You know that copyrights and patents are government-granted monopolies, right?
For limited times, specifically to encourage development of new products to compete in the marketplace. If someone can freely copy something that took you significant resources to develop or write, then that reduces your incentive to improve.
I'm not sure why you think that advances your position. There's certainly room in our world for cooperative research projects, but competition is vital to the advancement of humanity as a whole.
The ISS, or the LHC, or any other major research project wasn't built with competition in mind.
Competition is a bad thing, not a good thing. It results in monopolies, since the whole point of competition is to eliminate competitors.
Why would you want monopolies?
Competition also drives improvements. Why would you deliver a better product unless you would gain from doing so? If no one competes with you, by definition you have a monopoly, and there's no reason for you to improve what you're offering to your customers. You'd probably just sit there, making the same barely adequate product until the end of time.
Re:So this is what passes for clever these days
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USB 'Dead Drops'
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But as we say in Art: glad you don't like -- must mean its doing something right.
Is that in reference to the sort of 'Art' that requires no skill or developed talent to create, always comes with some moronic 'statement', and the 'you just don't get it' scam is attempted on anyone who calls it the horseshit that it is?
Being both illegal, and dangerous, it is probably a hindrance to the machine's duty of getting you safely to your destination.
While it would be polite to the driver of the semi (and therefor proper) to NOT draft a semi, a computer-controlled car could react quickly enough and precisely enough to safely gain from drafting a semi.
The only assumption necessary is that the car can stop more quickly than an unloaded semi, or the following distance (given the speed) is sufficient to allow for the difference between the unloaded semi and the auto's stopping distance.
I seem to recall that the Mythbusters gained significant mpg at 100' and 50' 'tailgating' distances. 10' was too close for a Grant (or a human) to manage precisely and resulted in decreased gas mileage. Surely 100' is a sufficiently polite following distance.
"Cranick says he told the operator he would pay whatever is necessary to have the fire put out."
If you believe someone without the foresight and financial wherewithal to pay a $75 dollar yearly fee has the capacity to pay tens of thousands for the actual call... well, do I really have to finish this joke?
But she certainly comes across as an idiot in the media.
And if you see what portion of the establishment media is 'liberal', you might suspect that portraying Palin as an idiot is an intentional product of their political tastes.
Hate has its uses. A little hate at the right place and time might have stopped Hitler.
You seem to understand a rather narrow slice of human emotional capacity. Hate is unnecessary, and an emotionally stunted 'position' to take. It's not a product of someone on an even keel, but that of an emotionally excitable juvenile.
One can understand that someone is wrong for the country, that their positions will be destructive if implemented, and work with resolve to defeat them- but hate is found nowhere in this mature spectrum. If you're a cynical manipulator, drumming up hate in a sea of useful idiots- such as yourself- might advance your goals. But it's not an emotion that leads to anything good.
If Sarah Palin gets elected, will she suddenly stop being an idiot?
You have demonstrated the GP's point, of course, by shifting the target of your irrational hatred from Bush to a new object. How's the two-minute hate thing working out for you?
One of the highlights of all the political arguments I've been in was to catch a liberal friend of mine going on about conservative hate. I told him if we really wanted to see hate in action, I'd get him started talking about Sarah Palin.
Hey, before you mod me down for being harsh, I'd like to point out this is about a couple of comedians mocking the hundreds of thousands of people who showed up to Beck's rally and enjoyed it. Have a little perspective.
Somehow I think a couple of smarmy joke-tellers aren't going to get very far with their cute little prank.
Who are they hoping will attend these things? Is Colbert hoping for a sea of horn-rimmed hipsters with ironic t-shirts? How many people can you have winking at each other before you realize the Colbert shtick is obvious and appeals only to folks who are enamored with their supposed intellect?
On the other hand, is Stewart hoping a bunch of politically uninvolved people will show up to say 'hey, look how average we are!'?
There's no deeper cause here than the fact that Stewart and Colbert being openly condescending to a growing force in American politics that's supported by far more folks than they're comfortable with. How far will that take them, eh?
One of the core factors here is the unexamined assumption that lefties are both far more intelligent and moral than anyone who holds conservative opinions. This allows them to engage in childish mockery such as these counter-rallies, as the defectiveness of their ideological opponents is taken a priori.
Unfortunately, for all their supposed intellect and compassion, they are utterly unable to fathom how any decent people could hold an opinion contrary to theirs without assigning 'fear' or 'ignorance' as the cause.
I see it in the comments of these threads, and in my most left-leaning friend- the inability to grasp why conservatives hold the values they do.
So when these conservative ideas start to gain momentum, the only weapon they really have to fall back on is mockery, an old Alinsky tactic that's increasingly transparent and tired. In your mockery, you display the true intellectual level you operate on, and it's not a flattering picture.
Now, I do have a grudging respect for Stewart, because I've seen him legitimately savage lefty politicians as well. The Colbert show (and this is consistent with reports of his personal appearances) is nothing but sarcastic smarm.
can testify that engineers receive little or no training in ethics. Antisocial attitudes are rife; they are trained to look down on other people, and think it's "funny" to install a virus on someone's computer or blow something up with a pipe bomb.
There's no class on ethics or anything else that will solve those problems. If Mommy & daddy didn't prevent those attitudes, then only years of social failure combined with sober reflection could start to fix them.
Also, your experience with software engineers is completely different than my experience with mechanical engineers. We didn't need any ethics class to solve degenerate attitudes and behaviors, because none of us had those attitudes. In the years since school, the same holds true in my work encounters.
Maybe one in twenty engineering types I now work with have attitudes close to what you describe, and the rest of us are trying hard to pull their heads out of their asses.
You touch on the problem, and the widespread disdain for philosophy as a field of study.
It's all been done, at least anything of any possible use or relevancy. New students of philosophy, or professors seeking to publish papers, must 'break new ground,' when there is little to be broken.
So if someone actually breaks new ground- unlikely- it will be so obscure and dense as to be unreadable, and so separated from our daily lives as to be useless.
More likely, the case is as you point out- spinning a pile of BS in order to dazzle your way into an 'A' or a MA/PHD, rehashing an old topic or just hoping you can appear smart enough that no one will point out it's crap, out of fear of being told 'Well you just don't get it.'
The horse-shit as real work scam can also be seen in 'modern art', where talentless hacks splatter paint on a canvas or piss in a jar, attach some ridiculous 'statement' to it, and tell everyone who says it's trash that 'you just don't get it.'
Yay! You sarcastically described public schools, which I never spoke against!
The trouble is you still can't make people listen and adjust their behavior. They have to act of their own will- and many won't.
So then what? Do you assume these people are incompetent, and always will be, and ease their lives by dictating the minutiae of their day & demanding wealth transfers from the productive? Or do you hope that they'll at least serve as an example to others, as they struggle by from day to day bathed in the results of their own ill-chosen actions, never connecting cause and effect?
Stupidity will always be with us, and as a result, the poor will always be with us. This is a fundamental reality of the human experience, and trying to 'solve it' (in the bleeding-heart liberal manner) mostly creates incentives to behave poorly.
There is certainly some basic level below which we cannot compassionately let people fall, but it should be a painful, embarrassing place to be, so folks have an incentive to do what they can to improve their own lot.
Or, alternately, the rich will keep doing things that make them rich, and the poor will keep doing things that make them poor.
Maybe we could try to teach poor folks a thing or two, instead of telling them they're f*cked out of the gate, and some beneficent government should come along and punish those nasty 'rich people' on their behalf?
I think a lot of people knew it was coming, but hoped there would be just one more sucker after them, and they'd make their money before the bubble burst.
I saw this an hour ago, and it came to mind immediately upon seeing the headline and brief.
Brick-and-Mortar schools have been engaged in an 'arms race' for students this past decade, fueled by easy credit and enabled by low academic standards. It's enabled them to offer all kinds of nice perks that are expensive and not central to education, and it has also allowed many universities to grow top-heavy with administrators.
My degree as a mechanical engineer allowed me to get a job with a substantial starting salary, which was necessary to cover my substantial student loans. I came out okay after a few years of aggressively paying down my debt, but there are thousands of folks who are in just as deep as I used to be, with a degree that doesn't open up well-paying fields to them. Though I don't regret the path I took (my life is good), I wouldn't use debt if I had to do it again. There are other ways (in-state, scholarships, military, etc.)
Anyway, from the article:
My reasoning was simple enough: Something that can't go on forever, won't. And the past decades' history of tuition growing much faster than the rate of inflation, with students and parents making up the difference via easy credit, is something that can't go on forever. Thus my prediction that it won't.
But then what? Assume that I'm right, and that higher education - both undergraduate and graduate, and including professional education like the law schools in which I teach - is heading for a major correction. What will that mean? What should people do?
Well, advice number one - good for pretty much all bubbles, in fact - is this: Don't go into debt. In bubbles, people borrow heavily because they expect the value of what they're borrowing against to increase.
Actually, it's absolutely the state's business. You're not seeking simply cohabitation or shared ownership, you're seeking a legal agency relationship that trumps the rights of blood relatives, allows for probate-free inheritance, etc. Since the state normally enforces probate and intestate succession, they absolutely must be involved in marriage. When the state is not involved - i.e. common law marriage - the couple does not get these probate benefits, nor do they get to be legal and medical proxies for each other.
That's quite an inversion from a few hundred years ago, when it was the business of the church only, and not of the states, who got married. If I remember correctly- and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, because that's what happens here- the state only got in the business of marriage licenses to prevent the races from intermarrying.
No one is seriously advocating for anarchy- but regulation is something that must be done carefully and cautiously.
The easiest way to illustrate it is this- the more an industry is regulated, the more it is in that industry's interest to control the regulators. (Usually by purchasing politicians. Why don't you go look up how much money BP gave Obama's campaign, compared to others?)
Controlling the regulators allows them to guide 'regulation' to the point where those without massive resources to navigate the regulations are blocked from competing with them. It also allows them to ensure the regulation doesn't fundamentally hurt their profitability.
This isn't something you can regulate or legislate around. Increased regulation creates increased incentive to control the regulators. Human nature isn't going to change for your grand ideals.
Secondly, well-intentioned regulations can create disastrous side effects. By attempting to directly dictate a solution to perceived problem X, you neglect to see that it will also adversely affect factor Y, and incentivise behavior 'Z', previously and rightly regarded as foolish behavior.
My point? Rallying in the abstract for more or less regulation is meaningless. Specific regulations have specific consequences that need to be evaluated on an individual basis and repealed if the associated cost (in terms of slowing proper business, promoting risky behavior, or shutting out new entrants to the market) are too great.
The regulators- and legislators who pull their strings- are fallible people with a different, but not perfect, set of incentives & motives than the regulated industry. Human nature has made it so, and the best laid plans of the brightest stock will not change a thing.
Regulation is necessary, but I'm asking you to 'fall' for the notion that delivering quality regulation is a complex endeavor. The regulators are not pure, and the regulated are not evil. Sometimes a regulation is sh*t and should be tossed out. Sometimes more controls are necessary. Sometimes more regulation only shuts out competitors, and doesn't protect the public one wit more. Determining what specific CFR* hurts or helps takes a level head and a curious mind.
As a fellow mechanical engineer, I would have preferred you considered more practical matters, along with cost-benefit and time value of money considerations before you shot your mouth off. Either that, or not mention you're a Mechanical Engineer.
Other responders have covered these things adequately, so I won't repeat them.
Nothing you quoted suggested kicking California out of the Union. Nothing you posted serves as a justification for continued out-of-control spending by the State of California or the Federal Government.
And in the void left by the eradication of religion, what do you think would fill in? Utopian enlightenment and a dreamy new world of scientific achievement and the finest arts?
The christian religion has served a vital role in the development of the advanced civilization that has given you the philosophical tools and freedom to criticize it as 'terrible, awful.'
I think you would find that something much more terrible than Christianity would rush in to fill the void, and all your grandiose dreams of philosophical perfection would be for naught. We're dealing with failliable humans here, not your enlightened select.
I used to think as you do. Then I grew up, and realized that not everyone before me was a complete moron, and the things they did served a purpose. 'Controlling the people' is the obvious dorm-room bullshit session reply. 'Teaching the people to control themselves' is part of the actual equation.
Whether or not any of it true isn't provable (Lollerskates!?@?! can't prove or disprove the easter bunny either!). Whether or not we gain by acting as if it were true is something you can observe by comparing various societies around the globe. When doing so, try to set aside the typical juvenile rejection of your parents and/ or the institutions that have been a part of your life thus far.
Does your heart bleed for the rabid dog that's been put down, too?
I'm not angry at the dog for getting rabies. I don't particularly care how it got rabies. It simply no longer has a place among us, and neither does such a brutal man as Utah put to death.
The rabid dog deserves even more sympathy, in fact- you can probably figure out a dog has rabies before it's done any harm. We cannot (and should not) determine that a man is so ruined as to require putting down before he's done his share of damage.
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You know that copyrights and patents are government-granted monopolies, right?
For limited times, specifically to encourage development of new products to compete in the marketplace. If someone can freely copy something that took you significant resources to develop or write, then that reduces your incentive to improve.
I'm not sure why you think that advances your position. There's certainly room in our world for cooperative research projects, but competition is vital to the advancement of humanity as a whole.
The ISS, or the LHC, or any other major research project wasn't built with competition in mind.
Competition is a bad thing, not a good thing. It results in monopolies, since the whole point of competition is to eliminate competitors.
Why would you want monopolies?
Competition also drives improvements. Why would you deliver a better product unless you would gain from doing so? If no one competes with you, by definition you have a monopoly, and there's no reason for you to improve what you're offering to your customers. You'd probably just sit there, making the same barely adequate product until the end of time.
But as we say in Art: glad you don't like -- must mean its doing something right.
Is that in reference to the sort of 'Art' that requires no skill or developed talent to create, always comes with some moronic 'statement', and the 'you just don't get it' scam is attempted on anyone who calls it the horseshit that it is?
The Treasury department takes voluntary tax payments. Buffett can put up or shut up.
While it would be polite to the driver of the semi (and therefor proper) to NOT draft a semi, a computer-controlled car could react quickly enough and precisely enough to safely gain from drafting a semi.
The only assumption necessary is that the car can stop more quickly than an unloaded semi, or the following distance (given the speed) is sufficient to allow for the difference between the unloaded semi and the auto's stopping distance.
I seem to recall that the Mythbusters gained significant mpg at 100' and 50' 'tailgating' distances. 10' was too close for a Grant (or a human) to manage precisely and resulted in decreased gas mileage. Surely 100' is a sufficiently polite following distance.
If you believe someone without the foresight and financial wherewithal to pay a $75 dollar yearly fee has the capacity to pay tens of thousands for the actual call... well, do I really have to finish this joke?
And if you see what portion of the establishment media is 'liberal', you might suspect that portraying Palin as an idiot is an intentional product of their political tastes.
You seem to understand a rather narrow slice of human emotional capacity. Hate is unnecessary, and an emotionally stunted 'position' to take. It's not a product of someone on an even keel, but that of an emotionally excitable juvenile.
One can understand that someone is wrong for the country, that their positions will be destructive if implemented, and work with resolve to defeat them- but hate is found nowhere in this mature spectrum. If you're a cynical manipulator, drumming up hate in a sea of useful idiots- such as yourself- might advance your goals. But it's not an emotion that leads to anything good.
So, have fun with that.
You have demonstrated the GP's point, of course, by shifting the target of your irrational hatred from Bush to a new object. How's the two-minute hate thing working out for you?
One of the highlights of all the political arguments I've been in was to catch a liberal friend of mine going on about conservative hate. I told him if we really wanted to see hate in action, I'd get him started talking about Sarah Palin.
To his credit, the message was understood.
This reflects the quality of Colbert's & Stewart's fans, and those who support these silly counter-rallies.
Hey, before you mod me down for being harsh, I'd like to point out this is about a couple of comedians mocking the hundreds of thousands of people who showed up to Beck's rally and enjoyed it. Have a little perspective.
Somehow I think a couple of smarmy joke-tellers aren't going to get very far with their cute little prank.
Who are they hoping will attend these things? Is Colbert hoping for a sea of horn-rimmed hipsters with ironic t-shirts? How many people can you have winking at each other before you realize the Colbert shtick is obvious and appeals only to folks who are enamored with their supposed intellect?
On the other hand, is Stewart hoping a bunch of politically uninvolved people will show up to say 'hey, look how average we are!'?
There's no deeper cause here than the fact that Stewart and Colbert being openly condescending to a growing force in American politics that's supported by far more folks than they're comfortable with. How far will that take them, eh?
One of the core factors here is the unexamined assumption that lefties are both far more intelligent and moral than anyone who holds conservative opinions. This allows them to engage in childish mockery such as these counter-rallies, as the defectiveness of their ideological opponents is taken a priori.
Unfortunately, for all their supposed intellect and compassion, they are utterly unable to fathom how any decent people could hold an opinion contrary to theirs without assigning 'fear' or 'ignorance' as the cause.
I see it in the comments of these threads, and in my most left-leaning friend- the inability to grasp why conservatives hold the values they do.
So when these conservative ideas start to gain momentum, the only weapon they really have to fall back on is mockery, an old Alinsky tactic that's increasingly transparent and tired. In your mockery, you display the true intellectual level you operate on, and it's not a flattering picture.
Now, I do have a grudging respect for Stewart, because I've seen him legitimately savage lefty politicians as well. The Colbert show (and this is consistent with reports of his personal appearances) is nothing but sarcastic smarm.
There's no class on ethics or anything else that will solve those problems. If Mommy & daddy didn't prevent those attitudes, then only years of social failure combined with sober reflection could start to fix them.
Also, your experience with software engineers is completely different than my experience with mechanical engineers. We didn't need any ethics class to solve degenerate attitudes and behaviors, because none of us had those attitudes. In the years since school, the same holds true in my work encounters.
Maybe one in twenty engineering types I now work with have attitudes close to what you describe, and the rest of us are trying hard to pull their heads out of their asses.
You touch on the problem, and the widespread disdain for philosophy as a field of study.
It's all been done, at least anything of any possible use or relevancy. New students of philosophy, or professors seeking to publish papers, must 'break new ground,' when there is little to be broken.
So if someone actually breaks new ground- unlikely- it will be so obscure and dense as to be unreadable, and so separated from our daily lives as to be useless.
More likely, the case is as you point out- spinning a pile of BS in order to dazzle your way into an 'A' or a MA/PHD, rehashing an old topic or just hoping you can appear smart enough that no one will point out it's crap, out of fear of being told 'Well you just don't get it.'
The horse-shit as real work scam can also be seen in 'modern art', where talentless hacks splatter paint on a canvas or piss in a jar, attach some ridiculous 'statement' to it, and tell everyone who says it's trash that 'you just don't get it.'
And yet a Reagan-appointed judge was the lone dissent in this case, and the originating state, Oregon, isn't exactly known as a Republican stronghold.
Perhaps you and your conservative-bashing responders hold some ideas that aren't quite true.
Yay! You sarcastically described public schools, which I never spoke against!
The trouble is you still can't make people listen and adjust their behavior. They have to act of their own will- and many won't.
So then what? Do you assume these people are incompetent, and always will be, and ease their lives by dictating the minutiae of their day & demanding wealth transfers from the productive? Or do you hope that they'll at least serve as an example to others, as they struggle by from day to day bathed in the results of their own ill-chosen actions, never connecting cause and effect?
Stupidity will always be with us, and as a result, the poor will always be with us. This is a fundamental reality of the human experience, and trying to 'solve it' (in the bleeding-heart liberal manner) mostly creates incentives to behave poorly.
There is certainly some basic level below which we cannot compassionately let people fall, but it should be a painful, embarrassing place to be, so folks have an incentive to do what they can to improve their own lot.
Or, alternately, the rich will keep doing things that make them rich, and the poor will keep doing things that make them poor.
Maybe we could try to teach poor folks a thing or two, instead of telling them they're f*cked out of the gate, and some beneficent government should come along and punish those nasty 'rich people' on their behalf?
I think a lot of people knew it was coming, but hoped there would be just one more sucker after them, and they'd make their money before the bubble burst.
I saw this an hour ago, and it came to mind immediately upon seeing the headline and brief.
Brick-and-Mortar schools have been engaged in an 'arms race' for students this past decade, fueled by easy credit and enabled by low academic standards. It's enabled them to offer all kinds of nice perks that are expensive and not central to education, and it has also allowed many universities to grow top-heavy with administrators.
My degree as a mechanical engineer allowed me to get a job with a substantial starting salary, which was necessary to cover my substantial student loans. I came out okay after a few years of aggressively paying down my debt, but there are thousands of folks who are in just as deep as I used to be, with a degree that doesn't open up well-paying fields to them. Though I don't regret the path I took (my life is good), I wouldn't use debt if I had to do it again. There are other ways (in-state, scholarships, military, etc.)
Anyway, from the article:
That's quite an inversion from a few hundred years ago, when it was the business of the church only, and not of the states, who got married. If I remember correctly- and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, because that's what happens here- the state only got in the business of marriage licenses to prevent the races from intermarrying.
No one is seriously advocating for anarchy- but regulation is something that must be done carefully and cautiously.
The easiest way to illustrate it is this- the more an industry is regulated, the more it is in that industry's interest to control the regulators. (Usually by purchasing politicians. Why don't you go look up how much money BP gave Obama's campaign, compared to others?)
Controlling the regulators allows them to guide 'regulation' to the point where those without massive resources to navigate the regulations are blocked from competing with them. It also allows them to ensure the regulation doesn't fundamentally hurt their profitability.
This isn't something you can regulate or legislate around. Increased regulation creates increased incentive to control the regulators. Human nature isn't going to change for your grand ideals.
Secondly, well-intentioned regulations can create disastrous side effects. By attempting to directly dictate a solution to perceived problem X, you neglect to see that it will also adversely affect factor Y, and incentivise behavior 'Z', previously and rightly regarded as foolish behavior.
My point? Rallying in the abstract for more or less regulation is meaningless. Specific regulations have specific consequences that need to be evaluated on an individual basis and repealed if the associated cost (in terms of slowing proper business, promoting risky behavior, or shutting out new entrants to the market) are too great.
The regulators- and legislators who pull their strings- are fallible people with a different, but not perfect, set of incentives & motives than the regulated industry. Human nature has made it so, and the best laid plans of the brightest stock will not change a thing.
Regulation is necessary, but I'm asking you to 'fall' for the notion that delivering quality regulation is a complex endeavor. The regulators are not pure, and the regulated are not evil. Sometimes a regulation is sh*t and should be tossed out. Sometimes more controls are necessary. Sometimes more regulation only shuts out competitors, and doesn't protect the public one wit more. Determining what specific CFR* hurts or helps takes a level head and a curious mind.
(*Code of Federal Regulations)
You haven't done your math, and you haven't reviewed the growth history of entitlement programs.
As a fellow mechanical engineer, I would have preferred you considered more practical matters, along with cost-benefit and time value of money considerations before you shot your mouth off. Either that, or not mention you're a Mechanical Engineer.
Other responders have covered these things adequately, so I won't repeat them.
Nothing you quoted suggested kicking California out of the Union.
Nothing you posted serves as a justification for continued out-of-control spending by the State of California or the Federal Government.
And in the void left by the eradication of religion, what do you think would fill in? Utopian enlightenment and a dreamy new world of scientific achievement and the finest arts?
The christian religion has served a vital role in the development of the advanced civilization that has given you the philosophical tools and freedom to criticize it as 'terrible, awful.'
I think you would find that something much more terrible than Christianity would rush in to fill the void, and all your grandiose dreams of philosophical perfection would be for naught. We're dealing with failliable humans here, not your enlightened select.
I used to think as you do. Then I grew up, and realized that not everyone before me was a complete moron, and the things they did served a purpose. 'Controlling the people' is the obvious dorm-room bullshit session reply. 'Teaching the people to control themselves' is part of the actual equation.
Whether or not any of it true isn't provable (Lollerskates!?@?! can't prove or disprove the easter bunny either!). Whether or not we gain by acting as if it were true is something you can observe by comparing various societies around the globe. When doing so, try to set aside the typical juvenile rejection of your parents and/ or the institutions that have been a part of your life thus far.
Does your heart bleed for the rabid dog that's been put down, too?
I'm not angry at the dog for getting rabies. I don't particularly care how it got rabies. It simply no longer has a place among us, and neither does such a brutal man as Utah put to death.
The rabid dog deserves even more sympathy, in fact- you can probably figure out a dog has rabies before it's done any harm. We cannot (and should not) determine that a man is so ruined as to require putting down before he's done his share of damage.