Libertarianism cannot cope with tragedy of the commons. You know when libertarians say that positive rights are not guaranteed human rights, because they force someone else into slavery? It gets mentioned on Slashdot pretty commonly.
Your right to live in a world where antibiotics work obliges pig farmers to lower their efficiency and lose money, because it is more cost effective to farm with antibiotics. Likewise, your right to live in a world with breathable air and survivable temperatures and arable land obliges coal factories and car manufacturers to capture their exhausts, including carbon. Libertarians would have to classify these rights as positive rights because they oblige others to take action.
Some libertarians will say that the court system can handle this, because you can sue those that cause you demonstrable harm. But in a case like this, exactly how much money do you think each person who dies from MRSA can extract from a Dutch farm? And isn't it better to live in a world without MRSA and more government regulation than a world with MRSA and more lawsuits?
Anyway, if the right to live in a world free of man-made and man-contributed diseases, where the temperature supports life and there is potable water to drink, is a positive right, then why the fuck do we bother with negative rights like speech and assembly at all? They are sort of meaningless when we're all dead. We all should have standing to take action when the commons could be violated, and the way we do that is through government regulation.
Sorry for a rant on the pointlessness of negative rights without positive rights, but I think that's why it was considered ok to dump antibiotics into animal feed.
I can't nap. I feel groggy and heavy afterward, much worse than I do when I wake up in the morning. I don't like that feeling at all, so when I'm tired enough to drift off in the afternoon or evening at home I try my best to resist.
Keep in mind that A) British people pay for their broadcast TV, so the government will presumably recoup this expense, and B) British people seem to really love their TV, from how much they're willing to invest in making it good.
Err.. no? I regularly have multiple tabs open for a given site, and sign in on one of them. Then I just have to go to the other tabs and reload them and they're all logged in.
I don't think cookies are restricted to per-tab by default. Maybe there's a way to turn this one without a plugin, but saying "All tabs operate independently" implies it does this automatically.
I found and wiped my web history a few months ago. My account was originally on blogspot and I never turned on web history, so I assume it was on by default for certain types of new accounts at certain times.
Not with the population they have today, living where they do today. How quickly do you think all those people could return to their native villages and learn subsistence farming? And you think those villages could absorb all those people and share the available food until more can be grown?
Aaaaand you neglect to point out that it was made that way for a reason. It's purpose wasn't to be the Justice League, populated only with the good and righteous Free Western World. If we wanted that, we would have made NATO and not the UN.
The purpose of the UN was to get everyone together in the same room and talk. Sometimes that talk has been ugly, but by keeping everyone talking we can keep reminding ourselves that they are human, too, and maybe that kept us from destroying the planet in WWIII. And if something happens that's actually able to unite the UN in response? Well then there's a strong worldwide mandate to take action. It doesn't happen every time it should, but when it happens it works well.
So yes, it's extremely important and I'm extremely happy that the UN included all those unfree hellholes, the Soviet Block, "ChiComs", and even Iran and Libya. It wouldn't have worked any other way, and it's possible neither you nor I would have "worked" either.
I have a 1997 Miata with no maintenance trouble. Original clutch made it 120k. I had to replace the battery once at 70k and again at 130k, and the roof will get replaced this year (but I wasn't able to garage it in the winter, so this is more routine maintenance than a repair).
It'll be hard to say which car made today will last 20 years without maintenance trouble, but I'm quite certain some of them will. Just as some will from the quality-troubled 90s.
The problem with that line of thought is that it allows one person to dominate the discussion by shouting nonsense. If someone keeps saying un- and half-truths repeatedly, and you take the time to independently analyze the validity of what they say, you never have any time to consider the viewpoints of others or to form your own opinions.
It's much easier, and indeed human nature, to eventually decide that source doesn't contribute anything meaningful to the discussion, and ignore it entirely.
Examples: a) Microsoft and anything about unfair trade practices (to some people) b) 126.67.234.x and spam (to many spam filters, and I just made up that IP address range) c) Political talking heads who fill various cable news channels 24/7 d) Boys who previously cried wolf
Uhh, project managers, business analysts, whatever you want to call them - should be IT people. They just aren't programmers. If they were programmers, the company should be paying them to program. The point of having IT business analysts is that they are IT and understand IT, but they spend their time interfacing with both IT programmers and the rest of the company.
I think your experiences are with companies that try to dictate projects with the end user group supplying the project manager. I don't think that's what the GP is referring to.
Like any other discrimination, unless its overt (i.e. someone slips up and tells you) then you have to look for patterns. "Hey, all fifteen of you in my local IEEE society applied to the same job I did, and you were all turned down for various stupid reasons? Then the job went to THAT guy? Maybe there was age discrimination; let's get a lawyer."
It's why we need regulation to monitor and report on gender/age/race hiring practices, long after we no longer need affirmative action programs. Without monitoring the crimes can resume without a chance of being caught. (I'm not arguing that affirmative action is/is not needed right now, just that whenever it ends, monitoring and reporting regulations need to continue on.)
Doesn't every application that processes Bluray data have to maintain HDCP, per the Bluray association's licensing deal?
I assume VLC doesn't have a license, and is displaying Bluray using one of its known hacks. While DVD content protection is dead dead there hasn't been as much case law with Bluray.
I'm a very distant cousin to three presidents myself; it just sort of happens when your family (in this case, my mom's family) has been in the U.S. since before the Revolution.
I'm also a direct descendant of the medieval kings of Sweden, but then again probably you are, too.
I thought charges like "negligence" and "reckless endangerment" were already crimes where the perpetrator didn't need to have criminal intent. That's sort of the point of having those charges along with "abuse" and "assault" - in the former the perpetrator should have known what they were doing was wrong (but didn't) while in the latter the perpetrator clearly knew it was wrong.
And this sort of manipulation works. When I want to buy general household supplies or other random things (but not specifically food), I think Target. When I want to buy clothes, I think JC Penny. When I want to buy food, I think (regional food chain).
On the other hand, I don't have a drug store imprinted on me, probably because all the brands changed when Walgreens and CVS swept across the country. When I want medicine, I think "whichever of the generic-looking boxes is on my way home; oh wait there's a (regional food chain or Target) if I go this way. I'll stop at whichever is convenient".
And I don't have a razor company imprint, despite getting a free Mach 5 thing when I was 20. I want to buy more blades, but then I go in the store and see the price and decide I don't want to be raped by those blades before I can use them. So I buy something else. In this case their imprinting could have worked but didn't because they set their prices too high.
I hope they were able to put the registers in the county area. That's where the actual sale takes place, right? The store itself is more like a warehouse and show room. The registers are where the transactions take place.
No, I think most of the "ads must show final price" argument isn't about sales taxes based on a percentage of the selling price. Most of the argument is focused on hidden fees and riders added to the final price to compensate for other company expenses, including other (non-sales) taxes.
For example, suppose a company is selling their product for $9.99. I should be able to buy it knowing my city/county/state sales tax of 8.25% will be added to the final price, no problem. But when I get to the register, the actual price is $13.99 plus tax, because the company is charging me: $1.00 for "Safety regulation tax recovery charge" $1.00 for "Fuel surcharge" $1.00 for "Property tax recovery charge" $1.00 for "We needed to buy a new truck this month recovery charge"
See the difference? When an airline or cell phone carrier (which is where many of these "hidden fee" problems occur) attempts to add fees and charges to the advertised price, they might claim that they are to recover government-imposed fees. But really, they are just selling their product at a higher than advertised price. Doing so to pay for a new "tax recovery" is no different than doing so to pay for a "fuel surcharge" or a "I want a new boat" surcharge. Any business can try to sell their product at a high enough price to cover the cost of their new boat - that's what capitalism is about - but they can't advertise a lower price to trick customers then pull a bait-and-switch at the register.
Now would I, personally, mind if all prices including sales tax are added to printed prices? No, I wouldn't mind. But a lot of people think this hides the sales tax and makes the public complacent to taxation. Whatever. As has been pointed out in other posts, the price of everything already has taxation built into it, to cover the income tax of the workers, the property tax paid for the factory, and the gas tax used to drive it to the store. It's impossible to separate all of those out and it shouldn't be legal to advertise a price then add riders and surcharges at the register to increase that price so as to generate more revenue.
Fortunately companies aren't humans and their commercial speech can and should be highly regulated under anti-fraud laws. (Just like commercial speech of sole proprietorships can be regulated, too.) And anyone who says otherwise is flat-out wrong, even if they wear black robes to work, and will be shown wrong over time one way or another.
I have a unique name; I'm the only one. I just searched on Google for myself and verified that in the first 12 pages of results, every single one is me. (The top of the next page had a few generic "name finder" database entries with my last name only, then the results returned to me.)
Since I've known this for a long time, I've been very careful about my online presence. There's a few things in those 12 pages I'd delete if I could, but nothing that terrifies me or that I truly regret.
I think too many other people assumed their non-unique name would lead to pseudo anonymity (or they just didn't care), and now they regret things they've done and said. You can't take things back!
Slashdot Mirror
Libertarianism cannot cope with tragedy of the commons. You know when libertarians say that positive rights are not guaranteed human rights, because they force someone else into slavery? It gets mentioned on Slashdot pretty commonly.
Your right to live in a world where antibiotics work obliges pig farmers to lower their efficiency and lose money, because it is more cost effective to farm with antibiotics. Likewise, your right to live in a world with breathable air and survivable temperatures and arable land obliges coal factories and car manufacturers to capture their exhausts, including carbon. Libertarians would have to classify these rights as positive rights because they oblige others to take action.
Some libertarians will say that the court system can handle this, because you can sue those that cause you demonstrable harm. But in a case like this, exactly how much money do you think each person who dies from MRSA can extract from a Dutch farm? And isn't it better to live in a world without MRSA and more government regulation than a world with MRSA and more lawsuits?
Anyway, if the right to live in a world free of man-made and man-contributed diseases, where the temperature supports life and there is potable water to drink, is a positive right, then why the fuck do we bother with negative rights like speech and assembly at all? They are sort of meaningless when we're all dead. We all should have standing to take action when the commons could be violated, and the way we do that is through government regulation.
Sorry for a rant on the pointlessness of negative rights without positive rights, but I think that's why it was considered ok to dump antibiotics into animal feed.
Repairable /= Replaceable.
There's nothing that is failed and unreplaceable per Theseus' paradox, just things that are failed and not cost effective to replace.
I can't nap. I feel groggy and heavy afterward, much worse than I do when I wake up in the morning. I don't like that feeling at all, so when I'm tired enough to drift off in the afternoon or evening at home I try my best to resist.
Keep in mind that A) British people pay for their broadcast TV, so the government will presumably recoup this expense, and B) British people seem to really love their TV, from how much they're willing to invest in making it good.
Err.. no? I regularly have multiple tabs open for a given site, and sign in on one of them. Then I just have to go to the other tabs and reload them and they're all logged in.
I don't think cookies are restricted to per-tab by default. Maybe there's a way to turn this one without a plugin, but saying "All tabs operate independently" implies it does this automatically.
I found and wiped my web history a few months ago. My account was originally on blogspot and I never turned on web history, so I assume it was on by default for certain types of new accounts at certain times.
Not with the population they have today, living where they do today. How quickly do you think all those people could return to their native villages and learn subsistence farming? And you think those villages could absorb all those people and share the available food until more can be grown?
Aaaaand you neglect to point out that it was made that way for a reason. It's purpose wasn't to be the Justice League, populated only with the good and righteous Free Western World. If we wanted that, we would have made NATO and not the UN.
The purpose of the UN was to get everyone together in the same room and talk. Sometimes that talk has been ugly, but by keeping everyone talking we can keep reminding ourselves that they are human, too, and maybe that kept us from destroying the planet in WWIII. And if something happens that's actually able to unite the UN in response? Well then there's a strong worldwide mandate to take action. It doesn't happen every time it should, but when it happens it works well.
So yes, it's extremely important and I'm extremely happy that the UN included all those unfree hellholes, the Soviet Block, "ChiComs", and even Iran and Libya. It wouldn't have worked any other way, and it's possible neither you nor I would have "worked" either.
Isn't location of manufacture printed on the door jam sticker? It should be pretty simple to pick one from the lot after inspecting it.
I have a 1997 Miata with no maintenance trouble. Original clutch made it 120k. I had to replace the battery once at 70k and again at 130k, and the roof will get replaced this year (but I wasn't able to garage it in the winter, so this is more routine maintenance than a repair).
It'll be hard to say which car made today will last 20 years without maintenance trouble, but I'm quite certain some of them will. Just as some will from the quality-troubled 90s.
The problem with that line of thought is that it allows one person to dominate the discussion by shouting nonsense. If someone keeps saying un- and half-truths repeatedly, and you take the time to independently analyze the validity of what they say, you never have any time to consider the viewpoints of others or to form your own opinions.
It's much easier, and indeed human nature, to eventually decide that source doesn't contribute anything meaningful to the discussion, and ignore it entirely.
Examples:
a) Microsoft and anything about unfair trade practices (to some people)
b) 126.67.234.x and spam (to many spam filters, and I just made up that IP address range)
c) Political talking heads who fill various cable news channels 24/7
d) Boys who previously cried wolf
Uhh, project managers, business analysts, whatever you want to call them - should be IT people. They just aren't programmers. If they were programmers, the company should be paying them to program. The point of having IT business analysts is that they are IT and understand IT, but they spend their time interfacing with both IT programmers and the rest of the company.
I think your experiences are with companies that try to dictate projects with the end user group supplying the project manager. I don't think that's what the GP is referring to.
My wife's step-granddad has a lifetime of dogs, everyone one of which he called "dog". But you know what I meant.
Like any other discrimination, unless its overt (i.e. someone slips up and tells you) then you have to look for patterns. "Hey, all fifteen of you in my local IEEE society applied to the same job I did, and you were all turned down for various stupid reasons? Then the job went to THAT guy? Maybe there was age discrimination; let's get a lawyer."
It's why we need regulation to monitor and report on gender/age/race hiring practices, long after we no longer need affirmative action programs. Without monitoring the crimes can resume without a chance of being caught. (I'm not arguing that affirmative action is/is not needed right now, just that whenever it ends, monitoring and reporting regulations need to continue on.)
Doesn't every application that processes Bluray data have to maintain HDCP, per the Bluray association's licensing deal?
I assume VLC doesn't have a license, and is displaying Bluray using one of its known hacks. While DVD content protection is dead dead there hasn't been as much case law with Bluray.
Several of our cats have recognized their names (as distinct from the names of our other cats) and come when called.
I'm a very distant cousin to three presidents myself; it just sort of happens when your family (in this case, my mom's family) has been in the U.S. since before the Revolution.
I'm also a direct descendant of the medieval kings of Sweden, but then again probably you are, too.
I thought charges like "negligence" and "reckless endangerment" were already crimes where the perpetrator didn't need to have criminal intent. That's sort of the point of having those charges along with "abuse" and "assault" - in the former the perpetrator should have known what they were doing was wrong (but didn't) while in the latter the perpetrator clearly knew it was wrong.
And this sort of manipulation works. When I want to buy general household supplies or other random things (but not specifically food), I think Target. When I want to buy clothes, I think JC Penny. When I want to buy food, I think (regional food chain).
On the other hand, I don't have a drug store imprinted on me, probably because all the brands changed when Walgreens and CVS swept across the country. When I want medicine, I think "whichever of the generic-looking boxes is on my way home; oh wait there's a (regional food chain or Target) if I go this way. I'll stop at whichever is convenient".
And I don't have a razor company imprint, despite getting a free Mach 5 thing when I was 20. I want to buy more blades, but then I go in the store and see the price and decide I don't want to be raped by those blades before I can use them. So I buy something else. In this case their imprinting could have worked but didn't because they set their prices too high.
Better hit all of Delaware. It's the only way to be sure.
I hope they were able to put the registers in the county area. That's where the actual sale takes place, right? The store itself is more like a warehouse and show room. The registers are where the transactions take place.
They probably just needed a good lawyer.
No, I think most of the "ads must show final price" argument isn't about sales taxes based on a percentage of the selling price. Most of the argument is focused on hidden fees and riders added to the final price to compensate for other company expenses, including other (non-sales) taxes.
For example, suppose a company is selling their product for $9.99. I should be able to buy it knowing my city/county/state sales tax of 8.25% will be added to the final price, no problem. But when I get to the register, the actual price is $13.99 plus tax, because the company is charging me:
$1.00 for "Safety regulation tax recovery charge"
$1.00 for "Fuel surcharge"
$1.00 for "Property tax recovery charge"
$1.00 for "We needed to buy a new truck this month recovery charge"
See the difference? When an airline or cell phone carrier (which is where many of these "hidden fee" problems occur) attempts to add fees and charges to the advertised price, they might claim that they are to recover government-imposed fees. But really, they are just selling their product at a higher than advertised price. Doing so to pay for a new "tax recovery" is no different than doing so to pay for a "fuel surcharge" or a "I want a new boat" surcharge. Any business can try to sell their product at a high enough price to cover the cost of their new boat - that's what capitalism is about - but they can't advertise a lower price to trick customers then pull a bait-and-switch at the register.
Now would I, personally, mind if all prices including sales tax are added to printed prices? No, I wouldn't mind. But a lot of people think this hides the sales tax and makes the public complacent to taxation. Whatever. As has been pointed out in other posts, the price of everything already has taxation built into it, to cover the income tax of the workers, the property tax paid for the factory, and the gas tax used to drive it to the store. It's impossible to separate all of those out and it shouldn't be legal to advertise a price then add riders and surcharges at the register to increase that price so as to generate more revenue.
Fortunately companies aren't humans and their commercial speech can and should be highly regulated under anti-fraud laws. (Just like commercial speech of sole proprietorships can be regulated, too.) And anyone who says otherwise is flat-out wrong, even if they wear black robes to work, and will be shown wrong over time one way or another.
One downloaded song certainly can't be used by both parties after they separate.
I dunno. How about I keep all the even frequencies and my wife keeps all the odd ones? Sounds like an even split.
Sounds like a company looking for any excuse to discriminate against older workers.
I have a unique name; I'm the only one. I just searched on Google for myself and verified that in the first 12 pages of results, every single one is me. (The top of the next page had a few generic "name finder" database entries with my last name only, then the results returned to me.)
Since I've known this for a long time, I've been very careful about my online presence. There's a few things in those 12 pages I'd delete if I could, but nothing that terrifies me or that I truly regret.
I think too many other people assumed their non-unique name would lead to pseudo anonymity (or they just didn't care), and now they regret things they've done and said. You can't take things back!