Yes, slavery and genocide of the American Indians were the result of European colonialism and European religious and social ideologies. Most of the history of the US as a separate nation has been occupied with dealing with the aftermath of those European crimes. Europeans, of course, continued to commit genocide in Africa and Europe well into the 20th century.
We did have institutionalized racism; so did Europe and Asia (and they still do, extensively).
Nazi ideologies were based in scientific racism and social Darwinism; Nazi popular success was based on psychology, mass communications, and sociology; even the language of the Nazis frequently used technological terminology for social policies and Nazi concepts in an attempt to make it sound more scientific. Communism and the mass murders it committed were likewise based on and supported by the work of prominent European intellectuals.
Furthermore, anti-intellectualism isn't an opposition to truth, rationality, or reason, it is an opposition to intellectualism; that is, an opposition to people who single-mindedly follow intellectual pursuits. Intellectuals frequently are neither truthful nor rational.
I suggest you actually look at the pro-intellectual cultures in Europe. Those cultures have been responsible for the most barbarous genocides, wars, racism, and mass murders in human history, complete with the most erudite justifications for them.
Yes, we're anti-intellectual to some degree, and that's a good thing.
You'd believe that, until you actually have lived in those supposedly "comparable nations".
I think that kind of uninformed and irrational inferiority complex is why the US objectively tends to do quite a bit better on justice, opportunity, and education than other nations who consider themselves civilized.
In the context of the article, we've been talking about evolution optimizing your brain for achieving more happiness than it currently can achieve. You can mimic that with drugs, and it's a bad thing.
You are trying to optimize your happiness through your choices and that's what you're supposed to do. In fact, the reason evolution doesn't optimize the brain for achieving more happiness more easily is precisely so that you have lots of room to optimize your happiness through behavior.
If you prefer to optimize for happiness, there are lots of drugs to help you with that.
Unfortunately, optimizing for happiness has serious disadvantages even in modern society. Preferentially learning from painful experiences has its benefits even today.
Tell you what: you work out the level of fines and enforcement needed to provide the same deterrent effect as a $38M judgment, and then we can talk again about which approach is more rational and effective.
The equation of a union security agreement with slavery is ridiculous and morally revolting.
Save me your faux outrage. The point is that there are many kinds of contracts that are prohibited by law because they are deemed to have undesirable consequences. Closed shop agreements are in that category. There is no absolute freedom to write any contract you like.
Furthermore, union security contracts are considered a violation of the European convention of human rights because it interferes with an individual's right to freedom of association. So the analogy is, in fact, valid: it's a human rights violation according to an important legal authority, even one with good progressive credentials.
And that's not even taking into account the other injustice, namely the fact that closed shop agreements often amount to organizing a mob to break the law in order to pressure a private property owner to enter into contracts he doesn't want to enter into (and usually hurting worker interests in the process).
the real issue is the construction of laws to target certain people and groups, namely the working poor, to systematically deprive them of political representation
What the law "deprives" people of is of being compelled to support an organization they don't want to be represented by, and the less money you have, the more important it is not to be compelled to give money to political organizations you don't want to give money to.
Just because you believe that "the working poor" are represented by unions doesn't mean that they agree.
Unions had been agitating for a five-day week for decades and he didn't invent the thing, it was common the textile industry since the aughts, mainly because a significant number of Jews were involved in needle trades and they wanted to have Saturdays off for the sabbath.
I.e. market forces produced what union action didn't manage to produce in decades. And it wasn't even the union's idea.
The catch with all of Ford's labor innovations were that they were always understood to be a gift on his part. It had to be his idea, and his time to give. The suggestion that labor had earned it, or that it was their due, was out of the question, and he reserved the right to withdraw his liberal labor practices at a moment's notice if anything displeased him.
Thank you for confirming what I said: Ford did it voluntarily, and he did it and kept it out of economic self interest. And simple market economics brought
As I was saying: you are a liar if you claim that unions are responsible for the 5 day work week.
just because a lot of people are using an open source product doesn't necessarily mean someone else will take it up. They will only do it if there is something in it for them, regardless of the currency. i.e. a profit.
When a lot of people are depending on an open source project, the ability to earn a profit from maintaining and supporting is pretty much automatic because there are a lot of potential customers with unmet needs. Sorry, but the flaw is in your understanding of economics.
Oh, stop being such an disingenuous ass. I didn't "advocate a chain of deaths" to fix anything. People will die no matter what; the question is how we can minimize deaths. You seem to live in a dream world where inspections and fines prevent deaths, but companies laugh at them. They'll pay the silly little fines and go on doing whatever is cheapest. The threat of a $38M judgment, on the other hand, is quite a strong deterrent.
For now. Because unless you can pick drivers, the better way to "strike" is to do stuff where there's a lot of flexibility. There are plenty of ways to protest that will hurt Uber more. Like poor pre-planning - getting "lost" or purposely driving into gridlock which can turn a 20 minute car ride into a 40 minutes or more. Or taking roundabout routes, or driving dangerously, etc.
You'll get bad ratings or reported to the police. Good luck with that.
Right now things are good because it's early. Once greed and ways to beat the system come in, it'll degrade very quickly. Unlicensed cabs are still unlicensed cabs.
F*ck licensed cabs; they are a scam. I'll rather take public transit than to pay those bloodsuckers.
The sanction of "Right to Work" laws and jurisdictions, which abridge the right to contract
Yes, we restrict the right to contract in certain ways. For example, you can't make a contract selling yourself into slavery. You can't make a contract charging unreasonable interest. And you can't make a "closed shop contract", for pretty much the same reasons. Note that the EU court of human rights has found that closed shop agreements violate freedom of association, so the US is hardly alone in this.
There are about 40000 reported bicycle injuries (mostly those requiring medical treatment) and about 800 reported bicycle deaths a year. So that gives you a rough order of magnitude, namely about 2%.
Seems to me that a $32M judgment against Domino's will provide a strong incentive to actually fix this. And if they don't and another accident happens, judges and juries will give even harsher sentences.
Yes, and (a) is a good strike, one that helps workers, employers, and buyers to reach an equitable and efficient agreement. But (b) is not just "coercion", it is blackmail by a special interest group; it's little different from the mafia.
The Taft-Hartley Act had the effect, in the US, of slowly killing the private sector union and leaving only government employees organized, so that union formation became a privilege or a bennie, as opposed to a protected right of anyone who works.
Taft Hartley doesn't prevent workers from organizing, it limits the ability of unions from imposing their views on workers who don't share them. Since there seem to be enough of those to make unions much less effective, they have been declining in power.
but it makes a picket harder to enforce: how do the strikers know for sure their buddy isn't taking Uber work while they're on "strike?"
By what right should unions be able to "enforce" pickets or strikes? If I'm not a member of your union, you have no business interfering in my affairs or what work I choose to do.
Voluntary collective bargaining is a good thing. Unions imposing their views on non-members is not acceptable.
As long as the money is concentrated in very few hands,
It isn't. Even if it were, what does it have to do with Uber? What's driving down the wages in this case is that these drivers are offering a service that requires little special training and has a low cost of entry. Historically, through rent seeking and monopolization, they have been able to fleece their customers. Now that there is actual competition, their wages decrease, as they should. I as a customer do not owe a cab driver a good income, I owe him exactly and only as much as the cheapest guy willing to offer the service to me.
Furthermore, if I take my own usage of Uber as an example, they are getting more customers. I almost never take cabs because they are such a hassle and so unpredictable, but Uber is a much better experience.
he's only broken his collarbone twice and hip once
What that actually says that he was in three life threatening situations and got lucky; because almost any kind of impact that breaks a bone has a significant probability of killing you.
They'll only pick it up if there is a benefit to them doing so.
Yes, usually that benefit is called "money".
Most open source projects end because people were not getting any benefit from the hours they put into it. Initially the benefit might have been fun or the dream of making money. After they spend enough time away from things that really matter without it helping to pay the bills, the project gets dropped.
Just like most closed source projects.
You seem to operate under the erroneous assumption that open source products are not for profit or that people don't make any money of them. That's wrong. While open source licenses don't guarantee longevity, but all things being equal, your risk is much lower when the product you use comes under an open source license than under a closed source license.
All those are good recommendations... except when they are not. Companies do programming not for its own sake, but to make a profit. And making a profit, sadly, often doesn't involve delivering the best possible product.
For example, if you don't get paid for longevity, providing it is going to cost you. For example, if you bid for some government contract but aren't required to do the long term maintenance, you may well choose tools that let you get the job done quickly and cheaply, but for which you know that long term maintenance is hell. Furthermore, if you don't do that, your competitors are.
If you pick an open source project with lots of users, that's not a problem: someone will pick up maintenance.
For commercial, closed source projects, having a lot of people in the same boat as you doesn't protect you against anything; even potentially money-making products whose maintenance someone could profitably take over often end up being dead.
If they can pay someone in-house to fork/maintain, they can probably afford someone to write a customized framework that fits their use-case better
You don't have to pay someone to "fork/maintain" when the original developer goes away; open source projects generally get picked up by other commercial entities to maintain without you having to do anything. In fact, many open source projects you use and rely on have gone through that process without you even noticing.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, slavery and genocide of the American Indians were the result of European colonialism and European religious and social ideologies. Most of the history of the US as a separate nation has been occupied with dealing with the aftermath of those European crimes. Europeans, of course, continued to commit genocide in Africa and Europe well into the 20th century.
We did have institutionalized racism; so did Europe and Asia (and they still do, extensively).
Nazi ideologies were based in scientific racism and social Darwinism; Nazi popular success was based on psychology, mass communications, and sociology; even the language of the Nazis frequently used technological terminology for social policies and Nazi concepts in an attempt to make it sound more scientific. Communism and the mass murders it committed were likewise based on and supported by the work of prominent European intellectuals.
Furthermore, anti-intellectualism isn't an opposition to truth, rationality, or reason, it is an opposition to intellectualism; that is, an opposition to people who single-mindedly follow intellectual pursuits. Intellectuals frequently are neither truthful nor rational.
I suggest you actually look at the pro-intellectual cultures in Europe. Those cultures have been responsible for the most barbarous genocides, wars, racism, and mass murders in human history, complete with the most erudite justifications for them.
Yes, we're anti-intellectual to some degree, and that's a good thing.
You'd believe that, until you actually have lived in those supposedly "comparable nations".
I think that kind of uninformed and irrational inferiority complex is why the US objectively tends to do quite a bit better on justice, opportunity, and education than other nations who consider themselves civilized.
In the context of the article, we've been talking about evolution optimizing your brain for achieving more happiness than it currently can achieve. You can mimic that with drugs, and it's a bad thing.
You are trying to optimize your happiness through your choices and that's what you're supposed to do. In fact, the reason evolution doesn't optimize the brain for achieving more happiness more easily is precisely so that you have lots of room to optimize your happiness through behavior.
If you prefer to optimize for happiness, there are lots of drugs to help you with that.
Unfortunately, optimizing for happiness has serious disadvantages even in modern society. Preferentially learning from painful experiences has its benefits even today.
Tell you what: you work out the level of fines and enforcement needed to provide the same deterrent effect as a $38M judgment, and then we can talk again about which approach is more rational and effective.
And simple market economics brought you what decades of union action failed to do.
Save me your faux outrage. The point is that there are many kinds of contracts that are prohibited by law because they are deemed to have undesirable consequences. Closed shop agreements are in that category. There is no absolute freedom to write any contract you like.
Furthermore, union security contracts are considered a violation of the European convention of human rights because it interferes with an individual's right to freedom of association. So the analogy is, in fact, valid: it's a human rights violation according to an important legal authority, even one with good progressive credentials.
And that's not even taking into account the other injustice, namely the fact that closed shop agreements often amount to organizing a mob to break the law in order to pressure a private property owner to enter into contracts he doesn't want to enter into (and usually hurting worker interests in the process).
What the law "deprives" people of is of being compelled to support an organization they don't want to be represented by, and the less money you have, the more important it is not to be compelled to give money to political organizations you don't want to give money to.
Just because you believe that "the working poor" are represented by unions doesn't mean that they agree.
I.e. market forces produced what union action didn't manage to produce in decades. And it wasn't even the union's idea.
Thank you for confirming what I said: Ford did it voluntarily, and he did it and kept it out of economic self interest. And simple market economics brought
As I was saying: you are a liar if you claim that unions are responsible for the 5 day work week.
When a lot of people are depending on an open source project, the ability to earn a profit from maintaining and supporting is pretty much automatic because there are a lot of potential customers with unmet needs. Sorry, but the flaw is in your understanding of economics.
Well, that's because we have Taft Hartley, right to work, and a lot of other laws restricting the power of unions.
The 5 day, 40h work week was introduced by Ford in 1926 in order to increase productivity, under no pressure from unions.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/HENRY_FORD:_Why_I_Favor_Five_Days'_Work_With_Six_Days'_Pay
In different words, you're a liar. But that's to be expected, I suppose.
Oh, stop being such an disingenuous ass. I didn't "advocate a chain of deaths" to fix anything. People will die no matter what; the question is how we can minimize deaths. You seem to live in a dream world where inspections and fines prevent deaths, but companies laugh at them. They'll pay the silly little fines and go on doing whatever is cheapest. The threat of a $38M judgment, on the other hand, is quite a strong deterrent.
You'll get bad ratings or reported to the police. Good luck with that.
F*ck licensed cabs; they are a scam. I'll rather take public transit than to pay those bloodsuckers.
Yes, we restrict the right to contract in certain ways. For example, you can't make a contract selling yourself into slavery. You can't make a contract charging unreasonable interest. And you can't make a "closed shop contract", for pretty much the same reasons. Note that the EU court of human rights has found that closed shop agreements violate freedom of association, so the US is hardly alone in this.
There are about 40000 reported bicycle injuries (mostly those requiring medical treatment) and about 800 reported bicycle deaths a year. So that gives you a rough order of magnitude, namely about 2%.
Seems to me that a $32M judgment against Domino's will provide a strong incentive to actually fix this. And if they don't and another accident happens, judges and juries will give even harsher sentences.
So what exactly is the problem?
Yes, and (a) is a good strike, one that helps workers, employers, and buyers to reach an equitable and efficient agreement. But (b) is not just "coercion", it is blackmail by a special interest group; it's little different from the mafia.
Taft Hartley doesn't prevent workers from organizing, it limits the ability of unions from imposing their views on workers who don't share them. Since there seem to be enough of those to make unions much less effective, they have been declining in power.
By what right should unions be able to "enforce" pickets or strikes? If I'm not a member of your union, you have no business interfering in my affairs or what work I choose to do.
Voluntary collective bargaining is a good thing. Unions imposing their views on non-members is not acceptable.
It isn't. Even if it were, what does it have to do with Uber? What's driving down the wages in this case is that these drivers are offering a service that requires little special training and has a low cost of entry. Historically, through rent seeking and monopolization, they have been able to fleece their customers. Now that there is actual competition, their wages decrease, as they should. I as a customer do not owe a cab driver a good income, I owe him exactly and only as much as the cheapest guy willing to offer the service to me.
Furthermore, if I take my own usage of Uber as an example, they are getting more customers. I almost never take cabs because they are such a hassle and so unpredictable, but Uber is a much better experience.
What that actually says that he was in three life threatening situations and got lucky; because almost any kind of impact that breaks a bone has a significant probability of killing you.
Yes, usually that benefit is called "money".
Just like most closed source projects.
You seem to operate under the erroneous assumption that open source products are not for profit or that people don't make any money of them. That's wrong. While open source licenses don't guarantee longevity, but all things being equal, your risk is much lower when the product you use comes under an open source license than under a closed source license.
Why can't you just walk into a store and buy it?
All those are good recommendations... except when they are not. Companies do programming not for its own sake, but to make a profit. And making a profit, sadly, often doesn't involve delivering the best possible product.
For example, if you don't get paid for longevity, providing it is going to cost you. For example, if you bid for some government contract but aren't required to do the long term maintenance, you may well choose tools that let you get the job done quickly and cheaply, but for which you know that long term maintenance is hell. Furthermore, if you don't do that, your competitors are.
If you pick an open source project with lots of users, that's not a problem: someone will pick up maintenance.
For commercial, closed source projects, having a lot of people in the same boat as you doesn't protect you against anything; even potentially money-making products whose maintenance someone could profitably take over often end up being dead.
You don't have to pay someone to "fork/maintain" when the original developer goes away; open source projects generally get picked up by other commercial entities to maintain without you having to do anything. In fact, many open source projects you use and rely on have gone through that process without you even noticing.