I'm sorry, but I don't see a reason why I should necessarily need the services of a banker to run my company.
Bankers give you access to capital for expansion, and they also give you access to markets for mitigating risk.
If we're talking reality, then in this reality the bankers have paid the lawyers and the lawmakers to make sure that all of them are needed for everything.
Bankers have manipulated laws to achieve monopolies and high barriers to entry. But a lot of those regulations come in the guise of consumer protection.
proof: the world got along fine before there was an American financial system
How historically illiterate and ignorant can you be? Have you looked at European history? At European banking? At the connection between banks, monarchies, war, and famine in Europe?
We need to bring back Glass-Steagall and take a step back from the cliff.
We need something. But if we write another Glass-Steagall, banks are going to use that to make themselves even more powerful and entrenched. One thing is certain: whatever legislation we need, the current administration is too incompetent and corrupt to deliver anything with teeth.
No one said that banks are useless, just that "bankers" (in the wall street sense) contribute less to society (in the "where most people live" sense) than one would expect, given how much they are paid.
And who becomes the arbiter of how much people are worth?
If a private entity voluntarily pays you a salary, that's what you're worth; whether other people judge your job to be worthwhile really is completely irrelevant.
Because if you indoctrinate people into believing income should be earned, they don't conveniently forget all about that when it comes to your income. CEOs are not perceived as pulling their weight, producing nothing but seemingly endless bankruptcies and layoffs, so all that "welfare queen" rhetoric is now turning against them.
CEOs don't receive "welfare", they are paid by their companies, and what they get is what their companies voluntarily pay them. You don't like it? Don't buy their stock, simple as that. Welfare, on the other hand, is forcibly extracted via taxes and redistributed; people have no choice about paying for that. "Welfare" is what you get if you can't work; if you do work, you're not on welfare, even if your job doesn't meet the Marxist value-of-labor criteria that you seem to subscribe to.
The only CEOs that get public funds are those whose companies receive government subsidies or bailouts; that should, of course, stop. However, progressives like Obama and his administration have been handing out corporate welfare hand over fist.
You're misrepresenting the numbers (as is ThinkProgress, where you probably got the number). The $9.7m is total compensation for CEOs of large public companies. That's not "the average CEO". nor "the average CEO salary" (TP), and it isn't just salary.
As for what people get paid for, CEOs of failing companies often get paid more because (1) it's a crappy job, and (2) it's a big stain on their resume. If you don't pay people a lot of money for that job, you aren't going to get anybody.
You can shout about what someone "deserves" until you're blue in the face, but the fact is if you don't want to get total losers in those positions, you need to pay them what they are getting.
Most of these people already have enough money that they really don't need the hassle of these positions and that giving them less simply won't interest them. And they always have the option of running their own company.
Are you sure? I find it hilarious how huge companies have to lay off thousands of employees, yet the CEOs are still making their 10s of millions in salary.
The purpose of companies is not to employ as many people as possible, but to make products as efficiently as possible.
For example,Blackberry CEO getting a compensation package of 88 mil literally days before laying off a bunch of employees.
Blackberry CEO has to be one of the shittiest CEO jobs in industry; you have to make that a really sweet deal for someone reasonably good to take it and stay in that job.
Science does have a defense against hooliganism, and you point it out: time and replication.
This misconception indicates the problem with science education in America. That one result is meaningful.
That's not a "misconception", it's something that's actively promoted politically because it can be used to justify political agendas in areas such as social policy, economics, climate, health, and drugs. The current administration has taken that kind of misuse of science to a new low.
Remember: this is the same peer review that many of the scientific results that government policies are justified with are based on.
Both science and peer review are a good thing, but you can only start trusting scientific results after decades have passed and after they have been replicated numerous times.
Farmland is where we decide to farm, it doesn't just "go away". If you mean potential farmland or arable land, climate change causes it to go away in some places, and it causes lots of it to appear in other places. But that's been going on since the last ice age and humanity deals with it easily.
Coastal regions are frequently composed of sediments; if sea levels rise, they rise along with it. Many low-lying islands work the same way. You cannot predict the effects of sea level rise on most coastal regions by taking a height map and adjusting the sea level.
Even more stupid is the fact that they "model" sea level rise of up to 500m. The maximum sea level rise that is possible from melting all of the earth's ice is about 80m. But no matter how hot it gets, a complete melting of Greenland and Antartica would take thousands of years.
I'm sorry you're too stupid to understand that if people actually use the Internet heavily, it gets slower. I'm sorry you're too stupid to understand the way that these speed statistics are computed. But I suppose that kind of stupidity is symptomatic of the general economic and statistical illiteracy of people like you.
You also don't understand what "the common good" means here. When nations in Europe "invest in public infrastructure", what that means is massive corporate welfare for private companies building and maintaining that infrastructure. But, then, corporate welfare dressed up as "common good" is what progressives are all about.
Given how well the US is doing economically and in terms of Internet-related innovation, I hope we will continue to "hurt the US" in exactly the same way, instead of switching to Europe's model.
It's not "way too expensive". Almost everybody is fine with 20/2. There is no reason for people to spend more so that a few people like you can have cheap 100/100 service.
The reason the US seems "slow" in statistics is simple: we have a lot of users and we've had Internet for a long time. Many users are in difficult to reach areas, and many others have never bothered upgrading to faster Internet because they don't actually need it. In addition, bandwidth is a limited commodity, and people are actually using the Internet for lots of things in the US.
Small countries, countries that only recently adopted the Internet, countries in which the Internet isn't utilized much for streaming, or countries in which only a smaller fraction of the population have Internet access will look better on speed statistics, but they won't necessarily be better off.
Quite the opposite: almost everybody already has a smart device that they are familiar with and that they are keeping updated.
If you make the set-top box a separate smart device, it requires users to install, learn, and maintain two devices. That's a lot worse than what Chromecast offers. On the other hand, if you make it just make it dumb screen mirroring, it ties up the phone.
As I was saying, I think Chromecast is better than either fully dumb or fully smart devices.
I've used both Android set-top boxes and Chromecast, and I prefer Chromecast. An Android set-top box requires more attention and configuration than I like, and a direct phone-to-TV connection ties up the phone. Chromecast strikes a nice middle ground, allowing autonomous playback without the hassles of having to maintain another device.
It would have cost almost nothing for the OS and/or the compiler to insert a little code that made sure that the stack couldn't overflow. If those kinds of checks aren't built into the platform and tools, critical and lethal bugs are going to be much more frequent than they ought to be. Given the power and low cost of modern embedded computer hardware, worrying about saving a few percent in CPU cycles is pointless.
To get companies to change their ways, courts should recognize this kind of programming as criminal negligence and punish Toyota and the responsible employees accordingly
As for simply moving carrier, number portability is available in many countries - not knowing which country you're from, however, I can't say for certain if it's an option for you.
Well, it certainly isn't an option when I want to use messaging from a tablet that happens not to have cellular. Whatever, there really is no advantage to not being able to run the messenger app on a tablet or wifi only device or new carrier or whatever.
As for Skype/Hangouts/etc that's all good and well for those with smartphones, but in a country like India for example, most people don't have smartphones yet whatsapp can still run on some fairly basic hardware and fairly reliably on 2G whereas those options require 3G**
I use Skype and Hangouts text messaging regularly on an S2 with 2G, no problems. And WhatsApp is pretty bloated itself.
Whether you agree or disagree with the need for the TSA, the above is a lousy childish argument.
You're putting up a straw man. He said that they "have not caught a single terrorist". You can catch terrorists without having a terrorist attack.
Both statements are true. And totally irrelevant.
They are quite relevant: the fact that the TSA hasn't even caught a significant number of potential terrorists suggests that the threat is, in fact, low.
Driving is a privilege because you are in control of a half ton or more missile. You are de facto lethal.
No, that doesn't make it a "privilege". Driving is a priori a right because it is not restricted in the Constitution. However, for practical reasons, we regulate it. If technology makes driving safer, then the restrictions become invalid.
The kind of reasoning you apply, namely that using or possessing something lethal is a privilege, is a prescription for totalitarianism; it contradicts basic legal and constitutional principles in the US; and it is simply not acceptable. That kind of reasoning may go over in Europe, where constitutions enumerate a limited set of rights for citizens and leave the rest to government, but the US has the opposite principle: government has a limited set of rights, and all other rights belong to the citizens.
Those of us who actually do leave our little towns are generally smart enough to figure out that there are plenty of better ways to do free international messaging.
Slashdot Mirror
Bankers give you access to capital for expansion, and they also give you access to markets for mitigating risk.
Bankers have manipulated laws to achieve monopolies and high barriers to entry. But a lot of those regulations come in the guise of consumer protection.
How historically illiterate and ignorant can you be? Have you looked at European history? At European banking? At the connection between banks, monarchies, war, and famine in Europe?
We need something. But if we write another Glass-Steagall, banks are going to use that to make themselves even more powerful and entrenched. One thing is certain: whatever legislation we need, the current administration is too incompetent and corrupt to deliver anything with teeth.
And who becomes the arbiter of how much people are worth?
If a private entity voluntarily pays you a salary, that's what you're worth; whether other people judge your job to be worthwhile really is completely irrelevant.
CEOs don't receive "welfare", they are paid by their companies, and what they get is what their companies voluntarily pay them. You don't like it? Don't buy their stock, simple as that. Welfare, on the other hand, is forcibly extracted via taxes and redistributed; people have no choice about paying for that. "Welfare" is what you get if you can't work; if you do work, you're not on welfare, even if your job doesn't meet the Marxist value-of-labor criteria that you seem to subscribe to.
The only CEOs that get public funds are those whose companies receive government subsidies or bailouts; that should, of course, stop. However, progressives like Obama and his administration have been handing out corporate welfare hand over fist.
You're misrepresenting the numbers (as is ThinkProgress, where you probably got the number). The $9.7m is total compensation for CEOs of large public companies. That's not "the average CEO". nor "the average CEO salary" (TP), and it isn't just salary.
As for what people get paid for, CEOs of failing companies often get paid more because (1) it's a crappy job, and (2) it's a big stain on their resume. If you don't pay people a lot of money for that job, you aren't going to get anybody.
You can shout about what someone "deserves" until you're blue in the face, but the fact is if you don't want to get total losers in those positions, you need to pay them what they are getting.
Most of these people already have enough money that they really don't need the hassle of these positions and that giving them less simply won't interest them. And they always have the option of running their own company.
The purpose of companies is not to employ as many people as possible, but to make products as efficiently as possible.
Blackberry CEO has to be one of the shittiest CEO jobs in industry; you have to make that a really sweet deal for someone reasonably good to take it and stay in that job.
I don't think we'll need vertical hydroponics; there's plenty of new arable land opening up in the north, even as the south gets warmer and drier.
Science does have a defense against hooliganism, and you point it out: time and replication.
That's not a "misconception", it's something that's actively promoted politically because it can be used to justify political agendas in areas such as social policy, economics, climate, health, and drugs. The current administration has taken that kind of misuse of science to a new low.
Remember: this is the same peer review that many of the scientific results that government policies are justified with are based on.
Both science and peer review are a good thing, but you can only start trusting scientific results after decades have passed and after they have been replicated numerous times.
Farmland is where we decide to farm, it doesn't just "go away". If you mean potential farmland or arable land, climate change causes it to go away in some places, and it causes lots of it to appear in other places. But that's been going on since the last ice age and humanity deals with it easily.
Coastal regions are frequently composed of sediments; if sea levels rise, they rise along with it. Many low-lying islands work the same way. You cannot predict the effects of sea level rise on most coastal regions by taking a height map and adjusting the sea level.
Even more stupid is the fact that they "model" sea level rise of up to 500m. The maximum sea level rise that is possible from melting all of the earth's ice is about 80m. But no matter how hot it gets, a complete melting of Greenland and Antartica would take thousands of years.
I'm sorry you're too stupid to understand that if people actually use the Internet heavily, it gets slower. I'm sorry you're too stupid to understand the way that these speed statistics are computed. But I suppose that kind of stupidity is symptomatic of the general economic and statistical illiteracy of people like you.
You also don't understand what "the common good" means here. When nations in Europe "invest in public infrastructure", what that means is massive corporate welfare for private companies building and maintaining that infrastructure. But, then, corporate welfare dressed up as "common good" is what progressives are all about.
Given how well the US is doing economically and in terms of Internet-related innovation, I hope we will continue to "hurt the US" in exactly the same way, instead of switching to Europe's model.
It's not "way too expensive". Almost everybody is fine with 20/2. There is no reason for people to spend more so that a few people like you can have cheap 100/100 service.
I get 30 Mbps for $30 in a small city. I think if you live in a large city, it may get more expensive and the performance may get worse.
The reason the US seems "slow" in statistics is simple: we have a lot of users and we've had Internet for a long time. Many users are in difficult to reach areas, and many others have never bothered upgrading to faster Internet because they don't actually need it. In addition, bandwidth is a limited commodity, and people are actually using the Internet for lots of things in the US.
Small countries, countries that only recently adopted the Internet, countries in which the Internet isn't utilized much for streaming, or countries in which only a smaller fraction of the population have Internet access will look better on speed statistics, but they won't necessarily be better off.
A "bribe"? WhatsApp is a private company, they can take money from whoever they want for whatever purpose they want.
Hah! You think we believe that? Getting M&M to issue a ticket to Barcelona is a lot harder than closing a $16b deal with Facebook!
Quite the opposite: almost everybody already has a smart device that they are familiar with and that they are keeping updated.
If you make the set-top box a separate smart device, it requires users to install, learn, and maintain two devices. That's a lot worse than what Chromecast offers. On the other hand, if you make it just make it dumb screen mirroring, it ties up the phone.
As I was saying, I think Chromecast is better than either fully dumb or fully smart devices.
I've used both Android set-top boxes and Chromecast, and I prefer Chromecast. An Android set-top box requires more attention and configuration than I like, and a direct phone-to-TV connection ties up the phone. Chromecast strikes a nice middle ground, allowing autonomous playback without the hassles of having to maintain another device.
It would have cost almost nothing for the OS and/or the compiler to insert a little code that made sure that the stack couldn't overflow. If those kinds of checks aren't built into the platform and tools, critical and lethal bugs are going to be much more frequent than they ought to be. Given the power and low cost of modern embedded computer hardware, worrying about saving a few percent in CPU cycles is pointless.
To get companies to change their ways, courts should recognize this kind of programming as criminal negligence and punish Toyota and the responsible employees accordingly
Well, it certainly isn't an option when I want to use messaging from a tablet that happens not to have cellular. Whatever, there really is no advantage to not being able to run the messenger app on a tablet or wifi only device or new carrier or whatever.
I use Skype and Hangouts text messaging regularly on an S2 with 2G, no problems. And WhatsApp is pretty bloated itself.
Of course, Skype, Hangouts, and lots of other apps satisfy all those requirements.
Gosh, yeah, like when you move to a different country or switch to another carrier and can't take your number with you.
You're putting up a straw man. He said that they "have not caught a single terrorist". You can catch terrorists without having a terrorist attack.
They are quite relevant: the fact that the TSA hasn't even caught a significant number of potential terrorists suggests that the threat is, in fact, low.
No, that doesn't make it a "privilege". Driving is a priori a right because it is not restricted in the Constitution. However, for practical reasons, we regulate it. If technology makes driving safer, then the restrictions become invalid.
The kind of reasoning you apply, namely that using or possessing something lethal is a privilege, is a prescription for totalitarianism; it contradicts basic legal and constitutional principles in the US; and it is simply not acceptable. That kind of reasoning may go over in Europe, where constitutions enumerate a limited set of rights for citizens and leave the rest to government, but the US has the opposite principle: government has a limited set of rights, and all other rights belong to the citizens.
Those of us who actually do leave our little towns are generally smart enough to figure out that there are plenty of better ways to do free international messaging.