You are not a customer of MySpace. You are the product.
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You paid them nothing. They owe you nothing.
Little bit of a contradiction here. If I am the product, then I paid with my private information and attention (for ads). Just because government currency didn't directly exchange hands doesn't mean I didn't pay anything, or that they aren't providing me some kind of service for that barter. Stop giving corporations excuses to get away with whatever they want.
Because I asked questions about why we should rush impact studies, or why there's such a rush to give money and bailouts to the nuclear industry instead of renewables? You are a perfect example of the fuckers who gave us a planet dying from pollution and climate change, because you refuse to think for yourself about the consequences of short-term profit motives.
Unfortunately the environmentalist fake news machine has been in high gear for nearly forty years convincing millions of otherwise intelligent people that nuclear power equals three-eyed fish and glow-in-the-dark babies.
There's already been several nuclear disasters, Fukushima the most recent large one that literally made a city uninhabitable. So how exactly is that "fake news" when it literally happened?
There is huge concern in the US as most of the US reactors are ancient and should be decommissioned, the longer they are open the more likely an accident is to occur. And unlike Fukushima, which was along a huge ocean, US reactors are along rivers, many of which are used for agriculture and drinking water. Even if the reactor doesn't melt down, spent fuel is being kept in storage tanks along those rivers and there is huge concern of leaks that can really decimate entire regions of the country. There is a huge disaster looming that no one is addressing, except for the environmentalists that you are putting down.
Same people who want to shut down coal-fired power plants but also don't like natural gas pipelines or LNG terminals to replace the electricity.
Where exactly is the contradiction here? "Environmentalists that oppose coal also oppose gas as both contribute to pollution and climate change!... News at 11". Gas is NOT a replacement for coal even though the gas lobby of course would love for you to think that. Gas extraction, fracking, and pipelines are destroying communities, ruining drinking water, and burning gas still contributes to climate change and air pollution. It shouldn't be considered any sort of long-term solution, yet politicians are digging in to support the fracking industry. Environmentalists of course oppose this and ask: why not more renewable energy?
Same people who demand solar on every roof but would flip a shit if they knew how "dirty" solar panel and power electronics manufacturing is.
Nothing is perfect, the laws of physics say so. Environmentalists understand that. The thing is, in comparison, solar is much better than fossil fuel usage -- and wind, hydroelectric, geothermal are even better than photovoltaics.
But you do bring up a good point -- keeping up manufacturing at today's levels is unsustainable. This is why environmentalists also call for a reduction in waste -- reduce, reuse, recycle. Keep our impact and carbon footprint as low as possible, and we're not going to be able to do that if we're stuck on fossil fuels for energy.
As usual, I blame society. For real this time. Too many people seem to have grown up with the idea that it's possible to have all the good stuff without paying for it in some way, either with cash, lack of reliability, pollution of one form or another, and usually some combination of all of the above.
Again, environmentalists are very aware of trade-offs and costs. An ecological economics that factors this in is one that says society needs to develop energy efficiency and reduce waste, meaning we only build as much as we absolutely need for a good life putting people first instead of business profits, but that sort of economics is very incompatible with the capitalist model of production that says "build as much as you can all the time to sell on the market!". Some people have brain meltdowns when you question the basic tenets of capitalism, but that's the real stance of wanting good stuff without paying for it. You are paying for it, in human costs of pollution and effective slavery, as well as climate change. So what sort of future do you want?
For the record, I'd prefer to live down the street from a nuclear plant than a gas or coal or oil-burning power plant. And I did the math: if I covered my roof in solar panels, I'd lower my electric bill by at most 50-60% on sunny days, and only 30% averaged year round. If I covered my whole property in s
You seem to think people want to slow it down for fun but there are many legitimate concerns.
1. Two to Three standard designs, vetted by some group of nuclear engineers as safe. Facilitates factory production of components
If the designs are so safe, why isn't it already standardized? or is it because sufficient protections depend greatly on environmental and other factors?
2. Processes to fast track environmental reviews
Why does it need to be fast, and how do you define "fast" anyway? A mess up of nuclear can result in VERY large consequences (see Fukushima as a recent example). Large consequences I think deserve extra time and thorough review, not a rushed job.
3. Limited indemnity for developers to prevent frivolous lawsuits.
If it's so safe, why do they need indemnity? What do you define as "frivolous"?
4. Some form of expedited processed in the courts to review lawsuits and settle them quickly.
Why do you want to rush review of lawsuits? Complaints need to be fully explored because the stakes are big here. As I said earlier, the consequences are sufficiently large that it seems fair to me that it takes time to thoroughly investigate. Business profits don't trump my right to a livable environment.
5. Reopen Yucca Mountain. Fuck Harry Reid. Hell, bury his soon to be dead ass in it.
Either breeder reactors work or they don't. If we still need this, then it's a clear sign that the "promise" of nuclear you hailed has failed and is still saddling us with nuclear waste for thousands of years. If Yucca is needed, then we need to develop new technologies and not pretend this is any kind of long-term solution.
6. Ongoing research into new designs, module designs, etc.
I've seen estimates that especially if the whole world switches to heavily lean on nuclear, we can only expect about 100 years of fuel at most -- and already nuclear is actually very expensive and only made "cheap" by heavy government subsidy (for example my state is preparing a bailout package of BILLIONS of dollars to nuclear to keep their plants profitable and operating). And it may not even be that long if we don't get the message that we need SUSTAINABLE development which very likely means rethinking how civilization and society functions to get our energy usage down -- we shouldn't be planning on continuing this path or even increasing global energy use at this point. After 100 years, we'll be right back at this same juncture, facing an energy crisis.
So why not plan for a long-term sustainable future by investing those billions of research dollars and subsidies into renewables: solar (not just photovoltaics either), wind, hydroelectric, geothermal? Those would be massively useful investments that would keep civilization going into the forseeable future indefinitely, particularly if coupled with a society-wide effort to reduce consumption of energy and products. It's the only real solution we have, everything else is a bandaid that kicks the can down the road in one form or another to our kids.
I was referring to quantity more so than ready-made. Depending what you need, it's sometimes difficult to find a non-ridiculous quantity for a reasonable price. It used to also be harder to do so under food stamps (there were many restrictions on what sorts of things you could buy, most fresh vegetables didn't even count) but they now cover a much greater range of things.
The system we have isn't Capitalism, it's Cronyism.
So you're saying "that's not REAL capitalism!"?:-) funny that many don't let socialists get away with making that same argument.
Can you point to a time when we *didn't* have cronyism? Because the last time we had such concentrated wealth and lack of regulation and oversight was the Gilded Age, the height of cronyism and poverty. If you're referring to economic prosperity since the world wars, that comes partly from being the major economic power left standing as well as FDR's New Deal and progressive reform that actually took very strong cues from Socialist Party demands (the Socialist Party was actually winning seats in Congress and state legislatures as a third party and that was enough to scare the establishment into giving into some of the demands). So in modern US history we've actually done the best with progressive/socialist reform and the worst under deregulated "free market" capitalism (that quickly becomes cronyism).
So why is it so wrong to point out we've never had real full socialism either and should give it a chance? Socialism is about economic democracy instead of the economic dictatorship of CEOs under capitalism, what's so wrong about democracy?
The young always think there is a better way. As they grow up, they realize that the current way works, while most "good ideas" don't. But, enough new ideas do work to keep the system changing.
Wait a minute, is it that the current way works can never change, or that new ideas do work and change the system? That seems pretty contradictory there.
At one time we lived under monarchies and feudalism. We moved to constitutional monarchies and mercantilism. We then moved to republics and capitalism. Is it really so hard to imagine that there is a next step in human social evolution after what we have today? So hard to admit that we are nowhere near perfect yet? And yes, we will probably move toward "democracy and socialism" next because each step has been about expanding rights to more and more people. People of the future will look back on the poverty and environmental destruction under capitalism and the "right to private property" and shake their heads just as we do to the "divine right" of kings before us.
So, the govt is supposed to be there for preventing people being stupid with their own money, making decisions for them?
I mean, there was no one with a gun to their heads telling them to take out all these massive loans.....
The gun is called "poverty, starvation, and death".
Yes, people will take out loans and go to university when they are told that is the only way to find a "good job" and provide for themselves and their families. That is what business leaders and politicians constantly drone on and on about. Right now they're pushing "everyone needs to learn coding to get a job". It's the same pattern.
You describe an extremely unforgiving and authoritarian system if there is absolutely no help for "being stupid". Do you think an 18 year old fresh out of high school should know as much as you and make every decision absolutely perfectly for the rest of their lives? Did *you* make all of the best decisions at 18? It's not like we're cyborgs and can simply upload all of human knowledge to high school graduates on their day of graduate. People will make always continue to make bad decisions, but that doesn't make them bad people or even stupid. Maybe they just haven't learned yet, the world is complicated and often unpredictable, and they will learn for the future from the experience. In fact making mistakes is pretty much the only real way to learn and master anything. They deserve help and education and sympathy, not scorn and anger and callousness. We all do.
Or young people see the generation before them loaded with debt and unable to afford to purchase a house, see a political ruling class that does not care about them, and see companies making record profits and all the money going to an increasingly smaller percentage of the population and are realizing "yep, the system's broken".
And everything you describe is a symptom of consumerism, not capitalism.
Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.
Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.
It's easy to confuse the two, and certainly they're related, but it's not as simple as that either. Private ownership of resources and the means of production gives one a vast amount of economic power the larger a business grows, and at some point that economic power is enough to project political power as well. The ruling class becomes all about pleasing the private corporate owners, partly because they might personally profit from such arrangements, but also because of a concern that the private owner will hurt the economy and community or even nation as a whole if they don't get what they want. How many times do football teams threaten to leave if they don't get a publicly-funded stadium built? How many times does Harley Davidson or other companies threaten layoffs and to go to other countries if we don't give them free money in the form of tax cuts? How many times have the banks insisted they need a bailout or they will let the mortgage market take down the world economy? Capitalists essentially hold the rest of us for ransom with their economic power.
the root problem is that too many people feel like they have to own the latest iPhone and iPad or Samsung Galaxy phone and Galaxy tab (as soon as it comes out each year) as well as drive a new Mercedes or BMW, go on an overseas vacation every year, and go out to eat with friends every night when they are in their 20s and early 30s. When young adults spend 110% of their earnings and don't start saving for retirement until around age 40, of course we are going to end up with the state of things we see now.
Hang on here, has it occurred to you that capitalism has caused this? I think you're conflating two different groups of people here. The poor can't afford BMWs or overseas vacations. Most grocery store meals are designed with "the family of four" in mind and so depending on what you eat when you are out (and how many leftovers you bring home for tomorrow) it can be cheaper to eat out than cook at home and be wasteful. Most people don't buy phones but rather lease/rent them, and you get automatic upgrades every year or two, so it's entirely possible for someone to have the latest phone and still be paying only $20 per month or so, and it's not exactly easy to find a job without a phone number and internet access (for many people, their phone *is* their way of accessing the web and email too, they don't own high-powered desktop rigs) so it's a necessary expense.
The expensive lifestyle problems are the rich being wasteful, which capitalism encourages because you have to always buy to make more and more profit. For the poor, they are expected to take on more and more bills and debt in order to keep up with the middle class and have even a chance at getting a job and avoiding poverty/homelessness. The poor cannot win that race long term, and we're seeing that in statistics as more and more people drop out of the workforce, are forced out of their homes, declare bankrupcty, all while wealth inequality skyrockets.
This is all capitalism. It all stems from the wealthy using their economic power to extort money out of the poor. It creates a dog-eat-dog culture of consumerism and stru
small "c" capitalism is something a free society has to have, i.e. the ability to buy and sell goods in a relatively unfettered market.
You're confusing a free market with capitalism, which is not the same thing. It's also a very common mistake to make given the propaganda in the US that intentionally wants us to associate "freedom" with capitalism.
Capitalism simply means private ownership and control of resources -- land, natural resources, and modern industrial means of production. Private ownership means generally speaking a person (a dictator or monarch) or a small board of directors (an oligarchy) make all the decisions about the use of resources and production. On the surface, this seems like a very fair thing -- you own it, why shouldn't you get to decide? -- but the problem with this line of thought is the scale we're talking. When a capitalist decides to clear cut a forest, that forest is now gone and even if he sells the land later, no other person gets to use that forest ever again. What if someone else wanted to create a park? Too late, capitalist decided already. What if a majority of people in the area wanted a park instead of a clear cut field? What if that forest and all those tree roots helped soak up water and prevent flooding, but now without it, surrounding neighborhoods easily flood? What if that forest held a rare species of tree or animal that could have lead to a medical discovery? Even if we needed to cut the trees down for firewood or paper or whatever, maybe we would have preferred to the wood go to local community members and not sold in China or wherever? Too late, capitalist already decided.
That's the problem with private ownership of resources and production. Most if not all resource use decisions actually impact all of us, at least community-wide if not planet-wide (as climate change is producing). And yet we are allowing monarchs and oligarchs make those decisions for our communities and nations without any input. Is that fair and just for someone else to decide things that impact your family and community without you having any say in the process whatsoever? I understand you might not always get what you want, but right now you don't even have a vote. A CEO decides and that's it, can legally do what they want (within broad confines of regulation that politicians continually cut and weaken) and completely ignore you and your family and your community. If it makes your house flood more, they don't care. If it causes environmental damage that gives you and your family lung cancer, they don't care. You don't have any say.
Socialism is the idea that resources and production should be publicly-owned and democratically managed. That's really all it is. Because of certain historical events people confuse socialism with authoritarian takeovers of those countries, but again, like the free market and capitalism, they are not the same thing. All we're talking about it more democracy, that you and your family and your community should have a vote and decide how those resources are used and that it should not be left to private decision-making behind closed doors by people who don't necessarily live in your community or even country.
Note also, as a common misconception, that socialist theory typically distinguishes between "private property", which is private ownership of natural resources and industrial means of production, and "personal property" which is your family home. Socialists don't generally care about your family home or your toothbrush or your clothes or your car, do whatever you want at home when you're not bothering anyone. No one is going to take your house. It's about democratizing economic decisions for the big industrial questions that affect all of us, it's about making sure no one businessperson CEO can force their economic vision on you and the community, you have to all agree together democratically. You get more individual freedoms and more say-so under a democratic system -- both politic
Let's see, the economic system that has raised more people out of poverty than any other, young people aren't sure about.
Two things.
One, I'll grant you it has raised some out of poverty -- and to very high wealth in fact! -- but the other side of the coin is that many more have fallen deeper into poverty and debt, stuck in a cycle that is nearly impossible to break without help from others. Our economic system is heavily weighted against the poor. We tell the poor they have to pay higher interest rates -- pay more money!! -- because they are poor and private companies with no public oversight decide "credit scores", what kind of sense does that make? I know, you'll say "but the capitalists are taking a risk and deserve more!" but that's exactly the point, capitalism is making some rich at the expense of many others who pay more and fall more into poverty and debt.
Second, even if what you say is true about capitalism (and I have my extreme doubts, see above), that's a very relative statement you're trying to make sound absolutist. Before capitalism we had mercantilism which was seen as improvement on feudal economics which was seen as an improvement on past systems. Why can't capitalism itself be flawed and similarly need replaced by some system -- let's call it socialism -- to help *even more* people? Until we have 0% homelessness, 0% poverty, our job is not done and we should not settle if we want to claim we are a civilized society.
Usually the district maps are drawn by bi-partisan groups and are routinely tested in the courts to make sure they are fair. What kind of rules do you think we need here that we don't already have?
That is definitely not the case in most states. In Pennsylvania, there is an ongoing court case that was recently taken up by the state Supreme Court that challenges the gerrymandered maps drawn by state Republicans using partisan voter data. Currently the state legislature simply approves the map, so the dominant party effectively gets to choose the map, and can of course make sure it is a favorable one.
Independent redistricting groups are a step in the right direction, but your word of "bi-partisan" shows the flaw in that system too. We don't want "bi-partisan" where the two major parties begrudgingly agree on a map that has "equal amounts" of gerrymandering. They're basically just dividing us up into gang turf at that point, "You take this district, and I'll take this district". We do NOT want that. We want NON-PARTISAN elections that are completely out of the hands of any party's decisions.
The way you do that is with Proportional Representation. We each elect a representative from a choice of all candidates -- no partisan primaries that get to tell us who to vote for -- and use a proportional ranked choice algorithm to determine the winners. The beauty of this system is that it works best when there's lots of choices, so you can at least establish a small number of static "super-districts" that don't need to be redrawn if not completely do away with districts in their entirety. This means our election process is no longer controlled by any party and is fair to all candidates of any party or even independent candidates, and therefore may the best candidate win according to voter interests.
Citizen's United seems like a good decision that upheld the 1st amendment to me. I don't think you can restrict companies and non-profits from making political donations or doing political activities w/o restricting free speech in the process. Maybe we can just require that funding of political activity can proceed with out any limits as long as the source of funding is 100% disclosed and must be 100% from USA sources? Seems to me that the issue isn't the amount of money, but that people may not be aware of the source of the funding. Full timely disclosure of who's donating what to whom would fix that.
Companies and non-profits are not people, they are not living breathing entities. They don't have thoughts, feelings, opinions, they can't serve jail time when they do something wrong. They are completely legal constructs, and as such should not have any rights under the Constitution.
The owners and investors of any company or organization have ALWAYS been completely free to donate to campaigns as individuals. They've never been restricted in that sense. The organization can even issue a statement of endorsement and encourage its members to donate to a particular candidate or party as individuals, that's not been restricted either. At least not in general, there's some basic rules like you can't donate to federal campaigns if you work for the federal government, etc., but for the most part there are no restrictions other than a limit on the donation amount. So this idea that organizations being able to contribute money as "free speech" is a completely invalid argument. They've always had "free speech" with their own personal money as individuals.
What those business owners and investors discovered is that they can use their organizations and businesses as shells to HIDE what they are doing. They can move around lots of money, they can claim tax breaks out on certain expenses. If they donate as individuals, their names are attached to the donation (as it should be transparent!), but then of course if you are a rich Republican or a rich Democrat you might turn off voters if they know you're supporting a candidate. So instead, you donate y
I'd like to know what they were smoking when they said the average reader reads 12 books a year. How many people read even one?
Very likely that statistics is hiding reality here. If most people read 0-2 books per year, but a small but not insignificant amount of people read 50 books per year, the average will be 12.
It's interesting. In the US, people generally trust corporations rather than their government. In Europe on the other hand, it's exactly the opposite, people rather trust their governments than corporations.
I don't trust either, but there's a distinct difference between the two. I can decide to opt out of dealing with any corporation. If I want to opt out of the government, eventually men with guns will come to force me to deal with the government.
I suppose you've not heard of the Pinkertons then? Hired by corporations to violently suppress labor strikes in early 1900s. Corporations world-wide have hired private security forces to impose their will on whoever opposes them, typically in countries with weaker central governments in Africa and South America, but it really happens everywhere. In the US they typically use armies of lawyers rather than military, because that works for them so far in our corporate two-party duopoly, but make no mistake how corporations would behave when deeply threatened, history tells us exactly what they do.
"Government" is too abstract a term. We're really talking about who holds the power. What you and the parent post both are concerned about is someone having power over others -- in other words, unequal power. Inequality comes from centralization, we empower one individual (or a small group) to have more power and authority than others, and any time that happens, there is the possibility that someone will take advantage and use it to coerce people.
The real key difference is democracy. The typical corporate structure is extremely top-down, centralized power in a CEO and board of directors that essentially act as dictators (maybe oligarchs is the better word) within the company. What they say goes, and even if middle management or workers or even customers disagree, the CEO is under no obligation to care at all. You don't have much recourse against a centralized authoritarian heirarchical power, what they say goes, and if fight too much they'll simply fire you or cut off service to you. At best you could quit and find a job somewhere else (or as a customer, "vote with your wallet" and go elsewhere), but that is only at best supporting one dictatorial corporation over another. Over time, capitalism encourages corporations to merge and become monopolies (to lower costs and maximize profit since there is no longer competition), which makes the top-down centralized power even worse.
To be fair, some governments evolve this way too. I absolutely hate the recent trend of "we need to run government like a business" because implicit in such statements is that top-down centralized corporate power. It breeds this attitude that the president and Congress are like CEO and board of directors, that what they say goes, and that's the end. That is the pathway to authoritarianism and government dictatorship, and we really need to reverse that trend.
But in principle, we value democractic governments. Why is democracy such a big deal? Because rather than centralizing power in a small group (or even just one person), democracy puts everyone on a level playing field. We ALL have a say so, we all have a vote, we all have the same legal power. There is little to no power inequality between individuals because every individual's concerns can be heard and address as the group deliberates and decides together. Recent history has made representative democracy (a slight oxymoron but we'll overlook it) more feasible because of the large amounts of people in each country (and the distance necessary to travel to Congress before cars and airplanes!), but I think modern technology and methods allow us to lean more towards pure direct democracy. Do you always get what you want in a democracy? No. But you are guaranteed a voice and a vote, which is more than you are guaranteed in today's authoritarian corporate structures.
What we really need are more democratic structures that protect individua
Scott Walker doesn't want pay teachers a living wage
The average teacher salary in Wisconsin is $53k. That is above the average salary/wage for Wisconsin, and certainly enough to live on.
Without knowing more about the statistical distribution, this is a somewhat misleading statement due to the way averages work. Is the starting salary for new teachers $20k, but there's enough teachers with seniority making $80k to shift the average? Is that average calculated only with teachers in classrooms, or does that include principals and other administrators?
My understanding is that many states currently facing a budget crisis are attacking our new teachers. Basically, they can't cut pensions of current retirees or near-retirees, partly due to contractual reasons and partly due to not wanting to anger older voters. So they're instead negotiating contracts for new teachers at low pay, low benefits, drastically reduced (if existent at all) pensions. It is completely logical to say that Walker and GOP don't want to pay a living wage (to new teachers) while still maintaining contractually-obligated good pay and benefits to senior teaching staff, there is no contradiction. You have to know the details and the distribution.
Because in general it is not the government's business to interfere with private agreements. If you and I agree to something, we should not need the government's permission.
Sir, you have this backwards. Government regulations are not granting permission, they are there to set a process that ensures everyone's rights are protected during the negotiation process, and to enforce penalties on those that break their contracts.
Without regulations, why should a billionaire CEO of a multi-national company give a shit what *you*, sabri, think about their policies and contracts? They can tell you anything you want to hear and then say "nevermind" after they've gotten your money. And what are you going to do as an individual?
Our government is of the people, for the people, by the people, because together we are strong and can protect ourselves and our rights. Individually we are weak, particularly in the face of a strong business adversary.
In this case, it does not [severely disadvantages them]. The system works as designed and the courts are now going to determine whether or not Apple's point of view (that an iPhone cannot be guaranteed to work after 1 year) is reasonable or not. This is based on general principles of reasonableness, not on a codified mandate for consumer warranties.
Our court system is effectively broken for most Americans. Have you been to court? I have. It's a lot of legal fees, meeting with lawyers, filing paperwork, waiting months for a court case, only to have the decision appealed by a defendant with way more money and time than you. It is extremely delayed justice, if you get it at all. The working and middle classes are typically hugely disadvantaged in court. We could fix it by requiring speedy trials, hiring more judges and public defenders, and other tweaks, but that would require a more expensive court system and likely higher taxes, which many completely flip their shit when they hear the word "taxes" so we've not been able to have constructive discussion on the topic.
We don't need the government to create laws that "protect" us, because those laws will have side effects.
Don't believe me? Let me give you one example. It's somewhat off topic and may start a flame war, but that is not my intention. In my home country, the unions have been successful in creating very strong labor protection laws. In short, once you hire someone on a permanent contract, it becomes very difficult to fire them. That resulted in employers being careful in giving permanent contracts, and opting for temporary contracts which kept getting extended. Then the government created new laws to prevent that from happening, by mandating a permanent contract after three extensions. And guess what? Do you think more people got permanent contracts? No. "Disposable" workers that are easily replaced where replaced after three contracts. In California, where I live, there is the principle of at-will employment. This means (explaining for non-US person), that I can get hired and fired at any time. And you know what: that flexibility causes businesses to hire without giving it a second thought. No bullshit with temporary contracts needed, because everything is flexible.
That is the net result of government interference, no matter how well these laws are meant.
It would be nice if we directed our ire at sociopathic executives of multi-national corporations that have no allegience to country or the people, rather than indirectly defending them when we attack government regulations and actions. No level of government did any of this to you; there is no law that says "no one should ever hire sabri for a permanent position". Corporations decided to do this because they are sociopaths, obsessed with forever increasing their profits regardless the consequences to people, the country, the economy, or the planet. Please note, I am in no way saying they shouldn't be profitable or well compensated for their work. Bei
Why do those advocating the $15 hamburger wage not see this ?
Because you're making a detached economic argument in favor of business interests, and they're making a "I need enough food to survive" argument in favor of community interests and human rights.
In most areas of the country, especially near big cities, the cost of living is approximately $15 if not much higher (I've seen estimates of more like $20-25 in New York City, for example). This is the cost of basic rent, basic utilities like electric and water, food, transportation to a job (whether by owning a small used car or taking the bus - what you think buses are free?), and replacement clothing (nothing fancy, just new pair of jeans every once in a while as old one rips). Basically, inflation is increase in cost of goods and services, and if you took the minimum wage of the '60s and '70s and adjusted it for inflation, it really should be something like $15 per hour now. With the productivity gains of the average American worker due to increased education and technology, it should probably be even higher, but almost all of the profit gains have gone to top executives rather than increased the salaries of those that actually do the work.
So what does this mean? It means any job paying less than approximately $15 per hour is NOT LIVABLE. You will starve, or end up homeless, or some sort of big problem. It's not sustainable. What I don't understand is why people make the argument of the don't "deserve" $15. Who says? Who decided some arbitrary number is the cap? The REAL issue is: does every person deserve enough to meet basic needs in modern society? I think the answer is unequivocally YES. Every American deserves the dignity of basic needs met, especially when they're willing to work full time to do so. No matter what the work is, if it takes up a full week of work, then they deserve to have basic bills covered, end of story. Full time work is opportunity cost -- if you're working full time, it means you don't have free time to take other jobs, attend school or training, etc. IT HAS TO BE WORTHWHILE. It has to be enough to survive.
Having "more jobs" that pay starvation wages is not really an improvement. It makes job numbers reports and corporate profits look better, but those aren't the only metrics of the success of a society. In fact, I think they're bad metrics; a much better one is: do we ensure every American that works hard can take care of themselves, and has opportunity to improve their lives? By that metric we are failing disastrously.
In my view, businesses that cannot budget for and pay living wages are FAILING BUSINESSES. A business that requires its workers to starve for its owner to make a profit is a FAILING BUSINESS and deserves no sympathy or respect. They should have to drastically change their business strategy or go out of business and be replaced in the free market by business owners that DO pay a living wage.
As far as automation goes, do you think they'll ever decide "Nah, I don't need more profit!"?. At best, low wages slightly delay automation, but make no mistake: it's coming. It's the story of the industrial revolution and the Gilded Age, big business grew larger and larger until it controlled the economy and could automate or improve efficiency, and laid off many many workers once they were unneeded. The poverty and starvation was great, which is what lead to so many of our labor reforms and formation of unions. We have to start putting human interests first over corporate interests. Don't fall for their propaganda. Every American that works hard deserves to live without fear of where the next meal will come from or how to pay rent this month.
And really, we should be taking advantage of automation to work LESS. Lower the amount of hours for full time work. Give everyone more time to raise their families, get involved in the community and local politics, take classes and improve education, volunteer, etc. There's more to life than wage labor. We can make that happen if we stop obsessing with letting big business take more, more, more for themselves.
Since FF 57 will be the death of Firefox in about three months due to the disabling of all "legacy" extensions (which is 100% of the extensions I use - some very useful ones that haven't been updated in quite some time and that I can't find WebExtensions equivalents for)
Completely seriously, which extensions are those? What do they do? Are they absolutely necessary for your work? (As in, are you sure the useful features haven't been integrated into Firefox at this point? if you are a developer, have you checked if the Firefox Developer Edition meets your needs without all those debug/dev extensions?).
And if those extensions really are that important, and there is no replacement or change to your current workflow/processes that can address it, how does switching to Chrome solve those problems? Why not write a new extension yourself? Help fund another developer to do it? Contribute to improving the community, rather than jumping ship to a proprietary competitor and giving them even more of a stranglehold over web standards. With Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, all using Chromium engine, Firefox is really the last free software engine we have to prevent a Google monopoly with closed proprietary standards like Internet Explorer did years ago.
Firefox is jettisoning their old insecure extension code, this is a good thing. Transitions are always painful even when done correctly, but sometimes they need to be done. Help them if you can.
It's amazing to me that if one goes to the FF addon's page and types in some search terms like "video" or "mouse" or "screen" or "download" or "tab" and sorts by 'most users', perhaps 10% of the extensions are tagged as compatible with 57+.
We're several months from release still, of course not every extension will be updated yet. I expect the number to grow as we get closer. Mozilla is even working directly with some high-profile extension authors like uBlock to get WebExtensions right; Firefox's implementation will have more features and power than Chrome's. Better extensions will be coming, and I hope it will actually push Chrome to innovate and improve their implementation too! Has Google ever added the missing features that made Firefox extensions better in the first place? Maybe this is the kick that will make them do so.
And for plugins that have not been touched in years: do you feel comfortable running code that is no longer maintained? That uses an old plugin/extension system that is insecure, part of the reason they're switching to WebExtensions in the first place? Mozilla announced this upcoming change last year, it's not like they're surprising anyone. I'm skeptical to use any software or extension that I can't confirm is maintained in case of security or other bugs.
when it gets to about 13 GB of virtual memory, it gets pretty slow even though I've got lots of free memory on my 32GB desktop
This could be related to all of those old extensions you're using. I've seen reports that a lot of the memory leaks attributed to Firefox are actually from poorly-written extensions and not core Firefox itself. They've done a pretty good job at improving core Firefox's performance in recent releases, and the changes in 57 should improve it even more significantly.
FF - R.I.P. - I'll miss you, it was fun back when FF was fresh and innovative
This is exactly why 57 is a big release! They're switching to a new web content engine that will improve performance and security, and it was written in a new programming language Rust that they researched and developed themselves. I think designing your own language to improve security and performance is about as innovative as you can get, and I really appreciate that managers at Mozilla encouraged experimenting with Rust rather than shutting it down with "just use C++" or whatever argument. I encourage them to keep experimenting and innovating!
Taleb's 4-part Incerto series (see http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/247576/incerto-4-book-bundle-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb/9780812997699/) is fantastic reading. Changes your perspective on the nature of randomness and how much control we actually have over our system and our environment. Not just control, but how little information we even have about the situation! (it is easy to get "fooled by randomness"). Antifragile is particularly a very good concept we should follow in all of our systems; it occurs to me so often now how fragile our systems are, and many steps we take actually make it more fragile, not less.
I believe Taleb is working on a 5th book, I am looking forward to it.
Ergo, my reference to the gun point, which is how all taxes are collected...
Let me ask a question. When you receive your electric bill or winter gas bill or water/sewerage bill, do you call it a forced bill "at gun point" from the utility company? Or do you just pay it because you're paying your fair share of bills for what you used?
Taxes are just our bill for our fair share of government and government services. It pays for military defense, a court system to allow you to file greviences against neighbors businesses or even the government itself, roads and bridges and other infrastructure, inspectors that ensure our buildings are constructed to code and food is safe to eat, and way more than I can list here. You use plenty of government services every day and don't even realize, so yes, you need to pay your bills for those services.
Now you could argue that our taxes are not always used wisely. I'd personally love to see our taxes go more to domestic programs rather than more middle eastern wars. And you might argue government is wasteful, and sometimes it is. But then I have a news flash for you, have you ever worked at corporate? Corporations are *at least* as wasteful as government services in many circumstances, so it's not particularly unique to government. If you'd like to see changes and waste cut, contact your representative and vote against them next election if they do nothing, that's why we're a democratic republic, we can vote and change things. At least you can do that, with private corporate control you have absolutely no say about what the CEO does.
So, of course, "UBI" and other attempts to forcibly "spread the wealth" to address the non-problem of "income inequality" are foolish and oppressive.
If you've never been poor I suppose you don't understand inequality, so let me give you a brief overview. Income is a huge part of it, but not all. Neighborhoods gentrify and rent increases meaning you must leave your long time neighborhood since you can't find a better job, because you don't have free time between 60+ hours a week job at several stores or money to attend college to get new skills. You might ask why they don't just buy a house. Good question! When your income is that low, you don't have the credit necessary to buy. Except landlords need to make money off of you, so their rent is almost by definition *more* than a typical mortgage (it has to be more than the mortgage to make a profit, right?). So you have to pay a lot and need more jobs. Many jobs are not on bus routes in my area, so you need a car. You get a cheap one at a used car lot, but since your credit is low, you don't get the typical 2 or 3% interest middle class gets, you get 8 or 10% interest, again having to pay *more* than middle class. But it's used car so you can make small payments over time so you try to make it work out. Then you get to work and your boss tells you to go home. They found someone new, or just plain don't like you, and they fire you on the spot. They can do that in many states because "right to work" really means employers have the right to fire you at any moment. Or even if you're not fired, it's a slow day, so he sends you home. Now you're short a day of pay, and your bills are stretched thin, so you can't make the car payment until the next paycheck. Now you're late and have penalty interest, and they possibly come to repo your car if you wait too long and they don't want to work with you. Or, you decide to take a payday loan on your next paycheck so you can have the money now rather than waiting two more weeks, so you pay your bills, but your payday loan was at obnoxious 25%+ and has to be paid back immediately at the next paycheck, which of course you don't have, so you sink into more debt. Which means your credit score dips lower, you have to pay even higher interest rates, now you don't even qualify for car loans and even rental units star
Now where does this money come from? More taxes on the average working man? Good to know that a sheer luck billionaire is shaping global finances.
Well I can't speak for Zuck's motives, but in general advocates say it comes from restoring taxes that used to exist on the wealthy. We've had decades of reduced taxes and tax loopholes for the rich that they pay hardly nothing anymore. During the most prosperous periods in modern US history, the tax rate was as high as 90% on the top tax bracket. Plus, there's plenty of infrastructure and environmental problems that have to be paid for by the people despite the fact that private interests caused it and profited off it. They must pay their fair share commensurate with the amount of money they make as well as the resources they take from the public (when you harvest things like oil now, it's gone for future generations; don't they owe something to our grandchildren and future generations who never get an opportunity to build that industry themselves?) and the infrastructure (trucks cause something like 10,000x the damage to roads than cars, do they pay for the roads?) and environment (many oil pipelines leaks over the years, not to mention all kinds of other runoff, a lot of it comes from agricultural pesticides too) that they damage in the process.
Yes, I would rather people be campaigning for Universal Basic Employment. That is, a system where everyone would always have access to a job that paid basic living expenses, a job built around each person's particular skill set.
Is there enough work for each skill set? Can we mandate that work? What if someone wants to change careers later in life and doesn't *want* to keep that skill set? What about people with little technical skills in a computer-dominated world?
My fear is that mandating employment will reduce down to people being assigned to unnecessary jobs just to fulfill the requirement. Extra secretaries, building extra housing beyond our population needs, etc. Plus, this assumes that people are happy working these types of jobs -- many people will be miserable working some jobs and you will have still not addressed the psychological health issue OP brought up.
No I think Universal Basic Income is the win here. We all earn it from corporations buying our publicly owned property (forests, parks) and privatizing it. It's time we started collecting royalties on it. We're not talking a giant income here, but enough for very modest housing and food. But those are the big stresses in life, worrying about if you will have enough to eat or will go homeless. Without those in the equation, people can decide their own lives.
With UBI, you can always eat beans and rice. Nothing fancy, but you can survive. But surely you want more from life than that -- a rewarding career, to volunteer in the community, to become an artist or actor or scientist, or at the very least enough money to get that big screen plasma TV and sometimes go to a football game. You need more income for that stuff, UBI only covers the bases, so most people (unless you are happy to live a spartan monk-like lifestyle in a studio apartment with beans and rice all day, and if so, more power to you) will want more and seek more employment. That isn't a problem.
Except now you've opened up an ACTUALLY free market. Right now corporations hold all the cards, many are forced to take low paying jobs with low/no benefits precisely because they're concerned if they wait any longer they won't be able to afford food or a house. Now with UBI, workers can pass on terrible job offers. They can survive so they don't NEED to work a terrible job for super low pay. They can wait for a better offer. So now corporations have to compete on the best pay and benefits that makes their jobs worthwhile rather than a race to the bottom.
Furthermore, with the UBI safety net, even more people can open that business they always wanted to but were afraid to do so. Open a restaurant, retail store, handyman shop, whatever. Previously people worried about the business failing and how they would get money to survive. Now under UBI, sure ideally the business would excel and make lots of money, but if it goes under, the person feels confident that at least I have UBI to cover my house and food. If the business fails, might have to cut expenses a while, but it can be done. It takes the pressure off, allowing more workers to become confident business owners, which further increases market competition.
Plus UBI allows things not possible before. Look at the people willing to donate their time to open source projects for free right now. If we had UBI, no doubt some programmers would choose to live on UBI and maybe only part time work to dedicate more time to open source. Remember, it's not a job for money necessarily that's healthy, it's having any sort of community contribution. There's plenty of non-profit volunteer positions that currently don't get many applicants but would likely see surges under UBI as people have more options to take less crappy jobs that give them enough free time to volunteer more. These volunteer positions are not any less jobs than paid ones; in fact, some volunteer positions can be very important to the community! Again, with UBI, workers have some restored bargaining power with employ
A good lecture isn't about taking notes down by dictation, or by copying them verbatim from a blackboard.
The notion that if its in the books we can just read it on our own is idiotic... the minute we have a question we have to stop... continuing further just leaves us confused. Reading the book as prep for the lecture is good. Reading the book afterward as review, and for study and reference is great. But if you think a lecture is just the professor reading the book, then you've missed the point of lectures completely.
There's a few dimensions to this that are important.
First, not everyone is a verbal learner. Some pick up concepts much easier from reading than listening. Sometimes a book diagram can enlighten much better than any hand-drawn diagram on a chalkboard; of course, the professor has the upside of of being able to adapt the drawing based on questions. So really, the two go hand-in-hand. I've actually always felt the opposite of you: the lecture gets me excited about things I should pay attention to, but I don't really understand it until I read the book and do some problems. Your line about getting confused is exactly me in lecture; if I have a question about the lecture but the professor moves on (which often the professor has thought he answered my question, and maybe even I did too), then the rest of the lecture can leave me a bit confused until I read the book later. It's a style difference I think, not making judgments because I don't think either way is "better".
Second, I suspect it depends a bit on the topic. It's difficult to understand a mathematical proof in a textbook for the first time simply by reading (often you need an expert to walk you through it), but there are other subjects that are well-suited to simply reading.
Third, we must separate the ideal from reality. A good lecture will inspire and be very dynamic based on questions and feedback from the students. However, I had several professors at my alma mater Big State University that would walk into class and flat out tell the students "I didn't want to teach this class, I'd rather being doing research, but the chair said I had to". As you can imagine, some professors look at lecture as something you just get through... and yes, they tend to regurgitate textbooks. Even when the professors care, if they wrote the textbook, they're a little partial to that style of presentation obviously and so will mirror much of the material in the book.
So much information is online now (or in books) that it does seem easiest to read books or watch videos outside of class, then use your class time with the expert in the field (the professor) to clarify questions. It's good to have someone walk you through the problems until you get it. Lectures - in video or book format - don't usually do that, instead leaving examples to the reader, which is what really misses the point.
I'm glad to see Devuan gearing up for a release. While Debian is not my favored flavor of linux, and I personally don't see any problems with systemd, I also recognize that this is exactly why different distros exist: we all have different needs.
So cheers to the Devuan team on this upcoming release, and best wishes for many more.
I hope this will help end the systemd "debate". I get a little tired seeing the constant re-treading of which one is better. If you like systemd or don't care, you have distro options. If you don't like systemd and DO care, you also have at least one distro to choose from. Use the tech that makes most sense for you.
Translation: 1,461 young adults admit they can't live without their mobile phone, and prefer it as the tool for communicating, regardless if it's for an interview or a Tinder hook-up.
I wonder how these young adults would feel if they got fired via text message. Oh, suddenly that would be rude and impersonal? Yeah, not unlike wanting to be hired via text message.
The linked article never said anything about rude or impersonal, where did you get that? It just said the phone is most convenient, and that's kind of a 'duh', isn't it? Not just texts, but email and websites can be accessed by mobile phone, at any time.Of course people are going to say they prefer that to sitting around at home staring at a landline or PC waiting for the call/email. I'm sure people in the '90s were saying "These young people can't live without their internet and email, why can't they just pick up the phone and call? Phones are much more personal!".
One of my biggest gripes with job applications these days is the complete lack of communication. I have no idea if my resume is being process, was rejected, or simply fell into a black hole and was never received. I'd like some feedback since I put some time and effort into applying for a job they took the time and effort to post for, especially because I might get an offer from a different job that wasn't my first choice and it would be nice to weigh the options if I have a chance at both. I think texts would be a perfect communication channel for this. A quick text of "Your resume was received and we'll get back to you", followed up with a request to set an interview time or a generic "Thank you for applying, we filled the position!" would be fantastic just to keep me in the loop. Wastes less time for everyone. Again, the article didn't say they expect interviews over text message, just that applicants feel more positive when texts are used as part of the process (which I interpret as the communication channel for updates as I said).
I can understand if a company is having a difficult time filling a position being open to a bit more flexibility when hiring, but this kind of pandering and coddling to the social-media texting generation is rather pathetic. You want the job bad enough? Then make an effort to get off your ass and go meet the human hiring you in fucking person.
Who says its pandering or coddling, or that millennials are too lazy to go in? There's plenty of reasons for both sides to enjoy video interviews: easy to schedule around a busy schedule (no travel time or sitting in traffic, in a rush to get back to another job or event; after all, interviews take place during the work day, so who can go on interviews easily when you don't already have a good job with paid time off?), saves money (interviewee saves parking fees, bus fare, gas, etc., and interviewer saves money particularly if the candidate is out of town and they don't need to pay to fly them in for an interview; remember also that every minute spent in the interview is the employer spending money on the salary of the interviewer, video interviews can be used as quick screening much easier than bringing someone in for a full day interview), and maybe using such tech is now an important skill in a now global economy (do you fly people half way around the world for a business meeting, or just video call them?).
Millennials are adapting to changing economics and job market, as well as technology, cut them some slack.
Slashdot Mirror
You are not a customer of MySpace. You are the product.
...
You paid them nothing. They owe you nothing.
Little bit of a contradiction here. If I am the product, then I paid with my private information and attention (for ads). Just because government currency didn't directly exchange hands doesn't mean I didn't pay anything, or that they aren't providing me some kind of service for that barter. Stop giving corporations excuses to get away with whatever they want.
Because I asked questions about why we should rush impact studies, or why there's such a rush to give money and bailouts to the nuclear industry instead of renewables? You are a perfect example of the fuckers who gave us a planet dying from pollution and climate change, because you refuse to think for yourself about the consequences of short-term profit motives.
Unfortunately the environmentalist fake news machine has been in high gear for nearly forty years convincing millions of otherwise intelligent people that nuclear power equals three-eyed fish and glow-in-the-dark babies.
There's already been several nuclear disasters, Fukushima the most recent large one that literally made a city uninhabitable. So how exactly is that "fake news" when it literally happened?
There is huge concern in the US as most of the US reactors are ancient and should be decommissioned, the longer they are open the more likely an accident is to occur. And unlike Fukushima, which was along a huge ocean, US reactors are along rivers, many of which are used for agriculture and drinking water. Even if the reactor doesn't melt down, spent fuel is being kept in storage tanks along those rivers and there is huge concern of leaks that can really decimate entire regions of the country. There is a huge disaster looming that no one is addressing, except for the environmentalists that you are putting down.
Same people who want to shut down coal-fired power plants but also don't like natural gas pipelines or LNG terminals to replace the electricity.
Where exactly is the contradiction here? "Environmentalists that oppose coal also oppose gas as both contribute to pollution and climate change! ... News at 11". Gas is NOT a replacement for coal even though the gas lobby of course would love for you to think that. Gas extraction, fracking, and pipelines are destroying communities, ruining drinking water, and burning gas still contributes to climate change and air pollution. It shouldn't be considered any sort of long-term solution, yet politicians are digging in to support the fracking industry. Environmentalists of course oppose this and ask: why not more renewable energy?
Same people who demand solar on every roof but would flip a shit if they knew how "dirty" solar panel and power electronics manufacturing is.
Nothing is perfect, the laws of physics say so. Environmentalists understand that. The thing is, in comparison, solar is much better than fossil fuel usage -- and wind, hydroelectric, geothermal are even better than photovoltaics.
But you do bring up a good point -- keeping up manufacturing at today's levels is unsustainable. This is why environmentalists also call for a reduction in waste -- reduce, reuse, recycle. Keep our impact and carbon footprint as low as possible, and we're not going to be able to do that if we're stuck on fossil fuels for energy.
As usual, I blame society. For real this time. Too many people seem to have grown up with the idea that it's possible to have all the good stuff without paying for it in some way, either with cash, lack of reliability, pollution of one form or another, and usually some combination of all of the above.
Again, environmentalists are very aware of trade-offs and costs. An ecological economics that factors this in is one that says society needs to develop energy efficiency and reduce waste, meaning we only build as much as we absolutely need for a good life putting people first instead of business profits, but that sort of economics is very incompatible with the capitalist model of production that says "build as much as you can all the time to sell on the market!". Some people have brain meltdowns when you question the basic tenets of capitalism, but that's the real stance of wanting good stuff without paying for it. You are paying for it, in human costs of pollution and effective slavery, as well as climate change. So what sort of future do you want?
For the record, I'd prefer to live down the street from a nuclear plant than a gas or coal or oil-burning power plant. And I did the math: if I covered my roof in solar panels, I'd lower my electric bill by at most 50-60% on sunny days, and only 30% averaged year round. If I covered my whole property in s
You seem to think people want to slow it down for fun but there are many legitimate concerns.
1. Two to Three standard designs, vetted by some group of nuclear engineers as safe. Facilitates factory production of components
If the designs are so safe, why isn't it already standardized? or is it because sufficient protections depend greatly on environmental and other factors?
2. Processes to fast track environmental reviews
Why does it need to be fast, and how do you define "fast" anyway? A mess up of nuclear can result in VERY large consequences (see Fukushima as a recent example). Large consequences I think deserve extra time and thorough review, not a rushed job.
3. Limited indemnity for developers to prevent frivolous lawsuits.
If it's so safe, why do they need indemnity? What do you define as "frivolous"?
4. Some form of expedited processed in the courts to review lawsuits and settle them quickly.
Why do you want to rush review of lawsuits? Complaints need to be fully explored because the stakes are big here. As I said earlier, the consequences are sufficiently large that it seems fair to me that it takes time to thoroughly investigate. Business profits don't trump my right to a livable environment.
5. Reopen Yucca Mountain. Fuck Harry Reid. Hell, bury his soon to be dead ass in it.
Either breeder reactors work or they don't. If we still need this, then it's a clear sign that the "promise" of nuclear you hailed has failed and is still saddling us with nuclear waste for thousands of years. If Yucca is needed, then we need to develop new technologies and not pretend this is any kind of long-term solution.
6. Ongoing research into new designs, module designs, etc.
I've seen estimates that especially if the whole world switches to heavily lean on nuclear, we can only expect about 100 years of fuel at most -- and already nuclear is actually very expensive and only made "cheap" by heavy government subsidy (for example my state is preparing a bailout package of BILLIONS of dollars to nuclear to keep their plants profitable and operating). And it may not even be that long if we don't get the message that we need SUSTAINABLE development which very likely means rethinking how civilization and society functions to get our energy usage down -- we shouldn't be planning on continuing this path or even increasing global energy use at this point. After 100 years, we'll be right back at this same juncture, facing an energy crisis.
So why not plan for a long-term sustainable future by investing those billions of research dollars and subsidies into renewables: solar (not just photovoltaics either), wind, hydroelectric, geothermal? Those would be massively useful investments that would keep civilization going into the forseeable future indefinitely, particularly if coupled with a society-wide effort to reduce consumption of energy and products. It's the only real solution we have, everything else is a bandaid that kicks the can down the road in one form or another to our kids.
I was referring to quantity more so than ready-made. Depending what you need, it's sometimes difficult to find a non-ridiculous quantity for a reasonable price. It used to also be harder to do so under food stamps (there were many restrictions on what sorts of things you could buy, most fresh vegetables didn't even count) but they now cover a much greater range of things.
The system we have isn't Capitalism, it's Cronyism.
So you're saying "that's not REAL capitalism!"? :-) funny that many don't let socialists get away with making that same argument.
Can you point to a time when we *didn't* have cronyism? Because the last time we had such concentrated wealth and lack of regulation and oversight was the Gilded Age, the height of cronyism and poverty. If you're referring to economic prosperity since the world wars, that comes partly from being the major economic power left standing as well as FDR's New Deal and progressive reform that actually took very strong cues from Socialist Party demands (the Socialist Party was actually winning seats in Congress and state legislatures as a third party and that was enough to scare the establishment into giving into some of the demands). So in modern US history we've actually done the best with progressive/socialist reform and the worst under deregulated "free market" capitalism (that quickly becomes cronyism).
So why is it so wrong to point out we've never had real full socialism either and should give it a chance? Socialism is about economic democracy instead of the economic dictatorship of CEOs under capitalism, what's so wrong about democracy?
The young always think there is a better way. As they grow up, they realize that the current way works, while most "good ideas" don't. But, enough new ideas do work to keep the system changing.
Wait a minute, is it that the current way works can never change, or that new ideas do work and change the system? That seems pretty contradictory there.
At one time we lived under monarchies and feudalism. We moved to constitutional monarchies and mercantilism. We then moved to republics and capitalism. Is it really so hard to imagine that there is a next step in human social evolution after what we have today? So hard to admit that we are nowhere near perfect yet? And yes, we will probably move toward "democracy and socialism" next because each step has been about expanding rights to more and more people. People of the future will look back on the poverty and environmental destruction under capitalism and the "right to private property" and shake their heads just as we do to the "divine right" of kings before us.
So, the govt is supposed to be there for preventing people being stupid with their own money, making decisions for them?
I mean, there was no one with a gun to their heads telling them to take out all these massive loans.....
The gun is called "poverty, starvation, and death".
Yes, people will take out loans and go to university when they are told that is the only way to find a "good job" and provide for themselves and their families. That is what business leaders and politicians constantly drone on and on about. Right now they're pushing "everyone needs to learn coding to get a job". It's the same pattern.
You describe an extremely unforgiving and authoritarian system if there is absolutely no help for "being stupid". Do you think an 18 year old fresh out of high school should know as much as you and make every decision absolutely perfectly for the rest of their lives? Did *you* make all of the best decisions at 18? It's not like we're cyborgs and can simply upload all of human knowledge to high school graduates on their day of graduate. People will make always continue to make bad decisions, but that doesn't make them bad people or even stupid. Maybe they just haven't learned yet, the world is complicated and often unpredictable, and they will learn for the future from the experience. In fact making mistakes is pretty much the only real way to learn and master anything. They deserve help and education and sympathy, not scorn and anger and callousness. We all do.
Or young people see the generation before them loaded with debt and unable to afford to purchase a house, see a political ruling class that does not care about them, and see companies making record profits and all the money going to an increasingly smaller percentage of the population and are realizing "yep, the system's broken".
And everything you describe is a symptom of consumerism, not capitalism.
Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.
Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.
It's easy to confuse the two, and certainly they're related, but it's not as simple as that either. Private ownership of resources and the means of production gives one a vast amount of economic power the larger a business grows, and at some point that economic power is enough to project political power as well. The ruling class becomes all about pleasing the private corporate owners, partly because they might personally profit from such arrangements, but also because of a concern that the private owner will hurt the economy and community or even nation as a whole if they don't get what they want. How many times do football teams threaten to leave if they don't get a publicly-funded stadium built? How many times does Harley Davidson or other companies threaten layoffs and to go to other countries if we don't give them free money in the form of tax cuts? How many times have the banks insisted they need a bailout or they will let the mortgage market take down the world economy? Capitalists essentially hold the rest of us for ransom with their economic power.
the root problem is that too many people feel like they have to own the latest iPhone and iPad or Samsung Galaxy phone and Galaxy tab (as soon as it comes out each year) as well as drive a new Mercedes or BMW, go on an overseas vacation every year, and go out to eat with friends every night when they are in their 20s and early 30s. When young adults spend 110% of their earnings and don't start saving for retirement until around age 40, of course we are going to end up with the state of things we see now.
Hang on here, has it occurred to you that capitalism has caused this? I think you're conflating two different groups of people here. The poor can't afford BMWs or overseas vacations. Most grocery store meals are designed with "the family of four" in mind and so depending on what you eat when you are out (and how many leftovers you bring home for tomorrow) it can be cheaper to eat out than cook at home and be wasteful. Most people don't buy phones but rather lease/rent them, and you get automatic upgrades every year or two, so it's entirely possible for someone to have the latest phone and still be paying only $20 per month or so, and it's not exactly easy to find a job without a phone number and internet access (for many people, their phone *is* their way of accessing the web and email too, they don't own high-powered desktop rigs) so it's a necessary expense.
The expensive lifestyle problems are the rich being wasteful, which capitalism encourages because you have to always buy to make more and more profit. For the poor, they are expected to take on more and more bills and debt in order to keep up with the middle class and have even a chance at getting a job and avoiding poverty/homelessness. The poor cannot win that race long term, and we're seeing that in statistics as more and more people drop out of the workforce, are forced out of their homes, declare bankrupcty, all while wealth inequality skyrockets.
This is all capitalism. It all stems from the wealthy using their economic power to extort money out of the poor. It creates a dog-eat-dog culture of consumerism and stru
small "c" capitalism is something a free society has to have, i.e. the ability to buy and sell goods in a relatively unfettered market.
You're confusing a free market with capitalism, which is not the same thing. It's also a very common mistake to make given the propaganda in the US that intentionally wants us to associate "freedom" with capitalism.
Capitalism simply means private ownership and control of resources -- land, natural resources, and modern industrial means of production. Private ownership means generally speaking a person (a dictator or monarch) or a small board of directors (an oligarchy) make all the decisions about the use of resources and production. On the surface, this seems like a very fair thing -- you own it, why shouldn't you get to decide? -- but the problem with this line of thought is the scale we're talking. When a capitalist decides to clear cut a forest, that forest is now gone and even if he sells the land later, no other person gets to use that forest ever again. What if someone else wanted to create a park? Too late, capitalist decided already. What if a majority of people in the area wanted a park instead of a clear cut field? What if that forest and all those tree roots helped soak up water and prevent flooding, but now without it, surrounding neighborhoods easily flood? What if that forest held a rare species of tree or animal that could have lead to a medical discovery? Even if we needed to cut the trees down for firewood or paper or whatever, maybe we would have preferred to the wood go to local community members and not sold in China or wherever? Too late, capitalist already decided.
That's the problem with private ownership of resources and production. Most if not all resource use decisions actually impact all of us, at least community-wide if not planet-wide (as climate change is producing). And yet we are allowing monarchs and oligarchs make those decisions for our communities and nations without any input. Is that fair and just for someone else to decide things that impact your family and community without you having any say in the process whatsoever? I understand you might not always get what you want, but right now you don't even have a vote. A CEO decides and that's it, can legally do what they want (within broad confines of regulation that politicians continually cut and weaken) and completely ignore you and your family and your community. If it makes your house flood more, they don't care. If it causes environmental damage that gives you and your family lung cancer, they don't care. You don't have any say.
Socialism is the idea that resources and production should be publicly-owned and democratically managed. That's really all it is. Because of certain historical events people confuse socialism with authoritarian takeovers of those countries, but again, like the free market and capitalism, they are not the same thing. All we're talking about it more democracy, that you and your family and your community should have a vote and decide how those resources are used and that it should not be left to private decision-making behind closed doors by people who don't necessarily live in your community or even country.
Note also, as a common misconception, that socialist theory typically distinguishes between "private property", which is private ownership of natural resources and industrial means of production, and "personal property" which is your family home. Socialists don't generally care about your family home or your toothbrush or your clothes or your car, do whatever you want at home when you're not bothering anyone. No one is going to take your house. It's about democratizing economic decisions for the big industrial questions that affect all of us, it's about making sure no one businessperson CEO can force their economic vision on you and the community, you have to all agree together democratically. You get more individual freedoms and more say-so under a democratic system -- both politic
Let's see, the economic system that has raised more people out of poverty than any other, young people aren't sure about.
Two things.
One, I'll grant you it has raised some out of poverty -- and to very high wealth in fact! -- but the other side of the coin is that many more have fallen deeper into poverty and debt, stuck in a cycle that is nearly impossible to break without help from others. Our economic system is heavily weighted against the poor. We tell the poor they have to pay higher interest rates -- pay more money!! -- because they are poor and private companies with no public oversight decide "credit scores", what kind of sense does that make? I know, you'll say "but the capitalists are taking a risk and deserve more!" but that's exactly the point, capitalism is making some rich at the expense of many others who pay more and fall more into poverty and debt.
Second, even if what you say is true about capitalism (and I have my extreme doubts, see above), that's a very relative statement you're trying to make sound absolutist. Before capitalism we had mercantilism which was seen as improvement on feudal economics which was seen as an improvement on past systems. Why can't capitalism itself be flawed and similarly need replaced by some system -- let's call it socialism -- to help *even more* people? Until we have 0% homelessness, 0% poverty, our job is not done and we should not settle if we want to claim we are a civilized society.
Usually the district maps are drawn by bi-partisan groups and are routinely tested in the courts to make sure they are fair. What kind of rules do you think we need here that we don't already have?
That is definitely not the case in most states. In Pennsylvania, there is an ongoing court case that was recently taken up by the state Supreme Court that challenges the gerrymandered maps drawn by state Republicans using partisan voter data. Currently the state legislature simply approves the map, so the dominant party effectively gets to choose the map, and can of course make sure it is a favorable one.
Independent redistricting groups are a step in the right direction, but your word of "bi-partisan" shows the flaw in that system too. We don't want "bi-partisan" where the two major parties begrudgingly agree on a map that has "equal amounts" of gerrymandering. They're basically just dividing us up into gang turf at that point, "You take this district, and I'll take this district". We do NOT want that. We want NON-PARTISAN elections that are completely out of the hands of any party's decisions.
The way you do that is with Proportional Representation. We each elect a representative from a choice of all candidates -- no partisan primaries that get to tell us who to vote for -- and use a proportional ranked choice algorithm to determine the winners. The beauty of this system is that it works best when there's lots of choices, so you can at least establish a small number of static "super-districts" that don't need to be redrawn if not completely do away with districts in their entirety. This means our election process is no longer controlled by any party and is fair to all candidates of any party or even independent candidates, and therefore may the best candidate win according to voter interests.
Citizen's United seems like a good decision that upheld the 1st amendment to me. I don't think you can restrict companies and non-profits from making political donations or doing political activities w/o restricting free speech in the process. Maybe we can just require that funding of political activity can proceed with out any limits as long as the source of funding is 100% disclosed and must be 100% from USA sources? Seems to me that the issue isn't the amount of money, but that people may not be aware of the source of the funding. Full timely disclosure of who's donating what to whom would fix that.
Companies and non-profits are not people, they are not living breathing entities. They don't have thoughts, feelings, opinions, they can't serve jail time when they do something wrong. They are completely legal constructs, and as such should not have any rights under the Constitution.
The owners and investors of any company or organization have ALWAYS been completely free to donate to campaigns as individuals. They've never been restricted in that sense. The organization can even issue a statement of endorsement and encourage its members to donate to a particular candidate or party as individuals, that's not been restricted either. At least not in general, there's some basic rules like you can't donate to federal campaigns if you work for the federal government, etc., but for the most part there are no restrictions other than a limit on the donation amount. So this idea that organizations being able to contribute money as "free speech" is a completely invalid argument. They've always had "free speech" with their own personal money as individuals.
What those business owners and investors discovered is that they can use their organizations and businesses as shells to HIDE what they are doing. They can move around lots of money, they can claim tax breaks out on certain expenses. If they donate as individuals, their names are attached to the donation (as it should be transparent!), but then of course if you are a rich Republican or a rich Democrat you might turn off voters if they know you're supporting a candidate. So instead, you donate y
I'd like to know what they were smoking when they said the average reader reads 12 books a year. How many people read even one?
Very likely that statistics is hiding reality here. If most people read 0-2 books per year, but a small but not insignificant amount of people read 50 books per year, the average will be 12.
It's interesting. In the US, people generally trust corporations rather than their government. In Europe on the other hand, it's exactly the opposite, people rather trust their governments than corporations.
I don't trust either, but there's a distinct difference between the two. I can decide to opt out of dealing with any corporation. If I want to opt out of the government, eventually men with guns will come to force me to deal with the government.
I suppose you've not heard of the Pinkertons then? Hired by corporations to violently suppress labor strikes in early 1900s. Corporations world-wide have hired private security forces to impose their will on whoever opposes them, typically in countries with weaker central governments in Africa and South America, but it really happens everywhere. In the US they typically use armies of lawyers rather than military, because that works for them so far in our corporate two-party duopoly, but make no mistake how corporations would behave when deeply threatened, history tells us exactly what they do.
"Government" is too abstract a term. We're really talking about who holds the power. What you and the parent post both are concerned about is someone having power over others -- in other words, unequal power. Inequality comes from centralization, we empower one individual (or a small group) to have more power and authority than others, and any time that happens, there is the possibility that someone will take advantage and use it to coerce people.
The real key difference is democracy. The typical corporate structure is extremely top-down, centralized power in a CEO and board of directors that essentially act as dictators (maybe oligarchs is the better word) within the company. What they say goes, and even if middle management or workers or even customers disagree, the CEO is under no obligation to care at all. You don't have much recourse against a centralized authoritarian heirarchical power, what they say goes, and if fight too much they'll simply fire you or cut off service to you. At best you could quit and find a job somewhere else (or as a customer, "vote with your wallet" and go elsewhere), but that is only at best supporting one dictatorial corporation over another. Over time, capitalism encourages corporations to merge and become monopolies (to lower costs and maximize profit since there is no longer competition), which makes the top-down centralized power even worse.
To be fair, some governments evolve this way too. I absolutely hate the recent trend of "we need to run government like a business" because implicit in such statements is that top-down centralized corporate power. It breeds this attitude that the president and Congress are like CEO and board of directors, that what they say goes, and that's the end. That is the pathway to authoritarianism and government dictatorship, and we really need to reverse that trend.
But in principle, we value democractic governments. Why is democracy such a big deal? Because rather than centralizing power in a small group (or even just one person), democracy puts everyone on a level playing field. We ALL have a say so, we all have a vote, we all have the same legal power. There is little to no power inequality between individuals because every individual's concerns can be heard and address as the group deliberates and decides together. Recent history has made representative democracy (a slight oxymoron but we'll overlook it) more feasible because of the large amounts of people in each country (and the distance necessary to travel to Congress before cars and airplanes!), but I think modern technology and methods allow us to lean more towards pure direct democracy. Do you always get what you want in a democracy? No. But you are guaranteed a voice and a vote, which is more than you are guaranteed in today's authoritarian corporate structures.
What we really need are more democratic structures that protect individua
Scott Walker doesn't want pay teachers a living wage
The average teacher salary in Wisconsin is $53k. That is above the average salary/wage for Wisconsin, and certainly enough to live on.
Without knowing more about the statistical distribution, this is a somewhat misleading statement due to the way averages work. Is the starting salary for new teachers $20k, but there's enough teachers with seniority making $80k to shift the average? Is that average calculated only with teachers in classrooms, or does that include principals and other administrators?
My understanding is that many states currently facing a budget crisis are attacking our new teachers. Basically, they can't cut pensions of current retirees or near-retirees, partly due to contractual reasons and partly due to not wanting to anger older voters. So they're instead negotiating contracts for new teachers at low pay, low benefits, drastically reduced (if existent at all) pensions. It is completely logical to say that Walker and GOP don't want to pay a living wage (to new teachers) while still maintaining contractually-obligated good pay and benefits to senior teaching staff, there is no contradiction. You have to know the details and the distribution.
Because in general it is not the government's business to interfere with private agreements. If you and I agree to something, we should not need the government's permission.
Sir, you have this backwards. Government regulations are not granting permission, they are there to set a process that ensures everyone's rights are protected during the negotiation process, and to enforce penalties on those that break their contracts.
Without regulations, why should a billionaire CEO of a multi-national company give a shit what *you*, sabri, think about their policies and contracts? They can tell you anything you want to hear and then say "nevermind" after they've gotten your money. And what are you going to do as an individual?
Our government is of the people, for the people, by the people, because together we are strong and can protect ourselves and our rights. Individually we are weak, particularly in the face of a strong business adversary.
In this case, it does not [severely disadvantages them]. The system works as designed and the courts are now going to determine whether or not Apple's point of view (that an iPhone cannot be guaranteed to work after 1 year) is reasonable or not. This is based on general principles of reasonableness, not on a codified mandate for consumer warranties.
Our court system is effectively broken for most Americans. Have you been to court? I have. It's a lot of legal fees, meeting with lawyers, filing paperwork, waiting months for a court case, only to have the decision appealed by a defendant with way more money and time than you. It is extremely delayed justice, if you get it at all. The working and middle classes are typically hugely disadvantaged in court. We could fix it by requiring speedy trials, hiring more judges and public defenders, and other tweaks, but that would require a more expensive court system and likely higher taxes, which many completely flip their shit when they hear the word "taxes" so we've not been able to have constructive discussion on the topic.
We don't need the government to create laws that "protect" us, because those laws will have side effects. Don't believe me? Let me give you one example. It's somewhat off topic and may start a flame war, but that is not my intention. In my home country, the unions have been successful in creating very strong labor protection laws. In short, once you hire someone on a permanent contract, it becomes very difficult to fire them. That resulted in employers being careful in giving permanent contracts, and opting for temporary contracts which kept getting extended. Then the government created new laws to prevent that from happening, by mandating a permanent contract after three extensions. And guess what? Do you think more people got permanent contracts? No. "Disposable" workers that are easily replaced where replaced after three contracts. In California, where I live, there is the principle of at-will employment. This means (explaining for non-US person), that I can get hired and fired at any time. And you know what: that flexibility causes businesses to hire without giving it a second thought. No bullshit with temporary contracts needed, because everything is flexible. That is the net result of government interference, no matter how well these laws are meant.
It would be nice if we directed our ire at sociopathic executives of multi-national corporations that have no allegience to country or the people, rather than indirectly defending them when we attack government regulations and actions. No level of government did any of this to you; there is no law that says "no one should ever hire sabri for a permanent position". Corporations decided to do this because they are sociopaths, obsessed with forever increasing their profits regardless the consequences to people, the country, the economy, or the planet. Please note, I am in no way saying they shouldn't be profitable or well compensated for their work. Bei
Why do those advocating the $15 hamburger wage not see this ?
Because you're making a detached economic argument in favor of business interests, and they're making a "I need enough food to survive" argument in favor of community interests and human rights.
In most areas of the country, especially near big cities, the cost of living is approximately $15 if not much higher (I've seen estimates of more like $20-25 in New York City, for example). This is the cost of basic rent, basic utilities like electric and water, food, transportation to a job (whether by owning a small used car or taking the bus - what you think buses are free?), and replacement clothing (nothing fancy, just new pair of jeans every once in a while as old one rips). Basically, inflation is increase in cost of goods and services, and if you took the minimum wage of the '60s and '70s and adjusted it for inflation, it really should be something like $15 per hour now. With the productivity gains of the average American worker due to increased education and technology, it should probably be even higher, but almost all of the profit gains have gone to top executives rather than increased the salaries of those that actually do the work.
So what does this mean? It means any job paying less than approximately $15 per hour is NOT LIVABLE. You will starve, or end up homeless, or some sort of big problem. It's not sustainable. What I don't understand is why people make the argument of the don't "deserve" $15. Who says? Who decided some arbitrary number is the cap? The REAL issue is: does every person deserve enough to meet basic needs in modern society? I think the answer is unequivocally YES. Every American deserves the dignity of basic needs met, especially when they're willing to work full time to do so. No matter what the work is, if it takes up a full week of work, then they deserve to have basic bills covered, end of story. Full time work is opportunity cost -- if you're working full time, it means you don't have free time to take other jobs, attend school or training, etc. IT HAS TO BE WORTHWHILE. It has to be enough to survive.
Having "more jobs" that pay starvation wages is not really an improvement. It makes job numbers reports and corporate profits look better, but those aren't the only metrics of the success of a society. In fact, I think they're bad metrics; a much better one is: do we ensure every American that works hard can take care of themselves, and has opportunity to improve their lives? By that metric we are failing disastrously.
In my view, businesses that cannot budget for and pay living wages are FAILING BUSINESSES. A business that requires its workers to starve for its owner to make a profit is a FAILING BUSINESS and deserves no sympathy or respect. They should have to drastically change their business strategy or go out of business and be replaced in the free market by business owners that DO pay a living wage.
As far as automation goes, do you think they'll ever decide "Nah, I don't need more profit!"?. At best, low wages slightly delay automation, but make no mistake: it's coming. It's the story of the industrial revolution and the Gilded Age, big business grew larger and larger until it controlled the economy and could automate or improve efficiency, and laid off many many workers once they were unneeded. The poverty and starvation was great, which is what lead to so many of our labor reforms and formation of unions. We have to start putting human interests first over corporate interests. Don't fall for their propaganda. Every American that works hard deserves to live without fear of where the next meal will come from or how to pay rent this month.
And really, we should be taking advantage of automation to work LESS. Lower the amount of hours for full time work. Give everyone more time to raise their families, get involved in the community and local politics, take classes and improve education, volunteer, etc. There's more to life than wage labor. We can make that happen if we stop obsessing with letting big business take more, more, more for themselves.
Since FF 57 will be the death of Firefox in about three months due to the disabling of all "legacy" extensions (which is 100% of the extensions I use - some very useful ones that haven't been updated in quite some time and that I can't find WebExtensions equivalents for)
Completely seriously, which extensions are those? What do they do? Are they absolutely necessary for your work? (As in, are you sure the useful features haven't been integrated into Firefox at this point? if you are a developer, have you checked if the Firefox Developer Edition meets your needs without all those debug/dev extensions?).
And if those extensions really are that important, and there is no replacement or change to your current workflow/processes that can address it, how does switching to Chrome solve those problems? Why not write a new extension yourself? Help fund another developer to do it? Contribute to improving the community, rather than jumping ship to a proprietary competitor and giving them even more of a stranglehold over web standards. With Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, all using Chromium engine, Firefox is really the last free software engine we have to prevent a Google monopoly with closed proprietary standards like Internet Explorer did years ago.
Firefox is jettisoning their old insecure extension code, this is a good thing. Transitions are always painful even when done correctly, but sometimes they need to be done. Help them if you can.
It's amazing to me that if one goes to the FF addon's page and types in some search terms like "video" or "mouse" or "screen" or "download" or "tab" and sorts by 'most users', perhaps 10% of the extensions are tagged as compatible with 57+.
We're several months from release still, of course not every extension will be updated yet. I expect the number to grow as we get closer. Mozilla is even working directly with some high-profile extension authors like uBlock to get WebExtensions right; Firefox's implementation will have more features and power than Chrome's. Better extensions will be coming, and I hope it will actually push Chrome to innovate and improve their implementation too! Has Google ever added the missing features that made Firefox extensions better in the first place? Maybe this is the kick that will make them do so.
And for plugins that have not been touched in years: do you feel comfortable running code that is no longer maintained? That uses an old plugin/extension system that is insecure, part of the reason they're switching to WebExtensions in the first place? Mozilla announced this upcoming change last year, it's not like they're surprising anyone. I'm skeptical to use any software or extension that I can't confirm is maintained in case of security or other bugs.
when it gets to about 13 GB of virtual memory, it gets pretty slow even though I've got lots of free memory on my 32GB desktop
This could be related to all of those old extensions you're using. I've seen reports that a lot of the memory leaks attributed to Firefox are actually from poorly-written extensions and not core Firefox itself. They've done a pretty good job at improving core Firefox's performance in recent releases, and the changes in 57 should improve it even more significantly.
FF - R.I.P. - I'll miss you, it was fun back when FF was fresh and innovative
This is exactly why 57 is a big release! They're switching to a new web content engine that will improve performance and security, and it was written in a new programming language Rust that they researched and developed themselves. I think designing your own language to improve security and performance is about as innovative as you can get, and I really appreciate that managers at Mozilla encouraged experimenting with Rust rather than shutting it down with "just use C++" or whatever argument. I encourage them to keep experimenting and innovating!
Plus not to mention the WebExtensions yo
Taleb's 4-part Incerto series (see http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/247576/incerto-4-book-bundle-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb/9780812997699/) is fantastic reading. Changes your perspective on the nature of randomness and how much control we actually have over our system and our environment. Not just control, but how little information we even have about the situation! (it is easy to get "fooled by randomness"). Antifragile is particularly a very good concept we should follow in all of our systems; it occurs to me so often now how fragile our systems are, and many steps we take actually make it more fragile, not less.
I believe Taleb is working on a 5th book, I am looking forward to it.
Ergo, my reference to the gun point, which is how all taxes are collected...
Let me ask a question. When you receive your electric bill or winter gas bill or water/sewerage bill, do you call it a forced bill "at gun point" from the utility company? Or do you just pay it because you're paying your fair share of bills for what you used?
Taxes are just our bill for our fair share of government and government services. It pays for military defense, a court system to allow you to file greviences against neighbors businesses or even the government itself, roads and bridges and other infrastructure, inspectors that ensure our buildings are constructed to code and food is safe to eat, and way more than I can list here. You use plenty of government services every day and don't even realize, so yes, you need to pay your bills for those services.
Now you could argue that our taxes are not always used wisely. I'd personally love to see our taxes go more to domestic programs rather than more middle eastern wars. And you might argue government is wasteful, and sometimes it is. But then I have a news flash for you, have you ever worked at corporate? Corporations are *at least* as wasteful as government services in many circumstances, so it's not particularly unique to government. If you'd like to see changes and waste cut, contact your representative and vote against them next election if they do nothing, that's why we're a democratic republic, we can vote and change things. At least you can do that, with private corporate control you have absolutely no say about what the CEO does.
So, of course, "UBI" and other attempts to forcibly "spread the wealth" to address the non-problem of "income inequality" are foolish and oppressive.
If you've never been poor I suppose you don't understand inequality, so let me give you a brief overview. Income is a huge part of it, but not all. Neighborhoods gentrify and rent increases meaning you must leave your long time neighborhood since you can't find a better job, because you don't have free time between 60+ hours a week job at several stores or money to attend college to get new skills. You might ask why they don't just buy a house. Good question! When your income is that low, you don't have the credit necessary to buy. Except landlords need to make money off of you, so their rent is almost by definition *more* than a typical mortgage (it has to be more than the mortgage to make a profit, right?). So you have to pay a lot and need more jobs. Many jobs are not on bus routes in my area, so you need a car. You get a cheap one at a used car lot, but since your credit is low, you don't get the typical 2 or 3% interest middle class gets, you get 8 or 10% interest, again having to pay *more* than middle class. But it's used car so you can make small payments over time so you try to make it work out. Then you get to work and your boss tells you to go home. They found someone new, or just plain don't like you, and they fire you on the spot. They can do that in many states because "right to work" really means employers have the right to fire you at any moment. Or even if you're not fired, it's a slow day, so he sends you home. Now you're short a day of pay, and your bills are stretched thin, so you can't make the car payment until the next paycheck. Now you're late and have penalty interest, and they possibly come to repo your car if you wait too long and they don't want to work with you. Or, you decide to take a payday loan on your next paycheck so you can have the money now rather than waiting two more weeks, so you pay your bills, but your payday loan was at obnoxious 25%+ and has to be paid back immediately at the next paycheck, which of course you don't have, so you sink into more debt. Which means your credit score dips lower, you have to pay even higher interest rates, now you don't even qualify for car loans and even rental units star
Now where does this money come from? More taxes on the average working man? Good to know that a sheer luck billionaire is shaping global finances.
Well I can't speak for Zuck's motives, but in general advocates say it comes from restoring taxes that used to exist on the wealthy. We've had decades of reduced taxes and tax loopholes for the rich that they pay hardly nothing anymore. During the most prosperous periods in modern US history, the tax rate was as high as 90% on the top tax bracket. Plus, there's plenty of infrastructure and environmental problems that have to be paid for by the people despite the fact that private interests caused it and profited off it. They must pay their fair share commensurate with the amount of money they make as well as the resources they take from the public (when you harvest things like oil now, it's gone for future generations; don't they owe something to our grandchildren and future generations who never get an opportunity to build that industry themselves?) and the infrastructure (trucks cause something like 10,000x the damage to roads than cars, do they pay for the roads?) and environment (many oil pipelines leaks over the years, not to mention all kinds of other runoff, a lot of it comes from agricultural pesticides too) that they damage in the process.
Yes, I would rather people be campaigning for Universal Basic Employment. That is, a system where everyone would always have access to a job that paid basic living expenses, a job built around each person's particular skill set.
Is there enough work for each skill set? Can we mandate that work? What if someone wants to change careers later in life and doesn't *want* to keep that skill set? What about people with little technical skills in a computer-dominated world?
My fear is that mandating employment will reduce down to people being assigned to unnecessary jobs just to fulfill the requirement. Extra secretaries, building extra housing beyond our population needs, etc. Plus, this assumes that people are happy working these types of jobs -- many people will be miserable working some jobs and you will have still not addressed the psychological health issue OP brought up.
No I think Universal Basic Income is the win here. We all earn it from corporations buying our publicly owned property (forests, parks) and privatizing it. It's time we started collecting royalties on it. We're not talking a giant income here, but enough for very modest housing and food. But those are the big stresses in life, worrying about if you will have enough to eat or will go homeless. Without those in the equation, people can decide their own lives.
With UBI, you can always eat beans and rice. Nothing fancy, but you can survive. But surely you want more from life than that -- a rewarding career, to volunteer in the community, to become an artist or actor or scientist, or at the very least enough money to get that big screen plasma TV and sometimes go to a football game. You need more income for that stuff, UBI only covers the bases, so most people (unless you are happy to live a spartan monk-like lifestyle in a studio apartment with beans and rice all day, and if so, more power to you) will want more and seek more employment. That isn't a problem.
Except now you've opened up an ACTUALLY free market. Right now corporations hold all the cards, many are forced to take low paying jobs with low/no benefits precisely because they're concerned if they wait any longer they won't be able to afford food or a house. Now with UBI, workers can pass on terrible job offers. They can survive so they don't NEED to work a terrible job for super low pay. They can wait for a better offer. So now corporations have to compete on the best pay and benefits that makes their jobs worthwhile rather than a race to the bottom.
Furthermore, with the UBI safety net, even more people can open that business they always wanted to but were afraid to do so. Open a restaurant, retail store, handyman shop, whatever. Previously people worried about the business failing and how they would get money to survive. Now under UBI, sure ideally the business would excel and make lots of money, but if it goes under, the person feels confident that at least I have UBI to cover my house and food. If the business fails, might have to cut expenses a while, but it can be done. It takes the pressure off, allowing more workers to become confident business owners, which further increases market competition.
Plus UBI allows things not possible before. Look at the people willing to donate their time to open source projects for free right now. If we had UBI, no doubt some programmers would choose to live on UBI and maybe only part time work to dedicate more time to open source. Remember, it's not a job for money necessarily that's healthy, it's having any sort of community contribution. There's plenty of non-profit volunteer positions that currently don't get many applicants but would likely see surges under UBI as people have more options to take less crappy jobs that give them enough free time to volunteer more. These volunteer positions are not any less jobs than paid ones; in fact, some volunteer positions can be very important to the community! Again, with UBI, workers have some restored bargaining power with employ
A good lecture isn't about taking notes down by dictation, or by copying them verbatim from a blackboard.
The notion that if its in the books we can just read it on our own is idiotic... the minute we have a question we have to stop... continuing further just leaves us confused. Reading the book as prep for the lecture is good. Reading the book afterward as review, and for study and reference is great. But if you think a lecture is just the professor reading the book, then you've missed the point of lectures completely.
There's a few dimensions to this that are important.
First, not everyone is a verbal learner. Some pick up concepts much easier from reading than listening. Sometimes a book diagram can enlighten much better than any hand-drawn diagram on a chalkboard; of course, the professor has the upside of of being able to adapt the drawing based on questions. So really, the two go hand-in-hand. I've actually always felt the opposite of you: the lecture gets me excited about things I should pay attention to, but I don't really understand it until I read the book and do some problems. Your line about getting confused is exactly me in lecture; if I have a question about the lecture but the professor moves on (which often the professor has thought he answered my question, and maybe even I did too), then the rest of the lecture can leave me a bit confused until I read the book later. It's a style difference I think, not making judgments because I don't think either way is "better".
Second, I suspect it depends a bit on the topic. It's difficult to understand a mathematical proof in a textbook for the first time simply by reading (often you need an expert to walk you through it), but there are other subjects that are well-suited to simply reading.
Third, we must separate the ideal from reality. A good lecture will inspire and be very dynamic based on questions and feedback from the students. However, I had several professors at my alma mater Big State University that would walk into class and flat out tell the students "I didn't want to teach this class, I'd rather being doing research, but the chair said I had to". As you can imagine, some professors look at lecture as something you just get through... and yes, they tend to regurgitate textbooks. Even when the professors care, if they wrote the textbook, they're a little partial to that style of presentation obviously and so will mirror much of the material in the book.
So much information is online now (or in books) that it does seem easiest to read books or watch videos outside of class, then use your class time with the expert in the field (the professor) to clarify questions. It's good to have someone walk you through the problems until you get it. Lectures - in video or book format - don't usually do that, instead leaving examples to the reader, which is what really misses the point.
I'm glad to see Devuan gearing up for a release. While Debian is not my favored flavor of linux, and I personally don't see any problems with systemd, I also recognize that this is exactly why different distros exist: we all have different needs.
So cheers to the Devuan team on this upcoming release, and best wishes for many more.
I hope this will help end the systemd "debate". I get a little tired seeing the constant re-treading of which one is better. If you like systemd or don't care, you have distro options. If you don't like systemd and DO care, you also have at least one distro to choose from. Use the tech that makes most sense for you.
Translation: 1,461 young adults admit they can't live without their mobile phone, and prefer it as the tool for communicating, regardless if it's for an interview or a Tinder hook-up.
I wonder how these young adults would feel if they got fired via text message. Oh, suddenly that would be rude and impersonal? Yeah, not unlike wanting to be hired via text message.
The linked article never said anything about rude or impersonal, where did you get that? It just said the phone is most convenient, and that's kind of a 'duh', isn't it? Not just texts, but email and websites can be accessed by mobile phone, at any time.Of course people are going to say they prefer that to sitting around at home staring at a landline or PC waiting for the call/email. I'm sure people in the '90s were saying "These young people can't live without their internet and email, why can't they just pick up the phone and call? Phones are much more personal!".
One of my biggest gripes with job applications these days is the complete lack of communication. I have no idea if my resume is being process, was rejected, or simply fell into a black hole and was never received. I'd like some feedback since I put some time and effort into applying for a job they took the time and effort to post for, especially because I might get an offer from a different job that wasn't my first choice and it would be nice to weigh the options if I have a chance at both. I think texts would be a perfect communication channel for this. A quick text of "Your resume was received and we'll get back to you", followed up with a request to set an interview time or a generic "Thank you for applying, we filled the position!" would be fantastic just to keep me in the loop. Wastes less time for everyone. Again, the article didn't say they expect interviews over text message, just that applicants feel more positive when texts are used as part of the process (which I interpret as the communication channel for updates as I said).
I can understand if a company is having a difficult time filling a position being open to a bit more flexibility when hiring, but this kind of pandering and coddling to the social-media texting generation is rather pathetic. You want the job bad enough? Then make an effort to get off your ass and go meet the human hiring you in fucking person.
Who says its pandering or coddling, or that millennials are too lazy to go in? There's plenty of reasons for both sides to enjoy video interviews: easy to schedule around a busy schedule (no travel time or sitting in traffic, in a rush to get back to another job or event; after all, interviews take place during the work day, so who can go on interviews easily when you don't already have a good job with paid time off?), saves money (interviewee saves parking fees, bus fare, gas, etc., and interviewer saves money particularly if the candidate is out of town and they don't need to pay to fly them in for an interview; remember also that every minute spent in the interview is the employer spending money on the salary of the interviewer, video interviews can be used as quick screening much easier than bringing someone in for a full day interview), and maybe using such tech is now an important skill in a now global economy (do you fly people half way around the world for a business meeting, or just video call them?).
Millennials are adapting to changing economics and job market, as well as technology, cut them some slack.