What you are trying to do is precisely that for people you disagree with under the guise of “free speech”. Absolutely pathetic, as is your assumption that I am a statist.
You implied that the state should have the ability to track all monetary transactions in the economy. How does that make you anything other than a statist and a totalitarian?
What you just said is you can't pick wealth for all, some have to be poor.
I'm talking about absolute levels of poverty. It is meaningless to talk about relative of poverty vis-a-vis inequality, because relative poverty means the same thing as inequality.
So, what I said is that if the US followed Europe's example and tried to reduce inequality, then Americans, both rich and poor, would be worse off. Conversely, by adopting policies that reduce inequality, European countries make their citizens, both rich and poor, economically poorer than if they didn't adopt such policies.
Specifically: adopting policies that reduce inequality makes poor people poorer in an absolute sense; it reduces their standard of living. Why is that a good thing to do?
Earning over $200k and the US is ranked 4th in the world. Earning over $10k and it's ranked 24th. By the way, Taiwan is 15th.
Yes, and if you're, say, a single mother and earn $0/year you still $20000 in disposable income in the US. That income is close to the median income for a single person in Germany. How about that?
The US is great if you are really wealthy, but if you are not then it's much much worse.
Having come to the US with nothing, that's not my experience. I'd rather be poor in the US than be poor anywhere in Europe.
French nobles did, indeed, exist in a zero-sum world: they enriched themselves by taking stuff from the poor.
We exist in a world that's closer to a free market; in a free market, people enrich themselves by providing value to society and lifting other people out of poverty.
An obsession with personal wealth is what causes inequality and poverty.
You're still making the incorrect implicit assumption that reducing inequality reduces poverty; that simply isn't true. Reducing inequality, in fact, increases poverty.
Northern European countries manage to provide everyone with a decent quality of life and relatively affluence, so that's demonstrably untrue.
People in Northern European countries have less economic inequality than Americans, and they also have less wealth. If people in Northern European countries were willing to accept higher levels of inequality, even their poor citizens would get wealthier.
So the question remains: why do Norther European countries want to keep their poor citizens poorer than they have to be?
You come from a place where non-conformity was demonimized and now you try to demonize those who disagree with you.
No, I come from a place where non-conformity was punished by the state. Using free speech to demonize reprehensible views is not merely OK, it is the purpose of free speech.
Also, adding someone as a “foe” has to be by far the most embarrassing thing I have seen
I don't consider you my "foe", but Slashdot doesn't give me the option of renaming the tag. I use the "foe" tag to label people who are ignorant statists; it helps me put your other postings in context.
"Facebook really is evil," writes Quartz reporter Nikhil Sonnad. "Not on purpose. In the banal kind of way. Underlying all of Facebook's screw-ups is a bumbling obliviousness to real humans..." An anonymous reader quotes Sonnad's essay:
Well, why we are on the subject of unsubstantiated, random accusations... My impression, on the other hand, is that Quartz is evil on purpose.
I saw what you did there. [False Dilemma] You know better.
No, it's not a "false dilemma", it's an economic fact, both observed numerous times in reality and well understood theoretically: if you want to help poor people, you need to accept increasing economic inequality. On the other hand, if you adopt policies that decrease inequality, everybody ends up worse off; in particular, you make poor people worse off,
it is quite easy to have comfortable wealth and equality
Nowhere did I say that you couldn't. You can make various tradeoffs between wealth and equality, and Europe has chosen to impoverish its citizens somewhat more in return for somewhat less inequality. But the fact remains: if you want to help the poorest members of society, you can only do that by increasing economic inequality.
So, the question you haven't answered is why you think it is a good idea to impoverish poor people further in order to reduce income inequality.
e.g. check Europe, especially Scandinavia, or Japan, Korea, and now emerging China.
I "checked Europe" for several decades, having emigrated from there.
His point was that 3 "Banana Republics" had more equally distributed wealth than what is ostensibly the Greatest Nation on Earth.
Yes, and his point is correct: wealth inevitably produces inequality. A society has a choice between lifting everybody out of poverty but accepting inequality (US) or keeping everybody in abject poverty but with equality (socialist states). What socialists promise is that they can deliver US-style wealth with Venezula-style equality and that is an impossibility; some socialists deliberately lie about this, most are just ignorant fools. Bernie is in the latter category.
he's got to be careful how he says things least people take quotes out of context to smear him.
People don't need to take him out of context to smear him: he is a run-of-the-mill socialist peddling run-of-the-mill socialist delusions and false promises.
no, the web "full stack" is needlessly complicated...provably so by the security flaws and bad design of the standard components.
The "full stack" functionality comprises distributed systems programming, asynchronous programming, relational databases, transactional processing, network security, user interfaces, error recovery, and whole host of other pieces. Saying that the tools we have are "needlessly complicated" (and we have tons of tools to choose from), and without even any ideas about how to improve them, really is just a testament to your ignorance, an example of Dunning Kruger.
Jonathan Edwards has been practicing brain surgery since 1969. "Brain surgery today," he writes, "is exactly what you'd expect to get by paying an isolated subculture of nerdy young men to entertain themselves for fifty years. "It is long past time to return to designing surgical tools not just for rock stars at the Mayo Clinic but the vast majority of doctors and laypeople with simple small-scale brain problems,"
Added as foe and rambling about totalitarianism. Isn’t that cute. What are you five or something?
No, I'm actually an older immigrant who experienced the kind of totalitarianism you advocate first hand.
And, though you may have missed it, I already had added you as a foe; people like you should be ostracized and told in no uncertain terms that your views are unacceptable in a free society.
High speed internet isn't "causing sleep deprivation". High speed internet doesn't force people to stay away or pour cold water on them in the middle of the night.
It is the choice of people to use high speed internet late at night is that causes sleep deprivation.
Verizon similarly charges $65 a month for 100Mbps fiber service (including a $10 router charge), and $63 or $64 a month for DSL service that provides download speeds between 1.5Mbps and 15Mbps, the white paper says
So? Why do you assume that Internet access prices should be somehow related to rate? There are plenty of good reasons why Internet access through DSL might actually be more expensive than fiber access.
So no bicycle paths, no stadiums, no libraries, just rich people inside expensive cars.
To the degree that infrastructure and education should be financed by government (and some of it should), it is not "communism" to provide these things, it is local politics and local taxes. That is, municipalities should spend scarce resources on clearly necessary infrastructure and services, not the kinds of gimmicks for the wealthy you demand.
And useless gimmicks for wealthy people is what you advocate. The rest of us are better off without having our money wasted on such boondoggles, driving our regular cars (and regular bicycles) on regular roads, paying for our entertainment out of our own pockets, and getting books on the Internet for free on our E-readers.
I am almost sure you did not read "Les Misérables" by Victor Hugo. I mean the orginal text in French.
Ah, I see your problem: you confuse 19th century French literature with a meaningful economic and political analysis of 21st century America.
And I'm sorry that French must have been such a struggle for you that you actually think it's worth mentioning what languages you read books in. For multilingual folks like myself, what language one reads a book in simply doesn't even register.
You are right, the implementation of "communism" in Eastern Europe with the hostile surrounding environment was a failure.
"Communism failed because capitalism didn't subsidize it enough." You people would be funny if you weren't so f*cking eil.
Building a library with free access for poor people, or cycling paths in a city, so that people can use bicycle for free, or community stadiums, etc. are also elements of what could be called a practical communism for the lack of a better word.
Those things also tend to be corrupt boondoggles and wastes of taxpayer money. So, yes, excellent examples of "practical communism".
There is a difference between what a perpetual motion machine is and its ultimate goals, and the half baked shit that's been called a perpetual motion machine in the past
There, fixed that for you.
Socialism is always, ever only going to be "half baked shit". Your pipe dream of "real socialism" is incompatible with reality and reason.
But "worthless fucking idiots like you" just don't understand such simple basic facts about the real world.
The first problem is, you don't understand (pure) socialism. Everyone is part owner of all resources, and means of production, and everyone's needs are met. The ultimate government form goal for socialism is self-management; one where there is no central government.
You're hiding behind weasel words like "self-management". Socialism, like capitalism, has a power structure and hierarchy; it's inevitable, it's the only way complex organizations can function. Every socialist state that has ever existed has had such a power structure. Every utopian commune has had such a power structure.
The difference between socialism and free market capitalism is that, under socialism, you get into power through corruption and nepotism, while under free market capitalism you get into power by making stuff that other people actually want to buy voluntarily. And that's why socialist states inevitable fail.
It's not an example of the free market at all, it's an example of the social welfare state at work.
Companies like Amazon are forced by law to for all sort of accident and disability benefits and government programs that are supposed to take care of workers when they are injured on the job. Why should Amazon on top of all that still provide private benefits?
If you get injured on the job in Washington State or California, go to the state government for help, they collect enough money ostensibly for helping you if something should happen. If you don't like what you get from your state government, complain to them.
It's not only banks/financial institutions, but also governments that like cashless societies, because it gives them better surveillance and more control.
The good thing is: they'll likely overplay their hand and lose control: if governments get rid of cash, people will find alternative payment means completely outside the control of banks and governments. Bitcoin didn't quite get it right technically, but systems like that will catch on.
ADHD Drugs Aren't Doing What You Think, Scientists Warn
I think that feeding psychoactive drugs to boys because their teachers don't know how to raise boys and are boring and dumb is going to produce adults that are angry, poorly educated, and anti-social. And what I "think" these drugs do seems to be exactly what they are doing.
Slashdot Mirror
You implied that the state should have the ability to track all monetary transactions in the economy. How does that make you anything other than a statist and a totalitarian?
I'm talking about absolute levels of poverty. It is meaningless to talk about relative of poverty vis-a-vis inequality, because relative poverty means the same thing as inequality.
So, what I said is that if the US followed Europe's example and tried to reduce inequality, then Americans, both rich and poor, would be worse off. Conversely, by adopting policies that reduce inequality, European countries make their citizens, both rich and poor, economically poorer than if they didn't adopt such policies.
Specifically: adopting policies that reduce inequality makes poor people poorer in an absolute sense; it reduces their standard of living. Why is that a good thing to do?
Yes, and if you're, say, a single mother and earn $0/year you still $20000 in disposable income in the US. That income is close to the median income for a single person in Germany. How about that?
Having come to the US with nothing, that's not my experience. I'd rather be poor in the US than be poor anywhere in Europe.
French nobles did, indeed, exist in a zero-sum world: they enriched themselves by taking stuff from the poor.
We exist in a world that's closer to a free market; in a free market, people enrich themselves by providing value to society and lifting other people out of poverty.
You're still making the incorrect implicit assumption that reducing inequality reduces poverty; that simply isn't true. Reducing inequality, in fact, increases poverty.
People in Northern European countries have less economic inequality than Americans, and they also have less wealth. If people in Northern European countries were willing to accept higher levels of inequality, even their poor citizens would get wealthier.
So the question remains: why do Norther European countries want to keep their poor citizens poorer than they have to be?
No, I come from a place where non-conformity was punished by the state. Using free speech to demonize reprehensible views is not merely OK, it is the purpose of free speech.
I don't consider you my "foe", but Slashdot doesn't give me the option of renaming the tag. I use the "foe" tag to label people who are ignorant statists; it helps me put your other postings in context.
Well, why we are on the subject of unsubstantiated, random accusations... My impression, on the other hand, is that Quartz is evil on purpose.
No, it's not a "false dilemma", it's an economic fact, both observed numerous times in reality and well understood theoretically: if you want to help poor people, you need to accept increasing economic inequality. On the other hand, if you adopt policies that decrease inequality, everybody ends up worse off; in particular, you make poor people worse off,
Nowhere did I say that you couldn't. You can make various tradeoffs between wealth and equality, and Europe has chosen to impoverish its citizens somewhat more in return for somewhat less inequality. But the fact remains: if you want to help the poorest members of society, you can only do that by increasing economic inequality.
So, the question you haven't answered is why you think it is a good idea to impoverish poor people further in order to reduce income inequality.
I "checked Europe" for several decades, having emigrated from there.
So, in context, you're saying that the "American dream" is equal levels of poverty for all? Because that's what Sanders is promising in context.
You get your pick: wealth for all or equality for all. You cannot have wealth and equality for all: it's a logical impossibility.
Yes, and his point is correct: wealth inevitably produces inequality. A society has a choice between lifting everybody out of poverty but accepting inequality (US) or keeping everybody in abject poverty but with equality (socialist states). What socialists promise is that they can deliver US-style wealth with Venezula-style equality and that is an impossibility; some socialists deliberately lie about this, most are just ignorant fools. Bernie is in the latter category.
People don't need to take him out of context to smear him: he is a run-of-the-mill socialist peddling run-of-the-mill socialist delusions and false promises.
The "full stack" functionality comprises distributed systems programming, asynchronous programming, relational databases, transactional processing, network security, user interfaces, error recovery, and whole host of other pieces. Saying that the tools we have are "needlessly complicated" (and we have tons of tools to choose from), and without even any ideas about how to improve them, really is just a testament to your ignorance, an example of Dunning Kruger.
There, fixed that for you.
No, I'm actually an older immigrant who experienced the kind of totalitarianism you advocate first hand.
And, though you may have missed it, I already had added you as a foe; people like you should be ostracized and told in no uncertain terms that your views are unacceptable in a free society.
High speed internet isn't "causing sleep deprivation". High speed internet doesn't force people to stay away or pour cold water on them in the middle of the night.
It is the choice of people to use high speed internet late at night is that causes sleep deprivation.
So? Why do you assume that Internet access prices should be somehow related to rate? There are plenty of good reasons why Internet access through DSL might actually be more expensive than fiber access.
To the degree that infrastructure and education should be financed by government (and some of it should), it is not "communism" to provide these things, it is local politics and local taxes. That is, municipalities should spend scarce resources on clearly necessary infrastructure and services, not the kinds of gimmicks for the wealthy you demand.
And useless gimmicks for wealthy people is what you advocate. The rest of us are better off without having our money wasted on such boondoggles, driving our regular cars (and regular bicycles) on regular roads, paying for our entertainment out of our own pockets, and getting books on the Internet for free on our E-readers.
Ah, I see your problem: you confuse 19th century French literature with a meaningful economic and political analysis of 21st century America.
And I'm sorry that French must have been such a struggle for you that you actually think it's worth mentioning what languages you read books in. For multilingual folks like myself, what language one reads a book in simply doesn't even register.
Yes: my priority is a free society, even at the cost of slightly more crime.
Your priority is to create a totalitarian society. Go to hell you evil creep.
"Communism failed because capitalism didn't subsidize it enough." You people would be funny if you weren't so f*cking eil.
Those things also tend to be corrupt boondoggles and wastes of taxpayer money. So, yes, excellent examples of "practical communism".
More anti-worker than Democrats? That's pretty much impossible.
And how exactly is that "anti-worker"?
There, fixed that for you.
Socialism is always, ever only going to be "half baked shit". Your pipe dream of "real socialism" is incompatible with reality and reason.
But "worthless fucking idiots like you" just don't understand such simple basic facts about the real world.
You're hiding behind weasel words like "self-management". Socialism, like capitalism, has a power structure and hierarchy; it's inevitable, it's the only way complex organizations can function. Every socialist state that has ever existed has had such a power structure. Every utopian commune has had such a power structure.
The difference between socialism and free market capitalism is that, under socialism, you get into power through corruption and nepotism, while under free market capitalism you get into power by making stuff that other people actually want to buy voluntarily. And that's why socialist states inevitable fail.
It's not an example of the free market at all, it's an example of the social welfare state at work.
Companies like Amazon are forced by law to for all sort of accident and disability benefits and government programs that are supposed to take care of workers when they are injured on the job. Why should Amazon on top of all that still provide private benefits?
If you get injured on the job in Washington State or California, go to the state government for help, they collect enough money ostensibly for helping you if something should happen. If you don't like what you get from your state government, complain to them.
It's not only banks/financial institutions, but also governments that like cashless societies, because it gives them better surveillance and more control.
The good thing is: they'll likely overplay their hand and lose control: if governments get rid of cash, people will find alternative payment means completely outside the control of banks and governments. Bitcoin didn't quite get it right technically, but systems like that will catch on.
I think that feeding psychoactive drugs to boys because their teachers don't know how to raise boys and are boring and dumb is going to produce adults that are angry, poorly educated, and anti-social. And what I "think" these drugs do seems to be exactly what they are doing.