Corruption is a side-effect of unsupervised wealth. Either increase the supervision (admittedly, that tends to merely increase the ranks of the bribed) or decrease the wealth. Obviously I advocate the latter since increased savings and decreased spending on the part of the middle class will cause a slump in government revenue.
If could well be useful to have the public undergo a paroxysm of legal change, in which the US Constitution is amended to deny the federal government the ability to create debt in the name of the nation and people. But at the very least, we've probably seen the last Constitutional Amendment already... a mob mentality has long governed law judgment in the United States, so I don't think it's ever going to change again. For example, the 4th Amendment has long since been repealed, but that happened from popular and jurist sentiment, not by the actual Amendment process.
I think it stands to reason that if you're Mr Productivity, then your credit is good in several senses of the term. I agree that the US can sustain significant trade deficits if the federal budget is sound, and the states are as well.
Firstly, I don't consider myself subject to some sort of mandatory consumerism (if that's what you may be implying). We are free to pull back from our consumption if our financial stability is endangered... and in fact, we are more than free, we are actually obligated to be fiscally sensible with our personal wealth.
We are morally obligated as such, to ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and all the way up the chain to all Humanity in general.
I've been one of the millions of unemployed, and the way things are going, I'm going to join their ranks once again. Knowing all this, I am quite the miser, and I really don't care how that affects you since my survival is entirely my right.
But far beyond this, I can only agree that government spending be curbed. By the year 2000, government funds for corporate welfare had reached 3 times the level of individual welfare. We have more than enough margin to downsize the government.
Past that, it's a matter of public will. If you actually observe some of this public will, capture it on a webcam, since it's such a rare beast that your clip will rank up there with the Bigfoot shot.
I'd love to see my fellow man comes to his senses and downsize his government, even when it means less welfare for people like himself and his company. Alas, I'm betting on that NOT happening. So my survival becomes even more acutely an issue in my mind.
It's not like I'm spending each of my days saying "screw everyone else". I have over $5K loaned out to 3 families in an effort to keep them afloat. If anything, I'm shouldering the burdens of social security in a very personal sense. But for you, I've really only well-wishing; I cannot spare wealth for the general public when poverty yawns like a vast and toothy chasm underneath my life. There's no excuse for such a threat of falling, except class war, and since it's war, it's about time we middle class folk admit that we're being fired on, and that we should enact emergency measures therefore.
That cycle of unsustainable government spending has to stop sometime. It's not just about employment. We have people making $30K in California who are homeless. It's also about overall affordability and quality of life.
In order for the middle classes to survive in America today, they will have to downsize their standards of living or suffer the consequences. You talk about an increased tax load. Bankruptcies are accomplishing the same thing. We are facing harsh fiscal times regardless. I'm only and strongly suggesting that we should take out fates into our own hands as individuals.
There is no scientifically valid reason to send people into space.
Why do we bother to explore space if there's no valid reason to send people there? I question the assumptions that underlie judgment about whether or not a space mission is "scientifically valid".
We crossed oceans not with robots but with ourselves. Sending robots to North America from Europe would have served little purpose. This logic can only apply to space exploration... particularly since we now well know how hospitable space is. We well know we can live in space, in habitats, on asteroids and on other planets like Mars.
From your sheep-like bleating, my initial condemnation of NASA as some sort of mental-masturbation agency for minting PhDs is more than justified.
And all this doesn't even get into the pure validity of having PEOPLE over MACHINES onsite when it comes to solving the real problems of exploration. A person is the most adaptable machine we could ever send. (And as far as I'm concerned, a properly outfitted Mars mission will never need to come back... since we know enough about Mars to colonize it permanently. The line of volunteers for such a no-return mission would be long enough to cross the state of Florida lengthwise.)
People? That's messy, dirty, expensive... heck, it's real engineering. Far better to promise to send robots, which is innately cooler, which may grab more funding ("Look, Senator, we're using ROBOTS!"), and will result in more PhDs minted per dollar than all that messy, lo-tech stuff like rockets, spacecraft, food, fuel, and Human sweat used to build habitats on Mars.
NASA is getting right the fuck out of Human exploration of space. Obviously the yuppie-fication of NASA is responsible, along with the brain-dead idea of constant under-budgeting.
I'm looking forward to NASA's continued collapse into the irrelevancy that it has well earned from years of degreed administrators running the damned agency like it's a large balance sheet.
And... oh yeah, my prediction is that this robots crap is never going to pan out since things have collapsed enough at NASA that even the non-Human exploration of space finds too many people wanting to occupy desks rather than get off their asses and do some engineering. The first level of engineering (Human involvement) is dead, and now the second level (building things anyway) is dying. NASA is just pathetic. I spit on it.
Fuck over the economy? Really? By having people economize, you end up with self-capitalized people, and that just falls into line with the Republican doctrine of "cut taxes and prosperity will follow". I do happen to believe that doctrine is true philosophically, expect that in practical terms the tax-cutting methods never fail to concentrate effects upon the wealthy, and those folks don't like to make sensible investments in this day and age... whereas a man with savings is bound to spend locally sometime.
America used to be able to hire itself to do its own work. We can return to that.
Actually, NO, it can't. Foreign nations have been raising the alarm flags on the US$ for some time... hence, with enough of a voice, they CAN devalue it. Waffle all you want, but the Euro is starting to be used in place of the US$ for things like buying oil.
You're indulging in wishful thinking. The rest of the world is speaking in an economic voice that the US's currency cannot ignore for long. And the longer Americans ignore this voice (running enormous budget and trade deficits are the very definitions of "ignoring it"), then the worse the devaluation is going to be.
A vast part of the problem is that we fund the government and corporations that attack us not only with every opportunity, but they work constantly to create more of the opportunities that they can exploit to attack us. We pay them to enslave us. Quick solution: Stop paying them.
Hence, if we indulge in some serious disconnection from consumer culture, we can break the corporations and the governments that tax the entire structure. Stop renting videos. Get rid of the SUV. Move into a smaller home. Don't eat out. Keep the thermostat at 62deg in winter, and use fans instead of AC in the summer. Explore alternative heating (wood, spot electric, etc.) and lighting (using mirrors to redirect sunlight, solar cells hooked to batteries, etc). Reduce your hot-water temperature, and maybe change to smaller tanks, even hot-water-on-demand. And so on.
It also helps to go change your W4 to say "EXEMPT" instead of a number of exemptions. Mind you, your employer is probably going to continue to withhold FITW anyway, but if you meet them and point out that they are doing something illegal (by withholding without an authorized number from YOU for YOUR taxes), then they will back down and simply not withhold FITW any further. This will help bankrupt the Federal mafia that we laughably call the "government".
The government and corporations are out of control, and unfortunately for us, they are now actually out to kill us since a populist American society is now too expensive to run, what with our need for silly things like emissions controls, health insurance, sick days, child care... I mean, all that fluff hits the elite right in their massive accounts. With all their insatiable demands for profit and Fascism, government and corporations are being assaulted daily with the inability to turn $1M into $1.1M in just a few hours of raping the public.
It's also true that they no longer need us to run an American society, since the yuppie sitting in his gated community has his money chasing overseas assets for a high ROI, instead of a lower but more secure ROI here in America. The American worker is no longer needed, hence he should drop dead ASAP before he causes too much trouble like attending demonstrations and voting out the establishment.
That might strike jurists as amazing news, since the study of law includes such a thing as Constitutional law. But never mind that. Continue to wallow in your delusion. After all, when it comes to things like culture, if a delusion becomes common, it becomes the reality... so you may have the upper hand. {shrug}
first-come-first-served... hired before background checks... didn't even check resumes... management roles at the age of 18
What does this honestly sound like to you? To me, it sounds like:
Gravy Train - The Federal money was rolling in, and there was little oversight.
Empire Building - A new bureaucracy created without oversight leads to massive building of little management empires.
The American people bought this farce hook, line and sinker. Today, we are literally no safer onboard an aircraft due to the TSA... except for the one thing which will always make a difference: the passengers alone will take down hijackers or assailants of any kind -- as they should have done all along, instead of following the advice of the Nanny Staters (as well as the general class of fucking coward who says we should not defend ourselves as individuals and as part of a crowd).
Furthermore, the "Right to Privacy" is not actually present anywhere in the Constitution.
The US Constitution does not function as a list of ALLOWED things, and then we assume everything else is disallowed. Instead, the Constitution outlines the DISALLOWED functions of government (as well as the actual functions), and basically everything else is a right retained by states and people.
Therefore, we DO have the right to privacy. The Constitution says nothing about; hence, we have it... unless the government attempts to specifically outlaw it. (Note from this that a bunch of common law assumes that we have some level of privacy.)
You need to read up on the philosophy of Constitutional law. You just don't understand the US Constitution.
P2P can save the artists the costs of traditional advertising, and possibly distribution. What remains risky is if these methods will leverage sales at all levels (online materials, concert attendance, media sales, etc.).
So all you're doing here is telling us you don't understand business risks. Have you ever heard the maxim that "you have to spend money to make money"? Well, putting your work on a P2P system is essentially such an investment.
Sorry to be so harsh. I guess I just tired of the whole "we're so noble" act. Just admit what's going on. We're pirating music so we don't have to pay people for it.
The harshness comes from your attempt to narrow the scope of the argument. Expand your mind and imagine people downloading music to try it out... and eventually they buy the CD for the security of ownership.
I can't defend the guys with massive MP3 collections. But I don't have to. I'm not on the defensive here -- YOU are, given your sad attempt to focus the argument on illegalities and away from moralities.
Also, if the general public chooses to download an MP3 illegally for free, over buying it legally for 99c, then by definition the price is too high. The same applies to CDs.
(BTW, this is why I buy my CDs used instead of new... a practice which is under constant assault by the original manufacturers, who want to be paid each time a sale is made, and in fact each time content is read or listened to. The only thing stopping them from that is the current state of law, and the way things are going, the rights of resale are probably going to go away too.)
Her mistake was in showing up to the corporation-owned courtroom in the first place.
The REAL lesson here is: The basis of the law is a cultural philosophy, not a mechanical method involving lobbyists, legislators and lawyers. The culture is turning against strict copyright protections, and money is fighting that trend. We're at WAR with our corporations, and that's the final statement... in war, people get hurt and things get broken.
Call me a nut, but the thing we know about black holes, is that we don't know. Therefore, making one on the surface of the Earth is about as foolish as risk as selling plutonium in quantity. If something bad happens, it could be catastrophic... and if it really does turn out to be a "planet eater", it will be Humankind's ultimate and final catastrophe.
We have all the tech necessary to perform such experiments on Luna. We can spare the Moon (*) if a planet eater is truly generated from an accident. What's lacking is the Human will to get such things done. After all, Oppenheimer and his crew weren't entirely certain the atomic bomb's reaction would stop with the fissile material; there was some speculation that the neutrons could continue to cause nuclear reactions in non-radioactive compounds. They took a foolish risk, and that's the unfortunate trend for Humans on Earth.
(*) Note that even this statement must be qualified with calculations. It could well be that a black hole that swallows the Moon produces a final burst of radiation that literally cooks the Moon-facing side of the Earth, even from about 200K miles away... killing about half of Humanity, and destroying much of the biosphere for the surviving other half. Hence, Luna may well be another poor place to conduct black-hole experiments. The L-positions could be a good alternative all around, by toting an asteroid into place and setting up shop there.
Hmm. Perhaps I should have clarified? I know old doors of any type are sold frameless as used items. But my impression about new exterior doors today was from:
I'd never seen a door for sale at Home Depot et al unless it was framed. Some screen doors and inner doors are still sold frameless for obvious reasons.
We've tried to get contractors to install secondhand exterior doors for us. All refused.
If new, frameless exterior doors are still sold "somewhere in the back", then I stand corrected.
That all depends on the level of "pre-fab" that triggers your overall definition. For example, you just can't find a door for sale nowadays that also doesn't come with a frame. Hence, every door we see installed today is a pre-fab.
There sure are quite a few pre-fab trusses being used, too.
Other than things like that, walls (block, brick, wood+insulation+drywall) must still be constructed onsite. Concrete must still be poured. Those kinds of things are not pre-fab.
What I'm seeing around Toledo OH are a bunch of complexes springing up with these things. One complex I went into didn't have the appearance of white trash, either, so don't try the "aha, retired white trash" angle on us, fella.
Not to pull a one-liner on you, but if we accept the concept of "eternal vigilance" as regards to operating a society to avoid the constant threat of tyranny, then what's so alien or unacceptable about being eternally vigilant about criminal behavior?
Honestly, somewhat in line with your reasoning, we should be executing people-mob leaders and corrupt politicians since they will only keep going with their misbehaviors until they attain the ultimate end of tyranny. Anyone looking at these long-term Senators in the USA can certainly say that they cannot be reformed, and that their actions are certainly responsible for enough Human deaths.
But We The People have the profit motive, by wishing like to obtain the most value for money spent on civil engineering projects. So why do We keep the government officials in power when they so blatantly allow terrible cost overruns?
The only way your vision is going to work is if the public ways are made private. The last time I checked, that would mean some scheme of payment. And the selfsame inept government tends to basically give the property away to insiders, by one means or another.
Privatizing some government functions is a sound instinct... particularly if said functions are measurably more inefficient than private industry is running their own. So, how would you have done the Big Dig? I93 is owned by the government.
Slashdot Mirror
Corruption is a side-effect of unsupervised wealth. Either increase the supervision (admittedly, that tends to merely increase the ranks of the bribed) or decrease the wealth. Obviously I advocate the latter since increased savings and decreased spending on the part of the middle class will cause a slump in government revenue.
... a mob mentality has long governed law judgment in the United States, so I don't think it's ever going to change again. For example, the 4th Amendment has long since been repealed, but that happened from popular and jurist sentiment, not by the actual Amendment process.
If could well be useful to have the public undergo a paroxysm of legal change, in which the US Constitution is amended to deny the federal government the ability to create debt in the name of the nation and people. But at the very least, we've probably seen the last Constitutional Amendment already
"exonomically" -- I like that word.
I think it stands to reason that if you're Mr Productivity, then your credit is good in several senses of the term. I agree that the US can sustain significant trade deficits if the federal budget is sound, and the states are as well.
Firstly, I don't consider myself subject to some sort of mandatory consumerism (if that's what you may be implying). We are free to pull back from our consumption if our financial stability is endangered ... and in fact, we are more than free, we are actually obligated to be fiscally sensible with our personal wealth.
We are morally obligated as such, to ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and all the way up the chain to all Humanity in general.
I've been one of the millions of unemployed, and the way things are going, I'm going to join their ranks once again. Knowing all this, I am quite the miser, and I really don't care how that affects you since my survival is entirely my right.
But far beyond this, I can only agree that government spending be curbed. By the year 2000, government funds for corporate welfare had reached 3 times the level of individual welfare. We have more than enough margin to downsize the government.
Past that, it's a matter of public will. If you actually observe some of this public will, capture it on a webcam, since it's such a rare beast that your clip will rank up there with the Bigfoot shot.
I'd love to see my fellow man comes to his senses and downsize his government, even when it means less welfare for people like himself and his company. Alas, I'm betting on that NOT happening. So my survival becomes even more acutely an issue in my mind.
It's not like I'm spending each of my days saying "screw everyone else". I have over $5K loaned out to 3 families in an effort to keep them afloat. If anything, I'm shouldering the burdens of social security in a very personal sense. But for you, I've really only well-wishing; I cannot spare wealth for the general public when poverty yawns like a vast and toothy chasm underneath my life. There's no excuse for such a threat of falling, except class war, and since it's war, it's about time we middle class folk admit that we're being fired on, and that we should enact emergency measures therefore.
That cycle of unsustainable government spending has to stop sometime. It's not just about employment. We have people making $30K in California who are homeless. It's also about overall affordability and quality of life.
In order for the middle classes to survive in America today, they will have to downsize their standards of living or suffer the consequences. You talk about an increased tax load. Bankruptcies are accomplishing the same thing. We are facing harsh fiscal times regardless. I'm only and strongly suggesting that we should take out fates into our own hands as individuals.
There is no scientifically valid reason to send people into space.
... particularly since we now well know how hospitable space is. We well know we can live in space, in habitats, on asteroids and on other planets like Mars.
... since we know enough about Mars to colonize it permanently. The line of volunteers for such a no-return mission would be long enough to cross the state of Florida lengthwise.)
Why do we bother to explore space if there's no valid reason to send people there? I question the assumptions that underlie judgment about whether or not a space mission is "scientifically valid".
We crossed oceans not with robots but with ourselves. Sending robots to North America from Europe would have served little purpose. This logic can only apply to space exploration
From your sheep-like bleating, my initial condemnation of NASA as some sort of mental-masturbation agency for minting PhDs is more than justified.
And all this doesn't even get into the pure validity of having PEOPLE over MACHINES onsite when it comes to solving the real problems of exploration. A person is the most adaptable machine we could ever send. (And as far as I'm concerned, a properly outfitted Mars mission will never need to come back
People? That's messy, dirty, expensive ... heck, it's real engineering. Far better to promise to send robots, which is innately cooler, which may grab more funding ("Look, Senator, we're using ROBOTS!"), and will result in more PhDs minted per dollar than all that messy, lo-tech stuff like rockets, spacecraft, food, fuel, and Human sweat used to build habitats on Mars.
... oh yeah, my prediction is that this robots crap is never going to pan out since things have collapsed enough at NASA that even the non-Human exploration of space finds too many people wanting to occupy desks rather than get off their asses and do some engineering. The first level of engineering (Human involvement) is dead, and now the second level (building things anyway) is dying. NASA is just pathetic. I spit on it.
NASA is getting right the fuck out of Human exploration of space. Obviously the yuppie-fication of NASA is responsible, along with the brain-dead idea of constant under-budgeting.
I'm looking forward to NASA's continued collapse into the irrelevancy that it has well earned from years of degreed administrators running the damned agency like it's a large balance sheet.
And
Fuck over the economy? Really? By having people economize, you end up with self-capitalized people, and that just falls into line with the Republican doctrine of "cut taxes and prosperity will follow". I do happen to believe that doctrine is true philosophically, expect that in practical terms the tax-cutting methods never fail to concentrate effects upon the wealthy, and those folks don't like to make sensible investments in this day and age ... whereas a man with savings is bound to spend locally sometime.
America used to be able to hire itself to do its own work. We can return to that.
Actually, NO, it can't. Foreign nations have been raising the alarm flags on the US$ for some time ... hence, with enough of a voice, they CAN devalue it. Waffle all you want, but the Euro is starting to be used in place of the US$ for things like buying oil.
You're indulging in wishful thinking. The rest of the world is speaking in an economic voice that the US's currency cannot ignore for long. And the longer Americans ignore this voice (running enormous budget and trade deficits are the very definitions of "ignoring it"), then the worse the devaluation is going to be.
Let's discuss it here.
... I mean, all that fluff hits the elite right in their massive accounts. With all their insatiable demands for profit and Fascism, government and corporations are being assaulted daily with the inability to turn $1M into $1.1M in just a few hours of raping the public.
A vast part of the problem is that we fund the government and corporations that attack us not only with every opportunity, but they work constantly to create more of the opportunities that they can exploit to attack us. We pay them to enslave us. Quick solution: Stop paying them.
Hence, if we indulge in some serious disconnection from consumer culture, we can break the corporations and the governments that tax the entire structure. Stop renting videos. Get rid of the SUV. Move into a smaller home. Don't eat out. Keep the thermostat at 62deg in winter, and use fans instead of AC in the summer. Explore alternative heating (wood, spot electric, etc.) and lighting (using mirrors to redirect sunlight, solar cells hooked to batteries, etc). Reduce your hot-water temperature, and maybe change to smaller tanks, even hot-water-on-demand. And so on.
It also helps to go change your W4 to say "EXEMPT" instead of a number of exemptions. Mind you, your employer is probably going to continue to withhold FITW anyway, but if you meet them and point out that they are doing something illegal (by withholding without an authorized number from YOU for YOUR taxes), then they will back down and simply not withhold FITW any further. This will help bankrupt the Federal mafia that we laughably call the "government".
The government and corporations are out of control, and unfortunately for us, they are now actually out to kill us since a populist American society is now too expensive to run, what with our need for silly things like emissions controls, health insurance, sick days, child care
It's also true that they no longer need us to run an American society, since the yuppie sitting in his gated community has his money chasing overseas assets for a high ROI, instead of a lower but more secure ROI here in America. The American worker is no longer needed, hence he should drop dead ASAP before he causes too much trouble like attending demonstrations and voting out the establishment.
That might strike jurists as amazing news, since the study of law includes such a thing as Constitutional law. But never mind that. Continue to wallow in your delusion. After all, when it comes to things like culture, if a delusion becomes common, it becomes the reality ... so you may have the upper hand. {shrug}
Let me guess: your razor-sharp wit.
Was I right? Huh? Was I?
What does this honestly sound like to you? To me, it sounds like:
- Gravy Train - The Federal money was rolling in, and there was little oversight.
- Empire Building - A new bureaucracy created without oversight leads to massive building of little management empires.
The American people bought this farce hook, line and sinker. Today, we are literally no safer onboard an aircraft due to the TSAFurthermore, the "Right to Privacy" is not actually present anywhere in the Constitution.
... unless the government attempts to specifically outlaw it. (Note from this that a bunch of common law assumes that we have some level of privacy.)
The US Constitution does not function as a list of ALLOWED things, and then we assume everything else is disallowed. Instead, the Constitution outlines the DISALLOWED functions of government (as well as the actual functions), and basically everything else is a right retained by states and people.
Therefore, we DO have the right to privacy. The Constitution says nothing about; hence, we have it
You need to read up on the philosophy of Constitutional law. You just don't understand the US Constitution.
P2P can save the artists the costs of traditional advertising, and possibly distribution. What remains risky is if these methods will leverage sales at all levels (online materials, concert attendance, media sales, etc.).
So all you're doing here is telling us you don't understand business risks. Have you ever heard the maxim that "you have to spend money to make money"? Well, putting your work on a P2P system is essentially such an investment.
Sorry to be so harsh. I guess I just tired of the whole "we're so noble" act. Just admit what's going on. We're pirating music so we don't have to pay people for it.
... and eventually they buy the CD for the security of ownership.
... a practice which is under constant assault by the original manufacturers, who want to be paid each time a sale is made, and in fact each time content is read or listened to. The only thing stopping them from that is the current state of law, and the way things are going, the rights of resale are probably going to go away too.)
The harshness comes from your attempt to narrow the scope of the argument. Expand your mind and imagine people downloading music to try it out
I can't defend the guys with massive MP3 collections. But I don't have to. I'm not on the defensive here -- YOU are, given your sad attempt to focus the argument on illegalities and away from moralities.
Also, if the general public chooses to download an MP3 illegally for free, over buying it legally for 99c, then by definition the price is too high. The same applies to CDs.
(BTW, this is why I buy my CDs used instead of new
Her mistake was in showing up to the corporation-owned courtroom in the first place.
... in war, people get hurt and things get broken.
The REAL lesson here is: The basis of the law is a cultural philosophy, not a mechanical method involving lobbyists, legislators and lawyers. The culture is turning against strict copyright protections, and money is fighting that trend. We're at WAR with our corporations, and that's the final statement
What's "wrong"? Corporations are now defining the term.
I'll make you a deal: I'll start obeying copyright law, when the US Congress lets the copyright on Mickey Mouse expire.
And did you cry about it subsequently?
... as long as it doesn't hit the fan, that is.
No, because it's milk over the dam
Kull wahad! That is the place of terror where others cannot look.
Call me a nut, but the thing we know about black holes, is that we don't know. Therefore, making one on the surface of the Earth is about as foolish as risk as selling plutonium in quantity. If something bad happens, it could be catastrophic ... and if it really does turn out to be a "planet eater", it will be Humankind's ultimate and final catastrophe.
... killing about half of Humanity, and destroying much of the biosphere for the surviving other half. Hence, Luna may well be another poor place to conduct black-hole experiments. The L-positions could be a good alternative all around, by toting an asteroid into place and setting up shop there.
We have all the tech necessary to perform such experiments on Luna. We can spare the Moon (*) if a planet eater is truly generated from an accident. What's lacking is the Human will to get such things done. After all, Oppenheimer and his crew weren't entirely certain the atomic bomb's reaction would stop with the fissile material; there was some speculation that the neutrons could continue to cause nuclear reactions in non-radioactive compounds. They took a foolish risk, and that's the unfortunate trend for Humans on Earth.
(*) Note that even this statement must be qualified with calculations. It could well be that a black hole that swallows the Moon produces a final burst of radiation that literally cooks the Moon-facing side of the Earth, even from about 200K miles away
- I'd never seen a door for sale at Home Depot et al unless it was framed. Some screen doors and inner doors are still sold frameless for obvious reasons.
- We've tried to get contractors to install secondhand exterior doors for us. All refused.
If new, frameless exterior doors are still sold "somewhere in the back", then I stand corrected.That all depends on the level of "pre-fab" that triggers your overall definition. For example, you just can't find a door for sale nowadays that also doesn't come with a frame. Hence, every door we see installed today is a pre-fab.
There sure are quite a few pre-fab trusses being used, too.
Other than things like that, walls (block, brick, wood+insulation+drywall) must still be constructed onsite. Concrete must still be poured. Those kinds of things are not pre-fab.
You forgot:
2. Retirees.
What I'm seeing around Toledo OH are a bunch of complexes springing up with these things. One complex I went into didn't have the appearance of white trash, either, so don't try the "aha, retired white trash" angle on us, fella.
Not to pull a one-liner on you, but if we accept the concept of "eternal vigilance" as regards to operating a society to avoid the constant threat of tyranny, then what's so alien or unacceptable about being eternally vigilant about criminal behavior?
Honestly, somewhat in line with your reasoning, we should be executing people-mob leaders and corrupt politicians since they will only keep going with their misbehaviors until they attain the ultimate end of tyranny. Anyone looking at these long-term Senators in the USA can certainly say that they cannot be reformed, and that their actions are certainly responsible for enough Human deaths.
But We The People have the profit motive, by wishing like to obtain the most value for money spent on civil engineering projects. So why do We keep the government officials in power when they so blatantly allow terrible cost overruns?
... particularly if said functions are measurably more inefficient than private industry is running their own. So, how would you have done the Big Dig? I93 is owned by the government.
The only way your vision is going to work is if the public ways are made private. The last time I checked, that would mean some scheme of payment. And the selfsame inept government tends to basically give the property away to insiders, by one means or another.
Privatizing some government functions is a sound instinct