it's printed right on the money: "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private". You're legally required to accept US Currency. It's up to you how much, but if you have a debt you don't get to say no. You can require that the currency be in certain denominations (e.g. you can decline a jar full of 10,000 pennies) but that's about it.
If you say no and it's enough money to go to court over than sooner or later a judge is going to make you take the money. If you tell a judge no he throws you in prison for contempt of court.
I suppose you could overthrow the US Gov't, but other than that our money is pretty sound.
Oh, gold's intrinsic value is that rich people like to wear it. It's one of the few metals that won't leave marks on your skin. Since rich people are, by definition, the most important players in any economy they sorta set the value. It's been a long time since we were the sort of hunter-gathers that couldn't see the intrinsic value of gold...
copper very much either works or it doesn't. It's reliable, but once it starts degrading it goes fast.
Cell service can often _barely_ work. This leaves you in the position of fighting tooth and nail with a phone company to get the service you've been promised. Unless you're wealthy you going to lose that fight.
True, but ensuring corporations remain profitable and the stock price goes up every year is the real role of gov't. At least until Citizens United get overturned.
Yeah, but it simplifies it to a frightening degree. I when can ship an office max 10 or 20 types of plastic they can turn into 1 million different products it'll be the kind of revolution we haven't seen since the hey day of the internet.
just about every big regulator goes to work for the industry when he's done. It's so common we have a name for it: Regulatory Capture.
Here in America we've been voting pro corporate right wingers into office since Reagan. They stacked the supreme court and have been chipping away at the gains made after WWII non-stop since those gains were made. It's not a battle I see us winning:(.
the problem is instant manufacturing. It won't be a 3D printer in your home, it'll be one at the store. That'll be doable in my life time. Heck, some officemaxs already have 3D printers, and there's a little commune of hobbyists doing 3D printing too.
It means the end of an entire industry of logistics, shipping, etc. That combined with automation (most factories employee less than 100 people unless they're paying subsistence wages) is going to cause huge social upheaval.
what you want is a social safety net so that you can do stuff like that without the constant fear of bankruptcy. Canada has one, and it's why you see a lot of good sci-fi writers coming out of there.
You don't want to be responsible for your employees well being? Fine. Then let the government do it, or just admit you're happy with 100 million people (about a third of the populace) living in abject poverty.
I suppose I really shouldn't single you out. The problem is we've all been put at each other's throats by the real 1%. Heck, the.01%. The billionaires and what not. I say have gov't make a nice big safety net so you don't have to. But then, if we did that you could seriously compete with the likes of Walmart, and they can't have you doing that now can they?
people don't need incentive to go above and beyond for anything that matters. Einstein was paid like shit his whole life, but his mathematics changed everything. OTOH we pay guys millions to run micro-Transaction fueled investment firms that skim off the top of all society like a bloated tick.
That's sorta the argument you'll hear. I saw an interview on Fox News years ago where they brought on an economist who explained he would combat automation by taxing the rich and redistributing the wealth. The host said, "But that's socialism" and he replied "that's right, I'm a socialist". The whole rest of the interview was the Host just trying to come to grips with the fact that the man just admitted he was a socialist. I think if he said he skinned babies for a living he'd have gotten less of a reaction.
After 70 years of being told that Communism == Socialism == Hitler == bad it's just ingrained in American Society. It's really the only answer to automation. There just aren't enough jobs. The world _doesn't_ need ditch diggers, and we only need so many scientists even if everyone was the next Albert Eisenstein. But the notion that a job, any job, is better than no job is heavily ingrained in America.
they just put someone in front of the self checkouts. When people feel their being watched they're much less likely to steal, and one minimum wage employee can watch 4 lanes. He's not really watching, but the people trying to steal don't know that.
Also, they put scanners on the shopping carts now. It's not everywhere yet, but it's coming. You scan everything while you shop except the produce. That gets weighted and you get a tag for it. The computer keeps track of the total weight of your order and you weigh it again when you bag up. It spreads the work of scanning out over all your shopping and makes it feel quicker even though it's the same amount of time.
Once we have automatic driving cars you'll see the end of retail as everything is delivered. A few high end goods might still have salesmen (Mercedes Benzes and whatnot), but you won't really have any options. You'll have the stuff delivered because it's quicker and you'll be working 60 hours a week to make enough money at your low pay job to buy food/shelter:(.
or Socialism. Or anything other than a fascists dictatorship that just happened to use Karl Marx's writtings for propaganda. They had about as much to do with Communism as North Korea, but for some reason we sorta forget all that. Also, Russia was a _lot_ worse off from WWII than anyone really remembers. They used mules to drag their tanks back home for lack of fuel for God's sake.
it's the incredibly high cost of entry (burying lines, running copper) combined the the fact that you pretty much need a gov't mandate in order to get everyone to allow you to bury/run all those lines on their property (otherwise sooner or later somebody either holds the whole thing up because he's crazy, wants infinite money or some combination of the two).
But hey, never let a little thing like facts and reality get in the way of a good right wing rant I always say. How's the joke go? Fact have a liberal bias...
Russia? China? They didn't even get close to communism. They were fascists dictatorships and kleptocracies that happen to use Karl Marx's writings for propaganda.
European socialism got pretty close, and they seem to be doing just fine except when they start acting like Americans and deregulating their banks.
Seriously, I know you're trolling, but there's a chance someone out there is taking your seriously...
not because the material's hard, but because it builds and builds and builds. If you're not taking the course along with your kid you're not gonna pull it off.
What I hate seeing is these schools giving 4+ hours of homework a night. It's damn near impossible to do all that. The US economy is crashing due to outsourcing and blind faith in Free Trade, and everyone's trying to figure out what to do that doesn't involve stuff that's politically impossible (like Tariffs and an end to Work Visas for people w/o a PHD and a large body of work). So far the solution seems to be to overwhelm children with tests and homework...
On Play was a start up. A bunch of engineers signed on and took stock options for lower pay. Then the company folder, reopened with the exact same name and same owners and everyone lost their stock. And lets not forget when AOL used to give their front line phone reps stock (before they shipped it all to Malaysia) and took back all the stock when the Time-Warner merge happened. They sued and a judge told 'em to take a long walk off a short pier
Besides, with all the H1-B's stable jobs in America are getting hard to find...
the replacements are under heavy duress. They quality will drop for a little bit, but they'll work 80 hours a week to catch up since the alternative is abject poverty and starvation. If the first batch doesn't do it the next one will.
Also, I think you underestimate the cost savings. I can get a programmer in India for $1200 a month tops (that's everything, benefits, taxes, computer. _everything_). The cheapest American is 10 times that. Are you really 10 times more productive? If you are, you should be working for google:P.
they're better in the long run in every way. First, they work harder because they're desperate. Yes, they make mistakes, but they'll work 80 hours correcting those mistakes. Second, they lower the overall cost of labor (by increasing the supply of labor).
See, you're thinking like a worker. Start thinking like an _owner_. Like someone who does nothing all day except _own_ stuff, and it'll make more sense. The owners aren't paying attention to how much wealth is created. They're just interested in how much of it is theirs. After a certain amount of money it stops being money and starts being power. When you lose, they gain.
"Neo-Liberalism" != Liberalism. Go figure. Liberalism generally means progressive socialism. "Neo-Liberalism" is really just the old "Libertarian" crap Rand Paul and his ilk spew. Basically you're free to do whatever unless you want to eat, or have a house, or health care. "Neo-Liberals" cheerfully ignore the power of money when they calculate freedom. That's more or less what (I think) the grandparent's post is getting at. .
The word's been co-opted by the Libertarian types.
Operation Whitecoat it was called. If you were a Conscientious Objector you did this instead of shooting people.
There's lots and lots of conspiracies out there. All a conspiracy means is that two or more people get together to do something. Banking is rife with them. So is the software industry (and the hardware, anyone remember when flat panels suddenly got cheap? Conspiracy among vendors to keep prices high...).
Yes, there are crack pots out there. But that doesn't mean organized groups of people aren't doing bad things...
I'm pretty local. I'm stuck here because a) I only know one language and it's a bit late to learn (what with being an adult of only sightly above average intelligence) and b) not having tons of money.
I keep getting told that if I don't like being poor I should just stop being poor. Gee, that'd be nice, but I don't see anyone lining up to give me capital.... I've got ideas and I'm willing to work (I am in fact:P, taking a break from a large code project to troll/.:) ). I made a lot of mistakes in life, but I also had a lot of things just fall apart around me through no fault of my own. I watched as 90 % of the IT industry was shipped overseas and nobody noticed or cared. Just like with the car industry. Now I'm watching what's left get automated away
I haven't once heard anything constructive come out of the "Don't be Poor" crowd. If you have real solutions I'd like to hear them. What are we going to do in 20 years when robots drive cars, make food, deliver packages and pick our fruit? What are we going to do with all these people we just don't _need_? If you're OK with letting them starve to death on Resevations (like America did with the Natives) and brutally oppressing them when they get out of line then fine, say it and be done. But stop pretending you have an answer that doesn't end with the entire planet looking like North Korea.
There have been a _ton_ of advancements that become available when you have money. Medical Science has advanced to the point where we can do maintenance on the human body and improve it in general. This can be as simple as your kid's braces, or as complex as resurfacing your hip so you can walk without a cane in your 50s.
Also, what's "necessary" is defined by employers. If I'm going to function as an office worker I'm expected to have a car, cellphone, college education, etc. If I don't have these I become unemployable... I lose access to all of the benefits I described above.
Also, why in God's Green Earth are we talking about regressing to the 1920s? When did we give up on progress? When did poverty become an acceptable condition? When I was a kid we'd already sent a man to the moon. Keeping kids out of poverty seemed simple by comparison...
Decompressing the audio on the fly hit the frame rate too hard. This is probably because the XBoxOne and many PCs don't have hardware accelerated sound. I run off my mobo's sound, for example. Yeah, I could do better, but I'd rather take that $100 bucks for a decent sound card and step up to the next graphics card, and I think a lot of people do....
With facts or even reasons? Lots of stuff is done traditionally that's just awful (for the sake of not trolling I won't bother listing any of them off).
Large parts of America are struck by enough poverty to count as the third world. So much so that several charities that traditionally work in third world countries have started offering services in America. The Rust Belt had it's entire manufacturing industry off shored. Entire economies literally collapsed. Short of outside intervention there's really nothing for those people.
Now, if you're willing to abandon those people to their fate that's fine. But just come right out and say it. But the fact is there isn't enough money locally to raise those people out of poverty.
I know your concern. Why should you have to pay for it? Well, one nation under God and all that.... Plus, what ever happened to America's Can Do Attitude? When I as a lad it would have been unthinkable to abandon 1/3 of America to abject poverty. Not because of any high and might moral beliefs, but because we took it for granted that there was no problem we couldn't solve.
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it's printed right on the money: "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private". You're legally required to accept US Currency. It's up to you how much, but if you have a debt you don't get to say no. You can require that the currency be in certain denominations (e.g. you can decline a jar full of 10,000 pennies) but that's about it.
If you say no and it's enough money to go to court over than sooner or later a judge is going to make you take the money. If you tell a judge no he throws you in prison for contempt of court.
I suppose you could overthrow the US Gov't, but other than that our money is pretty sound.
Oh, gold's intrinsic value is that rich people like to wear it. It's one of the few metals that won't leave marks on your skin. Since rich people are, by definition, the most important players in any economy they sorta set the value. It's been a long time since we were the sort of hunter-gathers that couldn't see the intrinsic value of gold...
copper very much either works or it doesn't. It's reliable, but once it starts degrading it goes fast.
Cell service can often _barely_ work. This leaves you in the position of fighting tooth and nail with a phone company to get the service you've been promised. Unless you're wealthy you going to lose that fight.
The other day I thought I saw a horse at the park, but it was just a Unicorn with it's horn broke off.
Sorry, you just reminded me of that joke.
True, but ensuring corporations remain profitable and the stock price goes up every year is the real role of gov't. At least until Citizens United get overturned.
Yeah, but it simplifies it to a frightening degree. I when can ship an office max 10 or 20 types of plastic they can turn into 1 million different products it'll be the kind of revolution we haven't seen since the hey day of the internet.
just about every big regulator goes to work for the industry when he's done. It's so common we have a name for it: Regulatory Capture.
:(.
Here in America we've been voting pro corporate right wingers into office since Reagan. They stacked the supreme court and have been chipping away at the gains made after WWII non-stop since those gains were made. It's not a battle I see us winning
the problem is instant manufacturing. It won't be a 3D printer in your home, it'll be one at the store. That'll be doable in my life time. Heck, some officemaxs already have 3D printers, and there's a little commune of hobbyists doing 3D printing too.
It means the end of an entire industry of logistics, shipping, etc. That combined with automation (most factories employee less than 100 people unless they're paying subsistence wages) is going to cause huge social upheaval.
what you want is a social safety net so that you can do stuff like that without the constant fear of bankruptcy. Canada has one, and it's why you see a lot of good sci-fi writers coming out of there.
.01%. The billionaires and what not. I say have gov't make a nice big safety net so you don't have to. But then, if we did that you could seriously compete with the likes of Walmart, and they can't have you doing that now can they?
You don't want to be responsible for your employees well being? Fine. Then let the government do it, or just admit you're happy with 100 million people (about a third of the populace) living in abject poverty.
I suppose I really shouldn't single you out. The problem is we've all been put at each other's throats by the real 1%. Heck, the
people don't need incentive to go above and beyond for anything that matters. Einstein was paid like shit his whole life, but his mathematics changed everything. OTOH we pay guys millions to run micro-Transaction fueled investment firms that skim off the top of all society like a bloated tick.
That's sorta the argument you'll hear. I saw an interview on Fox News years ago where they brought on an economist who explained he would combat automation by taxing the rich and redistributing the wealth. The host said, "But that's socialism" and he replied "that's right, I'm a socialist". The whole rest of the interview was the Host just trying to come to grips with the fact that the man just admitted he was a socialist. I think if he said he skinned babies for a living he'd have gotten less of a reaction.
After 70 years of being told that Communism == Socialism == Hitler == bad it's just ingrained in American Society. It's really the only answer to automation. There just aren't enough jobs. The world _doesn't_ need ditch diggers, and we only need so many scientists even if everyone was the next Albert Eisenstein. But the notion that a job, any job, is better than no job is heavily ingrained in America.
they just put someone in front of the self checkouts. When people feel their being watched they're much less likely to steal, and one minimum wage employee can watch 4 lanes. He's not really watching, but the people trying to steal don't know that.
:(.
Also, they put scanners on the shopping carts now. It's not everywhere yet, but it's coming. You scan everything while you shop except the produce. That gets weighted and you get a tag for it. The computer keeps track of the total weight of your order and you weigh it again when you bag up. It spreads the work of scanning out over all your shopping and makes it feel quicker even though it's the same amount of time.
Once we have automatic driving cars you'll see the end of retail as everything is delivered. A few high end goods might still have salesmen (Mercedes Benzes and whatnot), but you won't really have any options. You'll have the stuff delivered because it's quicker and you'll be working 60 hours a week to make enough money at your low pay job to buy food/shelter
or Socialism. Or anything other than a fascists dictatorship that just happened to use Karl Marx's writtings for propaganda. They had about as much to do with Communism as North Korea, but for some reason we sorta forget all that. Also, Russia was a _lot_ worse off from WWII than anyone really remembers. They used mules to drag their tanks back home for lack of fuel for God's sake.
it's the incredibly high cost of entry (burying lines, running copper) combined the the fact that you pretty much need a gov't mandate in order to get everyone to allow you to bury/run all those lines on their property (otherwise sooner or later somebody either holds the whole thing up because he's crazy, wants infinite money or some combination of the two).
But hey, never let a little thing like facts and reality get in the way of a good right wing rant I always say. How's the joke go? Fact have a liberal bias...
Russia? China? They didn't even get close to communism. They were fascists dictatorships and kleptocracies that happen to use Karl Marx's writings for propaganda.
European socialism got pretty close, and they seem to be doing just fine except when they start acting like Americans and deregulating their banks.
Seriously, I know you're trolling, but there's a chance someone out there is taking your seriously...
not because the material's hard, but because it builds and builds and builds. If you're not taking the course along with your kid you're not gonna pull it off.
What I hate seeing is these schools giving 4+ hours of homework a night. It's damn near impossible to do all that. The US economy is crashing due to outsourcing and blind faith in Free Trade, and everyone's trying to figure out what to do that doesn't involve stuff that's politically impossible (like Tariffs and an end to Work Visas for people w/o a PHD and a large body of work). So far the solution seems to be to overwhelm children with tests and homework...
On Play was a start up. A bunch of engineers signed on and took stock options for lower pay. Then the company folder, reopened with the exact same name and same owners and everyone lost their stock. And lets not forget when AOL used to give their front line phone reps stock (before they shipped it all to Malaysia) and took back all the stock when the Time-Warner merge happened. They sued and a judge told 'em to take a long walk off a short pier
Besides, with all the H1-B's stable jobs in America are getting hard to find...
the replacements are under heavy duress. They quality will drop for a little bit, but they'll work 80 hours a week to catch up since the alternative is abject poverty and starvation. If the first batch doesn't do it the next one will.
:P.
Also, I think you underestimate the cost savings. I can get a programmer in India for $1200 a month tops (that's everything, benefits, taxes, computer. _everything_). The cheapest American is 10 times that. Are you really 10 times more productive? If you are, you should be working for google
they're better in the long run in every way. First, they work harder because they're desperate. Yes, they make mistakes, but they'll work 80 hours correcting those mistakes. Second, they lower the overall cost of labor (by increasing the supply of labor).
See, you're thinking like a worker. Start thinking like an _owner_. Like someone who does nothing all day except _own_ stuff, and it'll make more sense. The owners aren't paying attention to how much wealth is created. They're just interested in how much of it is theirs. After a certain amount of money it stops being money and starts being power. When you lose, they gain.
"Neo-Liberalism" != Liberalism. Go figure. Liberalism generally means progressive socialism. "Neo-Liberalism" is really just the old "Libertarian" crap Rand Paul and his ilk spew. Basically you're free to do whatever unless you want to eat, or have a house, or health care. "Neo-Liberals" cheerfully ignore the power of money when they calculate freedom. That's more or less what (I think) the grandparent's post is getting at. .
The word's been co-opted by the Libertarian types.
Operation Whitecoat it was called. If you were a Conscientious Objector you did this instead of shooting people.
There's lots and lots of conspiracies out there. All a conspiracy means is that two or more people get together to do something. Banking is rife with them. So is the software industry (and the hardware, anyone remember when flat panels suddenly got cheap? Conspiracy among vendors to keep prices high...).
Yes, there are crack pots out there. But that doesn't mean organized groups of people aren't doing bad things...
I'm pretty local. I'm stuck here because a) I only know one language and it's a bit late to learn (what with being an adult of only sightly above average intelligence) and b) not having tons of money.
:P, taking a break from a large code project to troll /. :) ). I made a lot of mistakes in life, but I also had a lot of things just fall apart around me through no fault of my own. I watched as 90 % of the IT industry was shipped overseas and nobody noticed or cared. Just like with the car industry. Now I'm watching what's left get automated away
I keep getting told that if I don't like being poor I should just stop being poor. Gee, that'd be nice, but I don't see anyone lining up to give me capital.... I've got ideas and I'm willing to work (I am in fact
I haven't once heard anything constructive come out of the "Don't be Poor" crowd. If you have real solutions I'd like to hear them. What are we going to do in 20 years when robots drive cars, make food, deliver packages and pick our fruit? What are we going to do with all these people we just don't _need_? If you're OK with letting them starve to death on Resevations (like America did with the Natives) and brutally oppressing them when they get out of line then fine, say it and be done. But stop pretending you have an answer that doesn't end with the entire planet looking like North Korea.
There have been a _ton_ of advancements that become available when you have money. Medical Science has advanced to the point where we can do maintenance on the human body and improve it in general. This can be as simple as your kid's braces, or as complex as resurfacing your hip so you can walk without a cane in your 50s.
Also, what's "necessary" is defined by employers. If I'm going to function as an office worker I'm expected to have a car, cellphone, college education, etc. If I don't have these I become unemployable... I lose access to all of the benefits I described above.
Also, why in God's Green Earth are we talking about regressing to the 1920s? When did we give up on progress? When did poverty become an acceptable condition? When I was a kid we'd already sent a man to the moon. Keeping kids out of poverty seemed simple by comparison...
Decompressing the audio on the fly hit the frame rate too hard. This is probably because the XBoxOne and many PCs don't have hardware accelerated sound. I run off my mobo's sound, for example. Yeah, I could do better, but I'd rather take that $100 bucks for a decent sound card and step up to the next graphics card, and I think a lot of people do....
With facts or even reasons? Lots of stuff is done traditionally that's just awful (for the sake of not trolling I won't bother listing any of them off).
Large parts of America are struck by enough poverty to count as the third world. So much so that several charities that traditionally work in third world countries have started offering services in America. The Rust Belt had it's entire manufacturing industry off shored. Entire economies literally collapsed. Short of outside intervention there's really nothing for those people.
Now, if you're willing to abandon those people to their fate that's fine. But just come right out and say it. But the fact is there isn't enough money locally to raise those people out of poverty.
I know your concern. Why should you have to pay for it? Well, one nation under God and all that.... Plus, what ever happened to America's Can Do Attitude? When I as a lad it would have been unthinkable to abandon 1/3 of America to abject poverty. Not because of any high and might moral beliefs, but because we took it for granted that there was no problem we couldn't solve.
They were awful on the PS2. It was impossible to gauge how hard you were pressing....