let me laugh harder. Regulations are for old tech. New tech (like Facebook, Uber, the sharing economy) is free to innovate without those pesky little things.
For the most part I vastly preferred their coverage to the likes of Foxnews. They covered a lot of the nastier things the US Gov't was doing that the mainstream press wasn't covering. Frankly being gov't funded I'm surprised they got away with what they did.
which is that it's pretty much inevitable. The question isn't are we going to have a big central gov't, the question is: Are you going to take part in it?
another free break for corps and the rich. Thanks. Anyone else notice how everytime you go through a checkout they hit you up for some charity or another? Charities are all well and good but having my donation be some company's tax dodge really pisses me off...
and even I think this stuff is bad ju-ju. The Extra Creditz youtube blog did a good piece on the Chinese version of this called Sesame Credit.
For those of you wondering how I can stay pro central gov't, I don't see how you can have a world without one. We're going to have a big military to protect us from other countries with big militaries. If you're going to have a big military then you better have a big, strong civilian gov't to counter balance it or you're just asking for a coup de eta. Besides, what else besides a strong central gov't can possibly stand up to a large multi-national corporation?
Think of it this way: It's like there's a box of loader firearms out in the open and somebody picked up a bunch of them and starts waving them around demanding things. Are you gonna sit there and do what they say because you might shoot your eye out or are you gonna pick up a gun and defend yourself? Yeah, you might shoot yourself (heck, it's statistically likely) but it's either that or spend the rest of eternity doing what they guy with the gun says. Gov't is that gun. It's a dangerous tool we're all stuck with...
Not socialism. The difference is really simple. Communism is public ownership of the means of production. Socialism is govt regulation of income inequality to prevent abuses, slavery by wages and ensure a minimum and humane standard of life. Don't fall for the propaganda. We can make the world a better place for everyone.
Gas is only cheap because the Saudi's are trying to put Shale oil producers out of business. It was $4/gallon until then and the only reason it stopped there is folks were talking about abandoning gas and they got scared.
Rent is climbing rapidly this year. As for houses, that's the suburb effect. Yeah, I can get a 2600 square foot house. With a 3 hour a day commute. If I want a reasonable 30 minute commute I'm looking at 1000 sq ft if I'm lucky, young and rich.
Tune ups were cheap and you could do them yourself. Cars were a _lot_ simpler back then. They also polluted a lot more.
Cable TV doesn't really make my life any better. Americas watch a lot of TV because at the end of a long, shitty day it's all they've got left in them to do.
It's human nature turn a blind eye to the unpleasant realities of life. You've got to justify all the horrible things we do to maintain our meager quality of life in the face of the 1% constant assault. Walmart says it best. You're not destroying Unions and the American Working Class and turning back the clock on 100 years of human progress. You're saving money, living better.
Skipping A $4 cup of joe and $20 bucks a month on Netflix won't make up for the massive increases to the cost of transportation, food, Cars, Housing and the things in life that really matter. It won't replace the pension your company no longer gives you (and no, a 401k is _not_ a replacement for a pension. If you retire at the wrong time you're fucked).
People didn't choose the 40 hour work week so they could spend an extra $4x30+20 ($140/mo). That's not even $1/hr in their 160 hour work/month. The 40 hour work week was chosen for them. When Bush jr deregulated the commodities market so you could buy pork bellies and the like w/o taking ownership and the price of food jumped 20% in 10 years. When we pulled federal funding for education and the price of a college degree went from $10k to $140k in 20 years. When entry level pay dropped to the level of the 1990s after "free trade" sent good manufacturing jobs to Mexico and killed job saving tariffs.
You live in the world as is, not as you want it to be. With how weakly organized labor is they don't have any say in anything. Workers aren't even a tug boat in a typhoon.
Politics were there, but you missed it. We were taught supply rises to meet demand, but we were taught that oversupply was a) good because it always drives prices down and b) self correcting. Neither of these are true of labor. It took two World Wars to pull the country out of recession/depression. We mostly came out of it because we were too busy rebuilding multiple destroyed continents (Europe/Asia).
As for Joe Six pack: He doesn't have a 401k anymore. 30-40 years of stagnant or declining wages means he lives paycheck to paycheck. He works until he drops dead from exhaustion. Like his forefather's did. So much for progress.
shelter, transportation, education and healthcare. Some folks don't want to just consume all the time Brave New World style. And with mass communications and entertainment a lot of folks can spend their time reading, playing video games, etc with very minimal amounts of resources changing hands.
You're trying to solve this problem without Socialism. It's not going to work. You're either not going to solve the problem or going to end up with some bastardization of socialism like America's Military Industrial Complex.
what about the productivity gains? It's not just outsourcing (not that it helps). They're still been massive productivity gains, which is covered in TFA. In fact, it's exactly the gains Keynes predicted. Computers and Robots are taking our jerbs. Go look up how the Steam Controller is made. Instead of working less we work more because in our dog eat dog economy instead of lowering the work week to 30, raising minimum wage and enacting tariffs to protect workers we just let everyone's pay go down due to over supply.
An oversupply of labor lowers it's value like anything else. It's one of the funny things in American capitalism: We just can't imagine a downside to supply and demand. I think it's because when we were kids we were taught it like it was religion...
in court. Again, it's a bad law, but it's not a "Do any evil thing you want" law. If a company dumps toxic waste they don't get to say "You can't complain, the DMCA says so!". Now, the law _has_ been abused to silence critics. But again, completely different from what you or the Grandparent are suggesting.
is convinced the ads just got too annoying, but in my experience there's no amount of annoying in ads that makes Joe or Jane average run screaming from them. I'm guessing it's relatives sick of cleaning malware. I run some ads on my site to pay for bandwidth and what have you and I've stuck with plain Google ads even though other folks might pay more because I can't be bothered dealing with serving up malware to my users. Both AVGN & Penny-Arcade have seen their sites taken down by Malvertisements and now even Forbes?
I hate the DMCA as much as the next guy but there's no DRM involved in blocking ads. Now, if you told people how to get around a paywall (even a trivial one) then you'd have a point.
that would show you how old the child laborer was who made your stuff from China/Indonesia/Malaysia. I remember looking up my kid's soccer ball and finding out it was made by someone the same age. That site's long gone, and I can't imagine it died a happy death.
Out of sight out of mind is the main goal of our supply chains. You don't want to know how sausage is made. The closest I think we'll see is when robots replace the people on a few years
We're seeing it in the form of increased productivity rendering jobs obsolete. With fewer jobs people have to work more hours to make the same pay, resulting in yet more productivity and still fewer jobs. The Atlantic has an article on it. tl;dr: Our productivity gains kept pace with what Keynes predicted but hours worked stopped dropping in the 70s, resulting in massive inequality and stagnant wages for workers.
complex laws are more difficult to circumvent. They also solve for complex problems. I know it's popular to think anyone can govern because we're a democracy and all, but it's actually a really, really hard thing to do both fairly and effectively. Our tax law, for example, is complex because when it's simple it punishes the poor and middle class while getting dodged by the rich. There's an old saying: For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong...
It's mostly Whales. Obsessive compulsive types with mental issues. A large percentage of the revenue free to play makes comes from these folks. I think the point the Grandparent was getting at is that these games survive by taking advantage of people with varying degrees of sanity. As a society we like to think that we protect those kind of people. We don't.
folks who just want to watch the world burn don't get very far. They can't because they destroy everything they trough. Folks like Boko Haram are just using age old techniques of fear and Balkanizing their population to gain power. This is why racism and classism are so important. As a ruler you need to divide the working class into groups that fight among themselves so you can seize control. The patterns repeat again and again in every major civilization.
When you say crap like "Some people want to watch the world burn" you just encourage us to ignore root causes and the means a ruling class takes and maintains control of their population.You're not helping...
to Midoclorians & Virgin Births any day of the week. The story telling in the prequels was just awful. The tonal shifts while necessary were badly handled, the love story dragged on and on and was awkward as hell and the trade federation crap was so bad it was silly. When they were good (Podracers, Yoda vs Dooku, Starfighter Battles) they were great but they were so often terrible ("From _my_ perspective the Jedi are Evil!", how the hell did that line survive focus groups?).
Play it safe, rebuild the franchise, and we'll let folks experiment in games and TV.
because we have a housing shortage, a weak economy for the working class (especially blue collar) and a mortgage system designed to drain the maximum amount of money from said working class.
When you're poor you don't move very often (unless it's because you're homeless now). That's because moving is _expensive_ to the poor. For one thing base rent at a new apartment tends to be a lot higher than what your paying how. Rent goes up every year, but the rate is a little lower than a new apartment to encourage you to stay so they can soak up your rent money. Also that deposit might be 3, 5 or even 10 years old. It's not going to get them into a new apartment with new, higher rent.
A lot of people have been pointing out these folks were warned and it's their fault for not moving. If you've never been truly broke and not had your parents to fall back on then you have no idea. The folks not moving are tapped out. You can't squeeze blood from a stone.
have your ever rented for more than a few months? You don't get your deposit back. You're lucky if they don't take you to court to get you to pay to replace the carpets they were going to replace anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
let me laugh harder. Regulations are for old tech. New tech (like Facebook, Uber, the sharing economy) is free to innovate without those pesky little things.
For the most part I vastly preferred their coverage to the likes of Foxnews. They covered a lot of the nastier things the US Gov't was doing that the mainstream press wasn't covering. Frankly being gov't funded I'm surprised they got away with what they did.
which is that it's pretty much inevitable. The question isn't are we going to have a big central gov't, the question is: Are you going to take part in it?
another free break for corps and the rich. Thanks. Anyone else notice how everytime you go through a checkout they hit you up for some charity or another? Charities are all well and good but having my donation be some company's tax dodge really pisses me off...
and even I think this stuff is bad ju-ju. The Extra Creditz youtube blog did a good piece on the Chinese version of this called Sesame Credit.
For those of you wondering how I can stay pro central gov't, I don't see how you can have a world without one. We're going to have a big military to protect us from other countries with big militaries. If you're going to have a big military then you better have a big, strong civilian gov't to counter balance it or you're just asking for a coup de eta. Besides, what else besides a strong central gov't can possibly stand up to a large multi-national corporation?
Think of it this way: It's like there's a box of loader firearms out in the open and somebody picked up a bunch of them and starts waving them around demanding things. Are you gonna sit there and do what they say because you might shoot your eye out or are you gonna pick up a gun and defend yourself? Yeah, you might shoot yourself (heck, it's statistically likely) but it's either that or spend the rest of eternity doing what they guy with the gun says. Gov't is that gun. It's a dangerous tool we're all stuck with...
Not socialism. The difference is really simple. Communism is public ownership of the means of production. Socialism is govt regulation of income inequality to prevent abuses, slavery by wages and ensure a minimum and humane standard of life. Don't fall for the propaganda. We can make the world a better place for everyone.
Gas is only cheap because the Saudi's are trying to put Shale oil producers out of business. It was $4/gallon until then and the only reason it stopped there is folks were talking about abandoning gas and they got scared.
Rent is climbing rapidly this year. As for houses, that's the suburb effect. Yeah, I can get a 2600 square foot house. With a 3 hour a day commute. If I want a reasonable 30 minute commute I'm looking at 1000 sq ft if I'm lucky, young and rich.
Tune ups were cheap and you could do them yourself. Cars were a _lot_ simpler back then. They also polluted a lot more.
Cable TV doesn't really make my life any better. Americas watch a lot of TV because at the end of a long, shitty day it's all they've got left in them to do.
It's human nature turn a blind eye to the unpleasant realities of life. You've got to justify all the horrible things we do to maintain our meager quality of life in the face of the 1% constant assault. Walmart says it best. You're not destroying Unions and the American Working Class and turning back the clock on 100 years of human progress. You're saving money, living better.
Skipping A $4 cup of joe and $20 bucks a month on Netflix won't make up for the massive increases to the cost of transportation, food, Cars, Housing and the things in life that really matter. It won't replace the pension your company no longer gives you (and no, a 401k is _not_ a replacement for a pension. If you retire at the wrong time you're fucked).
People didn't choose the 40 hour work week so they could spend an extra $4x30+20 ($140/mo). That's not even $1/hr in their 160 hour work/month. The 40 hour work week was chosen for them. When Bush jr deregulated the commodities market so you could buy pork bellies and the like w/o taking ownership and the price of food jumped 20% in 10 years. When we pulled federal funding for education and the price of a college degree went from $10k to $140k in 20 years. When entry level pay dropped to the level of the 1990s after "free trade" sent good manufacturing jobs to Mexico and killed job saving tariffs.
You live in the world as is, not as you want it to be. With how weakly organized labor is they don't have any say in anything. Workers aren't even a tug boat in a typhoon.
Politics were there, but you missed it. We were taught supply rises to meet demand, but we were taught that oversupply was a) good because it always drives prices down and b) self correcting. Neither of these are true of labor. It took two World Wars to pull the country out of recession/depression. We mostly came out of it because we were too busy rebuilding multiple destroyed continents (Europe/Asia).
As for Joe Six pack: He doesn't have a 401k anymore. 30-40 years of stagnant or declining wages means he lives paycheck to paycheck. He works until he drops dead from exhaustion. Like his forefather's did. So much for progress.
shelter, transportation, education and healthcare. Some folks don't want to just consume all the time Brave New World style. And with mass communications and entertainment a lot of folks can spend their time reading, playing video games, etc with very minimal amounts of resources changing hands.
You're trying to solve this problem without Socialism. It's not going to work. You're either not going to solve the problem or going to end up with some bastardization of socialism like America's Military Industrial Complex.
what about the productivity gains? It's not just outsourcing (not that it helps). They're still been massive productivity gains, which is covered in TFA. In fact, it's exactly the gains Keynes predicted. Computers and Robots are taking our jerbs. Go look up how the Steam Controller is made. Instead of working less we work more because in our dog eat dog economy instead of lowering the work week to 30, raising minimum wage and enacting tariffs to protect workers we just let everyone's pay go down due to over supply.
An oversupply of labor lowers it's value like anything else. It's one of the funny things in American capitalism: We just can't imagine a downside to supply and demand. I think it's because when we were kids we were taught it like it was religion...
in court. Again, it's a bad law, but it's not a "Do any evil thing you want" law. If a company dumps toxic waste they don't get to say "You can't complain, the DMCA says so!". Now, the law _has_ been abused to silence critics. But again, completely different from what you or the Grandparent are suggesting.
is convinced the ads just got too annoying, but in my experience there's no amount of annoying in ads that makes Joe or Jane average run screaming from them. I'm guessing it's relatives sick of cleaning malware. I run some ads on my site to pay for bandwidth and what have you and I've stuck with plain Google ads even though other folks might pay more because I can't be bothered dealing with serving up malware to my users. Both AVGN & Penny-Arcade have seen their sites taken down by Malvertisements and now even Forbes?
I hate the DMCA as much as the next guy but there's no DRM involved in blocking ads. Now, if you told people how to get around a paywall (even a trivial one) then you'd have a point.
that would show you how old the child laborer was who made your stuff from China/Indonesia/Malaysia. I remember looking up my kid's soccer ball and finding out it was made by someone the same age. That site's long gone, and I can't imagine it died a happy death.
Out of sight out of mind is the main goal of our supply chains. You don't want to know how sausage is made. The closest I think we'll see is when robots replace the people on a few years
We're seeing it in the form of increased productivity rendering jobs obsolete. With fewer jobs people have to work more hours to make the same pay, resulting in yet more productivity and still fewer jobs. The Atlantic has an article on it. tl;dr: Our productivity gains kept pace with what Keynes predicted but hours worked stopped dropping in the 70s, resulting in massive inequality and stagnant wages for workers.
complex laws are more difficult to circumvent. They also solve for complex problems. I know it's popular to think anyone can govern because we're a democracy and all, but it's actually a really, really hard thing to do both fairly and effectively. Our tax law, for example, is complex because when it's simple it punishes the poor and middle class while getting dodged by the rich. There's an old saying: For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong...
so no, not so much. Rank & File divorce attorneys, yes. Multi-millionaire who keeps billionaires from paying taxes? Not so much.
It's mostly Whales. Obsessive compulsive types with mental issues. A large percentage of the revenue free to play makes comes from these folks. I think the point the Grandparent was getting at is that these games survive by taking advantage of people with varying degrees of sanity. As a society we like to think that we protect those kind of people. We don't.
folks who just want to watch the world burn don't get very far. They can't because they destroy everything they trough. Folks like Boko Haram are just using age old techniques of fear and Balkanizing their population to gain power. This is why racism and classism are so important. As a ruler you need to divide the working class into groups that fight among themselves so you can seize control. The patterns repeat again and again in every major civilization.
When you say crap like "Some people want to watch the world burn" you just encourage us to ignore root causes and the means a ruling class takes and maintains control of their population.You're not helping...
in Space!
to Midoclorians & Virgin Births any day of the week. The story telling in the prequels was just awful. The tonal shifts while necessary were badly handled, the love story dragged on and on and was awkward as hell and the trade federation crap was so bad it was silly. When they were good (Podracers, Yoda vs Dooku, Starfighter Battles) they were great but they were so often terrible ("From _my_ perspective the Jedi are Evil!", how the hell did that line survive focus groups?).
Play it safe, rebuild the franchise, and we'll let folks experiment in games and TV.
because we have a housing shortage, a weak economy for the working class (especially blue collar) and a mortgage system designed to drain the maximum amount of money from said working class.
When you're poor you don't move very often (unless it's because you're homeless now). That's because moving is _expensive_ to the poor. For one thing base rent at a new apartment tends to be a lot higher than what your paying how. Rent goes up every year, but the rate is a little lower than a new apartment to encourage you to stay so they can soak up your rent money. Also that deposit might be 3, 5 or even 10 years old. It's not going to get them into a new apartment with new, higher rent.
A lot of people have been pointing out these folks were warned and it's their fault for not moving. If you've never been truly broke and not had your parents to fall back on then you have no idea. The folks not moving are tapped out. You can't squeeze blood from a stone.
have your ever rented for more than a few months? You don't get your deposit back. You're lucky if they don't take you to court to get you to pay to replace the carpets they were going to replace anyway.