There seems to be this notion that capitalism and socialism are binary concepts, and that socialism and communism are the same. The truth is, they are on a spectrum, with capitalism and communism at the extremes. Somewhere along the spectrum is likely the optimum solution. Where productivity is high, and inequality is low. Everyone is too focused on the advantages and disadvantages of the extremes to explore the area in between.
Well, to be fair, Americans are thoroughly propagandized to think that Capitalism is some natural force like electromagnetism. They also think it's inseparable from democracy. We're voting with our dollars, right? Basically, we are so bamboozled we can't see straight.
Okay, we're done here. Response to demand creates jobs. People are not hired for no reason. In fact, the companies that rich people own want to hire as few people as possible and pay them as little as possible. Rich people don't create jobs. Or if they do, it is because they are forced to in order to keep up with demand and maintain their business.
The reason why the US is doing so well is because it is the only country that follows Ayn Rand's ideologies, which have kept the country from collapsing in a socialist mire.
Well, in that case, they should move to those countries so that they'll be better off there? What? What's that you say? Those countries won't take them in?
No, what I say is that you are being comically unrealistic if you expect poor people to have the means to move to another country to improve their standard of living. Do you have any idea how expensive that proposition is? What? What's that you say? I didn't think so.
That America is continuing to prop up the rest of the socialist world by continuing to be the only country besides Japan which has people that actually do something?
The human mind is particularly bad at handling some concepts... like 'infinity' for one.
What if the universe always existed, and always will? Why can't it be infinitely long on the time axis as well as the spatial ones? You ask how it came into existence in the first place, and I say what if it DIDN'T and it's simply always been there?
Everything our current models tell us about reality, from the Big Bang to the Heat Death of the observable universe could very well be nothing more than a finite and insignificant perturbation in the infinity of existence.
If Einstein was right, and space and time are the same thing, it seems reasonable that if the Universe has infinite space it should have infinite time.
...spoiled athletes losing jobs and endorsements for disrespecting our country, amirite?
LOL, you probably don't even know the real reason those athletes are protesting. They have been accused of disrespecting the country, or the flag, or the troops, or whatever to deflect from their actual point: that black people continue to be threatened by racist policing in this country.
Black athletes' money or status won't protect them from a jumpy officer at a traffic stop. I assume you think that issue is bullshit. Though that does make me wonder why you think you are in a better position than they are to know what should be an issue to them. But regardless, they are not simply disrespecting the country. And if they were, it would be because the country, in its policies and attitudes, continues to disrespect them and people who look like them.
Also, some people hate being exposed to facts that interfere with their beliefs, such as black people commit 217 times more violent crimes, gay men are 12 times more likely to be pedophiles, etc.
You are guilty of the same behavior you're pretending to be smugly self-righteous about.
Thank you for providing a perfect example of unconscious bias. Black people commit more 217 times more crimes than what, chickens lay eggs? Gay men are 12 times more likely to be pedophiles than what, Meryl Streep is to be nominated for an Oscar? No, your unsaid point is that black people commit 217 times more crimes than white people. Gay men are 12 times more likely to be pedophiles than straight men. In your view being white and straight are the default. They are the norm. They are the standard against which everything else is evaluated.
You didn't think you needed to explain what you were comparing these group to, because it should be a given. And indeed, I knew what you meant. That is implicit bias. It exposes the cultural dominance of white people. It shows how being white and straight are considered "normal", and things other than those are "abnormal". In short, it demonstrates white, straight cultural supremacy. I hope we can finally agree that that's a thing; that white, straight culture is the dominant one and therefore confers a certain status to the people in it.
If we didn't have massive numbers they would be a bane on society. Requiring everything normal people require but not making multiple new people would hurt a population many ages ago but we are way beyond that now.
Are you a bigot because you want thieves in jail? Some people are born kleptomaniacs. Why do you discriminate against thieves, throwing them in jail? Frankly, homosexuality is a greater evil than theft, and people are right to fight against such an evil being accepted in the public square.
You at least seem to acknowledge that people are born gay. So I think we're making progress.
Yes, indeed. I was coming at it from a public policy as advertised point of view. But I agree that the public rationale is not the true rationale for these policies.
I have zero sympathy, especially given the amount of warning these people have had.
Agreed. I was fairly warned that Bitcoins were overpriced when they reached $1, again at $100, again at $1000, and finally when they recently crossed the $5000 mark. I have no problem with your lack of sympathy for my predicament.
How many of those bitcoins have you converted to dollars?
The CDC says 41,000 Americans were killed in the U.S. during 2016 due to second hand smoke.
And I'd wager none of those people died as a result of standing next to a smoker at a bus stop. That's the kind of thing that Mark-T was whining about above; not a non-smoker who lives with a smoker.
There ought to be a cap on the amount of nicotine in the vapes, and that cap should be lowered at a steady rate over a fixed number of years until it hits zero. We need to stop supporting these legalized addictive drug dealers as a permanent establishment and seek to shut down the addictive drug industry entirely in the foreseeable future.
"We" are not supporting this industry. Its customers are, because they value the product enough to spend money on it. You really think we should be legislating what vices people are allowed to have? That's been tried, you know. From Prohibition to the War on Drugs, it hasn't worked out very well and has not achieved the desired outcomes.
You gotta let people do what they want to do with their time and their bodies, even if you think it's bad for them. That's part of living in a free country. No one lives a perfect, harm-free life and that's okay. Just let people do their thing and give them help if they ask for it. If you want to give them information about the harmfulness of their actions, I think that's great and would support it. But legislation and the punishments that result from noncompliance are not the answer.
"It is important to note that this study was small and limited, with the authors including the fact that most of the e-cigarette cohort were formerly cigarette smokers, making it difficult to clearly identify whether these results were solely related to e-cigarette use."
I'm not saying that e-cigarettes are completely harmless; I assume they are not. But I do think they are less harmful than cigarettes, by quite a bit. It's a matter of harm-reduction not complete elimination.
And I think it's pretty clear that e-cigarettes aren't really doing a damn thing to prevent or deter the traditional product.
I don't know what the statistics are, but I have switched from smoking to vaping (hate that term). I feel a lot better and can breathe more easily. I don't know about others, but personally a vaporizer has helped me completely quit smoking.
So what do I know. I only have a dad who worked as an reporter and operative in this clusterfuck for 4 decades now. I’ve only been threatened to be killed by terrorist groups twice. One of those being backed by my own western government.
Well, you clearly know more than the average American. As you know, Americans have foreign policy presented to them as a Western, in which the good guys in white hats (The USA) deal with the bad guys in black hats (America's enemy du jour). It's a neat, simple morality play that Americans love to see played out again and again. Connections are never made between the various actors motivations, actions and reactions. Everything seems to happen in a vacuum. So Americans think they are watching an old western, when really they're watching the Godfather.
The latest Red Scare is just a big nothing burger.
It's ironic that posts about Russian hacking are being done by a bot. This is the third identical post I have seen here today. So rather than being a "nothing burger" these posts indicate that the very interference they are trying to play down is in fact still ongoing.
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
Who ties your shoes for you?
PS - "The 1980s called. They want their foreign policy back." So, was Mitt Romney right and Obama a foolish dupe? Take you pick - either "OMFG TEH RUSSIANS ARE COMING!!! RUSSIANS!!!!" is a lie being foisted off to undermine President Trump (gawd I love putting that in responses to those like you!), or Obama was literally a foolish dupe with his "Russian reset". Because if the Russians are as bad as you're now wont to believe, Obama was a FOOL. Literally. So, which one is it?
LOL, dude... You have no idea who I am and what I think. Trust me, no idea. You have no concept of how deep the rabbit hole goes, and wouldn't believe me if I tried to explain it to you. Few things are as they seem, and the reasons things happen are not what you likely think they are.
If you think it's a choice between the Russian interference story being false and Obama being played by the Russians, you don't know how this game is played. You don't even know what the game is. You only know what they want you to know, unless you are prepared to throw your worldview out the window and step out of whatever paradigm you have chosen as comfortable. Who are "they", you may ask? Well, that's kind of the point isn't it?
Hey bud, go on and lick my balls. It started as a response, and when it was downmodded, it became a submission. Beau rejected it because, well, because it didn't fit his fake news narrative, and it didn't fit what he is being paid to do by the vested interests that own BIZX, LLC.
Okay, and? You then just spam it all over the board? What does that accomplish?
I'm impressed by your ability to not engage my point at all. As usual, people of your thinking ignore the power of concentrated wealth. A government of, by and for the people is your only defense against concentrated wealth. Sure, governments can get corrupted. It is up to the people represented by that government to ensure that doesn't happen. Many times they don't, I understand. But to use that as a rationale for eliminating government is unwarranted.
I am all for doing things without coercion. But what do you do when some ultra-wealthy individual or group decides to hell with that and starts coercing people? They can employ an army of mercenaries and lawyers to enforce their will. What are you going to do, get a million people to voluntarily pool their resources and present a united front? Good luck with that.
[snark]Business as usual in Americana.[/snark] Not saying his transactions are or aren't overtly suspicious, but significant profits amidst potentially massive losses for so many make one look like a complete douche.
Meh, if I had $90 million I don't think I'd care if people thought I was a douche. My friends at the country club likely wouldn't care if the peasants thought so either. It most certainly is business as usual in Americana.
Of course, he already supervised the posting of his personal information along with everybody else's.
It is amazing (not) to me that the board will let this happen.
If his contract gives him this cash regardless of competence, then the board made a poor contract.
If the contract requires competence for compensation, the the board should not give out the cash.
Come on, man. You know this works. It's a club where they all pay each other.
Slashdot Mirror
There seems to be this notion that capitalism and socialism are binary concepts, and that socialism and communism are the same. The truth is, they are on a spectrum, with capitalism and communism at the extremes. Somewhere along the spectrum is likely the optimum solution. Where productivity is high, and inequality is low. Everyone is too focused on the advantages and disadvantages of the extremes to explore the area in between.
Well, to be fair, Americans are thoroughly propagandized to think that Capitalism is some natural force like electromagnetism. They also think it's inseparable from democracy. We're voting with our dollars, right? Basically, we are so bamboozled we can't see straight.
The rich are the people that create the jobs.
Okay, we're done here. Response to demand creates jobs. People are not hired for no reason. In fact, the companies that rich people own want to hire as few people as possible and pay them as little as possible. Rich people don't create jobs. Or if they do, it is because they are forced to in order to keep up with demand and maintain their business.
The reason why the US is doing so well is because it is the only country that follows Ayn Rand's ideologies, which have kept the country from collapsing in a socialist mire.
Yeah, like I said, we're done here.
Well, in that case, they should move to those countries so that they'll be better off there? What? What's that you say? Those countries won't take them in?
No, what I say is that you are being comically unrealistic if you expect poor people to have the means to move to another country to improve their standard of living. Do you have any idea how expensive that proposition is? What? What's that you say? I didn't think so.
That America is continuing to prop up the rest of the socialist world by continuing to be the only country besides Japan which has people that actually do something?
The fuck is this?
The human mind is particularly bad at handling some concepts... like 'infinity' for one.
What if the universe always existed, and always will? Why can't it be infinitely long on the time axis as well as the spatial ones? You ask how it came into existence in the first place, and I say what if it DIDN'T and it's simply always been there?
Everything our current models tell us about reality, from the Big Bang to the Heat Death of the observable universe could very well be nothing more than a finite and insignificant perturbation in the infinity of existence.
If Einstein was right, and space and time are the same thing, it seems reasonable that if the Universe has infinite space it should have infinite time.
Remember, AIDS isn't a disease. It's a lifestyle choice.
Just like being a dick on the Internet, eh?
...spoiled athletes losing jobs and endorsements for disrespecting our country, amirite?
LOL, you probably don't even know the real reason those athletes are protesting. They have been accused of disrespecting the country, or the flag, or the troops, or whatever to deflect from their actual point: that black people continue to be threatened by racist policing in this country.
Black athletes' money or status won't protect them from a jumpy officer at a traffic stop. I assume you think that issue is bullshit. Though that does make me wonder why you think you are in a better position than they are to know what should be an issue to them. But regardless, they are not simply disrespecting the country. And if they were, it would be because the country, in its policies and attitudes, continues to disrespect them and people who look like them.
Also, some people hate being exposed to facts that interfere with their beliefs, such as black people commit 217 times more violent crimes, gay men are 12 times more likely to be pedophiles, etc.
You are guilty of the same behavior you're pretending to be smugly self-righteous about.
Thank you for providing a perfect example of unconscious bias. Black people commit more 217 times more crimes than what, chickens lay eggs? Gay men are 12 times more likely to be pedophiles than what, Meryl Streep is to be nominated for an Oscar? No, your unsaid point is that black people commit 217 times more crimes than white people. Gay men are 12 times more likely to be pedophiles than straight men. In your view being white and straight are the default. They are the norm. They are the standard against which everything else is evaluated.
You didn't think you needed to explain what you were comparing these group to, because it should be a given. And indeed, I knew what you meant. That is implicit bias. It exposes the cultural dominance of white people. It shows how being white and straight are considered "normal", and things other than those are "abnormal". In short, it demonstrates white, straight cultural supremacy. I hope we can finally agree that that's a thing; that white, straight culture is the dominant one and therefore confers a certain status to the people in it.
If we didn't have massive numbers they would be a bane on society. Requiring everything normal people require but not making multiple new people would hurt a population many ages ago but we are way beyond that now.
Okay, so what's the problem?
Are you a bigot because you want thieves in jail? Some people are born kleptomaniacs. Why do you discriminate against thieves, throwing them in jail? Frankly, homosexuality is a greater evil than theft, and people are right to fight against such an evil being accepted in the public square.
You at least seem to acknowledge that people are born gay. So I think we're making progress.
Works as intended, not as publicly advertised.
Yes, indeed. I was coming at it from a public policy as advertised point of view. But I agree that the public rationale is not the true rationale for these policies.
I have zero sympathy, especially given the amount of warning these people have had.
Agreed. I was fairly warned that Bitcoins were overpriced when they reached $1, again at $100, again at $1000, and finally when they recently crossed the $5000 mark. I have no problem with your lack of sympathy for my predicament.
How many of those bitcoins have you converted to dollars?
The CDC says 41,000 Americans were killed in the U.S. during 2016 due to second hand smoke.
And I'd wager none of those people died as a result of standing next to a smoker at a bus stop. That's the kind of thing that Mark-T was whining about above; not a non-smoker who lives with a smoker.
Fuck yeh! Also sports, driving, running too fast, candy and sex.
Yes, exactly. You can always find something that someone is doing that you think they ought not be doing.
There ought to be a cap on the amount of nicotine in the vapes, and that cap should be lowered at a steady rate over a fixed number of years until it hits zero. We need to stop supporting these legalized addictive drug dealers as a permanent establishment and seek to shut down the addictive drug industry entirely in the foreseeable future.
"We" are not supporting this industry. Its customers are, because they value the product enough to spend money on it. You really think we should be legislating what vices people are allowed to have? That's been tried, you know. From Prohibition to the War on Drugs, it hasn't worked out very well and has not achieved the desired outcomes.
You gotta let people do what they want to do with their time and their bodies, even if you think it's bad for them. That's part of living in a free country. No one lives a perfect, harm-free life and that's okay. Just let people do their thing and give them help if they ask for it. If you want to give them information about the harmfulness of their actions, I think that's great and would support it. But legislation and the punishments that result from noncompliance are not the answer.
Nicotine is not harmful but vaping appears to be https://newatlas.com/e-cigaret...
From the linked article:
I'm not saying that e-cigarettes are completely harmless; I assume they are not. But I do think they are less harmful than cigarettes, by quite a bit. It's a matter of harm-reduction not complete elimination.
And I think it's pretty clear that e-cigarettes aren't really doing a damn thing to prevent or deter the traditional product.
I don't know what the statistics are, but I have switched from smoking to vaping (hate that term). I feel a lot better and can breathe more easily. I don't know about others, but personally a vaporizer has helped me completely quit smoking.
So what do I know. I only have a dad who worked as an reporter and operative in this clusterfuck for 4 decades now. I’ve only been threatened to be killed by terrorist groups twice. One of those being backed by my own western government.
Well, you clearly know more than the average American. As you know, Americans have foreign policy presented to them as a Western, in which the good guys in white hats (The USA) deal with the bad guys in black hats (America's enemy du jour). It's a neat, simple morality play that Americans love to see played out again and again. Connections are never made between the various actors motivations, actions and reactions. Everything seems to happen in a vacuum. So Americans think they are watching an old western, when really they're watching the Godfather.
Come on, man. You know this works. It's a club where they all pay each other with someone else's money.
Heh, should have been you know how this works. But yes, it's always better with other people's money.
The latest Red Scare is just a big nothing burger.
It's ironic that posts about Russian hacking are being done by a bot. This is the third identical post I have seen here today. So rather than being a "nothing burger" these posts indicate that the very interference they are trying to play down is in fact still ongoing.
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
Who ties your shoes for you?
PS - "The 1980s called. They want their foreign policy back." So, was Mitt Romney right and Obama a foolish dupe? Take you pick - either "OMFG TEH RUSSIANS ARE COMING!!! RUSSIANS!!!!" is a lie being foisted off to undermine President Trump (gawd I love putting that in responses to those like you!), or Obama was literally a foolish dupe with his "Russian reset". Because if the Russians are as bad as you're now wont to believe, Obama was a FOOL. Literally. So, which one is it?
LOL, dude... You have no idea who I am and what I think. Trust me, no idea. You have no concept of how deep the rabbit hole goes, and wouldn't believe me if I tried to explain it to you. Few things are as they seem, and the reasons things happen are not what you likely think they are.
If you think it's a choice between the Russian interference story being false and Obama being played by the Russians, you don't know how this game is played. You don't even know what the game is. You only know what they want you to know, unless you are prepared to throw your worldview out the window and step out of whatever paradigm you have chosen as comfortable. Who are "they", you may ask? Well, that's kind of the point isn't it?
Hey bud, go on and lick my balls. It started as a response, and when it was downmodded, it became a submission. Beau rejected it because, well, because it didn't fit his fake news narrative, and it didn't fit what he is being paid to do by the vested interests that own BIZX, LLC.
Okay, and? You then just spam it all over the board? What does that accomplish?
I'm impressed by your ability to not engage my point at all. As usual, people of your thinking ignore the power of concentrated wealth. A government of, by and for the people is your only defense against concentrated wealth. Sure, governments can get corrupted. It is up to the people represented by that government to ensure that doesn't happen. Many times they don't, I understand. But to use that as a rationale for eliminating government is unwarranted.
I am all for doing things without coercion. But what do you do when some ultra-wealthy individual or group decides to hell with that and starts coercing people? They can employ an army of mercenaries and lawyers to enforce their will. What are you going to do, get a million people to voluntarily pool their resources and present a united front? Good luck with that.
Shh! Don't tell them that! I find it very handy that there are so many give-away code phrases, and want them to stay in use.
Heh, I'm pretty sure he's a computer program.
When iPhones phones start coming with 360 degree panoramic optics.... what then?
We'll cross that bridge when we come to it?
[snark]Business as usual in Americana.[/snark] Not saying his transactions are or aren't overtly suspicious, but significant profits amidst potentially massive losses for so many make one look like a complete douche.
Meh, if I had $90 million I don't think I'd care if people thought I was a douche. My friends at the country club likely wouldn't care if the peasants thought so either. It most certainly is business as usual in Americana.
Of course, he already supervised the posting of his personal information along with everybody else's.
It is amazing (not) to me that the board will let this happen. If his contract gives him this cash regardless of competence, then the board made a poor contract. If the contract requires competence for compensation, the the board should not give out the cash.
Come on, man. You know this works. It's a club where they all pay each other.