Like many political ideas - most noteworthy being communism - they sound good when you think about them on a local scale, where everyone knows everyone else personally, but once you start adding in layers of detachment the rules break down very quickly; the "best and the brightest" aren't likely to win very often when fighting sociopaths.
Maybe we need to localize then. Divide up into units of 150 people and make those part of a pyramid all the way up to someone at top.
If only there was some system of government in history that had done this...
US police are woefully underfunded. They might get a bunch of SWAT stuff from the government, but actual basic policing, substations, and other items needed to process all but murders and attempted murders are not funded. Most cities are far more interested in making sure the professional sport league has the latest and greatest stadium so they won't move to a city that would. So, blame the city councils that deny adequate funding to city services, not the people who have to decide between catching the perps from a drive-by shooting versus some guy who lost his cellphone.
The unpopular truth is that "We The People" don't want to vote for the actual funding required for police departments, because that would require us to admit how much crime runs among us and take a more seriously look at certain egalitarian illusions.
Instead, we've made police dependent on and drunken with money from traffic tickets and drug forfeitures, which is a dishonest way of doing things.
Given the choice between a complex truth and an easy lie, voters (as a group) always pick the lie.
Introduce a product near the top of what people pay for tablets, have some imperfections, incompatible with other market leaders, and plan to improve it over time.
You've got nowhere to go but up.
Then again, 6% market share is pretty good considering the above. MSFT's policy is to get an entry in the market and slowly improve it until it has everything the competitors do and innovations of their own. v1.0 is always bad, v2.0 chaotic, and v3.0 starts the war machine on its path to dominance.
The internet age: giant companies with huge pots of money, searching for a direction.
Google wants to fix the world. So does Bill Gates. Yahoo wants to be Netflix. Netflix wants to be Amazon, and Amazon wants to be Google.
It seems the money came too easily and too abundantly, and there was never any plan past the basics: Microsoft, unify the desktop computer; Google, search engine; Netflix, streaming video; Amazon, tax-free products online.
Here's the extended Sterling transcript which shows his lady friend attempting to bait him into saying something out of bounds -- note the leading questions and that she brings up race first:
If the voting base does not rise up and make its wishes known, billionaires take over political parties.
However, I don't know if I'd trust the NYT on anything. They lied about Cliven Bundy and whathisname Sterling by selecting editing the quotations. They're not a trustworthy news source any longer.
As opposed to the grand conservative vision where we just let people starve to death and die from lack of health care services because we're too selfish to think about anybody else.
Is that what you think it is?
The conservative vision is to keep around the useful people and make sure they're doing well.
The rest nature will sort out.
If they have a will to live, they'll make survival happen. It's not difficult.
Most of the places that are "starving" are in fact quite capable of supporting basic agriculture using plants which can be gathered from the wild.
Considering that the birth rate throughout damn near the entire developed world is neutral or declining and that the Chinese population is growing at the slowest rate in decades, I don't think overpopulation is the issue that a lot of people do.
Is that what they tell you? Seven billion today, nine billion soon, next stop fifteen billion.
Big media, illegal aliens, racism against white culture, public education, tyrannical government, the destruction of the middle class - basically the Democrat party platform.
They all seem to decline in the same way, which is roughly represented by the above.
It's as if there were some pathological mentality that makes people want to destroy their civilization at some point. Like lemmings marching over a cliff.
Once upon a time many said that about the Irish, Italians, Jews, assorted Eastern Europeans, etc.
Ever notice how more complicated American life got after that time? At least those groups were related to the founding group of Western Europeans. The newer groups have nothing in common at all.
Do you think there's a lesson there?
Yes. What's mistaken for "evolution" is often decline and some people will say anything to avoid facing the bald truth in front of their faces.
Throughout history, diversity has only appeared when dying empires are trying to bolster their economies by importing labor.
They inevitably collapse soon after.
The reason is that when you destroy culture, you have only rules left, and rules are good at prohibiting certain behaviors but can't make people collaborate.
The result is a me-first kleptocracy which inevitably descends to third-world-levels of corruption, filth, disorder, etc.
"Oh look, an outlier opinion. It's either genius or not worth commenting on."
Post-Eternal September:
"Someone who disagrees with me. I need to call him a corporate shill, a troll, a pedophile or a racist and then I've won this debate in my own mind and social group."
In addition, the scarcity of the resource makes future wars, politics, etc. inevitable.
I'm looking for one of those reactor-type-devices from the end of "Back to the Future" that can deconstruct ordinary household waste and produce high amounts of energy. Were I President of the ol' USA, I'd slam resources into that before anything else but space exploration.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe we need to localize then. Divide up into units of 150 people and make those part of a pyramid all the way up to someone at top.
If only there was some system of government in history that had done this...
There's a difference between "good enough" and "elegant" when it comes to design.
Our society is a chaotic blast of all sorts of noise, from physical sound waves, to electromagnetics, to sheer ugliness.
It doesn't reflect a consistent design philosophy.
The high number of electromagnetic wave emitters inevitably creates other problems as well. But we're so focused on "good enough" that we ignore this.
Step 1:
Get rid of all regulation.
Free market, yo.
Step 2:
A young girl is murdered and rape in a cab in a horrific fashion.
The democracy demands solutions!
Step 3:
Regulate. When that doesn't work, regulate some more.
Step 4:
Prices are high and a de facto exclusive license exists. People notice this is bad and want deregulation.
Before people get in and start "social engineering" and applying "universal morality" in order to make a perfect world to fit their neurotic needs.
If we're lucky, these cosmic Dark Ages will rub off on earth.
Democrats?
The unpopular truth is that "We The People" don't want to vote for the actual funding required for police departments, because that would require us to admit how much crime runs among us and take a more seriously look at certain egalitarian illusions.
Instead, we've made police dependent on and drunken with money from traffic tickets and drug forfeitures, which is a dishonest way of doing things.
Given the choice between a complex truth and an easy lie, voters (as a group) always pick the lie.
Don't blame cops for what the voters did.
They were all bought as gifts for baby boomers.
My guess is that many people who bought those are Android phone owners, and ended up using those instead.
Introduce a product near the top of what people pay for tablets, have some imperfections, incompatible with other market leaders, and plan to improve it over time.
You've got nowhere to go but up.
Then again, 6% market share is pretty good considering the above. MSFT's policy is to get an entry in the market and slowly improve it until it has everything the competitors do and innovations of their own. v1.0 is always bad, v2.0 chaotic, and v3.0 starts the war machine on its path to dominance.
IRC for people who like GUIs?
The internet age: giant companies with huge pots of money, searching for a direction.
Google wants to fix the world. So does Bill Gates. Yahoo wants to be Netflix. Netflix wants to be Amazon, and Amazon wants to be Google.
It seems the money came too easily and too abundantly, and there was never any plan past the basics: Microsoft, unify the desktop computer; Google, search engine; Netflix, streaming video; Amazon, tax-free products online.
Here's the full Bundy statement, in context:
http://disinfo.com/2014/04/une...
Here's the extended Sterling transcript which shows his lady friend attempting to bait him into saying something out of bounds -- note the leading questions and that she brings up race first:
http://deadspin.com/exclusive-...
Our population is stable and has been for some time. Further, those statistics (and the source, the tape-doctoring NYT) are suspect.
It's not social Darwinism, it's just Darwinism.
Why do you deny science?
http://conservamerica.org/
If the voting base does not rise up and make its wishes known, billionaires take over political parties.
However, I don't know if I'd trust the NYT on anything. They lied about Cliven Bundy and whathisname Sterling by selecting editing the quotations. They're not a trustworthy news source any longer.
Try this:
http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/
As you know -- well, you didn't obviously -- LIberty GB is a new party composed of experienced people from older parties.
The arrogance of the prole.
Is that what you think it is?
The conservative vision is to keep around the useful people and make sure they're doing well.
The rest nature will sort out.
If they have a will to live, they'll make survival happen. It's not difficult.
Most of the places that are "starving" are in fact quite capable of supporting basic agriculture using plants which can be gathered from the wild.
Is that what they tell you? Seven billion today, nine billion soon, next stop fifteen billion.
They all seem to decline in the same way, which is roughly represented by the above.
It's as if there were some pathological mentality that makes people want to destroy their civilization at some point. Like lemmings marching over a cliff.
Grand liberal vision:
We stop eating meat, everyone has more to eat.
Actuality:
We stop eating meat, people breed until the damage is equivalent to what we're doing now.
Ever notice how more complicated American life got after that time? At least those groups were related to the founding group of Western Europeans. The newer groups have nothing in common at all.
Yes. What's mistaken for "evolution" is often decline and some people will say anything to avoid facing the bald truth in front of their faces.
Throughout history, diversity has only appeared when dying empires are trying to bolster their economies by importing labor.
They inevitably collapse soon after.
The reason is that when you destroy culture, you have only rules left, and rules are good at prohibiting certain behaviors but can't make people collaborate.
The result is a me-first kleptocracy which inevitably descends to third-world-levels of corruption, filth, disorder, etc.
Pre-Eternal September:
"Oh look, an outlier opinion. It's either genius or not worth commenting on."
Post-Eternal September:
"Someone who disagrees with me. I need to call him a corporate shill, a troll, a pedophile or a racist and then I've won this debate in my own mind and social group."
Democracy, markets and social groups all recognize one factor: popularity.
When popularity rules, engineering comes second. What matters is making a product that many people think they need.
Gates isn't even a huge offender here. He accomplished something great: he made a company to standardize computing.
Thanks to him, we have standard hardware, file formats, disk drives, etc. enabling a lot of things including Linux.
This is why the Amiga Demo Scene was so amazing.
(Other brands had good demo scenes as well. The Amiga just had the best graphics capability of anything you could purchase at that time.)
If we can make alternative energy work, that is.
Oil is... it's great, but there's a high cost, mainly air pollution which may cause autism and heart disease among other problems.
The spills are disasters which cause ongoing problems for decades if not longer.
In addition, the scarcity of the resource makes future wars, politics, etc. inevitable.
I'm looking for one of those reactor-type-devices from the end of "Back to the Future" that can deconstruct ordinary household waste and produce high amounts of energy. Were I President of the ol' USA, I'd slam resources into that before anything else but space exploration.
Life is subjectively perceived but must be objectively assessed.
He pointed to weak/absent leadership and tried to use it as an argument against the need for strong leadership.