and other non-violent drug offenders. Legalize all drugs, treat the hard stuff as a medical condition and bam, problem solved. I live in America, and our Prisons are a money-making operation. You can't make money housing thieves, rapists and murderers with no hope while torturing them. You need a ton of non-violent guys who didn't belong in there in the first place and who are just trying to quietly "do their time".
Again, if we'd switch from a punishment based system to a rehab based one those problems go away. But then so do the profits...
I'm not trying to bag on your entire post, just wanted to make sure folks understand that in America we absolutely do use prisons for torture.
Also, I think making prisons nicer would be a good idea. I'm in favor of basic income anyway, so it's not like I don't think we can afford it. But think of it this way, you're dealing with somebody who's life is probably shit (there's not a lot of high dollar white collar guys in jail, even most of those guys are just passing bad checks). Imagine if you took somebody like that who's daily life is a living hell and gave them a respite for a few years instead of torture? Wouldn't that go a long way to rehabilitate? Of course you can't just abandon them when they're out like we do too...
I'm in America, and torture most definitely _is_ part of the plan. We use prisoners and overworked and underpaid guards to apply it so we can look the other way while it happens. Just google Prison Rape or look into the lives of prisoners who have mental illnesses (which is a lot of them, funny that how being mentally ill in a country w/o single payer healthcare can land you in jail a lot).
we make the laws. We decide what is legal. When you say that you're just leaning on the authority granted by the word "legal".
As for psychology, in children yes. Because their ability to reason isn't fully developed. But if you're dealing with an entity who's reasoning ability isn't developed then punishing them is obviously morally wrong because they're not in full control of their actions. OTOH if you're dealing with a being who's reasoning ability _is_ fully developed (or very nearly, since the brain develops into you're mid 20s) then there are much, much more effective ways to prevent that entity from doing "bad things". That is what is meant by rehabilitation. And that's before we start talking about prevention. Remember, it's always cheaper to drop food than bombs.
Punishment has two reasons to exist. First, some folks just like people to suffer. And not for the reasons you're thinking. Animals have an innate understanding of 'fairness'. Most people suffer some for their mistakes. When people give into their animal brain and stop reasoning they want others to suffer for their mistakes. I saw this first hand with a buddy of mine who's LGBTQ. She was upset that the young'uns didn't have to suffer like she did (she was bullied by her teachers in addition to students. Pretty f'd up actually).
As for the second reason, well, punishment is _cheap_. In a society with limited resources we can't afford to lock up the crazies and give them decent food and Playstations. Instead you make chain gains and forced labor camps and feed them the worst food possible. Well, economically we're past that. We could solve these problems anytime we want. Right now we don't.
Oh, and at least for murder fear of consequences doesn't factor into that. It's been shown repeatedly that the death penalty is worse than a non-deterrent. It actively encourages people to kill as they've got nothing left to lose and you might as well get rid of the witnesses. Where I am there was a pizza joint robbed a few decades ago where the employees were shot execution style because the crooks were repeat offenders and they knew if they got caught they'd die in prison. That's what your deterrent gets you..
it's that nobody cares. For one thing politicians are terrified being soft on them will backfire ever since Willie Horton. And to be blunt "tough on crime" plays very well with the dog whistle crowd while disproportionately impacting the poor. As an added bonus incarcerating all those people takes them out of the voter poll (usually permanently, since most states make it really hard to get your rights back). That puts a lot of political pressure on politicians to come down like a ton of bricks.
Me? It's 2018 for God's sake. There is no excuse for punishment anymore. We're adults. Either rehabilitate the person or keep them locked up and in reasonable comfort until they die. Vengeance has no place in a modern society, if for no other reason than it will eventually be turned on us all.
and those went into effect. Trump has moved the overton window even further into the right. In America very few people vote consistently. About 20% in a mid term and 40% in a presidential election. About half of those people are hanging on Trump's every word. Yes, there are adults in the room, but they're terrified that overgrown toddler is going to turn on them in a primary or even a general election.
And remember, the Republican party has very, very few people who genuinely care about the country. Even fewer than the Democrats. I think McCain was an asshat but I also think he cared about America. For most of those guys as long as their donation checks keep coming in and they can secure a cushy job after retiring they couldn't care less what happens to the country.
there was an interview with Ed McMahon where he talked about a Trump "negotiation" session. By the time Trump was done negotiating he'd given McMahon everything and got nothing in return.
Trump went bankrupt for real several times. His banks wanted to try and recover as much as they could and Trump had a well known name & brand so they let him keep some money and go on playing the part of the rich man so they could try and use his brand to bilk people out of money. Worked too. But that wasn't Trump's idea, and the banks told him exactly what to do and when to do it.
When that dried up he started relying on his Russian connections. Trump's neck deep with their mob and oligarchs. That's why he couldn't release his taxes. If you wanna see some fun times vote Democrat for the House in 2018 and watch as they subpoena his tax returns.
is from a tax cut for the rich. We literally just borrowed $1 trillion from China to give it to around 30,000 people...
It's not Keyesian because none of it is trickling down. Keyesian is demand side economics. What we've been doing is good 'ole fashion voodoo economics...
It's already biting us in the ass. Putting that much money in the economy with none of it making it to working class Americans is causing the supply side to over-rev. They've got too much money and not enough to do with it. Eventually they'll fuck up and cause a crash + recession. To counter that the Fed is going to use the only tool they have: Interest rates. They'll raise interest rates to slow down the economy, but that'll hit working class Americans hard in the form of inflation...
Thing is, it'll be 8 years before the damage shows up. By then we'll have another Democrat in charge who'll clean up as much of the mess as he/she can and they'll take the blame for the bad economy. Look at Bush Jr's poll numbers. He's recovered completely and people like him now...
I don't know about the rest of/. but my wages have not kept pace with inflation. Cheap foreign goods has been the only thing that's kept my head above water. Now, you can argue that my wages will start climbing as a result of this, but a) that's not going to happen right away and in the meantime it means big inflation I can ill afford and b) it's not likely to happen since even if the factories come back they're likely to be modern factories heavy on automation, meaning few jobs.
Tariffs are good at protecting an existing business, but you have to have a business to protect for a tariff to work. The US has manufacturing and we were already doing a good job of protecting it. We've doubled out manufacturing output in the last 40 years (while cutting the workforce by 1/3 due to automation, I might add). Broad tariffs at this point are just closing the barn door after the cows got out.
Goat Simulator started out as a broken mess and got that polish when it hit it big. It was just somebody playing around in the Unreal Editor and they posted the "game" as a joke. It took off with Streamers and the rest as they say is history.
The difference between Goat Simulator and most Asset Flips is that it had a clever angle on the assets it flipped. But Valve doesn't want to be the one to judge what's a clever angle and what's run of the mill garbage. Hell, there's a one man operation that made a competent Doom 3 clone out of asset flips.And I just spent a ton of time on an RPG Maker game that was 90% stock tiles and a well written story with good combat.
want the services provided by the colored people (and yes, I'm aware of how horribly racist what I just wrote is, but, well, it seems to be what we're doing on this thread). But those same white people don't seem to want to _pay_ for those services. So they want a sort of slum area just outside the city where the folks who cook, clean, do their laundry and cut their grass live. Third world countries have these sort of communities, but America used to be better than that.
In America wages are going down. In particular we've got high paid work being replaced by low paid (e.g. good factory jobs replaced by "McJobs"). If you're wages are going down then it doesn't really matter if inflation's only 4%.
because there's no accounting for taste, and if you took away garbage there'd be no Goat Simulator. As the saying goes, one man's trash is another's treasure.
Plus, a lot of good devs get their start making trash.
Most of what you think of as "Social Justice Warriors" these days are Russian Trolls trying to divide the country.
There's a very, very small number of nut job feminists running out of community colleges. They've got absolutely no power but they're blown way out of proportion by the likes of Fox News for much the same purpose as the Russian Trolls pretend to be SJWs: They're trying to get a rise out of you and distract you from economic problems with meaningless social ones (to wit: A loss of social standing).
Do you mean "Affirmative Action"? Because that's usually what folks mean when they use language like you just did. If so, for what I wish was the last time "Affirmative Action" is _not_ a quota system. All "Affirmative Action" does is require businesses keep records of their hiring decisions and furnish them on request. This is necessary if you're going to make discrimination on the basis of protective classes illegal since otherwise it's the businesses word against the person they refused to hire.
Now, if you're going to point to private quotas then that's all well and good, but those quotas are illegal and if you cared to be bothered you could get them ruled as such. Yes, "White Male" is just as much a protective class as "Black Woman".
If you mean something else entirely then that's fine. But your tone is a touch on the hostile side and you explicitly call out the government for enforcing discrimination when since the 60s the gov't has done the polar opposite. Usually that means you're leaning towards the alt-right talking points I mentioned above. If that's not the case please elaborate.
We need to elect politicians who support regulation as a solution. You can't rely on market forces since you're not able to "shop around" for a credit agency. They're assigned to you.
Pay special attention to the parts that create the Electoral College and the US Senate, both of which were explicitly designed to limit the impact of Democracy.
As an added bonus google "Gerrymandering" and "Voter Suppression"
like Jones getting banned or when Trump won the election. Like I said, stuff that matters. But this? But then here I am commenting on it. To be fair I'm icing a sore muscle here and posting on/. works for that.
you're drinking and/or smoking. That's some next level crazy you've got going on right there. Like Alex Jones by way of too much Nyquil.
Like I said, this is more than likely just a disgruntled staffer who didn't want to take the job and got pressured into it by their folks or something. Trump doesn't need anyone to sabotage his agenda. He can do bad all by himself.
I'm all for the "stuff that matters" part, but this is political minutiae. If there was a tech angle fine, but I don't see any. If the editors are going to greenlight political stories stick to the major ones. Not some random staffer who's dad probably made him take the job. I mean, we've got a SCOTUS nomination process going on right now...
necessity is the mother of invention. Doctor Who was fantastic and made on a shoe string. The Michael Bay Transformers movies are $100+ million a pop and some of the worst drivel I've ever seen. I'd like to see some small local talent get a shot. They're likely to be constrained in ways that a big production is not, and those constraints will make them more interesting.
It's like a garden full of Dandelions. They look nice and all but they're still weeds and they'll crowd out the rest of your followers.
single payer & higher taxes for wealthy both poll in the Mid to high 70s. The only reason they seem to be "left" ideas is that so few people vote. Less than 20% of Americans are Republicans and 52% of those support single payer, for example.
America uses a combination of Gerrymandering and Voter Suppression to make sure only the 'right' people vote. I'm embarrassed to say this about my country but a lot of folks agree with that, even if they don't agree that the current crop of selected voters is the ones they'd want in charge. I've suggested multiple times that we make voting mandatory (an idea I got from Obama) so that we could end Voter Suppression but folks hate the idea. They don't want "idiots" voting.
"good enough for government work". I've never once heard it reference Unions and I grew up in Buffalo, NY.
Unions are a victim of a nonstop propaganda campaign waged by corporate media. Folks have had it pounded into their skull that they're the problem, not the solution. I'm hoping that folks can start breaking free from the likes of MSNBC, CNN & Fox News and strike out more on their own.
Slashdot Mirror
and other non-violent drug offenders. Legalize all drugs, treat the hard stuff as a medical condition and bam, problem solved. I live in America, and our Prisons are a money-making operation. You can't make money housing thieves, rapists and murderers with no hope while torturing them. You need a ton of non-violent guys who didn't belong in there in the first place and who are just trying to quietly "do their time".
Again, if we'd switch from a punishment based system to a rehab based one those problems go away. But then so do the profits...
I'm not trying to bag on your entire post, just wanted to make sure folks understand that in America we absolutely do use prisons for torture.
Also, I think making prisons nicer would be a good idea. I'm in favor of basic income anyway, so it's not like I don't think we can afford it. But think of it this way, you're dealing with somebody who's life is probably shit (there's not a lot of high dollar white collar guys in jail, even most of those guys are just passing bad checks). Imagine if you took somebody like that who's daily life is a living hell and gave them a respite for a few years instead of torture? Wouldn't that go a long way to rehabilitate? Of course you can't just abandon them when they're out like we do too...
I'm in America, and torture most definitely _is_ part of the plan. We use prisoners and overworked and underpaid guards to apply it so we can look the other way while it happens. Just google Prison Rape or look into the lives of prisoners who have mental illnesses (which is a lot of them, funny that how being mentally ill in a country w/o single payer healthcare can land you in jail a lot).
we make the laws. We decide what is legal. When you say that you're just leaning on the authority granted by the word "legal".
As for psychology, in children yes. Because their ability to reason isn't fully developed. But if you're dealing with an entity who's reasoning ability isn't developed then punishing them is obviously morally wrong because they're not in full control of their actions. OTOH if you're dealing with a being who's reasoning ability _is_ fully developed (or very nearly, since the brain develops into you're mid 20s) then there are much, much more effective ways to prevent that entity from doing "bad things". That is what is meant by rehabilitation. And that's before we start talking about prevention. Remember, it's always cheaper to drop food than bombs.
Punishment has two reasons to exist. First, some folks just like people to suffer. And not for the reasons you're thinking. Animals have an innate understanding of 'fairness'. Most people suffer some for their mistakes. When people give into their animal brain and stop reasoning they want others to suffer for their mistakes. I saw this first hand with a buddy of mine who's LGBTQ. She was upset that the young'uns didn't have to suffer like she did (she was bullied by her teachers in addition to students. Pretty f'd up actually).
As for the second reason, well, punishment is _cheap_. In a society with limited resources we can't afford to lock up the crazies and give them decent food and Playstations. Instead you make chain gains and forced labor camps and feed them the worst food possible. Well, economically we're past that. We could solve these problems anytime we want. Right now we don't.
Oh, and at least for murder fear of consequences doesn't factor into that. It's been shown repeatedly that the death penalty is worse than a non-deterrent. It actively encourages people to kill as they've got nothing left to lose and you might as well get rid of the witnesses. Where I am there was a pizza joint robbed a few decades ago where the employees were shot execution style because the crooks were repeat offenders and they knew if they got caught they'd die in prison. That's what your deterrent gets you..
it's that nobody cares. For one thing politicians are terrified being soft on them will backfire ever since Willie Horton. And to be blunt "tough on crime" plays very well with the dog whistle crowd while disproportionately impacting the poor. As an added bonus incarcerating all those people takes them out of the voter poll (usually permanently, since most states make it really hard to get your rights back). That puts a lot of political pressure on politicians to come down like a ton of bricks.
Me? It's 2018 for God's sake. There is no excuse for punishment anymore. We're adults. Either rehabilitate the person or keep them locked up and in reasonable comfort until they die. Vengeance has no place in a modern society, if for no other reason than it will eventually be turned on us all.
was that we've doubled manufacturing while cutting the workforce by 1/3.
and those went into effect. Trump has moved the overton window even further into the right. In America very few people vote consistently. About 20% in a mid term and 40% in a presidential election. About half of those people are hanging on Trump's every word. Yes, there are adults in the room, but they're terrified that overgrown toddler is going to turn on them in a primary or even a general election.
And remember, the Republican party has very, very few people who genuinely care about the country. Even fewer than the Democrats. I think McCain was an asshat but I also think he cared about America. For most of those guys as long as their donation checks keep coming in and they can secure a cushy job after retiring they couldn't care less what happens to the country.
there was an interview with Ed McMahon where he talked about a Trump "negotiation" session. By the time Trump was done negotiating he'd given McMahon everything and got nothing in return.
Trump went bankrupt for real several times. His banks wanted to try and recover as much as they could and Trump had a well known name & brand so they let him keep some money and go on playing the part of the rich man so they could try and use his brand to bilk people out of money. Worked too. But that wasn't Trump's idea, and the banks told him exactly what to do and when to do it.
When that dried up he started relying on his Russian connections. Trump's neck deep with their mob and oligarchs. That's why he couldn't release his taxes. If you wanna see some fun times vote Democrat for the House in 2018 and watch as they subpoena his tax returns.
is from a tax cut for the rich. We literally just borrowed $1 trillion from China to give it to around 30,000 people...
It's not Keyesian because none of it is trickling down. Keyesian is demand side economics. What we've been doing is good 'ole fashion voodoo economics...
It's already biting us in the ass. Putting that much money in the economy with none of it making it to working class Americans is causing the supply side to over-rev. They've got too much money and not enough to do with it. Eventually they'll fuck up and cause a crash + recession. To counter that the Fed is going to use the only tool they have: Interest rates. They'll raise interest rates to slow down the economy, but that'll hit working class Americans hard in the form of inflation...
Thing is, it'll be 8 years before the damage shows up. By then we'll have another Democrat in charge who'll clean up as much of the mess as he/she can and they'll take the blame for the bad economy. Look at Bush Jr's poll numbers. He's recovered completely and people like him now...
who are these Yanks and how did they get a top app on Mac two months after sending data to China.
I don't know about the rest of /. but my wages have not kept pace with inflation. Cheap foreign goods has been the only thing that's kept my head above water. Now, you can argue that my wages will start climbing as a result of this, but a) that's not going to happen right away and in the meantime it means big inflation I can ill afford and b) it's not likely to happen since even if the factories come back they're likely to be modern factories heavy on automation, meaning few jobs.
Tariffs are good at protecting an existing business, but you have to have a business to protect for a tariff to work. The US has manufacturing and we were already doing a good job of protecting it. We've doubled out manufacturing output in the last 40 years (while cutting the workforce by 1/3 due to automation, I might add). Broad tariffs at this point are just closing the barn door after the cows got out.
Goat Simulator started out as a broken mess and got that polish when it hit it big. It was just somebody playing around in the Unreal Editor and they posted the "game" as a joke. It took off with Streamers and the rest as they say is history.
The difference between Goat Simulator and most Asset Flips is that it had a clever angle on the assets it flipped. But Valve doesn't want to be the one to judge what's a clever angle and what's run of the mill garbage. Hell, there's a one man operation that made a competent Doom 3 clone out of asset flips.And I just spent a ton of time on an RPG Maker game that was 90% stock tiles and a well written story with good combat.
want the services provided by the colored people (and yes, I'm aware of how horribly racist what I just wrote is, but, well, it seems to be what we're doing on this thread). But those same white people don't seem to want to _pay_ for those services. So they want a sort of slum area just outside the city where the folks who cook, clean, do their laundry and cut their grass live. Third world countries have these sort of communities, but America used to be better than that.
In America wages are going down. In particular we've got high paid work being replaced by low paid (e.g. good factory jobs replaced by "McJobs"). If you're wages are going down then it doesn't really matter if inflation's only 4%.
because there's no accounting for taste, and if you took away garbage there'd be no Goat Simulator. As the saying goes, one man's trash is another's treasure.
Plus, a lot of good devs get their start making trash.
Most of what you think of as "Social Justice Warriors" these days are Russian Trolls trying to divide the country.
There's a very, very small number of nut job feminists running out of community colleges. They've got absolutely no power but they're blown way out of proportion by the likes of Fox News for much the same purpose as the Russian Trolls pretend to be SJWs: They're trying to get a rise out of you and distract you from economic problems with meaningless social ones (to wit: A loss of social standing).
discrimination? Be specific.
Do you mean "Affirmative Action"? Because that's usually what folks mean when they use language like you just did. If so, for what I wish was the last time "Affirmative Action" is _not_ a quota system. All "Affirmative Action" does is require businesses keep records of their hiring decisions and furnish them on request. This is necessary if you're going to make discrimination on the basis of protective classes illegal since otherwise it's the businesses word against the person they refused to hire.
Now, if you're going to point to private quotas then that's all well and good, but those quotas are illegal and if you cared to be bothered you could get them ruled as such. Yes, "White Male" is just as much a protective class as "Black Woman".
If you mean something else entirely then that's fine. But your tone is a touch on the hostile side and you explicitly call out the government for enforcing discrimination when since the 60s the gov't has done the polar opposite. Usually that means you're leaning towards the alt-right talking points I mentioned above. If that's not the case please elaborate.
We need to elect politicians who support regulation as a solution. You can't rely on market forces since you're not able to "shop around" for a credit agency. They're assigned to you.
Here you go
Pay special attention to the parts that create the Electoral College and the US Senate, both of which were explicitly designed to limit the impact of Democracy.
As an added bonus google "Gerrymandering" and "Voter Suppression"
like Jones getting banned or when Trump won the election. Like I said, stuff that matters. But this? But then here I am commenting on it. To be fair I'm icing a sore muscle here and posting on /. works for that.
you're drinking and/or smoking. That's some next level crazy you've got going on right there. Like Alex Jones by way of too much Nyquil.
Like I said, this is more than likely just a disgruntled staffer who didn't want to take the job and got pressured into it by their folks or something. Trump doesn't need anyone to sabotage his agenda. He can do bad all by himself.
I'm all for the "stuff that matters" part, but this is political minutiae. If there was a tech angle fine, but I don't see any. If the editors are going to greenlight political stories stick to the major ones. Not some random staffer who's dad probably made him take the job. I mean, we've got a SCOTUS nomination process going on right now...
necessity is the mother of invention. Doctor Who was fantastic and made on a shoe string. The Michael Bay Transformers movies are $100+ million a pop and some of the worst drivel I've ever seen. I'd like to see some small local talent get a shot. They're likely to be constrained in ways that a big production is not, and those constraints will make them more interesting.
It's like a garden full of Dandelions. They look nice and all but they're still weeds and they'll crowd out the rest of your followers.
single payer & higher taxes for wealthy both poll in the Mid to high 70s. The only reason they seem to be "left" ideas is that so few people vote. Less than 20% of Americans are Republicans and 52% of those support single payer, for example.
America uses a combination of Gerrymandering and Voter Suppression to make sure only the 'right' people vote. I'm embarrassed to say this about my country but a lot of folks agree with that, even if they don't agree that the current crop of selected voters is the ones they'd want in charge. I've suggested multiple times that we make voting mandatory (an idea I got from Obama) so that we could end Voter Suppression but folks hate the idea. They don't want "idiots" voting.
"good enough for government work". I've never once heard it reference Unions and I grew up in Buffalo, NY.
Unions are a victim of a nonstop propaganda campaign waged by corporate media. Folks have had it pounded into their skull that they're the problem, not the solution. I'm hoping that folks can start breaking free from the likes of MSNBC, CNN & Fox News and strike out more on their own.