The reason I support State censorship of all media is the same reason why I support the State in all of its madness: the more they do to harm us, the more the free market will provide means for entrepreneurs to find new ways around the madness.
You're absolutely right. This is the same reason I go around sucker-punching total strangers. I figure that the more often I sneak up behind someone and ram my fist into their kidneys, the more motivation they'll have to ummmm.... avoid getting sucker-punched in the kidneys?
I also go around stealing things left unattended, like books, backpacks, and small children. This increases people's motivation to pay attention to their private property, which is good because you never know what sort of unsavory people might be around.
Anyhow, I'm doing my part to make the world a better place. What about the rest of you?
It really should take about as long to debug your way to line x as it does to write the cout, recompile, and run. And as you get into bigger projects with longer compile times, you'll find yourself saving time by using the debugger.
If the problem is simple enough that you're sure it must be something about that particular variable, then rather than going through the recompile cycle, it's sometimes better to just step through the code in your head. Think, "What values could it be that would make this behavior happen?" But if you're about 90% sure that's where the problem lies, go ahead and write the cout. It's not a big deal. I sometimes do it myself, though I consider it a bad habit that I'm trying to break.
But if you're any less sure, the cout method guarantees you'll end up going through the Great Cycle of Debugging Pain. You know the one:
You start by checking one variable.
You recompile and check the status.
Then you realize that you have an error in the code outputting the variable.
So you recompile again.
Then it gives you the same output fifteen hundred times.
So you put a conditional in to make sure that it only outputs the ones you want.
So you recompile again.
Then you realize that the variable you're looking at is just fine.
So you remove your outputting statements and come up with another theory involving another variable.
Luckily, you're in 'the zone' now, so you get it to give you usable output the first time.
This variable is also behaving as you expected.
Now you start throwing in outputters like crazy, with elaborate formatting, functions especially designed to output every bit of information that could be relevant.
This includes recreating the code you deleted after your first attempt.
Then a totally new bug crops up, that eventually gets traced back to a side effect of the outputting code you just wrote. This should be a warning to you, but you plunge onward...
It's insane, stupid, and how I spent my first three semesters of CS classes. Every time you go through TGCODP, you risk adding new bugs to the code (which doesn't happen in a debugging session, because the code isn't changing), and afterwards you're practically guaranteed to spend a few more iterations mopping up all the output statements you've splattered all over your code.
You don't have to be an expert in debugging. But you talk as though you're not even comfortable using the debugger, which is a bad state of affairs for anyone serious about a career in the field. Use the debugger every time, until you *are* comfortable, and then you'll be in a better position to decide which tactic is more appropriate in a given situation.
Of course, *any* debugger is better by far than cout/print/System.out.println. Don't sell gdb short.
Any one of you out there who is still using print statements for debugging, it's time to break free. Right now. Find out what debugger is available for your system, and spend a few hours mastering it. You will soon learn to hate yourself with the burning hatred of a thousand suns for not having made the switch sooner.
If you want to get a job in the software industry, or get a CS degree, or even just write useful programs of more than a few hundred lines, you want to master the art of debuggery. The very next time you find yourself writing 'cout "current value of', smack yourself and break out the debugger. The first five times, I promise you'll hate me for it. By the tenth time, you will praise me as your Yoda.
Probably nothing in comparison with the amount already spent prosecuting him, which is itself nothing compared to the total damage done by Enron to the economy.
Figures I've seen for warehousing criminals: about $50-75K/year.
Technically, "intractable" doesn't mean "mathematically impossible," but "too big to manage," so the solution you propose would fall under the "intractable" category.
Also, while you're probably already aware of this, the standard limitations apply to your solution: no external input can be available, and no race conditions can exist in the program.
Dude, when you try and take an argument to its logical extreme, the key word is *logical*. Outlawing cooking? Playing the piano? The fact that you have to resort to such absurd examples deeply undermines your credibility.
When your arguments aren't stupid, they're paranoid. The only purpose of outlawing cell phones while driving is so that everyone will be more miserable in traffic?
The deal you offer sucks. If you hit me, all the insurance in the world may not be able to make things right, because I may in fact be dead. And it would be your fault. Because you swear honest-to-god that you can hold your liquor... I mean drive safely while using a cell phone.
Life is risky, yes, and all the moreso due to people like yourself. But if you're not willing to take reasonable precautions to mitigate the risks you pose to others, then 'others' are justified in using the government to force you to take those precautions.
That's a little off-the-mark. It's not saying that your users will suddenly have Swing GUIs running in their browser. It's just saying that writing code for GWT feels an awful lot like writing code for Swing.
Anything in particular about Javascript that draws your ire? Last year, I knew almost nothing of it, and my mind associated it with nothing but ugly, hackish code to deliver ugly, annoying popups and redirect you to malicious websites.
Under duress, I've had to become familiar with it these last few months, and it really does have some impressive capabilities. Try investigating the prototype.js library; lots of things in there that show just how elegant Javascript code can be, especially if you're a Python/Ruby fan.
I think we get tarred with the "soft on kiddie porn" label because, frankly, we *are* soft on kiddie porn. Liberals tend to believe that people with self-destructive addictions (child porn, drugs, etc.) require treatment, and that legally ostracizing such people just leaves them alone with their self-destruction, unable to seek help.
Conservatives? Well, last I heard, Georgia had passed a law making child molestation eligible for the death penalty. I'm not familiar with the specifics of the law, and hearing about such crimes is like a fist to the stomach for me. But it seems like, due to a thirst for vengeance, Georgia conservatives have written a law that makes it harder than ever to talk about, makes it dangerous for people to report what they know, and will therefore probably cause even more incidents of abuse.
This technique of eliminating social problems by demonizing the people who have it, and ratcheting up the punishments until the problem goes away, seems ineffective.
I'm a liberal. I'm in favor of people getting treatment, and feeling safe in seeking it out. I understand why some people think that means I'm "soft on kiddie porn," but I can accept that they see the world through totally different eyes.
Fingerprinting algorithms aren't necessarily the same thing as checksums. For example, you could store as a "fingerprint" the image, shrunk down to 75x75, and use some fuzzy matching to detect a potential match. It might also be possible to just fingerprint the most important bits of the image (the parts that are unlikely to get cropped), then look for some subset of an image that seems to match the overall image. Computationally expensive and error prone, but not beyond the realm of possibility.
Once a potential match is found, the two images might be run through a neural net, and if PervBot 9000 decides they're the same, it would then get passed on to a human being for confirmation.
Yes, there are lots of things a computer-savvy pedophile can do to protect himself. But when it comes to analyzing effective techniques for stopping child porn distribution, I think it's safe to assume that most of them are basically normal people, rather than evil supergeniuses.
It's jealousy when you see a well-dressed man come out of a nightclub with a beautiful woman on his arm. It's outrage when the guy starts beating the crap out of her. Two very different emotions.
Your picture leaves out a few economic realities. You're looking at it simply as the flow of dollars from one place to another. But the dollars are only meaningful because they're pegged to valuable things like labor and natural resources. When someone decides to spend five million on a luxury yacht, the dollars go into the hands of other human beings, but the labor disappears and the natural resources are now firmly yachtified, and cannot be recovered for other purposes without the use of even more labor and capital.
In short, when somebody spends millions on a toy, the value needed to create that toy removes labor and resources from the world, when those resources could have been invested in something that would provide critical human needs.
Wealth isn't dollars, but is only represented by them, which is why the value of a dollar can vary. So when some person, for whatever reason, finds himself sitting on a big pile of dollars, it's symbolic of that person's ability to direct the disposition of vast quantities of labor and resources. Some wealthy people engage their money in meaningful, philanthropic ways. Others spend it on entertaining extravagances. There are some who use it to buy their way into political office (Mayor Bloomberg of New York, a long list of Rockerfellers, etc.)
I would argue that all three of these cases are corrosive to our society. In the case of the last two, my reasoning should be obvious, whether you agree with it or not. But in the case of philanthropy, it's a bit more subtle.
The most recent SF Weekly covers the philanthropic pursuits of Donald Fisher, the guy who founded The Gap (and then gave the bird to an entire generation of nostalgic hippies by putting one on the corner of Haight and Ashbury). His current focus is the educational system. He's setting up charter and private schools that seem to be doing a good job educating the students. Wonderful, right?
But the reporter has mixed feelings. As these private schools gather steam, they're quickly draining resources away from the public system, a process helped along by several pieces of legislation that Fisher supported financially.
So this raises questions. Are these private schools doing more good, or more harm? Should we be focusing our efforts on improving public education, or should we give up and privatize the whole thing?
I'm sure that there are many other questions, but the answer to all of them is, "It doesn't matter." Fisher has the money, so he's making the decision on behalf of the rest of us.
We can only hope people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are extremely wise in their philanthropic activities. But whether they see the public need clearly or simply want to do something showy to leave their marks on history, we're still faced with the situation where decisions about what constitutes the public good are increasingly being made by a handful of elites. I do not believe that these handful of billionaires are in any way worthy of the fortunes they've created, nor do I believe that they have the wisdom necessary to make such vast decisions for the rest of us.
Yes, yes. Taxation is equivalent to being mugged in a dark alley. Heard it all before.
Sorry, but we live in this thing called "society", and the whole premise is that we have obligations to things other than our own selfish interests. You can opt out, if you like, but please take care not to use the roads the rest of us paid for as you leave.
Buffett (speaking about his kids): In effect, they've had a gigantic headstart in a society that aspires to be a meritocracy. Dynastic mega-wealth would further tilt the playing field that we ought to be trying instead to level."
Despite my yammerings against the rich folk types, I've always been impressed with Buffett, both for his humility and his social conscience.
Those who are trying to achieve a meritocracy should be foresquare against huge transfers of capital to the next generation. It should be enough that they have access to the best education, the best health care, etc. Those who talk smack about welfare, saying how we're depriving people of the feeling of independence that comes from earning your own way in society, never seem to have an unkind word to say about somebody getting billions for the "hard work" of having the right parents.
How dare those evil politicians pillage what you spent a lifetime building! Can't they keep their filthy paws off anything?
I mean, I might understand if huge concentrations of wealth were damaging to society, or if some of these hordes were accumulated by taking advantage of government-granted monopolies or short-sighted profiteering. But since things just aren't like that, we shouldn't let the politicians stand between a very wealthy man and his dream of making sure that none of his descendants to the ninth generation need ever work again.
I did. Then I replaced the other two with "fatty foods" and "generalized pressure to consume, consume, consume until we've wrecked the environment and otherwise massively screwed over the next three hundred generatons."
Then, for some reason, I started having very negative feelings towards chocolate. I'm not sure why that happened.
Still, point taken. I used to be a very religious, conservative person. Now I don't understand this attitude of "sex is a sacred and holy act to be shared by exactly one man and exactly one woman, within the bonds of a legally and religiously sanctioned marriage, to be performed annually and in the missionary style, then never talked about until it's time to have another go at it next year."
As a fellow curmudgeon, I have to say that you're not doing it properly. You have to do something to hide it, or you won't get invited to peoples' birthday parties. When you attempt to paint yourself as "a carefree guy with a sense of humor," don't follow it up immediately with the humorless excoriation of a popular comedian. That undermines your message and makes your curmugeonosity obvious. Instead, try following it up by complimenting some piece of popular culture.
WRONG: I have a sense of humor, and am usually a pretty carefree guy. Jeff Foxworthy is stupid, and is betraying his fellow southerners to make money.
RIGHT: I have a sense of humor, and am usually a pretty carefree guy. For example, this morning's Family Circus had me chuckling all day. Billy wandered the entire neighborhood looking for a spatula. Why did he expect to find one down by the river? Nobody knows.
In the case of the WRONG example, people see that you've become so adept in your curmudgeoning that you can't even think on the subject of humor without going on a rant about the parts that piss you off. In the RIGHT example, you are shown to share your audience's taste for shallow, hackneyed popular culture. This will get you invited to social gatherings.
If, on the other hand, you're like me and have embraced your inner misanthrope, then there is no reason to describe yourself as either funny or carefree in the first place. I find it to be a refreshing way to live.
I'm AOC, and I hate pretty much everything! C'mon, now you give it a try. It will be like a weight lifted off your shoulders.
You're right, I *do* suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome. Everything the man has done from the day he stepped into office has managed to make my life and my country worse.
Nor does it help that his defenders gleefully try to malign anyone who criticizes this train wreck of an administration, calling them anti-Americans, armchair terrorists, and worse. They also try to prove our insanity by saying that (in the case of "Dr. Sanity") we blame Bush for acts of God, like Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami. If anyone goes around blaming hurricanes on human beings, it's Pat Robertson.
What we object to is our government's *reaction* to these events. The staffing of FEMA with incompetent ideological cronies was not an "act of God." The decision to redirect most government spending towards military pursuits, leaving us underfunded, undermanned, and underequipped at home, was not an "act of God." The ideology of "a government small enough to drown in the bathtub" didn't come from God, but from people who still have our President's attention and commitment.
Nor do we ask for the appeasement of terrorists. What we ask for are foreign policies that don't hand them one PR victory after another, helping them to radicalize vast swaths of the Islamic population. From Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghirab to rendition and torture, we are creating terrorists in the name of fighting terror. Frankly, it's not "appeasement" to recognize that had we spent the money squandered in Iraq on peaceful foreign aid, the true terrorists would find it much more difficult to get recruits. If we'd spent it on energy independence, our money wouldn't pour into the hands of people like the Saudi royalty, who use it to keep their people oppressed while using us as scapegoats to distract their own people. If we'd spent it on domestic programs, we would have saved more lives than were lost on September 11th. Had we not spent it at all, America would be on much more secure financial footing, and we'd have 100,000 soldiers home taking care of their families, rather than 2500 who never came home at all.
But then we'd have a mad dictator in power. Instead of a civil war. I'm about ready to call that one a toss-up.
So, yes, the man pisses me off to the point that it's hard to calm down when discussing him. Anyone who loves this country and can see where it's headed should be suffering from a severe case Bush Derangement Syndrome.
We need publicly financed elections and condorcet voting.
Frankly, that's the only way we're going to get third parties worth voting for. Frankly, the Libertarians scare me. The Constitution Party should scare the hell out of anybody. I'm ideologically aligned with the Green party, but they strike me as a bunch of disorganized hippies who wouldn't know what to do with the country if we turned it over to them.
Actually having a significant number of people governing would make third parties far more effective. Condorcet voting would allow people to vote for the candidate they thought best without helping the prospects of the candidate they like least.
I would argue that if you can only have sympathy for people whose actions you agree with, then you're a pretty unsympathetic person.
The desire to hold any job is a function of balancing the unpleasantness of the work with the need for money. Handling phone calls isn't pleasant work by any means, and even moreso when your job demands that you do everything in your power to avoid giving the customer what they want. So when you're on the line with one of these people, it's either because they enjoy the bullying (in which case, being a bastard just makes them enjoy it more) or it's because they have two kids at home and no other way to make rent (in which case, you're simply pouring more crap on someone with an already crappy life). By mistreating customer support, you're only helping to feed the egos of the sociopaths, while bringing misery to those who would like to be helpful, but are barred by corporate policy from doing so.
Can you see how this is a losing proposition all around?
I guess I hear you. But I disagree with you on a few points. First point: that other jobs are widely available. Sure, there are a lot of labor intensive jobs for which people would be willing to pay you... not nearly enough to live on. You'll end up with two or three of them, and still be barely able to make rent.
I think Adam Smith made a great point: The necessities of life aren't just the things that keep you from being dead, but those necessary to be a full participant in society. When you choose the "morally straight" job, you're basically choosing to opt out of free time, presentable clothing, money for education, and a host of other things that are--in an important sense--absolutely necessary.
Contrary to your assertion, I think money has everything to do with morality. Money is a form of control over other people, and if those who have it won't give a red cent to those who don't unless they do degrading, dishonest work in exchange, then I know how to place blame for the actions of those workers. While I think it's shameful to do anything even remotely dishonest in exchange for money that you don't need, I don't think of a ten dollar an hour CSR wage as a luxury.
Spoken like a man who has never had the misfortune of working a customer service line.
If they tell you to follow the script, you follow the script, or you risk losing your job. If they have a little form in the cancellation process for you to fill out (with exactly the sort of questions the rep was asking) then by god that form had better be filled out by the end of the call. And you can't fake it because you never know when people might be listening in.
I listened to the phone call, and Vincent struck me as a sarcastic little twit who had no clue what a difficult position he was putting another person in. Of course, he deserved to have his wishes respected. He's the friggin' customer! But the CSRs would love it if their jobs consisted of "Cancel!" "Done!" It's the AOL management (the ones who fired the guy to appease the angry Internet hordes) who created this culture of "we know what you should really want, and that is to keep paying us money."
Don't hate the player. Don't hate the game. Hate the guy who wrote up the rules.
I basically agree with you. While the "age of consent" thing isn't without its problems, there certainly needs to be some sort of legal mechanism in place, and sometimes an imperfect solution that is relatively easy to administer is the only reasonable option. Physical maturity is an imperfect proxy for emotional maturity, but it can be determined with a quick look at a driver's license, rather than a grueling six hour battery of psychological tests.
I agree that people shouldn't be having or asking for sex from people who are significantly less emotionally mature than them. I also realize that, when the penis is doing the thinking, it has no trouble rationalizing that the object of its desire is "mature enough". Sex should never happen between people when there is a big power differential between them, whether that means rape, coercion, or the sorts of manipulations that a clever nineteen year old could use on a significantly younger person.
So yes, he should have known better.
I also think it's very unlikely for two fourteen year olds to both have the emotional maturity and judgment necessary for a safe and fulfilling sexual relationship. But I don't see why "A 14-year old sleeping with a 14-year old is extremely regrettable." Not without at least throwing in a few (admittedly very likely) caveats.
Though, actually, a MySpace account would be a very different thing from alcohol, because alcohol doesn't care whose system it goes into. But the account is supposed to be linked to a single individual.
So theoretically, if person A goes into these kiosks, they might have their picture taken and posted as information linked to the account. If all the other pictures associated with an account are of an obviously different person, then the account could easily be reported.
Problem is, nobody wants people to see their drivers' license photos. Also, it's possible to find people who look a lot like you.
I think we really need a fundamentally secure, cryptographic online reputation system. You could theoretically use different keys and different authorities to verify anything about a person, from "this person is Person X" to "this person is over eighteen and that's all you need to know" to "IAAL". Going to a kiosk for a MySpace account seems like a lot of work. Going to the same kiosk to have all manner of things verified about your life, and receiving credentials that allow you to demonstrate them all in an online forum... that would be pretty cool.
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I also go around stealing things left unattended, like books, backpacks, and small children. This increases people's motivation to pay attention to their private property, which is good because you never know what sort of unsavory people might be around.
Anyhow, I'm doing my part to make the world a better place. What about the rest of you?
It really should take about as long to debug your way to line x as it does to write the cout, recompile, and run. And as you get into bigger projects with longer compile times, you'll find yourself saving time by using the debugger.
If the problem is simple enough that you're sure it must be something about that particular variable, then rather than going through the recompile cycle, it's sometimes better to just step through the code in your head. Think, "What values could it be that would make this behavior happen?" But if you're about 90% sure that's where the problem lies, go ahead and write the cout. It's not a big deal. I sometimes do it myself, though I consider it a bad habit that I'm trying to break.
But if you're any less sure, the cout method guarantees you'll end up going through the Great Cycle of Debugging Pain. You know the one:
You start by checking one variable.
You recompile and check the status.
Then you realize that you have an error in the code outputting the variable.
So you recompile again.
Then it gives you the same output fifteen hundred times.
So you put a conditional in to make sure that it only outputs the ones you want.
So you recompile again.
Then you realize that the variable you're looking at is just fine.
So you remove your outputting statements and come up with another theory involving another variable.
Luckily, you're in 'the zone' now, so you get it to give you usable output the first time.
This variable is also behaving as you expected.
Now you start throwing in outputters like crazy, with elaborate formatting, functions especially designed to output every bit of information that could be relevant.
This includes recreating the code you deleted after your first attempt.
Then a totally new bug crops up, that eventually gets traced back to a side effect of the outputting code you just wrote. This should be a warning to you, but you plunge onward...
It's insane, stupid, and how I spent my first three semesters of CS classes. Every time you go through TGCODP, you risk adding new bugs to the code (which doesn't happen in a debugging session, because the code isn't changing), and afterwards you're practically guaranteed to spend a few more iterations mopping up all the output statements you've splattered all over your code.
You don't have to be an expert in debugging. But you talk as though you're not even comfortable using the debugger, which is a bad state of affairs for anyone serious about a career in the field. Use the debugger every time, until you *are* comfortable, and then you'll be in a better position to decide which tactic is more appropriate in a given situation.
Of course, *any* debugger is better by far than cout/print/System.out.println. Don't sell gdb short.
Any one of you out there who is still using print statements for debugging, it's time to break free. Right now. Find out what debugger is available for your system, and spend a few hours mastering it. You will soon learn to hate yourself with the burning hatred of a thousand suns for not having made the switch sooner.
If you want to get a job in the software industry, or get a CS degree, or even just write useful programs of more than a few hundred lines, you want to master the art of debuggery. The very next time you find yourself writing 'cout "current value of', smack yourself and break out the debugger. The first five times, I promise you'll hate me for it. By the tenth time, you will praise me as your Yoda.
Probably nothing in comparison with the amount already spent prosecuting him, which is itself nothing compared to the total damage done by Enron to the economy.
Figures I've seen for warehousing criminals: about $50-75K/year.
Two points:
Technically, "intractable" doesn't mean "mathematically impossible," but "too big to manage," so the solution you propose would fall under the "intractable" category.
Also, while you're probably already aware of this, the standard limitations apply to your solution: no external input can be available, and no race conditions can exist in the program.
Dude, when you try and take an argument to its logical extreme, the key word is *logical*. Outlawing cooking? Playing the piano? The fact that you have to resort to such absurd examples deeply undermines your credibility.
When your arguments aren't stupid, they're paranoid. The only purpose of outlawing cell phones while driving is so that everyone will be more miserable in traffic?
The deal you offer sucks. If you hit me, all the insurance in the world may not be able to make things right, because I may in fact be dead. And it would be your fault. Because you swear honest-to-god that you can hold your liquor... I mean drive safely while using a cell phone.
Life is risky, yes, and all the moreso due to people like yourself. But if you're not willing to take reasonable precautions to mitigate the risks you pose to others, then 'others' are justified in using the government to force you to take those precautions.
That's a little off-the-mark. It's not saying that your users will suddenly have Swing GUIs running in their browser. It's just saying that writing code for GWT feels an awful lot like writing code for Swing.
Anything in particular about Javascript that draws your ire? Last year, I knew almost nothing of it, and my mind associated it with nothing but ugly, hackish code to deliver ugly, annoying popups and redirect you to malicious websites.
Under duress, I've had to become familiar with it these last few months, and it really does have some impressive capabilities. Try investigating the prototype.js library; lots of things in there that show just how elegant Javascript code can be, especially if you're a Python/Ruby fan.
I think we get tarred with the "soft on kiddie porn" label because, frankly, we *are* soft on kiddie porn. Liberals tend to believe that people with self-destructive addictions (child porn, drugs, etc.) require treatment, and that legally ostracizing such people just leaves them alone with their self-destruction, unable to seek help.
Conservatives? Well, last I heard, Georgia had passed a law making child molestation eligible for the death penalty. I'm not familiar with the specifics of the law, and hearing about such crimes is like a fist to the stomach for me. But it seems like, due to a thirst for vengeance, Georgia conservatives have written a law that makes it harder than ever to talk about, makes it dangerous for people to report what they know, and will therefore probably cause even more incidents of abuse.
This technique of eliminating social problems by demonizing the people who have it, and ratcheting up the punishments until the problem goes away, seems ineffective.
I'm a liberal. I'm in favor of people getting treatment, and feeling safe in seeking it out. I understand why some people think that means I'm "soft on kiddie porn," but I can accept that they see the world through totally different eyes.
Fingerprinting algorithms aren't necessarily the same thing as checksums. For example, you could store as a "fingerprint" the image, shrunk down to 75x75, and use some fuzzy matching to detect a potential match. It might also be possible to just fingerprint the most important bits of the image (the parts that are unlikely to get cropped), then look for some subset of an image that seems to match the overall image. Computationally expensive and error prone, but not beyond the realm of possibility.
Once a potential match is found, the two images might be run through a neural net, and if PervBot 9000 decides they're the same, it would then get passed on to a human being for confirmation.
Yes, there are lots of things a computer-savvy pedophile can do to protect himself. But when it comes to analyzing effective techniques for stopping child porn distribution, I think it's safe to assume that most of them are basically normal people, rather than evil supergeniuses.
True. But at the moment, we're so far from the ideal of a meritocracy, there's no use even thinking about that.
In Capitalist America, there is no stronger predictor of poverty than the poverty of one's parents.
Jealousy? I think you misspelled "outrage".
It's jealousy when you see a well-dressed man come out of a nightclub with a beautiful woman on his arm. It's outrage when the guy starts beating the crap out of her. Two very different emotions.
Your picture leaves out a few economic realities. You're looking at it simply as the flow of dollars from one place to another. But the dollars are only meaningful because they're pegged to valuable things like labor and natural resources. When someone decides to spend five million on a luxury yacht, the dollars go into the hands of other human beings, but the labor disappears and the natural resources are now firmly yachtified, and cannot be recovered for other purposes without the use of even more labor and capital.
In short, when somebody spends millions on a toy, the value needed to create that toy removes labor and resources from the world, when those resources could have been invested in something that would provide critical human needs.
Wealth isn't dollars, but is only represented by them, which is why the value of a dollar can vary. So when some person, for whatever reason, finds himself sitting on a big pile of dollars, it's symbolic of that person's ability to direct the disposition of vast quantities of labor and resources. Some wealthy people engage their money in meaningful, philanthropic ways. Others spend it on entertaining extravagances. There are some who use it to buy their way into political office (Mayor Bloomberg of New York, a long list of Rockerfellers, etc.)
I would argue that all three of these cases are corrosive to our society. In the case of the last two, my reasoning should be obvious, whether you agree with it or not. But in the case of philanthropy, it's a bit more subtle.
The most recent SF Weekly covers the philanthropic pursuits of Donald Fisher, the guy who founded The Gap (and then gave the bird to an entire generation of nostalgic hippies by putting one on the corner of Haight and Ashbury). His current focus is the educational system. He's setting up charter and private schools that seem to be doing a good job educating the students. Wonderful, right?
But the reporter has mixed feelings. As these private schools gather steam, they're quickly draining resources away from the public system, a process helped along by several pieces of legislation that Fisher supported financially.
So this raises questions. Are these private schools doing more good, or more harm? Should we be focusing our efforts on improving public education, or should we give up and privatize the whole thing?
I'm sure that there are many other questions, but the answer to all of them is, "It doesn't matter." Fisher has the money, so he's making the decision on behalf of the rest of us.
We can only hope people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are extremely wise in their philanthropic activities. But whether they see the public need clearly or simply want to do something showy to leave their marks on history, we're still faced with the situation where decisions about what constitutes the public good are increasingly being made by a handful of elites. I do not believe that these handful of billionaires are in any way worthy of the fortunes they've created, nor do I believe that they have the wisdom necessary to make such vast decisions for the rest of us.
Yes, yes. Taxation is equivalent to being mugged in a dark alley. Heard it all before.
Sorry, but we live in this thing called "society", and the whole premise is that we have obligations to things other than our own selfish interests. You can opt out, if you like, but please take care not to use the roads the rest of us paid for as you leave.
From the interview:
Despite my yammerings against the rich folk types, I've always been impressed with Buffett, both for his humility and his social conscience.
Those who are trying to achieve a meritocracy should be foresquare against huge transfers of capital to the next generation. It should be enough that they have access to the best education, the best health care, etc. Those who talk smack about welfare, saying how we're depriving people of the feeling of independence that comes from earning your own way in society, never seem to have an unkind word to say about somebody getting billions for the "hard work" of having the right parents.
*sniff*
How dare those evil politicians pillage what you spent a lifetime building! Can't they keep their filthy paws off anything?
I mean, I might understand if huge concentrations of wealth were damaging to society, or if some of these hordes were accumulated by taking advantage of government-granted monopolies or short-sighted profiteering. But since things just aren't like that, we shouldn't let the politicians stand between a very wealthy man and his dream of making sure that none of his descendants to the ninth generation need ever work again.
You hear me, politicians? It's just not right!
I did. Then I replaced the other two with "fatty foods" and "generalized pressure to consume, consume, consume until we've wrecked the environment and otherwise massively screwed over the next three hundred generatons."
Then, for some reason, I started having very negative feelings towards chocolate. I'm not sure why that happened.
Still, point taken. I used to be a very religious, conservative person. Now I don't understand this attitude of "sex is a sacred and holy act to be shared by exactly one man and exactly one woman, within the bonds of a legally and religiously sanctioned marriage, to be performed annually and in the missionary style, then never talked about until it's time to have another go at it next year."
Gentle Reader,
As a fellow curmudgeon, I have to say that you're not doing it properly. You have to do something to hide it, or you won't get invited to peoples' birthday parties. When you attempt to paint yourself as "a carefree guy with a sense of humor," don't follow it up immediately with the humorless excoriation of a popular comedian. That undermines your message and makes your curmugeonosity obvious. Instead, try following it up by complimenting some piece of popular culture.
WRONG: I have a sense of humor, and am usually a pretty carefree guy. Jeff Foxworthy is stupid, and is betraying his fellow southerners to make money.
RIGHT: I have a sense of humor, and am usually a pretty carefree guy. For example, this morning's Family Circus had me chuckling all day. Billy wandered the entire neighborhood looking for a spatula. Why did he expect to find one down by the river? Nobody knows.
In the case of the WRONG example, people see that you've become so adept in your curmudgeoning that you can't even think on the subject of humor without going on a rant about the parts that piss you off. In the RIGHT example, you are shown to share your audience's taste for shallow, hackneyed popular culture. This will get you invited to social gatherings.
If, on the other hand, you're like me and have embraced your inner misanthrope, then there is no reason to describe yourself as either funny or carefree in the first place. I find it to be a refreshing way to live.
I'm AOC, and I hate pretty much everything! C'mon, now you give it a try. It will be like a weight lifted off your shoulders.
You're right, I *do* suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome. Everything the man has done from the day he stepped into office has managed to make my life and my country worse.
Nor does it help that his defenders gleefully try to malign anyone who criticizes this train wreck of an administration, calling them anti-Americans, armchair terrorists, and worse. They also try to prove our insanity by saying that (in the case of "Dr. Sanity") we blame Bush for acts of God, like Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami. If anyone goes around blaming hurricanes on human beings, it's Pat Robertson.
What we object to is our government's *reaction* to these events. The staffing of FEMA with incompetent ideological cronies was not an "act of God." The decision to redirect most government spending towards military pursuits, leaving us underfunded, undermanned, and underequipped at home, was not an "act of God." The ideology of "a government small enough to drown in the bathtub" didn't come from God, but from people who still have our President's attention and commitment.
Nor do we ask for the appeasement of terrorists. What we ask for are foreign policies that don't hand them one PR victory after another, helping them to radicalize vast swaths of the Islamic population. From Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghirab to rendition and torture, we are creating terrorists in the name of fighting terror. Frankly, it's not "appeasement" to recognize that had we spent the money squandered in Iraq on peaceful foreign aid, the true terrorists would find it much more difficult to get recruits. If we'd spent it on energy independence, our money wouldn't pour into the hands of people like the Saudi royalty, who use it to keep their people oppressed while using us as scapegoats to distract their own people. If we'd spent it on domestic programs, we would have saved more lives than were lost on September 11th. Had we not spent it at all, America would be on much more secure financial footing, and we'd have 100,000 soldiers home taking care of their families, rather than 2500 who never came home at all.
But then we'd have a mad dictator in power. Instead of a civil war. I'm about ready to call that one a toss-up.
So, yes, the man pisses me off to the point that it's hard to calm down when discussing him. Anyone who loves this country and can see where it's headed should be suffering from a severe case Bush Derangement Syndrome.
We need publicly financed elections and condorcet voting.
Frankly, that's the only way we're going to get third parties worth voting for. Frankly, the Libertarians scare me. The Constitution Party should scare the hell out of anybody. I'm ideologically aligned with the Green party, but they strike me as a bunch of disorganized hippies who wouldn't know what to do with the country if we turned it over to them.
Actually having a significant number of people governing would make third parties far more effective. Condorcet voting would allow people to vote for the candidate they thought best without helping the prospects of the candidate they like least.
I would argue that if you can only have sympathy for people whose actions you agree with, then you're a pretty unsympathetic person.
The desire to hold any job is a function of balancing the unpleasantness of the work with the need for money. Handling phone calls isn't pleasant work by any means, and even moreso when your job demands that you do everything in your power to avoid giving the customer what they want. So when you're on the line with one of these people, it's either because they enjoy the bullying (in which case, being a bastard just makes them enjoy it more) or it's because they have two kids at home and no other way to make rent (in which case, you're simply pouring more crap on someone with an already crappy life). By mistreating customer support, you're only helping to feed the egos of the sociopaths, while bringing misery to those who would like to be helpful, but are barred by corporate policy from doing so.
Can you see how this is a losing proposition all around?
I guess I hear you. But I disagree with you on a few points. First point: that other jobs are widely available. Sure, there are a lot of labor intensive jobs for which people would be willing to pay you... not nearly enough to live on. You'll end up with two or three of them, and still be barely able to make rent.
I think Adam Smith made a great point: The necessities of life aren't just the things that keep you from being dead, but those necessary to be a full participant in society. When you choose the "morally straight" job, you're basically choosing to opt out of free time, presentable clothing, money for education, and a host of other things that are--in an important sense--absolutely necessary.
Contrary to your assertion, I think money has everything to do with morality. Money is a form of control over other people, and if those who have it won't give a red cent to those who don't unless they do degrading, dishonest work in exchange, then I know how to place blame for the actions of those workers. While I think it's shameful to do anything even remotely dishonest in exchange for money that you don't need, I don't think of a ten dollar an hour CSR wage as a luxury.
Spoken like a man who has never had the misfortune of working a customer service line.
If they tell you to follow the script, you follow the script, or you risk losing your job. If they have a little form in the cancellation process for you to fill out (with exactly the sort of questions the rep was asking) then by god that form had better be filled out by the end of the call. And you can't fake it because you never know when people might be listening in.
I listened to the phone call, and Vincent struck me as a sarcastic little twit who had no clue what a difficult position he was putting another person in. Of course, he deserved to have his wishes respected. He's the friggin' customer! But the CSRs would love it if their jobs consisted of "Cancel!" "Done!" It's the AOL management (the ones who fired the guy to appease the angry Internet hordes) who created this culture of "we know what you should really want, and that is to keep paying us money."
Don't hate the player. Don't hate the game. Hate the guy who wrote up the rules.
I basically agree with you. While the "age of consent" thing isn't without its problems, there certainly needs to be some sort of legal mechanism in place, and sometimes an imperfect solution that is relatively easy to administer is the only reasonable option. Physical maturity is an imperfect proxy for emotional maturity, but it can be determined with a quick look at a driver's license, rather than a grueling six hour battery of psychological tests.
I agree that people shouldn't be having or asking for sex from people who are significantly less emotionally mature than them. I also realize that, when the penis is doing the thinking, it has no trouble rationalizing that the object of its desire is "mature enough". Sex should never happen between people when there is a big power differential between them, whether that means rape, coercion, or the sorts of manipulations that a clever nineteen year old could use on a significantly younger person.
So yes, he should have known better.
I also think it's very unlikely for two fourteen year olds to both have the emotional maturity and judgment necessary for a safe and fulfilling sexual relationship. But I don't see why "A 14-year old sleeping with a 14-year old is extremely regrettable." Not without at least throwing in a few (admittedly very likely) caveats.
Care to share your thoughts?
Okay, now that's funny.
Though, actually, a MySpace account would be a very different thing from alcohol, because alcohol doesn't care whose system it goes into. But the account is supposed to be linked to a single individual.
So theoretically, if person A goes into these kiosks, they might have their picture taken and posted as information linked to the account. If all the other pictures associated with an account are of an obviously different person, then the account could easily be reported.
Problem is, nobody wants people to see their drivers' license photos. Also, it's possible to find people who look a lot like you.
I think we really need a fundamentally secure, cryptographic online reputation system. You could theoretically use different keys and different authorities to verify anything about a person, from "this person is Person X" to "this person is over eighteen and that's all you need to know" to "IAAL". Going to a kiosk for a MySpace account seems like a lot of work. Going to the same kiosk to have all manner of things verified about your life, and receiving credentials that allow you to demonstrate them all in an online forum... that would be pretty cool.