So the answer there is to tax imports to even them out for unfair wage discrepancies. Seems easy enough.
Sort of. I don't think that tariffs should be applied for the purpose of evening out wage differences.
I DO think tariffs should be applied for the purpose of evening out the impact of social policies like worker protection, healthcare, social security, welfare, and also for environmental controls. To the degree that a country matches US benefits in all of those categories trade should be free. To the degree that it does not, the tariff should reflect the cost of providing that service.
Otherwise it becomes a race for the bottom. And yes, I realize this would mean tariffs on US goods going into Europe, though certainly not as much as for Asian goods going into Europe.
I get where you're coming from. To some extent almost any government policy requires limited immigration and trade to work. After all, why should the US spend money on a military? If we get invaded we can all just move to Canada and they'll just HAVE to offer us refuge and protect us. Except, they won't, and of course they couldn't if they wanted to.
Limits on immigration and trade give people incentive to invest in what they have locally. It really is the same as owning a home vs renting it, except on a much bigger scale. A home owner is going to take care of his property. Citizens take care of their country.
The problem is the whole "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" thing.
If they hired you and they didn't work out, they'd have been reamed out for hiring somebody without a degree.
Instead they hired the graduate, and it just turned out that he was a bad apple - who could have seen that coming?
Generally speaking society punishes those who do things outside the norm and fail. Controlling whether you fail or not is hard. Controlling whether you ever step outside the norm is easier. Guess which strategy most choose?
Sure, you'll find the occasional Zuckerburg who steps outside the norm and succeeds, and obviously they achieve great wealth as a result. However, for every one of these there are thousands who get trampled over, and blamed for their deviations.
That is a horrible and seriously criminal attitude. You're arguing that if others don't give you something you need, it's fine to just murder them (your words, not mine).
Of course it is wrong and criminal. However, I am concerned that if we as a society don't do something to actually provide a living wage for the average person who is never going to work for Google, then that is a state we might just find ourselves in one day. If a mob shows up at our doorsteps because we actually live in a decent house, they're not really going to be impressed by either of our arguments concerning morality.
I think it's time to start talking about moving past a capitalistic economy.
If you haven't noticed, we've been talking about it for over 150 years. Alternate economic systems have been attempted, even at large scale, without much success. What new things would you like to explore?
Doing the same with modern technology? Attempting communism without robotics more advanced than even what we have today seems a bit like trying to market a smartphone in the 90s.
How does this "true communism" you speak of differ from the one that's been tried, and has failed over and over and over?
I imagine it is sort of like the difference between the Newton and the iPad.
I doubt that outright communism will ever make sense, but I suspect that as technology advances the ideal economic model will probably be a lot closer to it than the capitalism of the past. What choice is there once technology advances to the point where there is no need to employ humans at all? Sure, that doesn't seem likely to be anytime soon, but what we see today is just one step farther along that path.
Actually, part of the problem with AI experimentation these days is that I don't think they hardware things quite enough.
The human brain isn't a random network of neurons that gets trained into adulthood. If you take two random people and give them the same stimulus, they're going to use the same regions of the brain to respond to it, generally speaking. The part of your brain that recognizes faces is the same as the part of my brain which does this (well, several parts most likely).
So, while that might be the end-result of evolution, the engineering of our brains is clearly built into our DNA. There is some degree of flexibility around how it is wired as we grow, but if you have a stroke in the region of the brain that handles vision you're not suddenly going to regain your sight after 20 years of training and rewiring. You might very well have slight improvements, and you will certainly learn to cope using other senses and functionality that were unimpacted by the stroke.
"Jobs Americans won't do" is incorrect when applied to most jobs, but particularly in agriculture, it's a totally legitimate phenomenon. You wouldn't pick oranges for minimum wage.
I wouldn't write computer software or design bridges for minimum wage either. I guess we need more H1Bs to write software and design bridges, then.
Who says that people who pick oranges need to be paid minimum wage?
If you offered $1M/yr to anybody willing to pick oranges you'd have no trouble filling the jobs. If you offer $5/hr then nobody is willing to do the job, apparently. Chances are if you offered $10-20/hr you'd have no trouble filling the post. The price of oranges probably wouldn't change much at all - if they could get a penny more for them they already would be doing so. The guys who own the farm would just make less money.
If you make education purely a state-level system then there will be a race to the bottom. Employers will flee states that have generous education programs in favor of minimalist states that have lower taxes.
Except... that didn't happen back before the Feds co-opted education.
You don't seem to realize that Federal control of the educational system is a fairly recent thing - mid/late 1960's.
I suspect the average black person would have a different perspective on the quality of public education prior to the 1960s. Also, education was fairly different then, as was the workforce and the employment opportunities for the average American. Somebody who graduated today with the skills of the average high school graduate would find it quite difficult to get a job today. Heck, the average college graduate today has a hard time finding a job...
"I want a high paying corporate job but don't want my children to get an education" said nobody ever.
Given the choice of spending an extra $5k/yr or so in taxes for life vs just sending their kids to private school, most people with jobs would choose the latter, and probably get a better education for it.
The public education system primarily benefits those who can't afford it, as with socialized medicine/etc.
Now, I'd argue that these programs provide more general benefits to society, and a safety net for everybody when they lose their jobs (which happens increasingly often as society becomes more specialized). However, people tend to go for the bottom line, and that means cost-cutting.
Since radar doesn't give altitude information, you could be there and they wouldn't know you're in controlled air space (unless it's controlled down to ground). A 777 can probably go slow enough to look like something else, but probably with a little bigger radar echo.
Well, if the transponder were on then it would transmit altitude. I don't know that you can get an airliner transponder to work in Mode A so that you don't encode altitude, though I imagine you could tamper with the encoded altitude if you wanted to (heck, just cover the static ports and the plane will think it is at low altitude, though have fun flying it with no airdata).
Flying slow, it won't have much range.
Military radar can determine altitude of course (incoming air raids typically won't broadcast transponder returns). Also, you could infer minimum altitude from range - if you're getting primary returns 60 miles away you know they're not hugging the ground.
All of this is really only applicable to a takeoff from within the US. Any aircraft approaching the US from overseas has to enter the NORAD ADIZ. Now, I'm sure it isn't nearly as well-monitored as during the 60s, but I'm sure it has continuous military radar coverage especially since 9/11, and the ADIZ for the US looks like it is upwards of 300 miles thick. Any aircraft entering that zone will be intercepted if it hasn't identified itself.
Yup - explosions in the middle of the ocean at depth can travel incredible distances. In fact, at some depths the sound can travel all the way around the world. With multiple sonar stations measuring arrival times the position could be determined fairly accurately.
A plane crash happens on the surface and there would be little other noise - probably hard to notice unless a sensor were fairly closeby. Now, the pingers in the black box probably could be picked up from a distance, but I doubt the US monitors the Indian Ocean like they did the Atlantic in the Cold War.
Yup. Also, I doubt that even in 3rd world nations that planes flying at that altitude would simply be ignored if they had a transponder on. They're almost certainly in controlled airspace, and that is illegal just about everywhere without a clearance, even for domestic flights. You can't just go flying over the US at 20k feet and expect ATC to ignore you just because you have a transponder on. In theory you should be challenged as soon as you enter the ADIZ, and for domestic flights depending on where you are they'll either intercept you, or just see where you land and send the police to get your tail number and ID.
The antenna would be outside the plane most likely. The skin is made of aluminum - wouldn't make much sense to locate an antenna inside - especially at a frequency likely to be used for satellite communications.
Perhaps some of the equipment involved is located inside an accessible area, but you'd probably want to really know what you're doing before you start cutting random wires in the equipment rack.
I'm not sure how the record-keeping works for fueling. Certainly the pilots get a copy of the loading info. I imagine that whoever paid for the fuel gets a copy of the bill if nothing else. It is important for flight crews to have a good understanding of how much fuel is onboard - level sensors tend not to be very accurate so the most accurate figures come from measuring how much goes in and out.
If the plane has too little fuel the results are obvious. If it has too much fuel the results might not be as obvious, but it can be a big problem. Fuel is heavy - a plane needs more takeoff thrust or distance if it has more fuel, and it needs more landing distance if it lands with extra fuel (indeed, if a long-range flight has a problem right after takeoff they often end up circling or dumping fuel before landing just to shed weight). In order to maximize engine life the crew calculates the necessary takeoff thrust based on weather, weight, and runway length/slope, and programs the autopilot to deliver just that much thrust. If their weight was significantly over, they could run out of runway (especially if they had to abort at what they thought was the last possible moment - which would turn out to be too late - the crew calculates what that threshold is on every flight as well).
They certainly could put some max limits on range. A 777 fully fueled and fully loaded (that is, every seat taken and every baggage compartment loaded to rated capacity) couldn't take off at all. Long-range flights cannot carry as much cargo as a result.
So, based on what was in the plane they probably have a decent idea of what the range is. They probably don't know within 100 miles, but I doubt they'd be off by much more than 1000. Now, one thing the search radii doesn't reflect is winds - the effective range will be much less upwind, and much longer downwind. Obviously the max range is only achievable if the plane flies a direct route, and all that climbing/descending reduces range as well - max range can only be achieved at an optimal altitude (which starts out at one level and slowly goes up as the plane burns fuel).
Yup. I doubt anything bad would happen to a 777 at 45k feet. It probably would take a while to climb that high, and if it were heavily loaded it probably couldn't make it that high at all. That doesn't mean that it would fall apart of anything - the plane just would start slowing down as you tried to climb past a certain point and eventually start losing altitude or stall (not that any competent pilot would let it get that slow). If climbing on autopilot using a flight level change mode the airplane just wouldn't climb at all - the airplane would prioritize speed over climbing.
Typically airliners on long flights will step-climb - the optimal altitude increases as it burns off fuel and the crew will command ascents every few hours. They can flight higher than the optimal altitude, but it will cost them extra fuel.
If they were flying at 45k feet I imagine it would reduce their range considerably unless the winds were just that much more favorable (which seems unlikely).
In China, they'll murder you just for tax evasion. Falsifying part numbers and getting caught making China look bad almost certainly qualifies even if the part wasn't involved in an international incident. If you're going to go off to break rocks or get broken up for your internal organs anyway, who cares?
Well, yes and no. In China the real crime is embarrassing the government. You can put whatever you want into your infant formula until a reporter actually notices all the kids dying everywhere. Then heads will literally roll.
To an extent all countries work this way, but in China it is taken a lot further...
Which part of the US Constitution mandates education?
None. The constitution practically forbids socialism of any kind as it is written.
Really? What do you think the military is? What do you think our judicial system is? What do you think a government is? All of these examples are "socialism". All societies are a form of socialism.
Such a definition of "socialism" does little good. You've basically defined "government" as "socialism." Sure, I guess you can do that if you want to, but while we're at it can we define "vegetarian" as "somebody who eats," and "libertarian" as "somebody who believes in a government that does not have the authority to kill two-year-olds for crying in church." Both of those statements certainly pertain to the groups they are ascribed to, but they're basically useless in distinguishing them from just about anybody.
By your definition, anybody who isn't an anarchist is a socialist.
Education is primarily a social welfare program. Social welfare programs generally don't work if they are localized to jurisdictions that have free trade and immigration. States are required by the constitution to have both - the only reason that state-level primary education works is that the federal government sets uniform standards and will deny substantial funds to any state that violates them.
If you make education purely a state-level system then there will be a race to the bottom. Employers will flee states that have generous education programs in favor of minimalist states that have lower taxes.
Socialism of any kind can really only work at the national level. Employers can't easily flee countries, because they would then become subject to tariffs when selling back to that country. Granted, the US of late has backed free trade, which is why all the manufacturing jobs are going to countries where you can fire workers who get injured on the job and dump your pollution wherever you like.
Agreed. I'm an aviation enthusiast. I've never been in the cockpit of an airliner. I'm fairly confident I could reprogram the FMS of one in-flight to fly any route I wished. I've done it on flight sims that are fairly accurate, and they all tend to work about the same way.
Did you stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night as well?
Slashdot Mirror
So the answer there is to tax imports to even them out for unfair wage discrepancies. Seems easy enough.
Sort of. I don't think that tariffs should be applied for the purpose of evening out wage differences.
I DO think tariffs should be applied for the purpose of evening out the impact of social policies like worker protection, healthcare, social security, welfare, and also for environmental controls. To the degree that a country matches US benefits in all of those categories trade should be free. To the degree that it does not, the tariff should reflect the cost of providing that service.
Otherwise it becomes a race for the bottom. And yes, I realize this would mean tariffs on US goods going into Europe, though certainly not as much as for Asian goods going into Europe.
I get where you're coming from. To some extent almost any government policy requires limited immigration and trade to work. After all, why should the US spend money on a military? If we get invaded we can all just move to Canada and they'll just HAVE to offer us refuge and protect us. Except, they won't, and of course they couldn't if they wanted to.
Limits on immigration and trade give people incentive to invest in what they have locally. It really is the same as owning a home vs renting it, except on a much bigger scale. A home owner is going to take care of his property. Citizens take care of their country.
The problem is the whole "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" thing.
If they hired you and they didn't work out, they'd have been reamed out for hiring somebody without a degree.
Instead they hired the graduate, and it just turned out that he was a bad apple - who could have seen that coming?
Generally speaking society punishes those who do things outside the norm and fail. Controlling whether you fail or not is hard. Controlling whether you ever step outside the norm is easier. Guess which strategy most choose?
Sure, you'll find the occasional Zuckerburg who steps outside the norm and succeeds, and obviously they achieve great wealth as a result. However, for every one of these there are thousands who get trampled over, and blamed for their deviations.
That is a horrible and seriously criminal attitude. You're arguing that if others don't give you something you need, it's fine to just murder them (your words, not mine).
Of course it is wrong and criminal. However, I am concerned that if we as a society don't do something to actually provide a living wage for the average person who is never going to work for Google, then that is a state we might just find ourselves in one day. If a mob shows up at our doorsteps because we actually live in a decent house, they're not really going to be impressed by either of our arguments concerning morality.
I think it's time to start talking about moving past a capitalistic economy.
If you haven't noticed, we've been talking about it for over 150 years. Alternate economic systems have been attempted, even at large scale, without much success. What new things would you like to explore?
Doing the same with modern technology? Attempting communism without robotics more advanced than even what we have today seems a bit like trying to market a smartphone in the 90s.
How does this "true communism" you speak of differ from the one that's been tried, and has failed over and over and over?
I imagine it is sort of like the difference between the Newton and the iPad.
I doubt that outright communism will ever make sense, but I suspect that as technology advances the ideal economic model will probably be a lot closer to it than the capitalism of the past. What choice is there once technology advances to the point where there is no need to employ humans at all? Sure, that doesn't seem likely to be anytime soon, but what we see today is just one step farther along that path.
Actually, part of the problem with AI experimentation these days is that I don't think they hardware things quite enough.
The human brain isn't a random network of neurons that gets trained into adulthood. If you take two random people and give them the same stimulus, they're going to use the same regions of the brain to respond to it, generally speaking. The part of your brain that recognizes faces is the same as the part of my brain which does this (well, several parts most likely).
So, while that might be the end-result of evolution, the engineering of our brains is clearly built into our DNA. There is some degree of flexibility around how it is wired as we grow, but if you have a stroke in the region of the brain that handles vision you're not suddenly going to regain your sight after 20 years of training and rewiring. You might very well have slight improvements, and you will certainly learn to cope using other senses and functionality that were unimpacted by the stroke.
we will have human level ai in 10 years, but even if you are not, 25-50 years is easily more than enough time to complete it
That's what people have been saying for the last 50 years or more, and I don't think we're any closer now than we were back then.
Yup. And the Apple Newton just proves that there is no future in tablets as well.
The fact that something has never been true does not mean that it never will be true.
"Jobs Americans won't do" is incorrect when applied to most jobs, but particularly in agriculture, it's a totally legitimate phenomenon. You wouldn't pick oranges for minimum wage.
I wouldn't write computer software or design bridges for minimum wage either. I guess we need more H1Bs to write software and design bridges, then.
Who says that people who pick oranges need to be paid minimum wage?
If you offered $1M/yr to anybody willing to pick oranges you'd have no trouble filling the jobs. If you offer $5/hr then nobody is willing to do the job, apparently. Chances are if you offered $10-20/hr you'd have no trouble filling the post. The price of oranges probably wouldn't change much at all - if they could get a penny more for them they already would be doing so. The guys who own the farm would just make less money.
Except... that didn't happen back before the Feds co-opted education.
You don't seem to realize that Federal control of the educational system is a fairly recent thing - mid/late 1960's.
I suspect the average black person would have a different perspective on the quality of public education prior to the 1960s. Also, education was fairly different then, as was the workforce and the employment opportunities for the average American. Somebody who graduated today with the skills of the average high school graduate would find it quite difficult to get a job today. Heck, the average college graduate today has a hard time finding a job...
"I want a high paying corporate job but don't want my children to get an education" said nobody ever.
Given the choice of spending an extra $5k/yr or so in taxes for life vs just sending their kids to private school, most people with jobs would choose the latter, and probably get a better education for it.
The public education system primarily benefits those who can't afford it, as with socialized medicine/etc.
Now, I'd argue that these programs provide more general benefits to society, and a safety net for everybody when they lose their jobs (which happens increasingly often as society becomes more specialized). However, people tend to go for the bottom line, and that means cost-cutting.
Since radar doesn't give altitude information, you could be there and they wouldn't know you're in controlled air space (unless it's controlled down to ground). A 777 can probably go slow enough to look like something else, but probably with a little bigger radar echo.
Well, if the transponder were on then it would transmit altitude. I don't know that you can get an airliner transponder to work in Mode A so that you don't encode altitude, though I imagine you could tamper with the encoded altitude if you wanted to (heck, just cover the static ports and the plane will think it is at low altitude, though have fun flying it with no airdata).
Flying slow, it won't have much range.
Military radar can determine altitude of course (incoming air raids typically won't broadcast transponder returns). Also, you could infer minimum altitude from range - if you're getting primary returns 60 miles away you know they're not hugging the ground.
All of this is really only applicable to a takeoff from within the US. Any aircraft approaching the US from overseas has to enter the NORAD ADIZ. Now, I'm sure it isn't nearly as well-monitored as during the 60s, but I'm sure it has continuous military radar coverage especially since 9/11, and the ADIZ for the US looks like it is upwards of 300 miles thick. Any aircraft entering that zone will be intercepted if it hasn't identified itself.
Yup - explosions in the middle of the ocean at depth can travel incredible distances. In fact, at some depths the sound can travel all the way around the world. With multiple sonar stations measuring arrival times the position could be determined fairly accurately.
A plane crash happens on the surface and there would be little other noise - probably hard to notice unless a sensor were fairly closeby. Now, the pingers in the black box probably could be picked up from a distance, but I doubt the US monitors the Indian Ocean like they did the Atlantic in the Cold War.
Yup. Also, I doubt that even in 3rd world nations that planes flying at that altitude would simply be ignored if they had a transponder on. They're almost certainly in controlled airspace, and that is illegal just about everywhere without a clearance, even for domestic flights. You can't just go flying over the US at 20k feet and expect ATC to ignore you just because you have a transponder on. In theory you should be challenged as soon as you enter the ADIZ, and for domestic flights depending on where you are they'll either intercept you, or just see where you land and send the police to get your tail number and ID.
The antenna would be outside the plane most likely. The skin is made of aluminum - wouldn't make much sense to locate an antenna inside - especially at a frequency likely to be used for satellite communications.
Perhaps some of the equipment involved is located inside an accessible area, but you'd probably want to really know what you're doing before you start cutting random wires in the equipment rack.
I'm not sure how the record-keeping works for fueling. Certainly the pilots get a copy of the loading info. I imagine that whoever paid for the fuel gets a copy of the bill if nothing else. It is important for flight crews to have a good understanding of how much fuel is onboard - level sensors tend not to be very accurate so the most accurate figures come from measuring how much goes in and out.
If the plane has too little fuel the results are obvious. If it has too much fuel the results might not be as obvious, but it can be a big problem. Fuel is heavy - a plane needs more takeoff thrust or distance if it has more fuel, and it needs more landing distance if it lands with extra fuel (indeed, if a long-range flight has a problem right after takeoff they often end up circling or dumping fuel before landing just to shed weight). In order to maximize engine life the crew calculates the necessary takeoff thrust based on weather, weight, and runway length/slope, and programs the autopilot to deliver just that much thrust. If their weight was significantly over, they could run out of runway (especially if they had to abort at what they thought was the last possible moment - which would turn out to be too late - the crew calculates what that threshold is on every flight as well).
They certainly could put some max limits on range. A 777 fully fueled and fully loaded (that is, every seat taken and every baggage compartment loaded to rated capacity) couldn't take off at all. Long-range flights cannot carry as much cargo as a result.
So, based on what was in the plane they probably have a decent idea of what the range is. They probably don't know within 100 miles, but I doubt they'd be off by much more than 1000. Now, one thing the search radii doesn't reflect is winds - the effective range will be much less upwind, and much longer downwind. Obviously the max range is only achievable if the plane flies a direct route, and all that climbing/descending reduces range as well - max range can only be achieved at an optimal altitude (which starts out at one level and slowly goes up as the plane burns fuel).
Yup. I doubt anything bad would happen to a 777 at 45k feet. It probably would take a while to climb that high, and if it were heavily loaded it probably couldn't make it that high at all. That doesn't mean that it would fall apart of anything - the plane just would start slowing down as you tried to climb past a certain point and eventually start losing altitude or stall (not that any competent pilot would let it get that slow). If climbing on autopilot using a flight level change mode the airplane just wouldn't climb at all - the airplane would prioritize speed over climbing.
Typically airliners on long flights will step-climb - the optimal altitude increases as it burns off fuel and the crew will command ascents every few hours. They can flight higher than the optimal altitude, but it will cost them extra fuel.
If they were flying at 45k feet I imagine it would reduce their range considerably unless the winds were just that much more favorable (which seems unlikely).
In China, they'll murder you just for tax evasion. Falsifying part numbers and getting caught making China look bad almost certainly qualifies even if the part wasn't involved in an international incident. If you're going to go off to break rocks or get broken up for your internal organs anyway, who cares?
Well, yes and no. In China the real crime is embarrassing the government. You can put whatever you want into your infant formula until a reporter actually notices all the kids dying everywhere. Then heads will literally roll.
To an extent all countries work this way, but in China it is taken a lot further...
Which part of the US Constitution mandates education?
None. The constitution practically forbids socialism of any kind as it is written.
Really? What do you think the military is? What do you think our judicial system is? What do you think a government is? All of these examples are "socialism". All societies are a form of socialism.
Such a definition of "socialism" does little good. You've basically defined "government" as "socialism." Sure, I guess you can do that if you want to, but while we're at it can we define "vegetarian" as "somebody who eats," and "libertarian" as "somebody who believes in a government that does not have the authority to kill two-year-olds for crying in church." Both of those statements certainly pertain to the groups they are ascribed to, but they're basically useless in distinguishing them from just about anybody.
By your definition, anybody who isn't an anarchist is a socialist.
Which is why it authorized a government run military and post office, as well as for allowing congress to promote the general welfare.
You must have an interesting definition of "socialism" if it includes the military. The post office is a bit more borderline.
You are a fucking moron.
Your mother apparently never taught you manners, or rhetoric...
Which part of the US Constitution mandates education?
None. The constitution practically forbids socialism of any kind as it is written.
Education is primarily a social welfare program. Social welfare programs generally don't work if they are localized to jurisdictions that have free trade and immigration. States are required by the constitution to have both - the only reason that state-level primary education works is that the federal government sets uniform standards and will deny substantial funds to any state that violates them.
If you make education purely a state-level system then there will be a race to the bottom. Employers will flee states that have generous education programs in favor of minimalist states that have lower taxes.
Socialism of any kind can really only work at the national level. Employers can't easily flee countries, because they would then become subject to tariffs when selling back to that country. Granted, the US of late has backed free trade, which is why all the manufacturing jobs are going to countries where you can fire workers who get injured on the job and dump your pollution wherever you like.
Seems like it would make more sense to come up with a way to store the waste and process it the next day.
Agreed. I'm an aviation enthusiast. I've never been in the cockpit of an airliner. I'm fairly confident I could reprogram the FMS of one in-flight to fly any route I wished. I've done it on flight sims that are fairly accurate, and they all tend to work about the same way.
Did you stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night as well?
Nope. Must be the other guy.
I'm talking about using them appropriately based on evidence and preferring drugs with a longer track record for prudent risk management.
Well, sure, that only makes sense.