That would be great if it would work for HIV. I've read several stories that the descendants of the people who survived/evolved to fight the Black Plague that they are immune from the HIV virus as well.
There are only a few solutions, most of them unpalatable to a large number of the voting public: arrest all users and buyers and leave the dealers alone (attack the demand), but we don't have the resources in police, courts, and jails to do this and no one wants to do this anyway; legalize and/or control drug sales (opposed by a majority of voters); or provide treatment, prevention, and recovery plans for users and buyers (a great solution until you try to raise enough tax money to treat a problem that most people feel is a personality flaw to begin with). These options maybe unpalatable but they need to be done by brave set of politicians if we want to fix/minimize the drug issue.
I think what makes the most sense is to go with a combination of your second and third option. I think we should decriminalize all drugs. If they are available in your corner drug store the dealers immediately get cut out of the equation and drug prices will drop because a big part of the risk will be gone, for the dealers. This would also allow the government to tax the income of this Billion dollar industry (rather than getting it through unconstitutional seizure of money and other questionable tactics). The taxes could be reasonably high (e.g. 25%, it would still be much less than people are paying now) and at least half of the money should go to rehab and job placement programs for people who want to or are required by court order to get clean.
You would also need things like mandatory labeling that includes warnings about what can happen to you on these drugs and that you take full responsibility (e.g. no suing the makers for a lifetime of smoking pot and getting lung cancer as a result). Also a detailed information about the fact that if you do anything while on these drugs (e.g. eating all the cookies, murder, rape, etc.) that you are still responsible and you can't use it as a defense. This makes people responsible for their ACTIONS not for doing something that maybe dangerous and often only to themselves.
I don't advocate going this far, but has anyone read "Child of Fortune" by Norman Spinrad? In the society in that book, there were government bunkhouses where anyone could sleep (with monitoring and police protection), free clothing was provided, and nourishing meals were provided by the government, so if you were destitute or homeless or just didn't want to work, the government made absolute sure that you had shelter, had clothing, and had food. But the bunkhouses were cinder block with hard cots, the clothing was quilted recycled paper styled like hospital scrubs, and food was a vitamin enhanced hot mush made from surplus agricultural grains that was nutritionally balanced, but tasteless and served with water. I haven't read the book so I can't speak to it specifically. Although, I do like the idea of minimal government housing, clothing , food and basic job training (e.g. McDonald's or any other entry level position). I like the idea of providing for someone for a limited amount of time a way for them to get back on their feet. I know this doesn't solve all solutions to homelessness, for one there are people who just can't get better because of a mental illness but I think there is something we can provide for them in those areas too.
I certainly don't have all the answers but I'm always on the lookout for a better system or major improvements to our current system that I think will move us in the right direction.
If you want to see an example of a series that's done in a downloadable and on a small budget but still looks good then take a look at http://www.sanctuaryforall.com/
Thank you for your insightful post and I wish I had mod points for you as well as the grandparent post.
I do agree with your overall premise but I'm not sure how well it will work out in theory. For example, your idea of: "interest rates are so unfair, they should be capped to prevent abuse. Fine, cap them. Then what happens when the risks exceed the expected return? No entity in their right mind would lend any money, so you have stagnation." The problem with this is that we are already do this on a limited basis now with Payday loan places that charge people as much as 400% interest. Most of the people who use these services are poor and live paycheck to paycheck. What often happens is that they will take out their first one and then they have to keep taking out one week after week to payoff the previous one until they no longer can afford to pay it back. This is a bad cycle that these people could go through for their whole lives. Never really making any money other than the minimum they need to survive and keep a roof over their heads.
Not everyone is good with their money and often times it's the poor people who are very bad at managing their money. So in order for them to be able to move out from being poor their whole lives they have to be able to make sound financial decisions. Other than better education, I'm not sure what you'll do because you'll always have people like this (it's just a matter of how many that you can hopefully affect by education).
I know that Wall Street is always worried around the time of a Presidential election because of uncertainty in about what the future of the economy will be when someone new takes us in a different direction but that's not what we're seeing in this case.
It's because the economy and key policies with banks have been mismanaged for years and the shit finally hit the fan.
Yes but corporations look to consolidate their position with their vertical so there are very few players (at least by region). If there are 0-1 other players playing at their level (no small mom-and-pop ISPs) then they have very little to worry about. Because people's choices are basically live with crappy/minimal service or do without. Well, most consumers aren't willing to do without so they put up with it.
I do agree with calling up and complaining to get a better deal sometimes. That does seem to be one thing that works but unfortunately (lucky for the Corporations) most people don't do this (I doubt even 1% have ever done more than asking for a little off their bill this month for an ISP outage).
I have found that if you find reasonable (not fanboys) user reviews that it can be a good balance to a professional review.
I've found this to be the most reasoned approach. Often times professional reviewers don't have the time they need to fully review a game and what they might think of "innovative new feature" can actually be a game breaking issue for the gamer. The best example I can think of is that there was all the hype surrounding Oblivion (while I didn't play the previous installments of this series I have played other games in the genre). After reading a few professional reviews, I decided that I wanted to get the game since every professional reviewer and the general user rating had it at 9+. Then I got to playing it and quickly ran into a wall where I didn't enjoy the game after only a couple of hours and I wasn't really sure why.
I read several of the negative reviews and found what the source of my dis-satisfaction was. It was primarily that the enemies leveled with me, it was too open-ended, and the game areas were either expansive and sparsely populated or confined and full of enemies.
If I had bothered to read these negative user reviews then I would have seen that I wouldn't have liked this game despite it's near universal acclaim and could have saved myself $50.
Also, while I thought I was one of only a handful, I was surprised at how many people agreed with my criticisms of the game when I posted it up on Gamespot's User review section for Oblivion.
In conclusion, I really think you need a balance with the professional reviews to get you interested in a game and then using the user reviews (negative ones especially) to confirm whether the game is really worth the hard earned money.
I would like to thank you for your great post but I do have one bone to pick.
This is also consistent with the migration of low-end labor out of the US. As we compete with lower wages in other nations, we cannot maintain the $7.50 minimum wage and compete in a global market. As energy, economy, labor becomes more leveled with other nations we will experience a decline in the American lifestyle. We have to choose to use less in order to survive. The minimum wage is something that almost no one is paid. The only people that are paid this wage are typically high school students and people without any real skills. Most everyone else makes at least $10+ per hour and even then there aren't a lot of people in this wage bracket. If you've ever looked at the numbers you would see that you can't really survive on your own making only minimum wage unless you have two jobs or are a multi-wage earner family.
I weep for this country if we are given a choice between McCain and Clinton. The only thing worse would be Guiliani (SP?) and Clinton. They are both terrible and that SOS (same old shit) that been shoved in our faces for the last several decades. If it comes down to the two of them I'm not sure if I would even bother to vote (I think every informed person should vote and I don't ever want to not vote). It's just so sad the way our political system is structured.
If you want real change you need to look at someone like Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich (SP?).
Everybody bitches about Greenspan, but at the end of the day, he was just following orders, just like every other wage slave. I've got to disagree with you there. Greenspan was the money/economy guy. Presidents mostly went to him for advise on what to do not the other way around. Sure they all wanted to do certainly economic policies that were unique to their administration but Greenspan was the the one to control how the economy really did more than any other person.
Greenspan can be both praised and blamed for much of our current sitution. He certainly did some short and medium term good things but a lot of things he did have caused us great harm. Many of the times we things were headed down hill he would do something to prop up the economy for a little while and then he'd have to find something else to help (e.g. sub-prime lending was started under his watch).
I know your post maybe a little "tin foil hatty" for those people who don't follow what's gone on during this administration's tenure but I think you are a spot on in your descriptions of what has happened and the likely reason why.
I would like to point out that the Republican party your are talking about no longer exists in it's current form (e.g. Small federal government and reduced government spending). The party has been usurped by the Neo-Cons. This isn't to say that there aren't a majority of the people who want the old ways back (many don't even realize the old ways the party stood for are gone) but we're locked in a two party "choose the lesser of two evils" system where you as the the citizen is screwed either way. They will both take money from your pockets but give it to different groups (Democrats - social programs like Medicare, Republicans - corporate welfare).
We really need to revitalize our political system more than anything else. A lot of our current problems stem from our political quagmire. In the last few years people have really started to realize this, as evidenced by the increased interest in choosing our next President, but people have yet to realize what lays at the heart of the issue. Our system of having only two parties to choose from, poor voting system (see Condorcet voting method for a better one), gerrymandering, lobbying, etc. If we were to fix these issues a lot of other issues would fix themselves by the voter having more power over who gets into office and who stays there. Many of these issues could be fixed by a "Voting Amendment" to the Constitution, one of many I believe we need. This is the reason why I think the States should hold a Constitutional Convention.
I agree with almost everything you said except this "Problem was his port was bad, tried a different one and it worked." Do you have any evidence of this?
I have never been asked for my SSN when paying for something (even high dollar amounts) with Cash or Checks or even credit cards. However, I have certainly seen them ask this because they assume that I want to use their instore purchase program (e.g. no payments for 6 months or we'll finance everything for you kind of deals)
IANAC (Chemist) but IIRC you are supposed to use distilled water in Water Cooling which will not boil at the normal temp that tap water will unless you add catalyst (like dropping a sugar cube into it).
The main reason is supposed to be to minimize corrosion in the pump and lines.
You have a good general thesis but some of the details are lacking as ColdWetDog pointed out.
Excising people who cause social disruptions does not solve our issues, it only forces them onto others (those outcasts and society who could be affected by the outcasts). I do think we need to look more at treatment (for drug users), reform, re-education, and reintegration into society in order to evolve socially as humans and society at large. This would very likely result in a better society and help to solve many of our social ills.
People who can become functioning and productive members of society benefit the society, people rotting in jail drain society. I do think it will always be necessary to lockup a small minority of people who either cannot be reformed or are beyond our ability to help. People like sociopathic serial killers need to isolated because of their damage to society. Even if they could be reformed I don't think it would be a good idea to release them back (baring some major breakthroughs in psychology in which we could be 99.9% positive that the person would not re-offend, and even then I'm not sure I'd be ok with it). However, because a lot of the really bad people are a great minority it should be possible to only really have a handful of prisons in the idyllic society I have described.
*We also need to decriminalize drugs in this country but that's for another discussion
Civ 4 is a drain on my productivity whether I go into work or telecommute. For one, I'm always thinking about what I'm going to do next and the most damaging is staying up until 3am saying "just one more turn" for 5 hours...
While it's certainly good to be more responsive and be able to help out in a pinch when work needs to be done, it sounds like you're tied to your desk more than you like to admit. Your company has a pretty sweet heart deal with you. You work from home which reduces cost overhead per employee, you work a near full day on your days off, you work more hours than your expected, and you rarely want/ask for a raise. I'd hire you too, when I can get the work of 1.5 - 2 people for the pay of 80% of one normal worker.
Working for free without any compensation (whether it's time-and-a-half, bonuses, comp. time, vacation) is never a good idea. Businesses will abuse that with whoever they can because it's a great deal for them. If you've got a team of 5 people that do that you could get by without hiring a 6th person by just adding some more work on all 5 of the people that don't care if they lose a couple hours of their personal time.
Unfortunately, once you dig yourself into this hole in a company, especially if you are working remote, it's often impossible to get out of without leaving for another company and establishing the proper boundaries from the start.
As dumb as suing your own customers instead of coming up with a new business plan to meet the needs of a changing society...
If the RIAA member companies were smart they wouldn't be losing money at a rate of 10 - 30% per year. They would have adapted years ago (around the time of the original Napster) and they would likely be seeing record profits (assuming they handled the transition properly), as they did during the Napster's rise to popularity.
Don't mistake normal "business sense" with a dying industry trashing around trying to find a footing while sinking quicksand.
It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyways, that we've become too worried about the next quarter and to hell with the long term consequences. This will lead to collapse if we aren't careful. You can see it in the sub-prime housing crisis that's taking us into a recession. I only casually follow the financial markets, but to anyone who was paying attention it was obvious at least a year before everything blew up that it was unsustainable and that we would crash and burn hard. If we keep goings down the path we are on, without a serious correction, we will collapse as a society (not just economically). I don't think we're on a path with no turns yet but the longer we wait to change our ways the harder it will be to prevent the collapse.
*Hoping for the best but concerned that there is a chance the worse could happen.
As others have pointed out this is not a quote from one of the founders and your use of it is not a valid argument for the intentions of the founders. However, I agree with ideas of President Tyler.
When it comes to religious expression, I believe that everyone has made mistakes on both sides (courts and religious fanatics). The Supreme Court for the most part has ruled pretty well along with what I would expect but they and especially lower courts have made mistakes.
The Christian religious fanatics have tried to usurp the founders intentions by stating that they intended to create a Christian nation. Many have also tried to force their religious beliefs on others. On the other hand, you have the Atheists who have tried to excise religion from anything having to do with the government.
I see both the Christians and the Atheists as going too far and not understanding the real intention laid out by the founders. The way it should be is that each is able to express their beliefs in their places of worship or not as they see fit. If they choose to take it out onto government property (owned by everyone) then they have to allow for similar displays by people of opposing religious views. So if we allow a copy of the Ten Commandments then we also have to allow for a similar display for Muslims, Hindu, Buddhists etc. Same goes for holidays. If people want to have a Christmas display on government land then expect others to put up a Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Hajj, Yule display.
Lastly, I believe it's also important for religion to be as separated from politics as possible. If you want to support and idea like Abortion is bad then that's fine but you shouldn't be able to say "vote for Huckabee". If you do this then you become a political support group and not a religious group and you're "congregation" should lose it's religious tax free status (I realize there are laws stating this but they don't seem to be enforced like they should).
More meaningful reform would be to separate the physical layer from the service. One neutral not-for-profit entity owns the fiber/copper/coax and leases it to whomever is interested in providing service. It will never happen but I'm at a loss for how else you'd encourage local competition for the last mile, at least with regards to non-wireless technology. I think it's an excellent idea and it's one I've been saying for a while.
It solves the issues by:
1. Providing the most competition (which is what we ideally want in a capitalist society-I won't get into the details that we're not a true capitalist society)
2. Providing good prices (as everyone is competing)
3. Limits damaging policies (e.g. if one ISP is throttling their customers and another isn't then people will move to the one who is more consumer lenient)
I hate to be pessimistic, but I agree that the chances of it happening in most of the country is very low. The closest thing I've seen to this happing is with Utah's UTOPIA project. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTOPIA
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That would be great if it would work for HIV. I've read several stories that the descendants of the people who survived/evolved to fight the Black Plague that they are immune from the HIV virus as well.
I think what makes the most sense is to go with a combination of your second and third option. I think we should decriminalize all drugs. If they are available in your corner drug store the dealers immediately get cut out of the equation and drug prices will drop because a big part of the risk will be gone, for the dealers. This would also allow the government to tax the income of this Billion dollar industry (rather than getting it through unconstitutional seizure of money and other questionable tactics). The taxes could be reasonably high (e.g. 25%, it would still be much less than people are paying now) and at least half of the money should go to rehab and job placement programs for people who want to or are required by court order to get clean.
You would also need things like mandatory labeling that includes warnings about what can happen to you on these drugs and that you take full responsibility (e.g. no suing the makers for a lifetime of smoking pot and getting lung cancer as a result). Also a detailed information about the fact that if you do anything while on these drugs (e.g. eating all the cookies, murder, rape, etc.) that you are still responsible and you can't use it as a defense. This makes people responsible for their ACTIONS not for doing something that maybe dangerous and often only to themselves. I don't advocate going this far, but has anyone read "Child of Fortune" by Norman Spinrad? In the society in that book, there were government bunkhouses where anyone could sleep (with monitoring and police protection), free clothing was provided, and nourishing meals were provided by the government, so if you were destitute or homeless or just didn't want to work, the government made absolute sure that you had shelter, had clothing, and had food. But the bunkhouses were cinder block with hard cots, the clothing was quilted recycled paper styled like hospital scrubs, and food was a vitamin enhanced hot mush made from surplus agricultural grains that was nutritionally balanced, but tasteless and served with water. I haven't read the book so I can't speak to it specifically. Although, I do like the idea of minimal government housing, clothing , food and basic job training (e.g. McDonald's or any other entry level position). I like the idea of providing for someone for a limited amount of time a way for them to get back on their feet. I know this doesn't solve all solutions to homelessness, for one there are people who just can't get better because of a mental illness but I think there is something we can provide for them in those areas too.
I certainly don't have all the answers but I'm always on the lookout for a better system or major improvements to our current system that I think will move us in the right direction.
If you want to see an example of a series that's done in a downloadable and on a small budget but still looks good then take a look at http://www.sanctuaryforall.com/
Thank you for your insightful post and I wish I had mod points for you as well as the grandparent post.
I do agree with your overall premise but I'm not sure how well it will work out in theory. For example, your idea of: "interest rates are so unfair, they should be capped to prevent abuse. Fine, cap them. Then what happens when the risks exceed the expected return? No entity in their right mind would lend any money, so you have stagnation."
The problem with this is that we are already do this on a limited basis now with Payday loan places that charge people as much as 400% interest. Most of the people who use these services are poor and live paycheck to paycheck. What often happens is that they will take out their first one and then they have to keep taking out one week after week to payoff the previous one until they no longer can afford to pay it back. This is a bad cycle that these people could go through for their whole lives. Never really making any money other than the minimum they need to survive and keep a roof over their heads.
Not everyone is good with their money and often times it's the poor people who are very bad at managing their money. So in order for them to be able to move out from being poor their whole lives they have to be able to make sound financial decisions. Other than better education, I'm not sure what you'll do because you'll always have people like this (it's just a matter of how many that you can hopefully affect by education).
You haven't been paying attention.
I know that Wall Street is always worried around the time of a Presidential election because of uncertainty in about what the future of the economy will be when someone new takes us in a different direction but that's not what we're seeing in this case.
It's because the economy and key policies with banks have been mismanaged for years and the shit finally hit the fan.
Yes but corporations look to consolidate their position with their vertical so there are very few players (at least by region). If there are 0-1 other players playing at their level (no small mom-and-pop ISPs) then they have very little to worry about. Because people's choices are basically live with crappy/minimal service or do without. Well, most consumers aren't willing to do without so they put up with it.
I do agree with calling up and complaining to get a better deal sometimes. That does seem to be one thing that works but unfortunately (lucky for the Corporations) most people don't do this (I doubt even 1% have ever done more than asking for a little off their bill this month for an ISP outage).
And what happens if the mods delete most/all the bad reviews?
Plus GameFaqs is owned by CNet, who is the parent company of Gamespot. CNet's management is where most/all the blame lies for this Gamespot issue.
I have found that if you find reasonable (not fanboys) user reviews that it can be a good balance to a professional review.
I've found this to be the most reasoned approach. Often times professional reviewers don't have the time they need to fully review a game and what they might think of "innovative new feature" can actually be a game breaking issue for the gamer. The best example I can think of is that there was all the hype surrounding Oblivion (while I didn't play the previous installments of this series I have played other games in the genre). After reading a few professional reviews, I decided that I wanted to get the game since every professional reviewer and the general user rating had it at 9+. Then I got to playing it and quickly ran into a wall where I didn't enjoy the game after only a couple of hours and I wasn't really sure why.
I read several of the negative reviews and found what the source of my dis-satisfaction was. It was primarily that the enemies leveled with me, it was too open-ended, and the game areas were either expansive and sparsely populated or confined and full of enemies.
If I had bothered to read these negative user reviews then I would have seen that I wouldn't have liked this game despite it's near universal acclaim and could have saved myself $50.
Also, while I thought I was one of only a handful, I was surprised at how many people agreed with my criticisms of the game when I posted it up on Gamespot's User review section for Oblivion.
In conclusion, I really think you need a balance with the professional reviews to get you interested in a game and then using the user reviews (negative ones especially) to confirm whether the game is really worth the hard earned money.
It was probably unintentional but if you count the number of bases outside the US you could probably arrive at 200+. In Iraq we have 5 IIRC.
This is also consistent with the migration of low-end labor out of the US. As we compete with lower wages in other nations, we cannot maintain the $7.50 minimum wage and compete in a global market. As energy, economy, labor becomes more leveled with other nations we will experience a decline in the American lifestyle. We have to choose to use less in order to survive. The minimum wage is something that almost no one is paid. The only people that are paid this wage are typically high school students and people without any real skills. Most everyone else makes at least $10+ per hour and even then there aren't a lot of people in this wage bracket. If you've ever looked at the numbers you would see that you can't really survive on your own making only minimum wage unless you have two jobs or are a multi-wage earner family.
I weep for this country if we are given a choice between McCain and Clinton. The only thing worse would be Guiliani (SP?) and Clinton. They are both terrible and that SOS (same old shit) that been shoved in our faces for the last several decades. If it comes down to the two of them I'm not sure if I would even bother to vote (I think every informed person should vote and I don't ever want to not vote). It's just so sad the way our political system is structured.
If you want real change you need to look at someone like Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich (SP?).
Greenspan can be both praised and blamed for much of our current sitution. He certainly did some short and medium term good things but a lot of things he did have caused us great harm. Many of the times we things were headed down hill he would do something to prop up the economy for a little while and then he'd have to find something else to help (e.g. sub-prime lending was started under his watch).
Thank you for the insightful post.
I know your post maybe a little "tin foil hatty" for those people who don't follow what's gone on during this administration's tenure but I think you are a spot on in your descriptions of what has happened and the likely reason why.
I would like to point out that the Republican party your are talking about no longer exists in it's current form (e.g. Small federal government and reduced government spending). The party has been usurped by the Neo-Cons. This isn't to say that there aren't a majority of the people who want the old ways back (many don't even realize the old ways the party stood for are gone) but we're locked in a two party "choose the lesser of two evils" system where you as the the citizen is screwed either way. They will both take money from your pockets but give it to different groups (Democrats - social programs like Medicare, Republicans - corporate welfare).
We really need to revitalize our political system more than anything else. A lot of our current problems stem from our political quagmire. In the last few years people have really started to realize this, as evidenced by the increased interest in choosing our next President, but people have yet to realize what lays at the heart of the issue. Our system of having only two parties to choose from, poor voting system (see Condorcet voting method for a better one), gerrymandering, lobbying, etc. If we were to fix these issues a lot of other issues would fix themselves by the voter having more power over who gets into office and who stays there. Many of these issues could be fixed by a "Voting Amendment" to the Constitution, one of many I believe we need. This is the reason why I think the States should hold a Constitutional Convention.
I agree with almost everything you said except this "Problem was his port was bad, tried a different one and it worked." Do you have any evidence of this?
I have never been asked for my SSN when paying for something (even high dollar amounts) with Cash or Checks or even credit cards. However, I have certainly seen them ask this because they assume that I want to use their instore purchase program (e.g. no payments for 6 months or we'll finance everything for you kind of deals)
IANAC (Chemist) but IIRC you are supposed to use distilled water in Water Cooling which will not boil at the normal temp that tap water will unless you add catalyst (like dropping a sugar cube into it).
The main reason is supposed to be to minimize corrosion in the pump and lines.
That is until they install a camera in your favorite stall to figure out why the hell you're taking so long...
Where's my +10 mod Taco!?!
That was fantastic! Thank you Weaselmancer.
You have a good general thesis but some of the details are lacking as ColdWetDog pointed out.
Excising people who cause social disruptions does not solve our issues, it only forces them onto others (those outcasts and society who could be affected by the outcasts). I do think we need to look more at treatment (for drug users), reform, re-education, and reintegration into society in order to evolve socially as humans and society at large. This would very likely result in a better society and help to solve many of our social ills.
People who can become functioning and productive members of society benefit the society, people rotting in jail drain society. I do think it will always be necessary to lockup a small minority of people who either cannot be reformed or are beyond our ability to help. People like sociopathic serial killers need to isolated because of their damage to society. Even if they could be reformed I don't think it would be a good idea to release them back (baring some major breakthroughs in psychology in which we could be 99.9% positive that the person would not re-offend, and even then I'm not sure I'd be ok with it). However, because a lot of the really bad people are a great minority it should be possible to only really have a handful of prisons in the idyllic society I have described.
*We also need to decriminalize drugs in this country but that's for another discussion
This is a short witty, insightful, funny, sad post all in one. I wish there was a +10 Mod I could give this. Congrats!
Civ 4 is a drain on my productivity whether I go into work or telecommute. For one, I'm always thinking about what I'm going to do next and the most damaging is staying up until 3am saying "just one more turn" for 5 hours...
While it's certainly good to be more responsive and be able to help out in a pinch when work needs to be done, it sounds like you're tied to your desk more than you like to admit. Your company has a pretty sweet heart deal with you. You work from home which reduces cost overhead per employee, you work a near full day on your days off, you work more hours than your expected, and you rarely want/ask for a raise. I'd hire you too, when I can get the work of 1.5 - 2 people for the pay of 80% of one normal worker.
Working for free without any compensation (whether it's time-and-a-half, bonuses, comp. time, vacation) is never a good idea. Businesses will abuse that with whoever they can because it's a great deal for them. If you've got a team of 5 people that do that you could get by without hiring a 6th person by just adding some more work on all 5 of the people that don't care if they lose a couple hours of their personal time.
Unfortunately, once you dig yourself into this hole in a company, especially if you are working remote, it's often impossible to get out of without leaving for another company and establishing the proper boundaries from the start.
As dumb as suing your own customers instead of coming up with a new business plan to meet the needs of a changing society...
If the RIAA member companies were smart they wouldn't be losing money at a rate of 10 - 30% per year. They would have adapted years ago (around the time of the original Napster) and they would likely be seeing record profits (assuming they handled the transition properly), as they did during the Napster's rise to popularity.
Don't mistake normal "business sense" with a dying industry trashing around trying to find a footing while sinking quicksand.
Thank you for that insightful post.
It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyways, that we've become too worried about the next quarter and to hell with the long term consequences. This will lead to collapse if we aren't careful. You can see it in the sub-prime housing crisis that's taking us into a recession. I only casually follow the financial markets, but to anyone who was paying attention it was obvious at least a year before everything blew up that it was unsustainable and that we would crash and burn hard. If we keep goings down the path we are on, without a serious correction, we will collapse as a society (not just economically). I don't think we're on a path with no turns yet but the longer we wait to change our ways the harder it will be to prevent the collapse.
*Hoping for the best but concerned that there is a chance the worse could happen.
As others have pointed out this is not a quote from one of the founders and your use of it is not a valid argument for the intentions of the founders. However, I agree with ideas of President Tyler.
When it comes to religious expression, I believe that everyone has made mistakes on both sides (courts and religious fanatics). The Supreme Court for the most part has ruled pretty well along with what I would expect but they and especially lower courts have made mistakes.
The Christian religious fanatics have tried to usurp the founders intentions by stating that they intended to create a Christian nation. Many have also tried to force their religious beliefs on others. On the other hand, you have the Atheists who have tried to excise religion from anything having to do with the government.
I see both the Christians and the Atheists as going too far and not understanding the real intention laid out by the founders. The way it should be is that each is able to express their beliefs in their places of worship or not as they see fit. If they choose to take it out onto government property (owned by everyone) then they have to allow for similar displays by people of opposing religious views. So if we allow a copy of the Ten Commandments then we also have to allow for a similar display for Muslims, Hindu, Buddhists etc. Same goes for holidays. If people want to have a Christmas display on government land then expect others to put up a Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Hajj, Yule display.
Lastly, I believe it's also important for religion to be as separated from politics as possible. If you want to support and idea like Abortion is bad then that's fine but you shouldn't be able to say "vote for Huckabee". If you do this then you become a political support group and not a religious group and you're "congregation" should lose it's religious tax free status (I realize there are laws stating this but they don't seem to be enforced like they should).
It solves the issues by:
1. Providing the most competition (which is what we ideally want in a capitalist society-I won't get into the details that we're not a true capitalist society)
2. Providing good prices (as everyone is competing)
3. Limits damaging policies (e.g. if one ISP is throttling their customers and another isn't then people will move to the one who is more consumer lenient)
I hate to be pessimistic, but I agree that the chances of it happening in most of the country is very low. The closest thing I've seen to this happing is with Utah's UTOPIA project. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTOPIA