If you want to screed against something of that ilk, I'd suggest railing against the corporatism that is rampant in this country. The current administration dumped a trillion bucks to their buddies on wall street, and another trillion in "shovel ready" stimulus pork, right out of the gate!
Exaggerated, but partly true. But what you fail to understand is Mark Zuckerberg did not inherently create $300B in value by creating a large website. It's worth $300B because Wall Street made it worth $300B. He and the other Facebook investors made money because Wall Street investors decided it was valuable. So, yes, most of these companies gained much of their value from Wall Street speculation, partly enabled by the government in bailouts (it wasn't just GM: it was the investment banks now inflating.com values) low taxes, low interest rates, protectionism, and just completely lax regulations.
HENCE: a lot of their value is due to these bailouts, low taxes, low interest rates, protectionism, and lax regulations, ie. SOCIETY created a lot of the value and deserves to share the profit. You seem to think that one guy has an idea and that somehow "inherently" makes him worth $50B and all of the employees who help build it worth nothing. Well, sorry, that's not a law of nature, it's a result of some work, some luck, and a very stacked system.
I don't know why you think that Oprah Winfrey building a billion dollar media empire is a huge problem that should be addressed by confiscating the majority of her wealth
Is this the Oprah who bought a large share of Weight Watchers, announced she lost weight on the latest WW fad diet (for like the 20th time) and raked in $20M in stock gains the next day? Yeah, she worked hard for that money. Worked hard to figure out SEC insider trading loopholes. As they say, it takes money to make money - which is the whole point.
Except many of your points are just plain nonsense, sorry. Borrowing does not by definition create money out of thin air and cause inflation. The US government borrowed tons of money in 2015, and inflation was way below average. Inflation can be due to a government printing money because it CAN'T borrow enough. If lots of people are willing to lend the government money at low rates (like in the last couple years), then inflation can be really low even if govt borrowing is high.
Inflation means it costs more for the poor to buy stuff, and it means the stuff the rich own becomes more valuable. (if you bought a $100k house 30 years ago, it's worth $300k now thanks to inflation... you made $200k simply by owning it).
Whoa, that's absurdly incorrect. Appreciation != inflation. If it were due to inflation you'd be no better off than you were back then. You really have no idea what inflation is, do you? For a REALLY simple example: If you bought a house, and because your neighborhood became really desirable, it gained 10% this year, does that mean "inflation" was 10%? No, it is TOTALLY UNRELATED, because it appreciated (gained value) vs inflated (gained price for no increase in value).
I'm all for helping people, but the money that goes to help people needs to come from individuals, not from money creation. Also, human time assisting the needy needs to come from volunteers, not workers paid from borrowed (created) funds.
See above. Since your premise is wrong, this doesn't make any more sense than the other points.
Did you even look at Sanders' plans? Or are actually so ignorant just to take the Fox talking head's word that you would pay more taxes under Sanders' plan? The middle class is no longer in the "middle 25%" - in reality the middle 25% is barely better off than the bottom 25%. If you want to get to "middle class" these days you're talking top 30-40% of income, few of whom will see ANY tax increase (yes, only the top 1/3 of US households make more than $60k per year).
If you are making $250k+ you are in the top 2% and will remain there because the government taking an extra couple percent of your income (because it's a PROGRESSIVE MARGINAL TAX INCREASE, duh) is not going to change your financial situation ONE BIT vs anyone below you (again, PROGRESSIVE MARGINAL TAX SYSTEM).
If, however, you are making $2M+ a year, then you will be paying significantly more than you were. In that case I'm sure the 99.9% of the population below you will have much sympathy that you will have to wait an extra month to buy that Lamborghini.
Both parties are the same. Republicans shift workload onto society via corporate welfare. Democrats shift workload onto society via government welfare programs.... But when any of these programs are given a free pass (as the most staunch conservatives and staunch liberals do), inefficiency (corruption) begins to creep in and their cost to society eventually exceeds their benefit.
True, and an insightful point. Though I would argue that the result of corporate welfare abuse is that the already rich 0.1% benefits the most. The result of social welfare abuse is that the poorest 25%+ benefits the most.
Neither form of waste and corruption is ideal, of course, but if I had to choose the lesser of two evils I'd prefer to direct the inefficiencies to the 25% of the poorest people in society living day to day with underfed kids and horrible health care than I would to millionaires wanting to add an extra comma to their net worth.
There's this really neat thing called a "search engine". If they're a professional, they'll be searchable.
I almost wanted to agree with your pervious comment, but this one was silly.
As much as I can't stand Linkedin, if you are looking for a "search engine" optimized for professionals, there is nothing better. In fact often if you search Google for someone in a professional context Linkedin is the first result that comes up (which I try to make a point of not clicking on).
Just because you dislike something, doesn't mean it's not the best at what it does. Maybe not the right solution for you or me due to all of its other flaws, but definitely the most efficient way to "search" for professionals in many industries. Which explains both it's huge successes (it's effective) and recent financial problems (it's shady as hell in some ways, and people are fleeing it).
Sounds like you are blaming your sister for her endorsement, when obviously it's Linkedin that should be blamed. I have no interest in giving speeches or threats to friends over a shitty service like this.
The reason so many of these strange endorsements happen is that Linkedin makes it as confusing as possible for people. She probably saw something like "do you know X, and think he does great work? Would you like to endorse him?" - basically making you feel bad for not doing it without decent context. Who knows, they may have improved it more recently as it's been one of the major complaints - but I wouldn't know since I haven't used it for years...
Anyway, that's not the only reason I quit Linkedin. The biggest one is that the more you pay for their services, the more "semi private" information they will give you about other people. ie. unlike Facebook, etc, if you pay enough to Linkedin you can get access to people who aren't in your network. Not only that, if you pay more you can see who has looked at your page, etc. I know Linkedin has added some (buried) settings to limit that a bit, but in the end their business model is built on this so clearly they do NOT have their (non paying) users' best interests in mind.
Seriously, yes. What the HELL do they do with 250 engineers that no one has given a shit about (beyond the investors who watched their stock lose almost 50% in a single day) in the last couple years?
I won't even click on random search links to their site (let alone use it for business networking) once I realized how all of your "private" data is basically negotiable to anyone who wants to pay more than you to get access to it.
Because they are a fucked company, they know it, and they need to do something to get more publicity.
Re: Hammerheads in Vermont
on
Carly Is Out
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· Score: 1
But taking money you'd use to buy a non-infrastructure resource and then giving you an overpriced, shoddy but "official" government replacement, is also a rather sad utopia. "The even distribution of poverty" comes to mind.
A sad utopia for the 0.1% of the population who have made their billions off of the labor of the rest of the country - as they will become mere lesser billionaires. A tolerable living for the 50% of the population who have no political, economic, or any other influence and thus no way to improve their lot other than their vote in a democratic society.
Given the choice of "pay 50% taxes or GTFO" most billionaires would pay 50% taxes. In fact, 80+ years of the 20th century already proved that. Because the alternative would be to GTFO to 3rd world countries that won't tax them but where they can't I've the lifestyle they are accustomed to...
Re:Hammerheads in Vermont
on
Carly Is Out
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· Score: 1
And modded redundant, nice... please mods, if you think that post was useless, continue to waste your points to mod this post down as well. If you do, we allI know for a fact you are a useless waste of a human meatbag so at least we can burn your semi-democratic/. mod points on a post like this...
You are assuming the US Government outlasts Amazon...
Re:Hammerheads in Vermont
on
Carly Is Out
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· Score: 1
Don't get me wrong, I am not Libertarian in any sense, I am a practical Democrat who would prefer some Democratic Socialism where it actually works.
Your examples are great *social* leaders, but not *socialist* leaders. And none has done JACK SHIT for income inequality in their countries. I guess they are Libertarians Socialists and not Socialist Libertarians... or whatever bullshit people putting labels on people decide this week...
Re: Hammerheads in Vermont
on
Carly Is Out
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· Score: 0
Yeah, because a "thief" who "steals" 10% of another "thief's" gains is the real bad guy...
Re:Hammerheads in Vermont
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Carly Is Out
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· Score: 0
government wealth redistribution
This alone makes you socialist/communist.
For the past 35+ years we've been having a government redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class to those who are already wealthy. What does that make the worthless fucking idiots who created that?
Wish I had mod points (oh wait, I do - but I already commented on this thread multiple times...) This is my favorite statement from this discussion so far.
Re:Hammerheads in Vermont
on
Carly Is Out
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· Score: 1
Yeah, his argument is ridiculous. Socialists and Libertarians are just about as opposite on the spectrum in any ways that count as you could think of. The only commonality he had in his point was a total coincidence with different motivations, since Bernie's are (relative) Pacifism and privacy and Rand Paul is into isolationism and small government.
Though I disagree with your statement on Cruz "he too is opposed to an adventurist foreign policy." He wants to carpet bomb Syria and approves of torture if it gets results. I'm pretty sure those are not Rand Paul's positions.
Re:Hammerheads in Vermont
on
Carly Is Out
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Wait, what? We have the highest economic inequality in the last 100 years (and worse, in some ways). The last 40 years have basically been one right center economically conservative president after another (if you look at the math, Clinton did more to contribute to it than either Bush). Who's "choices" will be taken away by moderately raising taxes on those in the very top tax brackets? Trump, for example, says he wants to "make America great again", when if you look at it his definition of great (the economic boom of the 50s-60s) had a top tax bracket of 90%.
If you want a proven fiscal conservative and moderate social liberal, you should be supporting Hillary. None of the Republican candidates have the slightest clue what their back-asswards ideas will do to the US economy (and most people who actually have a clue say they will be disastrous). At least with Hillary you will get more of the same from the last 40 years.
I say that with the opinion that the majority of the country's social issues over the the history of the US have at their root cause economic inequality. Crime rates, educational imbalances/opportunity, racial inequality/bigotry, health care, and obviously significant poverty have been exacerbated by the fact that the top 0.1% has made more money than the bottom 50%. And they are just accumulating it for apparently no reason other than to keep score. The fact is, if you have something to live for and aren't just surviving day to day, you are a lot less likely to risk your life and future committing property crimes. But Republicans seem more willing to pay $50,000 a year to incarcerate a poor person than pay them a living wage (which is less than $50,000).
I wish we could get someone like Sanders in as President, and put the tax brackets back to where they were in 1960, fix the ridiculous capital gains rate, etc. Given the current divisiveness in US politics that probably won't happen. So we're probably still screwed for the foreseeable future...
So you admit the main reason for Git's existence is remote distributed development, but that's somehow not relevant to a company providing an incremental (even if significant) improvement over that main feature? Yeah, gonna have to call bullshit on that...
Most people I know switch back and forth between iphone and android phones regularly.
And most people I know are religiously tied to one or the other (and the older they get, the less they want to change). ie. anecdotes are useless.
Apple is making lots of money because they have no competition on the iphone side while there is lots of competition on the android side but as everyone upgrade every few years, it would only take a couple years of people starting to prefer android (like me and many of my friends) for their profit margins to start to erode
And you don't think that's significant? Android's price advantage is due to the cutthroat competition that I mentioned in my previous post. What will happen when HTC, LG, Sony, etc give up on the market because it's not profitable? You will have Samsung on the high end and a couple Chinese companies on the low end. And who knows, once Samsung owns the non-iOS phone market, they could just dump Google and do their own thing. If that happens Android is much more at risk of irrelevancy than iOS devices...
Regen on flat pedaling is stupid and goes along the lines of a perpetual motion machine. Much of the energy you pedal into the motor is lost in the form of heat and you won't get out what you put in.
You are thinking solely in terms of mechanics and not biology. Siphoning off a few watts on a flat pedal to recharge when cyclists are normally conserving energy for the next climb anyway and then applying it when needed most can spread out the energy expended to make things more efficient.
Try running a 5k sprinting until you can't run any more, and then walking until you recover and can sprint again vs just running at your maximum steady pace. I guarantee you the latter strategy gets you a better time.
Losses from inefficiencies of the motor could make things less ideal, though that depends on the motor and considering it certainly isn't "stupid".
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to screed against something of that ilk, I'd suggest railing against the corporatism that is rampant in this country. The current administration dumped a trillion bucks to their buddies on wall street, and another trillion in "shovel ready" stimulus pork, right out of the gate!
Exaggerated, but partly true. But what you fail to understand is Mark Zuckerberg did not inherently create $300B in value by creating a large website. It's worth $300B because Wall Street made it worth $300B. He and the other Facebook investors made money because Wall Street investors decided it was valuable. So, yes, most of these companies gained much of their value from Wall Street speculation, partly enabled by the government in bailouts (it wasn't just GM: it was the investment banks now inflating .com values) low taxes, low interest rates, protectionism, and just completely lax regulations.
HENCE: a lot of their value is due to these bailouts, low taxes, low interest rates, protectionism, and lax regulations, ie. SOCIETY created a lot of the value and deserves to share the profit. You seem to think that one guy has an idea and that somehow "inherently" makes him worth $50B and all of the employees who help build it worth nothing. Well, sorry, that's not a law of nature, it's a result of some work, some luck, and a very stacked system.
I don't know why you think that Oprah Winfrey building a billion dollar media empire is a huge problem that should be addressed by confiscating the majority of her wealth
Is this the Oprah who bought a large share of Weight Watchers, announced she lost weight on the latest WW fad diet (for like the 20th time) and raked in $20M in stock gains the next day? Yeah, she worked hard for that money. Worked hard to figure out SEC insider trading loopholes. As they say, it takes money to make money - which is the whole point.
Except many of your points are just plain nonsense, sorry. Borrowing does not by definition create money out of thin air and cause inflation. The US government borrowed tons of money in 2015, and inflation was way below average. Inflation can be due to a government printing money because it CAN'T borrow enough. If lots of people are willing to lend the government money at low rates (like in the last couple years), then inflation can be really low even if govt borrowing is high.
Inflation means it costs more for the poor to buy stuff, and it means the stuff the rich own becomes more valuable. (if you bought a $100k house 30 years ago, it's worth $300k now thanks to inflation... you made $200k simply by owning it).
Whoa, that's absurdly incorrect. Appreciation != inflation. If it were due to inflation you'd be no better off than you were back then. You really have no idea what inflation is, do you? For a REALLY simple example: If you bought a house, and because your neighborhood became really desirable, it gained 10% this year, does that mean "inflation" was 10%? No, it is TOTALLY UNRELATED, because it appreciated (gained value) vs inflated (gained price for no increase in value).
I'm all for helping people, but the money that goes to help people needs to come from individuals, not from money creation. Also, human time assisting the needy needs to come from volunteers, not workers paid from borrowed (created) funds.
See above. Since your premise is wrong, this doesn't make any more sense than the other points.
Yeah, the irony is much of the tea party thinks they are in the middle class but most of them haven't been for a while now.
The 1% has already taken 14 of the 15 cookies and left them to fight over the last one with everyone else.
Did you even look at Sanders' plans? Or are actually so ignorant just to take the Fox talking head's word that you would pay more taxes under Sanders' plan? The middle class is no longer in the "middle 25%" - in reality the middle 25% is barely better off than the bottom 25%. If you want to get to "middle class" these days you're talking top 30-40% of income, few of whom will see ANY tax increase (yes, only the top 1/3 of US households make more than $60k per year).
If you are making $250k+ you are in the top 2% and will remain there because the government taking an extra couple percent of your income (because it's a PROGRESSIVE MARGINAL TAX INCREASE, duh) is not going to change your financial situation ONE BIT vs anyone below you (again, PROGRESSIVE MARGINAL TAX SYSTEM).
If, however, you are making $2M+ a year, then you will be paying significantly more than you were. In that case I'm sure the 99.9% of the population below you will have much sympathy that you will have to wait an extra month to buy that Lamborghini.
Both parties are the same. Republicans shift workload onto society via corporate welfare. Democrats shift workload onto society via government welfare programs. ...
But when any of these programs are given a free pass (as the most staunch conservatives and staunch liberals do), inefficiency (corruption) begins to creep in and their cost to society eventually exceeds their benefit.
True, and an insightful point. Though I would argue that the result of corporate welfare abuse is that the already rich 0.1% benefits the most. The result of social welfare abuse is that the poorest 25%+ benefits the most.
Neither form of waste and corruption is ideal, of course, but if I had to choose the lesser of two evils I'd prefer to direct the inefficiencies to the 25% of the poorest people in society living day to day with underfed kids and horrible health care than I would to millionaires wanting to add an extra comma to their net worth.
There's this really neat thing called a "search engine". If they're a professional, they'll be searchable.
I almost wanted to agree with your pervious comment, but this one was silly.
As much as I can't stand Linkedin, if you are looking for a "search engine" optimized for professionals, there is nothing better. In fact often if you search Google for someone in a professional context Linkedin is the first result that comes up (which I try to make a point of not clicking on).
Just because you dislike something, doesn't mean it's not the best at what it does. Maybe not the right solution for you or me due to all of its other flaws, but definitely the most efficient way to "search" for professionals in many industries. Which explains both it's huge successes (it's effective) and recent financial problems (it's shady as hell in some ways, and people are fleeing it).
Meh. Some endorsements I got on LinkedIn make sense, others don't./quote
Which makes it sound pretty "random" - ie. totally useless as a metric for hiring decisions.
Sounds like you are blaming your sister for her endorsement, when obviously it's Linkedin that should be blamed. I have no interest in giving speeches or threats to friends over a shitty service like this.
The reason so many of these strange endorsements happen is that Linkedin makes it as confusing as possible for people. She probably saw something like "do you know X, and think he does great work? Would you like to endorse him?" - basically making you feel bad for not doing it without decent context. Who knows, they may have improved it more recently as it's been one of the major complaints - but I wouldn't know since I haven't used it for years...
Anyway, that's not the only reason I quit Linkedin. The biggest one is that the more you pay for their services, the more "semi private" information they will give you about other people. ie. unlike Facebook, etc, if you pay enough to Linkedin you can get access to people who aren't in your network. Not only that, if you pay more you can see who has looked at your page, etc. I know Linkedin has added some (buried) settings to limit that a bit, but in the end their business model is built on this so clearly they do NOT have their (non paying) users' best interests in mind.
Once my realtor endorsed me for embedded systems development I gave up and deleted my account (if that's even possible, who knows).
Seriously, yes. What the HELL do they do with 250 engineers that no one has given a shit about (beyond the investors who watched their stock lose almost 50% in a single day) in the last couple years?
I won't even click on random search links to their site (let alone use it for business networking) once I realized how all of your "private" data is basically negotiable to anyone who wants to pay more than you to get access to it.
Because they are a fucked company, they know it, and they need to do something to get more publicity.
But taking money you'd use to buy a non-infrastructure resource and then giving you an overpriced, shoddy but "official" government replacement, is also a rather sad utopia. "The even distribution of poverty" comes to mind.
A sad utopia for the 0.1% of the population who have made their billions off of the labor of the rest of the country - as they will become mere lesser billionaires. A tolerable living for the 50% of the population who have no political, economic, or any other influence and thus no way to improve their lot other than their vote in a democratic society.
Given the choice of "pay 50% taxes or GTFO" most billionaires would pay 50% taxes. In fact, 80+ years of the 20th century already proved that. Because the alternative would be to GTFO to 3rd world countries that won't tax them but where they can't I've the lifestyle they are accustomed to...
And modded redundant, nice... please mods, if you think that post was useless, continue to waste your points to mod this post down as well. If you do, we allI know for a fact you are a useless waste of a human meatbag so at least we can burn your semi-democratic /. mod points on a post like this...
You are assuming the US Government outlasts Amazon...
Don't get me wrong, I am not Libertarian in any sense, I am a practical Democrat who would prefer some Democratic Socialism where it actually works.
Your examples are great *social* leaders, but not *socialist* leaders. And none has done JACK SHIT for income inequality in their countries. I guess they are Libertarians Socialists and not Socialist Libertarians... or whatever bullshit people putting labels on people decide this week...
Yeah, because a "thief" who "steals" 10% of another "thief's" gains is the real bad guy...
government wealth redistribution
This alone makes you socialist/communist.
For the past 35+ years we've been having a government redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class to those who are already wealthy. What does that make the worthless fucking idiots who created that?
Wish I had mod points (oh wait, I do - but I already commented on this thread multiple times...) This is my favorite statement from this discussion so far.
Yeah, his argument is ridiculous. Socialists and Libertarians are just about as opposite on the spectrum in any ways that count as you could think of. The only commonality he had in his point was a total coincidence with different motivations, since Bernie's are (relative) Pacifism and privacy and Rand Paul is into isolationism and small government.
Though I disagree with your statement on Cruz "he too is opposed to an adventurist foreign policy." He wants to carpet bomb Syria and approves of torture if it gets results. I'm pretty sure those are not Rand Paul's positions.
Wait, what? We have the highest economic inequality in the last 100 years (and worse, in some ways). The last 40 years have basically been one right center economically conservative president after another (if you look at the math, Clinton did more to contribute to it than either Bush). Who's "choices" will be taken away by moderately raising taxes on those in the very top tax brackets? Trump, for example, says he wants to "make America great again", when if you look at it his definition of great (the economic boom of the 50s-60s) had a top tax bracket of 90%.
If you want a proven fiscal conservative and moderate social liberal, you should be supporting Hillary. None of the Republican candidates have the slightest clue what their back-asswards ideas will do to the US economy (and most people who actually have a clue say they will be disastrous). At least with Hillary you will get more of the same from the last 40 years.
I say that with the opinion that the majority of the country's social issues over the the history of the US have at their root cause economic inequality. Crime rates, educational imbalances/opportunity, racial inequality/bigotry, health care, and obviously significant poverty have been exacerbated by the fact that the top 0.1% has made more money than the bottom 50%. And they are just accumulating it for apparently no reason other than to keep score. The fact is, if you have something to live for and aren't just surviving day to day, you are a lot less likely to risk your life and future committing property crimes. But Republicans seem more willing to pay $50,000 a year to incarcerate a poor person than pay them a living wage (which is less than $50,000).
I wish we could get someone like Sanders in as President, and put the tax brackets back to where they were in 1960, fix the ridiculous capital gains rate, etc. Given the current divisiveness in US politics that probably won't happen. So we're probably still screwed for the foreseeable future...
So you admit the main reason for Git's existence is remote distributed development, but that's somehow not relevant to a company providing an incremental (even if significant) improvement over that main feature? Yeah, gonna have to call bullshit on that...
Not the best selling point for at a company where THE MAIN FEATURE is remote distributed development.
But luckily Woz is not only a brilliant engineer but a realist and not a pedantic AC on /.
Most people I know switch back and forth between iphone and android phones regularly.
And most people I know are religiously tied to one or the other (and the older they get, the less they want to change). ie. anecdotes are useless.
Apple is making lots of money because they have no competition on the iphone side while there is lots of competition on the android side but as everyone upgrade every few years, it would only take a couple years of people starting to prefer android (like me and many of my friends) for their profit margins to start to erode
And you don't think that's significant? Android's price advantage is due to the cutthroat competition that I mentioned in my previous post. What will happen when HTC, LG, Sony, etc give up on the market because it's not profitable? You will have Samsung on the high end and a couple Chinese companies on the low end. And who knows, once Samsung owns the non-iOS phone market, they could just dump Google and do their own thing. If that happens Android is much more at risk of irrelevancy than iOS devices...
They already have most of their cash stashed offshore, might as well move the mothership there...
Regen on flat pedaling is stupid and goes along the lines of a perpetual motion machine. Much of the energy you pedal into the motor is lost in the form of heat and you won't get out what you put in.
You are thinking solely in terms of mechanics and not biology. Siphoning off a few watts on a flat pedal to recharge when cyclists are normally conserving energy for the next climb anyway and then applying it when needed most can spread out the energy expended to make things more efficient.
Try running a 5k sprinting until you can't run any more, and then walking until you recover and can sprint again vs just running at your maximum steady pace. I guarantee you the latter strategy gets you a better time.
Losses from inefficiencies of the motor could make things less ideal, though that depends on the motor and considering it certainly isn't "stupid".