You're right about the 'serfdom' part. The Rich would love nothing better than to have complete control over everyone who not The Rich, and getting everyone dependent on something like UBI would do the trick. All you'd need is one complete generation raised without a work ethic, being used to their free money from the government, and you'd have them hooked for life, as surely as meth addicts someone after as little as one use. Once you have a population that sees no need to struggle through school or learn marketable skills, then you have total dominion over them -- ala fuedalism. Then keep them just at or slightly above the poverty level, so they can't ever own anything of real value (like a home or a car of their own), and rent them everything imaginable. Low income means poor quality food, so no one is ever really healthier than the bare minimum. From there, creatures like Betsy deVos, gutting the public education system in favor of a 'voucher' system and 'charter schools', the vouchers not being enough by themselves for the charter schools, and public schools being defunded to the point where they're practically irrelevant education-wise, and now you control access to an education that might elevate someone out of poverty, if they have the will to try it; only The Rich can afford to send their kids to good schools and to a university, and so only they have the knowledge and skills to actually work. The Rich stay rich, forever, and The Poor stay poor, forever, living on the scraps that The Rich toss down to them. Weaken or destroy the separartion of Church and State, declare an official State Religion with here-to-fore unprecedented political power, and we're right back into a new Dark Age.
The one thing that saves us here is basic math: any country that tried to put the majority of it's population on what amounts to a welfare program would quickly bankrupt itself. As-is, the United States has such a staggering volume of debt and annual budget deficit that there'd never be money to get nonsense like this off the ground in the first place. All these 'pilot programs' for UBI are meaningless because the concept does not scale up at all, it only works on a small scale, and it's a black hole financially, just a drain on the economy. No one will ever try this on a national scale and rightly so.
Finally, people in general are happier and healthier overall if they have a sense of purpose; proponents of UBI claim 'people will find their purpose' but I beg to differ, most people will just fritter away their time if they don't have to struggle to survive. The average person will produce nothing on their own if they have no reason to. Jobs give that sense of purpose to those who don't have one of their own choosing, and in return they get to fund their lives. Taking that away from them is actually doing them a grave injustice. The people who find their own purpose don't need free government money to do it, they find a way on their own, and become business owners, scientists, doctors, inventors, etc etc etc. UBI is unnecessary and in fact likely destructive to human health and overall happiness.
Looks good on paper, at least to marketing and sales types, but in reality it really doesn't work all that well and is far from being efficient. Only really works properly if you believe in magic. So it goes with so-called 'Universal Basic Income'; simple math shows that it would quickly bankrupt any country that tried to implement it on a scale encompassing the majority of their population. I'm just surprised that a country like Germany is willing to entertain this nonsense, I assumed they were smarter than this.
Also 'science being infallable' only works if you have the wisdom to look at the big picture over the long term, the scientific method may be a closed-loop negative-feedback system but it's also inherently open-ended with few if any theories being considered set in stone. You being a troll I wouldn't expect you to understand that though, especially being an Anonymous Coward.
You really should consider a large gauge double-barrel shotgun for your trolling shotgun blasts, you can pack more memes, half-truths, strawman arguments, and other logical fallacies into one massive blast instead of having to pick-and-choose a more limited list.
If you can't separate the technology from how it's being misused/abused, then you have to choose to either be taken advantage of, or discontinue use of the technology in question. Since it is literally impossible to secure a smartphone against the sort of abuses that wireless companies/ISPs, corporations, and governments perpetrate upon them, then you must choose: continue owning/using smartphones, or get rid of it and use something simpler that cannot so easily be exploited. Not that someone like you can understand what I'm talking about, it appears to be beyond your understanding.
If someone doesn't inherently understand what the real takeaway from this story is, then I question their IQ, their capacity to think critically, or both.
You and others in this comment thread don't understand the question fully: so far as I know, here in California, there is a cap on how much you can increase someone's rent annually. What they're talking about here is more than 10 times what I understood was the limit. The only way you can get around that is by issuing a 30 day notice to force the tennant to leave, then setting the rent wherever you want for the next tennant. There's been news stories about that this past year, too, it's a real scumbag practice. So how in Redwood City, California, did they raise someone's rent by $1500 in the same year? Shouldn't be possible so far as I know.
The research shows that children should spend more time with other children being properly socialized and less time paying attention to technology and I for one wholeheartedly agree with that. We seem to have more and more 'awkward penguins' in the world who end up as adults with 'social anxiety' problems and are 'socially avoidant', prefering to stare at a screen instead of seeking out the companionship of other people. So-called 'social media' is not a substitute for being 'actually social'; texting someone on your phone is not a substitute for looking at them across the table from you and having an actual conversation. Children should be running and playing with other children, not staring at screens playing pointless games. Medical research has even shown that childrens brains don't develop properly if they spend too much time interacting with video screens. Do yourselves and your kids a favor, parents: buy your kids toys and games that are oriented towards playing and interacting with other children live and in-person, and not the toy or game itself.
Do you have children? If you don't then perhaps you don't have the perspective to understand the mindset of a parent. I don't have children but I understand why they'd feel this way: anyone spying on your kids, whether in person or remotely, is automatically a threat to them in some way, and you can say that's paranoia all you like but it's a parents' right to control access to their children. 'Molestation' can take many forms.
Why do so many people assume that this surveillance is for consumers' benefit?
Because they've been indoctrinated to believe that by the corporations and governments that are performing the surveillance. There's an entire generation of young people out there who were raised to believe that sharing everything is normal and good and that people who want 'privacy' have something to hide and are probably criminals or terrorists or at least 'bad people' to be avoided. I do see some small signs that that's turning around, though.
RE: 'Targeted ads':
As anyone who reads the news daily can now see, so-called 'targeted ads' could just be 'targeting' you for purposes of trying to subvert you or even radicalize you, and the way things are structured, there's no way of telling for sure anymore what the true source of any advertising actually is. Therefore it is my contention that ALL 'targeted ads' should be considered bad and avoided at all costs.
If someone I know asked my advice on the subject, I'd tell them "If you must have these 'personal assistant' devices in your house for whatever reasons, unplug them when you're not actively using them, don't leave them turned on 24 hours a day, because they do listen to everything, and no one can guarantee the microphone 'mute' button actually means it's not listening at all anymore." But I'd also recommend they not buy them in the first place.
You know I thought you were okay then you turn around and chastise someone for sharing their opinion that might just inform someone who has been so thoroughly indoctrinated by nosy corporations and nosy governments that they aren't even thinking about whether their privacy is being invaded. Of course people aren't going to ask about things like this because if they can ask the question themselves then they're going to have the answer themselves without anyone elses' help, so when we talk about things like this it's to spark conversation about it, making people who otherwise wouldn't think about it consider what's being said. "Be quiet and mind your own business" only serves the nosy, over-reaching corporations and governments, not the interests of average citizens; these corporations and governments don't want you talking about subjects like privacy at all. Or are you a government/corporation operative, and are deliberately trying to quash conversation and thought about subjects like this? If so then YOU are the one that needs to be silenced.
So are you saying that, like me, you don't have a smartphone and refuse to own one under any circumstances? If so then I applaud you, sir, and 100% support you in that. Spread the word, get people off smartphones, encourge them to take back their privacy.
At first I had to think "How much of an attention whore do you have to be, before you spend thousands of dollars designing and building a device like that, which just as likely as not will be smashed to pieces by an angry thief, just to get views on YouTube?", but then I read this, and I have to conclude: this so-called 'ex-NASA engineer' has brain problems. What was he fired from NASA for? Behavioral problems?
Nope. I want all my firmware to be in OTP (one time programmable) hardware chips, in sockets, that have to be physically changed out to upgrade firmware, so jackass companies can't brick devices with shitty 'upgrades', and if they give me a bad upgrade anyway, I can just go back to the old OTP ROM.
..then just imagine what they can do when they intend to listen in on you!
Not going to mince words: you are STUPID if you allow these devices in your home! FFS at least unplug the gods-be-damned thing when you're not actively using it!
Does any first-world country ever cut their military spending? No. Why do you think that is? Because the other guys aren't going to downsize their military. Sad, but it's a fact of life. Unless and until every country on this planet wakes up one morning and simultaneously decides to downsize and defund their military, you're an idiot if you do it unilaterally. This would take a fundamental shift in the way our species thinks, which would likely take a huge leap in our overall evolution. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen. So sad, but ultimately true. There's only one thing I can think of that otherwise would unify everyone more or less all at the same time: World War 3, with the winner taking over the entire planet. Don't count of there being 7 billion people alive after that, and maybe don't count on the planet being terribly habitable afterwards, either.
Slashdot Mirror
*shrug* whatever, minor detail, it's still a stupid short-sighted idea that won't scale up, at all.
You're missing the points, pretty much all of them, but that seems to be par for the course for UBI supporters.
You're right about the 'serfdom' part. The Rich would love nothing better than to have complete control over everyone who not The Rich, and getting everyone dependent on something like UBI would do the trick. All you'd need is one complete generation raised without a work ethic, being used to their free money from the government, and you'd have them hooked for life, as surely as meth addicts someone after as little as one use. Once you have a population that sees no need to struggle through school or learn marketable skills, then you have total dominion over them -- ala fuedalism. Then keep them just at or slightly above the poverty level, so they can't ever own anything of real value (like a home or a car of their own), and rent them everything imaginable. Low income means poor quality food, so no one is ever really healthier than the bare minimum. From there, creatures like Betsy deVos, gutting the public education system in favor of a 'voucher' system and 'charter schools', the vouchers not being enough by themselves for the charter schools, and public schools being defunded to the point where they're practically irrelevant education-wise, and now you control access to an education that might elevate someone out of poverty, if they have the will to try it; only The Rich can afford to send their kids to good schools and to a university, and so only they have the knowledge and skills to actually work. The Rich stay rich, forever, and The Poor stay poor, forever, living on the scraps that The Rich toss down to them. Weaken or destroy the separartion of Church and State, declare an official State Religion with here-to-fore unprecedented political power, and we're right back into a new Dark Age.
The one thing that saves us here is basic math: any country that tried to put the majority of it's population on what amounts to a welfare program would quickly bankrupt itself. As-is, the United States has such a staggering volume of debt and annual budget deficit that there'd never be money to get nonsense like this off the ground in the first place. All these 'pilot programs' for UBI are meaningless because the concept does not scale up at all, it only works on a small scale, and it's a black hole financially, just a drain on the economy. No one will ever try this on a national scale and rightly so.
Finally, people in general are happier and healthier overall if they have a sense of purpose; proponents of UBI claim 'people will find their purpose' but I beg to differ, most people will just fritter away their time if they don't have to struggle to survive. The average person will produce nothing on their own if they have no reason to. Jobs give that sense of purpose to those who don't have one of their own choosing, and in return they get to fund their lives. Taking that away from them is actually doing them a grave injustice. The people who find their own purpose don't need free government money to do it, they find a way on their own, and become business owners, scientists, doctors, inventors, etc etc etc. UBI is unnecessary and in fact likely destructive to human health and overall happiness.
{Citation needed} on all your claims.
Looks good on paper, at least to marketing and sales types, but in reality it really doesn't work all that well and is far from being efficient. Only really works properly if you believe in magic. So it goes with so-called 'Universal Basic Income'; simple math shows that it would quickly bankrupt any country that tried to implement it on a scale encompassing the majority of their population. I'm just surprised that a country like Germany is willing to entertain this nonsense, I assumed they were smarter than this.
Also 'science being infallable' only works if you have the wisdom to look at the big picture over the long term, the scientific method may be a closed-loop negative-feedback system but it's also inherently open-ended with few if any theories being considered set in stone. You being a troll I wouldn't expect you to understand that though, especially being an Anonymous Coward.
You really should consider a large gauge double-barrel shotgun for your trolling shotgun blasts, you can pack more memes, half-truths, strawman arguments, and other logical fallacies into one massive blast instead of having to pick-and-choose a more limited list.
I think targeted ads have made you go buy rose-colored glasses and/or blinders.
If you can't separate the technology from how it's being misused/abused, then you have to choose to either be taken advantage of, or discontinue use of the technology in question. Since it is literally impossible to secure a smartphone against the sort of abuses that wireless companies/ISPs, corporations, and governments perpetrate upon them, then you must choose: continue owning/using smartphones, or get rid of it and use something simpler that cannot so easily be exploited. Not that someone like you can understand what I'm talking about, it appears to be beyond your understanding.
If someone doesn't inherently understand what the real takeaway from this story is, then I question their IQ, their capacity to think critically, or both.
You and others in this comment thread don't understand the question fully: so far as I know, here in California, there is a cap on how much you can increase someone's rent annually. What they're talking about here is more than 10 times what I understood was the limit. The only way you can get around that is by issuing a 30 day notice to force the tennant to leave, then setting the rent wherever you want for the next tennant. There's been news stories about that this past year, too, it's a real scumbag practice. So how in Redwood City, California, did they raise someone's rent by $1500 in the same year? Shouldn't be possible so far as I know.
The research shows that children should spend more time with other children being properly socialized and less time paying attention to technology and I for one wholeheartedly agree with that. We seem to have more and more 'awkward penguins' in the world who end up as adults with 'social anxiety' problems and are 'socially avoidant', prefering to stare at a screen instead of seeking out the companionship of other people. So-called 'social media' is not a substitute for being 'actually social'; texting someone on your phone is not a substitute for looking at them across the table from you and having an actual conversation. Children should be running and playing with other children, not staring at screens playing pointless games. Medical research has even shown that childrens brains don't develop properly if they spend too much time interacting with video screens. Do yourselves and your kids a favor, parents: buy your kids toys and games that are oriented towards playing and interacting with other children live and in-person, and not the toy or game itself.
Do you have children? If you don't then perhaps you don't have the perspective to understand the mindset of a parent. I don't have children but I understand why they'd feel this way: anyone spying on your kids, whether in person or remotely, is automatically a threat to them in some way, and you can say that's paranoia all you like but it's a parents' right to control access to their children. 'Molestation' can take many forms.
Why do so many people assume that this surveillance is for consumers' benefit?
Because they've been indoctrinated to believe that by the corporations and governments that are performing the surveillance. There's an entire generation of young people out there who were raised to believe that sharing everything is normal and good and that people who want 'privacy' have something to hide and are probably criminals or terrorists or at least 'bad people' to be avoided. I do see some small signs that that's turning around, though.
RE: 'Targeted ads':
As anyone who reads the news daily can now see, so-called 'targeted ads' could just be 'targeting' you for purposes of trying to subvert you or even radicalize you, and the way things are structured, there's no way of telling for sure anymore what the true source of any advertising actually is. Therefore it is my contention that ALL 'targeted ads' should be considered bad and avoided at all costs.
If someone I know asked my advice on the subject, I'd tell them "If you must have these 'personal assistant' devices in your house for whatever reasons, unplug them when you're not actively using them, don't leave them turned on 24 hours a day, because they do listen to everything, and no one can guarantee the microphone 'mute' button actually means it's not listening at all anymore." But I'd also recommend they not buy them in the first place.
You know I thought you were okay then you turn around and chastise someone for sharing their opinion that might just inform someone who has been so thoroughly indoctrinated by nosy corporations and nosy governments that they aren't even thinking about whether their privacy is being invaded. Of course people aren't going to ask about things like this because if they can ask the question themselves then they're going to have the answer themselves without anyone elses' help, so when we talk about things like this it's to spark conversation about it, making people who otherwise wouldn't think about it consider what's being said. "Be quiet and mind your own business" only serves the nosy, over-reaching corporations and governments, not the interests of average citizens; these corporations and governments don't want you talking about subjects like privacy at all. Or are you a government/corporation operative, and are deliberately trying to quash conversation and thought about subjects like this? If so then YOU are the one that needs to be silenced.
So are you saying that, like me, you don't have a smartphone and refuse to own one under any circumstances? If so then I applaud you, sir, and 100% support you in that. Spread the word, get people off smartphones, encourge them to take back their privacy.
Another family lost their Redwood City apartment when their landlord increased the rent from $1,300 to $2,800 a month.
So far as I know this shouldn't be possible, explain please?
At first I had to think "How much of an attention whore do you have to be, before you spend thousands of dollars designing and building a device like that, which just as likely as not will be smashed to pieces by an angry thief, just to get views on YouTube?", but then I read this, and I have to conclude: this so-called 'ex-NASA engineer' has brain problems. What was he fired from NASA for? Behavioral problems?
Don't forget Idiocracy.
Nope. I want all my firmware to be in OTP (one time programmable) hardware chips, in sockets, that have to be physically changed out to upgrade firmware, so jackass companies can't brick devices with shitty 'upgrades', and if they give me a bad upgrade anyway, I can just go back to the old OTP ROM.
I strongly disagree with you, and I think experts in psychology would agree with me.
..then just imagine what they can do when they intend to listen in on you!
Not going to mince words: you are STUPID if you allow these devices in your home! FFS at least unplug the gods-be-damned thing when you're not actively using it!
You've been warned. Repeatedly.
Does any first-world country ever cut their military spending? No. Why do you think that is? Because the other guys aren't going to downsize their military. Sad, but it's a fact of life. Unless and until every country on this planet wakes up one morning and simultaneously decides to downsize and defund their military, you're an idiot if you do it unilaterally. This would take a fundamental shift in the way our species thinks, which would likely take a huge leap in our overall evolution. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen. So sad, but ultimately true. There's only one thing I can think of that otherwise would unify everyone more or less all at the same time: World War 3, with the winner taking over the entire planet. Don't count of there being 7 billion people alive after that, and maybe don't count on the planet being terribly habitable afterwards, either.