You know what's interesting about your link? Look at the year with the most manned launches: 1985. NASA really was aggressively ramping up the Space Shuttle launch rate, to finally try to make good on the promise of reducing costs by amortizing the cost of the SLS over a large number of launches.
Loss of the Challenger (January 1986) put a stop to that, of course, and things never fully recovered. I expect we won't surpass the 1985 figure until SpaceX starts doing manned launches.
For some people, it made their lives better. For most others, it made it far worse
Regime change would have made almost every Iraqi's life better -- except for those who lost employment due to de-Baathification, which was about as justified as the de-Nazification program following WWII -- if not for the insurgency that subsequently arose.
Now, you can argue that we should have foreseen the insurgency. But no one in power, of any political stripe, did.
Think about this little-known fact: prior to the invasion of Iraq, the wargamers' best estimate of how many Americans would die in battles with Saddam's forces was 10,000. This estimate was briefed to the president and Congress. It did not deter Congress from voting for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. That's right: 374 members of Congress, including H. Clinton and J. Biden, felt that 10,000 American lives was an acceptable cost for deposing Saddam.
The wargamers apparently gave no thought at all to a possible insurgency, because they did not produce any estimate of how many would be killed by insurgents.
So we now know their crystal ball was quite inaccurate in two ways. Actual American deaths were: ~110 killed in battles with Saddam's forces; ~4,387 killed by insurgents; 4,497 total.
Objectively, one could argue that 4497, being much less than the 10,000 anticipated deaths, is an indicator of a very successful operation. But since the insurgency steadily generated bad news for about 8 years, the political perception was different. And that is why Joe Biden could get away with saying Iraq was the biggest mistake in American history. (That pronouncement was a pure political hack on Biden's part. He could not have possibly forgotten what was objectively a far bigger mistake: Vietnam, where 58,315 Americans were killed, even while we failed to meet the objective of protecting South Vietnam from invasion by the North.)
People are sick of ultra-specialized apps. (Not-so-far-fetched exaggeration: swiping through pages of apps until you find the one that displays the tensile strength of Reebok shoelaces.)
Every company's IT cost goes up when the public comes to expect an app, that simply presents the same information that's already available on the company's web site.
There's already an app that can replace 98% of the apps out there: a mobile web browser. If the user experience for mobile web browsers could be improved, there would be no need for the deluge of apps.
If he wants to take on debt so he can spend four years on poetry or Russian literature or on women's studies, that's his business, and HIS debt
If the leftists who want to make public universities "free" get their way, it will no longer be his debt. His education will be paid for by the taxpayers who didn't choose garbage majors.
Perhaps the most common way to measure the efficiency of a traditional rocket is specific impulse: total impulse (or change in momentum) delivered per unit of propellant consumed. Note that this is not a measure of energy efficiency; it's a measure of how efficiently propellant is used. (It's possible to waste a lot of energy in the process of getting your propellant up to extremely high exhaust velocities.)
By that measure, sure, a propellantless thruster's use of propellant is infinitely efficient. But that's not a good way to measure the efficiency of a propellantless thruster.
People who follow the Em Drive usually use a metric of thrust per kilowatt of electric power. Much better; and by this measure, efficiency is definitely not infinite.
a collective right does not suddenly spring into existence just because you brought together a bunch of people who would not have that right individually.
If making decisions collectively, by a bunch of people, doesn't reduce the risk that results from concentrating all power into a single individual, we might as well trim the Supreme Court down to a single judge. Trim the Senate down to a single Senator, while we're at it.
The only one with the right to decide to whom their secrets should be entrusted is the one holding the secrets.
That's not how things have worked with traditional information storage methods. In 1890, if there was probable cause to believe that documents locked in a safe contained evidence of a crime, law enforcement could get a warrant that compelled that safe to be unlocked. Are you arguing that that kind of power never should have been given to law enforcement in the first place?
You are speaking about a simple backdoor, while I was speaking about a whole system of systems of "clever checks, balances, and safeguards".
is not your call to make
Correct; it should not be my call to make.
Slashdot, for example, has a metamoderation system, that determines who tends to make good mods and who doesn't.
A similar system could rate law enforcement officials, to determine who would be most worthy -- after obtaining a legitimate warrant -- of access to private information.
Technology does not work that way. There are any number of permutations in which the room is not dark for everyone.
The worst possible permutation is where criminals have access to all our private information, and the system that wants to prosecute those criminals can obtain no evidence against them.
The best possible permutation is where criminals are in total darkness, while the most incorruptible members of law enforcement, after obtaining a legitimate warrant, are in a brightly-lit room.
There are smart people in the fields of cybersecurity and encryption. It just might be possible for them, over time, to develop clever checks, balances, and safeguards, that get us close to the best possible permutation.
Nye hasn't published any papers on this topic. Let's look at what real scientists have found.
Even as Al Gore was trying to scare everyone into believing that the frequency and intensity of cyclones was in the process of skyrocketing, Dr. R.N. Maue analyzed actual data and found just the opposite:
Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity Abstract Tropical cyclone accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) has exhibited strikingly large global interannual variability during the past 40-years. In the pentad since 2006, Northern Hemisphere and global tropical cyclone ACE has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Additionally, the global frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historical low. Here evidence is presented demonstrating that considerable variability in tropical cyclone ACE is associated with the evolution of the character of observed large-scale climate mechanisms including the El Niño Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. In contrast to record quiet North Pacific tropical cyclone activity in 2010, the North Atlantic basin remained very active by contributing almost one-third of the overall calendar year global ACE. - R.N. Maue, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida State University
And there are plenty of studies that show increasing global temperature causes reduced storm activity. One such study published in Quaternary Science Reviews is summarized here.
That you are an exception doesn't make that false.
It's amazing that someone with zero training in logic can get modded up so much around here.
Yes, if a counterexample can be shown, it by definition makes a proposition false.
In logic, and especially in its applications to mathematics and philosophy, a counterexample is an exception to a proposed general rule or law. For example, consider the proposition "all students are lazy". Because this statement makes the claim that a certain property (laziness) holds for all students, even a single example of a diligent student will prove it false. Thus, any hard-working student is a counterexample to "all students are lazy". More precisely, a counterexample is a specific instance of the falsity of a universal quantification (a "for all" statement).
Why such a large assessment? That scheme would generate far more revenue than needed to maintain the roads. But your ratios are pretty good. Keeping the same ratios,
A 540-pound motorcycle pays $1e-7 / mile (probably not worth collecting) A 3,470-pound SUV pays $2.7e-5 / mile An 80,000 pound semi trailer pays $0.33/mile
That level of assessment is much more congruent with the revenues that are needed to maintain roads.
I am living proof that this assertion is false. Back when I had a lousy income, I worked my butt off to change the situation (went back to school, went to lots of job interviews, while continuing to work a minimum-wage job). Now that I have a decent income, I am a slacker compared to my former self.
Maybe you can't relate, because you've never been in a cash-poor situation.
Competition keeps prices low. Gasoline is much cheaper where there are multiple gas stations competing for customers on the basis of price. Right now there are multiple health insurance companies competing for my business on the basis of low premiums and good customer service. A lot of discipline is imposed on these companies when they have to operate efficiently in order to not lose market share to competitors.
Competition, in fact, is the only thing that has ever caused healthcare costs to decrease. As the National Center for Policy Analysis points out,
Patients don't bother to shop for medical care, and doctors don't advertise their prices because nearly 90 percent of patients' tabs are paid with other people's money. However, when patients pay their own medical bills, they act like normal consumers -- comparing prices and looking for value. And when patients act like prudent consumers, doctors who want their patronage must respond by competing on prices, convenience and other amenities.
Consider cosmetic surgery, one of the few areas of medicine where consumers pay out of pocket. The inflation-adjusted price of cosmetic medicine actually fell over the past two decades -- despite a huge increase in demand and considerable innovation... Wherever there is price competition, quality competition tends to follow. Take corrective eye surgery. From 1999 (when eye doctors began performing Lasik in volume) through 2011, the price of conventional Lasik fell about one-quarter due to intense competition. Eye surgeons who wanted to differentiate themselves from other surgeons, and charge more, began to provide more advanced Custom Wavefront Lasik technology using IntraLase (a laser-created flap). By 2011, the average price per eye for doctors performing Custom Lasik was about what conventional Lasik had been more than a decade earlier; but the quality is far better. Occasionally an eye surgeon will offer a daily deal at half this price.
One criticism skeptics often voice in discussions about fostering patient consumerism is that a patient having a heart attack is not in a position to shop for the cheapest cardiac care from the back of an ambulance taking him to the emergency room. Few people would disagree. But only about $1 out of $20 is spent on patients who enter the health care system through the emergency room door.
Consider the experience of an insured patient whose doctor orders an abdominal CT scan. Receiving this service at a hospital outpatient department could cost the patient (or her health plan) nearly $3,000 depending on whether the patient's deductible has been met. Yet this same service is available outside the hospital at a medical imaging center for prices that are often 85 percent less. Few health plans provide the tools for enrollees to compare prices and few patients have an incentive to ask about prices.
Doctors and hospitals don't quote prices and don't compete on price because most patients are largely insulated from the adverse effects of not making price comparisons and acting like consumers. Both economic studies and common sense confirm that people do not shop carefully and prudently when someone else is picking up the tab. The contrast between cosmetic surgery and other medical services is important. One sector has a competitive marketplace and stable prices. The other does not. The medical marketplace should work more like the market for cosmetic surgery.
I've asked the question many times, and no one has ever been able to explain how a single-payer system, with no competitors, would not eventually incur much higher costs because it has turned into a bloated bureaucracy that delivers rotten healthcare -- like that which our veterans get from the VA -- and operates as inefficiently as a DMV.
- For most of Earth's history it had no polar icecaps whatsoever. That is the most common state of this planet. The only reason we currently have polar icecaps is because we are still emerging from the most recent glaciation (i.e., ice age).
- Only 50 million years ago, there were thousands of ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, and Antarctica was covered with lush beech forests. The subsequent decrease in CO2 caused the continent to become a barren wasteland of ice; it was not good for life. The current CO2 level is 403 ppm, and no scenario of fossil fuel usage is consistent with a return to thousands of ppm.
- The fossil record shows that polar bears have survived the comings and goings of multiple glaciations -- each one accompanied by a change in sea level that was about 120 times greater than climate models are predicting will occur in the next century.
Dr. Russell can't seem to distinguish between a transaction in which one voluntarily sells his labor (modern work), and compulsory labor for which one is not compensated (slavery).
While a voluntary employer/employee relationship does not make one enslaved, I do believe we are partially enslaved by our governments. And that is not entirely a bad thing (explanation here).
the expenses of government were diminished.
He's wrong again. The expenses of government have been going through the roof. As a percentage of an average total household budget, the cost of most things (food, rent, clothing) has been decreasing. The cost of government is a glaring exception to that trend.
Quite unimpressed with Dr. Russell.
We live in an economic system designed so that all value flows upward.
You seemed highly predisposed to place humans on a hierarchy, and to believe that the owners of enterprises are at the top of the hierarchy, and are to be despised.
Here's a counterexample: a retired bus driver who, slightly indirectly, is such an owner, because the pension fund that generates his income owns shares of corporations. Most shareholders are, in fact, like this retired bus driver: definitely not part of the "1%."
Another counterexample: a self-employed plumber who owns his own business; some of his clients are of a lower socio-economic status than he is, and some of his clients are of a higher socio-economic status than he is. But all of his clients benefit from the value of his services (i.e., the value flows both downward and upward).
Again I point out that if no one worked, no food, clothing, housing, or healthcare would be produced, making for a quite unvirtuous society. You seem to have no rebuttal for this.
Your work is meant only to enrich those who do not work (owners).
Would it make sense to say that to the millions of people who are self-employed?
And the work self-employed people do does not just benefit themselves. The other entities that voluntarily engage in transactions with them also realize a benefit from said transactions; otherwise, they would not voluntarily engage in them.
I'm not self-employed, but I do benefit quite a bit when I sell my labor to my employer. That's why I continue to do it: because I am enriched by that arrangement, not because anyone is coercing me.
If no one worked, no food, clothing, housing, or healthcare would be produced. That would be a rather unvirtuous situation, would it not?
Don't take offense at the being called "lazy," if the word is used in the same spirit Larry Wall uses it.
According to Larry Wall, the original author of the Perl programming language, there are three great virtues of a programmer; Laziness, Impatience and Hubris.
Slashdot Mirror
You know what's interesting about your link? Look at the year with the most manned launches: 1985. NASA really was aggressively ramping up the Space Shuttle launch rate, to finally try to make good on the promise of reducing costs by amortizing the cost of the SLS over a large number of launches.
Loss of the Challenger (January 1986) put a stop to that, of course, and things never fully recovered. I expect we won't surpass the 1985 figure until SpaceX starts doing manned launches.
For some people, it made their lives better. For most others, it made it far worse
Regime change would have made almost every Iraqi's life better -- except for those who lost employment due to de-Baathification, which was about as justified as the de-Nazification program following WWII -- if not for the insurgency that subsequently arose.
Now, you can argue that we should have foreseen the insurgency. But no one in power, of any political stripe, did.
Think about this little-known fact: prior to the invasion of Iraq, the wargamers' best estimate of how many Americans would die in battles with Saddam's forces was 10,000. This estimate was briefed to the president and Congress. It did not deter Congress from voting for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. That's right: 374 members of Congress, including H. Clinton and J. Biden, felt that 10,000 American lives was an acceptable cost for deposing Saddam.
The wargamers apparently gave no thought at all to a possible insurgency, because they did not produce any estimate of how many would be killed by insurgents.
So we now know their crystal ball was quite inaccurate in two ways. Actual American deaths were: ~110 killed in battles with Saddam's forces; ~4,387 killed by insurgents; 4,497 total.
Objectively, one could argue that 4497, being much less than the 10,000 anticipated deaths, is an indicator of a very successful operation. But since the insurgency steadily generated bad news for about 8 years, the political perception was different. And that is why Joe Biden could get away with saying Iraq was the biggest mistake in American history. (That pronouncement was a pure political hack on Biden's part. He could not have possibly forgotten what was objectively a far bigger mistake: Vietnam, where 58,315 Americans were killed, even while we failed to meet the objective of protecting South Vietnam from invasion by the North.)
People are sick of ultra-specialized apps. (Not-so-far-fetched exaggeration: swiping through pages of apps until you find the one that displays the tensile strength of Reebok shoelaces.)
Every company's IT cost goes up when the public comes to expect an app, that simply presents the same information that's already available on the company's web site.
There's already an app that can replace 98% of the apps out there: a mobile web browser. If the user experience for mobile web browsers could be improved, there would be no need for the deluge of apps.
You use the military, whether you want it or not. In the US that represents somewhere around 30-50% of your federal tax burden.
The U.S. spends 3.3% of GDP on the military (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )
Federal spending represents about 18% of GDP (see http://www.usgovernmentspendin... )
So from these figures, military spending represents 3.3 / 18 = 18% of our federal tax burden.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If he wants to take on debt so he can spend four years on poetry or Russian literature or on women's studies, that's his business, and HIS debt
If the leftists who want to make public universities "free" get their way, it will no longer be his debt. His education will be paid for by the taxpayers who didn't choose garbage majors.
Perhaps the most common way to measure the efficiency of a traditional rocket is specific impulse: total impulse (or change in momentum) delivered per unit of propellant consumed. Note that this is not a measure of energy efficiency; it's a measure of how efficiently propellant is used. (It's possible to waste a lot of energy in the process of getting your propellant up to extremely high exhaust velocities.)
By that measure, sure, a propellantless thruster's use of propellant is infinitely efficient. But that's not a good way to measure the efficiency of a propellantless thruster.
People who follow the Em Drive usually use a metric of thrust per kilowatt of electric power. Much better; and by this measure, efficiency is definitely not infinite.
Summary says, "Kaby Lake will not run on anything older than Windows 10".
In the past, operating systems ran on CPUs, not the other way around. So this is truly revolutionary!
a collective right does not suddenly spring into existence just because you brought together a bunch of people who would not have that right individually.
If making decisions collectively, by a bunch of people, doesn't reduce the risk that results from concentrating all power into a single individual, we might as well trim the Supreme Court down to a single judge. Trim the Senate down to a single Senator, while we're at it.
The only one with the right to decide to whom their secrets should be entrusted is the one holding the secrets.
That's not how things have worked with traditional information storage methods. In 1890, if there was probable cause to believe that documents locked in a safe contained evidence of a crime, law enforcement could get a warrant that compelled that safe to be unlocked. Are you arguing that that kind of power never should have been given to law enforcement in the first place?
According to the theory, thrust will increase by orders of magnitude if a high-Q-factor device is used.
And then, the signal would be quite distinct from the noise.
So why hasn't that been tested already? High-Q-factor devices have been manufactured for other purposes.
You are speaking about a simple backdoor, while I was speaking about a whole system of systems of "clever checks, balances, and safeguards".
is not your call to make
Correct; it should not be my call to make.
Slashdot, for example, has a metamoderation system, that determines who tends to make good mods and who doesn't.
A similar system could rate law enforcement officials, to determine who would be most worthy -- after obtaining a legitimate warrant -- of access to private information.
Technology does not work that way. There are any number of permutations in which the room is not dark for everyone.
The worst possible permutation is where criminals have access to all our private information, and the system that wants to prosecute those criminals can obtain no evidence against them.
The best possible permutation is where criminals are in total darkness, while the most incorruptible members of law enforcement, after obtaining a legitimate warrant, are in a brightly-lit room.
There are smart people in the fields of cybersecurity and encryption. It just might be possible for them, over time, to develop clever checks, balances, and safeguards, that get us close to the best possible permutation.
You know what else delivers its payload with a tether, then flies away?
For the answer, watch Seven Minutes of Terror -- the best video ever produced by the U.S. Government.
Nye hasn't published any papers on this topic. Let's look at what real scientists have found.
Even as Al Gore was trying to scare everyone into believing that the frequency and intensity of cyclones was in the process of skyrocketing, Dr. R.N. Maue analyzed actual data and found just the opposite:
Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity
Abstract
Tropical cyclone accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) has exhibited strikingly large global interannual variability during the past 40-years. In the pentad since 2006, Northern Hemisphere and global tropical cyclone ACE has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Additionally, the global frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historical low. Here evidence is presented demonstrating that considerable variability in tropical cyclone ACE is associated with the evolution of the character of observed large-scale climate mechanisms including the El Niño Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. In contrast to record quiet North Pacific tropical cyclone activity in 2010, the North Atlantic basin remained very active by contributing almost one-third of the overall calendar year global ACE.
- R.N. Maue, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida State University
And there are plenty of studies that show increasing global temperature causes reduced storm activity. One such study published in Quaternary Science Reviews is summarized here.
Are you referring to his autobiography, Adventures in the Atomic Age: From Watts to Washington ? https://www.amazon.com/Adventu...
That you are an exception doesn't make that false.
It's amazing that someone with zero training in logic can get modded up so much around here.
Yes, if a counterexample can be shown, it by definition makes a proposition false.
In logic, and especially in its applications to mathematics and philosophy, a counterexample is an exception to a proposed general rule or law. For example, consider the proposition "all students are lazy". Because this statement makes the claim that a certain property (laziness) holds for all students, even a single example of a diligent student will prove it false. Thus, any hard-working student is a counterexample to "all students are lazy". More precisely, a counterexample is a specific instance of the falsity of a universal quantification (a "for all" statement).
Why such a large assessment? That scheme would generate far more revenue than needed to maintain the roads. But your ratios are pretty good. Keeping the same ratios,
A 540-pound motorcycle pays $1e-7 / mile (probably not worth collecting)
A 3,470-pound SUV pays $2.7e-5 / mile
An 80,000 pound semi trailer pays $0.33/mile
That level of assessment is much more congruent with the revenues that are needed to maintain roads.
Money is irrelevant to whether people slack.
I am living proof that this assertion is false. Back when I had a lousy income, I worked my butt off to change the situation (went back to school, went to lots of job interviews, while continuing to work a minimum-wage job). Now that I have a decent income, I am a slacker compared to my former self.
Maybe you can't relate, because you've never been in a cash-poor situation.
Competition keeps prices low. Gasoline is much cheaper where there are multiple gas stations competing for customers on the basis of price. Right now there are multiple health insurance companies competing for my business on the basis of low premiums and good customer service. A lot of discipline is imposed on these companies when they have to operate efficiently in order to not lose market share to competitors.
Competition, in fact, is the only thing that has ever caused healthcare costs to decrease. As the National Center for Policy Analysis points out,
Patients don't bother to shop for medical care, and doctors don't advertise their prices because nearly 90 percent of patients' tabs are paid with other people's money. However, when patients pay their own medical bills, they act like normal consumers -- comparing prices and looking for value. And when patients act like prudent consumers, doctors who want their patronage must respond by competing on prices, convenience and other amenities.
Consider cosmetic surgery, one of the few areas of medicine where consumers pay out of pocket. The inflation-adjusted price of cosmetic medicine actually fell over the past two decades -- despite a huge increase in demand and considerable innovation... Wherever there is price competition, quality competition tends to follow. Take corrective eye surgery. From 1999 (when eye doctors began performing Lasik in volume) through 2011, the price of conventional Lasik fell about one-quarter due to intense competition. Eye surgeons who wanted to differentiate themselves from other surgeons, and charge more, began to provide more advanced Custom Wavefront Lasik technology using IntraLase (a laser-created flap). By 2011, the average price per eye for doctors performing Custom Lasik was about what conventional Lasik had been more than a decade earlier; but the quality is far better. Occasionally an eye surgeon will offer a daily deal at half this price.
One criticism skeptics often voice in discussions about fostering patient consumerism is that a patient having a heart attack is not in a position to shop for the cheapest cardiac care from the back of an ambulance taking him to the emergency room. Few people would disagree. But only about $1 out of $20 is spent on patients who enter the health care system through the emergency room door.
Consider the experience of an insured patient whose doctor orders an abdominal CT scan. Receiving this service at a hospital outpatient department could cost the patient (or her health plan) nearly $3,000 depending on whether the patient's deductible has been met. Yet this same service is available outside the hospital at a medical imaging center for prices that are often 85 percent less. Few health plans provide the tools for enrollees to compare prices and few patients have an incentive to ask about prices.
Doctors and hospitals don't quote prices and don't compete on price because most patients are largely insulated from the adverse effects of not making price comparisons and acting like consumers. Both economic studies and common sense confirm that people do not shop carefully and prudently when someone else is picking up the tab. The contrast between cosmetic surgery and other medical services is important. One sector has a competitive marketplace and stable prices. The other does not. The medical marketplace should work more like the market for cosmetic surgery.
I've asked the question many times, and no one has ever been able to explain how a single-payer system, with no competitors, would not eventually incur much higher costs because it has turned into a bloated bureaucracy that delivers rotten healthcare -- like that which our veterans get from the VA -- and operates as inefficiently as a DMV.
More interesting and relevant scientific facts:
- For most of Earth's history it had no polar icecaps whatsoever. That is the most common state of this planet. The only reason we currently have polar icecaps is because we are still emerging from the most recent glaciation (i.e., ice age).
- Only 50 million years ago, there were thousands of ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere , and Antarctica was covered with lush beech forests. The subsequent decrease in CO2 caused the continent to become a barren wasteland of ice; it was not good for life. The current CO2 level is 403 ppm, and no scenario of fossil fuel usage is consistent with a return to thousands of ppm.
- The fossil record shows that polar bears have survived the comings and goings of multiple glaciations -- each one accompanied by a change in sea level that was about 120 times greater than climate models are predicting will occur in the next century.
The morality of work is the morality of slaves
Dr. Russell can't seem to distinguish between a transaction in which one voluntarily sells his labor (modern work), and compulsory labor for which one is not compensated (slavery).
While a voluntary employer/employee relationship does not make one enslaved, I do believe we are partially enslaved by our governments. And that is not entirely a bad thing (explanation here).
the expenses of government were diminished.
He's wrong again. The expenses of government have been going through the roof. As a percentage of an average total household budget, the cost of most things (food, rent, clothing) has been decreasing. The cost of government is a glaring exception to that trend.
Quite unimpressed with Dr. Russell.
We live in an economic system designed so that all value flows upward.
You seemed highly predisposed to place humans on a hierarchy, and to believe that the owners of enterprises are at the top of the hierarchy, and are to be despised.
Here's a counterexample: a retired bus driver who, slightly indirectly, is such an owner, because the pension fund that generates his income owns shares of corporations. Most shareholders are, in fact, like this retired bus driver: definitely not part of the "1%."
Another counterexample: a self-employed plumber who owns his own business; some of his clients are of a lower socio-economic status than he is, and some of his clients are of a higher socio-economic status than he is. But all of his clients benefit from the value of his services (i.e., the value flows both downward and upward).
Again I point out that if no one worked, no food, clothing, housing, or healthcare would be produced, making for a quite unvirtuous society. You seem to have no rebuttal for this.
the excessive thinness has made the product functionally WORSE with each generation.
We're in the uncanny valley of thinness. Someday they will literally become razor-thin, and we'll be able to shave with them!
If a function key's label changes to give a helpful description of what the key actually does, a user is far more likely to use function keys at all.
And then, because the keys are finally starting to be used, eventually users will not have to look at them any more.
Your work is meant only to enrich those who do not work (owners).
Would it make sense to say that to the millions of people who are self-employed?
And the work self-employed people do does not just benefit themselves. The other entities that voluntarily engage in transactions with them also realize a benefit from said transactions; otherwise, they would not voluntarily engage in them.
I'm not self-employed, but I do benefit quite a bit when I sell my labor to my employer. That's why I continue to do it: because I am enriched by that arrangement, not because anyone is coercing me.
If no one worked, no food, clothing, housing, or healthcare would be produced. That would be a rather unvirtuous situation, would it not?
Don't take offense at the being called "lazy," if the word is used in the same spirit Larry Wall uses it.
According to Larry Wall, the original author of the Perl programming language, there are three great virtues of a programmer; Laziness, Impatience and Hubris.