Don't forget that, as a liberal in a state that hasn't gone Republican in a long time, my vote is pointless. If it was going to make a difference in how my state votes, the election's already decided by other states. Nobody seems to care about the popular vote, which I can influence very slightly.
If you're not voting in a swing state, you have no influence on the Presidential race.
Being treated like dirt is one thing, and nobody has to work for an employer who treats people like dirt,
Wrong. Completely wrong. Many people have to work for what employer they can find, for reasons like they want to give their children a chance at a better life. Look at people in the real world sometime.
In Oregon, the couple was turned away because of what they were. In Colorado, the customer was turned away because of what the customer wanted to do. There's a difference. There is no selection of one protected class over another, just a case where anti-discrimination laws apply and a case where they don't, because there is a great difference between being something and doing something.
You're perfectly free to be a Christian. Nothing about that compels you to ask for a specific cake. You're perfectly free to run a public business, and there are restrictions that apply, including not refusing a customer specifically because he or she is a member of a protected class. And, as a Christian, you have no right to demand that other people do things according to your religion.
New development tools have been coming along since the 1950s, and they haven't stopped. I'm using environments far better than when I first wrote BASIC programs on a teletype. Back then, the typical software application would be scientific computation or accounting programs tailored for the existing practices in companies. Now we have someone showing up yelling "AI! AI!" and telling me that I'll get better development tools and that I'll write different stuff. Oh, yay. Never would have guessed.
So, what do they do when there's a US carrier there? They can attack Taiwan, and let the USN decide whether to start a war with China. If the carrier does intervene, the Chinese can attack the carrier task force. China can doubtless at least neutralize the task force by throwing in enough air superiority fighters. A surprisingly small portion of the capabilities of a carrier task force is available for offensive operations, considering its cost and structure.
Alternatively, China could skip the threats and head right in to the invasion, trying to have a fait accompli before a carrier can arrive.
So, yes, China does have options that involve the conquest of Taiwan. They haven't exercised them. We don't want to make them determined to do so.
The situation is that an individual businessperson can refuse an individual order for pretty much any reason (there are social and business pressures to discourage being unreasonable), but may not deny service to someone by reason of being in a protected class (through experience, we've found that social and business pressures don't stop people from being unreasonable on this). This isn't hypocrisy. It's the result of experience, translated into law, and law is a blunt instrument.
The laws on protected classes don't apply to everyone, only people in business. I don't run a business, or make personnel or customer decisions in one, so I don't have to care. When retired, I won't have to care either. The law says that, if you run a business, you may not discriminate in certain ways. If this is too onerous for you, for whatever reason, find another way to make a living. . As far as religion goes, I can find plenty of historical religious references supporting racism or religious discrimination.
In the case of the Oregon bakery, the bakers refused the order (apparently with extreme rudeness) because the customers were in a protected class. In the case of the Colorado bakery, the bakers apparently refused the order on an individual basis, because they didn't want to make those particular cakes. It wasn't because the customers are heterosexual. It wasn't because of their religion. The cake was a political statement that the bakery did not want to make, and as far as I know there are no protected classes based on politics. Freedom of religion doesn't mean you get to make anyone else to do something that you think is according to your religion. It means you may practice your religion freely, as long as you don't break the law, and anti-discrimination laws make it illegal for someone covered by such laws to refuse you service or employment based on your religion.
Not per se, but an illegal speech act may have certain aggravating circumstances calling for a higher penalty than normal. It's reasonable to call that hate speech in a legal sense. It does have the possibility of implying that some speech is illegal in the US just because it's hateful, of course, and that's not the case.
I'm saying that specialized equipment can replace humans at specific jobs, and more and more jobs are falling into that category, as more and more types of specialized equipment are made. With the CNC mills we have, and some supporting infrastructure, we can do much better than by employing tool and die makers, and various other factory-type jobs. They aren't cheap, but they are precise and reasonably efficient. Lots of automation was put in place not because it was cheaper than humans, but because it was better, producing higher quality work. We don't bother with equipment on the shop floor that's not company owned. The closest I can get to owning the heavy machinery is to own stock in the company. We aren't going to outsource to guys with CNC mills in their garages either, for a variety of reasons. Either you work for us, you own company stock, or you don't benefit directly from us. (We hope that customers profit a lot from what we sell them, of course.)
Taxes and regulations add to human costs, but not all that much. If someone is going to make a decent living working here, then the cost is that of a decent living plus assorted overhead that might amount to about half again the guy's pay, and only some of that is due to taxes and regulations. There's a gap there where a machine could be more expensive than the guy's pay and less expensive than the total cost, but not a big one. Moreover, you seem to be implying that, to compete with automation, humans should be willing to be treated like dirt.
We know that lots of Windows 7 users didn't upgrade, and many who did were tricked into it. We don't know why they didn't want the upgrade. Doubtless some didn't want the telemetry, but there's a lot of other reasons for not wanting it.
My point is that the median income remaining flat while that amount of income buys more and more stuff means you are getting richer; and we don't have a good indicator that shows what people can actually buy.
And you're wrong in how you apply it. A rise in per capita GDP does not mean that a given amount of income buys more stuff. We have not had deflation going along with rising productivity. $52K worth of stuff is indeed worth more than $38K worth, but that doesn't mean the average person can buy more, just that the average person can produce more. Extra wealth has been disproportionately moving to the upper class.
You're cherry-picking items that have decreased in price, or improved while holding their price. The cost of medical care has gone up considerably, as has the cost of higher education. Houses are, probably, less expensive than they were ten years ago, at the height of the bubble, but I'd guess they're more expensive than they were twenty years ago. I have no idea what apartment rents have been doing, since I haven't lived in one since 1991 and haven't paid attention. Home ownership used to be a desirable thing financially, and people would save up for it. If they think this is now beyond them, they're likely to spend more money on luxuries.
I'm not talking about general-purpose human-form robots. I'm talking about automation in general, which includes a great many specialized devices, many of which are too expensive for most individuals to own. Most people can't afford CNC mills that cost over $500K, for example, and my company uses them by the dozen. It's cheaper to maintain and run these than to pay tool and die workers a living wage to do something similar. This does not depend on taxes, rules, regulations, inflation, or interest rates (the company is debt-averse). This depends on the cost of the mills, the maintenance cost, the cost to prepare things for the mills, and that sort of thing. That establishes a cost that is less than a skilled human would have to charge to make a basic living, not that a human could match the mills for speed and accuracy. Remove all taxes and the machines would be cheaper. We have rules and regulations about our mills (which can be quite dangerous if not properly used - if a piece of metal is in a mill and not fastened in somehow, it can come out of the mill enclosure at considerable speed).
Moreover, capital investment does not just start up by itself. Part of my investments are stuff I socked away from earning money by working, and part I inherited from Mom. If I were wiped out today, I'd be upset, but if I were still physically and mentally able I could get a job writing software that paid a good amount of money (or stay at the one I've got). If I couldn't work to earn more money, and I lost my investments, I'd be screwed..
Two different definitions. The legal definition in the US is illegal speech that threatens a group. The social definition is speech that promulgates hate towards a group. That definition is pretty fuzzy.
Sure, lots of people in the real world do well working on Linux or Unix machines. That's nice. There are industries that they can't work in and jobs they can't get. If the economy as it exists today is to function, there have to be a large number of people running Windows. This is beyond the ability of any individual to influence.
So, you're going to laugh at my suffering because of what numerous other people are unwilling to do? Asshole.
No, you haven't shown hypocrisy. The Oregon bakers refused the couple's business because of their sexual orientation, and got really nasty about it. The Colorado guy refused to make a particular cake Those are two different things. If you find a case of a baker prosecuted for refusing to put two grooms or two brides on top of a cake, please let us know.
AIUI, the couple went to that bakery because they thought they made good cakes. They likely didn't know not to go into that bakery.
I know some things that happened later from the court documents (last I looked, linked from the Snopes article), although some of it is inference. The bakery people apparently didn't simply come out with a polite refusal, but were very offensive about it. Later on, they orchestrated an internet harassment campaign. This is the part those who call themselves Christians tend not to talk about.
I think, although I'm not sure, that they did use another bakery for the wedding cake.
Who defines hate speech and those that get to make that definition hold a disproportionate amount of influence on our elections if they control the space by which national dialogue occurs.
You're saying this like it was something new, like newspapers, radio, and TV didn't control the space of national dialog for, probably, centuries. Why should I assume that the current control of national dialog is something to get all excited about?
Hate speech is not quoting a few bible versus with two X'ed out groomsmen.
Says you. It's up to the individual baker. Since there's plenty of bakers with varying opinions, this isn't much of a problem. There's no reason a baker would be required to produce a wedding cake with two bride figures, either. A public business is required not to discriminate based on certain specific features.
As a taxpayer, I'm complicit in all sorts of things. I helped make the 2003 Iraq war possible. I've financed CIA-supported torture lessons. Deputies from my county went to the pipeline standoff in the Dakotas, and were on what I consider the wrong side. I could keep going, but I really don't have that much sympathy to people legally forced to be complicit in things they find offensive, as long as the laws are reasonable. In this case, the law said the bakers could not turn away customers based on their sexual orientation. It also said they could not turn a customer away for being black or atheist, and I suspect people have had religious objections to both.
or the government should get involved when it becomes necessary for the public that those entities be impartial
And here's where the monopoly status comes in. If the telephone company objects to my political views, and has the ability to enforce it, my set of cordless phones are useless for political discussion. If Facebook objects to my political views, and has the ability to enforce it, I can find another forum. I don't need another computer or browser.
then it becomes necessary for those companies to be impartial for the public good. That is a much better course of action than any Ministry of Truth.
So, who defines "impartial" here? I've found Politifact and Snopes.com to be even-handed and mostly impartial, but lots of people on Slashdot disagree with me. I'm sure that many people have news sources they consider impartial that I'd consider heavily biased. If you allow anyone to say anything on a forum, that forum becomes pretty much useless, because the trolls will take over. Any useful internet forum has to have some mechanism to deal with trolls. Therefore, the only way we could establish impartiality is, indeed, Minitrue. I don't like that solution.
I'm reasonably familiar with how Hitler came to power, and it's not how most leaders came to power.
I'm not interested so much in what Trump said as what his supporters heard. I doubt that most Trump supporters can reliably spell "exegesis", let alone practice it on Trump's speeches. (To be fair, I doubt most X supporters can spell "exegesis".) What I heard floating around the media is probably close to what they heard.
What to blame nihilism on doesn't really matter, except if it gives us insight in how to help people get beyond it. It's just plain bad, and is primarily what I'm concerned about.
The President is perfectly capable of ruining our diplomacy and biasing our law enforcement. The President nominates Supreme Court justices. Who the President is matters.
I assure you that {me} and {people who didn't know about Taiwan three weeks ago} are a completely disjoint set, and I've been aware of the situation for over forty years now. The mainland Chinese government considers Taiwan to be part of China, and the government in Taiwan agrees. China allows the situation to exist currently, but does not have diplomatic relations with countries that have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. My read is that China is willing to let Taiwan continue to be de facto independent for now, and I'd hate to change their minds. I'd also not want the US and China not to have diplomatic relations.
The intent was to inject some judgment into the process. Federalist Paper 68 describes the intention in self-congratulatory detail, and specifically says the EC should prevent an unqualified but popular person from becoming President.
According to original intent, the Trump electors should vote for somebody actually qualified, not Trump.
The arguments that global warming isn't happening devolved into conspiracy theories long ago. After all, if all the climate scientists say something that you find personally uncomfortable, there must be a global conspiracy, right? The people who think it is happening have real scientific arguments, which are disregarded by the turkeys that trust a con man rather than a scientist.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget that, as a liberal in a state that hasn't gone Republican in a long time, my vote is pointless. If it was going to make a difference in how my state votes, the election's already decided by other states. Nobody seems to care about the popular vote, which I can influence very slightly.
If you're not voting in a swing state, you have no influence on the Presidential race.
Sure about that? That's not my experience.
Wrong. Completely wrong. Many people have to work for what employer they can find, for reasons like they want to give their children a chance at a better life. Look at people in the real world sometime.
In Oregon, the couple was turned away because of what they were. In Colorado, the customer was turned away because of what the customer wanted to do. There's a difference. There is no selection of one protected class over another, just a case where anti-discrimination laws apply and a case where they don't, because there is a great difference between being something and doing something.
You're perfectly free to be a Christian. Nothing about that compels you to ask for a specific cake. You're perfectly free to run a public business, and there are restrictions that apply, including not refusing a customer specifically because he or she is a member of a protected class. And, as a Christian, you have no right to demand that other people do things according to your religion.
The law here is not hypocritical.
If they're determined, why haven't they? Mainland China is capable of upsetting the situation, but they don't.
New development tools have been coming along since the 1950s, and they haven't stopped. I'm using environments far better than when I first wrote BASIC programs on a teletype. Back then, the typical software application would be scientific computation or accounting programs tailored for the existing practices in companies. Now we have someone showing up yelling "AI! AI!" and telling me that I'll get better development tools and that I'll write different stuff. Oh, yay. Never would have guessed.
So, what do they do when there's a US carrier there? They can attack Taiwan, and let the USN decide whether to start a war with China. If the carrier does intervene, the Chinese can attack the carrier task force. China can doubtless at least neutralize the task force by throwing in enough air superiority fighters. A surprisingly small portion of the capabilities of a carrier task force is available for offensive operations, considering its cost and structure.
Alternatively, China could skip the threats and head right in to the invasion, trying to have a fait accompli before a carrier can arrive.
So, yes, China does have options that involve the conquest of Taiwan. They haven't exercised them. We don't want to make them determined to do so.
The situation is that an individual businessperson can refuse an individual order for pretty much any reason (there are social and business pressures to discourage being unreasonable), but may not deny service to someone by reason of being in a protected class (through experience, we've found that social and business pressures don't stop people from being unreasonable on this). This isn't hypocrisy. It's the result of experience, translated into law, and law is a blunt instrument.
The laws on protected classes don't apply to everyone, only people in business. I don't run a business, or make personnel or customer decisions in one, so I don't have to care. When retired, I won't have to care either. The law says that, if you run a business, you may not discriminate in certain ways. If this is too onerous for you, for whatever reason, find another way to make a living. . As far as religion goes, I can find plenty of historical religious references supporting racism or religious discrimination.
In the case of the Oregon bakery, the bakers refused the order (apparently with extreme rudeness) because the customers were in a protected class. In the case of the Colorado bakery, the bakers apparently refused the order on an individual basis, because they didn't want to make those particular cakes. It wasn't because the customers are heterosexual. It wasn't because of their religion. The cake was a political statement that the bakery did not want to make, and as far as I know there are no protected classes based on politics. Freedom of religion doesn't mean you get to make anyone else to do something that you think is according to your religion. It means you may practice your religion freely, as long as you don't break the law, and anti-discrimination laws make it illegal for someone covered by such laws to refuse you service or employment based on your religion.
Not per se, but an illegal speech act may have certain aggravating circumstances calling for a higher penalty than normal. It's reasonable to call that hate speech in a legal sense. It does have the possibility of implying that some speech is illegal in the US just because it's hateful, of course, and that's not the case.
I'm saying that specialized equipment can replace humans at specific jobs, and more and more jobs are falling into that category, as more and more types of specialized equipment are made. With the CNC mills we have, and some supporting infrastructure, we can do much better than by employing tool and die makers, and various other factory-type jobs. They aren't cheap, but they are precise and reasonably efficient. Lots of automation was put in place not because it was cheaper than humans, but because it was better, producing higher quality work. We don't bother with equipment on the shop floor that's not company owned. The closest I can get to owning the heavy machinery is to own stock in the company. We aren't going to outsource to guys with CNC mills in their garages either, for a variety of reasons. Either you work for us, you own company stock, or you don't benefit directly from us. (We hope that customers profit a lot from what we sell them, of course.)
Taxes and regulations add to human costs, but not all that much. If someone is going to make a decent living working here, then the cost is that of a decent living plus assorted overhead that might amount to about half again the guy's pay, and only some of that is due to taxes and regulations. There's a gap there where a machine could be more expensive than the guy's pay and less expensive than the total cost, but not a big one. Moreover, you seem to be implying that, to compete with automation, humans should be willing to be treated like dirt.
We know that lots of Windows 7 users didn't upgrade, and many who did were tricked into it. We don't know why they didn't want the upgrade. Doubtless some didn't want the telemetry, but there's a lot of other reasons for not wanting it.
I'm sorry that Slashdot isn't a safe place for you. Should we have "women" listed as a trigger warning?
And you're wrong in how you apply it. A rise in per capita GDP does not mean that a given amount of income buys more stuff. We have not had deflation going along with rising productivity. $52K worth of stuff is indeed worth more than $38K worth, but that doesn't mean the average person can buy more, just that the average person can produce more. Extra wealth has been disproportionately moving to the upper class.
You're cherry-picking items that have decreased in price, or improved while holding their price. The cost of medical care has gone up considerably, as has the cost of higher education. Houses are, probably, less expensive than they were ten years ago, at the height of the bubble, but I'd guess they're more expensive than they were twenty years ago. I have no idea what apartment rents have been doing, since I haven't lived in one since 1991 and haven't paid attention. Home ownership used to be a desirable thing financially, and people would save up for it. If they think this is now beyond them, they're likely to spend more money on luxuries.
I'm not talking about general-purpose human-form robots. I'm talking about automation in general, which includes a great many specialized devices, many of which are too expensive for most individuals to own. Most people can't afford CNC mills that cost over $500K, for example, and my company uses them by the dozen. It's cheaper to maintain and run these than to pay tool and die workers a living wage to do something similar. This does not depend on taxes, rules, regulations, inflation, or interest rates (the company is debt-averse). This depends on the cost of the mills, the maintenance cost, the cost to prepare things for the mills, and that sort of thing. That establishes a cost that is less than a skilled human would have to charge to make a basic living, not that a human could match the mills for speed and accuracy. Remove all taxes and the machines would be cheaper. We have rules and regulations about our mills (which can be quite dangerous if not properly used - if a piece of metal is in a mill and not fastened in somehow, it can come out of the mill enclosure at considerable speed).
Moreover, capital investment does not just start up by itself. Part of my investments are stuff I socked away from earning money by working, and part I inherited from Mom. If I were wiped out today, I'd be upset, but if I were still physically and mentally able I could get a job writing software that paid a good amount of money (or stay at the one I've got). If I couldn't work to earn more money, and I lost my investments, I'd be screwed..
Two different definitions. The legal definition in the US is illegal speech that threatens a group. The social definition is speech that promulgates hate towards a group. That definition is pretty fuzzy.
Sure, lots of people in the real world do well working on Linux or Unix machines. That's nice. There are industries that they can't work in and jobs they can't get. If the economy as it exists today is to function, there have to be a large number of people running Windows. This is beyond the ability of any individual to influence.
So, you're going to laugh at my suffering because of what numerous other people are unwilling to do? Asshole.
No, you haven't shown hypocrisy. The Oregon bakers refused the couple's business because of their sexual orientation, and got really nasty about it. The Colorado guy refused to make a particular cake Those are two different things. If you find a case of a baker prosecuted for refusing to put two grooms or two brides on top of a cake, please let us know.
AIUI, the couple went to that bakery because they thought they made good cakes. They likely didn't know not to go into that bakery.
I know some things that happened later from the court documents (last I looked, linked from the Snopes article), although some of it is inference. The bakery people apparently didn't simply come out with a polite refusal, but were very offensive about it. Later on, they orchestrated an internet harassment campaign. This is the part those who call themselves Christians tend not to talk about.
I think, although I'm not sure, that they did use another bakery for the wedding cake.
You're saying this like it was something new, like newspapers, radio, and TV didn't control the space of national dialog for, probably, centuries. Why should I assume that the current control of national dialog is something to get all excited about?
Says you. It's up to the individual baker. Since there's plenty of bakers with varying opinions, this isn't much of a problem. There's no reason a baker would be required to produce a wedding cake with two bride figures, either. A public business is required not to discriminate based on certain specific features.
As a taxpayer, I'm complicit in all sorts of things. I helped make the 2003 Iraq war possible. I've financed CIA-supported torture lessons. Deputies from my county went to the pipeline standoff in the Dakotas, and were on what I consider the wrong side. I could keep going, but I really don't have that much sympathy to people legally forced to be complicit in things they find offensive, as long as the laws are reasonable. In this case, the law said the bakers could not turn away customers based on their sexual orientation. It also said they could not turn a customer away for being black or atheist, and I suspect people have had religious objections to both.
And here's where the monopoly status comes in. If the telephone company objects to my political views, and has the ability to enforce it, my set of cordless phones are useless for political discussion. If Facebook objects to my political views, and has the ability to enforce it, I can find another forum. I don't need another computer or browser.
So, who defines "impartial" here? I've found Politifact and Snopes.com to be even-handed and mostly impartial, but lots of people on Slashdot disagree with me. I'm sure that many people have news sources they consider impartial that I'd consider heavily biased. If you allow anyone to say anything on a forum, that forum becomes pretty much useless, because the trolls will take over. Any useful internet forum has to have some mechanism to deal with trolls. Therefore, the only way we could establish impartiality is, indeed, Minitrue. I don't like that solution.
Precisely!
I'm reasonably familiar with how Hitler came to power, and it's not how most leaders came to power.
I'm not interested so much in what Trump said as what his supporters heard. I doubt that most Trump supporters can reliably spell "exegesis", let alone practice it on Trump's speeches. (To be fair, I doubt most X supporters can spell "exegesis".) What I heard floating around the media is probably close to what they heard.
What to blame nihilism on doesn't really matter, except if it gives us insight in how to help people get beyond it. It's just plain bad, and is primarily what I'm concerned about.
The President is perfectly capable of ruining our diplomacy and biasing our law enforcement. The President nominates Supreme Court justices. Who the President is matters.
I assure you that {me} and {people who didn't know about Taiwan three weeks ago} are a completely disjoint set, and I've been aware of the situation for over forty years now. The mainland Chinese government considers Taiwan to be part of China, and the government in Taiwan agrees. China allows the situation to exist currently, but does not have diplomatic relations with countries that have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. My read is that China is willing to let Taiwan continue to be de facto independent for now, and I'd hate to change their minds. I'd also not want the US and China not to have diplomatic relations.
The intent was to inject some judgment into the process. Federalist Paper 68 describes the intention in self-congratulatory detail, and specifically says the EC should prevent an unqualified but popular person from becoming President.
According to original intent, the Trump electors should vote for somebody actually qualified, not Trump.
I was hoping for that, but his Cabinet choices, among other acts since the election, indicate that he doesn't.
The arguments that global warming isn't happening devolved into conspiracy theories long ago. After all, if all the climate scientists say something that you find personally uncomfortable, there must be a global conspiracy, right? The people who think it is happening have real scientific arguments, which are disregarded by the turkeys that trust a con man rather than a scientist.