Imagine the wages they would get without unions. Or having someone to back them when needed. Look at the run of the mill parochial schools versus public schools, where they have teachers that are not unionized. They make diddly squat, have few benefits, and can be fired for stupid things like who they marry or don't marry.
Schools should be for students. They were not originally intended to be run solely for the benefit of teachers. The union doesn't care about the students because the students don't pay union dues.
Why should the rest of society fund an entire institution entirely for the benefit of teachers?
And the individual results aren't so amazing with their students; their high scores are simply because these schools can cherry pick students.
When you get the best results, you don't have to make such excuses.
Blaming teacher unions for unsatisfactory results is a kneejerk response.
It's not about blame. The union prevents change. It's simply fact.
A few months back, the Wall Street Journal had an article on how many American educators are looking to Finland for teaching models, because Finland has remarkably high student achievement across the board. Yet, Finland and its fellow Nordic countries are marked by some of the strongest unions on the planet.
Wow. So you're saying union teachers trying to perpetuate a union system are looking to another union system to guide them?
Furthermore, I suspect many individual American teachers, not just the union fatcats you imagine, would prefer teaching classes as small as possible. The best teachers get great pleasure out of directing young people and showing them that learning can be fun. If you have too many students, it's just too impersonal and the emotional contact is lost.
Nevermind the students. Nevermind achievement. Nevermind productivity. The education system, in your description, exists to make teachers happy.
Some of the rest of us would like it to do something for the students too.
The Republican Party is the only party where where ignorance and being average is actually sold as a presidential trait.
Because "average" people want their leaders to make decisions like they'd make themselves. Because "average" people don't want their leaders to treat them like serfs or proles or subjects or children. Overt contempt and condescension for "average" people is doesn't earn their votes.
"I hate them and their culture so much. Why won't they vote for me?"
When a math teacher can get millions of people to watch commercials and thousands of people to pay $40 to watch them teach math for 2 hours, then they'll get paid as much as pro athletes.
Some use of mass media might actually make this closer to reality. The best math teachers could teach millions of students using video and the Internet -- with lower-paid local assistants to help one-on-one and answer questions.
But the current union structure of education makes experiments like this impossible. Unions don't want one teacher teaching thousands of students. They want the maximum number of union teachers teaching the minimum number of students. It's not about quality. It's not about productivity. It's not about achievement. It's about expanding the union payroll and nothing else.
Also, they're elitist because they don't trust individuals to make decisions about their own lives. Elitists think everyone is a child that needs a government parent to make their choices and take care of them. Elitists know how fast you should drive, where you should live, where you should work, how much you should be paid, what you should buy, what you should eat, and how long you should wait in line at the government health center when you get sick.
They are smarter than you. They know they are. You should be happy to have these people make your choices for you. You couldn't do it yourself. You'd just mess it up, like you always do. Trust them because they're better than you.
Obsession with yourself (your privacy, in this case) rarely leads to anything good. The privacy-obsessed might be better off coming out of the bunker and joining the rest of the world.
If not though, the original point stands. Why wouldn't they want to spend their leisure time reading privacy policies if that's what they care about?
You people who are obsessed with your privacy should be happy for the chance to spend 200 hours a month reading these policies. It's what you care about.
The rest of us don't care how long they are because we would rather live good lives rather than private lives. So we don't read them.
You don't understand how important he thinks he is. The border agents care about his life and his pictures because he's one of the important people. The stuff on the news is relevant to him because he is important, just like the people that appear on TV.
When you say "only children think in terms of the worst things that could happen to them" you forget how many people have a child-like mentality even though they're 18 or 30 or 67 years old. It's an increasingly large percentage of the population.
That's a pretty convenient position. You get to have things both ways. You can give up on freedom for someone else to get a benefit you want. Yet you're still "for" freedom. And it's the telecom's fault anyway so you don't get to be responsible for the wrongs done to them.
It's the kind of idealism any politician could identify with.
That infrastructure is already partly controlled by the government, and also granted monopoly privileges. If you want to get rid of that control, fine, but the privileges have to go too.
Yet you fail to say which you're for. The libertarian position is the one with less government involvement: no net neutrality controls, no so-called "privileges" for telecoms. The socialist/big-government position is the opposite: these so-called "privileges" give us an excuse to impose any controls we want, including net neutrality.
I pick the first one because freedom is important. Which do you pick?
Your analysis requires there be an arbiter who decides what's important or not...
Um, yeah. Regulations hurt people and take away their freedom. That shouldn't be done, in general. If you want to make exceptions where we need to hurt people and take away their freedom, you might want to have a good reason. Something besides "I want to" or "hurting them and taking away their freedom will personally benefit me".
On the other hand, if you don't have a problem with hurting people and taking away their freedom for your personal gain, then nevermind. There's probably some unlocked cars in your neighborhood you can steal some nice stuff from. Why not go have a look? The cops don't even investigate that stuff.
Given the relatively frivolous "consumers' needs" in question, you seem to be selling out your libertarian ideals for a discount.
I don't "consider myself a libertarian" in the same way. But I'm for freedom for these companies unless it causes a huge problem. All the Internet whining doesn't rise to the level of a "huge problem" yet.
Yes. An airport is really only one thing. Never has an "entire section of the country" been "closed off" -- unless you think 5 miles of road is "an entire section of the country".
I don't share your need to exaggerate and pretend things are worse (or better, or different) than they really are. A lot of people do. You might feel more validated conversing with them instead of me.
Just read the arguments. It should be an easy choice for a true libertarian.
The net neutrality people argue for nationalized/socialized/government ownership and control of the telecommunications infrastructure. That should be all a libertarian needs to hear to take the opposite position.
Of course "libertarian" seems to be a label you can buy at a discount these days. Lots of people say they're libertarians but really want the government to force people and companies to do things their way. To them, "libertarian" means "don't bother me with politics, just give me what I want".
So if burglars break into Obama's mansion in Illinois, the FBI and Secret Service should stay out of it? It's not a government building.
Breaking into email accounts is a Federal crime -- hence FBI involvement. The Secret Service protects Presidents and Presidential candidates -- hence Secret Service involvement.
See? It's "defective" because the dogma says it is. It's "insightful" because the moderator shares the dogma. (And because neither the original poster nor the moderator seem to know that lots of different companies make BD drives and discs -- not just Sony.)
DRM is so bad that you don't have to think about it to know how bad it is -- or even to know remotely what you're talking about. So no thinking.
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But in the context of the original post, there is not a difference. The condescension exists. The intelligence is still an open question.
Imagine the wages they would get without unions. Or having someone to back them when needed. Look at the run of the mill parochial schools versus public schools, where they have teachers that are not unionized. They make diddly squat, have few benefits, and can be fired for stupid things like who they marry or don't marry.
Schools should be for students. They were not originally intended to be run solely for the benefit of teachers. The union doesn't care about the students because the students don't pay union dues.
Why should the rest of society fund an entire institution entirely for the benefit of teachers?
And the individual results aren't so amazing with their students; their high scores are simply because these schools can cherry pick students.
When you get the best results, you don't have to make such excuses.
Blaming teacher unions for unsatisfactory results is a kneejerk response.
It's not about blame. The union prevents change. It's simply fact.
A few months back, the Wall Street Journal had an article on how many American educators are looking to Finland for teaching models, because Finland has remarkably high student achievement across the board. Yet, Finland and its fellow Nordic countries are marked by some of the strongest unions on the planet.
Wow. So you're saying union teachers trying to perpetuate a union system are looking to another union system to guide them?
Furthermore, I suspect many individual American teachers, not just the union fatcats you imagine, would prefer teaching classes as small as possible. The best teachers get great pleasure out of directing young people and showing them that learning can be fun. If you have too many students, it's just too impersonal and the emotional contact is lost.
Nevermind the students. Nevermind achievement. Nevermind productivity. The education system, in your description, exists to make teachers happy.
Some of the rest of us would like it to do something for the students too.
The Republican Party is the only party where where ignorance and being average is actually sold as a presidential trait.
Because "average" people want their leaders to make decisions like they'd make themselves. Because "average" people don't want their leaders to treat them like serfs or proles or subjects or children. Overt contempt and condescension for "average" people is doesn't earn their votes.
"I hate them and their culture so much. Why won't they vote for me?"
If only someone knew a way to quantify exactly how fuckable.
When a math teacher can get millions of people to watch commercials and thousands of people to pay $40 to watch them teach math for 2 hours, then they'll get paid as much as pro athletes.
Some use of mass media might actually make this closer to reality. The best math teachers could teach millions of students using video and the Internet -- with lower-paid local assistants to help one-on-one and answer questions.
But the current union structure of education makes experiments like this impossible. Unions don't want one teacher teaching thousands of students. They want the maximum number of union teachers teaching the minimum number of students. It's not about quality. It's not about productivity. It's not about achievement. It's about expanding the union payroll and nothing else.
Also, they're elitist because they don't trust individuals to make decisions about their own lives. Elitists think everyone is a child that needs a government parent to make their choices and take care of them. Elitists know how fast you should drive, where you should live, where you should work, how much you should be paid, what you should buy, what you should eat, and how long you should wait in line at the government health center when you get sick.
They are smarter than you. They know they are. You should be happy to have these people make your choices for you. You couldn't do it yourself. You'd just mess it up, like you always do. Trust them because they're better than you.
The is no improvement possible in education. The system operates under union rules. There will be no changes except those changes that help the union.
Your goal for better math education and a higher value for math achievement is not useful to improve things for the union.
Obsession with yourself (your privacy, in this case) rarely leads to anything good. The privacy-obsessed might be better off coming out of the bunker and joining the rest of the world.
If not though, the original point stands. Why wouldn't they want to spend their leisure time reading privacy policies if that's what they care about?
You people who are obsessed with your privacy should be happy for the chance to spend 200 hours a month reading these policies. It's what you care about.
The rest of us don't care how long they are because we would rather live good lives rather than private lives. So we don't read them.
Maybe the judge will have to start working 5 day weeks or holding court past 3 PM.
Here's an idea to help: just start summarily dismissing criminal charges where there's no victim.
You don't understand how important he thinks he is. The border agents care about his life and his pictures because he's one of the important people. The stuff on the news is relevant to him because he is important, just like the people that appear on TV.
When you say "only children think in terms of the worst things that could happen to them" you forget how many people have a child-like mentality even though they're 18 or 30 or 67 years old. It's an increasingly large percentage of the population.
That's a pretty convenient position. You get to have things both ways. You can give up on freedom for someone else to get a benefit you want. Yet you're still "for" freedom. And it's the telecom's fault anyway so you don't get to be responsible for the wrongs done to them.
It's the kind of idealism any politician could identify with.
That infrastructure is already partly controlled by the government, and also granted monopoly privileges. If you want to get rid of that control, fine, but the privileges have to go too.
Yet you fail to say which you're for. The libertarian position is the one with less government involvement: no net neutrality controls, no so-called "privileges" for telecoms. The socialist/big-government position is the opposite: these so-called "privileges" give us an excuse to impose any controls we want, including net neutrality.
I pick the first one because freedom is important. Which do you pick?
Your analysis requires there be an arbiter who decides what's important or not...
Um, yeah. Regulations hurt people and take away their freedom. That shouldn't be done, in general. If you want to make exceptions where we need to hurt people and take away their freedom, you might want to have a good reason. Something besides "I want to" or "hurting them and taking away their freedom will personally benefit me".
On the other hand, if you don't have a problem with hurting people and taking away their freedom for your personal gain, then nevermind. There's probably some unlocked cars in your neighborhood you can steal some nice stuff from. Why not go have a look? The cops don't even investigate that stuff.
Given the relatively frivolous "consumers' needs" in question, you seem to be selling out your libertarian ideals for a discount.
I don't "consider myself a libertarian" in the same way. But I'm for freedom for these companies unless it causes a huge problem. All the Internet whining doesn't rise to the level of a "huge problem" yet.
Yes. An airport is really only one thing. Never has an "entire section of the country" been "closed off" -- unless you think 5 miles of road is "an entire section of the country".
I don't share your need to exaggerate and pretend things are worse (or better, or different) than they really are. A lot of people do. You might feel more validated conversing with them instead of me.
Just read the arguments. It should be an easy choice for a true libertarian.
The net neutrality people argue for nationalized/socialized/government ownership and control of the telecommunications infrastructure. That should be all a libertarian needs to hear to take the opposite position.
Of course "libertarian" seems to be a label you can buy at a discount these days. Lots of people say they're libertarians but really want the government to force people and companies to do things their way. To them, "libertarian" means "don't bother me with politics, just give me what I want".
It just looks big because you're seeing it through a powerful telescope.
So you're saying this project is unbelievable?
Not as much. No. Only a few things get shut down for a hour or two.
It's disruptive.
That approach was used until a few Presidents were assassinated. Then people wised up.
So if burglars break into Obama's mansion in Illinois, the FBI and Secret Service should stay out of it? It's not a government building.
Breaking into email accounts is a Federal crime -- hence FBI involvement. The Secret Service protects Presidents and Presidential candidates -- hence Secret Service involvement.
See? It's "defective" because the dogma says it is. It's "insightful" because the moderator shares the dogma. (And because neither the original poster nor the moderator seem to know that lots of different companies make BD drives and discs -- not just Sony.)
DRM is so bad that you don't have to think about it to know how bad it is -- or even to know remotely what you're talking about. So no thinking.