The "guy" is dead. His stuff is not his anymore. How it is distributed is simply a policy decision, not socialism. Shall it all go to his eldest male heir? Distributed evenly to his surviving children? All goes to his spouse? Do whatever he wishes with the money in perpetuity? There is no moral "right" or "wrong" here - the guy is gone and departed.
I'd bet dollars to donuts that in aggregate the poor leave this earth with a negative nest egg. I bet funeral expenses and unpaid debts far exceed any estate value.
I'm not sure why you mentioned the GOP, other than they are (soon to be) the party in power. You are correct that they would never implement an inheritance tax.
That's a fair point, but that reform can be made with the swoosh of a pen - 100% inheritance tax (making an allowance for minors or dependents to defer the tax until 25). No one is hurt, no warfare necessary.
I'm not Nostradamus, that's for sure. But I'm fairly certain that industrial-grade robots will always be capital intensive and suited to large scale. I don't think economy of scale and centralized manufacturing is going anywhere in our lifetimes, at least not for mainstream products. There will always be niche markets, just like some small farms have managed to hang on by offering niche products or experiences.
In all seriousness, the main problems with your proposal are (a) no one lives for "millenia", so punishing people living today for crimes committed hundreds of years ago hardly seems just, (b) they weren't considered crimes when they occurred - it's like retroactively punishing an Indian tribe because their ancestors consumed compounds now forbidden by the FDA, and (c) it does nothing to actually fix the problem you seem to think exists - poor people won't own the robots, and it seems unlikely that they will ever amass the capital to get their own robots while on the government dole. That gives them even less access to opportunity then they have under the current system.
They are surprisingly useful. I would never try to type on a school bus - time management might be something to improve if you find yourself doing that - but they do work offline, depending on the application having support for that. You can even boot them into Linux if you know the secret handshake and run Crouton. Storage space is severely limited, but there's still plenty for a basic Linux system.
Those G5/Intel Pro aluminum machines had the highest build-quality I've ever seen in a desktop. I'm sure some leaked, but I don't think it was a very common problem.
Don't kid yourself. EVERYBODY is buying those including the techies.
I'm pretty "techie", though quite far from needing a truly bleeding edge machine most of the time (I can use AWS when I need bursts of computing). You are 100% correct. I really don't buy or even upgrade PCs at the rate I used to - progress has stalled somewhat on the desktop. For many techie tasks, you can, when push comes to shove, use a high-end machine from 10 years ago if you update the memory and stick a flash drive in it. In contrast, a 10-year-old phone (or God forbid, pre-iPad tablet) would be hopelessly obsolete. I have a wife and kids, too, and so that means I'm a few upgrade cycles in on phones and tablets for each PC that I buy. And the last two "PC"s that I bought were Chromebooks, since that's what the kids use at school. I have an old Core2Duo workstation with plenty of RAM set up for the kids that almost never gets powered on because the kids use the Chromebooks, despite being less capable and having a tiny screen.
From your tone I see that you think I am against social spending. That is not the case. With that said, treating government spending the same as charitable spending is simplistic and child-like. We are, in fact, taking away people's money by force and redistributing it. You seem to cringe at that characterization, but that is a factual description of what we are doing. It is necessary and proper to do so, but let's not sugar coat it.
IMHO, we need to use two different metrics. Voluntary spending should have a very low or non-existent threshold of justification; to the extend that they aren't actually doing harm, people should be able to spend their money as they see fit. The United Kitten Fanciers Club may seem like a frivolous expense, but no more so than a big screen TV - so if someone wants to donate their money to that "cause", by all means let them. On the other hand, use of government funds to support kitten fancying should be met with pitchforks and torches. Government spending needs to be to the benefit of society in general, not to whatever the group in power decides is their pet cause.
They don't do it for the "cheap thrill". They do it because they think winning will solve their problems.
That little bit of hope and enjoyment they experience as they dream about winning is actually fairly cheap compared to other forms of entertainment. It's not rational, it's just an emotional kick.
Not everyone who buys a lottery ticket is stupid, but if you gave them all an IQ test, most of them would be dumber than average. Buying a lottery ticket is a poor financial decision, so it is unsurprising that winners continue to make poor decisions.
I think you are right about that. I don't know about the IQ thing, but most winners were not wildly successful millionaires and so expecting them to be good at dealing with sudden wealth is not reasonable.
Maybe it is an Aspie thing, but to me it seemed about as enjoyable as flushing $20 bills down the toilet.
You know a lot more about Asperger's than I do, but there are many of us who don't particularly love gambling despite not being all that far over on the autism spectrum. I grew up near Atlantic City, and can tell you the number of times I went there solely to gamble on one hand - and I'd be making a big goose egg. I've definitely gambled while there, but it has never been my reason to go because it's not that thrilling to me.
For what it's worth (not much), though a lot (most?) Libertarians go for the strong property rights thing - even to the point of Ayn Rand Objectivist stuff in extreme cases - it is not necessary for one to embrace strong property protections and still be a Libertarian. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is a nice loose phrase with lots of interpretation wiggle room in the last two parts. Especially the last.
I'd love to see UBI experimented with on a large scale. Take a random swath of the US and change their tax and entitlement benefits. No Medicare/Medicaid, no Social Security, no unemployment, no food stamps - just a fixed weekly direct deposit. Tax rates adjusted such that the average participant will net about the same amount of money as before. But that's not how it will happen, because it will become a political issue and we'll swing back and forth until something shakes loose.
All of those groups do so voluntarily. "Giving" by a government is just redistribution of other people's money, with threat of force should you decide not to pay.
I don't really know what you are arguing. I'm not dragging anyone down. When you travel to, say, Malaysia, you can go to a restaurant and eat the best fish head curry you've ever had with a milk tea for about $3. The same meal in the US would be about $12 or so. It is absurd to compare the salary of someone who lives in a place with a $3 lunch to someone who lives in a place with a $12 lunch.
Why the heck us the US minimum wage as a standard to compare against? These people can be anywhere in the world - better to compare to their local minimum wage... Or better yet, typical wages for this type of work in their locality.
Boeing and Airbus do take different approaches to programming their flight control computers, but both are now fly-by-wire. The 777 was Boeing's first fly-by-wire plane, even though the controls still have the classic layout and in certain modes move along with the control surfaces.
I was operating under the assumption that the car is indeed fully automatic, and it is legal and advisable to let the car do all the driving. Under such circumstances, the failure mode needs to be such that you would survive such an incident even if you were asleep or reading. Frankly, if my Electric Dingbat 2000 vehicle stopped in the middle of the freeway, I'd walk over to the shoulder and call AAA - no need for heroics.
We carry around spare tires, jacks, jumper cables, flares, etc. It's not out of the realm of possibility for a little bar to be included to be used as an emergency steering wheel.
I don't think he meant road bumps, but the rotational pressures on the wheel as the tires encounter rotational forces. The trick for quality manufacturers is to get the steering to have very little slop so that the steering and road feel is accurate.
The clutch is fail-safe, though. The motor has to disengage the clutch when the system is operational, and a loss of electrical power should re-engage the clutch. But there are possible failure modes where the system still has electrical power yet is non-functional in a way that is not detected.
So yeah, there are edge cases where the system can theoretically fail. But that is also true of a mechanical linkage.
The "emergency brake" stopped being called that a long time ago - they now call it a "parking brake". Your parking brakes are laughably small things in the rear wheels. The "emergency" part was replaced by a dual master cylinder that separates the front and rear systems. In the event that you lose one, you get a light on the dash (and it will be very easy to tell from stopping performance and pedal feel). Even in the event that you lose electronic/vacuum assist, pushing hard enough on the pedal will stop your car.
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The "guy" is dead. His stuff is not his anymore. How it is distributed is simply a policy decision, not socialism. Shall it all go to his eldest male heir? Distributed evenly to his surviving children? All goes to his spouse? Do whatever he wishes with the money in perpetuity? There is no moral "right" or "wrong" here - the guy is gone and departed.
I'd bet dollars to donuts that in aggregate the poor leave this earth with a negative nest egg. I bet funeral expenses and unpaid debts far exceed any estate value.
I'm not sure why you mentioned the GOP, other than they are (soon to be) the party in power. You are correct that they would never implement an inheritance tax.
That's a fair point, but that reform can be made with the swoosh of a pen - 100% inheritance tax (making an allowance for minors or dependents to defer the tax until 25). No one is hurt, no warfare necessary.
I'm not Nostradamus, that's for sure. But I'm fairly certain that industrial-grade robots will always be capital intensive and suited to large scale. I don't think economy of scale and centralized manufacturing is going anywhere in our lifetimes, at least not for mainstream products. There will always be niche markets, just like some small farms have managed to hang on by offering niche products or experiences.
What is wrong with the poor demanding a larger share of that wealth?
Nothing, but I think the poor would be a lot better off if we tweaked the system to improve their opportunity rather than simply wrote them checks.
Yar! Class wars!
In all seriousness, the main problems with your proposal are (a) no one lives for "millenia", so punishing people living today for crimes committed hundreds of years ago hardly seems just, (b) they weren't considered crimes when they occurred - it's like retroactively punishing an Indian tribe because their ancestors consumed compounds now forbidden by the FDA, and (c) it does nothing to actually fix the problem you seem to think exists - poor people won't own the robots, and it seems unlikely that they will ever amass the capital to get their own robots while on the government dole. That gives them even less access to opportunity then they have under the current system.
$250K, sign this "no fault" agreement, and "GTFO."
I guess it's a better offer than the divorce.
They are surprisingly useful. I would never try to type on a school bus - time management might be something to improve if you find yourself doing that - but they do work offline, depending on the application having support for that. You can even boot them into Linux if you know the secret handshake and run Crouton. Storage space is severely limited, but there's still plenty for a basic Linux system.
Those G5/Intel Pro aluminum machines had the highest build-quality I've ever seen in a desktop. I'm sure some leaked, but I don't think it was a very common problem.
Don't kid yourself. EVERYBODY is buying those including the techies.
I'm pretty "techie", though quite far from needing a truly bleeding edge machine most of the time (I can use AWS when I need bursts of computing). You are 100% correct. I really don't buy or even upgrade PCs at the rate I used to - progress has stalled somewhat on the desktop. For many techie tasks, you can, when push comes to shove, use a high-end machine from 10 years ago if you update the memory and stick a flash drive in it. In contrast, a 10-year-old phone (or God forbid, pre-iPad tablet) would be hopelessly obsolete. I have a wife and kids, too, and so that means I'm a few upgrade cycles in on phones and tablets for each PC that I buy. And the last two "PC"s that I bought were Chromebooks, since that's what the kids use at school. I have an old Core2Duo workstation with plenty of RAM set up for the kids that almost never gets powered on because the kids use the Chromebooks, despite being less capable and having a tiny screen.
From your tone I see that you think I am against social spending. That is not the case. With that said, treating government spending the same as charitable spending is simplistic and child-like. We are, in fact, taking away people's money by force and redistributing it. You seem to cringe at that characterization, but that is a factual description of what we are doing. It is necessary and proper to do so, but let's not sugar coat it.
IMHO, we need to use two different metrics. Voluntary spending should have a very low or non-existent threshold of justification; to the extend that they aren't actually doing harm, people should be able to spend their money as they see fit. The United Kitten Fanciers Club may seem like a frivolous expense, but no more so than a big screen TV - so if someone wants to donate their money to that "cause", by all means let them. On the other hand, use of government funds to support kitten fancying should be met with pitchforks and torches. Government spending needs to be to the benefit of society in general, not to whatever the group in power decides is their pet cause.
They don't do it for the "cheap thrill". They do it because they think winning will solve their problems.
That little bit of hope and enjoyment they experience as they dream about winning is actually fairly cheap compared to other forms of entertainment. It's not rational, it's just an emotional kick.
Not everyone who buys a lottery ticket is stupid, but if you gave them all an IQ test, most of them would be dumber than average. Buying a lottery ticket is a poor financial decision, so it is unsurprising that winners continue to make poor decisions.
I think you are right about that. I don't know about the IQ thing, but most winners were not wildly successful millionaires and so expecting them to be good at dealing with sudden wealth is not reasonable.
Maybe it is an Aspie thing, but to me it seemed about as enjoyable as flushing $20 bills down the toilet.
You know a lot more about Asperger's than I do, but there are many of us who don't particularly love gambling despite not being all that far over on the autism spectrum. I grew up near Atlantic City, and can tell you the number of times I went there solely to gamble on one hand - and I'd be making a big goose egg. I've definitely gambled while there, but it has never been my reason to go because it's not that thrilling to me.
For what it's worth (not much), though a lot (most?) Libertarians go for the strong property rights thing - even to the point of Ayn Rand Objectivist stuff in extreme cases - it is not necessary for one to embrace strong property protections and still be a Libertarian. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is a nice loose phrase with lots of interpretation wiggle room in the last two parts. Especially the last.
I'd love to see UBI experimented with on a large scale. Take a random swath of the US and change their tax and entitlement benefits. No Medicare/Medicaid, no Social Security, no unemployment, no food stamps - just a fixed weekly direct deposit. Tax rates adjusted such that the average participant will net about the same amount of money as before. But that's not how it will happen, because it will become a political issue and we'll swing back and forth until something shakes loose.
All of those groups do so voluntarily. "Giving" by a government is just redistribution of other people's money, with threat of force should you decide not to pay.
I don't really know what you are arguing. I'm not dragging anyone down. When you travel to, say, Malaysia, you can go to a restaurant and eat the best fish head curry you've ever had with a milk tea for about $3. The same meal in the US would be about $12 or so. It is absurd to compare the salary of someone who lives in a place with a $3 lunch to someone who lives in a place with a $12 lunch.
Why the heck us the US minimum wage as a standard to compare against? These people can be anywhere in the world - better to compare to their local minimum wage... Or better yet, typical wages for this type of work in their locality.
Boeing and Airbus do take different approaches to programming their flight control computers, but both are now fly-by-wire. The 777 was Boeing's first fly-by-wire plane, even though the controls still have the classic layout and in certain modes move along with the control surfaces.
Preferably it would rocket out and impale them.
I was operating under the assumption that the car is indeed fully automatic, and it is legal and advisable to let the car do all the driving. Under such circumstances, the failure mode needs to be such that you would survive such an incident even if you were asleep or reading. Frankly, if my Electric Dingbat 2000 vehicle stopped in the middle of the freeway, I'd walk over to the shoulder and call AAA - no need for heroics.
It must blow your mind when some of us buy both, and sometimes even use the Mac to run Windows (gasp!).
We carry around spare tires, jacks, jumper cables, flares, etc. It's not out of the realm of possibility for a little bar to be included to be used as an emergency steering wheel.
I don't think he meant road bumps, but the rotational pressures on the wheel as the tires encounter rotational forces. The trick for quality manufacturers is to get the steering to have very little slop so that the steering and road feel is accurate.
The clutch is fail-safe, though. The motor has to disengage the clutch when the system is operational, and a loss of electrical power should re-engage the clutch. But there are possible failure modes where the system still has electrical power yet is non-functional in a way that is not detected.
So yeah, there are edge cases where the system can theoretically fail. But that is also true of a mechanical linkage.
The "emergency brake" stopped being called that a long time ago - they now call it a "parking brake". Your parking brakes are laughably small things in the rear wheels. The "emergency" part was replaced by a dual master cylinder that separates the front and rear systems. In the event that you lose one, you get a light on the dash (and it will be very easy to tell from stopping performance and pedal feel). Even in the event that you lose electronic/vacuum assist, pushing hard enough on the pedal will stop your car.
Yeah, I was definitely only talking about automotive. I think all the newer airliner designs are fly by wire now, too.
Unless you know otherwise, the steering and brakes always have mechanical fail-safes. In particular I'm familiar with the Infinity Q50 system.