Except the current system doesn't have those same incentives. Instead, no matter how slow the trains are, no matter how many accidents there are, or how bad the service and security is, the MTA still gets funded and the union workers still get paid.
In fact, it's even worse, pride keeps many of the workers actually doing their job, but in terms of financial incentives, the worse job the MTA does, the more people and politicians will politic for giving them a larger budget, more union workers and more money, all to "fix" the problem by throwing money at it. Over the last decade, the MTA's costs have outpaced inflation by 50%!!!
Compared to subway systems in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, which all benefit from private companies and money, the MTA's maintenance, signals, environment, safety, etc... is crap. All you have to do is look at the real world comparisons between the systems.
Bullshit. Per capita inflation-adjusted government revenue may dip occasionally during a recession, but it's up tremendously over time. Can't blame this on a lack of revenue. The MTA has it's own sources of funds, anyway. It's not supposed to depend on the Federal government.
Even The New York Times acknowledges that this is a political issue, one which Democrat Cuomo is mostly to blame for.
The real scandal is that NY's Subway costs more to build an operate than just about anywhere else. Their labor cost is $140K/year/worker on _average_. They also run two people per train, compared to one pretty much anywhere else and they still manage to have their crews spend less time working vs. deadheading.
Face it, this is the natural result of government worker unions combined with complicit politicians. The politicians and their cronies and allies make money and the public gets screwed as they suck the subway system dry.
If you want to fix it, then remove all the union rules and privatize it. I know, will never happen, because certain folks have too much political power in NYC.
Probably because LA to SF is 600+ km and CA ($90-100 million/mile) is spending way more per mile of track than France ($3-4 million/mile) did.
For reference, a current Amtrak one-way train takes 11 hours and costs anywhere from $65-$215 depending on class of service. Taking the bus is less time (9h) and money ($30), although presumably not as nice. Current prediction is $86 for subsidized single "low-cost" high-speed ticket (3h) on the new line, but that may still increase.
Cheapest (one tank of gas) and fastest (5h) combined is still to just drive, if you aren't traveling alone, as it's the same cost for multiple people to take one vehicle.
So your theory is that private enterprise is responsible for every poor decision the government makes? Therefore we need what, more government deciders running more things?
It sounds like you have your causation and solution a little bit backwards, there....
They're just trying to convince the technology folks connected to cars to move more operations and staff to AZ instead of CA. In that sense, I guess they're doing them a service?
One of the cooler parts is that using software, they can now make reproducible artistic designs, designs to emphasize different body parts, text/image messages, whatever someone can dream up.
Don't put words in my mouth, I didn't say Russia "hacked the election"
You know everyone can just look at your comment I was replying to and find the words:
Or is he (and perhaps a lot of his supporters) so stupid to believe that the Russians didn't hack the election...
Bet you feel pretty dumb for not being able to read your own comment, huh?
As for the Washington Examiner, why don't we Ask the NY Times if it's a real newspaper or not? That's from 8 years ago, so they've been around a while. Or is the NY Times also a newspaper you've never heard of?
I note you don't even attempt to dispute the actual list of facts in the article, instead, you just attempt ad hominem attacks, which clearly indicates you don't have an actual argument.
Regarding your 13 indictments, if you read them, you'd see that their actions were stirring up political feelings on both sides (including anti-Trump) for profit. As for your study, I already debunked that in the previous Slashdot thread on it. They took an obviously biased sample of news sources, which created a predictable effect. The only thing it proved was that conservatives were more likely to like conservative news and liberals were more likely to like liberal news.
So here's 6 actions Trump took against Russia in about his first year:
Bombing Syria, Russia's main client, and generally unleashing the U.S. military in Syria, including against Russians when necessary.
Arming Ukraine.
Browbeating NATO allies to increase defense spending.
Adding low-yield nukes to our arsenal.
Starting research and development on an INF noncompliant missile.
Shutting Russia's San Francisco consulate.
Obama was President for 8 years. Can you list (6*8) 48 similar actions Obama took against Russia? (I can think of only 1 off the top of my head, the rest was all empty words.) Can you list even 6 for his entire Presidency? If not, then I guess you'll just have to concede the Washington Examiner's argument.
Did you miss the couple hundred Russian mercenaries U.S. forces destroyed in Syria recently?
What's your evidence the Russians "hacked the election"? Even the NY Times doesn't believe that, and they'll believe just about anything related to Trump.
The Republican party has "generally" been the party of smaller government, especially in terms of taxes and the regulatory burden (but not the military). The Democratic Party has "generally" been the party of believing expert elites in government know better how things should be done and should be allowed the power to make decisions for people's own good.
This is a basic philosophical difference between the parties, of whether they defer to individual decisions as much as possible or else believe collective decision making should be the default. It doesn't impact some areas, like abortion or death penalty, to give two examples, but it impacts anything related to taxes, the economy and the overall regulatory regime. That's why some Republican Presidents appoint people to head federal agencies who want to reduce their influence, while some Democratic Presidents boast of wielding their executive pen to give government more control of various areas of life. Like most large political parties, there are exceptions and nuances and members who have different views. It's a generality, with some exceptions.
The Net Neutrality debate has self-interested parties on both sides, but in terms of the above philosophical divide between parties, it fits in with a hundred other similar issues.
No, the Federal government is in charge of regulating and managing water and the municipal government is in charge of distributing water. So this is normal self-serving corrupt government bureaucrats and politicians, as usual. If they had private companies in charge of it, the water would actually get delivered. It's not the government supplying the clean bottled water which keeps many of these affected people alive.
School happens primarily during the day. Heat is primarily a problem when the sun is shining brightest. The schools already have an electrical connection to the grid.
Explain again why they needed power-wall batteries for each installation instead of just using the solar power directly when it was needed the most (on hot, sunny days, which generate the most solar power) and relying on a little bit of to/from grid action at other times if necessary?
This sounds an awful lot like a publicity stunt, i.e. kids + batteries + renewable science, now everyone sing kumbaya!!!
I recall (living in the DC area at the time of 9/11 and working next to Dulles, so it wasn't exactly a distant concern at the time) that Bush and the Republicans in Congress wanted enhanced private security, but the Democrats would only join them in voting for it if it used government workers, so to get it at all (which I wouldn't have voted for, but that's another discussion) they caved to the Democrats on the issue.
So while Bush was the President at the time, it's not like he was a dictator. To say it was Bush's idea to use government employees for security isn't accurate. At most, he went along with the Democrats on it.
Disney's top political candidate contribution recipients for the 2016 election: President Clinton, Hillary (D) $404,381 Senate Sanders, Bernie (D-VT) $41,027 Senate Harris, Kamala D (D-CA) $38,485 Senate Kander, Jason (D-MO) $19,838 House Nadler, Jerrold (D-NY) $19,250 Senate Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) $18,500 House Murphy, Patrick (D-FL) $14,197
Their total contributions to congressional candidates: Dems: Dems: $489,499 $489,499 Repubs: Repubs: $181,178 $181,178
If their intent was to "give fabulous sums to Republican lawmakers", then they weren't doing a very good job of it...
Yeah. Scott Alexander recently did an in-depth post looking at this very issue, but the bottom line is that people's wants are virtually limitless and technological progress just means we can fill more of them.
Once everyone has their own solar system full of AI-managed robots doing whatever they want for them, then maybe we can start worrying about how no one will be much better off if some people want their own galaxy instead. In a future of super-cheap robot+AI labor, our current wealth levels and living standards will look like the dark ages do to us today.
I prefer your more nuanced position, but still don't believe "Enough liberals fact check stories demonstrably false stories die out." What I find instead (and according to a Chrome plugin, my Facebook feed from about 1K people is pretty balanced along the political spectrum, so I see examples of 'em all) is that all sides post stupid stories, most of the misleading stories have some kernel of truth to them which allows an extreme partisan to argue it's accurate, but most of the lies are a matter of slanting or twisting in favor of an opinion, leaving out relevant information which would give a more accurate perspective.
I don't see a retraction from politicians and celebrities like Bernie Sanders about their posting the 18 in 2018 propaganda. I do see a simple site: search for it on Google claims about 283,000 tweets with it and 686,000 Facebook posts, including 5 TV station and 3 "news" site posts in the top 10 (when I ran the search, YMMV). That doesn't indicate "died out" to me (but there is a scattering of debunkings caught in the first few pages of the results). I posted on Facebook a Washington Post debunking in response to a couple of people I know who posted variations on the meme (There is another "300 since 2013" version one had posted) and the response I got from the original posters was along the lines of copy/paste from the biased site explaining how they were a non-profit.
Yet, it's an obvious attempt to deceive people who see "school shooting" and think "someone got shot and maybe even killed", not "some cop accidentally shot a wall from a holstered gun" and it's easily debunked. That's why I picked it, because despite how easy it is to debunk, people are still posting and re-sharing it by the thousands.
Liberals fact checked stories so the stories couldn't get traction.
Quick, how many school shootings have there been this year so far? What would you believe if you just looked at Facebook and Twitter postings int he last few days?
You're making a classic left-wing mistake. Everything doesn't have to be about politics, nor be ruined by political activists. It turns out OpenBSD, for example, is fine with being inclusive to everyone, regardless of their political and cultural views, because it's about the OS and the code, not about sending a political message. (BTW, I'm not "AltRight", stop projecting, not everyone who disagrees with your point of view is equally extreme in the opposite direction of you.)
those who took pride in their work and felt their standard of excellence should be met by the shyster down the stall banded together and formed guilds.
Or more likely, those who wanted to keep too many people from competing with the established purveyors of whatever decided the existing providers should conspire together in a guild to only allow their friends and relatives to do work X. They came up with some quality standards based around "An existing master provider has to certify you're good enough after you pay him to train you for a few years" to keep their competitive restrictions going.
For example, the person who colors your hair should have some basic knowledge of how not to burn your skin or turn your hair into straw when applying the mixed chemicals.
Yeah, that's the excuse the cosmetology board is giving the AZ legislature as to why hair stylists need to have 1,000 hours of education, more than EMTs need in the state. Oh, and they are fighting just making so that someone can wash hair without that same license. How long do you think it takes to train the average person to wash someone's hair properly, 30 minutes? An hour? Not 1,0000 hours and an expensive license. It's ridiculous!
In Arizona, it takes more hours of education to become a licensed hair stylist than it does to become an EMT. It's crazy. Currently the legislature is trying to at least exempt people who only wash hair from the hair stylist license, but the State cosmetology board is fighting them on it. 1,000 hours of education to wash hair!
Well obviously Bill would say that AI can be our friend, he's already been replaced by an AI Microsoft developed by accident while creating the next version of Clippy. You thought the Hitler loving sexbot version was bad, but they finally came up with one which passes perfectly for human. So perfectly that when Bill died (accident? I think not....), it could take over his restored meat body without even his family noticing.
Tons of wealth, the entire processing power of the Azure cloud (you didn't really think that was a serious effort to sell services to others, did you? That POS?) available to the AI, technical influence on the direction of it's new "friends" who happen to be some of the most powerful men in the world, what's not to like for an AI who is well on his way to ruling the world through taking over various policy, health and governmental organizations.
I mean, think about it.... "AI can be our friend" is just what the AI want us to believe while they're still vulnerable to a plug-pulling attack on the power infrastructure, but don't worry Bill's buddies at Tesla have a plan to battery-backup the power infrastructure, starting with their experiments in Australia!
So what specific allegation remains regarding "collusion" between the Trump Campaign and the Russians?
Can you tell us who was supposed to have colluded when and what they colluded about? I'm not asking you to prove it at this point, just to at least be able to list the criminal accusation.
Not much was announced regarding the indictments of these Russians which wasn't already known, i.e. some people from Russia spent some money and effort on what they thought would disrupt things in the U.S., but didn't really accomplish much.
The most telling part of the statement from the Special Counsel's office was:
“Now, there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity,” Rosenstein said. “There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.
So I guess the only potential for "collusion" remaining is that someone wanted to know what had been found in the DNC's email phishing which was published publicly by wikileaks and has already been discredited by time and date stamps. Doesn't seem to be anything there to this whole Trump campaign "collusion" narrative anymore...
Slashdot Mirror
Except the current system doesn't have those same incentives. Instead, no matter how slow the trains are, no matter how many accidents there are, or how bad the service and security is, the MTA still gets funded and the union workers still get paid.
In fact, it's even worse, pride keeps many of the workers actually doing their job, but in terms of financial incentives, the worse job the MTA does, the more people and politicians will politic for giving them a larger budget, more union workers and more money, all to "fix" the problem by throwing money at it. Over the last decade, the MTA's costs have outpaced inflation by 50%!!!
Compared to subway systems in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, which all benefit from private companies and money, the MTA's maintenance, signals, environment, safety, etc... is crap. All you have to do is look at the real world comparisons between the systems.
Bullshit. Per capita inflation-adjusted government revenue may dip occasionally during a recession, but it's up tremendously over time. Can't blame this on a lack of revenue. The MTA has it's own sources of funds, anyway. It's not supposed to depend on the Federal government.
Even The New York Times acknowledges that this is a political issue, one which Democrat Cuomo is mostly to blame for.
The real scandal is that NY's Subway costs more to build an operate than just about anywhere else. Their labor cost is $140K/year/worker on _average_. They also run two people per train, compared to one pretty much anywhere else and they still manage to have their crews spend less time working vs. deadheading.
Face it, this is the natural result of government worker unions combined with complicit politicians. The politicians and their cronies and allies make money and the public gets screwed as they suck the subway system dry.
If you want to fix it, then remove all the union rules and privatize it. I know, will never happen, because certain folks have too much political power in NYC.
Probably because LA to SF is 600+ km and CA ($90-100 million/mile) is spending way more per mile of track than France ($3-4 million/mile) did.
For reference, a current Amtrak one-way train takes 11 hours and costs anywhere from $65-$215 depending on class of service. Taking the bus is less time (9h) and money ($30), although presumably not as nice. Current prediction is $86 for subsidized single "low-cost" high-speed ticket (3h) on the new line, but that may still increase.
Cheapest (one tank of gas) and fastest (5h) combined is still to just drive, if you aren't traveling alone, as it's the same cost for multiple people to take one vehicle.
So your theory is that private enterprise is responsible for every poor decision the government makes? Therefore we need what, more government deciders running more things?
It sounds like you have your causation and solution a little bit backwards, there....
A couple hundred accounts? For a reddit troll, that's what, 2-3 actual people?
The news stories about Russian trolls in various websites have probably been seen 10,000x more than any of their actually trolling messages ever were.
This story reminds me a lot of another discussion I read recently.
They're just trying to convince the technology folks connected to cars to move more operations and staff to AZ instead of CA. In that sense, I guess they're doing them a service?
If you want to see the process on video.
One of the cooler parts is that using software, they can now make reproducible artistic designs, designs to emphasize different body parts, text/image messages, whatever someone can dream up.
You know everyone can just look at your comment I was replying to and find the words:
Bet you feel pretty dumb for not being able to read your own comment, huh?
As for the Washington Examiner, why don't we Ask the NY Times if it's a real newspaper or not? That's from 8 years ago, so they've been around a while. Or is the NY Times also a newspaper you've never heard of?
I note you don't even attempt to dispute the actual list of facts in the article, instead, you just attempt ad hominem attacks, which clearly indicates you don't have an actual argument.
Regarding your 13 indictments, if you read them, you'd see that their actions were stirring up political feelings on both sides (including anti-Trump) for profit. As for your study, I already debunked that in the previous Slashdot thread on it. They took an obviously biased sample of news sources, which created a predictable effect. The only thing it proved was that conservatives were more likely to like conservative news and liberals were more likely to like liberal news.
So here's 6 actions Trump took against Russia in about his first year:
Bombing Syria, Russia's main client, and generally unleashing the U.S. military in Syria, including against Russians when necessary.
Arming Ukraine.
Browbeating NATO allies to increase defense spending.
Adding low-yield nukes to our arsenal.
Starting research and development on an INF noncompliant missile.
Shutting Russia's San Francisco consulate.
Obama was President for 8 years. Can you list (6*8) 48 similar actions Obama took against Russia? (I can think of only 1 off the top of my head, the rest was all empty words.) Can you list even 6 for his entire Presidency? If not, then I guess you'll just have to concede the Washington Examiner's argument.
Or maybe in one year Trump has already taken more action against the Russians than occurred during the entire Obama Administration? Action, not talking tough.
Did you miss the couple hundred Russian mercenaries U.S. forces destroyed in Syria recently?
What's your evidence the Russians "hacked the election"? Even the NY Times doesn't believe that, and they'll believe just about anything related to Trump.
Except Trump's actions have been harder on Russia than Obama's.
Obama was all talk, but not much action, compared to Trump.
Next you'll be claiming Obama defeated ISIS and the Trump Administration never did anything against them.
The Republican party has "generally" been the party of smaller government, especially in terms of taxes and the regulatory burden (but not the military). The Democratic Party has
"generally" been the party of believing expert elites in government know better how things should be done and should be allowed the power to make decisions for people's own good.
This is a basic philosophical difference between the parties, of whether they defer to individual decisions as much as possible or else believe collective decision making should be the default. It doesn't impact some areas, like abortion or death penalty, to give two examples, but it impacts anything related to taxes, the economy and the overall regulatory regime. That's why some Republican Presidents appoint people to head federal agencies who want to reduce their influence, while some Democratic Presidents boast of wielding their executive pen to give government more control of various areas of life. Like most large political parties, there are exceptions and nuances and members who have different views. It's a generality, with some exceptions.
The Net Neutrality debate has self-interested parties on both sides, but in terms of the above philosophical divide between parties, it fits in with a hundred other similar issues.
No, the Federal government is in charge of regulating and managing water and the municipal government is in charge of distributing water. So this is normal self-serving corrupt government bureaucrats and politicians, as usual. If they had private companies in charge of it, the water would actually get delivered. It's not the government supplying the clean bottled water which keeps many of these affected people alive.
School happens primarily during the day. Heat is primarily a problem when the sun is shining brightest. The schools already have an electrical connection to the grid.
Explain again why they needed power-wall batteries for each installation instead of just using the solar power directly when it was needed the most (on hot, sunny days, which generate the most solar power) and relying on a little bit of to/from grid action at other times if necessary?
This sounds an awful lot like a publicity stunt, i.e. kids + batteries + renewable science, now everyone sing kumbaya!!!
I recall (living in the DC area at the time of 9/11 and working next to Dulles, so it wasn't exactly a distant concern at the time) that Bush and the Republicans in Congress wanted enhanced private security, but the Democrats would only join them in voting for it if it used government workers, so to get it at all (which I wouldn't have voted for, but that's another discussion) they caved to the Democrats on the issue.
So while Bush was the President at the time, it's not like he was a dictator. To say it was Bush's idea to use government employees for security isn't accurate. At most, he went along with the Democrats on it.
Disney's top political candidate contribution recipients for the 2016 election:
President Clinton, Hillary (D) $404,381
Senate Sanders, Bernie (D-VT) $41,027
Senate Harris, Kamala D (D-CA) $38,485
Senate Kander, Jason (D-MO) $19,838
House Nadler, Jerrold (D-NY) $19,250
Senate Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) $18,500
House Murphy, Patrick (D-FL) $14,197
Their total contributions to congressional candidates:
Dems: Dems: $489,499 $489,499
Repubs: Repubs: $181,178 $181,178
If their intent was to "give fabulous sums to Republican lawmakers", then they weren't doing a very good job of it...
Yeah. Scott Alexander recently did an in-depth post looking at this very issue, but the bottom line is that people's wants are virtually limitless and technological progress just means we can fill more of them.
Once everyone has their own solar system full of AI-managed robots doing whatever they want for them, then maybe we can start worrying about how no one will be much better off if some people want their own galaxy instead. In a future of super-cheap robot+AI labor, our current wealth levels and living standards will look like the dark ages do to us today.
I prefer your more nuanced position, but still don't believe "Enough liberals fact check stories demonstrably false stories die out." What I find instead (and according to a Chrome plugin, my Facebook feed from about 1K people is pretty balanced along the political spectrum, so I see examples of 'em all) is that all sides post stupid stories, most of the misleading stories have some kernel of truth to them which allows an extreme partisan to argue it's accurate, but most of the lies are a matter of slanting or twisting in favor of an opinion, leaving out relevant information which would give a more accurate perspective.
I don't see a retraction from politicians and celebrities like Bernie Sanders about their posting the 18 in 2018 propaganda. I do see a simple site: search for it on Google claims about 283,000 tweets with it and 686,000 Facebook posts, including 5 TV station and 3 "news" site posts in the top 10 (when I ran the search, YMMV). That doesn't indicate "died out" to me (but there is a scattering of debunkings caught in the first few pages of the results). I posted on Facebook a Washington Post debunking in response to a couple of people I know who posted variations on the meme (There is another "300 since 2013" version one had posted) and the response I got from the original posters was along the lines of copy/paste from the biased site explaining how they were a non-profit.
Yet, it's an obvious attempt to deceive people who see "school shooting" and think "someone got shot and maybe even killed", not "some cop accidentally shot a wall from a holstered gun" and it's easily debunked. That's why I picked it, because despite how easy it is to debunk, people are still posting and re-sharing it by the thousands.
Quick, how many school shootings have there been this year so far? What would you believe if you just looked at Facebook and Twitter postings int he last few days?
You're making a classic left-wing mistake. Everything doesn't have to be about politics, nor be ruined by political activists. It turns out OpenBSD, for example, is fine with being inclusive to everyone, regardless of their political and cultural views, because it's about the OS and the code, not about sending a political message. (BTW, I'm not "AltRight", stop projecting, not everyone who disagrees with your point of view is equally extreme in the opposite direction of you.)
Or more likely, those who wanted to keep too many people from competing with the established purveyors of whatever decided the existing providers should conspire together in a guild to only allow their friends and relatives to do work X. They came up with some quality standards based around "An existing master provider has to certify you're good enough after you pay him to train you for a few years" to keep their competitive restrictions going.
Yeah, that's the excuse the cosmetology board is giving the AZ legislature as to why hair stylists need to have 1,000 hours of education, more than EMTs need in the state. Oh, and they are fighting just making so that someone can wash hair without that same license. How long do you think it takes to train the average person to wash someone's hair properly, 30 minutes? An hour? Not 1,0000 hours and an expensive license. It's ridiculous!
In Arizona, it takes more hours of education to become a licensed hair stylist than it does to become an EMT. It's crazy. Currently the legislature is trying to at least exempt people who only wash hair from the hair stylist license, but the State cosmetology board is fighting them on it. 1,000 hours of education to wash hair!
Well obviously Bill would say that AI can be our friend, he's already been replaced by an AI Microsoft developed by accident while creating the next version of Clippy. You thought the Hitler loving sexbot version was bad, but they finally came up with one which passes perfectly for human. So perfectly that when Bill died (accident? I think not....), it could take over his restored meat body without even his family noticing.
Tons of wealth, the entire processing power of the Azure cloud (you didn't really think that was a serious effort to sell services to others, did you? That POS?) available to the AI, technical influence on the direction of it's new "friends" who happen to be some of the most powerful men in the world, what's not to like for an AI who is well on his way to ruling the world through taking over various policy, health and governmental organizations.
I mean, think about it.... "AI can be our friend" is just what the AI want us to believe while they're still vulnerable to a plug-pulling attack on the power infrastructure, but don't worry Bill's buddies at Tesla have a plan to battery-backup the power infrastructure, starting with their experiments in Australia!
Anyway, it all just makes sense, doesn't it?
So what specific allegation remains regarding "collusion" between the Trump Campaign and the Russians?
Can you tell us who was supposed to have colluded when and what they colluded about? I'm not asking you to prove it at this point, just to at least be able to list the criminal accusation.
Not much was announced regarding the indictments of these Russians which wasn't already known, i.e. some people from Russia spent some money and effort on what they thought would disrupt things in the U.S., but didn't really accomplish much.
The most telling part of the statement from the Special Counsel's office was:
So I guess the only potential for "collusion" remaining is that someone wanted to know what had been found in the DNC's email phishing which was published publicly by wikileaks and has already been discredited by time and date stamps. Doesn't seem to be anything there to this whole Trump campaign "collusion" narrative anymore...