You can't build something that will do the same job but not economically. These will remain concepts and prototypes until we can get a solar cell that is very efficient at a competitive price.
I wish this weren't the case... who likes being a slave to the grid but no one is making solar sustainable without absurd subsidies. The germans are making a big push for it right now which can only go to sad places because germany isn't known for it's sun and has huge energy needs. I wish them well and I hope I'm wrong... but it's looking to implode as soon as the maintenance costs start ramping up. We know a little about this in california. We've been building these sorts of power plants for decades. They work fine initially. But five years down the road everything goes pear shaped and you have another eco ruin in the desert.
First, there isn't anything the US government can do that isn't already being done. Second, this will serve as justification for a massive expansion of US Executive power onto the currently anarchic internet.
Serfdom requires force. Landed nobility oppressed the peasants into that position. If you resisted, you were killed.
Serfdom is not possible under a libertarian system because force would not be allowed.
As to a walmart town, if the whole town's economy was buying things from shops that were later taken over by walmart then the town never had an economy in the first place.
If all you have is end point retail then how are you buying things?
Lets say we removed walmart and we went to nothing but small mom and pop stores. Okay, so how does the guy that owns the hardware store buy shoes at the shoe store? How are they paying for hammers and shoes? How do they get resupplied?
The attack on walmart simply doesn't make sense. I'm not saying you're wrong because I don't know what you're really trying to say. But walmart only effects end point retail. Furthermore, walmart is in competition with internet retailers, speciality shops, and other big box stores.
Are mom and pop stores that sell the same thing as walmart at a higher price being driven out of business. Yes. But I don't see how that relates to corporate slavery or serfdom.
As to the town living in slavery, if you had nothing in that town but mom and pop retail outlets then walmart didn't make you poor. You were poor already.
As to having no ability to leave, I don't know what that means. Of course they can leave. People have been leaving small towns to go to big cities to find work for THOUSANDS of years. It's a common economic trend. The birth rate in rural areas tends to be higher then in urban areas while the economic activity and therefore opportunities tends to be greater in cities. This has been true for thousands of years. If you can't find what you want in your tiny little town that apparently had nothing but small mom and pop retail then you should probably go some place that has jobs.
As to corporate overlords, corporations are rarely hereditary and tend to favor promotions based upon merit. There are exceptions but it's in the corporation's interest to promote more useful people in to positions of greater responsibility indifferent to class or blood. These medieval references possibly have more meaning then you intend.
As to rising up in the town, no one is going to get rich working as a clerk in retail whether you work for walmart or a small mom and pop shop. I don't understand what you're talking about with walmart. If you're working as a clerk in a local hardware store how are you better off then if you were working as a clerk in walmart? Think mom and pop shops pay better then walmart? They don't. The only difference is that they're smaller so they're not practical to unionize. The major reason walmart tends to come up is that the large national labor unions want to unionize walmart. It has very little to do with small towns or small businesses.
And the big labor unions are are likely to act as "overlord" as any corporation if not more likely because they have effective monopolies on labor in their areas. Try to work in some industries without the permission of the labor union. The company can't hire you even if they want to hire you. So if you really want to talk about this more expansively, lets not get side tracked into the petty propoganda talking points of the big labor unions. They're not saints or angels or in any way divine. They're just people... just like everyone else including the corporations. And all the nasty evil things that corporations are prone to are just as possible with unions or government. These institutions have no inherent will. They're machines. The moral character of any organization is ultimately determined by those that run it. And all organizations are run by people.
The corporations are no more evil then the unions or the government or the local girl scout troop. They have their biases, their bigotries, their ambitions, their fears, their hopes.
Do not dehumanize people or you won't understand them.
You've confused libertarians with anarchists. They're not the same thing.
I've heard a lot of ignorant people say that the libertarian utoptia is in Somalia. Again, this is someone that has confused anarchy with libertarianism.
The basic premise is that that the government should exist to stop people from using force on each other. It can use force to stop force.
So non-consensual violence of any kind would be met with police, judges, and prisons. However, any situation where all relevant parties are consenting to the action would be permitted.
I'm not a die hard libertarian myself. I'm somewhat jaded by the weaknesses of all philosophies. That said, if you're going to level a criticism at least know what you're talking about.
Are libertarians often utopians? Many are... and they tend to not understand that force is required even by the definition of their own philosophy. But corporate slavery is a meaningless charge. What are you implying? Slavery is a form of force and under no libertarian system would slavery of any kind be permitted. If you mean the corporations would be powerful and be able to dictate terms then that is true but no one would be forced to accept those contracts. Most corporate monopolies tend to be government sponsored and under a libertarian system the corporations couldn't form such ties. Ultimately, the corporations could collude to trap people but that's probably not in the interest of all corporations. So long as there are a few that don't have it in their interest to do that there will be some corporations that will make a lot of money offering a better deal.
It's extremely complicated of course and I won't claim any of these systems are perfect. The really wild eyed utopians will tell you their system is the best and no system can ever be better. That's silly. But to deride the whole philosophy especially on false terms is unfair.
I don't know why everyone attacking people with MBAs... they provide a valuable skill set to a company. The problem is when they use their ignorance of other skill sets to devalue them. Which is ironically what you're doing by attacking MBAs.
It's the same lack of understanding in both directions.
They've realized that outsourcing the call centers was a mistake largely because customers complained and they lost business. They're going to have to progressively learn why it's a bad idea in every other field.
That isn't to say out sourcing is bad in general. There are uses for it. But they keep trying to basically outsource the whole company while keeping management. That doesn't work... if you outsource the whole company you have no company.
Most of the jobs they're talking about require years of experience to qualify while at the same time there isn't nearly enough lower level work to supply that higher level demand with labor.
By outsourcing all the lower level jobs they've made it impossible for domestic labor to get the experience.
So then the companies have to import foreign skilled labor that are only skilled because the job was outsourced in the first place. Ultimately this makes it more efficient to simply outsource the higher skilled levels as well... etc. all the way up the chain eventually.
The whole outsourcing craze has been generally ill considered.
First, the corporations are not gods. Second, I didn't say they were weak. I said they have a bottom line. Think about the economy like an ecosystem if that helps you. Ecosystems can be quiet robust. One would think that they were invulnerable. These great natural forces... the size and scope of it all. But we both know that these systems have finite limits. Damage them too much or impose too much upon them and you cripple the ecosystem. Take out keystone species and whole tiers of the ecosystem collapse. Economies are similar. They have limits. The bottom line is not an arbitrary figure you can toy with. Cross that line and the system starts to starve. Just as an ecosystem if it is denied resources or energy will starve. Poison the system and you'll kill off weaker members. And while those elements might have been weak just like in an ecosystem often the weaker members are vital to keep the whole system healthy. Small businesses for example are often weaker then big businesses and are completely vital to long term survival.
As to adding more overhead not causing a problem. It is already causing a huge problem.
As to cost externeralization being important, of course it is... so what? I have no problem with corporations paying what they owe. Simply keep that reasonable and NEVER EVER EVER make it an adversarial relationship. You are not there to ruin them. You are there to keep a hopefully long term relationship healthy.
As to demand, that depends on whether it is blocked and that depends on who supplies it. If you shut down all domestic supplies because everyone that plays by your rules dies. Then all domestic demand will have to be met by foreign supply. And at what point do we have nothing to offer in return?
If you don't take the health of the domestic business ecosystem seriously you'll so cripple that you'll destroy the wealth of the society.
Further a point that environmentalists really seem to have a hard time grasping is that environmentalism is a LUXURY policy. Poor countries have no environmental policy. In poor countries they not only don't protect endangered species... they eat them. If the choice is between saving a rare and beautiful creature or having your child go hungry. You feed your child.
The only hope of environmentalism is for the economy we be wealthy enough to fund it. Impoverish the society and you'll find that what funding you have for environmentalism evaporates.
As to race to the bottom, no. Merely an understanding of what the bottom line is at this time.
As to a continuing decline, we grew when we followed my policies which you hold in contempt. We have only begun to really fall under your policy. The greatest economic growth in the US has always come during times of low regulation and high export trade. This is a fact.
As to what environmentalists what. They want to eat their cake and have it too. I don't really care what they want since their desire are often quiet naive.
As to who or what is the enemy, we didn't make this adversarial or politicize it. We went out of our way in fact to try and keep politics out of it. It was the environmental movement that politicized. The founder of Green Peace left the organization for that reason... he said something along the lines that it was taken over by politicos.
If you want to claim otherwise that isn't productive. I don't hate you and I don't want to fight you. Don't mistake that as a sign of weakness. I'm perfectly happy to fight you and rip your throat out. I simply would rather not. Grasp that there are compromises we can come to that are reasonable and mutually beneficial. Industry can benefit from help from activists to improve services and standards. And of course, there are bad actors in industry just as all communities have bad actors. It is to everyone's benefit that the bad elements are addressed. That said, it is going to far to demonize the whole industry simply because of the excesses of a single individual. Often a large corporation will be demonized because one
It does things the desktop apps didn't do before or didn't do very well. There are a lot of things desktop apps do a lot better then the cloud.
Neither one has to displace the other. It's like music and movies. You don't really consume one to the exclusion of the other. Ideally the cloud and desktop apps should learn to get along because in that way they can both play to the other's strengths and cover the other's weaknesses.
They really really really don't like being directly contradicted.
I know a lot of people are contemptuous of religions or the concept of religion. They think the right idea is to spurn these people and just force them to accept the facts or be ostracized. Unfortunately that isn't possible and that isn't a very wise solution. Religions are powerful, common throughout the world, and very capable of controlling human belief. Going into direct conflict with them isn't in our interest since it mostly wastes time and doesn't accomplish much.
Bare with me here. An alternate solution would be offering the religions a loophole. Some ideological wiggle room that lets them keep beliefs they'd literally die to protect and allow them hold scientifically accurate positions.
What the quote said about "if you don't want to call it evolution"... that is actually a very important concession. It sounds stupid that a name would matter, but to the religions it matters a lot.
Consider the difference between a civil union and a marriage. They're literally the same thing in almost every respect but the religions organizations have a special problem with homosexual marriage. Why is that?
The word marriage means something to the religions organizations that it does not mean to other people. In some senses we're not speaking the same language.
In most cases, we could probably compromise by giving everyone a comparable third option that uses a different term.
For example, call evolution something else but have it represent all the same scientific concepts. And this time be very careful about massaging the religious groups into seeing that it isn't a threat to their world view. It's not that hard. They don't want to fight. They just don't want to give ground. Tell them how they can hold their positions without conflicting with science and they'll accept it.
That goes for all the other stuff as well. The religious groups in general don't have a problem with people getting civil unions. So what if everyone got civil unions and we left "marriage" up to private organizations to handle. Marriage would then have no legal meaning where as the civil union would stand in for all the same legal institutions. The religious groups could decide who they think is married or not and none of that would matter to the law.
We either try to find compromises or we're just going to keep peeing into each other's drinking water.
Maiming has it's place. I don't know if false accusations are enough to warrant it. It would require felony convictions at a minimum.
For example, something to identify murderers, rapists, child molesters etc. If they serve their time they have a right to exist in society but I don't know if anonymity is a right they deserve.
Radically less likely. How many cases in history can you point to where critical flaws were introduced into weapons systems by that means.
You might get them to leak information for a fee but introduce a weakness? Unlikely especially since you'd probably have to bribe dozens of people and of course none of them without exception could blow the whistle. If so much as one of them sends a message up the chain the whole scheme is exposed.
Lets say you get what you want and the result is that your economy dies and your people start starving to death. Would you compromise or die?
Clearly you would compromise at some point sacrificing the interests of the environment to satisfy yourself. That or you'd die and those that survived would have different values because they would have been the ones that chose to live.
Further, you say people are distanced from the realities of the world. Why is it those that live in urban cities that seem most prone to talk to those living in rural areas about the destruction of the environment? Why is it that you're more prone to run into vegetarians in a New York condo then on a Kentucky farm?
There is a great deal of separation... how much of your own excrement have you shoveled in your life? Ever dug a latrine? How many animals have you killed with your own two hands to eat? What portion of the energy you burn every day just existing did you provide?
These things are taken for granted it seems more by those that have no respect for the means by which they are produced. It isn't easy. It isn't free. And the process is not helped by whiny urban yuppies pining for utopian solutions that don't actually exist.
If this offends you, I apologize... that is not my intention. My intention is to be understood.
Do corporations externalize environmental costs sometimes? Yes. Are there solutions to that problem besides destroying the company? Yes. The problem with environmentalists today is that they offer few constructive solutions to anything. They merely try to shut things down, bury everyone in red tape, and generally make a mess of otherwise efficient and healthy institutions. Am I claiming perfection at any level? Perfection doesn't exist in this world. By all means help people do things better. But the instant your goal becomes shutting everything down you are an enemy of the modern world and should be treated as such.
Billions would starve to death were we to regress. Who will choose those that live and those that die? Why is it that the environmentalists always think they'll be amongst the chosen few if there are famines or mandatory population reductions?
Careful how sharp you grind that axe... it might just be for you.
We made our own chips. And the only reason we don't make our own chips is because people keep dicking around with the semiconductor companies when they want electricity and some regulation clarity about what they can and can't do.
That's why they left to asia. Think the price of labor matters at all in a semi conductor fab? Oh sure... it always matters but not so much that you'd leave the country. They're not paying people 2 dollars an hour in those fabs anywhere. You don a clean room suit and you're unlikely to be paid slave wages.
Government doesn't need to give these companies huge loans. Just a reasonable price for power and some protection from the insane enviros that would likely take issue with some aspect of the process to try and shut it all down.
Do they? Most papers are actually delivered by a specialized private delivery service. Typically it's a pick up truck that drives through the neighborhood at 4 am slowly throwing a series of papers onto every front lawn.
It's just a modern version of the paper boy.
Is the paper boy an employee of the US postal service?
Do people honestly get papers delivered every day by the postal service? You're getting a paper after most of the day is done then aren't you? I get mail delivery around 4pm every day. Possibly others get it sooner but I live rather close to the post office so I don't understand how.
Papers though... they're delivered before the sun comes up. Can't compare with that... and it has jack all to do with the postal service.
They were comically overblown from the simple descriptions.
Look just but a big warning label on the internet cable and make people that sign up for service sign a wavier.
Someone might hurt your pathetic touchy over blown sense of self on the internet. And that might make you sad. By going on the internet you accept that that is your problem and not the duty of the government to make you feel good about yourself even though anyone that actually gets truly offended probably deserves it if only for being that weak.
harsh? Welcome to the 21st century, snowflakes. Toughen up or stay off the grid.
The point is not to hurt someone. The point is to make them take the process seriously.
So many things that are handled by fines today should be handled by something like this... it doesn't hurt anyone. No nasty fines. No jail fees to pay for... you don't even have to provide food. Water probably should be provided but that costs nothing. they can get up to go to the bathroom and then right back into the stocks. After a good eight hours of that they can go home.
you're saying water makes titanium safe because it reacts with that instead to form a protective layer?... so... spraying water on it if there were a fire would solve the problem?
Because every representation I've seen of the hatches shows handles.
It also makes sense that there should be a manual way to open and close them.
What if the hydraulics are damaged and I need to open or close a hatch?
It seems odd that on the one hand you'd rely on sailors with fire extinguishers to put out fires and on the other hand you'd rely on only three automated hydraulic hatches. Those seem to be different design philosophies.
If you were a person in one of those countries, you'd be very lucky to get many of those jobs. Those are the good jobs.
Consider what labor meant during the industrial revolution. It meant the difference between your children starving or not. Literally. And often to make that happen you'd have to put the children to work as well.
These people are pulling themselves through hundreds of years of Western economic history in no time. It isn't literally over night but what took us hundreds of years is taking them decades because they're just copying us verbatim.
You shouldn't feel bad about it. They're slaves. They show up to work because those are the good jobs.
I might avoid Foxconn (between the suicides and forced internships... basically slavery... I have issues with them.) and anyone that uses them. But other then that I see no reason to avoid any of them.
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You can't build something that will do the same job but not economically. These will remain concepts and prototypes until we can get a solar cell that is very efficient at a competitive price.
I wish this weren't the case... who likes being a slave to the grid but no one is making solar sustainable without absurd subsidies. The germans are making a big push for it right now which can only go to sad places because germany isn't known for it's sun and has huge energy needs. I wish them well and I hope I'm wrong... but it's looking to implode as soon as the maintenance costs start ramping up. We know a little about this in california. We've been building these sorts of power plants for decades. They work fine initially. But five years down the road everything goes pear shaped and you have another eco ruin in the desert.
First, there isn't anything the US government can do that isn't already being done.
Second, this will serve as justification for a massive expansion of US Executive power onto the currently anarchic internet.
Serfdom requires force. Landed nobility oppressed the peasants into that position. If you resisted, you were killed.
Serfdom is not possible under a libertarian system because force would not be allowed.
As to a walmart town, if the whole town's economy was buying things from shops that were later taken over by walmart then the town never had an economy in the first place.
If all you have is end point retail then how are you buying things?
Lets say we removed walmart and we went to nothing but small mom and pop stores. Okay, so how does the guy that owns the hardware store buy shoes at the shoe store? How are they paying for hammers and shoes? How do they get resupplied?
The attack on walmart simply doesn't make sense. I'm not saying you're wrong because I don't know what you're really trying to say. But walmart only effects end point retail. Furthermore, walmart is in competition with internet retailers, speciality shops, and other big box stores.
Are mom and pop stores that sell the same thing as walmart at a higher price being driven out of business. Yes. But I don't see how that relates to corporate slavery or serfdom.
As to the town living in slavery, if you had nothing in that town but mom and pop retail outlets then walmart didn't make you poor. You were poor already.
As to having no ability to leave, I don't know what that means. Of course they can leave. People have been leaving small towns to go to big cities to find work for THOUSANDS of years. It's a common economic trend. The birth rate in rural areas tends to be higher then in urban areas while the economic activity and therefore opportunities tends to be greater in cities. This has been true for thousands of years. If you can't find what you want in your tiny little town that apparently had nothing but small mom and pop retail then you should probably go some place that has jobs.
As to corporate overlords, corporations are rarely hereditary and tend to favor promotions based upon merit. There are exceptions but it's in the corporation's interest to promote more useful people in to positions of greater responsibility indifferent to class or blood. These medieval references possibly have more meaning then you intend.
As to rising up in the town, no one is going to get rich working as a clerk in retail whether you work for walmart or a small mom and pop shop. I don't understand what you're talking about with walmart. If you're working as a clerk in a local hardware store how are you better off then if you were working as a clerk in walmart? Think mom and pop shops pay better then walmart? They don't. The only difference is that they're smaller so they're not practical to unionize. The major reason walmart tends to come up is that the large national labor unions want to unionize walmart. It has very little to do with small towns or small businesses.
And the big labor unions are are likely to act as "overlord" as any corporation if not more likely because they have effective monopolies on labor in their areas. Try to work in some industries without the permission of the labor union. The company can't hire you even if they want to hire you. So if you really want to talk about this more expansively, lets not get side tracked into the petty propoganda talking points of the big labor unions. They're not saints or angels or in any way divine. They're just people... just like everyone else including the corporations. And all the nasty evil things that corporations are prone to are just as possible with unions or government. These institutions have no inherent will. They're machines. The moral character of any organization is ultimately determined by those that run it. And all organizations are run by people.
The corporations are no more evil then the unions or the government or the local girl scout troop. They have their biases, their bigotries, their ambitions, their fears, their hopes.
Do not dehumanize people or you won't understand them.
You've confused libertarians with anarchists. They're not the same thing.
I've heard a lot of ignorant people say that the libertarian utoptia is in Somalia. Again, this is someone that has confused anarchy with libertarianism.
The basic premise is that that the government should exist to stop people from using force on each other. It can use force to stop force.
So non-consensual violence of any kind would be met with police, judges, and prisons. However, any situation where all relevant parties are consenting to the action would be permitted.
I'm not a die hard libertarian myself. I'm somewhat jaded by the weaknesses of all philosophies. That said, if you're going to level a criticism at least know what you're talking about.
Are libertarians often utopians? Many are... and they tend to not understand that force is required even by the definition of their own philosophy. But corporate slavery is a meaningless charge. What are you implying? Slavery is a form of force and under no libertarian system would slavery of any kind be permitted. If you mean the corporations would be powerful and be able to dictate terms then that is true but no one would be forced to accept those contracts. Most corporate monopolies tend to be government sponsored and under a libertarian system the corporations couldn't form such ties. Ultimately, the corporations could collude to trap people but that's probably not in the interest of all corporations. So long as there are a few that don't have it in their interest to do that there will be some corporations that will make a lot of money offering a better deal.
It's extremely complicated of course and I won't claim any of these systems are perfect. The really wild eyed utopians will tell you their system is the best and no system can ever be better. That's silly. But to deride the whole philosophy especially on false terms is unfair.
I don't know why everyone attacking people with MBAs... they provide a valuable skill set to a company. The problem is when they use their ignorance of other skill sets to devalue them. Which is ironically what you're doing by attacking MBAs.
It's the same lack of understanding in both directions.
They've realized that outsourcing the call centers was a mistake largely because customers complained and they lost business. They're going to have to progressively learn why it's a bad idea in every other field.
That isn't to say out sourcing is bad in general. There are uses for it. But they keep trying to basically outsource the whole company while keeping management. That doesn't work... if you outsource the whole company you have no company.
Most of the jobs they're talking about require years of experience to qualify while at the same time there isn't nearly enough lower level work to supply that higher level demand with labor.
By outsourcing all the lower level jobs they've made it impossible for domestic labor to get the experience.
So then the companies have to import foreign skilled labor that are only skilled because the job was outsourced in the first place. Ultimately this makes it more efficient to simply outsource the higher skilled levels as well... etc. all the way up the chain eventually.
The whole outsourcing craze has been generally ill considered.
Yes they are... they want to ban it.
We can't have a real discussion if you start it by lying to me.
First, the corporations are not gods.
Second, I didn't say they were weak. I said they have a bottom line. Think about the economy like an ecosystem if that helps you. Ecosystems can be quiet robust. One would think that they were invulnerable. These great natural forces... the size and scope of it all. But we both know that these systems have finite limits. Damage them too much or impose too much upon them and you cripple the ecosystem. Take out keystone species and whole tiers of the ecosystem collapse. Economies are similar. They have limits. The bottom line is not an arbitrary figure you can toy with. Cross that line and the system starts to starve. Just as an ecosystem if it is denied resources or energy will starve. Poison the system and you'll kill off weaker members. And while those elements might have been weak just like in an ecosystem often the weaker members are vital to keep the whole system healthy. Small businesses for example are often weaker then big businesses and are completely vital to long term survival.
As to adding more overhead not causing a problem. It is already causing a huge problem.
As to cost externeralization being important, of course it is... so what? I have no problem with corporations paying what they owe. Simply keep that reasonable and NEVER EVER EVER make it an adversarial relationship. You are not there to ruin them. You are there to keep a hopefully long term relationship healthy.
As to demand, that depends on whether it is blocked and that depends on who supplies it. If you shut down all domestic supplies because everyone that plays by your rules dies. Then all domestic demand will have to be met by foreign supply. And at what point do we have nothing to offer in return?
If you don't take the health of the domestic business ecosystem seriously you'll so cripple that you'll destroy the wealth of the society.
Further a point that environmentalists really seem to have a hard time grasping is that environmentalism is a LUXURY policy. Poor countries have no environmental policy. In poor countries they not only don't protect endangered species... they eat them. If the choice is between saving a rare and beautiful creature or having your child go hungry. You feed your child.
The only hope of environmentalism is for the economy we be wealthy enough to fund it. Impoverish the society and you'll find that what funding you have for environmentalism evaporates.
As to race to the bottom, no. Merely an understanding of what the bottom line is at this time.
As to a continuing decline, we grew when we followed my policies which you hold in contempt. We have only begun to really fall under your policy. The greatest economic growth in the US has always come during times of low regulation and high export trade. This is a fact.
As to what environmentalists what. They want to eat their cake and have it too. I don't really care what they want since their desire are often quiet naive.
As to who or what is the enemy, we didn't make this adversarial or politicize it. We went out of our way in fact to try and keep politics out of it. It was the environmental movement that politicized. The founder of Green Peace left the organization for that reason... he said something along the lines that it was taken over by politicos.
If you want to claim otherwise that isn't productive. I don't hate you and I don't want to fight you. Don't mistake that as a sign of weakness. I'm perfectly happy to fight you and rip your throat out. I simply would rather not. Grasp that there are compromises we can come to that are reasonable and mutually beneficial. Industry can benefit from help from activists to improve services and standards. And of course, there are bad actors in industry just as all communities have bad actors. It is to everyone's benefit that the bad elements are addressed. That said, it is going to far to demonize the whole industry simply because of the excesses of a single individual. Often a large corporation will be demonized because one
It does things the desktop apps didn't do before or didn't do very well. There are a lot of things desktop apps do a lot better then the cloud.
Neither one has to displace the other. It's like music and movies. You don't really consume one to the exclusion of the other. Ideally the cloud and desktop apps should learn to get along because in that way they can both play to the other's strengths and cover the other's weaknesses.
They really really really don't like being directly contradicted.
I know a lot of people are contemptuous of religions or the concept of religion. They think the right idea is to spurn these people and just force them to accept the facts or be ostracized. Unfortunately that isn't possible and that isn't a very wise solution. Religions are powerful, common throughout the world, and very capable of controlling human belief. Going into direct conflict with them isn't in our interest since it mostly wastes time and doesn't accomplish much.
Bare with me here. An alternate solution would be offering the religions a loophole. Some ideological wiggle room that lets them keep beliefs they'd literally die to protect and allow them hold scientifically accurate positions.
What the quote said about "if you don't want to call it evolution"... that is actually a very important concession. It sounds stupid that a name would matter, but to the religions it matters a lot.
Consider the difference between a civil union and a marriage. They're literally the same thing in almost every respect but the religions organizations have a special problem with homosexual marriage. Why is that?
The word marriage means something to the religions organizations that it does not mean to other people. In some senses we're not speaking the same language.
In most cases, we could probably compromise by giving everyone a comparable third option that uses a different term.
For example, call evolution something else but have it represent all the same scientific concepts. And this time be very careful about massaging the religious groups into seeing that it isn't a threat to their world view. It's not that hard. They don't want to fight. They just don't want to give ground. Tell them how they can hold their positions without conflicting with science and they'll accept it.
That goes for all the other stuff as well. The religious groups in general don't have a problem with people getting civil unions. So what if everyone got civil unions and we left "marriage" up to private organizations to handle. Marriage would then have no legal meaning where as the civil union would stand in for all the same legal institutions. The religious groups could decide who they think is married or not and none of that would matter to the law.
We either try to find compromises or we're just going to keep peeing into each other's drinking water.
Maiming has it's place. I don't know if false accusations are enough to warrant it. It would require felony convictions at a minimum.
For example, something to identify murderers, rapists, child molesters etc. If they serve their time they have a right to exist in society but I don't know if anonymity is a right they deserve.
Radically less likely. How many cases in history can you point to where critical flaws were introduced into weapons systems by that means.
You might get them to leak information for a fee but introduce a weakness? Unlikely especially since you'd probably have to bribe dozens of people and of course none of them without exception could blow the whistle. If so much as one of them sends a message up the chain the whole scheme is exposed.
The point is reversible.
Lets say you get what you want and the result is that your economy dies and your people start starving to death. Would you compromise or die?
Clearly you would compromise at some point sacrificing the interests of the environment to satisfy yourself. That or you'd die and those that survived would have different values because they would have been the ones that chose to live.
Further, you say people are distanced from the realities of the world. Why is it those that live in urban cities that seem most prone to talk to those living in rural areas about the destruction of the environment? Why is it that you're more prone to run into vegetarians in a New York condo then on a Kentucky farm?
There is a great deal of separation... how much of your own excrement have you shoveled in your life? Ever dug a latrine? How many animals have you killed with your own two hands to eat? What portion of the energy you burn every day just existing did you provide?
These things are taken for granted it seems more by those that have no respect for the means by which they are produced. It isn't easy. It isn't free. And the process is not helped by whiny urban yuppies pining for utopian solutions that don't actually exist.
If this offends you, I apologize... that is not my intention. My intention is to be understood.
Do corporations externalize environmental costs sometimes? Yes. Are there solutions to that problem besides destroying the company? Yes. The problem with environmentalists today is that they offer few constructive solutions to anything. They merely try to shut things down, bury everyone in red tape, and generally make a mess of otherwise efficient and healthy institutions. Am I claiming perfection at any level? Perfection doesn't exist in this world. By all means help people do things better. But the instant your goal becomes shutting everything down you are an enemy of the modern world and should be treated as such.
Billions would starve to death were we to regress. Who will choose those that live and those that die? Why is it that the environmentalists always think they'll be amongst the chosen few if there are famines or mandatory population reductions?
Careful how sharp you grind that axe... it might just be for you.
We made our own chips. And the only reason we don't make our own chips is because people keep dicking around with the semiconductor companies when they want electricity and some regulation clarity about what they can and can't do.
That's why they left to asia. Think the price of labor matters at all in a semi conductor fab? Oh sure... it always matters but not so much that you'd leave the country. They're not paying people 2 dollars an hour in those fabs anywhere. You don a clean room suit and you're unlikely to be paid slave wages.
Government doesn't need to give these companies huge loans. Just a reasonable price for power and some protection from the insane enviros that would likely take issue with some aspect of the process to try and shut it all down.
It's officially a national security issue.
The problem here is not that female owned companies are not eligible. It is that there are contracts specifically for female companies.
The government really needs to stop social engineering.
And note there are no programs to get more men into traditionally female enterprises. The door swings only one way.
Why am I paying my taxes to be treated like dog shit?
Do they? Most papers are actually delivered by a specialized private delivery service. Typically it's a pick up truck that drives through the neighborhood at 4 am slowly throwing a series of papers onto every front lawn.
It's just a modern version of the paper boy.
Is the paper boy an employee of the US postal service?
Do people honestly get papers delivered every day by the postal service? You're getting a paper after most of the day is done then aren't you? I get mail delivery around 4pm every day. Possibly others get it sooner but I live rather close to the post office so I don't understand how.
Papers though... they're delivered before the sun comes up. Can't compare with that... and it has jack all to do with the postal service.
They were comically overblown from the simple descriptions.
Look just but a big warning label on the internet cable and make people that sign up for service sign a wavier.
Someone might hurt your pathetic touchy over blown sense of self on the internet. And that might make you sad. By going on the internet you accept that that is your problem and not the duty of the government to make you feel good about yourself even though anyone that actually gets truly offended probably deserves it if only for being that weak.
harsh? Welcome to the 21st century, snowflakes. Toughen up or stay off the grid.
Yeah people aren't getting the point here... so apparently I'd have to resort to the stocks instead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stocks
The point is not to hurt someone. The point is to make them take the process seriously.
So many things that are handled by fines today should be handled by something like this... it doesn't hurt anyone. No nasty fines. No jail fees to pay for... you don't even have to provide food. Water probably should be provided but that costs nothing. they can get up to go to the bathroom and then right back into the stocks. After a good eight hours of that they can go home.
And don't do it again.
No... the point is not to beat them.
Look... maybe the stocks are a better solution if people aren't getting the point here.
Example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stocks
The idea is not to hurt them but to humiliate them and get their attention so they realize that what they're doing will not be tolerated.
who gets their paper delivered by the US postal service? I don't see the relevance.
you're saying water makes titanium safe because it reacts with that instead to form a protective layer?... so... spraying water on it if there were a fire would solve the problem?
Seriously... if there were a new world and you can get on a ship and go.... and never come back... how many would just do it.
that's an extreme reaction but it's just one stupid thing after another... I just want to go...
Because every representation I've seen of the hatches shows handles.
It also makes sense that there should be a manual way to open and close them.
What if the hydraulics are damaged and I need to open or close a hatch?
It seems odd that on the one hand you'd rely on sailors with fire extinguishers to put out fires and on the other hand you'd rely on only three automated hydraulic hatches. Those seem to be different design philosophies.
That applies when you make millions of cars. We're not making millions of subs.
When a car explodes you've lost what? 10 to 20 thousand considering depreciation? Okay... this sub cost 1 billion dollars.
See the issue? Rerun your cost benefit analysis and you'll see that you REALLY don't want to have a failure.
If you were a person in one of those countries, you'd be very lucky to get many of those jobs. Those are the good jobs.
Consider what labor meant during the industrial revolution. It meant the difference between your children starving or not. Literally. And often to make that happen you'd have to put the children to work as well.
These people are pulling themselves through hundreds of years of Western economic history in no time. It isn't literally over night but what took us hundreds of years is taking them decades because they're just copying us verbatim.
You shouldn't feel bad about it. They're slaves. They show up to work because those are the good jobs.
I might avoid Foxconn (between the suicides and forced internships... basically slavery... I have issues with them.) and anyone that uses them. But other then that I see no reason to avoid any of them.