I thought the amount of work to be done in an economy will expand or contract depending on the demand for goods and services.
The demand for labor is not fixed, and neither is the demand for goods and services. As production costs fall, goods and services decrease in cost and increase in quality. This causes the demand to rise.
Here is a simple test from an introductory business class: You have a factory that produces 100 TVs per day, with 10 workers. Then you invent a machine that doubles the productivity of each worker. So you fire half your workers. True or false? If you answered true, you are an idiot, and you should never even consider going into business. Your workers are now worth twice as much, so you want more of them. You should hire 40 more workers, and make a thousand TVs per day, and then expand production to ten thousand, or a million or whatever maximizes your profit.
The correct answer is it depends. If the demand is still only 100 tvs per day to be sold and you now can produce that many with half the workers, then yes, you fire half the workers. OTOH, if the demand for the tvs was greater than the amount you could previously produce then you produce more and possibly even hirer additional workers if the demand is great enough. But ultimately the correct answer is it depends.
Now the question to be answered is what drives demand, is it low prices or is it the ability for the consumer to purchase in the first place? Obviously it is both, but low prices can only go so far. Ultimately the more purchasing power the consumer has the more they will be able to consume and supply will increase to fill that demand. To increase that supply, in the real world, companies will need to hire additional labor. That has the effect of adding even more purchasing power increasing more demand. It only becomes a problem when capacity to produce more is reached and then inflation sets in and as prices rise, demand drops and employement drops do to decrease supply needs causing further reductions in demand. Then when the prices reach a certain point, purchases start again and the process continues.
For a healthy economy, there needs to be a healthy consumer class, which is the middle class. That is where the majority of purchasing occurs. When the middle class is burdened, it's ability to purchase declines and demand goes down as does jobs and there is a spiral to the bottom. During the 90s as the middle class was being dismantled, demand was maintained by borrowing to support purchasing. But just like the government, that only works in the short term and eventually the debt payments take a significant amount of the purchasing power away causing the spiral downward.
Reagan's supply side economics was supposed to change all of that. Lower the cost to the businesses and they would lower prices and people would buy more. But that didn't happen. Prices didn't go down. Instead dividends and corporate bonuses went up and prices and consumer demand stayed the same. Since most of the financial benefits of supply side economics didn't go to the middle class, it never stimulated the economy, at least not as intended. Since it went to the wealthy, who tend to invest their funds instead of purchase, it cause numerous bubbles in stocks, housing, stocks again, etc. But everytime one of those bubbles burst, the ensuing recession impacted the middle class. Many economist today hold that the US doesn't have enough purchasing power left in the middle class to get out of the recession and high unemployment. Too much money has been transferred upward away from the middle class where it doesn't help the economy, at least not in significant ways. And, until that changes, jobs won't come back.
Even drifting aimlessly in space, it would eventually get caught by the gravity of another object... and would still end up inside of a star.
Nonetheless, rendering this rock a lifeless ice-cube hovering near temperature of only a couple of kelvin pretty much counts as "being destroyed" too.
There is no guarantee it would be caught in the gravity well of another object. It would also depend on whether or not the universe is forever expanding or not. And while from our perspective a lifeless ice-cube version of the earth might be considered being destroyed doesn't actually mean it is destroyed.
While I'm not sure if correlation implies causation, it's certainly true that executive salaries are absurd. There is no job out there that's worth millions of dollars a year.
There is a good book, well, some say so, others not, called Aftershock by Robert Reich that discusses among other things exactly how far out of whack executive pay has become and the problems it causes. More importantly it discusses the plight of the middle class and the ramifications on the economy.
When that day comes, in whomever's lifetime, when nobody has to work anymore, where will people get food from? Where will people get energy from? Where will people get entertainment from?
If/when that day comes, we will be getting food from robot farmers (other than a handful of human artisans whose idea of play is gardening), our energy from orbital photovoltaic stations run by robots, and we will entertain each other via our play. (I'd love to try to spend more time entertaining you with music, poetry, and a novel I've got an idea for, but I have to hack e-commerce software to pay the bills.)
Oh, you mean in the future when we have a two tier system where the top 1% don't have to work but the rest of us have menial jobs
Well, that's another vision of the future. That one, there's a cure for. that, though it does have messy side-effects.
Exactly how will you pay for that food from the robot farmers and that energy from the orbital photovoltaic stations? Or is there somepoint in the future when corporations become altruistic and do everything for the common good and there is no need to pay for anything (which would be good, since we won't be working to earn the pay in the first place).
Are you that critical to the universe that it will suffer if nihilistic philosophers are no longer here?
Seriously, guy, your argument works just as well for good old Earthbound genocide. If there were people left in Europe, the Jews would not be a loss at all - never saw a Nazi propagandist make that argument. Scour China with a death ray? No problem; there's lots of people left in India, so the Chinese were no loss.
And, yes, I'm going to die, odds are I'll do it in less than thirty years. That doesn't mean shooting me now is OK.
I think you and I are saying two different things. Just because we matter shit in the big scheme of things like the universe, doesn't mean there isn't value to us for the here and now. I only question the wisdom in expending enormous resources to preserve what mankind had accomplished when there won't be anybody to benefit from the effort. It's the ultimate form of narcissism that we are so important that we must leave our record for whomever might be out there know what great things we did.
That has nothing to do with killing people now, because the don't matter. People do matter. But as far as the universe is concern, we don't matter any more than anything else, particularly since the universe, to the best of our knowledge isn't sentient.
....except the example with Bob being allergic to peanut butter because Bob is allergic to peanut butter every day. How about you make it illegal for me to bring a peanut butter sandwich on days that Bob wears a white tie? How am I to know Bob will be wearing a white tie today when I pack my lunch? Bob needs to stay away from my peanut butter sandwich if he doesn't want a stain on his white tie. Just as in TFA, how am I to know Bob is driving his car when I press send? Seems the onus is on Bob to not dick around with his phone when it's not safe. Seems to me that it's safer to send someone a text which they can answer at their leisure than to call them and make them be distracted while talking to me. Sheesh.... yet another impossible to enforce law. Soon, we'll have enough laws everyone will be a criminal.
As the judge said, the the texter knew the guy was driving. So if you don't know he is driving it's not an issue, but if you are aware, then it is. How you know doesn't matter, that you know does. Next, they aren't talking about a single text or even two, but the continual texting back and forth. As an example you text Mary and she texts back that she can't text because she's on the highway. You now know she's driving if you continue to text and it distracts her and there is an accident because of it, why shouldn't you be accountable for your actions? Finally, you think it won't be enforceable, and yet, they are only talking about enforcing it when it contributes to an accident, so since they know there is an accident, it is likely to be enforced, particularly if there is an investigation as to the cause of the accident.
What I find interesting is how many people in slashdot are incensed by the notion they could be in trouble for continuously texting somebody while they are driving. Are we on slashdot so ignorant of the risks to the person driving that arise from texting and driving that we actually feel we must defend the practice or is it that we just don't like being told what to do or not to do?
Sun. 8 billion more years. Red giant. Burns Earth to a crisp. Possibly fully engulfs it. Sorry, its 100%. The Earth is toast (pun intended).
To be technical, unless it fully engulfs it, even with the atmosphere burned away and the surface molten, the planet is still here. Put that is only one possible outcome, although it is by far the most likely.
Those are awful court decision. Replace woman taking off their blouse with signage, advertisements, police sirens, speed limit signs, noisy kids in the car, radio, etc and there are literally hundreds of possible distractions to a driver. If the driver does not take responsibility for his/her own actions then they shouldn't be driving. Period.
When you get behind the wheel of a car, you take responsibility for driving yourself, those in your vehicle and other drivers around you, and should perform and pay attention to the best of your ability as the situation demands. Anything else is a failing on your own part and no one else's.
While I agree with part of what you are saying, signage, advertisements, etc. don't exhibit intent nor the ability to reason. As for the other distractions you list, yes, there are hundreds of distractions, but again, a fussy child in the back seat, is not the same as some woman flashing people down the highway. Is it conceivable to reasonable human being that such an action might distract a driver enough that an accident could ensue? If a jury thinks yes, then the woman has contributed to the cause of the accident. Often in these cases, charges are reduced against the driver because the distraction was so out of the ordinary from what one would expect while driving.
You are correct that when we drive, we need to be responsible. But, at some point if others are deliberately trying to distract you and there is an accident that you are at fault for and that distraction was germane to the accident, they share in the guilt. Do they not?
It's a whole different situation. If I bring a peanut butter sandwich to work, then I'm directly responsible for putting my colleague in danger. However, if I'm sending a text message to someone I know is driving, then my sending that text message is in no way directly responsible for whatever accident may happen due to the driver picking up the phone and reading the text message. The big difference is that the driver still has a choice here. It's the driver that makes the choice to check the text message. He isn't forced to. Your allergic colleague doesn't have the choice of being exposed to peanut butter or not (assuming this is a real, terrible case of peanut butter allergy) and has no real way of avoiding the consequences.
I understand what you are saying, however, the judge in the case would seem to differ and in a court, neither my nor your opinion count. Let's break the texting thing down to its core issue. If somebody is driving and while they are driving you do something that you knowingly will distract them and because of that distraction they are involved in an accident, are you liable? In a nutshell, that is what is the issue, is it not?
1. Go to new world 2. Imprison the indigenous population. 3. Suck out as many natural resources as you can until the new world forms a government and kicks you out.
I don't see why the moon should be any different. The first man on the moon put up an American flag so I suppose that crater can be somewhat considered property of the USA. The moon is just an extension of our activities over the last 300 years.
Remember how it was called a space race? There's actually a prize to be had here for coming first.
Because it never really worked that way. What happened is somebody came to a new place, usually from Europe. Imprisoned the indigenous population or outright killed them or sold them as slaves (which isn't a problem with the moon). Exploited the natural resources until somebody with bigger guns came and kicked them out, etc. etc.
One would hope over the last millennia or so, that the human race had evolved somewhat and could do things without causing so much pain and suffering and collateral damage. Maybe until we do, the moon should be off limits.
Stupid argument is stupid, and it was stupid the last 2304721379 times it was used. Mankind cares if mankind dies on the vine. You are part of mankind. If you don't care about mankind, get the fuck out of the way and let people who do assert their opinions.
I care if I die, but by the time mankind dies, you and I will long be dust. Do you really waste your time worrying about the the things in this universe that you ultimately have no control over? What a waste of time and energy.
You are probably correct. Technology does create more jobs than it destroys. The problem is it destroys good paying middle class jobs and creates a lot of minimum wage jobs. That's not a very good tradeoff.
Every wonder why there is more and more un/underemployment? It's because we can do more with less.
You are spouting the Lump of Labor Fallacy. It is not true that there is a certain amount of "work" to be done in an economy. The truth is that the amount of work will expand or contract depending on the resources and opportunities available.
I thought the amount of work to be done in an economy will expand or contract depending on the demand for goods and services. The biggest consumer of goods and services in a free society is the middle class, however, in the US, the middle class has been decimated and actually shrunk. Without the demand for more goods and services, those goods and services won't be provided, hence no jobs. In the past, governments could step in to jump start the economy by temporarily increasing demand. But it can't sustain it indefinitely because the very funds used to increase demand are taken from the same middle class reducing their ability to demand goods and services.
If you want more jobs and a better economy, you need to work on giving relief to the middle class.
Every wonder why there is more and more un/underemployment? It's because we can do more with less. By eliminating rote jobs we gain efficiency. The utopian ideal envisioned in the 60s is that we would all be working 10-15 hour work weeks by the 90s through automation and computer technology making things more efficient.
What they completely missed is that a human will trade roughly 2000 hours per year of their life to make enough money for food and shelter. Computers and robots don't really matter, it's just that each human can produce more stuff for those 2000 hours. There is no need to let them work less or pay them any more. You just need fewer of them.
The thing is, we're still making humans at an accelerating rate. That's great for everyone who sell things to those people, as it drives demand to make more stuff. It's bad for all the extra people who - quite frankly - are not in a position to excel at a job better than a computer, robot, or other machine. For a creature who evolves over a time span of tens of millennia, this kind of change in a couple of decades (two centuries if you want to count the industrial revolution), this poses quite a challenge.
H1B means nothing except a small eddy in the current of change which will see more and more humans become obsolete.
I agree, to a point, The number of jobs may decrease because we have become more efficient, however, so have the number of workers as we have gone from an average of 4 children per family to 2.1. It's not just efficiency that is the problem, the other change since the 1960s is that we have exported a huge portion of our factory jobs overseas, primarily to China.
Interestingly, demographers estimate by 2040, those jobs will return. China's birthrate is so low that they cannot sustain the growth of their own production, let alone our needs and other countries. For various reasons, the one country that has the infrastructure needed and the projected workforce is the US. Time will tell that in a generation or two those jobs that return are of the quality where one can support a family or whether the US will become the bastion of the new sweatshop.
Yes in the short term. Less truck drivers, less cab drivers...
No in the long term.
The real thing hurting the job pool is the dilution by H1-B.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The real thing hurting the job pool has nothing to do with H1-B. That might impact certain jobs, particularly the IT sector, but doesn't explain the high unemployment. The real thing hurting the job pool is that over the past 40 years we have pretty much decimated the middle class and it is the middle class that controls the economy. Without a strong middle class, to keep the economy going, we have relied on government spending.
What happened to the middle class? It's easy, since the 1970s there has been a massive shift of wealth concentrated at the top. What happened to the middle class? We decided unions were bad and have done whatever we can to get rid of them. What happened to the middle class? We outsourced all of their jobs so our corporations could pay their executives more and more and pay out more dividends, thus shifting wealth upward (see the first what happended).
It's not technology that has killed jobs, it's plain old greed.
Most people? Show some numbers, I highly doubt most people are employed in the trucking industry.
Well, Walmart is the largest private sector employer in the US and most of their workers are not in the stores but in product distribution. Get food or whatever from point a to point b involves a lot more than just truckers.
All technology destroys jobs. We invent things to save time and effort. I can't wait until we've saved so much time and effort that I don't have to work anymore...Not in my lifetime, unfortunately.
When that day comes, in whomever's lifetime, when nobody has to work anymore, where will people get food from? Where will people get energy from? Where will people get entertainment from? Oh, you mean in the future when we have a two tier system where the top 1% don't have to work, but the rest of us have menial jobs because technology has replaced all of the formerly middle class jobs that one could raise a family on. We had that system in the middle ages. It was called feudalism. Before too long in the West, we will most likely return to it as long as we keep the proletariat distracted long enough.
I don't employ any people in my car so you must mean the chauffeurs in the yellow cars who speak only Pashto or Urdu?
Or if you weren't so swarmy and would read more carefully you would see they were talking about the technology itself, not the cars. The implication being that what other jobs will be lost to computers that can rapidly adapt to changing situations that until now we thought required human beings?
Not really. In the 60s two countries vied to be the first to land a man on the moon.
No, two countries vied to gain military dominance through control of the ultimate high ground. The upstart won and the old power lost. Landing a man on the moon was just one part of that process.
And that distinction would alter the argument, how?
Your argument doesn't work because the grocery store has a known owner. Also, the issue is natural resources, not personal property. A similar example is oil fields. Right now, whichever country they are located in they belong to that country, that's not disputed. Disputes occur when they are found in international waters off the coasts of other countries. Then we rely on international treaties to determine not ownership but rights. By definition they aren't owned because they aren't in any country's territory. Likewise with the moon. It isn't in any country's territory so it's resources belong to everyone. At least if we base it on existing treaties.
So when country X goes to the moon and mines the helium, are they going to come back and distribute it to all of the world's inhabitants or does it just belong to country X? I'm curious, because before mining the moon began, it would seem that we would need to know who owns the moon? Does it belong to the first one who gets there? Does it belong equally to all people? Or will it belong to some mining company? Because if you get that first basic question wrong then potentionally everything after that becomes immoral because it infringes not on the privelige of some inaimate lifeless celestial body, but real people, here on earth. And if it is immoral, then technically one could consider it evil (although that is a strong word).
It's an interesting question. I imagine the answer is something along the lines of "If you don't like the fact that we aren't sharing, then get you own asses up here and grab some for yourself, or, alternately, get your own asses up here and try to stop us".
That pretty much sums it up. But when that question has played out in the past over terrestrial resources, it usually has resulted in armed conflict to settle it.
If all that's left of this rock is a charred ball of ash held together by gravity,. it's destroyed. And yes, there is a 100% chance of that.
That is only one possible outcome, although it is the most probable. There are also models that show events where the earth is knocked out of its orbit and drifts aimlessly in space. Those are significantly less probable. Regardless, the planet known as earth will survive in most scenarios. The inhabitants of earth won't, though.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the amount of work to be done in an economy will expand or contract depending on the demand for goods and services.
The demand for labor is not fixed, and neither is the demand for goods and services. As production costs fall, goods and services decrease in cost and increase in quality. This causes the demand to rise.
Here is a simple test from an introductory business class: You have a factory that produces 100 TVs per day, with 10 workers. Then you invent a machine that doubles the productivity of each worker. So you fire half your workers. True or false? If you answered true, you are an idiot, and you should never even consider going into business. Your workers are now worth twice as much, so you want more of them. You should hire 40 more workers, and make a thousand TVs per day, and then expand production to ten thousand, or a million or whatever maximizes your profit.
The correct answer is it depends. If the demand is still only 100 tvs per day to be sold and you now can produce that many with half the workers, then yes, you fire half the workers. OTOH, if the demand for the tvs was greater than the amount you could previously produce then you produce more and possibly even hirer additional workers if the demand is great enough. But ultimately the correct answer is it depends.
Now the question to be answered is what drives demand, is it low prices or is it the ability for the consumer to purchase in the first place? Obviously it is both, but low prices can only go so far. Ultimately the more purchasing power the consumer has the more they will be able to consume and supply will increase to fill that demand. To increase that supply, in the real world, companies will need to hire additional labor. That has the effect of adding even more purchasing power increasing more demand. It only becomes a problem when capacity to produce more is reached and then inflation sets in and as prices rise, demand drops and employement drops do to decrease supply needs causing further reductions in demand. Then when the prices reach a certain point, purchases start again and the process continues.
For a healthy economy, there needs to be a healthy consumer class, which is the middle class. That is where the majority of purchasing occurs. When the middle class is burdened, it's ability to purchase declines and demand goes down as does jobs and there is a spiral to the bottom. During the 90s as the middle class was being dismantled, demand was maintained by borrowing to support purchasing. But just like the government, that only works in the short term and eventually the debt payments take a significant amount of the purchasing power away causing the spiral downward.
Reagan's supply side economics was supposed to change all of that. Lower the cost to the businesses and they would lower prices and people would buy more. But that didn't happen. Prices didn't go down. Instead dividends and corporate bonuses went up and prices and consumer demand stayed the same. Since most of the financial benefits of supply side economics didn't go to the middle class, it never stimulated the economy, at least not as intended. Since it went to the wealthy, who tend to invest their funds instead of purchase, it cause numerous bubbles in stocks, housing, stocks again, etc. But everytime one of those bubbles burst, the ensuing recession impacted the middle class. Many economist today hold that the US doesn't have enough purchasing power left in the middle class to get out of the recession and high unemployment. Too much money has been transferred upward away from the middle class where it doesn't help the economy, at least not in significant ways. And, until that changes, jobs won't come back.
Even drifting aimlessly in space, it would eventually get caught by the gravity of another object... and would still end up inside of a star.
Nonetheless, rendering this rock a lifeless ice-cube hovering near temperature of only a couple of kelvin pretty much counts as "being destroyed" too.
There is no guarantee it would be caught in the gravity well of another object. It would also depend on whether or not the universe is forever expanding or not. And while from our perspective a lifeless ice-cube version of the earth might be considered being destroyed doesn't actually mean it is destroyed.
Bzzzzrrrtt. The JATO rocket car is an urban legend.
Yes and no. The darwin award version is, but even mythbusters made one, so technically there are JATO rocket cars.
While I'm not sure if correlation implies causation, it's certainly true that executive salaries are absurd. There is no job out there that's worth millions of dollars a year.
There is a good book, well, some say so, others not, called Aftershock by Robert Reich that discusses among other things exactly how far out of whack executive pay has become and the problems it causes. More importantly it discusses the plight of the middle class and the ramifications on the economy.
If/when that day comes, we will be getting food from robot farmers (other than a handful of human artisans whose idea of play is gardening), our energy from orbital photovoltaic stations run by robots, and we will entertain each other via our play. (I'd love to try to spend more time entertaining you with music, poetry, and a novel I've got an idea for, but I have to hack e-commerce software to pay the bills.)
Well, that's another vision of the future. That one, there's a cure for. that, though it does have messy side-effects.
Exactly how will you pay for that food from the robot farmers and that energy from the orbital photovoltaic stations? Or is there somepoint in the future when corporations become altruistic and do everything for the common good and there is no need to pay for anything (which would be good, since we won't be working to earn the pay in the first place).
Are you that critical to the universe that it will suffer if nihilistic philosophers are no longer here?
Seriously, guy, your argument works just as well for good old Earthbound genocide. If there were people left in Europe, the Jews would not be a loss at all - never saw a Nazi propagandist make that argument. Scour China with a death ray? No problem; there's lots of people left in India, so the Chinese were no loss.
And, yes, I'm going to die, odds are I'll do it in less than thirty years. That doesn't mean shooting me now is OK.
I think you and I are saying two different things. Just because we matter shit in the big scheme of things like the universe, doesn't mean there isn't value to us for the here and now. I only question the wisdom in expending enormous resources to preserve what mankind had accomplished when there won't be anybody to benefit from the effort. It's the ultimate form of narcissism that we are so important that we must leave our record for whomever might be out there know what great things we did.
That has nothing to do with killing people now, because the don't matter. People do matter. But as far as the universe is concern, we don't matter any more than anything else, particularly since the universe, to the best of our knowledge isn't sentient.
Here is a clue:
When people say 'flying car' they are talking about this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24bRtzwK4rY (warning horrible music)
I was thinking more of this http://damp-dry.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/cheap-rocket-car.jpg
But in line with your post, I'm more of a traditionalist, so I would have gone with
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyinD6ZDqeg
....except the example with Bob being allergic to peanut butter because Bob is allergic to peanut butter every day. How about you make it illegal for me to bring a peanut butter sandwich on days that Bob wears a white tie? How am I to know Bob will be wearing a white tie today when I pack my lunch? Bob needs to stay away from my peanut butter sandwich if he doesn't want a stain on his white tie. Just as in TFA, how am I to know Bob is driving his car when I press send? Seems the onus is on Bob to not dick around with his phone when it's not safe. Seems to me that it's safer to send someone a text which they can answer at their leisure than to call them and make them be distracted while talking to me. Sheesh.... yet another impossible to enforce law. Soon, we'll have enough laws everyone will be a criminal.
As the judge said, the the texter knew the guy was driving. So if you don't know he is driving it's not an issue, but if you are aware, then it is. How you know doesn't matter, that you know does. Next, they aren't talking about a single text or even two, but the continual texting back and forth. As an example you text Mary and she texts back that she can't text because she's on the highway. You now know she's driving if you continue to text and it distracts her and there is an accident because of it, why shouldn't you be accountable for your actions? Finally, you think it won't be enforceable, and yet, they are only talking about enforcing it when it contributes to an accident, so since they know there is an accident, it is likely to be enforced, particularly if there is an investigation as to the cause of the accident.
What I find interesting is how many people in slashdot are incensed by the notion they could be in trouble for continuously texting somebody while they are driving. Are we on slashdot so ignorant of the risks to the person driving that arise from texting and driving that we actually feel we must defend the practice or is it that we just don't like being told what to do or not to do?
Sun. 8 billion more years. Red giant. Burns Earth to a crisp. Possibly fully engulfs it. Sorry, its 100%. The Earth is toast (pun intended).
To be technical, unless it fully engulfs it, even with the atmosphere burned away and the surface molten, the planet is still here. Put that is only one possible outcome, although it is by far the most likely.
Those are awful court decision. Replace woman taking off their blouse with signage, advertisements, police sirens, speed limit signs, noisy kids in the car, radio, etc and there are literally hundreds of possible distractions to a driver. If the driver does not take responsibility for his/her own actions then they shouldn't be driving. Period.
When you get behind the wheel of a car, you take responsibility for driving yourself, those in your vehicle and other drivers around you, and should perform and pay attention to the best of your ability as the situation demands. Anything else is a failing on your own part and no one else's.
While I agree with part of what you are saying, signage, advertisements, etc. don't exhibit intent nor the ability to reason. As for the other distractions you list, yes, there are hundreds of distractions, but again, a fussy child in the back seat, is not the same as some woman flashing people down the highway. Is it conceivable to reasonable human being that such an action might distract a driver enough that an accident could ensue? If a jury thinks yes, then the woman has contributed to the cause of the accident. Often in these cases, charges are reduced against the driver because the distraction was so out of the ordinary from what one would expect while driving.
You are correct that when we drive, we need to be responsible. But, at some point if others are deliberately trying to distract you and there is an accident that you are at fault for and that distraction was germane to the accident, they share in the guilt. Do they not?
It's a whole different situation. If I bring a peanut butter sandwich to work, then I'm directly responsible for putting my colleague in danger. However, if I'm sending a text message to someone I know is driving, then my sending that text message is in no way directly responsible for whatever accident may happen due to the driver picking up the phone and reading the text message. The big difference is that the driver still has a choice here. It's the driver that makes the choice to check the text message. He isn't forced to. Your allergic colleague doesn't have the choice of being exposed to peanut butter or not (assuming this is a real, terrible case of peanut butter allergy) and has no real way of avoiding the consequences.
I understand what you are saying, however, the judge in the case would seem to differ and in a court, neither my nor your opinion count. Let's break the texting thing down to its core issue. If somebody is driving and while they are driving you do something that you knowingly will distract them and because of that distraction they are involved in an accident, are you liable? In a nutshell, that is what is the issue, is it not?
Ownership? Why not treat it the way we used to?
1. Go to new world
2. Imprison the indigenous population.
3. Suck out as many natural resources as you can until the new world forms a government and kicks you out.
I don't see why the moon should be any different. The first man on the moon put up an American flag so I suppose that crater can be somewhat considered property of the USA. The moon is just an extension of our activities over the last 300 years.
Remember how it was called a space race? There's actually a prize to be had here for coming first.
Because it never really worked that way. What happened is somebody came to a new place, usually from Europe. Imprisoned the indigenous population or outright killed them or sold them as slaves (which isn't a problem with the moon). Exploited the natural resources until somebody with bigger guns came and kicked them out, etc. etc.
One would hope over the last millennia or so, that the human race had evolved somewhat and could do things without causing so much pain and suffering and collateral damage. Maybe until we do, the moon should be off limits.
And the problem if mankind dies on the vine?
Stupid argument is stupid, and it was stupid the last 2304721379 times it was used. Mankind cares if mankind dies on the vine. You are part of mankind. If you don't care about mankind, get the fuck out of the way and let people who do assert their opinions.
I care if I die, but by the time mankind dies, you and I will long be dust. Do you really waste your time worrying about the the things in this universe that you ultimately have no control over? What a waste of time and energy.
You are probably correct. Technology does create more jobs than it destroys. The problem is it destroys good paying middle class jobs and creates a lot of minimum wage jobs. That's not a very good tradeoff.
Every wonder why there is more and more un/underemployment? It's because we can do more with less.
You are spouting the Lump of Labor Fallacy. It is not true that there is a certain amount of "work" to be done in an economy. The truth is that the amount of work will expand or contract depending on the resources and opportunities available.
I thought the amount of work to be done in an economy will expand or contract depending on the demand for goods and services. The biggest consumer of goods and services in a free society is the middle class, however, in the US, the middle class has been decimated and actually shrunk. Without the demand for more goods and services, those goods and services won't be provided, hence no jobs. In the past, governments could step in to jump start the economy by temporarily increasing demand. But it can't sustain it indefinitely because the very funds used to increase demand are taken from the same middle class reducing their ability to demand goods and services.
If you want more jobs and a better economy, you need to work on giving relief to the middle class.
Ok, maybe that was harsh.
Every wonder why there is more and more un/underemployment? It's because we can do more with less. By eliminating rote jobs we gain efficiency. The utopian ideal envisioned in the 60s is that we would all be working 10-15 hour work weeks by the 90s through automation and computer technology making things more efficient.
What they completely missed is that a human will trade roughly 2000 hours per year of their life to make enough money for food and shelter. Computers and robots don't really matter, it's just that each human can produce more stuff for those 2000 hours. There is no need to let them work less or pay them any more. You just need fewer of them.
The thing is, we're still making humans at an accelerating rate. That's great for everyone who sell things to those people, as it drives demand to make more stuff. It's bad for all the extra people who - quite frankly - are not in a position to excel at a job better than a computer, robot, or other machine. For a creature who evolves over a time span of tens of millennia, this kind of change in a couple of decades (two centuries if you want to count the industrial revolution), this poses quite a challenge.
H1B means nothing except a small eddy in the current of change which will see more and more humans become obsolete.
I agree, to a point, The number of jobs may decrease because we have become more efficient, however, so have the number of workers as we have gone from an average of 4 children per family to 2.1. It's not just efficiency that is the problem, the other change since the 1960s is that we have exported a huge portion of our factory jobs overseas, primarily to China.
Interestingly, demographers estimate by 2040, those jobs will return. China's birthrate is so low that they cannot sustain the growth of their own production, let alone our needs and other countries. For various reasons, the one country that has the infrastructure needed and the projected workforce is the US. Time will tell that in a generation or two those jobs that return are of the quality where one can support a family or whether the US will become the bastion of the new sweatshop.
Yes in the short term. Less truck drivers, less cab drivers...
No in the long term.
The real thing hurting the job pool is the dilution by H1-B.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The real thing hurting the job pool has nothing to do with H1-B. That might impact certain jobs, particularly the IT sector, but doesn't explain the high unemployment. The real thing hurting the job pool is that over the past 40 years we have pretty much decimated the middle class and it is the middle class that controls the economy. Without a strong middle class, to keep the economy going, we have relied on government spending.
What happened to the middle class? It's easy, since the 1970s there has been a massive shift of wealth concentrated at the top. What happened to the middle class? We decided unions were bad and have done whatever we can to get rid of them. What happened to the middle class? We outsourced all of their jobs so our corporations could pay their executives more and more and pay out more dividends, thus shifting wealth upward (see the first what happended).
It's not technology that has killed jobs, it's plain old greed.
Most people?
Show some numbers, I highly doubt most people are employed in the trucking industry.
Well, Walmart is the largest private sector employer in the US and most of their workers are not in the stores but in product distribution. Get food or whatever from point a to point b involves a lot more than just truckers.
All technology destroys jobs. We invent things to save time and effort. I can't wait until we've saved so much time and effort that I don't have to work anymore...Not in my lifetime, unfortunately.
When that day comes, in whomever's lifetime, when nobody has to work anymore, where will people get food from? Where will people get energy from? Where will people get entertainment from? Oh, you mean in the future when we have a two tier system where the top 1% don't have to work, but the rest of us have menial jobs because technology has replaced all of the formerly middle class jobs that one could raise a family on. We had that system in the middle ages. It was called feudalism. Before too long in the West, we will most likely return to it as long as we keep the proletariat distracted long enough.
I don't employ any people in my car so you must mean the chauffeurs in the yellow cars who speak only Pashto or Urdu?
Or if you weren't so swarmy and would read more carefully you would see they were talking about the technology itself, not the cars. The implication being that what other jobs will be lost to computers that can rapidly adapt to changing situations that until now we thought required human beings?
Not really. In the 60s two countries vied to be the first to land a man on the moon.
No, two countries vied to gain military dominance through control of the ultimate high ground. The upstart won and the old power lost. Landing a man on the moon was just one part of that process.
And that distinction would alter the argument, how?
Your argument doesn't work because the grocery store has a known owner. Also, the issue is natural resources, not personal property. A similar example is oil fields. Right now, whichever country they are located in they belong to that country, that's not disputed. Disputes occur when they are found in international waters off the coasts of other countries. Then we rely on international treaties to determine not ownership but rights. By definition they aren't owned because they aren't in any country's territory. Likewise with the moon. It isn't in any country's territory so it's resources belong to everyone. At least if we base it on existing treaties.
So when country X goes to the moon and mines the helium, are they going to come back and distribute it to all of the world's inhabitants or does it just belong to country X? I'm curious, because before mining the moon began, it would seem that we would need to know who owns the moon? Does it belong to the first one who gets there? Does it belong equally to all people? Or will it belong to some mining company? Because if you get that first basic question wrong then potentionally everything after that becomes immoral because it infringes not on the privelige of some inaimate lifeless celestial body, but real people, here on earth. And if it is immoral, then technically one could consider it evil (although that is a strong word).
It's an interesting question. I imagine the answer is something along the lines of "If you don't like the fact that we aren't sharing, then get you own asses up here and grab some for yourself, or, alternately, get your own asses up here and try to stop us".
That pretty much sums it up. But when that question has played out in the past over terrestrial resources, it usually has resulted in armed conflict to settle it.
If all that's left of this rock is a charred ball of ash held together by gravity,. it's destroyed. And yes, there is a 100% chance of that.
That is only one possible outcome, although it is the most probable. There are also models that show events where the earth is knocked out of its orbit and drifts aimlessly in space. Those are significantly less probable. Regardless, the planet known as earth will survive in most scenarios. The inhabitants of earth won't, though.
"Always" is a strong word to use and speaks more of ideology than of reality.
Not always.
By definition, not always is not as strong as always. One might even say if always is strong then not always is not strong at all.