Libertarians are feudalists. They want a return to might makes right. It's fascism with a stop in anarchyland.
Take this quote:
we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance
Now, does that sound like a libertarian or free market advocate to you, or does it sound more like a US-style "liberal"? According to Toland, the quote is from a 1927 Hitler speech (there are plenty of other statements to that effect from leading fascists). Fascism is simply an extreme form of progressivism, and "government intervention in business for the benefit of society" is one of the hallmarks of fascism.
And Hillary Clinton claims to be a liberal, and Bernie Sanders claims to be a socialist, and they are neither. Does it surprise you that politicians aren't actually what they say they are?
Some libertarians consider Cruz to be the least bad of the handful of plausible presidential candidates, but that doesn't make him a "libertarian". Between Obama, Clinton, and McCain, Obama was the "least bad" from a libertarian point of view (given his statements on civil liberties and foreign interventions), but nobody confused him with a libertarian either.
I don't know where this "$60k" figure is coming from. H1-Bs need to be paid at least prevailing wage for the occupation. That number is determined by a government labor certification, and the number is adjusted annually based on actual labor market conditions.
I just want a company officer to sign off, under penalty of perjury, on the supposed prevailing pay for the position they are seeking to fill. Right now the company gets to essentially make up a number, which no one checks and carries no penalty if anyone were to find out that they massively lowballed it.
That's bullshit. H1-B jobs go through a DOL labor certification.
You don't need to negotiate health insurance with your employer if you don't want to; you can pay for it yourself, like you do in many other countries. However, many employers have negotiated group rates and there are tax advantages, which makes employment-based health insurance attractive for Americans. It's something that started because employers wanted to be more attractive to employees, and it got cemented into place with lots of special interest tax legislation.
If you think, though, that this is a case of "the US vs the rest of the world", you really don't know much about the rest of the world. There is a wide variety of systems by which people pay for health care.
LMOL yeah float that canard won't you. NO SINGLE US CORPORATION HAS MOVED OVER SEAS
You must have missed all the brouhaha over "corporate inversions". That's what "moving overseas" means: moving your headquarters there. Obviously, companies don't just drop all US sales and offices when they do that.
More importantly, though, a lot of companies don't move overseas because they don't know how to; instead, they just go out of business. That's what happened with a lot of consumer electronics, computers, and appliances.
Let's say Alphabet, or some other large corp, are working on a new project that will take 3 years and employ 100 people. But the budget can only support 60 people over 2 years.
Companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and IBM have tech employees all over the world. It looks like Google has development in Brazil, Switzerland, and China; I'd guess they also have labs in India. In my experience, these companies hire you close to where people want to work and where they can get a visa. If they want you and they can't get you an H1-B visa, they'll hire you in Europe or Asia instead.
I've seen projects work when off-shored as well as fail miserably. The reason they usually fail miserably is managing the time-space problem. Lots of managers do the MBWA thing--management by walking around--which doesn't work very well in these situations.
True. But the result of keeping foreign workers out of the US won't be that US companies will hire US workers at higher salaries to be close to US management, it will be that management itself moves to foreign countries. That happens either by the US company creating foreign subsidiaries to take advantage over lower labor costs, or by foreign companies out-competing US companies, like what we have seen with consumer electronics and many other industries.
The problem is you will never be able to work for as little as someone in India. Even if you are willing to give you first world standards of living, the cost of living the developing world life is lower there.
And the cost of living is so high because government makes it that high: minimum wage, insurance requirements, zoning laws, building codes, etc.
Many people in many countries don't want that crap, so their cost of living is lower and they end up working cheaper. Welcome to the real world. You ignore it at your own peril.
It's a business decision that is only allowed because of bribing congress.
Congress can kill immigration if it likes to, that's one of its delegated powers. However, there are two other business decisions it can't disallow: a company can move its operations overseas, or a company can simply close shop and its owners can invest their money in something more profitable. Either way, the jobs are gone too.
What should be done instead is to create legislation mandating that the unemployment rate for the industry being hired for is below a set level before they can import workers on the H1-B program, *and* they have to pay the prevailing wage.
That is effectively the law. The need and prevailing wage certifications are made by the US Department of Labor:
What we're talking about, is that the jobs us Americans are working, for $75,000 would pay over $100,000. Except rather than pay what the market demands, the companies import workers on H1B visas.
The market doesn't care whether the people willing to do the job for $75000 are Americans or Indians. If Indians can't come to the US to do these jobs, the usual result isn't that Americans get the jobs for $100000, it's that the jobs go overseas one way or another: via foreign subsidiaries, inversions, or foreign competition. And even if the jobs stayed in the US and salaries were raised, it would simply mean that prices would adjust accordingly in the US.
Attempts to keep salaries high through government mandates and restrictions like this are the cause of US job losses, loss of US competitiveness, increasing inequality, and middle class income stagnation.
All laws passed should be inflation adjusted, if so, then it would already be $110K
H1-B salary requirements are actually based on "prevailing wage", as determined every year by the Office of Foreign Labor Certification. http://www.foreignlaborcert.do... That means that they are not just keeping up with inflation, they are actually keeping up with above average salary increases in each area of employment.
If the speculation that companies above abuse H1B visas by importing low-wage earners is true, then the $110k wage limit would eliminate those visa uses.
And what do you think is going to happen next? One of three things:
(1) US labor costs go up and US companies raise prices on US consumers.
(2) US labor costs go up and US companies move jobs overseas to stay competitive.
(3) US labor costs go up and US companies lose business and jobs to overseas companies.
In other words, he is kind of a prioneer in open source and spent quite a bit of time thinking through the implications of open sourcing.
You can say the same about Stallman, but that doesn't mean I take Stallman's beliefs as gospel truth, and neither should you do that with Perens.
He is discussing how we should approach the problem to make the community most efficient and how licensing models for hardware can achieve the properties that we want in open hardware.
There is no more a single "best" licensing model for hardware than there is for software. And approaching licensing issues from the point of view of "what the community wants" or how "we should approach" it is deluded. Licenses are decided by the people developing new technologies, whether software or hardware, and the only thing that determines a license is whether the creator of that technology believes that license to be in line with his goals and interests, whatever they may be (profit, altruism, whatever).
It seems like another lightweight Ubuntu variant. Doesn't Xubuntu have that area covered adequately? I mean, if people have fun doing this, good for them, but from the point of view of Ubuntu distributions, it just seems a bit redundant.
Kinda makes me wonder about that initial founding block of bitcoins that has never been used, and if this person has necessary information to actually access that block, what the legal issues for that would be for both him and for that initial unused block.
What possible legal justification would the Australian government have to force someone to release information about someone else's legal private property?
They ARE behaving exactly like every other large corp because... WE AREN'T GOING TO DO ANYTHING HARMFUL TO THEM. [...] ongress isn't going to do shit, else a few of the C-level people in VW will just out them on a few of their cocaine binge parties
Sorry to rain in on your rant, but VW is a German company. A significant part of it is state-owned, and like many big German companies, it is effectively run cooperatively by management (a lot of them skilled engineers; its CEO had a Ph.D. in physics), workers, and government representatives.
If you want action, stop voting for democrats and republics.
You're a fool if you think that voting for the right people and government "action" will fix this. Shit like this will happen no matter who you vote for. The more you delude yourself into thinking that just electing the right, strong leader will fix this, the more you place democracy and freedom at risk.
Free speech and free flow of information does more good than harm.
I think that's true, but it's the wrong argument to make. We don't value free speech because it's useful or reduces harm, but because it is a basic human right that government has no business interfering with.
If you stop people like Trump and Cruz from solving the problem in their lousy but not all together bad for you and I way, you will get Hilliary, Jeb, or Marco doing something that will be a whole lot more shitty.
There is nothing these people can do to stop terrorism. They are simply lying to you in order to get elected.
There is no irony. He is simply making the correct point that there is an inherent conflict between liberty and safety, and that he is choosing liberty. And it's the same with guns.
And the reason for that choice is simple: in order to gain any kind of meaningful improvement in terms of safety from restricting freedom of speech or gun rights, you have to essentially turn the nation into a totalitarian state. The Trumps and Obamas of this world, who pretend that they can make you safer by just restricting liberties a little bit in a way you won't notice or mind, are either ignorant or liars.
There is something to be said for some regulation, however. This is from having seen the unregulated "Black Taxis" of South Africa...
Those aren't really "taxis" but minibuses, like you find in many third world nations. And the problem isn't with lack of regulation, it's with lack of enforcement of criminal law (or alternative private mechanisms).
It's also hard to say whether the current situation is worse than the original situation. After all, large numbers of people are transported by the current system, and relatively cheaply. A state-granted monopoly would be more orderly and safer, but would likely serve the people much less well.
This is as much a part of the 'if they can't enforce laws against you then screw them' economy as Uber and Lyft are.
Which is why we shouldn't be passing unenforceable laws in the first place. If we didn't have the taxi monopolies and the laws supporting them, Uber and Lyft wouldn't be such a big deal because we would already have large numbers of small companies. But by passing first the monopolistic taxi laws and then passing more laws to try and regulate Uber and Lyft, you're pretty much ensuring that only big companies with deep pockets and lots of lawyers can remain in the market.
It was said back in the 80's that the United States would become more like the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union would become more like the United States.
The breakup of the East Bloc has led to an outpouring of academics and migrants who bring the bad ideas of those regimes with them to the West. In addition, a lot of the younger generations in Central Europe don't remember how bad socialism and fascism actually were, and are now reverting to the older political ideas common to their cultures. Likewise, US academics, politicians, and journalists often never really understood what European totalitarianism was all about, they simply knew it was pointing rockets at the US and rattling sabers; their support for liberty was rooted in nationalism, not principle.
Slashdot Mirror
False. E.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Take this quote:
Now, does that sound like a libertarian or free market advocate to you, or does it sound more like a US-style "liberal"? According to Toland, the quote is from a 1927 Hitler speech (there are plenty of other statements to that effect from leading fascists). Fascism is simply an extreme form of progressivism, and "government intervention in business for the benefit of society" is one of the hallmarks of fascism.
And Hillary Clinton claims to be a liberal, and Bernie Sanders claims to be a socialist, and they are neither. Does it surprise you that politicians aren't actually what they say they are?
Some libertarians consider Cruz to be the least bad of the handful of plausible presidential candidates, but that doesn't make him a "libertarian". Between Obama, Clinton, and McCain, Obama was the "least bad" from a libertarian point of view (given his statements on civil liberties and foreign interventions), but nobody confused him with a libertarian either.
I don't know where this "$60k" figure is coming from. H1-Bs need to be paid at least prevailing wage for the occupation. That number is determined by a government labor certification, and the number is adjusted annually based on actual labor market conditions.
That's bullshit. H1-B jobs go through a DOL labor certification.
You don't need to negotiate health insurance with your employer if you don't want to; you can pay for it yourself, like you do in many other countries. However, many employers have negotiated group rates and there are tax advantages, which makes employment-based health insurance attractive for Americans. It's something that started because employers wanted to be more attractive to employees, and it got cemented into place with lots of special interest tax legislation.
If you think, though, that this is a case of "the US vs the rest of the world", you really don't know much about the rest of the world. There is a wide variety of systems by which people pay for health care.
You must have missed all the brouhaha over "corporate inversions". That's what "moving overseas" means: moving your headquarters there. Obviously, companies don't just drop all US sales and offices when they do that.
More importantly, though, a lot of companies don't move overseas because they don't know how to; instead, they just go out of business. That's what happened with a lot of consumer electronics, computers, and appliances.
Companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and IBM have tech employees all over the world. It looks like Google has development in Brazil, Switzerland, and China; I'd guess they also have labs in India. In my experience, these companies hire you close to where people want to work and where they can get a visa. If they want you and they can't get you an H1-B visa, they'll hire you in Europe or Asia instead.
True. But the result of keeping foreign workers out of the US won't be that US companies will hire US workers at higher salaries to be close to US management, it will be that management itself moves to foreign countries. That happens either by the US company creating foreign subsidiaries to take advantage over lower labor costs, or by foreign companies out-competing US companies, like what we have seen with consumer electronics and many other industries.
And the cost of living is so high because government makes it that high: minimum wage, insurance requirements, zoning laws, building codes, etc.
Many people in many countries don't want that crap, so their cost of living is lower and they end up working cheaper. Welcome to the real world. You ignore it at your own peril.
Congress can kill immigration if it likes to, that's one of its delegated powers. However, there are two other business decisions it can't disallow: a company can move its operations overseas, or a company can simply close shop and its owners can invest their money in something more profitable. Either way, the jobs are gone too.
That is effectively the law. The need and prevailing wage certifications are made by the US Department of Labor:
http://www.foreignlaborcert.do...
The market doesn't care whether the people willing to do the job for $75000 are Americans or Indians. If Indians can't come to the US to do these jobs, the usual result isn't that Americans get the jobs for $100000, it's that the jobs go overseas one way or another: via foreign subsidiaries, inversions, or foreign competition. And even if the jobs stayed in the US and salaries were raised, it would simply mean that prices would adjust accordingly in the US.
Attempts to keep salaries high through government mandates and restrictions like this are the cause of US job losses, loss of US competitiveness, increasing inequality, and middle class income stagnation.
H1-B salary requirements are actually based on "prevailing wage", as determined every year by the Office of Foreign Labor Certification. http://www.foreignlaborcert.do... That means that they are not just keeping up with inflation, they are actually keeping up with above average salary increases in each area of employment.
And what do you think is going to happen next? One of three things:
(1) US labor costs go up and US companies raise prices on US consumers.
(2) US labor costs go up and US companies move jobs overseas to stay competitive.
(3) US labor costs go up and US companies lose business and jobs to overseas companies.
Brilliant plan!
I was just saying: what my computer really needs is more proprietary connectors! Thanks, Lenovo!
You can say the same about Stallman, but that doesn't mean I take Stallman's beliefs as gospel truth, and neither should you do that with Perens.
There is no more a single "best" licensing model for hardware than there is for software. And approaching licensing issues from the point of view of "what the community wants" or how "we should approach" it is deluded. Licenses are decided by the people developing new technologies, whether software or hardware, and the only thing that determines a license is whether the creator of that technology believes that license to be in line with his goals and interests, whatever they may be (profit, altruism, whatever).
It seems like another lightweight Ubuntu variant. Doesn't Xubuntu have that area covered adequately? I mean, if people have fun doing this, good for them, but from the point of view of Ubuntu distributions, it just seems a bit redundant.
What possible legal justification would the Australian government have to force someone to release information about someone else's legal private property?
Sorry to rain in on your rant, but VW is a German company. A significant part of it is state-owned, and like many big German companies, it is effectively run cooperatively by management (a lot of them skilled engineers; its CEO had a Ph.D. in physics), workers, and government representatives.
You're a fool if you think that voting for the right people and government "action" will fix this. Shit like this will happen no matter who you vote for. The more you delude yourself into thinking that just electing the right, strong leader will fix this, the more you place democracy and freedom at risk.
I think that's true, but it's the wrong argument to make. We don't value free speech because it's useful or reduces harm, but because it is a basic human right that government has no business interfering with.
But the result would be even more Islamic terrorism.
The only way to reduce this problem as far as the US is concerned is for the US to disengage. The Middle East isn't, and shouldn't be, our problem.
There is nothing these people can do to stop terrorism. They are simply lying to you in order to get elected.
There is no irony. He is simply making the correct point that there is an inherent conflict between liberty and safety, and that he is choosing liberty. And it's the same with guns.
And the reason for that choice is simple: in order to gain any kind of meaningful improvement in terms of safety from restricting freedom of speech or gun rights, you have to essentially turn the nation into a totalitarian state. The Trumps and Obamas of this world, who pretend that they can make you safer by just restricting liberties a little bit in a way you won't notice or mind, are either ignorant or liars.
Those aren't really "taxis" but minibuses, like you find in many third world nations. And the problem isn't with lack of regulation, it's with lack of enforcement of criminal law (or alternative private mechanisms).
It's also hard to say whether the current situation is worse than the original situation. After all, large numbers of people are transported by the current system, and relatively cheaply. A state-granted monopoly would be more orderly and safer, but would likely serve the people much less well.
Which is why we shouldn't be passing unenforceable laws in the first place. If we didn't have the taxi monopolies and the laws supporting them, Uber and Lyft wouldn't be such a big deal because we would already have large numbers of small companies. But by passing first the monopolistic taxi laws and then passing more laws to try and regulate Uber and Lyft, you're pretty much ensuring that only big companies with deep pockets and lots of lawyers can remain in the market.
The breakup of the East Bloc has led to an outpouring of academics and migrants who bring the bad ideas of those regimes with them to the West. In addition, a lot of the younger generations in Central Europe don't remember how bad socialism and fascism actually were, and are now reverting to the older political ideas common to their cultures. Likewise, US academics, politicians, and journalists often never really understood what European totalitarianism was all about, they simply knew it was pointing rockets at the US and rattling sabers; their support for liberty was rooted in nationalism, not principle.