College graduates tend to stay away from factories usually because they're afraid of becoming too comfortable.
I doubt one in ten college graduates has this fear much less that expectation of comfortable jobs anywhere near a factory. In the case you mention, I suspect the real reason you didn't see a lot of college graduates is because this employer didn't hire them.
College graduates can always move on and do something else, if they don't like what they're doing. That's pretty much what you did. This employer most likely wants people without such options.
There's no reason it can't come from the people who don't pay it off at the end of every month.
There's no reason it can't come from the generosity of the Grey aliens, sharing the bounty of their far-reaching interstellar empire with us. This is classic free lunch thinking here.
Your contract with the credit card companies didn't include specifying where your "reward money" comes from. Hence, it comes from the greatly expanded fees the credit card company charges on your transactions which from the credit card company's point of view is the logical choice. They'll just drop the rewards system gimmick altogether, if they can't continue to hide transaction fees from you.
I have an additional comment on what I think "civilized societies" are, or perhaps, should be.
this is not a fucking GIFT. its what civilized societies do. they take care of their own people.
My view is that civilized societies build for the future, the "old men plant trees whose shade they shall never rest in" thing. It's not "I paid my dues!"
I hate when people use that word. to me, it implies that you think its not fair that when you pay into a system for your lifetime, that you get a return on the other end, later on.
Too bad. What "social contract" implies to me is a bunch of bleating sheep trying to get more out than they put in.
I've posted about 'social contract' before and its a key issue, here. its not 'entitlement' when you pay so much tax over decades, your parents did, even grandparents. you have invested in your own social system and you expect (no, DEMAND) that it take care of you. you paid your dues!
Except what did you do to deserve that? I invest in the local sewer system every time I flush the toilet, but I don't expect it to take care of me. I similarly flush money on various mandatory social welfare schemes (in the US, Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare/Medicaid, etc), but I don't have an expectation that these will be around when I need them.
Why should I? The only people making promises are a bunch of vapid politicians. Rather than putting my hopes in a crap handling system, I'd rather save money and try to make a stand myself. Self-reliance isn't perfect, but it's a lot easier to listen to than whiny dependent entitlement.
I pay into the system and I know I'm helping to pay for those that are a generation ahead. fine with me, they earned a good life and they deserve to be taken care of. call me a commie if you want, but taking care of our people is what makes us human.
And who's going to take care of the next generation? Pension schemes, private and public, world-wide are failing because they too often can't pay out what they promise. It's a near universal problem. Taking care of people is nice, but not when it's at the expense of other people who won't get that care. Creating unsustainable systems doesn't help in the long run.
Arguments like yours are based on the assumption by Milton Friedman and his ilk that jobs are just as fungible as money, and that it's *your fault* that your price is too high by your simply living in civilization. You are being forced into a race to the bottom. Races to the bottom have no winners.
I guess you can call a case of straight forward competition "race to the bottom". It's a bit wall-eyed to do so, but you're free to call competition whatever you want to call it. In practice, competition has plenty of winners, namely, everyone else. So everyone in those "poorer countries" is a winner, for example (the "bottom", if you will is steadily improving). And every time someone buys a good or service made with cheaper developed world labor, that person is also a winner.
As to Milton Friedman, does it really matter if he cast some moral connotation on a choice? As I see it, you can chose whatever you want to. But there are consequences to making choices. For example, choosing to live in "civilization" that by its nature causes your price to be too high, well, that has consequences which I suspect Friedman is quite accurate about even if one chooses not to assign blame.
This is Slashdot, not Forbes.com or daytrader forum.
Well, they don't have to recognize valid points either. So it's not really that different.
Jobs was the guy who figured out how to cash the ideas in
And available evidence indicates this is the harder part than coming up with the ideas in the first place. To have done so three times, indicates that Jobs was really good at what he did.
The guy with the kerosine truck is not going to take a bag of rice in exchange for a gallon of fuel.
Why not? The bag of rice has value after all. And he can trade that for something of value down the road. Yes, he can sit on his fuel, but I imagine he has needs as well and those just aren't getting met while he's "sitting".
I don't need to "read about actual experiences", I lived in Peru during the IMF-caused hyperinflation and devaluation of 1989-1991. We were lucky, we made enough money we could buy 50 kilos of rice, 5 gallons of kerosine, 10 kilos of sugar, and exchange the rest of our paychecks for Dollars on the way home. Our neighbors couldn't do that, and they were well and truly fucked. Our landlord had guys pass out on the job because they weren't eating, in order to make sure their children had food. Much of our neighborhood only had potable water because one kid knew how to pick the padlocks used to shut the faucets off for non-payment. Other neighborhoods were drinking river water, and people didn't have enough fuel to boil it adequately. A third of my nephew's class (a free accelerated program for gifted children) was out sick during much of this period, some of them didn't come back, probably because they died.
There's a couple of things to note here. First, last I checked Peru is not a division of the IMF and the currency of Peru is owned and controlled by Peru. What you experienced was a Peru-caused case of hyperinflation. This is quite relevant because one doesn't need to completely destroy their currency in order to comply with IMF loan conditions. Sure, IMF has a long history of screwing up debtor countries, but let's be fair here, Peru had messed itself up pretty badly to get into that situation in the first place. And then, it made it worse with the hyperinflation.
Second, you aren't actually contradicting anything I've said so far. Did I say that hyperinflation was not destructive to any degree? Of course not. I merely stated that it was a temporary effect without much of a lasting impact. You indicate that's what it was in your experience. Some people died, but not many. And when it was all done, the economy of Peru was still there.
a unsubsidized food market is generally healthier than a subsidized one
In what way? When you have a large portion of the population who are poor and under-employed there are only two choices; 1) let them starve, or 2) subsidize their nutrition. There is no third choice. Raise their wages and in an uncontrolled market vendors will raise the price of food correspondingly.
For starters, by offering choice number 3) creating a market of reasonably priced food that doesn't require perpetual subsidy. As to your claim in the last sentence, it's worth noting that this doesn't happen in practice (for example, the entire developed world) because people can switch to vendors who offer cheaper prices for food.
Sure, economies 'survive', but not all of the people do.
A completely irrelevant observation without considering degree of harm. People die because of good times as well as because of bad. Really bad famines and plagues kill people too.
Oh, you mean that the almighty all-important market will be healthier. Yeah, I guess you're right. No one cares about the actual people who live in that market, they don't show up on a bank's balance sheet.
Well, come up with a better system then. Bad things don't stop happening to people just because you don't want them to. Markets have the intrinsic beneficial property that every transaction done is agreed to by all parties. That's something you can't say about most such systems (except very similar ones like other trade systems, eg, barter).
I prefer to work with tools that work well, that's why I like markets. I also dislike things that break my tools. That's why I dislike subsidies and other imposed market distortions.
Also, ban business ass-rape-fest on consumers - there's no reason to trash strong consumer protection, nor trade in for US corporation protection system.
Well, there's no demonstrated need for strong consumer protection. That's a reason right there. My view is that getting screwed a few times is a necessary step in becoming a smart consumer. And I'd rather have smart consumers than a herd of "protected" dumb consumers.
I know it's just not popular to defend businesses, but their interests are as relevant as the interests of their customers. Compliance with "strong consumer protection" costs money and jobs. And what's the benefit? So the consumer doesn't have to work or think so hard about what they do. I see that as counterproductive for everyone involved.
I take it you've never lived through a currency devaluation or hyperinflation.
I do take it that you are aware that there are numerous economies that have suffered through such things and are still kicking? Yes, even hyperinflation doesn't do that much. Keep in mind all it is doing is zeroing out a particular currency. One can always trade in something else that still has value, such as that bag of rice or a currency that isn't experiencing hyperinflation.
There are real reasons why the IMF plans for food riots in countries where they impose austerity measures (they even call them "IMF riots" in their internal documents), people's children are starving. They know it, and they don't care as long as their corporate partners get control of the country's assets.
Those real reasons include that a unsubsidized food market is generally healthier than a subsidized one.
So it is possible he made up that part just to sound good to American ears, but he did say it.
Yep, that's what I think too. It's just words. Let us keep in mind that Von Braun might have been in front of a firing squad, if he had surrendered to the godless commies rather than the people whom he hadn't crossed.
There is nothing about a free market that will prevent a monopoly. It's pretty easy to see how totally free markets would result in monopolies.
Competition. High prices from the existence of a monopoly result in incentives to enter the market. The monopolist might be able to keep them out by losing money (say buying the competitor at exaggerated price or conducting costly undercutting wars).
because the US was a Christian nation and the Soviets were atheist.
Not at all. They surrendered to the US because they were the less scary choice. The Communists were always a rival to the Nazis in the Wiemar Republic and were blamed in large part for the downfall of Germany during the First World War. So there was some hate going in to the invasion of Russia.
Then toss in all the bad blood created between Germany and Russia thereafter, Joseph Stalin as a remarkably scary leader even by Nazi standards, and that Von Braun and various members of his group may have been partly responsible for the deaths of Russian soldiers (I read that prisoners of war were enslaved at Mittelwerk (and died there) and the largest portion of such in Nazi Germany would have been Soviet).
If it rises in cost, then the cap can still make sense. For example, I've always advocated "soft caps" on pollution credits (in the context that there's a market for trading these credits) where one can buy an arbitrary number of credits, but the costs go up as the number of credits are increased.
I doubt any similar mechanism is being used here. Instead, it seems to be intended as a stealthly way to increase the H1-Bs substantially.
(2) alternate universe "time-lines" in which case whatever horrible thing you are trying to change still occurred in the original universe and you have just created a copy. Nobody ever deals with that.
Well, how would you observe this "original universe" except by undoing the change?
Now, someone will chime in about educating yourself as a consumer, but we all know that most companies do not want an educated consumer, because educated consumers won't fall for their marketing tricks. Companies have proven time and again that without some amount of regulation they will act only in their best interests, which is to make as much money for their stakeholders as possible. The absence of regulation, as in the USA, lets companies get away with a lot more at the expense and detriment of the consumer.
The answer is simple. Educate yourself. Don't let the company with a vested interested do that job instead.
I'm also happy to live in a country (Finland) that has granted its citizens internet access as a right.
I imagine that they don't actually legally treat it as a "right". It's just some word that you like to use in place of "entitlement". But then again, all sorts of crap is considered "rights" by some governments and who knows? Those governments might last.
Glancing at Wikipedia, I see that the current Finnish constitution has been kicking around for quite some time - since 2000, almost 13 years ago (with some parts coming from even earlier, in 1995)! So of course, you'd expect people with that kind of long, storied constitutional history to have a deep grasp of what should be or shouldn't be a "right".
My beef here, is that the problem with making entitlements a "right" is who is responsible for insuring that you have this "right"? Who pays? It's just a poorly thought out idea that in practice generates a legal requirement that gets violated to some degree in order to address the "tragedy of the commons" problem.
Let's see if all this lasts a few decades first, before we start crowing about how advanced and special the EU experiment and many of its governments are. Last I heard, the weaker governments in the system were already failing.
Now, if only you had a clue what "free market", "monopoly", etc means. If you have monopolies, you don't have a free market. if you have competition, you don't have monopolies. And, of course, if you have a government intervening to create the situation, then you don't have a free market either. What is the point of making up new definitions that nobody recognizes for existing terms?
I think that you'll find the CEO of RJR, BAT or any of the other tobacco companies beat Leopold hands down, especially those who lied for over four decades, including in front of Congress, denying that smoking caused cancer even though their own research in the 1930s had already definitively established the link. The executives of the asbestos and mercury mining companies are probably also in Leopold's league, and some of the petrochemical executives as well. They're just shadows of Big Pharma though, who deliberately price drugs far out of reach of most of the world's population and prosecute companies and embargo countries that try to produce affordable AIDS and malaria drugs for their poor.
While that's a more interesting accusation, it's worth noting that none of those things happened in a vacuum and the worst excesses involve a product that was consumed voluntarily despite its obvious health consequences and a legal environment which was extremely hostile to businesses then and continues to be so today.
No one holds a candle though to the heads of the IMF, World Bank, the mega-banks, or the currency speculators, who deliberately destroy the economies of entire continents.
I guess you haven't noticed, but destroying an economy doesn't really do that much. It's a couple years of belt tightening and then pretty much back to where things were before. I imagine the practice would fade out altogether, if the rewards went away.
And I see by your mention of "currency speculators" that you really don't get what goes on in these things. That's an entirely different group and one which often profits by puncturing or anticipating the schemes of the previous groups you mention. Hence, that is why they're so heavily villainized.
The Soviets, the Nazis, Mao, Ataturk, etc. all were private citizens who got sick of the old regime.
In addition, Mao was recognized as head of state by the USSR for many years before he finally fully controlled mainland China. Ataturk was a military officer throughout the period of the various genocides up to the time when he took over.
The Soviets, the Nazis, Mao, Ataturk, etc. all were private citizens who got sick of the old regime.
No. It's been a while since hereditary titles. So almost everyone is born a private citizen. And the excesses of these particular groups happened when they were in a position of government power. The Soviets may have been a private faction in 1916, but they were a government by 1918. And that's what they remained through the Russian Civil War and the purges and famines of Stalin. Similarly, the Nazis became the government when they took over in 1933. The Holocaust didn't start for a number of years past that.
You fail to see because you seem to be reading in reverse, maybe being deliberately obtuse. If you actually read in proper order as the English language intended, you'll realize that my rhetorical question was asking for a position which is OUTSIDE of government, that has the most influence on government.
Then you've being asking the wrong questions. And in answer, a powerful and brutal outsider like say, Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan who actually has the power to destroy civilization, not merely its leadership, has had far more influence than a businessman. I already addressed this question in my original post. It's almost like I've actually thought about the problem.
No, it was highly visible. Not many people did anything about it, that's all. It took some time to recognize the need to do anything. The world appeased Hitler, and they knew they were appeasing him. People argued if that was the right policy (guess it wasn't). When the world finally made up its mind, it went to war (took the Americans a little longer to wake up and see the problem, but hey, what else is new?)
And the Holocaust didn't come out until Allied forces started freeing concentration camps in late 1944. I imagine that if Nazi Germany had won Europe back then, we'd not know of the Holocaust today. Visibility is easy to speak of when the government in question has collapsed.
Yes, even now there are deniers. Doesn't mean people don't see they're full of shit. I mean, YOU know so much about Turkey or Congo or China or the USA, right? YOU are here arguing about on just how big and bad government is, right?
Maybe you should similarly educate yourself on these countries and what happened there? We could have a legitimate debate and not just some narrow minded two minute hate for the latest unpopular group.
They can't make a high enough yield war head to deal with guidance errors fit on their rocket. These folks are too broke for that.
Yet. Ten years ago they couldn't make a nuclear weapon and stick it on a rocket. Ten years from now, maybe they'll have that accuracy problem fixed well enough or maybe they'll have abandoned nuclear weapons altogether and be back in their original state of being incapable of doing what they've done so far.
The problem here is that such statements of impossibility are never true for very long unless someone does something to keep them true.
So the guy who had Osama killed is not going to do anything about the latest Kim to rule NK if he steps over the line?
I seriously doubt that.
With bin Laden, Obama just had to approve the plan. No real risks would be taken since bin Laden is just a thug in hiding with little power. Here, if Kim Jong-un steps "over the line", any world leader has to consider what consequences would come, such as a bloody attack on South Korea or some sort of nuclear strike.
Obama just doesn't strike me as the sort of politician who likes to take such risks.
Slashdot Mirror
College graduates tend to stay away from factories usually because they're afraid of becoming too comfortable.
I doubt one in ten college graduates has this fear much less that expectation of comfortable jobs anywhere near a factory. In the case you mention, I suspect the real reason you didn't see a lot of college graduates is because this employer didn't hire them.
College graduates can always move on and do something else, if they don't like what they're doing. That's pretty much what you did. This employer most likely wants people without such options.
timothy is a force multiplier.
There's no reason it can't come from the people who don't pay it off at the end of every month.
There's no reason it can't come from the generosity of the Grey aliens, sharing the bounty of their far-reaching interstellar empire with us. This is classic free lunch thinking here.
Your contract with the credit card companies didn't include specifying where your "reward money" comes from. Hence, it comes from the greatly expanded fees the credit card company charges on your transactions which from the credit card company's point of view is the logical choice. They'll just drop the rewards system gimmick altogether, if they can't continue to hide transaction fees from you.
this is not a fucking GIFT. its what civilized societies do. they take care of their own people.
My view is that civilized societies build for the future, the "old men plant trees whose shade they shall never rest in" thing. It's not "I paid my dues!"
I hate when people use that word. to me, it implies that you think its not fair that when you pay into a system for your lifetime, that you get a return on the other end, later on.
Too bad. What "social contract" implies to me is a bunch of bleating sheep trying to get more out than they put in.
I've posted about 'social contract' before and its a key issue, here. its not 'entitlement' when you pay so much tax over decades, your parents did, even grandparents. you have invested in your own social system and you expect (no, DEMAND) that it take care of you. you paid your dues!
Except what did you do to deserve that? I invest in the local sewer system every time I flush the toilet, but I don't expect it to take care of me. I similarly flush money on various mandatory social welfare schemes (in the US, Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare/Medicaid, etc), but I don't have an expectation that these will be around when I need them.
Why should I? The only people making promises are a bunch of vapid politicians. Rather than putting my hopes in a crap handling system, I'd rather save money and try to make a stand myself. Self-reliance isn't perfect, but it's a lot easier to listen to than whiny dependent entitlement.
I pay into the system and I know I'm helping to pay for those that are a generation ahead. fine with me, they earned a good life and they deserve to be taken care of. call me a commie if you want, but taking care of our people is what makes us human.
And who's going to take care of the next generation? Pension schemes, private and public, world-wide are failing because they too often can't pay out what they promise. It's a near universal problem. Taking care of people is nice, but not when it's at the expense of other people who won't get that care. Creating unsustainable systems doesn't help in the long run.
Arguments like yours are based on the assumption by Milton Friedman and his ilk that jobs are just as fungible as money, and that it's *your fault* that your price is too high by your simply living in civilization. You are being forced into a race to the bottom. Races to the bottom have no winners.
I guess you can call a case of straight forward competition "race to the bottom". It's a bit wall-eyed to do so, but you're free to call competition whatever you want to call it. In practice, competition has plenty of winners, namely, everyone else. So everyone in those "poorer countries" is a winner, for example (the "bottom", if you will is steadily improving). And every time someone buys a good or service made with cheaper developed world labor, that person is also a winner.
As to Milton Friedman, does it really matter if he cast some moral connotation on a choice? As I see it, you can chose whatever you want to. But there are consequences to making choices. For example, choosing to live in "civilization" that by its nature causes your price to be too high, well, that has consequences which I suspect Friedman is quite accurate about even if one chooses not to assign blame.
And corporate bootlicking? Totally turnoff. Yea.
This is Slashdot, not Forbes.com or daytrader forum.
Well, they don't have to recognize valid points either. So it's not really that different.
Jobs was the guy who figured out how to cash the ideas in
And available evidence indicates this is the harder part than coming up with the ideas in the first place. To have done so three times, indicates that Jobs was really good at what he did.
The guy with the kerosine truck is not going to take a bag of rice in exchange for a gallon of fuel.
Why not? The bag of rice has value after all. And he can trade that for something of value down the road. Yes, he can sit on his fuel, but I imagine he has needs as well and those just aren't getting met while he's "sitting".
I don't need to "read about actual experiences", I lived in Peru during the IMF-caused hyperinflation and devaluation of 1989-1991. We were lucky, we made enough money we could buy 50 kilos of rice, 5 gallons of kerosine, 10 kilos of sugar, and exchange the rest of our paychecks for Dollars on the way home. Our neighbors couldn't do that, and they were well and truly fucked. Our landlord had guys pass out on the job because they weren't eating, in order to make sure their children had food. Much of our neighborhood only had potable water because one kid knew how to pick the padlocks used to shut the faucets off for non-payment. Other neighborhoods were drinking river water, and people didn't have enough fuel to boil it adequately. A third of my nephew's class (a free accelerated program for gifted children) was out sick during much of this period, some of them didn't come back, probably because they died.
There's a couple of things to note here. First, last I checked Peru is not a division of the IMF and the currency of Peru is owned and controlled by Peru. What you experienced was a Peru-caused case of hyperinflation. This is quite relevant because one doesn't need to completely destroy their currency in order to comply with IMF loan conditions. Sure, IMF has a long history of screwing up debtor countries, but let's be fair here, Peru had messed itself up pretty badly to get into that situation in the first place. And then, it made it worse with the hyperinflation.
Second, you aren't actually contradicting anything I've said so far. Did I say that hyperinflation was not destructive to any degree? Of course not. I merely stated that it was a temporary effect without much of a lasting impact. You indicate that's what it was in your experience. Some people died, but not many. And when it was all done, the economy of Peru was still there.
a unsubsidized food market is generally healthier than a subsidized one
In what way? When you have a large portion of the population who are poor and under-employed there are only two choices; 1) let them starve, or 2) subsidize their nutrition. There is no third choice. Raise their wages and in an uncontrolled market vendors will raise the price of food correspondingly.
For starters, by offering choice number 3) creating a market of reasonably priced food that doesn't require perpetual subsidy. As to your claim in the last sentence, it's worth noting that this doesn't happen in practice (for example, the entire developed world) because people can switch to vendors who offer cheaper prices for food.
Sure, economies 'survive', but not all of the people do.
A completely irrelevant observation without considering degree of harm. People die because of good times as well as because of bad. Really bad famines and plagues kill people too.
Oh, you mean that the almighty all-important market will be healthier. Yeah, I guess you're right. No one cares about the actual people who live in that market, they don't show up on a bank's balance sheet.
Well, come up with a better system then. Bad things don't stop happening to people just because you don't want them to. Markets have the intrinsic beneficial property that every transaction done is agreed to by all parties. That's something you can't say about most such systems (except very similar ones like other trade systems, eg, barter).
I prefer to work with tools that work well, that's why I like markets. I also dislike things that break my tools. That's why I dislike subsidies and other imposed market distortions.
Also, ban business ass-rape-fest on consumers - there's no reason to trash strong consumer protection, nor trade in for US corporation protection system.
Well, there's no demonstrated need for strong consumer protection. That's a reason right there. My view is that getting screwed a few times is a necessary step in becoming a smart consumer. And I'd rather have smart consumers than a herd of "protected" dumb consumers.
I know it's just not popular to defend businesses, but their interests are as relevant as the interests of their customers. Compliance with "strong consumer protection" costs money and jobs. And what's the benefit? So the consumer doesn't have to work or think so hard about what they do. I see that as counterproductive for everyone involved.
The monopolist doesn't buy competitors. He buys Senators, Congressmen, and Presidents. Much cheaper in the long run.
Again. Not free market since you implicitly have interference from government above.
I take it you've never lived through a currency devaluation or hyperinflation.
I do take it that you are aware that there are numerous economies that have suffered through such things and are still kicking? Yes, even hyperinflation doesn't do that much. Keep in mind all it is doing is zeroing out a particular currency. One can always trade in something else that still has value, such as that bag of rice or a currency that isn't experiencing hyperinflation.
For example, we can read about actual experiences with hyperinflation.
There are real reasons why the IMF plans for food riots in countries where they impose austerity measures (they even call them "IMF riots" in their internal documents), people's children are starving. They know it, and they don't care as long as their corporate partners get control of the country's assets.
Those real reasons include that a unsubsidized food market is generally healthier than a subsidized one.
So it is possible he made up that part just to sound good to American ears, but he did say it.
Yep, that's what I think too. It's just words. Let us keep in mind that Von Braun might have been in front of a firing squad, if he had surrendered to the godless commies rather than the people whom he hadn't crossed.
There is nothing about a free market that will prevent a monopoly. It's pretty easy to see how totally free markets would result in monopolies.
Competition. High prices from the existence of a monopoly result in incentives to enter the market. The monopolist might be able to keep them out by losing money (say buying the competitor at exaggerated price or conducting costly undercutting wars).
Plutocracy or oligopoly would be good choices, depending whether you're referring to it as a form of government or as a market force.
because the US was a Christian nation and the Soviets were atheist.
Not at all. They surrendered to the US because they were the less scary choice. The Communists were always a rival to the Nazis in the Wiemar Republic and were blamed in large part for the downfall of Germany during the First World War. So there was some hate going in to the invasion of Russia.
Then toss in all the bad blood created between Germany and Russia thereafter, Joseph Stalin as a remarkably scary leader even by Nazi standards, and that Von Braun and various members of his group may have been partly responsible for the deaths of Russian soldiers (I read that prisoners of war were enslaved at Mittelwerk (and died there) and the largest portion of such in Nazi Germany would have been Soviet).
If it rises in cost, then the cap can still make sense. For example, I've always advocated "soft caps" on pollution credits (in the context that there's a market for trading these credits) where one can buy an arbitrary number of credits, but the costs go up as the number of credits are increased.
I doubt any similar mechanism is being used here. Instead, it seems to be intended as a stealthly way to increase the H1-Bs substantially.
(2) alternate universe "time-lines" in which case whatever horrible thing you are trying to change still occurred in the original universe and you have just created a copy. Nobody ever deals with that.
Well, how would you observe this "original universe" except by undoing the change?
Now, someone will chime in about educating yourself as a consumer, but we all know that most companies do not want an educated consumer, because educated consumers won't fall for their marketing tricks. Companies have proven time and again that without some amount of regulation they will act only in their best interests, which is to make as much money for their stakeholders as possible. The absence of regulation, as in the USA, lets companies get away with a lot more at the expense and detriment of the consumer.
The answer is simple. Educate yourself. Don't let the company with a vested interested do that job instead.
I'm also happy to live in a country (Finland) that has granted its citizens internet access as a right.
I imagine that they don't actually legally treat it as a "right". It's just some word that you like to use in place of "entitlement". But then again, all sorts of crap is considered "rights" by some governments and who knows? Those governments might last.
Glancing at Wikipedia, I see that the current Finnish constitution has been kicking around for quite some time - since 2000, almost 13 years ago (with some parts coming from even earlier, in 1995)! So of course, you'd expect people with that kind of long, storied constitutional history to have a deep grasp of what should be or shouldn't be a "right".
My beef here, is that the problem with making entitlements a "right" is who is responsible for insuring that you have this "right"? Who pays? It's just a poorly thought out idea that in practice generates a legal requirement that gets violated to some degree in order to address the "tragedy of the commons" problem.
Let's see if all this lasts a few decades first, before we start crowing about how advanced and special the EU experiment and many of its governments are. Last I heard, the weaker governments in the system were already failing.
Now, if only you had a clue what "free market", "monopoly", etc means. If you have monopolies, you don't have a free market. if you have competition, you don't have monopolies. And, of course, if you have a government intervening to create the situation, then you don't have a free market either. What is the point of making up new definitions that nobody recognizes for existing terms?
I think that you'll find the CEO of RJR, BAT or any of the other tobacco companies beat Leopold hands down, especially those who lied for over four decades, including in front of Congress, denying that smoking caused cancer even though their own research in the 1930s had already definitively established the link. The executives of the asbestos and mercury mining companies are probably also in Leopold's league, and some of the petrochemical executives as well. They're just shadows of Big Pharma though, who deliberately price drugs far out of reach of most of the world's population and prosecute companies and embargo countries that try to produce affordable AIDS and malaria drugs for their poor.
While that's a more interesting accusation, it's worth noting that none of those things happened in a vacuum and the worst excesses involve a product that was consumed voluntarily despite its obvious health consequences and a legal environment which was extremely hostile to businesses then and continues to be so today.
No one holds a candle though to the heads of the IMF, World Bank, the mega-banks, or the currency speculators, who deliberately destroy the economies of entire continents.
I guess you haven't noticed, but destroying an economy doesn't really do that much. It's a couple years of belt tightening and then pretty much back to where things were before. I imagine the practice would fade out altogether, if the rewards went away.
And I see by your mention of "currency speculators" that you really don't get what goes on in these things. That's an entirely different group and one which often profits by puncturing or anticipating the schemes of the previous groups you mention. Hence, that is why they're so heavily villainized.
Well, if that's you're going in point, then for NK all he has to do is approve a plan also.
Furthermore, it could have been 1,000x worse had the operation gone horribly wrong (reference Jimmy Carter here).
1000x worse than what? Than not doing anything and losing the election because of that?
The Soviets, the Nazis, Mao, Ataturk, etc. all were private citizens who got sick of the old regime.
In addition, Mao was recognized as head of state by the USSR for many years before he finally fully controlled mainland China. Ataturk was a military officer throughout the period of the various genocides up to the time when he took over.
The Soviets, the Nazis, Mao, Ataturk, etc. all were private citizens who got sick of the old regime.
No. It's been a while since hereditary titles. So almost everyone is born a private citizen. And the excesses of these particular groups happened when they were in a position of government power. The Soviets may have been a private faction in 1916, but they were a government by 1918. And that's what they remained through the Russian Civil War and the purges and famines of Stalin. Similarly, the Nazis became the government when they took over in 1933. The Holocaust didn't start for a number of years past that.
You fail to see because you seem to be reading in reverse, maybe being deliberately obtuse. If you actually read in proper order as the English language intended, you'll realize that my rhetorical question was asking for a position which is OUTSIDE of government, that has the most influence on government.
Then you've being asking the wrong questions. And in answer, a powerful and brutal outsider like say, Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan who actually has the power to destroy civilization, not merely its leadership, has had far more influence than a businessman. I already addressed this question in my original post. It's almost like I've actually thought about the problem.
No, it was highly visible. Not many people did anything about it, that's all. It took some time to recognize the need to do anything. The world appeased Hitler, and they knew they were appeasing him. People argued if that was the right policy (guess it wasn't). When the world finally made up its mind, it went to war (took the Americans a little longer to wake up and see the problem, but hey, what else is new?)
And the Holocaust didn't come out until Allied forces started freeing concentration camps in late 1944. I imagine that if Nazi Germany had won Europe back then, we'd not know of the Holocaust today. Visibility is easy to speak of when the government in question has collapsed.
Yes, even now there are deniers. Doesn't mean people don't see they're full of shit. I mean, YOU know so much about Turkey or Congo or China or the USA, right? YOU are here arguing about on just how big and bad government is, right?
Maybe you should similarly educate yourself on these countries and what happened there? We could have a legitimate debate and not just some narrow minded two minute hate for the latest unpopular group.
They can't make a high enough yield war head to deal with guidance errors fit on their rocket. These folks are too broke for that.
Yet. Ten years ago they couldn't make a nuclear weapon and stick it on a rocket. Ten years from now, maybe they'll have that accuracy problem fixed well enough or maybe they'll have abandoned nuclear weapons altogether and be back in their original state of being incapable of doing what they've done so far.
The problem here is that such statements of impossibility are never true for very long unless someone does something to keep them true.
So the guy who had Osama killed is not going to do anything about the latest Kim to rule NK if he steps over the line?
I seriously doubt that.
With bin Laden, Obama just had to approve the plan. No real risks would be taken since bin Laden is just a thug in hiding with little power. Here, if Kim Jong-un steps "over the line", any world leader has to consider what consequences would come, such as a bloody attack on South Korea or some sort of nuclear strike.
Obama just doesn't strike me as the sort of politician who likes to take such risks.