I don't object to signing a contract with an entity that represents workers. I object to signing a contract that limits my ability to hire who I want when I want, and to fire who I want when I want. This is no different than objecting to a contract with a parts supplier that mandates that I can't buy parts from a different supplier, or objecting to a contract that requires I only use a given suppliers parts in my products. I know such contracts exist, and I know that some companies sign them willingly. My companies will not, and if necessary I am willing to pay more and/or put in extra effort to avoid such contracts.
At least with parts suppliers, you have reasonable confidence that the parts are the same, or similar enough to work. Employees however, are very much not the same: an employee is more like a custom designed factory than a part, and every single employee is going to be unique and different. Those differences matter, and they matter a lot - employees are not just skill and technical knowledge, they are also personality, temperament, life goals, and sometimes, family. Treating them as replacable cogs, as unions invariably do, does everyone a disservice.
I already negotiate these kinds of things with people, without a union involved. To me, it's just the other side of the table, and I very much remember having to negotiate my long hair and keeping intellectual property intact when I was interviewing.
It's not about getting the maximum possible dollar in the short term. It's about both parties getting what they want out of it, in a way that's sustainable and lasts for the long term. IMHO the biggest problems in business aren't technology, they're people and long term planning.
I never said that workers didn't deserve rights. In fact, as someone who has worked part time, full time, and as a contractor, I know very well what rights employees have, and why they have them. Employee rights have nothing to do with why I will never tolerate a union presence.
Hiring is between me any my employees. I treat them well, and they do good work. If an employee and I have a problem that's not resolvable, we part ways. I don't need and won't have a third party coming in to tell me or my employees what they should be doing, who I can and can't fire, who I can and can't promote, and who can and can't quit.
Boycott if you want. If I can't have the freedom to work with who I want when I want, I'll either take my business overseas or hire independent contractors. Either way, I'll still provide the same service and people will still buy it, but I'll be paying taxes to a government that doesn't allow organized labor extortion.
I think it is as black and white as I'm making it; we don't allow people to crap on city sidewalks because it's a public health hazard, no matter how strongly they believe that god told them to crap on the sidewalk. You crap on the sidewalk, you get arrested. Plain and simple. Vaccination is really no different.
No matter what a person believes, we don't allow them to kill or maim other people, and it doesn't matter if the tool is a claw hammer or an easily vaccinated disease.
Don't be stupid. Taking a topic like this to a sufficiently far away extreme always results in idiocy and serves only to muddy the waters. You're smarter than that, and so am I.
We have the authority to put people in jail and to commit people to mental institutions. That's good enough. You refuse a vaccine for personal reasons? Fine. You go to the novax prison in north texas with all the other anti-vaxxers, where the vaccination rate is very low, segregated from the rest of the sane population. You can leave when you get your shots.
I fully agree, and have been saying this for years. You want to immigrate to the US? Show full vaccinations and paperwork. You want to live in the US? Show full vaccinations and paperwork. You want to prevent your kids from getting vaccines? Leave the US.
IMHO the only reason to not be vaccinated is a medical exception saying that the vaccine in question would be directly physically harmful to the individual.
Actually, materials with high enough strength to weight ratios have been commercially available for years, and the cable gets wider at the top, not at the bottom. The big problems haven't been strength to weight ratio, they've been resistance to radiation damage, resistance to wear and tear, and figuring out how to get something to climb the cable.
You asked for concrete actions, for concrete suggestions. I gave them. Not all will be usable by all people. Not all will be sustainable at all times. But every one of them is something that I've seen capable "unlucky" people willfully ignore, then complain about being unlucky.
As for being on the wrong side of the median income, if you're implying that I'm an upper middle class snob, I'm not. I've been substantially below median income for my age and gender for several years now, voluntarily. Because I actually practice what I preach, I've had a pretty good life of it.
I would also appreciate it if you stopped assuming ignorance on my part. I understand the plight of the poor; I have been there. I have worked my ass off, sacrificed, planned, and given up short term gains for long term gains for many, many years. My concrete examples come not from some right-wing sense of fairness but from the list of things I personally have had to do over the course of many years to get to where I am. When was the last time your thanksgiving dinner consisted entirely of things anonymously donated by a local church?
I'm sorry if you find my concrete examples to be 'knee slappingly' funny, or unreasonably difficult. I personally found them to be decidedly unfunny and merely reasonably difficult. Far more importantly, I found them to be extremely effective. Unfortunately, they are all too often ignored or underused by others.
Good and bad fortune befalls everyone. However, when bad fortune befalls you regularly, reliably, and consistently more often than good fortune, you're doing something wrong. We make our own fortune and we make our own luck, not by being in the right place at the right time, but by having the resources to take advantage of opportunity when it arises.
As for specifics of things to do, how about these?
- spend less than you make - always have a budget - when you have a budget surplus, it goes into a rainy day fund. You don't buy stuff with it. - when your rainy day fund is full, the extra goes into the stock market. You don't buy stuff with it. - if you have more time than money, get a second job - if you still have more time than money, get a third job - study and become good at social engineering - cancel cable tv - move to a cheaper/smaller/better insulated location - move closer to work - get rid of stuff you don't need - buy used vehicles - pay your bills on time and don't incur late fees - be healthy: get and keep your BMI in the 18-23 range
I understand that for some people, some of these aren't really an option; in particular, if you have kids, a lot of your options are limited. But even excepting those, a huge fraction of the 'unlucky' people I've encountered still fail to do these simple and obvious things.
If you have so little savings that a bad winter's heating costs blow them, you're doing something wrong.
If you live in an apartment with bad insulation that's eating you alive on heating costs, you're doing something wrong.
If you own a home that's eating you alive on heating costs, you're doing something wrong.
Not that it's pleasant to be in any of these situations, and I feel for those who are; but if you find yourself in them, you're doing something wrong and should change it to prevent it in the future.
In my systems, it's even easier: starting up, shutting down, and running. If I want a gui, I log in on a tty and run xinit. The only reason I even know what run level I'm in (3) is because the first thing I do on new systems is edit inittab to start up 20 virtual terminals so I have a proper programming environment.
In the 18 years I've been running linux, I've never seen an actual need for run level 5.
Granted, I'm not a sysadmin for other people or support other users on my box, but if I were, I'd probably expect them to log in at a tty and fire up X manually as well. This is why I would probably not be a good sysadmin.
No. We choose not to 'fix' these issues, not because we would rather spend money on drone strikes, but because spending money on these issues does not fix them. One does not throw resources blindly down a hole in the hopes that they will do some good.
As for not funding totalitarian regimes, I agree. The world as a whole should refuse to buy any oil whatsoever from totalitarian regimes.
Now that I live in Portland, Oregon, I see homelessness in a whole different light. In particular, most of the vast numbers of homeless people here are mentally impaired. It's not a matter of the resources being available, or even lack of donors to help them - it's a lack of ability of the homeless to function in society.
In short, it's a mental health issue, and that's not something that's easily fixable with today's tools.
The homeless in our streets are primarily a mental health issue, not a resources issue.
People blowing 'their savings' on heating costs are doing something fundamentally wrong.
Middle eastern residents are getting blown up because their governments are incompetent. Canada, the US, and Norway also have a ton of oil under their ground; nobody gets blown up there.
African children are similarly dying of starvation because their governments are incompetent.
None of these is a resource issue. All of these are a people problem.
Current projections have world population peaking around 2050 at 10 billion or less, which is well within our ability to support even given today's resources. I find your 'more likely scenario' implausible.
The/. staff aren't censoring comments. People like me, with mod points, are. Shit that's off topic is off topic, no matter how full of righteous fury the poster is or how justified they think they are in posting off topic comments.
There is a place outside the event horizon when light can orbit; however, it is an unstable orbit, and no light accumulates there. So no, you won't be fried (and there's not really even a chance it could happen.)
You're misunderstanding what this means. Suppose A and B want to trade, and both A and B have their coins held by trusted third party X. A and B tell X to transfer coins from one account to the other. X does so. The transaction need never hit the block chain, because it's held in X's local ledger.
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I don't object to signing a contract with an entity that represents workers. I object to signing a contract that limits my ability to hire who I want when I want, and to fire who I want when I want. This is no different than objecting to a contract with a parts supplier that mandates that I can't buy parts from a different supplier, or objecting to a contract that requires I only use a given suppliers parts in my products. I know such contracts exist, and I know that some companies sign them willingly. My companies will not, and if necessary I am willing to pay more and/or put in extra effort to avoid such contracts.
At least with parts suppliers, you have reasonable confidence that the parts are the same, or similar enough to work. Employees however, are very much not the same: an employee is more like a custom designed factory than a part, and every single employee is going to be unique and different. Those differences matter, and they matter a lot - employees are not just skill and technical knowledge, they are also personality, temperament, life goals, and sometimes, family. Treating them as replacable cogs, as unions invariably do, does everyone a disservice.
I already negotiate these kinds of things with people, without a union involved. To me, it's just the other side of the table, and I very much remember having to negotiate my long hair and keeping intellectual property intact when I was interviewing.
It's not about getting the maximum possible dollar in the short term. It's about both parties getting what they want out of it, in a way that's sustainable and lasts for the long term. IMHO the biggest problems in business aren't technology, they're people and long term planning.
I never said that workers didn't deserve rights. In fact, as someone who has worked part time, full time, and as a contractor, I know very well what rights employees have, and why they have them. Employee rights have nothing to do with why I will never tolerate a union presence.
Hiring is between me any my employees. I treat them well, and they do good work. If an employee and I have a problem that's not resolvable, we part ways. I don't need and won't have a third party coming in to tell me or my employees what they should be doing, who I can and can't fire, who I can and can't promote, and who can and can't quit.
Boycott if you want. If I can't have the freedom to work with who I want when I want, I'll either take my business overseas or hire independent contractors. Either way, I'll still provide the same service and people will still buy it, but I'll be paying taxes to a government that doesn't allow organized labor extortion.
I will close my company before I allow a union within the ranks.
I think it is as black and white as I'm making it; we don't allow people to crap on city sidewalks because it's a public health hazard, no matter how strongly they believe that god told them to crap on the sidewalk. You crap on the sidewalk, you get arrested. Plain and simple. Vaccination is really no different.
No matter what a person believes, we don't allow them to kill or maim other people, and it doesn't matter if the tool is a claw hammer or an easily vaccinated disease.
Religion is no excuse to not be vaccinated. There should be no religious exception.
Don't be stupid. Taking a topic like this to a sufficiently far away extreme always results in idiocy and serves only to muddy the waters. You're smarter than that, and so am I.
Go one better than this: define lack of vaccinations as child abuse that can get your kids taken away (unless there are strong medical exceptions.)
We have the authority to put people in jail and to commit people to mental institutions. That's good enough. You refuse a vaccine for personal reasons? Fine. You go to the novax prison in north texas with all the other anti-vaxxers, where the vaccination rate is very low, segregated from the rest of the sane population. You can leave when you get your shots.
I fully agree, and have been saying this for years. You want to immigrate to the US? Show full vaccinations and paperwork. You want to live in the US? Show full vaccinations and paperwork. You want to prevent your kids from getting vaccines? Leave the US.
IMHO the only reason to not be vaccinated is a medical exception saying that the vaccine in question would be directly physically harmful to the individual.
Actually, materials with high enough strength to weight ratios have been commercially available for years, and the cable gets wider at the top, not at the bottom. The big problems haven't been strength to weight ratio, they've been resistance to radiation damage, resistance to wear and tear, and figuring out how to get something to climb the cable.
You want to win the argument and be right more than you want to learn. Terminating conversation.
You asked for concrete actions, for concrete suggestions. I gave them. Not all will be usable by all people. Not all will be sustainable at all times. But every one of them is something that I've seen capable "unlucky" people willfully ignore, then complain about being unlucky.
As for being on the wrong side of the median income, if you're implying that I'm an upper middle class snob, I'm not. I've been substantially below median income for my age and gender for several years now, voluntarily. Because I actually practice what I preach, I've had a pretty good life of it.
I would also appreciate it if you stopped assuming ignorance on my part. I understand the plight of the poor; I have been there. I have worked my ass off, sacrificed, planned, and given up short term gains for long term gains for many, many years. My concrete examples come not from some right-wing sense of fairness but from the list of things I personally have had to do over the course of many years to get to where I am. When was the last time your thanksgiving dinner consisted entirely of things anonymously donated by a local church?
I'm sorry if you find my concrete examples to be 'knee slappingly' funny, or unreasonably difficult. I personally found them to be decidedly unfunny and merely reasonably difficult. Far more importantly, I found them to be extremely effective. Unfortunately, they are all too often ignored or underused by others.
Good and bad fortune befalls everyone. However, when bad fortune befalls you regularly, reliably, and consistently more often than good fortune, you're doing something wrong. We make our own fortune and we make our own luck, not by being in the right place at the right time, but by having the resources to take advantage of opportunity when it arises.
As for specifics of things to do, how about these?
- spend less than you make
- always have a budget
- when you have a budget surplus, it goes into a rainy day fund. You don't buy stuff with it.
- when your rainy day fund is full, the extra goes into the stock market. You don't buy stuff with it.
- if you have more time than money, get a second job
- if you still have more time than money, get a third job
- study and become good at social engineering
- cancel cable tv
- move to a cheaper/smaller/better insulated location
- move closer to work
- get rid of stuff you don't need
- buy used vehicles
- pay your bills on time and don't incur late fees
- be healthy: get and keep your BMI in the 18-23 range
I understand that for some people, some of these aren't really an option; in particular, if you have kids, a lot of your options are limited. But even excepting those, a huge fraction of the 'unlucky' people I've encountered still fail to do these simple and obvious things.
If you have so little savings that a bad winter's heating costs blow them, you're doing something wrong.
If you live in an apartment with bad insulation that's eating you alive on heating costs, you're doing something wrong.
If you own a home that's eating you alive on heating costs, you're doing something wrong.
Not that it's pleasant to be in any of these situations, and I feel for those who are; but if you find yourself in them, you're doing something wrong and should change it to prevent it in the future.
In my systems, it's even easier: starting up, shutting down, and running. If I want a gui, I log in on a tty and run xinit. The only reason I even know what run level I'm in (3) is because the first thing I do on new systems is edit inittab to start up 20 virtual terminals so I have a proper programming environment.
In the 18 years I've been running linux, I've never seen an actual need for run level 5.
Granted, I'm not a sysadmin for other people or support other users on my box, but if I were, I'd probably expect them to log in at a tty and fire up X manually as well. This is why I would probably not be a good sysadmin.
No. We choose not to 'fix' these issues, not because we would rather spend money on drone strikes, but because spending money on these issues does not fix them. One does not throw resources blindly down a hole in the hopes that they will do some good.
As for not funding totalitarian regimes, I agree. The world as a whole should refuse to buy any oil whatsoever from totalitarian regimes.
Now that I live in Portland, Oregon, I see homelessness in a whole different light. In particular, most of the vast numbers of homeless people here are mentally impaired. It's not a matter of the resources being available, or even lack of donors to help them - it's a lack of ability of the homeless to function in society.
In short, it's a mental health issue, and that's not something that's easily fixable with today's tools.
The homeless in our streets are primarily a mental health issue, not a resources issue.
People blowing 'their savings' on heating costs are doing something fundamentally wrong.
Middle eastern residents are getting blown up because their governments are incompetent. Canada, the US, and Norway also have a ton of oil under their ground; nobody gets blown up there.
African children are similarly dying of starvation because their governments are incompetent.
None of these is a resource issue. All of these are a people problem.
Current projections have world population peaking around 2050 at 10 billion or less, which is well within our ability to support even given today's resources. I find your 'more likely scenario' implausible.
The /. staff aren't censoring comments. People like me, with mod points, are. Shit that's off topic is off topic, no matter how full of righteous fury the poster is or how justified they think they are in posting off topic comments.
I accept that the probability is non-zero, and nothing I said conflicts with that. However, there's not really any chance that it could happen.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ml/but_theres_still_a_chance_right
There is a place outside the event horizon when light can orbit; however, it is an unstable orbit, and no light accumulates there. So no, you won't be fried (and there's not really even a chance it could happen.)
I have a vast pile of libraries that I wrote myself because frameworks are buggy as hell.
You're misunderstanding what this means. Suppose A and B want to trade, and both A and B have their coins held by trusted third party X. A and B tell X to transfer coins from one account to the other. X does so. The transaction need never hit the block chain, because it's held in X's local ledger.