even as they age. There's a point where that's not true, but if you're living well you won't hit that until 70 unless your genetics suck (which for most Japanese they don't).
When rent seekers being to negatively impact the population's overall quality of life that's when it's 'too much'.
Nobody's arguing that somebody who generates 100x as much value doesn't get 100x as much money. That's the rising tide that lifts all boats.
What we're talking about are folks who either don't work (living off capital, typically capital given to them by their parents, grandparents, or even ancestors) or parasites like High Frequency Traders and Vulture Capitalists who find ways to drain money from the economy without providing value or worse, by using legal tricks and good 'ole boy's networks to strip mine value from productive companies.
Some of this can be tolerated. Never approved, but tolerated. But when it becomes the norm is when things go to hell. At that point you get an aristocracy who's only goal is to maintain their wealth, privilege and power. You end up in a dark age where absurd levels of conservatism are enforced to maintain that aristocracy. North Korea's got this going on. So does Saudi Arabia. China & India is only just barely staying ahead of it with insanely rapid growth that can't last. And the United States is gradually lapsing into it.
how is this supposed to work it's way out? If you make your own long term only stock market (with Black Jack & Hookers) I can't imagine they won't notice and want their cut. Don't forget, there's a powerful group of folks who make their money skimming off those long term guys' trades.
pays well for a driving job, local runs (natch). Looks like they're first on the chopping block. Sucks, for most of them it means going back to being a part running (the original 'gig' economy since most parts shops use "contractors" so they can pay effectively less than minimum wage).
corporatists do. There are right wing corporate hacks on both sides. The media sides not with a party, but with the ultra wealthy.
As for the parties, The Dems have Chuck Shumer and Fienstien. The Rs have, well.... pretty much the entire party. On the Dem side I've at least got Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren. I don't think I can point to a single R that has consistently voted in favor of the working class. The tax bill, for example, is us borrowing a $1 trillion dollars to give it away to the richest 1%. Paul Ryan has already started leveraging it for entitlement 'reform', e.g. taking away Social Security & Medicare from anyone under 55...
You're right about not insulting the alt-right. The alt-right aren't particularly right wing. It's really just a bunch of guys who can't get jobs and women (after all, first you get the money, _then_ you get the women). Oh, and a few at the top bilking them for money. Still, talking down to the folks in the rust belt who's manufacturing jobs are gone doesn't help; nor does telling them to go back to school (especially when the cheap bastards telling them that won't lift a finger to help. And no, knocking 2% off a 15% student loan doesn't count as 'helping').
Still, the only folks offering real solutions are the real left. Go look up Justice Democrats, which is the left wing movement in the Dem party, if you want to see anything actually get fixed.
We're waiting on Medicare for All, College for all, Infrastructure spending, ending the wars and living wage (among other things). If this was some wackadoodle from the House I could put up with this, but it's the Senate. This isn't just that they have better things to be doing, it's that they know they have those better things and they're not doing them; probably because they've been bought off.
Show up to your primary folks and vote these people out.
Crypto currencies have proven incredibly useful on the black market. They've been useful in facilitating the purchase of Drugs, Money Laundering, prostitution and all manner of illegal transactions. That stuff's not going away. Drugs and prostitution are likely to stay illegal and there's always room for money laundering. Ransomeware's still out there too. These things will continue to form a bedrock for the exchanges to run off of.
Now, if you could get drugs & prostitution legalized that would be a huge blow. Crack down on Ransomeware & money laundering and they bottom would drop out. But there's widespread support for all those things (debatable about money laundering I suppose) and nothing seem to be happening. There are other forces at play.
So I'm gonna bitch about the super rich. There's no shortage of useful things to send up on a rocket, but we're gonna waste a launch on a dumb stunt by a rich guy. I'm an American, so I don't even have guaranteed health care let alone a robust social safety net, so maybe I'd be a little less bitter if I did. But this sort of nonsense reminds me of the pyramids, the opera houses and other excesses of the ultra wealthy. It's not a good sign to see stuff like this starting to make a comeback.
nothing sticks to him. He's still rockin the same approval numbers as he had when he was elected (give or take).
It's a combination of factors. First, he makes folks feel good. Make America Great Again hits ya right in the feels. Second, it's the whole "What do you got to lose" factor. The Dems moved hard right thanks to Bill Clinton with corporatist Dems taking over the party. There's been a few movements to move things back left (Bernie Sanders, Justice Democrats, etc) but they haven't gotten anywhere yet. They're trying to primary Feinstein, but not sure if that's going anywhere. Meanwhile if you ask CNN for a top 20 list of Democratic contenders for the next Presidential election Bernie isn't even on the list.
People did elect an administration that made cutting back on regulation a central plank of it's campaign. This is part of that. The idea is that the market should sort these things out. People should start demanding their financial institutions stop doing business with Equifax and/or stop doing business with institutions that do.
Now, you can counter that is virtually impossible, but the counter argument is that if the government would get out of the way there's be more competition. Regardless, people voted for this. Lots of them, many of them right here on/.. OTOH, I'm reminded of the meme about leopards eating faces....
paying full price for a beta. I especially don't like it when said beta is my operating system. I _really_ don't like it when motherboard manufacturers and system start to prematurely drop support for the working OS (Win XP) under pressure from the OS maker.
but you could be right for Europe and I'm sure you're right for Asia. As for America, land is cheap around here. You might see this effect in the major cities (San Fransisco, New York, etc) but elsewhere there's no shortage of land.
in my neck of the woods, but the contracts are just awful. They're structured so that the homeowner takes on all the risk. There's monthly lease payments for the equipment and if the value of the electricity generated doesn't cover the lease you're on the hook to pay the rest. Also if you move you have to buy out the lease or get the new homeowner to buy into it. It's a pretty crap deal all around.
the hours make it hard to have a life. It's generally 12s. 3 two weeks then 4 the next. Meaning a 48 hour shift once a week. Most cities that have tech jobs also have long commutes. Meaning you spend 3-4 days doing nothing but work. It's hard to have a life like that. Borderline impossible if you're stuck on the graveyard shift.
Companies could compensate by paying more, but they just don't do that anymore. They just live with the problems. So you get a mix of old guys that can't get hired anywhere else (being old in tech sucks), incompetents and the occasional young guy that doesn't last. If you're one of the competent old guys your life is hell because you're the one stuck holding the fort down while the incompetents do what incompetents do and they young guys spend their time studying for their next job.
While this is going on your bosses are trying to find a way to make your job obsolete with better software & outsourcing; so every other week you've got new software in beta form that's supposed to make your job easy enough for the incompetents. Your bosses know the team's a mess and can't do their jobs but the last thing they're gonna do is pay enough to get an entire crew of competent people.
See here. Then there's eMusic. The music industry gave up on DRM because it wasn't worth the tech headaches. If you want lossless though you'll pay a premium, but there's no shortage of options out there for audiophiles.
It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: *Compact Disc is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *Compact Disc community when IDC confirmed that *Compact Disc market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *Compact Disc has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *Compact Disc is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict *Compact Disc's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *Compact Disc faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *Compact Disc because *Compact Disc is dying. Things are looking very bad for *Compact Disc. As many of us are already aware, *Compact Disc continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
But seriously, mother-fscking vinyl moved 14 million units last year and CDs cleared 104 million. yeah, it's way down, but now so low it can't support a healthy industry, especially with a product with margins like CDs.
Expect to see more independent record stores and better sales at concerts as the money gets too small for the big fish to care, which can't help but be a good thing.
to get DRM free MP3s. eMusic comes to mind. Hell, didn't Apple remove DRM? They might have added it back. And besides, CDs aren't going away, but you won't be able to buy them at Best Buy, Target and Walmart. Good. That'll drive people to independent record stores and to concerts. Folks still want physical media. If only for the collectability. Hell, it probably won't even raise prices given the amount of profit built into a CD.
but in America, none outside of the really high end stuff that isn't really IT, it's math. I guess it's a little hard to get competent folks to work a 24/7 NOC because companies don't want to have enough people on staff that the hours don't suck so you end up with 12 hour swing shifts 3-4 days a week. Aside from that outsourcing + H1-Bs have meant there's a glut of cheap labor.
State governments can't stand up to global mega corps. They get bought out and overwhelmed one by one. Meanwhile the mega corps build central governments for their own use which the small government proponents refuse to participate in on principle and therefore end up being crushed by.
Sorry, You're going to have a powerful central government whether you like it or not. They're just too useful. The only question is are you going to have a seat at the table.
the major banks could easily take it over. Hell, there's tons of evidence that the price has been heavily manipulated by the various exchanges, and they have a fraction of the power of a bank. They're not afraid, they don't want to deal with the risk of disputed transactions (especially in jurisdictions where disputes are tightly regulated).
The best antidote to banks controlling a cashless future is government regulation. Somebody has to be in charge of the money supply or it'll become unstable and wreck the economy. But giving somebody that power inevitably results in a strong concentrations of power. The only effective counter balance to that is Democracy. This is one of the reasons the left has been pushing for mandatory (and anonymous) voting. It really is a civic duty at that point.
prosecutors are generally in it for political points. It's a great way to launch a political career. This tends to make them hard on crime (since that's a popular political issue) and therefor more likely to look the other way at accusations of excessive force. Then you add to that how hard it is to get a jury to convict and it's basically impossible. I suspect if we tried to go independent it would a) be massively underfunded and b) be staffed by folks who couldn't make it as a regular prosecutor.
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even as they age. There's a point where that's not true, but if you're living well you won't hit that until 70 unless your genetics suck (which for most Japanese they don't).
When rent seekers being to negatively impact the population's overall quality of life that's when it's 'too much'.
Nobody's arguing that somebody who generates 100x as much value doesn't get 100x as much money. That's the rising tide that lifts all boats.
What we're talking about are folks who either don't work (living off capital, typically capital given to them by their parents, grandparents, or even ancestors) or parasites like High Frequency Traders and Vulture Capitalists who find ways to drain money from the economy without providing value or worse, by using legal tricks and good 'ole boy's networks to strip mine value from productive companies.
Some of this can be tolerated. Never approved, but tolerated. But when it becomes the norm is when things go to hell. At that point you get an aristocracy who's only goal is to maintain their wealth, privilege and power. You end up in a dark age where absurd levels of conservatism are enforced to maintain that aristocracy. North Korea's got this going on. So does Saudi Arabia. China & India is only just barely staying ahead of it with insanely rapid growth that can't last. And the United States is gradually lapsing into it.
how is this supposed to work it's way out? If you make your own long term only stock market (with Black Jack & Hookers) I can't imagine they won't notice and want their cut. Don't forget, there's a powerful group of folks who make their money skimming off those long term guys' trades.
pays well for a driving job, local runs (natch). Looks like they're first on the chopping block. Sucks, for most of them it means going back to being a part running (the original 'gig' economy since most parts shops use "contractors" so they can pay effectively less than minimum wage).
corporatists do. There are right wing corporate hacks on both sides. The media sides not with a party, but with the ultra wealthy.
As for the parties, The Dems have Chuck Shumer and Fienstien. The Rs have, well.... pretty much the entire party. On the Dem side I've at least got Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren. I don't think I can point to a single R that has consistently voted in favor of the working class. The tax bill, for example, is us borrowing a $1 trillion dollars to give it away to the richest 1%. Paul Ryan has already started leveraging it for entitlement 'reform', e.g. taking away Social Security & Medicare from anyone under 55...
You're right about not insulting the alt-right. The alt-right aren't particularly right wing. It's really just a bunch of guys who can't get jobs and women (after all, first you get the money, _then_ you get the women). Oh, and a few at the top bilking them for money. Still, talking down to the folks in the rust belt who's manufacturing jobs are gone doesn't help; nor does telling them to go back to school (especially when the cheap bastards telling them that won't lift a finger to help. And no, knocking 2% off a 15% student loan doesn't count as 'helping').
Still, the only folks offering real solutions are the real left. Go look up Justice Democrats, which is the left wing movement in the Dem party, if you want to see anything actually get fixed.
We're waiting on Medicare for All, College for all, Infrastructure spending, ending the wars and living wage (among other things). If this was some wackadoodle from the House I could put up with this, but it's the Senate. This isn't just that they have better things to be doing, it's that they know they have those better things and they're not doing them; probably because they've been bought off.
Show up to your primary folks and vote these people out.
that passing 1% is a milestone?
to be above the law. It's good to be the king.
Crypto currencies have proven incredibly useful on the black market. They've been useful in facilitating the purchase of Drugs, Money Laundering, prostitution and all manner of illegal transactions. That stuff's not going away. Drugs and prostitution are likely to stay illegal and there's always room for money laundering. Ransomeware's still out there too. These things will continue to form a bedrock for the exchanges to run off of.
Now, if you could get drugs & prostitution legalized that would be a huge blow. Crack down on Ransomeware & money laundering and they bottom would drop out. But there's widespread support for all those things (debatable about money laundering I suppose) and nothing seem to be happening. There are other forces at play.
So I'm gonna bitch about the super rich. There's no shortage of useful things to send up on a rocket, but we're gonna waste a launch on a dumb stunt by a rich guy. I'm an American, so I don't even have guaranteed health care let alone a robust social safety net, so maybe I'd be a little less bitter if I did. But this sort of nonsense reminds me of the pyramids, the opera houses and other excesses of the ultra wealthy. It's not a good sign to see stuff like this starting to make a comeback.
nothing sticks to him. He's still rockin the same approval numbers as he had when he was elected (give or take).
It's a combination of factors. First, he makes folks feel good. Make America Great Again hits ya right in the feels. Second, it's the whole "What do you got to lose" factor. The Dems moved hard right thanks to Bill Clinton with corporatist Dems taking over the party. There's been a few movements to move things back left (Bernie Sanders, Justice Democrats, etc) but they haven't gotten anywhere yet. They're trying to primary Feinstein, but not sure if that's going anywhere. Meanwhile if you ask CNN for a top 20 list of Democratic contenders for the next Presidential election Bernie isn't even on the list.
People did elect an administration that made cutting back on regulation a central plank of it's campaign. This is part of that. The idea is that the market should sort these things out. People should start demanding their financial institutions stop doing business with Equifax and/or stop doing business with institutions that do.
/.. OTOH, I'm reminded of the meme about leopards eating faces....
Now, you can counter that is virtually impossible, but the counter argument is that if the government would get out of the way there's be more competition. Regardless, people voted for this. Lots of them, many of them right here on
paying full price for a beta. I especially don't like it when said beta is my operating system. I _really_ don't like it when motherboard manufacturers and system start to prematurely drop support for the working OS (Win XP) under pressure from the OS maker.
Yeah, but you get much better framerates in Win 10 thank to Direct X 12. Sadly they're a Windows Store exclusive.
but you could be right for Europe and I'm sure you're right for Asia. As for America, land is cheap around here. You might see this effect in the major cities (San Fransisco, New York, etc) but elsewhere there's no shortage of land.
in my neck of the woods, but the contracts are just awful. They're structured so that the homeowner takes on all the risk. There's monthly lease payments for the equipment and if the value of the electricity generated doesn't cover the lease you're on the hook to pay the rest. Also if you move you have to buy out the lease or get the new homeowner to buy into it. It's a pretty crap deal all around.
the hours make it hard to have a life. It's generally 12s. 3 two weeks then 4 the next. Meaning a 48 hour shift once a week. Most cities that have tech jobs also have long commutes. Meaning you spend 3-4 days doing nothing but work. It's hard to have a life like that. Borderline impossible if you're stuck on the graveyard shift.
Companies could compensate by paying more, but they just don't do that anymore. They just live with the problems. So you get a mix of old guys that can't get hired anywhere else (being old in tech sucks), incompetents and the occasional young guy that doesn't last. If you're one of the competent old guys your life is hell because you're the one stuck holding the fort down while the incompetents do what incompetents do and they young guys spend their time studying for their next job.
While this is going on your bosses are trying to find a way to make your job obsolete with better software & outsourcing; so every other week you've got new software in beta form that's supposed to make your job easy enough for the incompetents. Your bosses know the team's a mess and can't do their jobs but the last thing they're gonna do is pay enough to get an entire crew of competent people.
See here. Then there's eMusic. The music industry gave up on DRM because it wasn't worth the tech headaches. If you want lossless though you'll pay a premium, but there's no shortage of options out there for audiophiles.
But seriously, mother-fscking vinyl moved 14 million units last year and CDs cleared 104 million. yeah, it's way down, but now so low it can't support a healthy industry, especially with a product with margins like CDs.
Expect to see more independent record stores and better sales at concerts as the money gets too small for the big fish to care, which can't help but be a good thing.
to get DRM free MP3s. eMusic comes to mind. Hell, didn't Apple remove DRM? They might have added it back. And besides, CDs aren't going away, but you won't be able to buy them at Best Buy, Target and Walmart. Good. That'll drive people to independent record stores and to concerts. Folks still want physical media. If only for the collectability. Hell, it probably won't even raise prices given the amount of profit built into a CD.
but in America, none outside of the really high end stuff that isn't really IT, it's math. I guess it's a little hard to get competent folks to work a 24/7 NOC because companies don't want to have enough people on staff that the hours don't suck so you end up with 12 hour swing shifts 3-4 days a week. Aside from that outsourcing + H1-Bs have meant there's a glut of cheap labor.
State governments can't stand up to global mega corps. They get bought out and overwhelmed one by one. Meanwhile the mega corps build central governments for their own use which the small government proponents refuse to participate in on principle and therefore end up being crushed by.
Sorry, You're going to have a powerful central government whether you like it or not. They're just too useful. The only question is are you going to have a seat at the table.
Here ya go
the major banks could easily take it over. Hell, there's tons of evidence that the price has been heavily manipulated by the various exchanges, and they have a fraction of the power of a bank. They're not afraid, they don't want to deal with the risk of disputed transactions (especially in jurisdictions where disputes are tightly regulated).
The best antidote to banks controlling a cashless future is government regulation. Somebody has to be in charge of the money supply or it'll become unstable and wreck the economy. But giving somebody that power inevitably results in a strong concentrations of power. The only effective counter balance to that is Democracy. This is one of the reasons the left has been pushing for mandatory (and anonymous) voting. It really is a civic duty at that point.
prosecutors are generally in it for political points. It's a great way to launch a political career. This tends to make them hard on crime (since that's a popular political issue) and therefor more likely to look the other way at accusations of excessive force. Then you add to that how hard it is to get a jury to convict and it's basically impossible. I suspect if we tried to go independent it would a) be massively underfunded and b) be staffed by folks who couldn't make it as a regular prosecutor.