominem arguments, that dywolf and yourself are so fond of (for lack of anything else), that I consider hateful.
BTW, given the diligent attention you pay to my posts, are you sure, you don't wish to subscribe to my newsletter?
The "test" is a very simple one. Had the current technology existed, when the existing taxi-regulations were being created, would they have gotten created at all? To me the answer is an obvious "no" — with the information about rides and drivers available to consumers instantly 24x7, there is no need for the governments to "certify" drivers nor to weight in on the "fair" rates.
Consider this hypothetical example — suppose a wonder-pill was created, that eliminated all disease. Would we be seriously considering attempts to ban it out of concerns for unemployed doctors, unused hospitals, or that it can, sometimes, be taken in unsanitary conditions?
having some basic insurance to cover if things go wrong are pretty reasonable
Why must an Uber driver have a different insurance plan from you and me? Any reasons you can come up with are none of the government's concern — they are between the driver and his insurance company.
hard to think that having cheaper car services is such a compellingly necessary service that it can morally or ethically justify ignoring laws
it's because the town doesn't want to pay obscene 90+% profit margins
The "obscene" profit margin would, presumably, have been to some kind of Comcast. My question was, why — if people capable of running an ISP live in or near the own — would they not form a private ISP of their own, enjoy the modest 45% profit margin and the adoration of neighbors?
The people of the town can elect or depose the leaders of city hall.
Yes. Same applies to the State legislature.
What do you mean?
What I meant is that if the town does not have people capable of running an ISP, but creates one anyway, the service will be horrible and yet, because of governmental monopoly, nobody else would offer competing service either. The townfolk will be settled with that bond (or, more likely, a tax-hike) and shitty service. Congratulations.
If the government entity receives no unfair treatment and has to play by the same rules as every other company
Begging the question, aren't you? A giant "if"...
It is pretty bad, when local governments keep would-be challengers of private companies out.
When it is the municipality itself, that's running it, things can only be worse — because, infamously, you can not fight city hall. Very simply, if the town has expertise to run an ISP, why wouldn't not those people form a private company to do it? And if they don't, their establishing a governmental ISP anyway will preclude anybody with a clue from ever setting up shop...
WASHINGTON, DC - President Obama announced in a Rose Garden press conference today that in light of the recent Amtrak accident he is calling on the Congress for bipartisan action on Physical Law Reform, and if they don’t act, he will.
Mr. Obama stated that if the Congress refuses to act on this reform of the laws of physics, he will sign an executive order repealing them outright and implement reform on his own. “Reforming these so-called ‘Laws of Nature’ is the right thing to do, and it will help working families and keep them safe.”
Said Mr. Obama: “The deadly Amtrak accident is just the latest example of how the GOP’s refusal to act has put many in danger with deadly consequences”.
“This reform will have immediate benefits from instantly efficient electric cars that no longer need to obey the ‘laws of thermodynamics and energy density’ to the being able to drive around a curve at high speed without needing so-called ‘Centripetal force’ to keep you on the tracks.”
Obama continued “So if the Congress refuses to act, I will issue an executive order repealing these so-called ‘laws of physics’, We cannot continue living in the past having to follow ‘Laws’ handed down from Sir Issac Newton over 300 hundred years ago, this is not who we are”.
“It’s time to put equality before equations, people instead of physics and fairness over formulas,” the president said.
Obama dismissed the simplistic Newton’s laws of motion as a holdovers from a bygone era of racism where the ‘majority’ felt they could impose their vision of the physical world on everyone else with their so-called ‘classical mechanics’.
In a related development, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement that President Obama's Physical Law Reform does not violate the Constitutional separation of powers because the Founding Fathers didn’t foresee that people of the future would be so stupid as to fall for this kind of malarkey.
But, jesting aside, the 2011 article you dismiss as "one-girl story" says:
Studies show that Asian-Americans meet these colleges' admissions standards far out of proportion to their 6 percent representation in the U.S. population, and that they often need test scores hundreds of points higher than applicants from other ethnic groups to have an equal chance of admission. Critics say these numbers, along with the fact that some top colleges with race-blind admissions have double the Asian percentage of Ivy League schools, prove the existence of discrimination.
Seems rather convincing to me — which is why I cited it in the first place.
primarily to allow them to admit "legacy" students, who are children of other Harvard alumni
In that case, they wouldn't be favouring "underrepresented minorities" over Whites. The phenomena you describe may well exists, but it would not account for all of the observed discrimination. And, besides, I've encountered plenty of Asians among Harvard students even 20 years ago. Their children are now "children of alumni" too, which further reduces the effect, with which you try to explain the existing anti-Asian bias.
They simply must discriminate against the more successful races, because otherwise they will have disproportionately many Asians and too few Blacks. This would make them a target of various boycotts and governmental investigations by the assholes favoring equality of results over that of opportunity...
Why isn't it discrimination to select students who score higher on a standardized test?
Of course, my objection was to the objectionable sort of discrimination — such as that based on race or sex.
And I protested the term "reverse" discrimination, because it has no direction — whether Purple Americans discriminate against Green ones, or the other way around, it is still racial discrimination and neither direction is "reverse".
Actually, affirmative action is reverse discrimination
Though I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, the term "reverse discrimination" is a misnomer at best and discriminatory at worst — because it implies, that discriminations are or can be different. They aren't and they can not — any preference given to one race, sex, etc. is discrimination and there are neither "forward" nor "reverse" among them.
Back to the topic, I'm surprised, it took so long. That the Big Education discriminates against Asians and Whites has long been very well known. Asians in particular have been advised to not identify their race at all — this would put them into the same category as Whites, which is an improvement. For ultimate win, claiming to be Black — if you can pull it off — is the best. The suit, apparently, compares the treatment of Asians with that of Blacks — which is a safer ground — but the real outrage is the Black privilege... Too bad, the claimants in this suit are too chicken to go all the way.
I can not imagine, who — other than people with serious dislike for America and a wish to hurt it — would impose such policies on the country. No one would set out to find a surgeon of a particular race to treat them — why is it Ok to seek out a firefighter or a judge of a particular origin? It is so patently idiotic, a sinister motive is easier to imagine...
The electronic transactions will be subject to the same surveillance our phone-calls already are — who (other than the totalitarian Statists) would seriously consider it, is a mystery to me.
Menuet isn't based on other operating system nor has it roots within UNIX or the POSIX standards. The design goal, since the first release in year 2000, has been to remove the extra layers between different parts of an OS, which normally complicate programming and create bugs.
So, if you want to port your own application to it, you'll need to rewrite it too. And you may need to do it in assembly — although there is, apparently, a C-compiler for MenuetOS it is billed as "low-level", which, I gather, means no (or limited) libc, and other exciting and challenging limitations.
Oh, this is so sweet... Clean air, is what I pay taxes for? As we used to joke back in USSR, "Spring has passed, Summer arrives, thanks be to the Party" (it rhymes in Russian).
YOU, on the other hand, want to be a fucking thief
Don't curse, asshole, it annoys your audience and your argument, such as it is, falls flat.
In a sense you're right...taxation isn't charity. It's responsibility
You got it. Whatever taxation is, it is not evidence of high morals or ethical standards of those, who want more of it — contrary to Grishnakh's above assertion. Case closed.
As Oliver Wendell Holmes said "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."
That canard stops being quite so comforting, when you realize, it is your taxes, that pay for NSA spying on you, for example. And for myriads other things you would never have given a dime for, had you been given a choice.
The point of this subthread, however, was not whether or not taxes are good, but that people voting for more of them are not doing so out of some sort of highly ethical altruism, as Grishnank was alleging. And, because this non-existent "altruism" was used by him to prove religion not being a cause of any moral good, that argument is, in turn, null and void, for he — despite already replying again — has presented nothing else to support it.
The body of Avijit Roy, founder of the Mukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog site – which champions liberal secular writing in the Muslim-majority nation – was found covered in blood after an attack that also left his wife critically wounded.
Could some Islamic scholar chime in to describe, how such an attack (as well as that against Charlie Hebdo, or Pamela Geller, or Salman Rushdie) is not in perfect conformance with Koran?
No, pointing fingers at other religions will not answer the question and will be ignored.
the irreligious people are much more liable to vote for politicians who push social welfare programs ("working for the common good")
People voting to rob other people at gun-point (which is how taxes are collected) to pay for something, they themselves consider worthwhile are not "charitable" and driven not by ethics, but by simple greed: "I want a better road, I can not pay for it — ergo, I'll vote for forcing others to pay it for instead." It is so blatant, whenever a poor person speaks out against such "spreading the wealth around", he is accosted as "an idiot" acting against "his own interests". These arguments and accusations are proof, that the accusers' own motivation is not ethical, but egoistic, greed and envy — and that they are stupefied to find somebody else not sharing them.
Whereas the "grabbing whatever you can get" Republicans are happy to limit the "grabbing", to what's rightfully theirs, Illiberals aren't satisfied with such restrictions...
So the idea of religion giving people any kind of decent morals or ethics is blatantly false.
Your generalized hand-waving in support of this conclusion hereby destroyed, do you have anything better to offer as evidence?
Because, it is better for society to have an educated populace
Same can be said about a lot of different things. Why must education-loans be federally guaranteed?
and not just have the children of the wealthy be able to afford to have one.
Please, spare me the class-warfare rhetoric.
Because a society in which only the children of the wealthy can afford an education
False dilemma. You don't need federally-guaranteed loans to continue to avoid the gloomy prospect you are trying to scare us with.
well, that society is a complete shithole.
A society, where the government controls the education contents and access to it — and that's inevitable result of government paying for it — is even more of a shithole, actually.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this your backwards way of admitting, the things you must fight to prevent has not happened yet — despite hundreds of thousands of Uber/Lyft drivers on the road for years?
Not having enough insurance is a potential problem for everyone and everywhere — whether you ride in a car (be it hired, your own, or a friend's), or walking on the street, or cooking a steak. Why must Uber's drivers and passengers be singled-out for concern — and regulations to alleviate it?
(Please, try to respond in one posting.)
Ok, please, cite a case of an Uber passenger being hurt in an accident and taxpayer's help being necessary for their medical treatment.
Darling, even when evidence is not to your little heart's liking, it is still evidence.
Dats right mah man, mi be da racist for sure... Your grammar as wanting, though — in the context like this, the preposition "on" is mandatory: "hate on towns", "hate on Black people!", et cætera.
No, actually, it is primarily the name-calling and the ad hominem arguments, that dywolf and yourself are so fond of (for lack of anything else), that I consider hateful.
BTW, given the diligent attention you pay to my posts, are you sure, you don't wish to subscribe to my newsletter?
How is this hypothetical horror made different by it being "uber car" rather than "Fran Taylor's car"?
The "test" is a very simple one. Had the current technology existed, when the existing taxi-regulations were being created, would they have gotten created at all? To me the answer is an obvious "no" — with the information about rides and drivers available to consumers instantly 24x7, there is no need for the governments to "certify" drivers nor to weight in on the "fair" rates.
Consider this hypothetical example — suppose a wonder-pill was created, that eliminated all disease. Would we be seriously considering attempts to ban it out of concerns for unemployed doctors, unused hospitals, or that it can, sometimes, be taken in unsanitary conditions?
Why must an Uber driver have a different insurance plan from you and me? Any reasons you can come up with are none of the government's concern — they are between the driver and his insurance company.
Think of it as "civil disobedience". And note, that the broken laws are purely of the malum prohibitum kind for there is nothing unethical in the drivers' actions per se. If burning police cars and robbing private businesses can be "legitimate political strategy", any concern over Uber and Lyft for providing useful services at low costs is misplaced at least.
Haters gonna hate... Sigh...
Of course. Everything else is an attempt to turn Marx' feces into chicken salad.
The "obscene" profit margin would, presumably, have been to some kind of Comcast. My question was, why — if people capable of running an ISP live in or near the own — would they not form a private ISP of their own, enjoy the modest 45% profit margin and the adoration of neighbors?
Yes. Same applies to the State legislature.
What I meant is that if the town does not have people capable of running an ISP, but creates one anyway, the service will be horrible and yet, because of governmental monopoly, nobody else would offer competing service either. The townfolk will be settled with that bond (or, more likely, a tax-hike) and shitty service. Congratulations.
Except that does not really happen. Pretty much by definition.
Begging the question, aren't you? A giant "if"...
It is pretty bad, when local governments keep would-be challengers of private companies out. When it is the municipality itself, that's running it, things can only be worse — because, infamously, you can not fight city hall. Very simply, if the town has expertise to run an ISP, why wouldn't not those people form a private company to do it? And if they don't, their establishing a governmental ISP anyway will preclude anybody with a clue from ever setting up shop...
It is like Slashdot's earlier obsession with "Municipal WiFi" has not taught anybody anything...
Equality before Equations!!:
I did offer a citation. Here it is again.
Ah, so you did see them — you just didn't like them. Why, then, did you pretend, I have not offered anything? Could it be something personal?..
What? Since when is one girl's account not enough to prove everything and destroy the reputations of all involved?
But, jesting aside, the 2011 article you dismiss as "one-girl story" says:
Seems rather convincing to me — which is why I cited it in the first place.
In that case, they wouldn't be favouring "underrepresented minorities" over Whites. The phenomena you describe may well exists, but it would not account for all of the observed discrimination. And, besides, I've encountered plenty of Asians among Harvard students even 20 years ago. Their children are now "children of alumni" too, which further reduces the effect, with which you try to explain the existing anti-Asian bias.
They simply must discriminate against the more successful races, because otherwise they will have disproportionately many Asians and too few Blacks. This would make them a target of various boycotts and governmental investigations by the assholes favoring equality of results over that of opportunity ...
Of course, my objection was to the objectionable sort of discrimination — such as that based on race or sex.
And I protested the term "reverse" discrimination, because it has no direction — whether Purple Americans discriminate against Green ones, or the other way around, it is still racial discrimination and neither direction is "reverse".
Though I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, the term "reverse discrimination" is a misnomer at best and discriminatory at worst — because it implies, that discriminations are or can be different. They aren't and they can not — any preference given to one race, sex, etc. is discrimination and there are neither "forward" nor "reverse" among them.
Back to the topic, I'm surprised, it took so long. That the Big Education discriminates against Asians and Whites has long been very well known. Asians in particular have been advised to not identify their race at all — this would put them into the same category as Whites, which is an improvement. For ultimate win, claiming to be Black — if you can pull it off — is the best. The suit, apparently, compares the treatment of Asians with that of Blacks — which is a safer ground — but the real outrage is the Black privilege ... Too bad, the claimants in this suit are too chicken to go all the way.
I can not imagine, who — other than people with serious dislike for America and a wish to hurt it — would impose such policies on the country. No one would set out to find a surgeon of a particular race to treat them — why is it Ok to seek out a firefighter or a judge of a particular origin? It is so patently idiotic, a sinister motive is easier to imagine...
They don't mean "barter", when they talk of "cashless society" — and it is the Statists' prescription for everyone , not just Argentina.
The electronic transactions will be subject to the same surveillance our phone-calls already are — who (other than the totalitarian Statists) would seriously consider it, is a mystery to me.
You can't, but that's a separate topic — your attempt to point finger at other religions is against the "rules" I set in my original request. Fail.
From their own site:
So, if you want to port your own application to it, you'll need to rewrite it too. And you may need to do it in assembly — although there is, apparently, a C-compiler for MenuetOS it is billed as "low-level", which, I gather, means no (or limited) libc, and other exciting and challenging limitations.
I'm pretty sure, the conversation was focusing on the alleged propensity of Republicans to "grab" wealth. Neither Iraq, nor fetus qualify.
Run along and keep your talking points fresh till next time.
Oh, this is so sweet... Clean air, is what I pay taxes for? As we used to joke back in USSR, "Spring has passed, Summer arrives, thanks be to the Party" (it rhymes in Russian).
Don't curse, asshole, it annoys your audience and your argument, such as it is, falls flat.
You got it. Whatever taxation is, it is not evidence of high morals or ethical standards of those, who want more of it — contrary to Grishnakh's above assertion. Case closed.
That canard stops being quite so comforting, when you realize, it is your taxes, that pay for NSA spying on you, for example. And for myriads other things you would never have given a dime for, had you been given a choice.
The point of this subthread, however, was not whether or not taxes are good, but that people voting for more of them are not doing so out of some sort of highly ethical altruism, as Grishnank was alleging. And, because this non-existent "altruism" was used by him to prove religion not being a cause of any moral good, that argument is, in turn, null and void, for he — despite already replying again — has presented nothing else to support it.
Hey, if you do want to live in a society with roads, go live in North Korea.
Sounds like a fatwa... Please, don't hate.
The Guardian shies away from discussing the motivation, but even their description of an earlier attack alludes to it:
Could some Islamic scholar chime in to describe, how such an attack (as well as that against Charlie Hebdo, or Pamela Geller, or Salman Rushdie) is not in perfect conformance with Koran?
No, pointing fingers at other religions will not answer the question and will be ignored.
People voting to rob other people at gun-point (which is how taxes are collected) to pay for something, they themselves consider worthwhile are not "charitable" and driven not by ethics, but by simple greed: "I want a better road, I can not pay for it — ergo, I'll vote for forcing others to pay it for instead." It is so blatant, whenever a poor person speaks out against such "spreading the wealth around", he is accosted as "an idiot" acting against "his own interests". These arguments and accusations are proof, that the accusers' own motivation is not ethical, but egoistic, greed and envy — and that they are stupefied to find somebody else not sharing them.
Whereas the "grabbing whatever you can get" Republicans are happy to limit the "grabbing", to what's rightfully theirs, Illiberals aren't satisfied with such restrictions...
Your generalized hand-waving in support of this conclusion hereby destroyed, do you have anything better to offer as evidence?
Same can be said about a lot of different things. Why must education-loans be federally guaranteed?
Please, spare me the class-warfare rhetoric.
False dilemma. You don't need federally-guaranteed loans to continue to avoid the gloomy prospect you are trying to scare us with.
A society, where the government controls the education contents and access to it — and that's inevitable result of government paying for it — is even more of a shithole, actually.