Staging fake rallies and being in bed with the media so that they play along and present it so it looks like a full rally DOES impact who I'd vote for.
But they all do that, so where does that leave you?
Do you think the Chinese are sitting on a giant pile of dollars ?
They are taking US dollars and building their country with it.
I eagerly await your reply on how either the lizard men or the underpants gnomes are stealing our capital inflows.
Can't argue with reason, so resort to petty insults. Good stuff.
The original argument, which you've tried so hard to avoid, is that cash hand outs to the poor has proven to be be an effective strategy to stimulate local economies. No amount of ad hominem changes that fact.
By the way, is it getting any more obvious to anyone that Trump is a Hillary plant?
What gets me is when it's pointed out to him that he's lagging in the polls, his reaction is that if he doesn't win he'll just go do something else.
I'd like to think that whoever I'm backing really wants the job. I've never seen a candidate with such lack of conviction and passion for the task at hand.
This leads me to believe that he is a plant, or at least a deliberate distraction to weaken the GOP. Win, lose or draw, the GOP will be severely damaged after this election because of him.
Second, they have changed my opinion of Facebook and social media as a whole. Social media continues to devolve into more yelling, screaming, threats, trolling, guilt by association, and mob justice. And what makes it bad for Facebook is that the harder they try to "fix" things, the worse it becomes.
I worked this out years ago. What started as a new way to stay in touch with casual acquaintances turned into a platform for attention seekers to keep me informed of every aspect of their life which I didn't really care about. The more FB changed, the more it promoted the noise and less of the signal. I gave it away years ago and haven't missed it.
Actually you're more likely to believe something if you think you came up with the idea. Tell them the idea explicitly and they'll be defensive, give them enough info to formulate the same idea and they'll own it like their own child.
So no, I don't think it's quite correct to say "nobody has ever changed anyone's mind about anything ever". It happens all the time... in sales.
Agree 100%. I've worked in a sales-focused environment an it's almost like magic watching the techniques that get people to buy things they didn't necessarily want.
Most people can be swayed with the right technique, even those who think it doesn't work on them.
I'd go to a Trump rally, purely for the entertainment. I'd never vote for the clown, but as entertainment it'd be an interesting day out.
A Hillary rally on the other hand would be boring at batshit. Like going to see Oprah, who pays money for that?
That plays no part on who I'd rather have running the country though. Entertainment and political responsibility are completely different things.
It all depends on the delivery. Slashdot has tons of political material which if informative I find useful for shaping my opinion.
Gun Control is a good case in point, there thousands of posts from both sides with mindless drivel that are worthless. but every now and again you actually do find some useful information that makes sense. I wouldn't say this changes my mind, but it does tweak my position slightly.
Information has value, you just need to be able to filter the signal from the noise (and lets face it, FB is 99.999% noise, so I don't get why people bother).
Every single political post I see on Facebook is not really about politics, it's about someone trying to snidely imply that they are much more intelligent, high-minded, and enlightened than everyone else. It's not about Trump or Hillary. It's about trying to make themselves look like an upright, cultured, magnanimous person by publicly expressing disdain for others.
So why do you subscribe to such a service? It's like going to a rodeo and complaining about all the cowboy hats...
This is how people are enslaved. Give them everything they want but at a moments notice they can be cut off and will have no way to fight back.
Needs are managed by the government, wants are open to the free market. If Facebook or Google disappeared overnight, there would be more freedom, not less.
I'd actually be happier if Ford ended up doing this first instead of Google. I love the idea of a self-driving car, but don't really like the idea of Google having full access to yet another facet of everyone's lives.
I don't either, but I also don't like the idea of latest product offering being 20 year old tech. Seriously, car manufactures were still selling cars with cassette players in them only a few years ago, and most still don't offer Bluetooth as standard today. A car is just technology, it needs to be run by technology-minded companies.
That's nice, but back to the topic at hand, in a globalised economy, trickle down invariably ends up as trickle out, since the rich will find cheaper suppliers abroad (Why build a house in my neighbourhood if I can build 10 houses in China for the same price, and get better returns?)
If you are going to give handouts to stimulate the local economy, give it to the people who will spend it locally.
No, not really - because in real estate the developer resells the resulting properties shortly afterwards and a normal market can resume.
I meant that the hybrid model of government control but private implementation works, as demonstrated by real estate zoning regulations.
I could use an example of toll roads which are currently already using that model where I live, which is exactly the same, but you appear to believe that it can't work even though it already does. Maybe it's a local thing where your govt tried a variation which failed, but that doesn't mean other variations can't succeed.
Not for natural monopolies.
No, but that is not the model I'm discussing.
Public delivery is NOT efficient by default, it is only efficient when there is competition
Yes which is why the modern public/private model involves things like tenders and lease expiry. You know I didn't invent this, someone smarter than me did and has demonstrated it with real world implementations
The exact same model with the Gautrain in South Africa ended up with a company getting profit gaurantees from government which now means taxpayers are subsidising the operation of the thing. Overall it could be called a success but the ticket prices are way above what they ought to be for something subsidized by tax money.
I can only assume you haven't used the MTR. It's faster, more reliable, safer, cleaner and cheaper for the users, AND taxes in Hong Kong are among the lowest in the world (about 12% when I was there), so there's no case of externalising or subsidising costs. So maybe the RSA model is not the same as how Hong Kong tackled the issue. But the MTR is a hybrid model that produced more successful results for the govt, the taxpayers, the users and the operator. You cannot get a more successful public infrastructure result than that.
True we have no historical analogy for that in roads - but we have dozens with other infrastructure, and it's a universal disaster.
It's exactly how real estate development works now. Govt assigns zoning to land allow certain types of building, then private companies build buildings and rent them out.
Maybe it's not common where you live but we already do that here and it works. The only difference is that tolls are currently a blanket charge, not specific to vehicle weight/usage, and only only specific roads. The only change I'm suggesting is more intelligent tolling and applied more widely. It's not rocket science.
In the hybrid model you get companies who are not accountable to taxpayers having all the power of a governmental service and no competition. The result is the US broadband industry - which slashdot hates so much. There's no reason to believe that roads will be any better.
That's the US implementation of Broadband. Other models exist which are better.
The reason these things are difficult is because a pure market solution *cannot* work - they are natural monopolies by definition, which makes them market failures./p>
But I'm not proposing a pure market solution. It's hybrid model where you get all the governance and accountability of government oversight, but the efficiency of public delivery. This already happens in a lot of places, and it works (The MTR in Hong Kong is a great example of a massive public/private project that delivered high quality results). So it's not same imaginary unicorn that exists only in fairyland.
Wealthy person takes the money , puts it into an overseas real estate investment trust
FTFY. Money leaks out of the country, tax is avoided. That is the difference with rich an poor people. 100% of poor people's money gets spent locally, which is the whole point of a stimulus.
Sure some rich money trickles down, this is classic Reaganomics, but since globalisation and offshoring has become mainstream, trickle down is not as effective as trickle up.
Roads in the US were all privately built until the 1920s - it changed because it was a disaster.
It's not an either/or choice. You can have a hybrid model where the government still oversees and regulates large infrastructure projects like now, but funding comes from users instead of the greater population. This model has really only been feasible in the last 10 years since the advent of technology like RFID and number plate recognition, GPS etc. No historical analogy exists to compare against this.
Just how would you think it would increase the economy ?
A poor person with gets more money so buys more whisky and smokes, the whisky and smoke store makes more money, hires more staff, buys more stock, pays more sales tax. The transport company, distributor, manufacturer and everyone up the chain does the same, their employees spend their money in other stores and all pay more tax.
There is no increase in productivity all this does is change who is doing spending.
And that's all you need. $100 spent 10 times is better for the economy than $200 spent once.
If we were very lucky I would expect this to be neutral. If we were unlucky it could easily provoke inflation in basic goods, and suck capital out of the system for investment.
I was taught to never give cash to someone who is hungry, in my town, nine times out of ten it's for booze and smokes.
If it's a one off payment, maybe. Because that person never knows when their last drink or smoke is, so abuses the few chances they get.
But if you give that same person $250/week every week for their lifetime, then pretty soon some of them will have enough smokes and booze for the week, and maybe then go out and buy a new hat. Then the week after maybe some new shoes. And over time, more people will have the means to lift themselves out of poverty.
Or you could continue to give them nothing and see how that works out...
Or 3 trillion per year vs the entire current federal budget of approximately 3 trillion per year
that also assumes no overhead in running the program.
It also assumes no resulting additional increase to the economy which is a bit of a weird omission to the calculation.
Do you think all 300 million people would hide their new income under their mattress, or maybe, just maybe some of them will spend it?
What do you think $3T of extra spending will do to sales tax revenue?
No company I've worked for (at least 20) has ever sent any email of any political nature ever. But then I'm not American.
In fact I'm doing a govt contract right now, and the only political messages we get say that as govt workers we must remain neutral in the process. No-one is permitted to show any preference for any political party because the process has to be as impartial as possible.
The American system seems so corrupt by comparison.
Slashdot Mirror
Staging fake rallies and being in bed with the media so that they play along and present it so it looks like a full rally DOES impact who I'd vote for.
But they all do that, so where does that leave you?
Do you think the Chinese are sitting on a giant pile of dollars ?
They are taking US dollars and building their country with it.
I eagerly await your reply on how either the lizard men or the underpants gnomes are stealing our capital inflows.
Can't argue with reason, so resort to petty insults. Good stuff.
The original argument, which you've tried so hard to avoid, is that cash hand outs to the poor has proven to be be an effective strategy to stimulate local economies. No amount of ad hominem changes that fact.
That being the case, I have to seriously question the credibility of anybody suggesting WeChat in the context of basically anything.
WeChat is used by all the Asian hookers around here. So if you want a seriously good time, WeChat is useful.
By the way, is it getting any more obvious to anyone that Trump is a Hillary plant?
What gets me is when it's pointed out to him that he's lagging in the polls, his reaction is that if he doesn't win he'll just go do something else.
I'd like to think that whoever I'm backing really wants the job. I've never seen a candidate with such lack of conviction and passion for the task at hand.
This leads me to believe that he is a plant, or at least a deliberate distraction to weaken the GOP. Win, lose or draw, the GOP will be severely damaged after this election because of him.
Second, they have changed my opinion of Facebook and social media as a whole. Social media continues to devolve into more yelling, screaming, threats, trolling, guilt by association, and mob justice. And what makes it bad for Facebook is that the harder they try to "fix" things, the worse it becomes.
I worked this out years ago. What started as a new way to stay in touch with casual acquaintances turned into a platform for attention seekers to keep me informed of every aspect of their life which I didn't really care about. The more FB changed, the more it promoted the noise and less of the signal. I gave it away years ago and haven't missed it.
I don't say anything political on Facebook because as the study says, whose mind would it change?
I don't say anything political on Facebook because Facebook is stupid and I don't use it.
Actually you're more likely to believe something if you think you came up with the idea. Tell them the idea explicitly and they'll be defensive, give them enough info to formulate the same idea and they'll own it like their own child.
So no, I don't think it's quite correct to say "nobody has ever changed anyone's mind about anything ever". It happens all the time... in sales.
Agree 100%. I've worked in a sales-focused environment an it's almost like magic watching the techniques that get people to buy things they didn't necessarily want. Most people can be swayed with the right technique, even those who think it doesn't work on them.
I'd go to a Trump rally, purely for the entertainment. I'd never vote for the clown, but as entertainment it'd be an interesting day out.
A Hillary rally on the other hand would be boring at batshit. Like going to see Oprah, who pays money for that?
That plays no part on who I'd rather have running the country though. Entertainment and political responsibility are completely different things.
It all depends on the delivery. Slashdot has tons of political material which if informative I find useful for shaping my opinion.
Gun Control is a good case in point, there thousands of posts from both sides with mindless drivel that are worthless. but every now and again you actually do find some useful information that makes sense. I wouldn't say this changes my mind, but it does tweak my position slightly.
Information has value, you just need to be able to filter the signal from the noise (and lets face it, FB is 99.999% noise, so I don't get why people bother).
Every single political post I see on Facebook is not really about politics, it's about someone trying to snidely imply that they are much more intelligent, high-minded, and enlightened than everyone else. It's not about Trump or Hillary. It's about trying to make themselves look like an upright, cultured, magnanimous person by publicly expressing disdain for others.
So why do you subscribe to such a service? It's like going to a rodeo and complaining about all the cowboy hats...
This is how people are enslaved. Give them everything they want but at a moments notice they can be cut off and will have no way to fight back.
Needs are managed by the government, wants are open to the free market. If Facebook or Google disappeared overnight, there would be more freedom, not less.
I'd actually be happier if Ford ended up doing this first instead of Google. I love the idea of a self-driving car, but don't really like the idea of Google having full access to yet another facet of everyone's lives.
I don't either, but I also don't like the idea of latest product offering being 20 year old tech. Seriously, car manufactures were still selling cars with cassette players in them only a few years ago, and most still don't offer Bluetooth as standard today. A car is just technology, it needs to be run by technology-minded companies.
However, the actual reason for it (hydrogen peroxide being dumped in it) was only revealed today everywhere.
It was in our news on the weekend: http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
Yes and absolutely no foreign capital never ever comes into this country /sarcasm
Ever heard of the Trade Deficit? http://www.tradingeconomics.co...
I really don't argue religion with people.
That's nice, but back to the topic at hand, in a globalised economy, trickle down invariably ends up as trickle out, since the rich will find cheaper suppliers abroad (Why build a house in my neighbourhood if I can build 10 houses in China for the same price, and get better returns?)
If you are going to give handouts to stimulate the local economy, give it to the people who will spend it locally.
No, not really - because in real estate the developer resells the resulting properties shortly afterwards and a normal market can resume.
I meant that the hybrid model of government control but private implementation works, as demonstrated by real estate zoning regulations.
I could use an example of toll roads which are currently already using that model where I live, which is exactly the same, but you appear to believe that it can't work even though it already does. Maybe it's a local thing where your govt tried a variation which failed, but that doesn't mean other variations can't succeed.
Not for natural monopolies.
No, but that is not the model I'm discussing.
Public delivery is NOT efficient by default, it is only efficient when there is competition
Yes which is why the modern public/private model involves things like tenders and lease expiry. You know I didn't invent this, someone smarter than me did and has demonstrated it with real world implementations
The exact same model with the Gautrain in South Africa ended up with a company getting profit gaurantees from government which now means taxpayers are subsidising the operation of the thing. Overall it could be called a success but the ticket prices are way above what they ought to be for something subsidized by tax money.
I can only assume you haven't used the MTR. It's faster, more reliable, safer, cleaner and cheaper for the users, AND taxes in Hong Kong are among the lowest in the world (about 12% when I was there), so there's no case of externalising or subsidising costs. So maybe the RSA model is not the same as how Hong Kong tackled the issue. But the MTR is a hybrid model that produced more successful results for the govt, the taxpayers, the users and the operator. You cannot get a more successful public infrastructure result than that.
So privately funded but government controlled ?
True we have no historical analogy for that in roads - but we have dozens with other infrastructure, and it's a universal disaster.
It's exactly how real estate development works now. Govt assigns zoning to land allow certain types of building, then private companies build buildings and rent them out.
Maybe it's not common where you live but we already do that here and it works. The only difference is that tolls are currently a blanket charge, not specific to vehicle weight/usage, and only only specific roads. The only change I'm suggesting is more intelligent tolling and applied more widely. It's not rocket science.
In the hybrid model you get companies who are not accountable to taxpayers having all the power of a governmental service and no competition. The result is the US broadband industry - which slashdot hates so much. There's no reason to believe that roads will be any better.
That's the US implementation of Broadband. Other models exist which are better.
The reason these things are difficult is because a pure market solution *cannot* work - they are natural monopolies by definition, which makes them market failures. /p>
But I'm not proposing a pure market solution. It's hybrid model where you get all the governance and accountability of government oversight, but the efficiency of public delivery. This already happens in a lot of places, and it works (The MTR in Hong Kong is a great example of a massive public/private project that delivered high quality results). So it's not same imaginary unicorn that exists only in fairyland.
Wealthy person takes the money , puts it into an overseas real estate investment trust
FTFY. Money leaks out of the country, tax is avoided. That is the difference with rich an poor people. 100% of poor people's money gets spent locally, which is the whole point of a stimulus.
Sure some rich money trickles down, this is classic Reaganomics, but since globalisation and offshoring has become mainstream, trickle down is not as effective as trickle up.
Roads in the US were all privately built until the 1920s - it changed because it was a disaster.
It's not an either/or choice. You can have a hybrid model where the government still oversees and regulates large infrastructure projects like now, but funding comes from users instead of the greater population. This model has really only been feasible in the last 10 years since the advent of technology like RFID and number plate recognition, GPS etc. No historical analogy exists to compare against this.
Just how would you think it would increase the economy ?
A poor person with gets more money so buys more whisky and smokes, the whisky and smoke store makes more money, hires more staff, buys more stock, pays more sales tax. The transport company, distributor, manufacturer and everyone up the chain does the same, their employees spend their money in other stores and all pay more tax.
There is no increase in productivity all this does is change who is doing spending.
And that's all you need. $100 spent 10 times is better for the economy than $200 spent once.
If we were very lucky I would expect this to be neutral. If we were unlucky it could easily provoke inflation in basic goods, and suck capital out of the system for investment.
We don't need to guess at this, we have real world examples that have already worked: http://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/__da...
I was taught to never give cash to someone who is hungry, in my town, nine times out of ten it's for booze and smokes.
If it's a one off payment, maybe. Because that person never knows when their last drink or smoke is, so abuses the few chances they get.
But if you give that same person $250/week every week for their lifetime, then pretty soon some of them will have enough smokes and booze for the week, and maybe then go out and buy a new hat. Then the week after maybe some new shoes. And over time, more people will have the means to lift themselves out of poverty.
Or you could continue to give them nothing and see how that works out...
Ok lets run the numbers
Or 3 trillion per year vs the entire current federal budget of approximately 3 trillion per year
that also assumes no overhead in running the program.
It also assumes no resulting additional increase to the economy which is a bit of a weird omission to the calculation.
Do you think all 300 million people would hide their new income under their mattress, or maybe, just maybe some of them will spend it?
What do you think $3T of extra spending will do to sales tax revenue?
Money for nothing teaches people to slack.
That explains why all rich people are lazy. Oh wait...
No company I've worked for (at least 20) has ever sent any email of any political nature ever. But then I'm not American.
In fact I'm doing a govt contract right now, and the only political messages we get say that as govt workers we must remain neutral in the process. No-one is permitted to show any preference for any political party because the process has to be as impartial as possible.
The American system seems so corrupt by comparison.
Agree, and we now have technology to make this feasible. I wonder much longer "socialised roads" will be a thing?