You're right, it's not the same. Purchases are a much more reliable indicator of what people want than asking them directly. People don't consider all the trade-offs involved until they are faced with deciding how they want to spend their hard-earned money given the versions of the products that actually made it to the market.
The battery on $20,000 a car lasts, at best, about five years. It costs $150 to get a new one.
If auto manufacturers made the batteries non-removable people wouldn't buy cars.
The battery on a $800 phone lasts, at best, about 3 years. It costs $10 for a new battery.
Why is it okay to hand-wave away the phone manufacturer's choice to glue these units closed?
Because automobiles are a mature market with only minor changes over time, and someone will probably still be driving that same car 15 or 20 years after it was manufactured. The rate of change in smartphone technology thus far has meant that by the time the battery needs to be replaced the phone itself is looking rather obsolete. Phones with replaceable batteries used to be ubiquitous, but people rarely bought new batteries for old phones. Doing away with the extra size and weight required to support replaceable batteries was a perfectly logical decision based on market trends. Doing otherwise would be wasteful so long as consumers choose to upgrade their phones to the latest model every couple of years regardless of battery performance. Software support also tends to end around that same time, and the prevalence of closed-source drivers mean that devices lacking active support from the manufacturers cannot be updated to run the latest operating systems.
If you want replaceable batteries to make sense you need to start by changing the upgrade cycle. That means designing apps and operating systems to work well on older devices, not just the latest flagship models, and encouraging the use of fully open source software stacks (especially the drivers) so that updates are not dependent on the original manufacturer's goodwill. Replacing the battery after three years makes sense only when a five- or six-year-old smartphone is actually considered usable.
A refrigerator and washing machine have a higher number of field replaceable parts than a cellphone.
That is certainly one way to measure complexity, from the perspective of field service. It's probably not the best metric for overall complexity, though. The number of steps involved in manufacturing the device from raw materials, the tolerances required to make sure all the pieces fit together, the number of things that have to work exactly right in order for the device to perform its intended function—these are the metrics I would use. I would also consider whether a similar result could be accomplished with a simpler design (essential complexity vs. optimization), and what degree of supporting infrastructure the device requires. By any of these measures even an old-style "dumb" cellphone is far more complex than a refrigerator. You can make a reasonably efficient refrigerator with a pump, some copper tubing, a well-insulated box, some coolant, and a source of energy to operate the pump. You don't even need electricity, much less electronics. Your basic functional cellphone, on the other hand, requires a bunch of integrated circuits (which are massively complex in their own right), PCB(s), a battery, a microphone, and a speaker, all manufactured to very tight tolerances to fit within acceptable limits for size, weight, heat dissipation, and battery life, plus a well-regulated source of electricity, a network of cell towers (each more complex than a cellphone), radio protocols to link the cellphones to the towers, routing protocols to forward voice traffic between towers, etc. And all of that is just for voice calls.
In terms of repairability, the tolerances are going to be the main issue for anything designed to be "mobile". The design parameters favor tight integration with little room to spare between parts. Consumers may think they want items that last longer and can be repaired easily in the field, but in practice when it comes time to make a purchase they don't want it enough to accept a device twice as large and three times as heavy. Compared to a sturdy, immobile appliance like a refrigerator, a novice attempting DIY repair is far more likely to damage a cellphone during disassembly or re-assembly. One is also much less likely to accidentally fry a refrigerator with static electricity, or put too much pressure on the unprotected battery pack while the case is off and cause an intermittent short which eventually leads to a fire.
Note that of the the refrigerator parts you listed, the one most similar to a cellphone—the digital control panel—is typically replaced, not repaired. This is comparable to how cellphones are usually "repaired"—by throwing the old one out and buying a new one.
So don't think only people in wheelchairs have benefited from the law.
If that were true people would implement these changes on their own even without the law. The law exists specifically because the benefits you list are not deemed to be worth what they cost unless the government forcibly externalizes the cost of dealing with disabilities onto the non-disabled.
(and, in fact, won't cancel the insurance until you prove that you have either gotten new insurance or handed in your plates)
Interesting. Wouldn't that mean you're getting insurance for free until you actually send in the plates? Or are they receiving some kind of special legal protection not available to other service providers which allows them to keep charging even after the contract is terminated?
But you'll find plenty about assault, threats to national security, or inciting public turmoil.... There aren't restrictions on the speech itself.
"Assault" can be nothing more than speech. Classification as a "threat to national security" may be based on nothing more substantial than something you said. "Inciting public turmoil" usually amounts to making a speech the authorities don't care for. All of these "crimes" are restrictions on the speech itself and a violation of the 1st Amendment.
There shouldn't be any restrictions on speech... but in practice, as the law is currently written and interpreted, there are.
Free speech does not extend the the encouragement, endorsement, or threat of acts of violence.
Sure it does. Certainly any degree of "encouragement" or "endorsement" in the form of speech would not justify a violent response. Threats likewise, though there is a caveat: if your speech gives someone the impression that they are facing an imminent threat of irreversible harm, it would not be unreasonable for them to respond preemptively to counter that threat. That would simply be self-defense; the response is justified by the anticipated act of violence, not by the act of speech.
Science makes statements about how the world is, religion makes statements about how to be in the world.
Religion also typically makes statements about "how the world is" (e.g. "God exists and is actively involved in world events"). These statements are largely at odds with the statements made by science on the same topic. If your version of "religion" is limited to "how to be in the world" and says nothing about the existence of god(s) then congratulations, you're an atheist. Welcome to the club.
These domains are not orthogonal, either. If your prescriptions about "how to be in the world" are not informed by a solid foundation in "how the world is" the results are not likely to be what you expected.
Only if you're a simple-minded literalist do you think the creation stories and whatnot are there as history. Most people understand they're there as archetypical stories about how to live.... You can both believe in the Big Bang, and believe e.g. in the moral lesson of the story of Cain and Abel...
Believing in "the moral lesson of the story of Cain and Abel" is perfectly compatible with being an atheist, so long as you're simply treating it as an ancient moral lesson and not as proof of the existence of god(s). Atheism does not mean rejecting every lesson ever taught under the guise of religion, just the absence of beliefe in god(s).
You have your terms backwards. Atheism is simply the absence of belief in god(s), not a positive belief in the absence of god(s). The atheist does not go around asserting that god does not exist, but simply dismisses the question until and unless sufficient evidence is presented in favor of existence to merit consideration—the position people usually take on the existence of hypothetical entities with no supporting evidence. Agnosticism, on the other hand, is a strictly neutral stance, considering both existence and non-existence equally likely. It grants more credence to the idea that god might exist than, say, the possible existence of invisible pink unicorns in your backyard, given equivalent evidence. Neither one requires faith, per se, but of the two agnosticism makes the more extraordinary claim. Atheism is just a straightforward application of Occum's Razor.
Irrelevant. The original statement said "cause of suicide", not "cause of death". The cause of death is an abstract fact: "the subject's body ceased to function due to damage from a bullet entering at high speed". (Medically speaking the gun had nothing to do with the cause of death; the bullet did all the actual damage. It makes no difference whether the bullet was shot from a firearm or accelerated some other way.) To call something a "cause of suicide" is a statement of blame, with the connotation that without that factor the suicide wouldn't have occurred—as opposed to merely taking a different form. The bullet may indeed be the cause of death but it isn't to blame for the person choosing to commit suicide.
There are plenty of other ways to accomplish the same result, many of them just as easy and effective as a gun.
Name few.
Death is never more than a hair's-breadth away even without deliberately courting it. Humans are fragile. A sharp knife to the wrist or neck, asphyxiation, electrocution—people manage to kill themselves all the time by accident, in varied and sometimes quite innovative ways. It's not hard to arrange for that sort of fatal "accident" deliberately. If you really want to commit suicide the tricky part is not finding an easy and effective way to do it, it's making sure you won't be interrupted before it's finished. The mistake a lot of people make is to choose something slow and mostly reversible with treatment, like a drug overdose. Of course, they probably do that on purpose (albeit subconsciously) because they're really not trying to kill themselves, just send a message. That says very little about the intentions of someone who would turn to a quick and sure method like a gun. You don't do that unless you actually intend to die.
Research shows that ease of suicide is correlated to incidences.
So? You seem to be approaching this from the position that suicide is always the wrong choice. I say that is up to the individual to decide. Perhaps by making suicide more difficult, rather than improving their lives, you are simply taking away the choice and imposing your own will over theirs.
You have incitement to riot backwards--the person who is supposed to be charged is the person who goes, basically, "Let's have a riot!" and has the audience respond with...let's call it enthusiastic approval.
Yeah, that's how I understand it as well. And it's wrong.
The rioters alone are responsible for the riot. No one else should be charged for "incitement".
It preserves free speech, but... takes the view that free speech is 'free to say what you want' but not 'free of consequences.'
No, it does not preserve free speech. If the law imposes consequences which depend on the content of your speech then you are not free to speak. You are, in fact, subject to being punished specifically for speaking, which is pretty much the definition of an infringement of your freedom of speech.
Speech can of course have consequences—social ones, things that people could do on their own initiative whether you spoke or not. You may lose friends or become unwelcome in certain places. However, no amount or content of speech justifies taking away your property, locking you up, or any other limitation or restriction on your legal rights.
In 2014, 50% of all suicides in the US were caused by firearms.
Not "caused by", "aided by". A firearm does not make anyone commit suicide. It is merely a tool. There are plenty of other ways to accomplish the same result, many of them just as easy and effective as a gun.
Any discussion of the comparative dangers of firearms must exclude suicides, as well as justified self-defense—and should include the deterrent effect, though that is harder to measure since it involved the absence of violence which might have otherwise occurred.
Regarding suicides, the goal should be to reduce the desire to commit suicide, not to prevent it from being carried out.
Forcing someone to live when they want to die is no better than forcing them to die when they wish to live. It is not your decision to make either way.
Come on, you can't seriously define freedom as being able to download Netflix and Hollywood created content.
This is a red herring. Regardless of your stance on copyright, the issue is not whether one can obtain copyrighted content for free, but rather the collateral damage to the Internet and society as a whole resulting from Hollywood's quixotic quest to eliminate copyright infringement at all costs. Most of the negative effects of this quest are born not by "pirates" but by paying customers—after all, the "pirates" get the version without any DRM while those who follow Hollywood's rules are stuck with obnoxious restrictions on where and how they can view the content they payed for. That's not even considering the pervasive effort to avoid giving the owners of devices administrative control over their own hardware, mostly for the sake of enforcing said DRM (e.g. Netflix recently blocking their app from being installed on rooted smartphones), or the push to conscript ISPs to act as copyright enforcement agents, trolling every scrap of private online conversation for the slightest suggestion of impropriety and banning subscribers from the Internet on the basis of unproven complaints.
Even if you think copyright is a good thing—and I don't—the measures taken to enforce it have clearly long since grown out of proportion to the supposed offense.
Hollywood—the entire content industry—is not worth the collateral damage they are inflicting. So far as I am concerned, if they cannot survive in a post-copyright world, so be it. Let them fail.
i think the people culpable would be the people that organize antifa 'protesters' to show up en masse, and tell them that it's ok to use violence.
Even then, what would make it reasonable for these people to actually believe that it was OK to use violence, regardless of what they were told? They are adults and ought to know better than to behave like that. The responsibility for their actions is theirs alone. No matter how obviously the organizer(s) desired that outcome, they didn't cause it to happen. At any point the audience could have simply said "no" and walked away.
Laws against "incitement" violate not only the freedom of speech, but also the more fundamental principle of proportional response. If someone else speaks, and your response to that speech is more violent than simply speaking back, then you're the one in the wrong—not them. It doesn't matter what they said or what their intentions may have been.
In fact, I want my payments to be visible, so I can prove that I made a payment, or on rare occasions, can reverse a payment if a service wasn't delivered.
You don't have to give up anonymity (or rather pseudonymity, as all the major cryptocurrencies use public keys as identifiers) in order to prove that a payment was made, as the blockchain clearly shows what payments were made to which addresses. Recommended best practice is to use a different receiving address for each order, so this will generally be sufficient. You will, of course, need to support the claim that the merchant requested payment to a particular address, since the request is not part of the blockchain. If you need to prove the funds were sent by you you can sign a statement with the private key used to send the payment, thus proving that you were the sender without ever revealing your true identity.
As for reversible payments, while they have their uses, if you make it too easy to cancel payment then you penalize honest merchants. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. It is relatively simple to achieve the buyer protection you desire through an appropriate escrow system built on top of an irreversible and pseudonymous payment protocol. On the other hand, implementing irreversible payments on top of a reversible protocol is a much more difficult task.
If you use speech in a way that starts a riot, you most certainly can get arrested.
If your speech has the ability to cause a riot on its own, without regard for anyone else's choices—you must be a magician. In reality riots occur not because someone makes a speech (regardless of the content) but because the listeners choose to riot. The liability for the riot lies entirely with those who choose to participate in it. They had the choice to riot or not, and chose incorrectly. Don't make the mistake of shifting the blame for their behavior onto someone else's speech.
I remember reading about turning the other cheek but I don't recall anything about handing your wife or daughters over to be raped. Then again, I'm not super familiar with the bible.
I'm not sure whether you were being sarcastic, but if not you might want to read up on the story of Lot, who is said to have done exactly that—offered up his daughters to be raped by a mob in place of his guests. There is no mention of him being condemned for it either; if anything this show of "hospitality" toward his guests was part of the reason why he was deemed "righteous" and saved while the rest of the town, and all who lived there, were destroyed. Apparently no one asked the daughters for their opinion of this act of "hospitality".
... the IRS reported $9T of taxable adjusted gross income for 2013 and the adult (18+) population of the USA is around 250 million, so that would give a mean AGI of approximately $36 million dollars per adult. In other words, you wouldn't need to impose a 50% income tax to give every adult a tax-exempt $25k handout, just a flat increase of 0.07% of AGI over the current rates. The total annual cost of the program would only be $25k*25M = $6.25B, after all, which is practically a rounding error in the $3.8T federal budget (2015).
Actually, forget all of that. Both calculations are off by three orders of magnitude. Mean AGI is only $36k, not $36M. (I thought that seemed incredible... I was using "trillion" = 10^15 rather than 10^12.) To pay $25k per adult would require a total of $6.25 trillion, not billion (i.e. double the total federal budget for 2015), and raising that amount would require a flat tax of about 70% of the 2015 taxable AGI, not 0.07%. That's 70% extra on top of the current rates, since everything else still needs to be payed for, though a few programs (not a majority of the budget) could potentially be repealed as redundant once UBI was in place.
Obviously an extra 70% tax would be completely impractical; combined with the existing non-UBI taxes it would result in a marginal income tax rate in excess of 100% for anyone making over about $190k. Not only would they lose all incentive to try to earn more, they would actually be penalized for every extra dollar they earned—so of course they wouldn't earn more than that, and most of the taxable income you would be counting on would evaporate. An extra 20% income tax to fund UBI would be more plausible (for a total tax of around 60% on the top brackets), but then you would only get $7.2k per adult, which is well below the poverty line and thus much less interesting.
Also, AGI may not have been the best metric to use for taxable income. After deductions, the IRS-reported taxable income for 2014 was only $7 trillion, vs. the AGI of almost $10 trillion. After this 30% reduction in the base amount the payout would be just $5k per adult rather than $7.2k.
If you raise funds to pay for the UBI with a universal flat tax at the ratio of the basic income over the mean income, then (so long as the basic income is less than the mean income) there is guaranteed to be enough money to fund it, and everyone below the mean income (currently about 75% of the population) would see some net benefit after tax and UBI.... We could give every individual a luxurious UBI of about $25,000 a year, and fund that by taxing every individual about 50% of their income...
You make an interesting point about the ratio of basic income to mean income, but something seems off about the calculations. I'm not sure where you're getting your figure for the mean income—I wasn't able to find any reliable sources, they all report median income instead, which is close to the $50k you used to calculate the 50% rate—but the IRS reported $9T of taxable adjusted gross income for 2013 and the adult (18+) population of the USA is around 250 million, so that would give a mean AGI of approximately $36 million dollars per adult. In other words, you wouldn't need to impose a 50% income tax to give every adult a tax-exempt $25k handout, just a flat increase of 0.07% of AGI over the current rates. The total annual cost of the program would only be $25k*25M = $6.25B, after all, which is practically a rounding error in the $3.8T federal budget (2015). This is assuming all else remains equal, of course; historically it would be a bad idea to assume that a given increase in the tax rate will result in the same (or any) increase in total tax receipts, and the UBI itself is likely to have some effect on non-UBI income.
Naturally, the initial effect would be a massive increase in the prices of consumer goods offsetting the sudden increase in demand. Handing people an extra $25k does not mean there is suddenly $25k worth of extra stuff available for them to buy, just that there is more money on the market bidding for the same limited supply of goods. (The money was on the market before, but directed toward different goods.) It remains to be seen whether the average citizen's purchasing power would actually increase over the long term as production adjusts to the new demand profile.
Personally, I couldn't care less what they believe so long as they behave themselves.
That's the thing now isn't it. They aren't behaving themselves, they're actively advocating and implementing things that are contrary to the civilization that they live in. Some of them are now going as far to advocate attacks against that same civilization.
Again, punishing people based on what they are "advocating for" is not compatible with "western culture". If someone actually goes out and implements an attack then punishment of some form would be a proportional response. However, so long as they interact with others in a civil and voluntary manner, attempting to punish them for holding and advocating for their beliefs and working peaceably to implement them would be a greater affront to our own culture and ideals than anything they've done.
American style capitalism says everything gets cheaper, better, more efficient through privatization.... Except when it doesn't.
Aside from the potential for competition, that assumes a that the buyers are somewhat sensitive to changes in price. Under normal circumstances that would be a safe assumption, but when the buyer is the government, and spending other people's money, there is very little price sensitivity on the buyer's side to keep prices in check. The seller, of course, is going to charge whatever they can get away with, and the government has no real incentive to bargain or look for cheaper solutions. The inevitable outcome is obvious, and not in any sense a failing of capitalism.
Blocking your access to the polls is the same in effect regardless if it is done with a gun or a mob.
When you put it that way, the effect is the same even if there is no gun or mob and the potential voter simply stays home out of apathy. The effect is not the issue here. The means is, and directly threatening someone with violence is very different from congregating on public property around the polling place, perhaps looking a bit intimidating but not actually committing assault or otherwise physically blocking anyone from entering.
A gay couple and friends could have taken your 'milder' form of social consequences when denied a wedding cake but the courts were involved and have been involved for a very long time now.
Yes, the courts are involved, and that has been a mistake. Nothing should be effectively nationalized as a "public accommodation" aside from what the government itself provides, and then only because the government can hardly argue that they do not owe their services to everyone while imposing taxes on everyone to pay for them.
It is precedent that the government not let any institution that has a disproportionate influence on our elections to be partial to the public. Why should twitter or any social media company be exempt?
Wrong question. Rather than asking why Twitter should be exempt, we should be asking why the government has been allowed to get away with violating the freedoms of speech and association of all these other organizations. Consistency is a laudable goal, but no excuse for applying old injustices to new situations. Fix the precedent instead.
What you're saying is that any group can oppress any other group so long as the government is complicit in that oppression. Hey, it isn't the government silencing you or restricting your right to vote. If it's against the law just call the police. Oh, they didn't answer? Well shucks! At least the government isn't oppressing us!
The activities of the KKK were not "social consequences". An example of a social consequence is someone exercising their freedom of association and choosing not to do business with you or interact with you on a social level. In its milder forms it may take the form of higher prices or worse customer service, or malicious gossip. Social consequences do not include trespass, destruction of property, or assault. Those are simply crimes,
regardless of the motivation.
But going with your KKK example, the government was actively involved in the oppression, by not allowing the victims to defend themselves. They're the ones who insisted that everyone leave defense up to them, taxed everyone to (theoretically) fund that defense, and then selectively failed to respond when defense is needed. By doing so they were siding with the aggressors, even if they never lifted a finger during the attack.
To put it another way, Twitter... should not be able to ban political ideology just like they cannot ban black people.
On the contrary, Twitter should be able to ban whoever and whatever they feel like. You have the right to speak freely, without legal consequences: your status under the law is determined by what you do and not by what you say. That does not mean you are entitled to free use of someone else's resources in order to spread your message. If Twitter wishes to be selective about who they offer their services to, and for what purpose,
that is entirely within their rights.
A relatively small car battery stores around 50 amp-hours of charge.
At 12V, so the stored energy is only about 0.6 kWh.
The average house wiring is capable of carrying 10 or 15 amps.
At either 120V or 240V, depending on the country, so energy can be delivered at a rate of around 1.8 to 3.6 kW from a standard 15A output. If internal resistance were not an issue, you could draw enough energy to fully recharge that 50 Ah car battery in 10-20 minutes. Or with a dedicated 50A 240V appliance outlet, about 3 minutes.
A Tesla Roadster has a 54 kWh battery capacity (90x as much), so a full recharge would require at least 4.5 hours even with the dedicated 50A 240V outlet. That would be a significant improvement, but still well short of "instantaneous".
Of course in this article "instantaneous" refers not to the time required to recharge the battery, but merely the time to replace the electrolytic fluid. The old electrolytes still need to be recycled or processed to restore their original charge before they can be reused. It would be fairer to compare this process to physically replacing an electric car's batteries with pre-charged spares, which could be done in moments if the car was designed for it.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, it's not the same. Purchases are a much more reliable indicator of what people want than asking them directly. People don't consider all the trade-offs involved until they are faced with deciding how they want to spend their hard-earned money given the versions of the products that actually made it to the market.
The battery on $20,000 a car lasts, at best, about five years. It costs $150 to get a new one.
If auto manufacturers made the batteries non-removable people wouldn't buy cars.
The battery on a $800 phone lasts, at best, about 3 years. It costs $10 for a new battery.
Why is it okay to hand-wave away the phone manufacturer's choice to glue these units closed?
Because automobiles are a mature market with only minor changes over time, and someone will probably still be driving that same car 15 or 20 years after it was manufactured. The rate of change in smartphone technology thus far has meant that by the time the battery needs to be replaced the phone itself is looking rather obsolete. Phones with replaceable batteries used to be ubiquitous, but people rarely bought new batteries for old phones. Doing away with the extra size and weight required to support replaceable batteries was a perfectly logical decision based on market trends. Doing otherwise would be wasteful so long as consumers choose to upgrade their phones to the latest model every couple of years regardless of battery performance. Software support also tends to end around that same time, and the prevalence of closed-source drivers mean that devices lacking active support from the manufacturers cannot be updated to run the latest operating systems.
If you want replaceable batteries to make sense you need to start by changing the upgrade cycle. That means designing apps and operating systems to work well on older devices, not just the latest flagship models, and encouraging the use of fully open source software stacks (especially the drivers) so that updates are not dependent on the original manufacturer's goodwill. Replacing the battery after three years makes sense only when a five- or six-year-old smartphone is actually considered usable.
A refrigerator and washing machine have a higher number of field replaceable parts than a cellphone.
That is certainly one way to measure complexity, from the perspective of field service. It's probably not the best metric for overall complexity, though. The number of steps involved in manufacturing the device from raw materials, the tolerances required to make sure all the pieces fit together, the number of things that have to work exactly right in order for the device to perform its intended function—these are the metrics I would use. I would also consider whether a similar result could be accomplished with a simpler design (essential complexity vs. optimization), and what degree of supporting infrastructure the device requires. By any of these measures even an old-style "dumb" cellphone is far more complex than a refrigerator. You can make a reasonably efficient refrigerator with a pump, some copper tubing, a well-insulated box, some coolant, and a source of energy to operate the pump. You don't even need electricity, much less electronics. Your basic functional cellphone, on the other hand, requires a bunch of integrated circuits (which are massively complex in their own right), PCB(s), a battery, a microphone, and a speaker, all manufactured to very tight tolerances to fit within acceptable limits for size, weight, heat dissipation, and battery life, plus a well-regulated source of electricity, a network of cell towers (each more complex than a cellphone), radio protocols to link the cellphones to the towers, routing protocols to forward voice traffic between towers, etc. And all of that is just for voice calls.
In terms of repairability, the tolerances are going to be the main issue for anything designed to be "mobile". The design parameters favor tight integration with little room to spare between parts. Consumers may think they want items that last longer and can be repaired easily in the field, but in practice when it comes time to make a purchase they don't want it enough to accept a device twice as large and three times as heavy. Compared to a sturdy, immobile appliance like a refrigerator, a novice attempting DIY repair is far more likely to damage a cellphone during disassembly or re-assembly. One is also much less likely to accidentally fry a refrigerator with static electricity, or put too much pressure on the unprotected battery pack while the case is off and cause an intermittent short which eventually leads to a fire.
Note that of the the refrigerator parts you listed, the one most similar to a cellphone—the digital control panel—is typically replaced, not repaired. This is comparable to how cellphones are usually "repaired"—by throwing the old one out and buying a new one.
So don't think only people in wheelchairs have benefited from the law.
If that were true people would implement these changes on their own even without the law. The law exists specifically because the benefits you list are not deemed to be worth what they cost unless the government forcibly externalizes the cost of dealing with disabilities onto the non-disabled.
(and, in fact, won't cancel the insurance until you prove that you have either gotten new insurance or handed in your plates)
Interesting. Wouldn't that mean you're getting insurance for free until you actually send in the plates? Or are they receiving some kind of special legal protection not available to other service providers which allows them to keep charging even after the contract is terminated?
But you'll find plenty about assault, threats to national security, or inciting public turmoil. ... There aren't restrictions on the speech itself.
"Assault" can be nothing more than speech. Classification as a "threat to national security" may be based on nothing more substantial than something you said. "Inciting public turmoil" usually amounts to making a speech the authorities don't care for. All of these "crimes" are restrictions on the speech itself and a violation of the 1st Amendment.
There shouldn't be any restrictions on speech... but in practice, as the law is currently written and interpreted, there are.
Free speech does not extend the the encouragement, endorsement, or threat of acts of violence.
Sure it does. Certainly any degree of "encouragement" or "endorsement" in the form of speech would not justify a violent response. Threats likewise, though there is a caveat: if your speech gives someone the impression that they are facing an imminent threat of irreversible harm, it would not be unreasonable for them to respond preemptively to counter that threat. That would simply be self-defense; the response is justified by the anticipated act of violence, not by the act of speech.
Science makes statements about how the world is, religion makes statements about how to be in the world.
Religion also typically makes statements about "how the world is" (e.g. "God exists and is actively involved in world events"). These statements are largely at odds with the statements made by science on the same topic. If your version of "religion" is limited to "how to be in the world" and says nothing about the existence of god(s) then congratulations, you're an atheist. Welcome to the club.
These domains are not orthogonal, either. If your prescriptions about "how to be in the world" are not informed by a solid foundation in "how the world is" the results are not likely to be what you expected.
Only if you're a simple-minded literalist do you think the creation stories and whatnot are there as history. Most people understand they're there as archetypical stories about how to live. ... You can both believe in the Big Bang, and believe e.g. in the moral lesson of the story of Cain and Abel...
Believing in "the moral lesson of the story of Cain and Abel" is perfectly compatible with being an atheist, so long as you're simply treating it as an ancient moral lesson and not as proof of the existence of god(s). Atheism does not mean rejecting every lesson ever taught under the guise of religion, just the absence of beliefe in god(s).
You have your terms backwards. Atheism is simply the absence of belief in god(s), not a positive belief in the absence of god(s). The atheist does not go around asserting that god does not exist, but simply dismisses the question until and unless sufficient evidence is presented in favor of existence to merit consideration—the position people usually take on the existence of hypothetical entities with no supporting evidence. Agnosticism, on the other hand, is a strictly neutral stance, considering both existence and non-existence equally likely. It grants more credence to the idea that god might exist than, say, the possible existence of invisible pink unicorns in your backyard, given equivalent evidence. Neither one requires faith, per se, but of the two agnosticism makes the more extraordinary claim. Atheism is just a straightforward application of Occum's Razor.
Irrelevant. The original statement said "cause of suicide", not "cause of death". The cause of death is an abstract fact: "the subject's body ceased to function due to damage from a bullet entering at high speed". (Medically speaking the gun had nothing to do with the cause of death; the bullet did all the actual damage. It makes no difference whether the bullet was shot from a firearm or accelerated some other way.) To call something a "cause of suicide" is a statement of blame, with the connotation that without that factor the suicide wouldn't have occurred—as opposed to merely taking a different form. The bullet may indeed be the cause of death but it isn't to blame for the person choosing to commit suicide.
There are plenty of other ways to accomplish the same result, many of them just as easy and effective as a gun.
Name few.
Death is never more than a hair's-breadth away even without deliberately courting it. Humans are fragile. A sharp knife to the wrist or neck, asphyxiation, electrocution—people manage to kill themselves all the time by accident, in varied and sometimes quite innovative ways. It's not hard to arrange for that sort of fatal "accident" deliberately. If you really want to commit suicide the tricky part is not finding an easy and effective way to do it, it's making sure you won't be interrupted before it's finished. The mistake a lot of people make is to choose something slow and mostly reversible with treatment, like a drug overdose. Of course, they probably do that on purpose (albeit subconsciously) because they're really not trying to kill themselves, just send a message. That says very little about the intentions of someone who would turn to a quick and sure method like a gun. You don't do that unless you actually intend to die.
Research shows that ease of suicide is correlated to incidences.
So? You seem to be approaching this from the position that suicide is always the wrong choice. I say that is up to the individual to decide. Perhaps by making suicide more difficult, rather than improving their lives, you are simply taking away the choice and imposing your own will over theirs.
You have incitement to riot backwards--the person who is supposed to be charged is the person who goes, basically, "Let's have a riot!" and has the audience respond with...let's call it enthusiastic approval.
Yeah, that's how I understand it as well. And it's wrong. The rioters alone are responsible for the riot. No one else should be charged for "incitement".
It preserves free speech, but ... takes the view that free speech is 'free to say what you want' but not 'free of consequences.'
No, it does not preserve free speech. If the law imposes consequences which depend on the content of your speech then you are not free to speak. You are, in fact, subject to being punished specifically for speaking, which is pretty much the definition of an infringement of your freedom of speech.
Speech can of course have consequences—social ones, things that people could do on their own initiative whether you spoke or not. You may lose friends or become unwelcome in certain places. However, no amount or content of speech justifies taking away your property, locking you up, or any other limitation or restriction on your legal rights.
... like the fighting words doctrine ...
Which is also wrong for the same reason.
In 2014, 50% of all suicides in the US were caused by firearms.
Not "caused by", "aided by". A firearm does not make anyone commit suicide. It is merely a tool. There are plenty of other ways to accomplish the same result, many of them just as easy and effective as a gun.
Any discussion of the comparative dangers of firearms must exclude suicides, as well as justified self-defense—and should include the deterrent effect, though that is harder to measure since it involved the absence of violence which might have otherwise occurred. Regarding suicides, the goal should be to reduce the desire to commit suicide, not to prevent it from being carried out. Forcing someone to live when they want to die is no better than forcing them to die when they wish to live. It is not your decision to make either way.
Come on, you can't seriously define freedom as being able to download Netflix and Hollywood created content.
This is a red herring. Regardless of your stance on copyright, the issue is not whether one can obtain copyrighted content for free, but rather the collateral damage to the Internet and society as a whole resulting from Hollywood's quixotic quest to eliminate copyright infringement at all costs. Most of the negative effects of this quest are born not by "pirates" but by paying customers—after all, the "pirates" get the version without any DRM while those who follow Hollywood's rules are stuck with obnoxious restrictions on where and how they can view the content they payed for. That's not even considering the pervasive effort to avoid giving the owners of devices administrative control over their own hardware, mostly for the sake of enforcing said DRM (e.g. Netflix recently blocking their app from being installed on rooted smartphones), or the push to conscript ISPs to act as copyright enforcement agents, trolling every scrap of private online conversation for the slightest suggestion of impropriety and banning subscribers from the Internet on the basis of unproven complaints.
Even if you think copyright is a good thing—and I don't—the measures taken to enforce it have clearly long since grown out of proportion to the supposed offense. Hollywood—the entire content industry—is not worth the collateral damage they are inflicting. So far as I am concerned, if they cannot survive in a post-copyright world, so be it. Let them fail.
i think the people culpable would be the people that organize antifa 'protesters' to show up en masse, and tell them that it's ok to use violence.
Even then, what would make it reasonable for these people to actually believe that it was OK to use violence, regardless of what they were told? They are adults and ought to know better than to behave like that. The responsibility for their actions is theirs alone. No matter how obviously the organizer(s) desired that outcome, they didn't cause it to happen. At any point the audience could have simply said "no" and walked away.
Laws against "incitement" violate not only the freedom of speech, but also the more fundamental principle of proportional response. If someone else speaks, and your response to that speech is more violent than simply speaking back, then you're the one in the wrong—not them. It doesn't matter what they said or what their intentions may have been.
In fact, I want my payments to be visible, so I can prove that I made a payment, or on rare occasions, can reverse a payment if a service wasn't delivered.
You don't have to give up anonymity (or rather pseudonymity, as all the major cryptocurrencies use public keys as identifiers) in order to prove that a payment was made, as the blockchain clearly shows what payments were made to which addresses. Recommended best practice is to use a different receiving address for each order, so this will generally be sufficient. You will, of course, need to support the claim that the merchant requested payment to a particular address, since the request is not part of the blockchain. If you need to prove the funds were sent by you you can sign a statement with the private key used to send the payment, thus proving that you were the sender without ever revealing your true identity.
As for reversible payments, while they have their uses, if you make it too easy to cancel payment then you penalize honest merchants. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. It is relatively simple to achieve the buyer protection you desire through an appropriate escrow system built on top of an irreversible and pseudonymous payment protocol. On the other hand, implementing irreversible payments on top of a reversible protocol is a much more difficult task.
If you use speech in a way that starts a riot, you most certainly can get arrested.
If your speech has the ability to cause a riot on its own, without regard for anyone else's choices—you must be a magician. In reality riots occur not because someone makes a speech (regardless of the content) but because the listeners choose to riot. The liability for the riot lies entirely with those who choose to participate in it. They had the choice to riot or not, and chose incorrectly. Don't make the mistake of shifting the blame for their behavior onto someone else's speech.
I remember reading about turning the other cheek but I don't recall anything about handing your wife or daughters over to be raped. Then again, I'm not super familiar with the bible.
I'm not sure whether you were being sarcastic, but if not you might want to read up on the story of Lot, who is said to have done exactly that—offered up his daughters to be raped by a mob in place of his guests. There is no mention of him being condemned for it either; if anything this show of "hospitality" toward his guests was part of the reason why he was deemed "righteous" and saved while the rest of the town, and all who lived there, were destroyed. Apparently no one asked the daughters for their opinion of this act of "hospitality".
... the IRS reported $9T of taxable adjusted gross income for 2013 and the adult (18+) population of the USA is around 250 million, so that would give a mean AGI of approximately $36 million dollars per adult. In other words, you wouldn't need to impose a 50% income tax to give every adult a tax-exempt $25k handout, just a flat increase of 0.07% of AGI over the current rates. The total annual cost of the program would only be $25k*25M = $6.25B, after all, which is practically a rounding error in the $3.8T federal budget (2015).
Actually, forget all of that. Both calculations are off by three orders of magnitude. Mean AGI is only $36k, not $36M. (I thought that seemed incredible... I was using "trillion" = 10^15 rather than 10^12.) To pay $25k per adult would require a total of $6.25 trillion, not billion (i.e. double the total federal budget for 2015), and raising that amount would require a flat tax of about 70% of the 2015 taxable AGI, not 0.07%. That's 70% extra on top of the current rates, since everything else still needs to be payed for, though a few programs (not a majority of the budget) could potentially be repealed as redundant once UBI was in place.
Obviously an extra 70% tax would be completely impractical; combined with the existing non-UBI taxes it would result in a marginal income tax rate in excess of 100% for anyone making over about $190k. Not only would they lose all incentive to try to earn more, they would actually be penalized for every extra dollar they earned—so of course they wouldn't earn more than that, and most of the taxable income you would be counting on would evaporate. An extra 20% income tax to fund UBI would be more plausible (for a total tax of around 60% on the top brackets), but then you would only get $7.2k per adult, which is well below the poverty line and thus much less interesting.
Also, AGI may not have been the best metric to use for taxable income. After deductions, the IRS-reported taxable income for 2014 was only $7 trillion, vs. the AGI of almost $10 trillion. After this 30% reduction in the base amount the payout would be just $5k per adult rather than $7.2k.
If you raise funds to pay for the UBI with a universal flat tax at the ratio of the basic income over the mean income, then (so long as the basic income is less than the mean income) there is guaranteed to be enough money to fund it, and everyone below the mean income (currently about 75% of the population) would see some net benefit after tax and UBI. ... We could give every individual a luxurious UBI of about $25,000 a year, and fund that by taxing every individual about 50% of their income ...
You make an interesting point about the ratio of basic income to mean income, but something seems off about the calculations. I'm not sure where you're getting your figure for the mean income—I wasn't able to find any reliable sources, they all report median income instead, which is close to the $50k you used to calculate the 50% rate—but the IRS reported $9T of taxable adjusted gross income for 2013 and the adult (18+) population of the USA is around 250 million, so that would give a mean AGI of approximately $36 million dollars per adult. In other words, you wouldn't need to impose a 50% income tax to give every adult a tax-exempt $25k handout, just a flat increase of 0.07% of AGI over the current rates. The total annual cost of the program would only be $25k*25M = $6.25B, after all, which is practically a rounding error in the $3.8T federal budget (2015). This is assuming all else remains equal, of course; historically it would be a bad idea to assume that a given increase in the tax rate will result in the same (or any) increase in total tax receipts, and the UBI itself is likely to have some effect on non-UBI income.
Naturally, the initial effect would be a massive increase in the prices of consumer goods offsetting the sudden increase in demand. Handing people an extra $25k does not mean there is suddenly $25k worth of extra stuff available for them to buy, just that there is more money on the market bidding for the same limited supply of goods. (The money was on the market before, but directed toward different goods.) It remains to be seen whether the average citizen's purchasing power would actually increase over the long term as production adjusts to the new demand profile.
Personally, I couldn't care less what they believe so long as they behave themselves.
That's the thing now isn't it. They aren't behaving themselves, they're actively advocating and implementing things that are contrary to the civilization that they live in. Some of them are now going as far to advocate attacks against that same civilization.
Again, punishing people based on what they are "advocating for" is not compatible with "western culture". If someone actually goes out and implements an attack then punishment of some form would be a proportional response. However, so long as they interact with others in a civil and voluntary manner, attempting to punish them for holding and advocating for their beliefs and working peaceably to implement them would be a greater affront to our own culture and ideals than anything they've done.
American style capitalism says everything gets cheaper, better, more efficient through privatization. ... Except when it doesn't.
Aside from the potential for competition, that assumes a that the buyers are somewhat sensitive to changes in price. Under normal circumstances that would be a safe assumption, but when the buyer is the government, and spending other people's money, there is very little price sensitivity on the buyer's side to keep prices in check. The seller, of course, is going to charge whatever they can get away with, and the government has no real incentive to bargain or look for cheaper solutions. The inevitable outcome is obvious, and not in any sense a failing of capitalism.
Blocking your access to the polls is the same in effect regardless if it is done with a gun or a mob.
When you put it that way, the effect is the same even if there is no gun or mob and the potential voter simply stays home out of apathy. The effect is not the issue here. The means is, and directly threatening someone with violence is very different from congregating on public property around the polling place, perhaps looking a bit intimidating but not actually committing assault or otherwise physically blocking anyone from entering.
A gay couple and friends could have taken your 'milder' form of social consequences when denied a wedding cake but the courts were involved and have been involved for a very long time now.
Yes, the courts are involved, and that has been a mistake. Nothing should be effectively nationalized as a "public accommodation" aside from what the government itself provides, and then only because the government can hardly argue that they do not owe their services to everyone while imposing taxes on everyone to pay for them.
It is precedent that the government not let any institution that has a disproportionate influence on our elections to be partial to the public. Why should twitter or any social media company be exempt?
Wrong question. Rather than asking why Twitter should be exempt, we should be asking why the government has been allowed to get away with violating the freedoms of speech and association of all these other organizations. Consistency is a laudable goal, but no excuse for applying old injustices to new situations. Fix the precedent instead.
What you're saying is that any group can oppress any other group so long as the government is complicit in that oppression. Hey, it isn't the government silencing you or restricting your right to vote. If it's against the law just call the police. Oh, they didn't answer? Well shucks! At least the government isn't oppressing us!
The activities of the KKK were not "social consequences". An example of a social consequence is someone exercising their freedom of association and choosing not to do business with you or interact with you on a social level. In its milder forms it may take the form of higher prices or worse customer service, or malicious gossip. Social consequences do not include trespass, destruction of property, or assault. Those are simply crimes, regardless of the motivation.
But going with your KKK example, the government was actively involved in the oppression, by not allowing the victims to defend themselves. They're the ones who insisted that everyone leave defense up to them, taxed everyone to (theoretically) fund that defense, and then selectively failed to respond when defense is needed. By doing so they were siding with the aggressors, even if they never lifted a finger during the attack.
To put it another way, Twitter ... should not be able to ban political ideology just like they cannot ban black people.
On the contrary, Twitter should be able to ban whoever and whatever they feel like. You have the right to speak freely, without legal consequences: your status under the law is determined by what you do and not by what you say. That does not mean you are entitled to free use of someone else's resources in order to spread your message. If Twitter wishes to be selective about who they offer their services to, and for what purpose, that is entirely within their rights.
A relatively small car battery stores around 50 amp-hours of charge.
At 12V, so the stored energy is only about 0.6 kWh.
The average house wiring is capable of carrying 10 or 15 amps.
At either 120V or 240V, depending on the country, so energy can be delivered at a rate of around 1.8 to 3.6 kW from a standard 15A output. If internal resistance were not an issue, you could draw enough energy to fully recharge that 50 Ah car battery in 10-20 minutes. Or with a dedicated 50A 240V appliance outlet, about 3 minutes.
A Tesla Roadster has a 54 kWh battery capacity (90x as much), so a full recharge would require at least 4.5 hours even with the dedicated 50A 240V outlet. That would be a significant improvement, but still well short of "instantaneous".
Of course in this article "instantaneous" refers not to the time required to recharge the battery, but merely the time to replace the electrolytic fluid. The old electrolytes still need to be recycled or processed to restore their original charge before they can be reused. It would be fairer to compare this process to physically replacing an electric car's batteries with pre-charged spares, which could be done in moments if the car was designed for it.