You have to look at it as a general strategy: general care vs insulate. A gated community belongs to the second category. There are positive feedback mechanisms. The more you put your trust in insulation, the less you're inclined to invest in the general care which locks you into the gated community approach, which makes things worse outside. There can be different levels of gated community: at one level you can insulate your country from a range of refugees , which frees you to pursue aggressive policies abroad. At another level you can insulate yourself inside the country. I mentioned surveillance infrastructure. That is also a way to safeguard your privilege. With climate change things depend on how bad it gets but I know of people who are investing in 'premium' real estate taking in account climate change scenarios. Which islands will be relatively well off if the sea levels rise a lot?
I don't understand your 'artificial biosphere' idea. Climate change can mean rising sea levels, changing weather, economical disasters. You can protect yourself from that. In general i see that the gated community idea has flaws and that even out of self interest the wealthy should invest in the overall health of the society.
It really needs to get very bad before a place like Mars is better for us than earth. First, you can only get a tiny group to leave earth. Second, with the investment needed it's always possible to create a better place for them here than you'd achieve elsewhere.
I can think of two reasons to explore space 1. pioneering. No rationale required 2. not putting all your eggs in a single basket. Things might get that bad that humanity kills itself off.
You're badly mistaken. It's natural that some people are better at making money and motivated to do so, but how skewed does the distribution of wealth have to become before you say wait a minute, there is something else going on? Once you have a certain wealth you just hire someone to make it grow. You don't need much talent, and eventually the system becomes the opposite of what you claim: socialism for the rich.
Gordon Gekko still was a selfmade man, but that is over a generation ago. Now you've got the heirs of Gordon Gekko.
When you get a class of very rich people it tends to come with a sense of entitlement. These people eventually want to arrange the world around them and consolidate their power. It also means that their solutions to global problems may only serve them. Suppose you have a catastrophic global warming scenario, then one approach to it is, how can we avoid it or minimize the damage. Another approach is, how can we create a fortress paradise which is safe from the rest of the world. You don't need to believe the purpose of the surveillance state was to protect the wealthy from the rest, to see that it is bound to end up that way. Fear of the external enemy serves that purpose that very well, whether it's terrorists or Russians.
Checks and balances should apply for all concentrations of power, also those who claim to protect us and also private wealth.
The most effective way to implement that is to make everything a crime. considering the incarceration rate in the US that approach has been mostly implemented.
That's what bothers me about Occam's razor: the idea that you somehow have to commit to the simplest conclusion when you have nothing else to go on, that idea is bogus.
When you can't draw conclusions, then don't draw conclusions, and simply move on. Of course moving on may resemble committing to the simplest conclusion, but in one case you commit to an idea, in the other case you don't.
The checks and balances mean you're required to think from an attitude of distrust, even if it's artificial distrust. Instead people simply just trust the system until they distrust it. Institutions in the meantime never see harm in concentrating more power if it allows them to do their job better. I'm being as nice as possible here in my formulation.
That touches on my main worry about cashless: power concentration. You don't feel it until a bit later when this concentrated power decides to use it . - Let's introduce negative interest rates - from now on we don't want you to pay to fund organisations of type X - from now on it is impossible to do trade with person Y
Trump is not 'the powers that be'. Or not yet. For a journalist it is safe to be very critical about him. You could simply ask: "is it safe to be critical of this". I would understand the collapse of journalism as that they no longer perform their watchdog function but instead are very critical towards official enemies and very gullible towards official friends.
Hardly new, but it became much worse during Obama. The reason re are a lot of journalists not complaining about press freedom is that the only way to have a career is if you have nothing critical to say about the powers that be. Mainstream journalism is as good as dead.
That factor tends to be underestimated. I'm a bit older and I used to have a certain ratio of music I bought on vinyl and illegal copies on cassette. I would have bought less records if the cassettes hadn't helped feeding and growing my interest. That makes the argument of 'look how much money pirated content causes us to lose' quite dishonest.
Even wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) acknowledges that PNG has no independence. It was handed over to Indonesia. There is a fight for independence - from Indonesia.
First, do I have to be aware if I'm a russian shill? Or is it enough if Russian propaganda has secretively entered my brain and taken over my thoughts without me knowing it? I've been on here longer than you. So am I some kind of Russian sleeper? Or did I get 'turned' more recently? Second, apparently you think the Dutch have the duty to act as American shills. That explains it. You don't object to shills, you just object to the wrong 'disloyal' type of shills.I believe people should try to think for themselves and not just be someone's shill.
It could have been operated by Russians who were 'on holiday'(I've actually encountered this description), but going from coal miners without military experience to Russian professionals making their own decisions seems like you're skipping a lot of possibilities in between.
You don't know the Dutch. The press and the state are entirely US puppets (okay, not entirely, there are vocal exceptions) and that includes their ideas on Trump. Take this case: The dutch state has just approved the 'sleepwet' https://dutchreview.com/news/p... This law has been handed down to them from the US and has been passed without discussion - or knowledge actually. There has been opposition to it which has led to a national referendum on it , which has subsequently been ignored, and the law has been enacted regardless.
The Dutch are deeply committed to the US and they will exploit the MH17 incident for maximum damage to Russia, regardless of facts. If the facts support the claims and allow to shift blame from the Ukranian rebels to Russia then that's convenient. If not, they'll do it without the facts.
I really didn't find any proof. In any case I used to attribute the serious vascular effects of smoking to the nicotine but that was not justified. Hence my deduction that the remaining health effects of nicotine will at least be an order of magnitude lower. A factor 10 lower would still be significant but if you're a bit risk tolerant (I'm thinking of prioritizing using comparative risk) , much less of an issue.
The factors I can see are - Pence , Pompeo and Bolton proposing the Libyan outcome, while Libya was the trigger to put the North Korean nuclear program in high gear. With Bolton it was likely deliberate sabotage. - The Trump team thinking North Korea was surrendering (applying power works!) so they could just up demands instead of starting negotiation. North Korea is not surrendering, the things North Korea wants are not trivial and I have no idea if Trump understands that. - Western press being dead set against negotiations with North Korea.
Apart from that the negotiations would be complicated and would last long. I can't see how newbees could pull it off.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to look at it as a general strategy: general care vs insulate. A gated community belongs to the second category. There are positive feedback mechanisms. The more you put your trust in insulation, the less you're inclined to invest in the general care which locks you into the gated community approach, which makes things worse outside. There can be different levels of gated community: at one level you can insulate your country from a range of refugees , which frees you to pursue aggressive policies abroad. At another level you can insulate yourself inside the country. I mentioned surveillance infrastructure. That is also a way to safeguard your privilege.
With climate change things depend on how bad it gets but I know of people who are investing in 'premium' real estate taking in account climate change scenarios. Which islands will be relatively well off if the sea levels rise a lot?
I don't understand your 'artificial biosphere' idea. Climate change can mean rising sea levels, changing weather, economical disasters. You can protect yourself from that. In general i see that the gated community idea has flaws and that even out of self interest the wealthy should invest in the overall health of the society.
It really needs to get very bad before a place like Mars is better for us than earth. First, you can only get a tiny group to leave earth.
Second, with the investment needed it's always possible to create a better place for them here than you'd achieve elsewhere.
I can think of two reasons to explore space
1. pioneering. No rationale required
2. not putting all your eggs in a single basket. Things might get that bad that humanity kills itself off.
You're badly mistaken. It's natural that some people are better at making money and motivated to do so, but how skewed does the distribution of wealth have to become before you say wait a minute, there is something else going on? Once you have a certain wealth you just hire someone to make it grow. You don't need much talent, and eventually the system becomes the opposite of what you claim: socialism for the rich.
Gordon Gekko still was a selfmade man, but that is over a generation ago. Now you've got the heirs of Gordon Gekko.
When you get a class of very rich people it tends to come with a sense of entitlement. These people eventually want to arrange the world around them and consolidate their power. It also means that their solutions to global problems may only serve them. Suppose you have a catastrophic global warming scenario, then one approach to it is, how can we avoid it or minimize the damage. Another approach is, how can we create a fortress paradise which is safe from the rest of the world.
You don't need to believe the purpose of the surveillance state was to protect the wealthy from the rest, to see that it is bound to end up that way. Fear of the external enemy serves that purpose that very well, whether it's terrorists or Russians.
Checks and balances should apply for all concentrations of power, also those who claim to protect us and also private wealth.
The most effective way to implement that is to make everything a crime. considering the incarceration rate in the US that approach has been mostly implemented.
That's what bothers me about Occam's razor: the idea that you somehow have to commit to the simplest conclusion when you have nothing else to go on, that idea is bogus.
When you can't draw conclusions, then don't draw conclusions, and simply move on. Of course moving on may resemble committing to the simplest conclusion, but in one case you commit to an idea, in the other case you don't.
Great. There goes my surprise effect!
I hereby condone your mention of Herman and Chomsky but what the heck is the Barbra Streisand effect?
It sounds more like giving more money to those deep state goons to make them happy.
The DoD is also into predicting when their patients will die, and into making money in the process.
I agree.
The checks and balances mean you're required to think from an attitude of distrust, even if it's artificial distrust. Instead people simply just trust the system until they distrust it. Institutions in the meantime never see harm in concentrating more power if it allows them to do their job better. I'm being as nice as possible here in my formulation.
That touches on my main worry about cashless: power concentration. You don't feel it until a bit later when this concentrated power decides to use it .
- Let's introduce negative interest rates
- from now on we don't want you to pay to fund organisations of type X
- from now on it is impossible to do trade with person Y
Checks and balances, there's a reason for it.
Trump is not 'the powers that be'. Or not yet. For a journalist it is safe to be very critical about him. You could simply ask: "is it safe to be critical of this". I would understand the collapse of journalism as that they no longer perform their watchdog function but instead are very critical towards official enemies and very gullible towards official friends.
Hardly new, but it became much worse during Obama. The reason re are a lot of journalists not complaining about press freedom is that the only way to have a career is if you have nothing critical to say about the powers that be. Mainstream journalism is as good as dead.
That factor tends to be underestimated. I'm a bit older and I used to have a certain ratio of music I bought on vinyl and illegal copies on cassette. I would have bought less records if the cassettes hadn't helped feeding and growing my interest. That makes the argument of 'look how much money pirated content causes us to lose' quite dishonest.
that almost always means "I triumphantically point out that" but you're right. I didn't know.
Even wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )
acknowledges that PNG has no independence. It was handed over to Indonesia. There is a fight for independence - from Indonesia.
First, do I have to be aware if I'm a russian shill? Or is it enough if Russian propaganda has secretively entered my brain and taken over my thoughts without me knowing it? I've been on here longer than you. So am I some kind of Russian sleeper? Or did I get 'turned' more recently? .I believe people should try to think for themselves and not just be someone's shill.
Second, apparently you think the Dutch have the duty to act as American shills. That explains it. You don't object to shills, you just object to the wrong 'disloyal' type of shills
It could have been operated by Russians who were 'on holiday'(I've actually encountered this description), but going from coal miners without military experience to Russian professionals making their own decisions seems like you're skipping a lot of possibilities in between.
You don't know the Dutch. The press and the state are entirely US puppets (okay, not entirely, there are vocal exceptions) and that includes their ideas on Trump.
Take this case:
The dutch state has just approved the 'sleepwet' https://dutchreview.com/news/p...
This law has been handed down to them from the US and has been passed without discussion - or knowledge actually. There has been opposition to it which has led to a national referendum on it , which has subsequently been ignored, and the law has been enacted regardless.
The Dutch are deeply committed to the US and they will exploit the MH17 incident for maximum damage to Russia, regardless of facts.
If the facts support the claims and allow to shift blame from the Ukranian rebels to Russia then that's convenient. If not, they'll do it without the facts.
I really didn't find any proof. In any case I used to attribute the serious vascular effects of smoking to the nicotine but that was not justified.
Hence my deduction that the remaining health effects of nicotine will at least be an order of magnitude lower. A factor 10 lower would still be significant but if you're a bit risk tolerant (I'm thinking of prioritizing using comparative risk) , much less of an issue.
The factors I can see are
- Pence , Pompeo and Bolton proposing the Libyan outcome, while Libya was the trigger to put the North Korean nuclear program in high gear. With Bolton it was likely deliberate sabotage.
- The Trump team thinking North Korea was surrendering (applying power works!) so they could just up demands instead of starting negotiation. North Korea is not surrendering, the things North Korea wants are not trivial and I have no idea if Trump understands that.
- Western press being dead set against negotiations with North Korea.
Apart from that the negotiations would be complicated and would last long. I can't see how newbees could pull it off.
that's excellent thanks.