Greed is OK if funneled correctly and controlled. Greed is understandable and direct. In fact, simple greed works better than than altruism, as altruism is often just uncontrolled greed masquerading as goodness.
For example, who would you trust more: the guy who offers to mow your lawn for $20, or the guy who tells you he'll do it because "he just wants to help". Without knowing either person, you'd trust the $20 guy more. His motivation is obvious.
Keep in mind I said Controlled. Uncontrolled greed is a blight.
Get a little older and you'll see it too, unless you're one of those absurd "new=beautiful" idiots. Hell, My yahoo email account dates WAAAAAAY back, and I still use it as primary for many things.
If Verizon was some pie-in-the-sky commune, where we were all sharing bandwidth for the greater good and world peace, I'd agree with you. But they're not. They're a business. And they're advertising falsely.
Currently in California, many "clean air" vehicles get to use the carpool lane ( which I find idiotic). now if the state suddenly started saying "Well, you can only use them between 9 pm and 4 AM", I'd be against that as well.
So if that is true, then you advertise what you're willing to offer to everyone.
I like the idea of compulsory service, as long as it isn't only military. Allow anyone who doesn't want to shoot someone else to join a conservation corp-esque organization, or volunteer in inner cities, or any other number of things.
You can bet that if every time you bought some underwhelming/easily broken item, turned it over, and it said "Manufactured in Upper Madeupistan", we'd all be sitting around complaining about Madupistan stuff being garbage. Hell, if they were all made in Ohio it would be the same: Ohio would become synonymous with low quality. But they're not. They're made in China and say so. This has nothing to do with anyone hating China or non western manufacturing.
But follow this train of thought out. Assuming the original manufacturer only made decent quality items, and the knockoffs were low quality but cheaper: Eventually the original manufacturer goes out of business, and everyone associates this product with junk.
Amazon doesn't have barriers to entry compared to previously. They supply ease of entry. Think about like before Amazon: unless you had an enormous mail order catalog or brick and mortar store, nobody could ever see your products. Could a tiny Chinese counterfeiter have ever hoped to reach an audience then?
For instance, a waiter or a cashier. Those are pathetically low skilled jobs, but that makes up millions of people careers.
Please. Go do that. and be friendly and create an environment that makes people say " I like that place and will be coming back, they're so nice". It's a social skill job if done right. I bet you'd have a hard time with it.
They won't replace everyone, just maybe 100 million of you or so.
Fallacy: You write that as if it's beneath you to be one of the replaced. Here's a hint: You're probably one of them too.
It doesn't matter whose fault it is. If you let society devolve to a state where large numbers of people are unemployed, hungry, and angry, those with jobs will find their factories burned down and their heads on poles. That sort of thing, historically, is as old as the human race. It doesn't care that those people should have worked harder/smarter/faster.
Housing has gotten pricier, not cheaper. My parents bought their home in 1963 for 20K. Current market value, $450K. Inflation doesn't begin to cover that. And that's STANDARD for the area--suburb in California. http://www.bloomberg.com/view/...
This is a larger issue which requires a larger discussion, but essentially as we continually automate, eventually a point will be reached where most people aren't needed for work. It's fine and dandy to say "well, just educate yourself!", but not everyone is smart enough to do that. And you need to deal with those people. Because, left unchecked, if we end up with a lot of poor unemployed middle intelligence people with not enough food, bad things will happen. Also, if we end up with social distribution fixing the food part, but still have lots of people unemployed with too much time on their hands, bad things will happen.
I have no solution for this, but I can certainly see it coming.
Her choice in using the email server is a pretty fair indication of her way of reaching decisions. She was told by experts not to do it, and she pretty much said "meh, i don't care, Gonna do it anyway". Powell's situation, while not a server but just private email accounts, was different in that it occurred much earlier than hers. It's like comparing someone today not using a seat-belt versus someone in the fifties.
Here's a hint: Everyone is racist, to some degree. And sexist as well. But one team keeps shouting at the other team for being that way while denying it of themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
From the point of view of pretty much every former east german I've known ( admittedly, only three)
Greed is OK if funneled correctly and controlled. Greed is understandable and direct.
In fact, simple greed works better than than altruism, as altruism is often just uncontrolled greed masquerading as goodness.
For example, who would you trust more: the guy who offers to mow your lawn for $20, or the guy who tells you he'll do it because "he just wants to help".
Without knowing either person, you'd trust the $20 guy more. His motivation is obvious.
Keep in mind I said Controlled. Uncontrolled greed is a blight.
China hasn't been communist for , oh, forty years. They're a dictatorship pure and simple. A highly capitalist one at that.
Get a little older and you'll see it too, unless you're one of those absurd "new=beautiful" idiots.
Hell, My yahoo email account dates WAAAAAAY back, and I still use it as primary for many things.
If Verizon was some pie-in-the-sky commune, where we were all sharing bandwidth for the greater good and world peace, I'd agree with you.
But they're not. They're a business. And they're advertising falsely.
Currently in California, many "clean air" vehicles get to use the carpool lane ( which I find idiotic). now if the state suddenly started saying "Well, you can only use them between 9 pm and 4 AM", I'd be against that as well.
So if that is true, then you advertise what you're willing to offer to everyone.
it's possible that all are true, and it's just a general downhill spiral...
I'm guessing he speaks more languages than you, and it's a language issue.
I like the idea of compulsory service, as long as it isn't only military. Allow anyone who doesn't want to shoot someone else to join a conservation corp-esque organization, or volunteer in inner cities, or any other number of things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A fat fingered writer feels badly that he isn't great at building PCs, and whines about it.
Got it, thanks.
God. Just hand him some random key string, and when he complains that it doesn't work say "you're doing it wrong."
You can bet that if every time you bought some underwhelming/easily broken item, turned it over, and it said "Manufactured in Upper Madeupistan", we'd all be sitting around complaining about Madupistan stuff being garbage. Hell, if they were all made in Ohio it would be the same: Ohio would become synonymous with low quality.
But they're not. They're made in China and say so. This has nothing to do with anyone hating China or non western manufacturing.
But follow this train of thought out. Assuming the original manufacturer only made decent quality items, and the knockoffs were low quality but cheaper: Eventually the original manufacturer goes out of business, and everyone associates this product with junk.
Amazon doesn't have barriers to entry compared to previously. They supply ease of entry. Think about like before Amazon: unless you had an enormous mail order catalog or brick and mortar store, nobody could ever see your products. Could a tiny Chinese counterfeiter have ever hoped to reach an audience then?
For instance, a waiter or a cashier. Those are pathetically low skilled jobs, but that makes up millions of people careers.
Please. Go do that. and be friendly and create an environment that makes people say " I like that place and will be coming back, they're so nice". It's a social skill job if done right. I bet you'd have a hard time with it.
They won't replace everyone, just maybe 100 million of you or so.
Fallacy: You write that as if it's beneath you to be one of the replaced. Here's a hint: You're probably one of them too.
I'm more scared of anyone using the term "capitalist pig". I thought that went out with Rumble Seats.
It doesn't matter whose fault it is.
If you let society devolve to a state where large numbers of people are unemployed, hungry, and angry, those with jobs will find their factories burned down and their heads on poles.
That sort of thing, historically, is as old as the human race. It doesn't care that those people should have worked harder/smarter/faster.
Housing has gotten pricier, not cheaper. My parents bought their home in 1963 for 20K. Current market value, $450K. Inflation doesn't begin to cover that. And that's STANDARD for the area--suburb in California.
http://www.bloomberg.com/view/...
This is a larger issue which requires a larger discussion, but essentially as we continually automate, eventually a point will be reached where most people aren't needed for work. It's fine and dandy to say "well, just educate yourself!", but not everyone is smart enough to do that. And you need to deal with those people.
Because, left unchecked, if we end up with a lot of poor unemployed middle intelligence people with not enough food, bad things will happen.
Also, if we end up with social distribution fixing the food part, but still have lots of people unemployed with too much time on their hands, bad things will happen.
I have no solution for this, but I can certainly see it coming.
Dubya wasn't as dumb as everyone would like to imagine, but he was very good at appearing to be incredibly dense.
Straight outta Sun Tzu.
it's like Micro$oft. It stopped being funny about the third time you saw it.
Her choice in using the email server is a pretty fair indication of her way of reaching decisions. She was told by experts not to do it, and she pretty much said "meh, i don't care, Gonna do it anyway".
Powell's situation, while not a server but just private email accounts, was different in that it occurred much earlier than hers. It's like comparing someone today not using a seat-belt versus someone in the fifties.
IF you go far enough left and far enough right, the two circle around, meet, and become surprisingly similar.
Ah, yes, the racist noble savages argument.
I see you've been watching "Avatar" again.
Here's a hint: Everyone is racist, to some degree. And sexist as well. But one team keeps shouting at the other team for being that way while denying it of themselves.
But that guy wasn't a TRUE Scotsman, I mean African American...