You can't just say "Murder is wrong!" as an absolute statement and then quibble about what the definition of murder is.
I'm not quibbling about the definition of a murder. I was acknowledging the reality that we don't have perfect information, and so we have to make a judgement whether a dead person was murdered or killed. The uncertainty isn't in the definition, it's in the situation - was this murder or self defense or an accident? Depends.
That we're not sure whether Col. Mustard murdered Mr. Body has no bearing on the reality that there is a definition of murder, and we can agree that someone whose action fits the definition is in the wrong.
And yes, I used "murder" instead of "kill" because the words mean different things. Murder is a subset of kill, and we recognize there's a difference between a woman who shoots a man trying to rape her, and a woman who shoots a man because he dumped her.
You're welcome to be sophomoric about "right" and "wrong", but you'd have to start by explaining why the first woman is morally equivalent to the second one.
Yes! It's the black and white, false dichotomy, my team vs other team, bi-partisan bickering!
Maybe you should read the rest of his post. Pointing out two extremes and advocating a balance between the two is not a "false dichotomy" in any meaningful sense.
You might call his characterization of the liberal position a strawman, but "false dichotomy" is so wrong that you need to take a refresher on Logical Fallacies 101.
The absolutist manner in which you criticize his absolutism is... interesting. You do realize you've applied a foot bullet to your own argument, right?
If he knows what principles he stands for, why should he not proudly claim them? Moral questions are not in the same category as scientific questions.
For example, is "do not murder other people" a result of scientific experimentation, or is it based on principles? Is it subject to change and revision?
The answer should be obvious - there is no improving on it. There may be difficult questions on whether a specific incident was a murder or not, but the rule itself does not change nor should it. (I should also point out that scientific experiments cannot tell us what people ought to do; it can only tell us what results to expect from a given action)
Your philosophy does not properly handle moral issues. Are you willing to recalibrate your theories, or do you still hold onto your absolute enmity towards absolute stances?
Why retain the label of Republican when you could just call yourself Conservative and identify the problems with the Republicans or side with Libertarians or Tea Party? I mean, you sell your idea as core Conservatism and publish it for Republicans yet you're fired for it. And then you still continue to call yourself Republican? Why?
US politics encourages a two party system.
I would also guess he feels connected to the historical Republican Party. It was anti-slavery on principle, because it believed in a nation of ideals, not race.
If they [immigrants from other nations] look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none [...] but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" and then they feel that [...] they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.
Which is one of the chestnuts I tire of when debating ultra Conservatives and Libertarians. Because "messed with the incentive structure" can mean a lot of things. For most Libertarians, any taxation at all is "messing with the incentive structure."
In your opinion, what level of taxation is not "messing with the incentive structure"?
How complicated is your tax return? Is it complicated because it has to be for the gov't to collect enough money? Or is it complicated because there are hundreds of different tax rules to encourage certain economic behaviors?
)
I couldn't read past the first two. "I don't like the Republicans (for how they treated me, for how some of my beliefs align with them), but I guess, without ever really looking, that my conservative views are more closely aligned with Republican, so I'm a Republican for life, no matter how bad they treat me or the rest of the country."
Funny how you feel the need to make up words to put in his mouth.
Democrats are anti-conservative. Republicans are a mix of conservative and anti-conservative. Both suck, but one sucks much more.
Whether you're a social conservative or a fiscal conservative, the past 6 years of majority Democrat rule is adequate evidence for a conservative to dismiss them as an option. Others are free to hold out hope, but hope doesn't mean much in politics. Votes do.
Furthermore, our political system favors two parties, so influencing one of the main two parties is the easiest path to political success.
Given that Democrats are not an option, it is completely rational to focus efforts on the other party. If conservative ideas are any good, the other party will start winning elections and force the Democratic party to shift their stance if they want to stay in power.
Also US was already at war siding with the allies because of pearl harbour when hilter declared war.
US being in a state of war does not mean that the US is at war with Germany. Japan is not Germany, and had no authority or ability to initiate a war between Germany-US on Germany's behalf.
The US did not declare war on Germany. Germany declared war first. That's pretty much the definition of "initiate".
I don't know (honestly). Perhaps keeping drugs off the market that would make the side effects of Thalidomide seem minor?
(BTW, it's available for other uses, with an image of a pregnant woman with a circle-slash on each pill.. at least that's what I saw on the news long ago.)
You know the saying "Victory has a thousand fathers, defeat is an orphan"?
It's easy to claim that the FDA fixed or improved things; it's not as easy to list the treatments prevented by the FDA that could have helped people, because it's invisible. It's hard to see the wasted potential, but those are the hard-to-quantify side effects of regulatory agencies.
It says that 5.4 additional people died. I would like to see the other 0.6 of the last person to die.
Without access to the study itself, I'd guess the math is based on the % increase in ER visits, and then using that % to determine culpability for the extra deaths post-ban.
The number doesn't mean there's a half death person out there, but it does assign half a death to a certain factor (plastic bag ban).
Outside of super-caps or battery swapping, you can't charge the car with electricity faster than you can pour in a liquid hydrocarbon.
The more batteries you have the faster you can charge real miles, and this scales infinitely, assuming you can obtain electricity as the necessary rate (think charging stations at electrical substations).
Uh... Batteries are expensive and add weight. They do not scale infinitely, because you can reach a battery weight where your engine can't even move the car.
Charging all of those batteries in parallel, quickly, needs a lot of electrical current (human hazard!). There's also a heat issue, since so much power moving through wires means a lot of waste heat.
You're working against physics here. Pushing electrons into a chemical solution (battery) is by nature slower than pouring a stable liquid chemical (gas) into a tank.
> Last I've read, those "subsidies" are normal tax breaks that any business can claim for long term capital investment.
Nope, the oil industry gets special tax breaks despite record $billions in profits. Obama campaigned about this.
Would like a better citation than a campaign slogan.
As an industry, oil industry does not have a very high return on investment, either. That undermines your claim of "record profits" based on subsidies.
Of course there are standards issues, which eventually get settled. I shouldn't have to explain this on slashdot.
The speed and availability of charging is not a standards issue. It's a practicality/logistics issue that is driven by the physics of the technology. Outside of super-caps or battery swapping, you can't charge the car with electricity faster than you can pour in a liquid hydrocarbon.
That makes the EV a more specialized (limited) tool than an equivalent size ICEV, and it's more expensive to boot.
Subsidies? Do you know how much subsidies the ICE (manufacturers as well as petroleum) industry gets still today?!?!?!
Last I've read, those "subsidies" are normal tax breaks that any business can claim for long term capital investment. If your beef is that there are any tax breaks at all, I wouldn't mind us simplifying the tax code.
I performed a cost analysis for the hybrid car I own. Break even was 30k miles. Well past that. Many people still say hybrids don't pay. They did for me... Cost anaylses are very subjective, and should be.
For the Volt, I compared it against the ICE car it was based on, which was something like $10k cheaper. The amount of electric mileage you needed to overcome $10k was pretty ridiculous, and required a lifestyle geared around optimizing use of the car. (Sorry, don't have access to my calculations at the moment)
It's nice that your hybrid saved you money, but for EVs to provide value, they must save *more* money (provide value) than equivalent gas hybrids and non-hybrids. Otherwise, you're paying a premium to use the technology, making it a fashion accessory rather than a practical choice.
Tangentially - what hybrid, what was the savings rate and the cost to break even?
I rented a Nissan Leaf for a month and they only gave me the 110v charger. I plugged it in when I got home, and it was always done by the morning.
That's the "slow charge" solution I was talking about. Obviously, the "quick charge" solution isn't used much because it's expensive. Looks like Tesla is trying to provide gas-station like "quick-charge" stations - except even with a quick-charge, you have to wait half an hour, instead of 5 minutes as for a gas fill-up. Availability of the super-charge stations is limited, and only for one brand of EVs.
Of course there are limitations, issues, change over costs. No one is claiming that EVs are superior to ICE in every aspect today, or even ever. But they are reasonable to many today. And they'll only become more reasonable to more people as technology progresses.
"Reasonable" with subsidies, which masks the economic realities. I performed a Chevy Volt cost analysis for a speech club, and the break even point is practically never.
As for future scaling, EVs are currently a rich people novelty status toy, and look to be so for the future barring some amazing technological breakthroughs.
This is just my stinkin' opinion, so don't let it stop you early adopters from giving it a good try. Just leave my wallet alone.
Not in the least. Charging where you sleep is not re-engineering society--it's the exact opposite--it's technology matching the existing state of society. Driving to filling (or recharging stations) is society adapting to technology.
Charging where you sleep requires one of the following two:
1. Specialized chargers that allow quick charges. Expensive.
2. Wall chargers that do not require new hardware, but will charge slowly due to the physics of 110v AC. A daily slow charge is a limitation when compared to a weekly gas station fill up.
A gas station fill up did involve a societal adaptation, but that's a sunk cost - and it's actually pretty convenient when compared to the frequent long charges needed for an EV. Switching over to electric is a marginal cost, and there's a lot more work needed to make EVs worth that cost, if it's even possible.
The solution is not to make the new technology work under the constraints of the old industry, but to solve the needs of the new technology the right way. Consider recharging available at home, hotels, etc. Recharge at night, where/while you sleep, and *never* drive to a specific place to refuel.
You're thinking in terms of how we can remodel society to efficiently use a particular technology.
I suspect the rest of society is a lot less eager to do so. We don't exist for the sake of adopting new technology, after all.
For your idea, I've read analysis that the power grid can't handle the load of a large number of EVs charging; you'd need to upgrade both power generation and the power distribution grid before your idea can actually be implemented.
Wow. 1971. It's almost like there were different people working there 40 years and it was a different time in automobile advancements and technology. Seriously, is that the best trolling you can do? Digging up old articles from 25-40 years ago to reflect on how a magazine might be run today?
If you bothered to read the link provided, you'll notice some more recent cars (1990s, 2000s) were also awarded Car of the Year, but failed to live up to the hype as well.
It's just evidence that a CotY award isn't sufficient to prove that a car is great. It takes time to find out if a car is reliable, and that's something that takes time and a large number of vehicles to find out.
Without minimum wage and even with it, you have a job market where many of the jobs that exist do not pay a living wage.
By destroying those jobs with minimum wage, you remove "training jobs" that teenagers and young workers can use to pick up job skills and experience.
The fallacy is in assuming that every single job on the market needs to be something that you can make a career out of. But jobs aren't permanent; people can and do switch jobs.
A lot of those "crappy" jobs could be used as a stepping stone to better ones. But since you've destroyed them, you've removed a chance for someone to gain work experience, learn skills, demonstrate competence, and work one's way up the job market.
The high school girl who babysits every week for a little spending money doesn't need to be paid a "living wage"; but a thorough application of minimum wage would remove that as an option for her. (I'm pretty sure babysitting is exempt from most minimum wage laws; but it's still a job)
Destroying jobs and removing employment options does not help anyone; unemployment is a far greater waste of resources than a "bad" job. See our current job market, where being unemployed creates a nasty cycle of continuing to be unemployed. ("If no one wants to pay him to work, clearly I don't want to hire him")
Quit meddling with a system that you don't understand well. Econ 101 is sufficient to understand that minimum wage decreases employment; at best, you hope you set it below the market equilibrium so that it has no effect.
If I were the president, I'd propose a strong evaluation of military spending, keep the CIA, FBI, State Department, and the EPA, and turn almost everything else over to the states. That is, the government would concern itself with international relations and matters between the states, or that spill over state borders, and leave everything else to the states to figure out, especially medicare, social security and education.
If only we had more people who understood federalism and how de-centralized gov't can be more responsive and effective.
So what are you going to do with the people who can't hold down a high-tech/creative job? They don't magically vanish, and putting them all in prison would be horribly expensive.
Stop destroying their options with the minimum wage would be an excellent starting point.
High tech jobs can exist because they are supported by a whole set of "low-tech" jobs that maintain the infrastructure. Jobs like janitor, plumber, construction, and so on aren't going anywhere, though they don't fall under the "hi-tech/creative" umbrella.
Which is why minimum wage is mandated by government - so that everyone is hit the same way. No one gets a competitive advantage.
You don't seem to understand that fast food is not just competing with fast food. It's competing with home-cooked food and alternatives that have less "minimum wage labor" costs.
So yes, some other product does get more of a competitive advantage, which does change the market and hurt businesses. Furthermore, the minimum wage hurts the employees it's supposed to help - businesses have increased employment costs, so some jobs that used to be barely profitable cease to exist.
Less jobs is a bad thing; even "bad" jobs are better than unemployment, and they provide training that can be used to transition to better paying jobs.
It's also incorrect. The story is not about Canute's arrogance but his humility. He wanted to show his adherents that a king may not command everything so he illustrated, so the story goes, by commanding the tide with predictable results.
It's absolutely correct. The point was about the effect of the king's words, not the attitude of the king.
King Canute's words had no effect on the tides. What effect will Obama's words have on "climate change"?
Come back to me when thanks to some serious efforts and funding, we have solar or geothermal or hydro power that could handle the entire energy needs of the US.
Solar - incapable of providing baseline power needs. (unless you like your AC or heating to turn off at night)
Geothermal - limited availability.
Hydro - also limited availability, AND opposed by conservationists/environmentalists for the enviornmental damage it causes to the area upstream of the dam.
In short, yours is a list of impractical solutions; and you want them to handle the entire energy needs of the US?
Slashdot Mirror
You can't just say "Murder is wrong!" as an absolute statement and then quibble about what the definition of murder is.
I'm not quibbling about the definition of a murder. I was acknowledging the reality that we don't have perfect information, and so we have to make a judgement whether a dead person was murdered or killed. The uncertainty isn't in the definition, it's in the situation - was this murder or self defense or an accident? Depends.
That we're not sure whether Col. Mustard murdered Mr. Body has no bearing on the reality that there is a definition of murder, and we can agree that someone whose action fits the definition is in the wrong.
And yes, I used "murder" instead of "kill" because the words mean different things. Murder is a subset of kill, and we recognize there's a difference between a woman who shoots a man trying to rape her, and a woman who shoots a man because he dumped her.
You're welcome to be sophomoric about "right" and "wrong", but you'd have to start by explaining why the first woman is morally equivalent to the second one.
Yes! It's the black and white, false dichotomy, my team vs other team, bi-partisan bickering!
Maybe you should read the rest of his post. Pointing out two extremes and advocating a balance between the two is not a "false dichotomy" in any meaningful sense.
You might call his characterization of the liberal position a strawman, but "false dichotomy" is so wrong that you need to take a refresher on Logical Fallacies 101.
The absolutist manner in which you criticize his absolutism is ... interesting. You do realize you've applied a foot bullet to your own argument, right?
If he knows what principles he stands for, why should he not proudly claim them? Moral questions are not in the same category as scientific questions.
For example, is "do not murder other people" a result of scientific experimentation, or is it based on principles? Is it subject to change and revision?
The answer should be obvious - there is no improving on it. There may be difficult questions on whether a specific incident was a murder or not, but the rule itself does not change nor should it. (I should also point out that scientific experiments cannot tell us what people ought to do; it can only tell us what results to expect from a given action)
Your philosophy does not properly handle moral issues. Are you willing to recalibrate your theories, or do you still hold onto your absolute enmity towards absolute stances?
Except the OP was speaking against the free market...
Yes, he has successfully shut down his brain to avoid thoughtcrime. His dedication to the State has been noted.
You, on the other hand, have earned a trip to the re-education camps.
Why retain the label of Republican when you could just call yourself Conservative and identify the problems with the Republicans or side with Libertarians or Tea Party? I mean, you sell your idea as core Conservatism and publish it for Republicans yet you're fired for it. And then you still continue to call yourself Republican? Why?
US politics encourages a two party system.
I would also guess he feels connected to the historical Republican Party. It was anti-slavery on principle, because it believed in a nation of ideals, not race.
Wiki has some good quotes from Lincoln, but especially read the ones from the Lincoln-Douglas debates (1958). http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln
If they [immigrants from other nations] look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none [...] but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" and then they feel that [...] they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.
Which is one of the chestnuts I tire of when debating ultra Conservatives and Libertarians. Because "messed with the incentive structure" can mean a lot of things. For most Libertarians, any taxation at all is "messing with the incentive structure."
In your opinion, what level of taxation is not "messing with the incentive structure"?
How complicated is your tax return? Is it complicated because it has to be for the gov't to collect enough money? Or is it complicated because there are hundreds of different tax rules to encourage certain economic behaviors?
) I couldn't read past the first two. "I don't like the Republicans (for how they treated me, for how some of my beliefs align with them), but I guess, without ever really looking, that my conservative views are more closely aligned with Republican, so I'm a Republican for life, no matter how bad they treat me or the rest of the country."
Funny how you feel the need to make up words to put in his mouth.
Democrats are anti-conservative. Republicans are a mix of conservative and anti-conservative. Both suck, but one sucks much more.
Whether you're a social conservative or a fiscal conservative, the past 6 years of majority Democrat rule is adequate evidence for a conservative to dismiss them as an option. Others are free to hold out hope, but hope doesn't mean much in politics. Votes do.
Furthermore, our political system favors two parties, so influencing one of the main two parties is the easiest path to political success.
Given that Democrats are not an option, it is completely rational to focus efforts on the other party. If conservative ideas are any good, the other party will start winning elections and force the Democratic party to shift their stance if they want to stay in power.
I stopped reading right there.
As per your training.
How dare you speak in favor of double plus ungood thoughtcrime.
Go see what initiated means please.
Go see what being at war means.
Also US was already at war siding with the allies because of pearl harbour when hilter declared war.
US being in a state of war does not mean that the US is at war with Germany. Japan is not Germany, and had no authority or ability to initiate a war between Germany-US on Germany's behalf.
The US did not declare war on Germany. Germany declared war first. That's pretty much the definition of "initiate".
Hitler did not initiate war with the US.
Hitler declared war on the US after Pearl Harbor.
Granted, it's not like the US was completely neutral up to that point, but changing it into open warfare was completely on him.
I don't know (honestly). Perhaps keeping drugs off the market that would make the side effects of Thalidomide seem minor? (BTW, it's available for other uses, with an image of a pregnant woman with a circle-slash on each pill.. at least that's what I saw on the news long ago.)
You know the saying "Victory has a thousand fathers, defeat is an orphan"?
It's easy to claim that the FDA fixed or improved things; it's not as easy to list the treatments prevented by the FDA that could have helped people, because it's invisible. It's hard to see the wasted potential, but those are the hard-to-quantify side effects of regulatory agencies.
It says that 5.4 additional people died. I would like to see the other 0.6 of the last person to die.
Without access to the study itself, I'd guess the math is based on the % increase in ER visits, and then using that % to determine culpability for the extra deaths post-ban.
The number doesn't mean there's a half death person out there, but it does assign half a death to a certain factor (plastic bag ban).
this would still be the 1700's.
I didn't realize the FDA was responsible for the passage of time. Wow, that's a big job.
On a more serious note, the FDA was founded in 1906. What has the FDA done over the past 100 years that make it so essential to progress?
Outside of super-caps or battery swapping, you can't charge the car with electricity faster than you can pour in a liquid hydrocarbon.
The more batteries you have the faster you can charge real miles, and this scales infinitely, assuming you can obtain electricity as the necessary rate (think charging stations at electrical substations).
Uh... Batteries are expensive and add weight. They do not scale infinitely, because you can reach a battery weight where your engine can't even move the car.
Charging all of those batteries in parallel, quickly, needs a lot of electrical current (human hazard!). There's also a heat issue, since so much power moving through wires means a lot of waste heat.
You're working against physics here. Pushing electrons into a chemical solution (battery) is by nature slower than pouring a stable liquid chemical (gas) into a tank.
> Last I've read, those "subsidies" are normal tax breaks that any business can claim for long term capital investment.
Nope, the oil industry gets special tax breaks despite record $billions in profits. Obama campaigned about this.
Would like a better citation than a campaign slogan.
As an industry, oil industry does not have a very high return on investment, either. That undermines your claim of "record profits" based on subsidies.
Of course there are standards issues, which eventually get settled. I shouldn't have to explain this on slashdot.
The speed and availability of charging is not a standards issue. It's a practicality/logistics issue that is driven by the physics of the technology. Outside of super-caps or battery swapping, you can't charge the car with electricity faster than you can pour in a liquid hydrocarbon.
That makes the EV a more specialized (limited) tool than an equivalent size ICEV, and it's more expensive to boot.
Subsidies? Do you know how much subsidies the ICE (manufacturers as well as petroleum) industry gets still today?!?!?!
Last I've read, those "subsidies" are normal tax breaks that any business can claim for long term capital investment. If your beef is that there are any tax breaks at all, I wouldn't mind us simplifying the tax code.
I performed a cost analysis for the hybrid car I own. Break even was 30k miles. Well past that. Many people still say hybrids don't pay. They did for me... Cost anaylses are very subjective, and should be.
For the Volt, I compared it against the ICE car it was based on, which was something like $10k cheaper. The amount of electric mileage you needed to overcome $10k was pretty ridiculous, and required a lifestyle geared around optimizing use of the car. (Sorry, don't have access to my calculations at the moment)
It's nice that your hybrid saved you money, but for EVs to provide value, they must save *more* money (provide value) than equivalent gas hybrids and non-hybrids. Otherwise, you're paying a premium to use the technology, making it a fashion accessory rather than a practical choice.
Tangentially - what hybrid, what was the savings rate and the cost to break even?
I rented a Nissan Leaf for a month and they only gave me the 110v charger. I plugged it in when I got home, and it was always done by the morning.
That's the "slow charge" solution I was talking about. Obviously, the "quick charge" solution isn't used much because it's expensive. Looks like Tesla is trying to provide gas-station like "quick-charge" stations - except even with a quick-charge, you have to wait half an hour, instead of 5 minutes as for a gas fill-up. Availability of the super-charge stations is limited, and only for one brand of EVs.
Of course there are limitations, issues, change over costs. No one is claiming that EVs are superior to ICE in every aspect today, or even ever. But they are reasonable to many today. And they'll only become more reasonable to more people as technology progresses.
"Reasonable" with subsidies, which masks the economic realities. I performed a Chevy Volt cost analysis for a speech club, and the break even point is practically never.
As for future scaling, EVs are currently a rich people novelty status toy, and look to be so for the future barring some amazing technological breakthroughs.
This is just my stinkin' opinion, so don't let it stop you early adopters from giving it a good try. Just leave my wallet alone.
Not in the least. Charging where you sleep is not re-engineering society--it's the exact opposite--it's technology matching the existing state of society. Driving to filling (or recharging stations) is society adapting to technology.
Charging where you sleep requires one of the following two:
1. Specialized chargers that allow quick charges. Expensive.
2. Wall chargers that do not require new hardware, but will charge slowly due to the physics of 110v AC. A daily slow charge is a limitation when compared to a weekly gas station fill up.
A gas station fill up did involve a societal adaptation, but that's a sunk cost - and it's actually pretty convenient when compared to the frequent long charges needed for an EV. Switching over to electric is a marginal cost, and there's a lot more work needed to make EVs worth that cost, if it's even possible.
The solution is not to make the new technology work under the constraints of the old industry, but to solve the needs of the new technology the right way. Consider recharging available at home, hotels, etc. Recharge at night, where/while you sleep, and *never* drive to a specific place to refuel.
You're thinking in terms of how we can remodel society to efficiently use a particular technology.
I suspect the rest of society is a lot less eager to do so. We don't exist for the sake of adopting new technology, after all.
For your idea, I've read analysis that the power grid can't handle the load of a large number of EVs charging; you'd need to upgrade both power generation and the power distribution grid before your idea can actually be implemented.
Wow. 1971. It's almost like there were different people working there 40 years and it was a different time in automobile advancements and technology. Seriously, is that the best trolling you can do? Digging up old articles from 25-40 years ago to reflect on how a magazine might be run today?
If you bothered to read the link provided, you'll notice some more recent cars (1990s, 2000s) were also awarded Car of the Year, but failed to live up to the hype as well.
It's just evidence that a CotY award isn't sufficient to prove that a car is great. It takes time to find out if a car is reliable, and that's something that takes time and a large number of vehicles to find out.
Without minimum wage and even with it, you have a job market where many of the jobs that exist do not pay a living wage.
By destroying those jobs with minimum wage, you remove "training jobs" that teenagers and young workers can use to pick up job skills and experience.
The fallacy is in assuming that every single job on the market needs to be something that you can make a career out of. But jobs aren't permanent; people can and do switch jobs.
A lot of those "crappy" jobs could be used as a stepping stone to better ones. But since you've destroyed them, you've removed a chance for someone to gain work experience, learn skills, demonstrate competence, and work one's way up the job market.
The high school girl who babysits every week for a little spending money doesn't need to be paid a "living wage"; but a thorough application of minimum wage would remove that as an option for her. (I'm pretty sure babysitting is exempt from most minimum wage laws; but it's still a job)
Destroying jobs and removing employment options does not help anyone; unemployment is a far greater waste of resources than a "bad" job. See our current job market, where being unemployed creates a nasty cycle of continuing to be unemployed. ("If no one wants to pay him to work, clearly I don't want to hire him")
Quit meddling with a system that you don't understand well. Econ 101 is sufficient to understand that minimum wage decreases employment; at best, you hope you set it below the market equilibrium so that it has no effect.
If I were the president, I'd propose a strong evaluation of military spending, keep the CIA, FBI, State Department, and the EPA, and turn almost everything else over to the states. That is, the government would concern itself with international relations and matters between the states, or that spill over state borders, and leave everything else to the states to figure out, especially medicare, social security and education.
If only we had more people who understood federalism and how de-centralized gov't can be more responsive and effective.
So what are you going to do with the people who can't hold down a high-tech/creative job? They don't magically vanish, and putting them all in prison would be horribly expensive.
Stop destroying their options with the minimum wage would be an excellent starting point.
High tech jobs can exist because they are supported by a whole set of "low-tech" jobs that maintain the infrastructure. Jobs like janitor, plumber, construction, and so on aren't going anywhere, though they don't fall under the "hi-tech/creative" umbrella.
Which is why minimum wage is mandated by government - so that everyone is hit the same way. No one gets a competitive advantage.
You don't seem to understand that fast food is not just competing with fast food. It's competing with home-cooked food and alternatives that have less "minimum wage labor" costs.
So yes, some other product does get more of a competitive advantage, which does change the market and hurt businesses. Furthermore, the minimum wage hurts the employees it's supposed to help - businesses have increased employment costs, so some jobs that used to be barely profitable cease to exist.
Less jobs is a bad thing; even "bad" jobs are better than unemployment, and they provide training that can be used to transition to better paying jobs.
It's also incorrect. The story is not about Canute's arrogance but his humility. He wanted to show his adherents that a king may not command everything so he illustrated, so the story goes, by commanding the tide with predictable results.
It's absolutely correct. The point was about the effect of the king's words, not the attitude of the king.
King Canute's words had no effect on the tides. What effect will Obama's words have on "climate change"?
Come back to me when thanks to some serious efforts and funding, we have solar or geothermal or hydro power that could handle the entire energy needs of the US.
Solar - incapable of providing baseline power needs. (unless you like your AC or heating to turn off at night)
Geothermal - limited availability.
Hydro - also limited availability, AND opposed by conservationists/environmentalists for the enviornmental damage it causes to the area upstream of the dam.
In short, yours is a list of impractical solutions; and you want them to handle the entire energy needs of the US?