now what are we going to do with all these people that we don't need to work thanks to 50 years of productivity gains? Right now the plan is to let them starve so they can depress wages and increase the share of wealth (and power) for 1% of the world.
they let the police ignore wealthy smokers while still using the Federal Law to lock up poor people. It's a great way to keep the poor out of your neighborhood. Odds are if you get a group of lower income people together at least one has pot on him, and Federal law lets you seize everyone's property. Sure, legally you get it back, but if you're working 50+ hours/week at two $7.25/hr jobs who's got time for that (unless you can afford a lawyer, but then wealth rears it's head again).
So viva la Medical Marijuana, and our two separate legal systems: One for the poors and one for the rich.
Are we really so dense that we can't just acknowledge that we have a ruling class? You don't spill the blood of kings folks, and you don't punish executives for screwing up. It's the same thing. The only difference is they got smart enough to stop flaunting their wealth so you'd think of them as 'one of us' and not even consider revolting. You can't win a (class) war when only one side knows it's fighting...
the ISPs will buy off Congress, meanwhile even suggesting we regulate the ISPs to enforce net neutrality is met with jeers about bureaucracy. Way I see it we're damned if we don't in that scenario, but I'm in the minority:(.
sure, things are better now, but my point wasn't that things can't get better, my point was that the 'Zero Sum' argument assumes they always _will_ get better. It assumes that the economy will be _allowed_ to continue growing and improving.
My point is that we're going to see a massive contraction put in place by the wealthy to preserve the high status their wealth affords. That's what's meant by the phrase "What good's being rich if nobody's poor".
This idea isn't new. Karl Marx talked about it a lot. But all anyone can remember about him is that his writings were used as propaganda by a few nasty dictators.
The economy _is_ a zero sum game, when you're at the top. To understand, ask yourself this: "What good's being rich if nobody's poor?". The wealthy have enormous leverage over the non-wealthy. They can make us do what they please. They can control the military. They can have anything they want. But if we all had the basics (food, shelter, healthcare) we'd be a lot less malleable. How many people here hate their jobs? How many are planning to stop going tomorrow?
Basically, when you factor in the ruling class the economy becomes a zero sum game. One side (the wealthy) gain when the rest of us (poor and middle class) lose. You're just not thinking about _what_ they gain. Power. They gain power. And as we gain, they lose that power. Zero sum it is.
I think I lost a few IQ points just reading it. Anyway, in rebuttal:
1. You don't need very many smart people. Albert Einstein did all the hard stuff when it came to the atom bomb. Factories run with a 2 or 3 engineers instead of thousands of workers. Lotus 1-2-3 put thousands of accountant clerks out of work. Etc, etc. I suppose we can all go work at Walmart.
2. Fewer people means less people to leak. Also fewer jobs means people more afraid of losing what little they have. It means less idealism and more dog-eat-dog survival.
But hey, who am I point all that out. If we just keep telling ourselves the scary stuff isn't happening because it didn't all happen at once that makes it OK, right?
This is what I don't get. Was it Ford that said he wanted his employees paid enough that they could buy the cars they made? By then everything will be made with robots. Sure, it took a little longer than we expected. Computers had to catch up and there were some material science issues. But it's pretty clear that automation is (finally) coming. Heck, Boeing is on it's way back to the US bringing robots instead of jobs... So who, besides maybe 50,000 people at the top and another 200,000 of their bootlickers is going to be able to afford food, much less a car?
That's a symptom of your political system being busted. The congressman should be worried about not being reelected.
And having worked in the private sector and moved up quite a bit over the years, it's just as bad there if not worse. I've watched companies waste billions just so nobody has to admit they wasted billions (e.g. not take the write off).
squeezing from the movie studios. I know they've been trying to get a cut of concessions for years now, and raising rates on movies in general. It probably doesn't help that it's damn near impossible for a small mom and pop to skirt the law and show stuff without paying full pop anymore. I've heard movies shipping on sealed, tracked DRM'd hard disks with their own network adapter that phones home these days.
it would have taken years of preventative maintenance and care. With the way things are set up today it's too expensive for anyone but the very wealthy to get that care.
I just said that his reasons were mostly health related, and that with enough money his reasons go away. I think the money should be taken out of that equation. No one should kill themselves for lack of medical care...
with the exception of some of the Alzheimer stuff he mentioned every thing he described is treatable, and even a lot of the Alzheimer stuff is. That is, if you have access to the health care. This sounds more like a failing of our society than anything else.
not saying it _does_ work, but I think you'll find people are too busy living their day to day lives (work, family, kids, social networking) to monitor all the bad things companies do. There's a reason we started regulating companies. They did really bad things until we did.
we're going to do absolutely nothing. We're too busy living our daily lives. You're guard will slip as daily life grinds you down, and you'll gradually join the sheeple. My history teacher said it best. "I was a radical in high school. Then I got a job, a car, house wife kids, the works. One I had something to lose I got real conservative real fast".
Me? I pick my poison. I'd rather have a strong central gov't I can at least try to influence and use. Maybe if we can get the schools to indoctrinate kids on the importance of democratic participation instead of the intrinsic beauty of capitalism....
IBM was pretty public about laying off all the non-Sales positions and moving anything to do with technology and engineering overseas or giving it to Visa applicants. It was a cornerstone of the strategy. They're a 'consulting' firm now. They sell commodity services using cheap foreign labor paid at subsistence wages.
I suppose if you mean that the sales people are the only ones that add value you're right, in your own fashion. But if you feel that way what the heck are you doing on/.? Astroturfing?
if you've got kids, particularly girls, you're stuck. They all want to watch the same shows and the same night. I'm too broke for cable right now (When it hit $170/mo for Internet+tv I had to bail) and it drives my kid nuts. Sure, the shows might show up on Netflix, but it takes months. I can get them on iTunes, but it's so expensive I might as well buy cable (and I'm sure that's by design).
I know a lot of people will rant about Television being brain rot and all that, but for most normal people (hint: Not the/. crowd) TV is a social thing. It genuinely puts my kid at a social disadvantage that she doesn't have it.
It's unproven treatments that don't get covered. There are lots of Cancer treatments like that. It might extend your life, it might not (and have bad side effects).
The super rich will still get the best of the best. You're not going to change that. What single payer does is make sure you get good basic care and usually a bit more.
If you think you'll do better on you're own you're being silly. If you were one of the super rich you'd have better things to do than post on/.:).
you don't have to chip in _anything_. The insurance companies profits would pay for your healthcare. You buy wholesale if you can, right? Then why do you have an insurance company between you and life saving medicine?
lots of states will not opt those people in. Lots more will use lies and subterfuge to keep people off the roles. Arizona does everything it can to disqualify people. I've got friends with kids on the local medicaid program that have to report birthday money from granddad as 'income'...
Slashdot Mirror
now what are we going to do with all these people that we don't need to work thanks to 50 years of productivity gains? Right now the plan is to let them starve so they can depress wages and increase the share of wealth (and power) for 1% of the world.
they let the police ignore wealthy smokers while still using the Federal Law to lock up poor people. It's a great way to keep the poor out of your neighborhood. Odds are if you get a group of lower income people together at least one has pot on him, and Federal law lets you seize everyone's property. Sure, legally you get it back, but if you're working 50+ hours/week at two $7.25/hr jobs who's got time for that (unless you can afford a lawyer, but then wealth rears it's head again).
So viva la Medical Marijuana, and our two separate legal systems: One for the poors and one for the rich.
I do a lot of remote IT support, and it's a nightmare getting that damn thing to pop up in an RDP or logmein session.
Are we really so dense that we can't just acknowledge that we have a ruling class? You don't spill the blood of kings folks, and you don't punish executives for screwing up. It's the same thing. The only difference is they got smart enough to stop flaunting their wealth so you'd think of them as 'one of us' and not even consider revolting. You can't win a (class) war when only one side knows it's fighting...
the ISPs will buy off Congress, meanwhile even suggesting we regulate the ISPs to enforce net neutrality is met with jeers about bureaucracy. Way I see it we're damned if we don't in that scenario, but I'm in the minority :(.
I have you and your ilk to thank for the drek that is Starbucks. What made them big was their coffee is higher in caffeine than most.
Uh, he sorta kinda did all the maths and stuff...
sure, things are better now, but my point wasn't that things can't get better, my point was that the 'Zero Sum' argument assumes they always _will_ get better. It assumes that the economy will be _allowed_ to continue growing and improving.
My point is that we're going to see a massive contraction put in place by the wealthy to preserve the high status their wealth affords. That's what's meant by the phrase "What good's being rich if nobody's poor".
This idea isn't new. Karl Marx talked about it a lot. But all anyone can remember about him is that his writings were used as propaganda by a few nasty dictators.
The economy _is_ a zero sum game, when you're at the top. To understand, ask yourself this: "What good's being rich if nobody's poor?". The wealthy have enormous leverage over the non-wealthy. They can make us do what they please. They can control the military. They can have anything they want. But if we all had the basics (food, shelter, healthcare) we'd be a lot less malleable. How many people here hate their jobs? How many are planning to stop going tomorrow?
Basically, when you factor in the ruling class the economy becomes a zero sum game. One side (the wealthy) gain when the rest of us (poor and middle class) lose. You're just not thinking about _what_ they gain. Power. They gain power. And as we gain, they lose that power. Zero sum it is.
I think I lost a few IQ points just reading it. Anyway, in rebuttal:
1. You don't need very many smart people. Albert Einstein did all the hard stuff when it came to the atom bomb. Factories run with a 2 or 3 engineers instead of thousands of workers. Lotus 1-2-3 put thousands of accountant clerks out of work. Etc, etc. I suppose we can all go work at Walmart.
2. Fewer people means less people to leak. Also fewer jobs means people more afraid of losing what little they have. It means less idealism and more dog-eat-dog survival.
But hey, who am I point all that out. If we just keep telling ourselves the scary stuff isn't happening because it didn't all happen at once that makes it OK, right?
This is what I don't get. Was it Ford that said he wanted his employees paid enough that they could buy the cars they made? By then everything will be made with robots. Sure, it took a little longer than we expected. Computers had to catch up and there were some material science issues. But it's pretty clear that automation is (finally) coming. Heck, Boeing is on it's way back to the US bringing robots instead of jobs... So who, besides maybe 50,000 people at the top and another 200,000 of their bootlickers is going to be able to afford food, much less a car?
That's a symptom of your political system being busted. The congressman should be worried about not being reelected.
And having worked in the private sector and moved up quite a bit over the years, it's just as bad there if not worse. I've watched companies waste billions just so nobody has to admit they wasted billions (e.g. not take the write off).
squeezing from the movie studios. I know they've been trying to get a cut of concessions for years now, and raising rates on movies in general. It probably doesn't help that it's damn near impossible for a small mom and pop to skirt the law and show stuff without paying full pop anymore. I've heard movies shipping on sealed, tracked DRM'd hard disks with their own network adapter that phones home these days.
Work harder for less. It's the American Way.
it would have taken years of preventative maintenance and care. With the way things are set up today it's too expensive for anyone but the very wealthy to get that care.
I just said that his reasons were mostly health related, and that with enough money his reasons go away. I think the money should be taken out of that equation. No one should kill themselves for lack of medical care...
with the exception of some of the Alzheimer stuff he mentioned every thing he described is treatable, and even a lot of the Alzheimer stuff is. That is, if you have access to the health care. This sounds more like a failing of our society than anything else.
not saying it _does_ work, but I think you'll find people are too busy living their day to day lives (work, family, kids, social networking) to monitor all the bad things companies do. There's a reason we started regulating companies. They did really bad things until we did.
we're going to do absolutely nothing. We're too busy living our daily lives. You're guard will slip as daily life grinds you down, and you'll gradually join the sheeple. My history teacher said it best. "I was a radical in high school. Then I got a job, a car, house wife kids, the works. One I had something to lose I got real conservative real fast".
Me? I pick my poison. I'd rather have a strong central gov't I can at least try to influence and use. Maybe if we can get the schools to indoctrinate kids on the importance of democratic participation instead of the intrinsic beauty of capitalism....
IBM was pretty public about laying off all the non-Sales positions and moving anything to do with technology and engineering overseas or giving it to Visa applicants. It was a cornerstone of the strategy. They're a 'consulting' firm now. They sell commodity services using cheap foreign labor paid at subsistence wages.
/.? Astroturfing?
I suppose if you mean that the sales people are the only ones that add value you're right, in your own fashion. But if you feel that way what the heck are you doing on
if you've got kids, particularly girls, you're stuck. They all want to watch the same shows and the same night. I'm too broke for cable right now (When it hit $170/mo for Internet+tv I had to bail) and it drives my kid nuts. Sure, the shows might show up on Netflix, but it takes months. I can get them on iTunes, but it's so expensive I might as well buy cable (and I'm sure that's by design).
/. crowd) TV is a social thing. It genuinely puts my kid at a social disadvantage that she doesn't have it.
I know a lot of people will rant about Television being brain rot and all that, but for most normal people (hint: Not the
there's a bunch of sales reps and H1-B contractors gathered round an old name nobody remembers....
It's unproven treatments that don't get covered. There are lots of Cancer treatments like that. It might extend your life, it might not (and have bad side effects).
/. :).
The super rich will still get the best of the best. You're not going to change that. What single payer does is make sure you get good basic care and usually a bit more.
If you think you'll do better on you're own you're being silly. If you were one of the super rich you'd have better things to do than post on
you don't have to chip in _anything_. The insurance companies profits would pay for your healthcare. You buy wholesale if you can, right? Then why do you have an insurance company between you and life saving medicine?
lots of states will not opt those people in. Lots more will use lies and subterfuge to keep people off the roles. Arizona does everything it can to disqualify people. I've got friends with kids on the local medicaid program that have to report birthday money from granddad as 'income'...