Tech startups need capital, and reinvesting the profits they make is an easy way of getting that. If they pay out their profits as dividends and then raise more capital by issuing more shares, they pay a premium for that capital and take a risk as well. Paying dividends also screws shareholders because dividends are taxable immediately, while the capital gains from reinvestment only are taxed when the shares are sold.
Or, you know, sensible gun legislation could be in place like in Canada, the UK, Japan, Scandanavian countries, France, etc. and mass shootings would be aberrations instead of weekly occurrences.
Mass shootings are frequent occurrences in the US because the US is big. Amazing, huh? Norway has about 1/60th the population of the US, so mass shootings should happen at 1/60th the rate.
If you look at death rates from mass shootings, the US is at number 11 behind countries like Norway, France, Switzerland, Finland, and Belgium.
But still more than other developed countries by a lot. I mean a WHOLE lot.
Yes: primarily suicides, followed by black-on-black violence. If you look at the rest of the population, intentional homicides are less common than in many European countries.
And mass shootings in the US are at an all-time high.
So is US population. So what? You would expect mass shootings to go up over time, all things being equal.
In addition, the MoJo data suffers from biased sampling and is not properly controlled.
No matter how you cut it, we are one violent and fucked up culture that loves guns.
The rate of mass shootings in the US is lower than in many European countries.
The gun-related suicide rate in the US is certainly higher because guns are available, and that is as it should be: the state has no business preventing me from committing suicide with a gun. And the causes for the high homicide rate are unrelated to the high availability of guns, since some of the populations with the highest legal gun ownership rates in the US happen to have the lowest homicide rates.
Compared to the rest of the developed world, gun violence in the USA is still at appalling levels.
Gun violence in the US is a problem of a small subculture. If you're not part of that subculture, gun violence in the US is lower than in many European nations.
No, it's down in many countries. Of course, by the kind of pretzel logic people like you employ, when gun violence falls in Australia, it's due to gun control, while when it falls in the US, it's because of lack of gun control. Or something.
Let me put it this way: You might have cut off the crusts, but you're still eating a shit sandwich.
The "shit sandwich" metaphor refers to the kind of lousy service governments that progressive governments give people, the same governments that tend to try to impose gun control. So, sorry, that metaphor doesn't work here.
It actually makes sense not to have such an emoji, because it creates a dilemma whether someone using such an emoji in a message is making a threat, and whether the company, becoming aware of such a threat, has a duty to do something about it.
So is Apple going to filter out all mentions of the words "rifle", "gun", or "pistol" as well?
Humans will never drive, the speed would make them go insane! Humans can't every fly! Humans can't go into space! The world just needs a handful of computers!
Human group behavior often appears as something simple, especially when it isn't. In business, this often produces an effect whereby everyone in a business has honest, benevolent intentions, and manages to build a shambling, evil empire; actual malicious intent and selfish greed are rare events, but common outcomes.
You make it sound as if this is somehow a feature of big, complex organizations. But good intentions frequently yield disastrous outcomes even at the individual level. Ultimately, it isn't people's intentions that matter, it's actual outcomes.
As for Coursera, their "good intentions" may simply be running into financial reality: the MOOC space is crowded, there is a lot of good free content, and big name universities are not necessarily at an advantage here. Good intentions don't come to fruition if the people with the good intentions can't figure out how to pay for them.
You can download the free Coursera courses and host them yourself. You can probably upload them to YouTube as well if the copyright permits it.
The idea that Coursera has been an "enthusiastic pioneer" also strikes me as silly. MIT OpenCourseWare started in 2001 and Khan Academy in 2006, and even those were far from the first efforts. There have been tons of lectures on iTunes as well. Coursera has been a relatively late effort by Stanford to get into the game using its Silicon Valley connections. Good for them that they succeeded, but they are not "pioneers".
Look, you stated, without evidence, your beliefs that "Human development has a inverse correlation with violence. Most parts of the world are developing, hence prosperity is up, violence is down. Most parts of the world are developing, hence prosperity is up, violence is down." and that "Gun violence is merely a multiplier of violence so most intelligent places limit the power this has on society.".
We're not having an argument over that; your beliefs are simply false. I'm just giving you some simple, easy to understand observations that might convince you of that. But if you stubbornly and without any basis in reality want to believe something incorrect, be my guest.
but a good idea doesn't need to be forced on anybody [...] If you think using force on somebody who disagrees with your ideas can be justified, then you are, in my book, not a progressive -- you are a despot
I don't see how you can say that. The very essence of progressivism is about government forcing people to live in high density housing, use public transportation, use green energy, recycle, emit less carbon, pay for higher education, pay certain wages, not own guns, work in certain jobs, use in particular forms of housing and family units, etc. That is, progressivism is about using political means and government force for achieving progress. And you are right: that is ultimately despotic, although modern progressives try to get by with more nudging and less guns.
If you believe that a "good idea doesn't need to be forced on anybody", then you are a classical liberal (US: libertarian). Libertarians love progress; it's because we love progress that we oppose progressivism.
That might be the case where you are, but many countries have functioning taxi industries which are not monopolised, provide good service, and are safe.
Not in my experience. And, in any case, you leave out one important factor: price. Taxi monopolies may well serve the interests of the well off who can afford to take the government licensed operators, but that doesn't mean that they are good for society.
I guess someone pretending to be a doctor and selling Draino as a health tonic is just engaging in "voluntary exchanges of goods and services" and should be left alone...
That person would be guilty of criminal fraud even in the complete absence of medical licensing.
What you should be more worried about is the hundreds of thousands of people in the US alone that are killed by licensed doctors every year. It's just as bad, if not worse, in the UK. And medical licensing is in large part responsible for the absence of effective control mechanisms for preventing this.
Human development has a inverse correlation with violence. Most parts of the world are developing, hence prosperity is up, violence is down. Most parts of the world are developing, hence prosperity is up, violence is down.
That would predict an upturn of violence during recessions, but that's not happening, either in this recession or others. In fact, there simply is no significant relationship between wealth/development and gun violence among first world nations.
Gun violence is merely a multiplier of violence so most intelligent places limit the power this has on society.
There is also no significant relationship between gun control and homicide rates among first world nations either, or in the US at state level, or over time after the introduction of gun control. Passing legislation based on knee jerk responses without solid facts to back it up is not "intelligent".
The US is the weird exception because 'freedom' seems to be more important than quality of life.
Yes, US quality of life is so low that absolutely nobody from those "intelligent places" ever wants to emigrate here. Never ever. Oh no.
And, yes, the view "Give me liberty, or give me death!" was prevalent during the US revolution. Maybe that has something to do with why the US muddled through the 20th century while Europe was torn between imperialism, colonialism, fascism and communism and committing genocide. And, yes, it wasn't just the Germans.
Roddenberry's Federation-dominated universe that he created in middle of the 20th century was just an extension of America's manifest destiny campaign a century earlier. [...] That Utopia only works if you think your version of law and order is the only right one, and that you are therefore justified in imposing it on people if they think differently than you do.
So, you agree then that Roddenberry was a technocrat and a progressive.
If those added up to the jobs being lost then they wouldn't be doing it because it would cost more, not less.
Well, for the past century, they have "added up" in just that way, so your analysis is obviously wrong. I have given you some hints as to why it is wrong, you'll have to figure out the rest for yourself.
No it isn't. I know the difference between physics and economics, thank you very much.
I'm sure you're just as brilliant at physics as you are at economics.
If we're looking for radical changes in the way we live, does technology have a role? Is the answer smart gun technology? Mandatory metal detectors at night clubs? Better data analysis algorithms for the federal government? Bulletproof fabrics?
We have had a massive decline in gun violence, both in the US and abroad, and nobody really knows what the cause of the decline is. It isn't gun control or getting tough on criminals.
Furthermore, in the US, probably the single factor that sticks out most with respect to gun violence is "race": after all, despite the US's higher murder rate overall, as a "white" American, you are no more likely to get murdered than the people of Iceland, France, Denmark, New Zealand, the UK, Norway, Canada, Belgium, Israel, and Finland. But "race" (in the weird US sense) obviously doesn't cause violence per se; it must be a marker that correlates with something else.
So, given that we don't really understand what causes gun violence, and that it has been massively decreasing for poorly understood reasons, it's hard to come up with a technological solution.
Of course there is. If it wasn't the case, they wouldn't be doing it because it wouldn't cost less.
Automation drives down costs and prices, which increases demand, so even the manufacturers themselves may well be employing more people after automation than before. That has happened again and again with automated manufacturing in anything from cars to cell phones. In addition, automation is often used simply to improve quality, so even if output doesn't increase, it doesn't follow that workers are let go. So even looking at individual manufacturers, your reasoning doesn't work.
Of course, it is wrong to look at individual manufacturers anyway and assume that changes in their employment translate into overall joblessness. Automation creates many jobs in other companies, like the companies that supply the automation equipment, that program it, and that perform training and maintenance, plus all their suppliers. In addition, by lowering the prices of products, consumers now have more money to spend on other products and services, creating jobs there.
Your reasoning about the economy is as faulty as is the reasoning people employ for perpetual motion machines: you focus on a single step, but neglect the other interactions that happen.
But the article raises an interesting question. Is he responsible for the pain which his robot inflicts?
Yes, just like he would be responsible if he let loose a scorpion in Berkeley, or, for that matter, his child. The threshold for legal and moral responsibility are self-awareness, cognition, an understanding of morality, and free will. Anybody impaired in any of those areas generally has a guardian who makes decisions on their behalf and bears legal and moral responsibility for keeping their ward from harming others.
What is the fascination with Uber by Slashdot and other tech sites?
The fascination is that a simple web-based communications platform has gotten sucked into a black hole of government regulation, in large part because powerful lobbies want it so and reframe what Uber is doing as some kind of system of corporate enslavement.
And you better pay attention, because what's happening with Uber might well happen with many other web based platforms and voluntary exchanges of goods and services.
Uber is a company that matches drivers with riders. The idea that consenting adults can't give each other rides for money without government permission, or one or the other person becoming an "employee", is absolutely ludicrous.
Strawman argument. Nobody is suggesting that. [...] If they automate everything, there isn't a something else to move to.
That's exactly what you are suggesting: if you look at pre-industrial society, we already have "automated everything"; almost everything people were doing back then has been automated. Did "automating everything" cause less employment? Not at all. Furthermore, even if every human need were met by automated machines, obviously you wouldn't have to have a job anymore.
But, in any case, whatever automation may or may not do, there is no justification for making any political decisions based on it ahead of time. Automation is an unconditionally good thing. So people should stop worrying about it, and they should stop trying to use it as an excuse for more crony capitalist programs.
Massive collection of data by government is a necessary part of implementing financial regulation, health care regulation, environmental regulations, gun control, employment regulation, public education, and civil rights legislation. That is, federal and state governments cannot accomplish their goals of detecting fraud and inefficiencies, without detailed data on the health, drugs, purchases, sales, salaries, and education of every American. And, of course, the IRS, DEA, and other agencies are going to get access to it: it's their job to find fraud and abuse in the system. What rubs people the wrong way about it is that they are now starting to realize that once that data has been collected and the three letter agencies get access to it, they themselves are potential suspects and may be identified for idiosyncratic reasons by some data mining algorithm. That's in addition to the other abuses that such data collection engenders: political blackmail, government corruption, and massive leaks of personal information.
The combination of the war on drugs, anti-terrorism legislation, the ACA and the massive increase of financial services regulations in recent years have fundamentally changed the US from a country where you were left alone unless you did something wrong, to a country where every aspect of your life is recorded and scrutinized by state and federal agencies. I think we need to reverse that.
Slashdot Mirror
Tech startups need capital, and reinvesting the profits they make is an easy way of getting that. If they pay out their profits as dividends and then raise more capital by issuing more shares, they pay a premium for that capital and take a risk as well. Paying dividends also screws shareholders because dividends are taxable immediately, while the capital gains from reinvestment only are taxed when the shares are sold.
Mass shootings are frequent occurrences in the US because the US is big. Amazing, huh? Norway has about 1/60th the population of the US, so mass shootings should happen at 1/60th the rate.
If you look at death rates from mass shootings, the US is at number 11 behind countries like Norway, France, Switzerland, Finland, and Belgium.
http://crimeresearch.org/2015/...
Gun control has never been shown to have any significant effect on either homicide rates or mass shootings.
Well, and whaddayaknow, they happen at a lower rate in the US than in many European countries.
Yes: primarily suicides, followed by black-on-black violence. If you look at the rest of the population, intentional homicides are less common than in many European countries.
So is US population. So what? You would expect mass shootings to go up over time, all things being equal.
In addition, the MoJo data suffers from biased sampling and is not properly controlled.
The rate of mass shootings in the US is lower than in many European countries.
The gun-related suicide rate in the US is certainly higher because guns are available, and that is as it should be: the state has no business preventing me from committing suicide with a gun. And the causes for the high homicide rate are unrelated to the high availability of guns, since some of the populations with the highest legal gun ownership rates in the US happen to have the lowest homicide rates.
Gun violence in the US is a problem of a small subculture. If you're not part of that subculture, gun violence in the US is lower than in many European nations.
No, it's down in many countries. Of course, by the kind of pretzel logic people like you employ, when gun violence falls in Australia, it's due to gun control, while when it falls in the US, it's because of lack of gun control. Or something.
The "shit sandwich" metaphor refers to the kind of lousy service governments that progressive governments give people, the same governments that tend to try to impose gun control. So, sorry, that metaphor doesn't work here.
So is Apple going to filter out all mentions of the words "rifle", "gun", or "pistol" as well?
Humans will never drive, the speed would make them go insane! Humans can't every fly! Humans can't go into space! The world just needs a handful of computers!
You make it sound as if this is somehow a feature of big, complex organizations. But good intentions frequently yield disastrous outcomes even at the individual level. Ultimately, it isn't people's intentions that matter, it's actual outcomes.
As for Coursera, their "good intentions" may simply be running into financial reality: the MOOC space is crowded, there is a lot of good free content, and big name universities are not necessarily at an advantage here. Good intentions don't come to fruition if the people with the good intentions can't figure out how to pay for them.
You can download the free Coursera courses and host them yourself. You can probably upload them to YouTube as well if the copyright permits it.
The idea that Coursera has been an "enthusiastic pioneer" also strikes me as silly. MIT OpenCourseWare started in 2001 and Khan Academy in 2006, and even those were far from the first efforts. There have been tons of lectures on iTunes as well. Coursera has been a relatively late effort by Stanford to get into the game using its Silicon Valley connections. Good for them that they succeeded, but they are not "pioneers".
Look, you stated, without evidence, your beliefs that "Human development has a inverse correlation with violence. Most parts of the world are developing, hence prosperity is up, violence is down. Most parts of the world are developing, hence prosperity is up, violence is down." and that "Gun violence is merely a multiplier of violence so most intelligent places limit the power this has on society.".
We're not having an argument over that; your beliefs are simply false. I'm just giving you some simple, easy to understand observations that might convince you of that. But if you stubbornly and without any basis in reality want to believe something incorrect, be my guest.
I don't see how you can say that. The very essence of progressivism is about government forcing people to live in high density housing, use public transportation, use green energy, recycle, emit less carbon, pay for higher education, pay certain wages, not own guns, work in certain jobs, use in particular forms of housing and family units, etc. That is, progressivism is about using political means and government force for achieving progress. And you are right: that is ultimately despotic, although modern progressives try to get by with more nudging and less guns.
If you believe that a "good idea doesn't need to be forced on anybody", then you are a classical liberal (US: libertarian). Libertarians love progress; it's because we love progress that we oppose progressivism.
Not in my experience. And, in any case, you leave out one important factor: price. Taxi monopolies may well serve the interests of the well off who can afford to take the government licensed operators, but that doesn't mean that they are good for society.
That person would be guilty of criminal fraud even in the complete absence of medical licensing.
What you should be more worried about is the hundreds of thousands of people in the US alone that are killed by licensed doctors every year. It's just as bad, if not worse, in the UK. And medical licensing is in large part responsible for the absence of effective control mechanisms for preventing this.
My point exactly. Which means that pretty much any policies intended to improve society are based on "pure guesswork", rather than sound science
That would predict an upturn of violence during recessions, but that's not happening, either in this recession or others. In fact, there simply is no significant relationship between wealth/development and gun violence among first world nations.
There is also no significant relationship between gun control and homicide rates among first world nations either, or in the US at state level, or over time after the introduction of gun control. Passing legislation based on knee jerk responses without solid facts to back it up is not "intelligent".
Yes, US quality of life is so low that absolutely nobody from those "intelligent places" ever wants to emigrate here. Never ever. Oh no.
And, yes, the view "Give me liberty, or give me death!" was prevalent during the US revolution. Maybe that has something to do with why the US muddled through the 20th century while Europe was torn between imperialism, colonialism, fascism and communism and committing genocide. And, yes, it wasn't just the Germans.
That's one theory people have advanced, but it's controversial and hard to prove conclusively.
So, you agree then that Roddenberry was a technocrat and a progressive.
Well, for the past century, they have "added up" in just that way, so your analysis is obviously wrong. I have given you some hints as to why it is wrong, you'll have to figure out the rest for yourself.
I'm sure you're just as brilliant at physics as you are at economics.
We have had a massive decline in gun violence, both in the US and abroad, and nobody really knows what the cause of the decline is. It isn't gun control or getting tough on criminals.
Furthermore, in the US, probably the single factor that sticks out most with respect to gun violence is "race": after all, despite the US's higher murder rate overall, as a "white" American, you are no more likely to get murdered than the people of Iceland, France, Denmark, New Zealand, the UK, Norway, Canada, Belgium, Israel, and Finland. But "race" (in the weird US sense) obviously doesn't cause violence per se; it must be a marker that correlates with something else.
So, given that we don't really understand what causes gun violence, and that it has been massively decreasing for poorly understood reasons, it's hard to come up with a technological solution.
Automation drives down costs and prices, which increases demand, so even the manufacturers themselves may well be employing more people after automation than before. That has happened again and again with automated manufacturing in anything from cars to cell phones. In addition, automation is often used simply to improve quality, so even if output doesn't increase, it doesn't follow that workers are let go. So even looking at individual manufacturers, your reasoning doesn't work.
Of course, it is wrong to look at individual manufacturers anyway and assume that changes in their employment translate into overall joblessness. Automation creates many jobs in other companies, like the companies that supply the automation equipment, that program it, and that perform training and maintenance, plus all their suppliers. In addition, by lowering the prices of products, consumers now have more money to spend on other products and services, creating jobs there.
Your reasoning about the economy is as faulty as is the reasoning people employ for perpetual motion machines: you focus on a single step, but neglect the other interactions that happen.
Yes, just like he would be responsible if he let loose a scorpion in Berkeley, or, for that matter, his child. The threshold for legal and moral responsibility are self-awareness, cognition, an understanding of morality, and free will. Anybody impaired in any of those areas generally has a guardian who makes decisions on their behalf and bears legal and moral responsibility for keeping their ward from harming others.
The fascination is that a simple web-based communications platform has gotten sucked into a black hole of government regulation, in large part because powerful lobbies want it so and reframe what Uber is doing as some kind of system of corporate enslavement.
And you better pay attention, because what's happening with Uber might well happen with many other web based platforms and voluntary exchanges of goods and services.
Uber is a company that matches drivers with riders. The idea that consenting adults can't give each other rides for money without government permission, or one or the other person becoming an "employee", is absolutely ludicrous.
That's exactly what you are suggesting: if you look at pre-industrial society, we already have "automated everything"; almost everything people were doing back then has been automated. Did "automating everything" cause less employment? Not at all. Furthermore, even if every human need were met by automated machines, obviously you wouldn't have to have a job anymore.
But, in any case, whatever automation may or may not do, there is no justification for making any political decisions based on it ahead of time. Automation is an unconditionally good thing. So people should stop worrying about it, and they should stop trying to use it as an excuse for more crony capitalist programs.
Massive collection of data by government is a necessary part of implementing financial regulation, health care regulation, environmental regulations, gun control, employment regulation, public education, and civil rights legislation. That is, federal and state governments cannot accomplish their goals of detecting fraud and inefficiencies, without detailed data on the health, drugs, purchases, sales, salaries, and education of every American. And, of course, the IRS, DEA, and other agencies are going to get access to it: it's their job to find fraud and abuse in the system. What rubs people the wrong way about it is that they are now starting to realize that once that data has been collected and the three letter agencies get access to it, they themselves are potential suspects and may be identified for idiosyncratic reasons by some data mining algorithm. That's in addition to the other abuses that such data collection engenders: political blackmail, government corruption, and massive leaks of personal information.
The combination of the war on drugs, anti-terrorism legislation, the ACA and the massive increase of financial services regulations in recent years have fundamentally changed the US from a country where you were left alone unless you did something wrong, to a country where every aspect of your life is recorded and scrutinized by state and federal agencies. I think we need to reverse that.