There also must be a sound plan for installing security updates on IoT devices.
No, not really. If your home network security assumes that every single attached device is patched and secure, you have already lost. You should deploy your IoT devices in such a way that, even if they get compromised, the damage is limited.
Also of concern are huge repositories where IoT data is being stored, which can become attractive targets for corporate hackers and industrial spies who rely on big data to make profits.
I don't really see how "corporate hackers and industrial spies" can "make profits" by breaking into Apple and stealing data about when I turn on my toaster. "Corporate hackers and industrial spies" generally don't go after such low value data, they go after credit card numbers and corporate secrets.
What is evident is that the IoT will become an important part of our lives very soon, and its security is one of the major issues that must be addressed via active participation by the entire global tech community.
No, it really doesn't need to be. Unless you have specific and clear evidence to the contrary (plus an assumption of liability by the manufacturer), consider all IoT devices to be inherently insecure and use them accordingly.
Sites that fail due to well understood human activity will have to resort in some way to the "tax payers or the government".
Quite the opposite: sites that fail due to well understood human activity should hold the people engaging in that activity responsible for the failure.
So private insurance should be left to pay up and clean any site for any reason in the US based on some clause any US court can extend over any human induced event?
I have no idea what "extending clauses over human induced events" is even supposed to mean. You are rambling and you make no sense.
How does cheap technology like this mesh with Bill Gates's dream of putting a computer in every home, and projects like OLPC?
What would we do without visionaries like Bill Gates imagining cheaper computers? Without him, people would have gotten confused and made computers more and more expensive!
And the difference between Kindle and other low cost devices: the Kindle isn't intended to be hackable. In fact, the $50 is really a subsidized price.
These are private oil storage facilities. If they are being threatened by human activity, this can be sorted out in the courts. If they are being threatened by natural disasters, insurance and diversification can sort it out. Furthermore, we have insane amounts of oil in the "strategic petroleum reserves" all across the country, which could easily absorb even a total loss. There is absolutely no reason for the US government to get involved in this; it simply amounts to crony capitalism. It is even more idiotic for a president and administration intending to reduce carbon emissions to subsidize the oil industry in this way.
but I've always been told that they are like any citizen, and you can choose not to interact with them.
You have been told wrong. Police can detain you for many reasons, even if you have done nothing wrong.
one actually arrested me for not having ID (while hiking on a public trail)
There is no legal requirement for you to carry or show an ID. However, if you don't show an ID and police have a legitimate reason to need to establish your identity, they can detain you while they determine your identity. Although that's unpleasant, I don't see how they could do their job without that ability, but you are welcome to suggest alternative policies.
I don't know what it is with America these days, but we're definitely seeing more angry police, and this is reflected in the public's perception.
What it is with America these days is that violent crime and police violence are both down, so people are less used to it and more sensitive to it. That's good. What is also happening with America these days is that people are increasingly questioning authority. That's also a good thing. However, some people have a tendency of veering into first world problems, self-righteous indignation, and plain whining, and you're getting close to that.
You don't like how your local police handle stops? Well, it's in your hands: local police procedures are determined by your local government, probably the easiest level of government to get involved in and changed. Of course, you do need to formulate what police procedures you actually want to have in place.
He says he's been told by many police leaders that officers who normally would stop to question suspicious people are opting to stay in their patrol cars for fear of having their encounters recorded and become video sensations. That hesitancy has led to missed opportunities to apprehend suspects and has decreased the police presence on the streets of the country's most violent cities.
If you have nothing to hide and don't break any laws, why would you object to being recorded and scrutinized?
continuing to do business with the DRC, but trying to do it in a "fair trade" way (i.e. directly with the producers on the ground) so as to subvert the structures that make conflict materials problematic:
What "structures" would that be, specifically? Where is the evidence that they are "subverting" the structures?
Do you think people engaged in violent civil war are just going to say "oh, well, let's go home"? The most obvious consequence for these people is to force the "producers on the ground" to give up money at gunpoint, leaving them with even less money than before.
Heck, I can't even tell whether the Congo government is legitimate or not. Obama seems to "like" the government. But in that case, what's the justification of "subverting" the structures of the Congo?
Note also that the "Fairphone" web page talks a lot about what they "want" and their "goals", but nothing specific in terms of quantifiable results.
Umm...I don't think you understand what the government not owning the means of production actually means.
Believe me, I know: I have first hand experience. And you are absolutely right: neither the US nor most of Europe are socialist. What we are is a regulated market economy and a welfare state, with little practical difference between the US and Europe. I was objecting to your statement We're actually pure free market capitalist.; in fact, we are nothing like that at all.
A free market means the prices are determined by the forces of supply and demand.
In the definition you quote, that is only one of the conditions; you skipped over the second part "in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority". Those two conditions must both be satisfied. In fact, you then quote the definition of what we actually are:
A free market contrasts with a regulated market, in which government intervenes in supply and demand through non-market methods such as laws creating barriers to market entry or price fixing
That is, we live in a regulated market according to your own quote, a market in which the government intervenes but doesn't necessarily set prices. But, of course, the US government also massively interferes in pricing itself, since almost all transactions are subject to taxation, but that taxation itself is subject to exemptions, all intended to encourage and discourage people from engaging in some transactions and not others.
You're talking about EEO type laws, and no, the government isn't setting prices.
But it is regulating the market and intervening through other authority, which are incompatible with "pure free markets". Those regulations also indirectly affect prices; that is, under EEO regulations, many people are paid different salaries than they would be without EEO regulations. Such laws form part of a "regulated market". That is, there is still a market there, but it's not free. That's not a judgment on whether EEO regulations are good or bad (which is a separate discussion), it's simply a fact about what kind of economic system we live under.
I don't think I did?
Presumably you want to get at some point when you said "Also do not confuse welfare programs with socialism". Given how poorly our welfare state functions, I thought that you were trying to get across that "true socialism" would function better. But perhaps you meant something different. In any case, the welfare state and socialism are indeed different (their primary difference being who owns the means of production), but they share the same fundamental economic misconception, namely that you need to put smart people in charge of yourself and give them the right to commit violence against you in order to improve your own life.
China and the Soviet Union are not, were not and never were Communist
They weren't "communist" in the sense that they didn't deliver what Karl Marx promised. They were very much "communist" in the sense that they represented the kind of government you get when you try to implement Karl Marx's ideas in the real world. The problem with communism is that it promises outcomes it obviously cannot deliver. Karl Marx's theories were simply wrong.
I wrote in an obscenely obvious way earlier that I am not a "communist" and what your shithead got was the usual "is not capitalism then must be communist".
It's not your dislike of capitalism that brands you as a communist; you share that with lots of worshipers of totalitarianism. What brands you as a communist is the distinction between actual communism and "real communism" that you're trying to make.
No surprise that much of the world want to see your country disappearing in a nuclear mushroom.
Sure: communists, fascists, theocrats, and the European intelligentsia have always hated the US. That's why the US is maintaining a large military to defend itself, and I'm glad they do. It was only under US hegemony and military occupation that Europeans and Asians finally stopped murdering each other and their minorities by the millions and started focusing on the peaceful pursuits of trade, ending hunger and poverty, and creating wealth. Despite all their arrogance, Europeans have never managed to do that on their own. And, btw, you have no idea what "my country" is.
My point (on which we probably agree) is that you should still strive to do the right thing even if you get it wrong initially.
Obviously you should do the right thing if you know what it is. But what is the right thing? We can't even agree in the US on the costs and benefits of basic economic questions like minimum wage or taxes. What kind of hubris leads people to believe that we can figure out whether doing business with this-or-that group in a war torn third world country is actually hurting or helping people?
So, back to "fairphone". The company uses "conflict minerals" as a marketing tool for their bulky and expensive phone, and they make a big deal of it on their home page. But they don't present any clear cut evidence that what they are doing is actually helping rather than hurting and instead fill their web page with lots of verbiage. Since they would be in the best position to make such an argument and are evidently unable to make it, that, in my book, casts a lot of doubt on what they are doing. In fact, to me it looks like they were required to disclose that they source from the DRC under Dodd Frank and tried to put a positive spin on it. So, if you want to "do the right thing", I think you should avoid these guys, because I think they are astroturfing.
In general, however, it is rarely a good idea to stop doing business with oppressive or totalitarian regimes (and I'm speaking from first hand experience). You are hurting people economically that way, and you just push the common man into the arms of his oppressor.
1) No, dislike of capitalism does NOT mean that the person then is communist;
Of course not: communism and socialism are in good company with fascism, theocracy, military dictatorships, and aristocracies in their disdain for capitalism.
5) No, you've never, ever seen truly communist societies, see facts 2 and 3;
I completely agree: none of the societies I have seen were "real communist societies" in the sense of living up to communist ideals. That's because no society composed of human beings ever can or will live up to communist ideals.
What those nominally communist societies were, however, were societies run by "real communist" like you, people who fervently believe that the problem with communism is the "sickness" of others, as opposed to their own delusions.
True communism implies real cooperation, something that your sick society is unable to imagine, let alone put into practice.
The kind of "real cooperation" communism requires is impossible for anything other than societies that function like insect colonies. Societies composed of intelligent beings with free will simply cannot organize under communism.
Personally, I find communist societies "sick" (based, incidentally, on first hand experience). Of course, you're free to believe something different, as long as you don't try to impose your beliefs on me at gunpoint, which is another thing communist societies like to do when their erroneous theories run head first into reality.
And no, the US is not in any way, shape, or form, definable as socialist (socialism is defined as the state owning the means of production, employing the workers, and setting prices.) Not even a little bit. We're actually pure free market capitalist.
Facts contradict your belief. For example, about 40% of our national spending is done by the government, so that part isn't "pure free market". Employment is strongly regulated and restricted, with minimum wages in many places, and limits on who you can hire and fire. Health insurance, health care, auto insurance, and home insurance are also highly regulated, and people are not permitted to engage in free market transactions. Both businesses and landlord face strong restrictions on who they can and cannot do business with. Our banking and financial system is highly regulated, with many forms of financial transactions simply being illegal, and borrowing and lending tightly regulated and controlled. When all is said and done, maybe a quarter of the transactions in our economy are anything like free market transactions.
Also do not confuse welfare programs with socialism
Also, do not confuse people who pretend to be socialists with actual socialists. Bernie Sanders isn't a socialist, and neither are most of the other people who call themselves "socialist" in the US or Europe. People who pretend to be "socialists" in US politics are really just lobbying groups like any other, wanting to take away money from some people and give it to themselves and their friends.
I think the operative word in your first paragraph is "unintended". If it's known upfront things can be done differently (or not at all).
"Unintended" doesn't mean "unexpected". In this case, the consequences may be unintended, but they shouldn't be unexpected, in particular after reading and thinking about the issues a bit.
Yeah people like to feel good about themselves, but that doesn't mean good deeds for the sake of real altruism isn't real.
If you receive more benefit from an act than it costs you, it ceases to be altruistic. Running around with a "Fairphone" that advertises to your peers what a wonderful person you are and that you can afford to spend way too much money on a clunky phone is probably not driven by altruism, but by social signaling, group conformity, and self promotion.
Yes, I think they are trying to turn lemon into lemonade: Dodd Frank requires them to disclose their sources, they get their metals from DRC, and so they write pages and pages about how they intend to do so responsibly. It's hard to tell what they actually end up doing, but I don't see any evidence that they are any more "fair" than other companies.
So your point is apparently that as long as your intentions are good and doing something makes you feel good and noble, you don't really whether it has unintended consequences and results in people suffering or dying. My point is that you should care about the consequences of your actions and their unintended consequences, because whether real people end up suffering matters a lot more than whether you feel good about yourself.
My more general point is also that you should think critically. Fairphone is an expensive, bulky phone, so it needs some gimmick to sell. Under Dodd-Frank they are already required to report where there minerals come from, and, lo and behold, they come from a conflict zone, the DRC. Normally, under Dodd-Frank, that should be of concern, but they turn lemon into lemonade by trying to sell that as a good thing. But if you look at their web site, there is a lot of verbiage about their lobbying and their intentions and their goals, but little clearcut evidence that they are doing anything useful.
People would do well to remember what can happen when trying to avoid "conflict materials". See this article from The Guardian.
A lot of these so-called "fair trade" efforts are marketing gimmicks and come from the "let them eat cake" school of thinking of rich and naive Westerners.
Yeah, I know where you're coming from. Other problems were that compilers used to be quite buggy, there weren't a lot of tools, and libraries were a mess. Besides language improvements, new tools like clang and the Boost libraries have made a big difference. C++ is still not my favorite language, but it's become a usable and fairly mature systems programming language.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/166... [gallup.com] Once you start figuring THAT in the US is really pretty far down the list, far below Canada and France and Germany, all highly socialist nations also.
What you point at is a Gallup poll of self-reported incomes. The US is sixth on that list among 131, which is hardly "pretty far down". However, that list is gross, self-reported income, which is really the wrong thing to compare. What you need to compare is disposable income compared by PPP$. The only European nations that do better than the US are Norway (oil money) and Luxembourg (banking and tax haven).
Even if you do that, you're still not making the right comparison. Both the US and the EU are integrated free markets with mobility of capital and individuals. The fact that Luxembourg is doing well needs to be balanced against the fact that Greece is not. So, what you actually need to compare is a ranking of US states against a ranking of EU member states, or all of the US against all of the EU.
In different words, you are using the wrong statistics and you don't understand the statistics.
Let me complete the sentence for you,.. is the same as saying there's not government since there's no taxes and since there's no government there's no law
Nowhere did I say that there should be no taxes at all. I merely illustrated that rejecting taxes on market transactions is not the same as rejecting all laws.
If socialist rule is so bad , why are the richest nations also the most socialist?
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland are not "socialist", they are small Nordic welfare states. In terms of economic liberty, they are comparable to the US.
Norway is wealthy because it has oil and isn't in the EU. Sweden, Denmark, and Finland are significantly worse off than the US economically.
Historically, both the Nordic countries had higher degrees of economic liberty, which was important in the rapid post-WWII growth of their economy. Once they were wealthy, they strongly increased social spending, something they could get away with also because of demographics. More recently, they have been reducing that trend again because because it's not sustainable.
In terms of economic liberties they rank about as high as the US.
Furthermore, per capita social welfare spending in the US as percentage of GDP is one of the highest in the world, according to the OECD:
That's a straw man. We're talking about "regulation and laws" with regard to the free market. Saying that I should be able to sell you raisins at a price we freely agree on and without getting taxed isn't the same as saying I should be able to shoot you without consequences. Nor does the absence of government-issued regulations and laws translate into "anything goes".
because that's worked out so well for us the first couple thousand years of human civilization.
Human civilization is a lot older than 2000 years. And throughout most of that time, there have been extensive economic restrictions and regulations. Many of those restrictions and regulations were motivated by the same naive economic views you have. It was only during the Renaissance that we finally figured out that a lot of those regulations are actually harmful.
then it would have when there were no laws under Ghengis Khan
There were, literally, laws under Ghengis Khan. In fact, they were quite strict, as far as laws go.
or in Somolia anywhere else on earth in which there were, literally, no laws.
Somalia turned into the current shithole under European imperialism, US foreign policy, monarchy, dictatorship, Islamic fundamentalism, and socialist rule, all systems that imposed strong restrictions on both economic and non-economic freedoms.
And while the Somali national government is clearly dysfunctional and impotent, that doesn't mean lawlessness; Somalis still live under local law and government, subject to local taxation, corruption, and restrictions. Nevertheless, while Somalis are still fairly poor by our standards, after their national government collapsed, life in Somalia has improved much faster than the average among African nations. So, even anarchy beats socialist government. (But, again, libertarians aren't anarchists.)
I think the interesting and - to my knowledge, unique - feature of Rust is that you get compile time errors if you...
There are lots of ways of doing compile time checking for memory and concurrency issues. If you impose certain restrictions on how variables are used, you can check at compile time for memory and data races, that's been known for decades. Baking those sorts of restrictions into the type system of a language, however, has never worked well (and people have tried before) because there is really no right answer, only lots of compromises. That's one of the reason the Rust type system keeps changing and why they have dropped a lot of those checks.
I haven't worked with C++ since 2005 and I haven't followed the standard changes, but as far as I know, C++11 and C++14 don't have an equivalent mechanism. So while you can write equally safe and stable C++ code, it requires a lot more careful concentration by the developer.
C++'s smart pointers are a superset of what Rust offers. C++ also has excellent static and dynamic analysis and testing tools available. Writing safe and stable C++ just doesn't seem to be a problem in practice, and I see little difference between Rust and modern C++ in practice.
The only claim to fame for Rust is that it avoid garbage collection, like C++. Once you drop that requirement, there are plenty of excellent languages for general purpose programming (Scala, C#, Java, Swift, Clojure, D, Go, etc.) that offer runtime safety and (often) better concurrency primitives than either Rust or C++.
Slashdot Mirror
No, not really. If your home network security assumes that every single attached device is patched and secure, you have already lost. You should deploy your IoT devices in such a way that, even if they get compromised, the damage is limited.
I don't really see how "corporate hackers and industrial spies" can "make profits" by breaking into Apple and stealing data about when I turn on my toaster. "Corporate hackers and industrial spies" generally don't go after such low value data, they go after credit card numbers and corporate secrets.
No, it really doesn't need to be. Unless you have specific and clear evidence to the contrary (plus an assumption of liability by the manufacturer), consider all IoT devices to be inherently insecure and use them accordingly.
Quite the opposite: sites that fail due to well understood human activity should hold the people engaging in that activity responsible for the failure.
I have no idea what "extending clauses over human induced events" is even supposed to mean. You are rambling and you make no sense.
None of your lengthy bloviations explain why tax payers or the government should get involved in this.
What would we do without visionaries like Bill Gates imagining cheaper computers? Without him, people would have gotten confused and made computers more and more expensive!
And the difference between Kindle and other low cost devices: the Kindle isn't intended to be hackable. In fact, the $50 is really a subsidized price.
These are private oil storage facilities. If they are being threatened by human activity, this can be sorted out in the courts. If they are being threatened by natural disasters, insurance and diversification can sort it out. Furthermore, we have insane amounts of oil in the "strategic petroleum reserves" all across the country, which could easily absorb even a total loss. There is absolutely no reason for the US government to get involved in this; it simply amounts to crony capitalism. It is even more idiotic for a president and administration intending to reduce carbon emissions to subsidize the oil industry in this way.
You have been told wrong. Police can detain you for many reasons, even if you have done nothing wrong.
There is no legal requirement for you to carry or show an ID. However, if you don't show an ID and police have a legitimate reason to need to establish your identity, they can detain you while they determine your identity. Although that's unpleasant, I don't see how they could do their job without that ability, but you are welcome to suggest alternative policies.
What it is with America these days is that violent crime and police violence are both down, so people are less used to it and more sensitive to it. That's good. What is also happening with America these days is that people are increasingly questioning authority. That's also a good thing. However, some people have a tendency of veering into first world problems, self-righteous indignation, and plain whining, and you're getting close to that.
You don't like how your local police handle stops? Well, it's in your hands: local police procedures are determined by your local government, probably the easiest level of government to get involved in and changed. Of course, you do need to formulate what police procedures you actually want to have in place.
Let's use the usual police argument:
If you have nothing to hide and don't break any laws, why would you object to being recorded and scrutinized?
What "structures" would that be, specifically? Where is the evidence that they are "subverting" the structures?
Do you think people engaged in violent civil war are just going to say "oh, well, let's go home"? The most obvious consequence for these people is to force the "producers on the ground" to give up money at gunpoint, leaving them with even less money than before.
Heck, I can't even tell whether the Congo government is legitimate or not. Obama seems to "like" the government. But in that case, what's the justification of "subverting" the structures of the Congo?
Note also that the "Fairphone" web page talks a lot about what they "want" and their "goals", but nothing specific in terms of quantifiable results.
Believe me, I know: I have first hand experience. And you are absolutely right: neither the US nor most of Europe are socialist. What we are is a regulated market economy and a welfare state, with little practical difference between the US and Europe. I was objecting to your statement We're actually pure free market capitalist.; in fact, we are nothing like that at all.
In the definition you quote, that is only one of the conditions; you skipped over the second part "in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority". Those two conditions must both be satisfied. In fact, you then quote the definition of what we actually are:
That is, we live in a regulated market according to your own quote, a market in which the government intervenes but doesn't necessarily set prices. But, of course, the US government also massively interferes in pricing itself, since almost all transactions are subject to taxation, but that taxation itself is subject to exemptions, all intended to encourage and discourage people from engaging in some transactions and not others.
But it is regulating the market and intervening through other authority, which are incompatible with "pure free markets". Those regulations also indirectly affect prices; that is, under EEO regulations, many people are paid different salaries than they would be without EEO regulations. Such laws form part of a "regulated market". That is, there is still a market there, but it's not free. That's not a judgment on whether EEO regulations are good or bad (which is a separate discussion), it's simply a fact about what kind of economic system we live under.
Presumably you want to get at some point when you said "Also do not confuse welfare programs with socialism". Given how poorly our welfare state functions, I thought that you were trying to get across that "true socialism" would function better. But perhaps you meant something different. In any case, the welfare state and socialism are indeed different (their primary difference being who owns the means of production), but they share the same fundamental economic misconception, namely that you need to put smart people in charge of yourself and give them the right to commit violence against you in order to improve your own life.
They weren't "communist" in the sense that they didn't deliver what Karl Marx promised. They were very much "communist" in the sense that they represented the kind of government you get when you try to implement Karl Marx's ideas in the real world. The problem with communism is that it promises outcomes it obviously cannot deliver. Karl Marx's theories were simply wrong.
It's not your dislike of capitalism that brands you as a communist; you share that with lots of worshipers of totalitarianism. What brands you as a communist is the distinction between actual communism and "real communism" that you're trying to make.
Sure: communists, fascists, theocrats, and the European intelligentsia have always hated the US. That's why the US is maintaining a large military to defend itself, and I'm glad they do. It was only under US hegemony and military occupation that Europeans and Asians finally stopped murdering each other and their minorities by the millions and started focusing on the peaceful pursuits of trade, ending hunger and poverty, and creating wealth. Despite all their arrogance, Europeans have never managed to do that on their own. And, btw, you have no idea what "my country" is.
Obviously you should do the right thing if you know what it is. But what is the right thing? We can't even agree in the US on the costs and benefits of basic economic questions like minimum wage or taxes. What kind of hubris leads people to believe that we can figure out whether doing business with this-or-that group in a war torn third world country is actually hurting or helping people?
So, back to "fairphone". The company uses "conflict minerals" as a marketing tool for their bulky and expensive phone, and they make a big deal of it on their home page. But they don't present any clear cut evidence that what they are doing is actually helping rather than hurting and instead fill their web page with lots of verbiage. Since they would be in the best position to make such an argument and are evidently unable to make it, that, in my book, casts a lot of doubt on what they are doing. In fact, to me it looks like they were required to disclose that they source from the DRC under Dodd Frank and tried to put a positive spin on it. So, if you want to "do the right thing", I think you should avoid these guys, because I think they are astroturfing.
In general, however, it is rarely a good idea to stop doing business with oppressive or totalitarian regimes (and I'm speaking from first hand experience). You are hurting people economically that way, and you just push the common man into the arms of his oppressor.
Of course you're not a troll. You're something much worse: a dyed-in-the-wool believer in "real communism", which simply makes you evil.
Of course not: communism and socialism are in good company with fascism, theocracy, military dictatorships, and aristocracies in their disdain for capitalism.
I completely agree: none of the societies I have seen were "real communist societies" in the sense of living up to communist ideals. That's because no society composed of human beings ever can or will live up to communist ideals.
What those nominally communist societies were, however, were societies run by "real communist" like you, people who fervently believe that the problem with communism is the "sickness" of others, as opposed to their own delusions.
The kind of "real cooperation" communism requires is impossible for anything other than societies that function like insect colonies. Societies composed of intelligent beings with free will simply cannot organize under communism.
Personally, I find communist societies "sick" (based, incidentally, on first hand experience). Of course, you're free to believe something different, as long as you don't try to impose your beliefs on me at gunpoint, which is another thing communist societies like to do when their erroneous theories run head first into reality.
Facts contradict your belief. For example, about 40% of our national spending is done by the government, so that part isn't "pure free market". Employment is strongly regulated and restricted, with minimum wages in many places, and limits on who you can hire and fire. Health insurance, health care, auto insurance, and home insurance are also highly regulated, and people are not permitted to engage in free market transactions. Both businesses and landlord face strong restrictions on who they can and cannot do business with. Our banking and financial system is highly regulated, with many forms of financial transactions simply being illegal, and borrowing and lending tightly regulated and controlled. When all is said and done, maybe a quarter of the transactions in our economy are anything like free market transactions.
Also, do not confuse people who pretend to be socialists with actual socialists. Bernie Sanders isn't a socialist, and neither are most of the other people who call themselves "socialist" in the US or Europe. People who pretend to be "socialists" in US politics are really just lobbying groups like any other, wanting to take away money from some people and give it to themselves and their friends.
"Unintended" doesn't mean "unexpected". In this case, the consequences may be unintended, but they shouldn't be unexpected, in particular after reading and thinking about the issues a bit.
If you receive more benefit from an act than it costs you, it ceases to be altruistic. Running around with a "Fairphone" that advertises to your peers what a wonderful person you are and that you can afford to spend way too much money on a clunky phone is probably not driven by altruism, but by social signaling, group conformity, and self promotion.
Yes, I think they are trying to turn lemon into lemonade: Dodd Frank requires them to disclose their sources, they get their metals from DRC, and so they write pages and pages about how they intend to do so responsibly. It's hard to tell what they actually end up doing, but I don't see any evidence that they are any more "fair" than other companies.
So your point is apparently that as long as your intentions are good and doing something makes you feel good and noble, you don't really whether it has unintended consequences and results in people suffering or dying. My point is that you should care about the consequences of your actions and their unintended consequences, because whether real people end up suffering matters a lot more than whether you feel good about yourself.
My more general point is also that you should think critically. Fairphone is an expensive, bulky phone, so it needs some gimmick to sell. Under Dodd-Frank they are already required to report where there minerals come from, and, lo and behold, they come from a conflict zone, the DRC. Normally, under Dodd-Frank, that should be of concern, but they turn lemon into lemonade by trying to sell that as a good thing. But if you look at their web site, there is a lot of verbiage about their lobbying and their intentions and their goals, but little clearcut evidence that they are doing anything useful.
People would do well to remember what can happen when trying to avoid "conflict materials". See this article from The Guardian.
A lot of these so-called "fair trade" efforts are marketing gimmicks and come from the "let them eat cake" school of thinking of rich and naive Westerners.
Yeah, I know where you're coming from. Other problems were that compilers used to be quite buggy, there weren't a lot of tools, and libraries were a mess. Besides language improvements, new tools like clang and the Boost libraries have made a big difference. C++ is still not my favorite language, but it's become a usable and fairly mature systems programming language.
What you point at is a Gallup poll of self-reported incomes. The US is sixth on that list among 131, which is hardly "pretty far down". However, that list is gross, self-reported income, which is really the wrong thing to compare. What you need to compare is disposable income compared by PPP$. The only European nations that do better than the US are Norway (oil money) and Luxembourg (banking and tax haven).
Even if you do that, you're still not making the right comparison. Both the US and the EU are integrated free markets with mobility of capital and individuals. The fact that Luxembourg is doing well needs to be balanced against the fact that Greece is not. So, what you actually need to compare is a ranking of US states against a ranking of EU member states, or all of the US against all of the EU.
In different words, you are using the wrong statistics and you don't understand the statistics.
Nowhere did I say that there should be no taxes at all. I merely illustrated that rejecting taxes on market transactions is not the same as rejecting all laws.
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland are not "socialist", they are small Nordic welfare states. In terms of economic liberty, they are comparable to the US.
Norway is wealthy because it has oil and isn't in the EU. Sweden, Denmark, and Finland are significantly worse off than the US economically.
Historically, both the Nordic countries had higher degrees of economic liberty, which was important in the rapid post-WWII growth of their economy. Once they were wealthy, they strongly increased social spending, something they could get away with also because of demographics. More recently, they have been reducing that trend again because because it's not sustainable.
In terms of economic liberties they rank about as high as the US.
Furthermore, per capita social welfare spending in the US as percentage of GDP is one of the highest in the world, according to the OECD:
http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/OE...
In absolute terms, that makes the US per capita social welfare spending much larger than any other nation.
That's a straw man. We're talking about "regulation and laws" with regard to the free market. Saying that I should be able to sell you raisins at a price we freely agree on and without getting taxed isn't the same as saying I should be able to shoot you without consequences. Nor does the absence of government-issued regulations and laws translate into "anything goes".
Human civilization is a lot older than 2000 years. And throughout most of that time, there have been extensive economic restrictions and regulations. Many of those restrictions and regulations were motivated by the same naive economic views you have. It was only during the Renaissance that we finally figured out that a lot of those regulations are actually harmful.
There were, literally, laws under Ghengis Khan. In fact, they were quite strict, as far as laws go.
Somalia turned into the current shithole under European imperialism, US foreign policy, monarchy, dictatorship, Islamic fundamentalism, and socialist rule, all systems that imposed strong restrictions on both economic and non-economic freedoms.
And while the Somali national government is clearly dysfunctional and impotent, that doesn't mean lawlessness; Somalis still live under local law and government, subject to local taxation, corruption, and restrictions. Nevertheless, while Somalis are still fairly poor by our standards, after their national government collapsed, life in Somalia has improved much faster than the average among African nations. So, even anarchy beats socialist government. (But, again, libertarians aren't anarchists.)
There are lots of ways of doing compile time checking for memory and concurrency issues. If you impose certain restrictions on how variables are used, you can check at compile time for memory and data races, that's been known for decades. Baking those sorts of restrictions into the type system of a language, however, has never worked well (and people have tried before) because there is really no right answer, only lots of compromises. That's one of the reason the Rust type system keeps changing and why they have dropped a lot of those checks.
C++'s smart pointers are a superset of what Rust offers. C++ also has excellent static and dynamic analysis and testing tools available. Writing safe and stable C++ just doesn't seem to be a problem in practice, and I see little difference between Rust and modern C++ in practice.
The only claim to fame for Rust is that it avoid garbage collection, like C++. Once you drop that requirement, there are plenty of excellent languages for general purpose programming (Scala, C#, Java, Swift, Clojure, D, Go, etc.) that offer runtime safety and (often) better concurrency primitives than either Rust or C++.