There's so much entitled Valley logic in the business model at Uber that it's hideously disturbing,
There may be that, I'm not 100% sure. However, it is very hard for me not to see all these complaints about "rider safety" and such as nothing more than "protect the taxi companies!".
I've not heard of a single case of an Uber or Lyft ride going terribly wrong. Were there large numbers of cases of such they'd be out of business virtually overnight. If the taxi companies screw people over day after day you're going to do what about it? File a paper form that someone will promptly lose?
Although the world seems to focus on America, we must remember that aside from subsidized countries like Venezuela, Americans enjoy an average gas price that is much less than the global averages. That said, we must understand that the recent movement in crude prices is in direct correlation to the ongoing strategy that the United States has with choking off Russian monetary supplies. It's not a conspiracy theorist and as a pure market technician, which can be defined in my book The Market is not Random., the market foretold this sell off going all the way back to the swing sell in May...
Whenever one mentions that gas prices are so much higher elsewhere and that American's are lucky, one should also mention the why of gas prices being higher else where. It's almost always, if not always, entirely due to punitive taxation on fuel. According to the BBC filling up a 55 liter tank would currently cost about 68 pounds, of which 43 is bloody taxes. So, gas in the US isn't cheap. It just isn't taxed to death like in other parts of the world.
Google Wallet still has limited usefulness. NFC payments are still only supported on a tiny fraction of Android users, using a custom build of the wallet app not available in the Google play store. Only some phone distributors are given access to this custom build. My phone has android 4.4, NFC support, and Google wallet installed, but I can't do NFC payments. How do they expect to compete like that?
Nope, sorry. While you transition to a valid concern, the dismissal you lead with isn't quite right.
Firearm availability is one of the factors in these sorts of things. The kind of people who engage in emotionally driven mass shootings aren't the same kind of people who rise to any obstacle that impedes their plans. Barriers to firearm access(which isn't the same as ownership) would curtail these kinds of shootings.
Contains and absolutely requires the presumption that someone looking to get famous by killing large numbers of legislatively defenseless people and then promptly get on the news and have every facet of their miserable little lives examined for meaning they could never find themselves would somehow stop simply because they can't use a particular method. Your logic is that if we eliminate method A then they absolutely won't switch to B or that somehow B is better than A.
You want fewer of these incidents? Don't report on the shooters, don't glorify them, don't give them the fame and validation they crave and that ultimately drives these acts. Speak of the victims, sure. The shooter should be treated as a nameless pariah or if given a name at all it should be no more than name/age. No details, no examining their motivations, no wall to wall coverage of them. Having people in the school who can defend against such nutjobs and other threats would be good as well. Yet even that is simply mitigation of a phenomenon created almost entirely by what I've already put forth.
The underlying technologies of the SpaceCraftTwo are completely and woefully underdimensioned for actually reaching orbit. It's just not feasible to develop it into a craft that can do that. You need a completely different solution to do it.
And the Bell X1 was woefully underdimensioned and completely useless for commercial flight. SpaceShipTwo will never achieve the things that people seem to be implying it should nor is it intended to. It is intended to be a development platform for technologies and methods of manufacturing and business. SpaceShipWhatever on the other hand may be capable of these things and it will be thanks in part to SpaceShipTwo through whatever.
Because, you complete fucking genius, not everyone is 5' 2'' tall and of medium build. Why, if you are 6' tall, are you penalised with having to buy a more expensive ticket?
Because physics? Limited volume of space, all costs and profits must come from cargo (that's us) carried within that space. If some require significantly more room then logically it costs more to carry them and therefore it isn't completely unreasonable to charge them more. It's the same logic that's been applied to overweight people and which says larger hotel rooms cost more.
Money is speech when it is used to promote a political view.
No. Money just buys you a bigger louder megaphone.
The trouble is, with enough money, your megaphone can be so loud it can drown out everything else.
In many ways the issue here is not so much louder megaphones or anything but a lazy electorate that doesn't bother to do even basic research or acquire understanding of either the candidates or the issues at hand.
The loudest megaphone in the universe cannot actually compel the electorate to vote in any particular way. Stupid people following the crowds and paying the most attention to things that matter the least is the real reason why any of this matters at all.
As the man in the movie said, if you're looking for the responsible party you need only look in a mirror.
... so bascially you're saying that you want to live in a system where our politcians can be legally bribed. I don't think most people agree.
As others have said, you think that wasn't going on before? Bribery is still illegal and CU didn't change that. All it did is recognize that when I, or anyone, contribute money to a cause that is a form of political expression, i.e. speech.
You don't think Unions and other groups were doing basically the same thing before either under the table or through less obvious means? Personally, I'd rather all such activities be out in the open as simply banning them will do nothing but push them underground and into smoke filled rooms.
Money is speech when it is used to promote a political view.
It gives the wealthy disproportionate influence over governance. They have an established track record of setting up policies and institutions that are favorable to themselves and detrimental to society as a whole. That is not what free speech is for.
Only to the degree that regular people allow this to happen by apathy. Don't expect others or government to defend your views for you. That's never happened in history and there's no reason it should start now. If the wealthy have disproportionate influence over governance then it is because we gave it to them. The Bill Gates and others of the world can spread as much money as they like, but at the end of the day they get one vote and we get over 150 Million. Who really has the power here?
No, it isn't speech. It's used to provide you with a podium, but a podium is not speech, and has never been seen as such since the beginning of the US.
It's amusing that the Supreme Court has said on numerous occasions that the government has the right to regulate the means, location or time of speech (see: Anti-abortion protest laws, regulating where a mob can protest a convention, or better yet, limiting where someone can protest a speech by PRESIDENT BUSH) and yet you teatards have an issue with the Supreme Court regulating the MONEY used to make the speech. It's stupid.
Much as I said in a previous post, if you cannot make your point without using terms like 'teatards' then you really lose the debate right there. Further, your post contains a number of presumptions not the least of which being that I or those holding my views would somehow see the CU case as 'good' and would also see the gross failures of justice concerning some other SCOTUS rulings on the Free Speech question.
Speech is expression. If I don't own or control a TV network then realistically in this day and age one of the best ways I can express my beliefs is via the spending of money. Either on a company, or on or against a political candidate/position. I still maintain that the Left didn't get busted up about such things when it was "their" side doing it and only got upset over the CU case because now suddenly the Evil Right can do it too.
Also, you think Obama doesn't have/use free speech zones and other sorts of non-sense then you're deluding yourself. If you think that I don't see both as a terrible affront to Liberty then consider yourself corrected.
Anytime Congress passes serious reform, it gets struck down by a conservative Supreme Court that has no interest in reform and literally equates money with speech. The ONLY way to have serious reform that sticks is to...
1) Make sure Clinton gets into office in 2016, so she can appoint liberal judges once luddites and philistines like Scalia and Thomas are gone / die off.
2) Focus on an amendment to the Constitution that SPECIFICALLY says money is not speech for purposes of law.
That is it. Nothing else will do, because it will be OVERTURNED. Why is this so hard to understand, Lessig?
Sorry, you're wrong on many points but for the moment I'm only going to answer the cash != speech point. Money is speech when it is used to promote a political view. There simply is no other rational way to say it. The only reason the Left, of which you would appear to be one, are butt hurt about Citizens United is that the case has the effect of putting the Right on more equal footing with the Left's propaganda machine in the form of the majority of the media.
It was all good when Unions and various Left wing groups and causes could scream in the echo chamber but once CU broke the echo chamber and everyone could play now it is a bad thing. I'd think true Liberals, in theory those in favor of liberty one would imagine, would have cheered the ability for anyone to band together and form a PAC to promote their interests.
The pro-rights side has history, logic and statistics on their side. The Anti-rights side has dick jokes, fear, racism and lies. Who should we really be listening to here?
Fox news of course. It will tell you all about those pinko commies who want to take your guns away. Protect you precious!
Well, that's slightly more tasteful than a dick joke but still not anymore of a thoughtful comment. Want to try again?
... as usual go ape shit at slightest reason. Calm down morons, nobody is taking away you dick extensions.
There probably should be a debate rule much like Godwin's that says in any debate on guns or really anything else not actually involving such, the minute your side pulls out "dick extensions" or like phrasing you lose.
The pro-rights side has history, logic and statistics on their side. The Anti-rights side has dick jokes, fear, racism and lies. Who should we really be listening to here?
If you think same-sex couples should be discriminated against, you're a bigot,and debating bigots is as pointless as debating creationists or climate science denialists.
Point of order, surely you're not attempting to equate Equal Rights Under the Law with scientific disagreement. Surely you're not trying to say that saying that some people are more equal than others and disagreeing on anthropogenic climate change are the same thing. You're not, right?
So how do explain people coming in and building giant expensive buildings in the city? The number of condos going up in my hood is insane. I guess they didn't the memo about rent control stopping them from making a decent profit. Only like 2% percent of the apartments are rent controlled.
Have you even looked for a decent apartment in the city? Because usually people that say " only way you can get a decent apartment is practically if someone dies." mostly know the city from watching Seinfeld episodes.
I will admit I have not. Of course, that's because no one would be willing to pay me what I'd require to work in "the city" let alone live there. I'd prefer to live in the part of the US which respects all my Rights and not just the ones they feel like respecting today.
An admittedly quick bit of research indicates that for more than it costs to buy a house with an acre of land where I live you can get yourself a 1 bedroom 1 bath cracker box in various parts of "the city". I'd rather not pay more and get one quarter the space.
Also, when you say "the city" as if it is the only city in the world it sounds all kinds of pretentious and self-important.
Cost of living in NYC, by which I mean a place to live, is sky high because of a combination of lack of physical space on the ground and rent control. There's no point in building giant expensive and nice apartment buildings when the government will just come in and force you to rent it out for far less than it ought to cost. Therefore supply is choked off, shortages result and the only way you can get a decent apartment is practically if someone dies.
Without rent control things would most likely still eventually get expensive because of lack of real estate but you'd also likely have people trying to build more options whereas right now what's the point?
make it worth their while.... quit asking them to do things that are not in their best interest.
And that narrow view sums up the problem. Where is your sense of social responsibility? Or if not that, can you at least muster some enlightened self interest? You know, the thought that improving a neighborhood is in fact in your own interest, and that just moving into a neighborhood will improve it? That's assuming the business isn't one of those irresponsible sorts that sets a bad example by spewing pollution into the environment and then walking away from the mess they made, leaving it for the public or natural processes to clean up.
Except that spending my money to improve a crap hole neighborhood is almost certainly not in my best interests. It would cost far more money, have far greater risks and likely benefit me not at all beyond a PR move. Building a new corporate HQ in a blighted area is almost always going to be a moronically bad idea for nearly everyone concerned except the city which gets to tax you to hell and gone for the privilege. On top of that you're almost certainly going to have greater security concerns and far higher crime rates to deal with.
Can you imagine the recruiting message for getting new employees to work at said HQ? Come work in beautiful downtown Crimeville! AKs provided for your security! Only 12 muggings this week!
Out here in the real world wealth is created by the process of work and innovation among other things. Wealth is not this finite pool where if I have more then you have less.
What an idealistic little world YOU live in.
Out here in the real world, wealth is hoarded, scammed, and crushed from those who can't afford to defend themselves against well-funded corporate legal teams. The rich get richer. Everyone else gets the shaft.
The American^H^H^H^H^H^HCapitalist Dream is a lie. The statistics paint a pretty grim picture about our so-called "economic mobility". Sure it's there, but it's mostly in the downward direction.
You're right, wealth is not a finite pool. It's a seesaw with a endless buffet in the middle. The big fat asses on one end of the seesaw make sure that they continue to stuff their faces so more and more food comes to them while everyone else is held helpless at the other end watching the gluttony.
Bitter much? I and several people I know worked their way well into the middle, if not upper middle, class by our own hard work and talent after starting out anywhere from poor to dirt poor. You can take your defeatist attitude and go right back to the sad little world you live in and continue hating on those who can and do make something of themselves.
As wealth is not finite, thanks for conceding that right off the bat, it cannot be hoarded therefore my point is correct and everything you said is defeated by that admission. QED. If you think that the American Dream is a lie then that too is your problem. Those who come here every day to live that Dream don't need people like you trying to drag them down.
Most people in this world who are well off got there by hard work and talent. If you can't hack it, that's your problem and not one that is the fault of the system or anything else or would you rather just take from those who can create and make? What a sad, gray and terrible world you live in.
You could suggest that it's still scarcity, but defining scarcity on an individual or even local level is a bit strange given the fairly globally connected world we live in.
People are poor because other people can be, and want to be, rich, at the expense of other people if necessary.
There will never be any such thing as a "post scarcity" economy until humans stop being humans.
So, in your world wealth is finite and if I have more then by definition it is because I, directly or indirectly, took it from someone that has less? What a dreary and depressing little world you live in.
Out here in the real world wealth is created by the process of work and innovation among other things. Wealth is not this finite pool where if I have more then you have less.
There will never be a post scarcity economy until we figure out a way for virtually limitless energy. Not very cheap, but limitless and the ways to use it to directly provide goods. That is what makes the Federation run and allows people to work more or less only when they want to. The combination of replicators and limitless energy, which at this point may as well be magic. Coincidentally magic is pretty much required to make any socialist utopia run for too long so I guess one ought not be surprised.
One thing that is never answered in the ST universe is why would anyone want to be a waiter in a restaurant (or similar service job)? They show them from time to time but the number of people who feel their true calling in life is to bring people food and deal with crappy attitudes is vanishingly small so where do they come from?
Yeah, right now at $79 I just keep letting my Prime membership auto-renew because a) I'm lazy, and b) it does save me a little at Christmastime. But their video catalog is pretty limited - much of what I've tried to watch is TV shows where, it turns out, they've only included a few episodes you can access without paying more. And their Kindle Lending Library is likewise pretty limited - it's "all the Harry Potter books plus hundreds of authors you'll never want to read".
Really, even at $79 it's hard to justify. There's not a whole lot I *must* get in two days...
I'll probably just not renew this time around - free ground shipping is good enough. And, if they further limit that, I'll probably start frequenting other online stores. Pretty much everyone is on the web now; I just currently default to Amazon because of the "free" shipping.
Either you don't buy much in the way of electronics, or you live in a place with lots of options. I do buy a fair bit and live in a place where the best computer store is Best Buy. Sure, I could wait days and days for something to show up (and still pay for even that likely) or with Prime I can order as late as Thursday and have it no later than Saturday.
Given the alternative for someone in my position is to wait up to a week for something to show up, or buy it locally at highly inflated prices and just take whatever the local stores feel like carrying it's a pretty simple thing.
Newegg wants to charge 23 bucks to ship anything over night. Prime will do it for 3.99 and you only have to do that a handful of times for Prime to pay for itself.
Both factors make feedback cycles more rapid & precise. I wouldn't be surprised at all, if evidence existed that those poor backward horse-riding founders could conceive of this.
But again, this was very much a function of the state of technology and the limitations of travel and communications at the time. The feedback cycle today can be instantaneous, across the country. And while state representatives live closer to those they represent, that's not a function of state power. Members of Congress live near those they represent. We could have no recognition of states or any state governments and still have federal government representatives distributed across the US, representing people.
State and local government does lend itself to backwardness, which is probably why conservatives gravitate to it. The founders should be admired for the country they created, however if you brought them back today they wouldn't know what a computer is, what a semi automatic weapon was and why somebody shot up a movie theater with one, why all the homosexuals aren't in prison, and why there are so many free slaves walking around.
The giant difference is the amount of influence you have against your city or State government is far far greater than you do against anyone in Fed.gov. Depending on the size of the city you're in your Mayor may care what you personally think and say. The President of the US cares not one little bit what you personally think and your Senator's likely care little more. You're a number among millions and they are going to be far more influenced by someone down on K Street than you.
That's the point in the end. Your direct power over someone in the Fed.gov is very limited simply as a function of numbers. Your direct power over your State rep is far greater and in the end if your State sucks in your mind, you can relatively easily move to one that matches your view points. Don't like the conservatism of the Mid-west for instance, move to California or vice versa. The Founders reasonably foresaw this and they may have no idea what a computer was but that doesn't make the Federal system they crafted antiquated and we are poorer for having moved from it. They might wonder why there were so many "free slaves walking around" (or not, as many of them were abolitionists or proto-abolutionists) but they definitely would wonder why in the world we had let Fed.gov become the out of control leviathan it is and how in the world it has been allowed to reach into the life of every last man, woman and child.
A budget that can't be passed by the Senate and won't be signed by the President is not a real budget. It's a hope that they can still get reelected in their gerrymandered districts and still remain relevant.
Sorry, no. That logic would only apply if the budget were insane and passed by the House specifically to fail. In any case, if the Senate thought the budget was crazy they should have taken it up and voted it down. Instead they simply said "meh" to their Constitutional duties and ignored the budget for years and years.
Their bloody job is to take it up, vote it up or down and/or amend and return it. Not to bloody ignore it so they can avoid going on the record.
"Not only is G+ not forced upon you, at all, but it's one of the easiest social services to delete your account from, removing ALL your history (every post, every reply, every picture, every single trace of your existence). And to top it off, it allows you, before you delete your account, to download a.zip file of all your posts, if you want."
Says the AC with no link.
IT certainly has been forced on me and if there is an option to delete it short of deleting my accounts on gmail and youtube (which seem to have been merged without my consent) in the process it's far from obvious.
Odd, I was able to search and find a delete your google plus link easily. I do agree that it is slightly annoying they don't have a check box to not create the G+ profile but it isn't like they automatically fill it out and push everything into it. You have to manually go to G+ and finish the process if you want it, delete it if you don't.
The poster's stalker premise is also pretty silly. If I'm being stalked am I really going to be dumb enough to create accounts with my actual name on them? The whole thing still strikes me as a tempest in a teapot.
Slashdot Mirror
There's so much entitled Valley logic in the business model at Uber that it's hideously disturbing,
There may be that, I'm not 100% sure. However, it is very hard for me not to see all these complaints about "rider safety" and such as nothing more than "protect the taxi companies!".
I've not heard of a single case of an Uber or Lyft ride going terribly wrong. Were there large numbers of cases of such they'd be out of business virtually overnight. If the taxi companies screw people over day after day you're going to do what about it? File a paper form that someone will promptly lose?
Who even goes, "Oh my god, gas prices are too low!" when they wake up in the morning?
Hard core environmental whackos? :D
Although the world seems to focus on America, we must remember that aside from subsidized countries like Venezuela, Americans enjoy an average gas price that is much less than the global averages. That said, we must understand that the recent movement in crude prices is in direct correlation to the ongoing strategy that the United States has with choking off Russian monetary supplies. It's not a conspiracy theorist and as a pure market technician, which can be defined in my book The Market is not Random., the market foretold this sell off going all the way back to the swing sell in May...
Whenever one mentions that gas prices are so much higher elsewhere and that American's are lucky, one should also mention the why of gas prices being higher else where. It's almost always, if not always, entirely due to punitive taxation on fuel. According to the BBC filling up a 55 liter tank would currently cost about 68 pounds, of which 43 is bloody taxes. So, gas in the US isn't cheap. It just isn't taxed to death like in other parts of the world.
Google Wallet still has limited usefulness. NFC payments are still only supported on a tiny fraction of Android users, using a custom build of the wallet app not available in the Google play store. Only some phone distributors are given access to this custom build. My phone has android 4.4, NFC support, and Google wallet installed, but I can't do NFC payments. How do they expect to compete like that?
What terrible phone are you using?
Nope, sorry. While you transition to a valid concern, the dismissal you lead with isn't quite right.
Firearm availability is one of the factors in these sorts of things. The kind of people who engage in emotionally driven mass shootings aren't the same kind of people who rise to any obstacle that impedes their plans. Barriers to firearm access(which isn't the same as ownership) would curtail these kinds of shootings.
Contains and absolutely requires the presumption that someone looking to get famous by killing large numbers of legislatively defenseless people and then promptly get on the news and have every facet of their miserable little lives examined for meaning they could never find themselves would somehow stop simply because they can't use a particular method. Your logic is that if we eliminate method A then they absolutely won't switch to B or that somehow B is better than A.
You want fewer of these incidents? Don't report on the shooters, don't glorify them, don't give them the fame and validation they crave and that ultimately drives these acts. Speak of the victims, sure. The shooter should be treated as a nameless pariah or if given a name at all it should be no more than name/age. No details, no examining their motivations, no wall to wall coverage of them. Having people in the school who can defend against such nutjobs and other threats would be good as well. Yet even that is simply mitigation of a phenomenon created almost entirely by what I've already put forth.
The underlying technologies of the SpaceCraftTwo are completely and woefully underdimensioned for actually reaching orbit. It's just not feasible to develop it into a craft that can do that. You need a completely different solution to do it.
And the Bell X1 was woefully underdimensioned and completely useless for commercial flight. SpaceShipTwo will never achieve the things that people seem to be implying it should nor is it intended to. It is intended to be a development platform for technologies and methods of manufacturing and business. SpaceShipWhatever on the other hand may be capable of these things and it will be thanks in part to SpaceShipTwo through whatever.
Because, you complete fucking genius, not everyone is 5' 2'' tall and of medium build. Why, if you are 6' tall, are you penalised with having to buy a more expensive ticket?
Because physics? Limited volume of space, all costs and profits must come from cargo (that's us) carried within that space. If some require significantly more room then logically it costs more to carry them and therefore it isn't completely unreasonable to charge them more. It's the same logic that's been applied to overweight people and which says larger hotel rooms cost more.
If money == speech, then speech == money and I can buy a new TV with all my free speech, and a car and a house and a space rocket while I'm at it.
Yes, because clearly that's exactly what is being said here without the slightest deviation. The issue is far from abstruse.
Money is speech when it is used to promote a political view.
No. Money just buys you a bigger louder megaphone.
The trouble is, with enough money, your megaphone can be so loud it can drown out everything else.
In many ways the issue here is not so much louder megaphones or anything but a lazy electorate that doesn't bother to do even basic research or acquire understanding of either the candidates or the issues at hand.
The loudest megaphone in the universe cannot actually compel the electorate to vote in any particular way. Stupid people following the crowds and paying the most attention to things that matter the least is the real reason why any of this matters at all.
As the man in the movie said, if you're looking for the responsible party you need only look in a mirror.
... so bascially you're saying that you want to live in a system where our politcians can be legally bribed. I don't think most people agree.
As others have said, you think that wasn't going on before? Bribery is still illegal and CU didn't change that. All it did is recognize that when I, or anyone, contribute money to a cause that is a form of political expression, i.e. speech.
You don't think Unions and other groups were doing basically the same thing before either under the table or through less obvious means? Personally, I'd rather all such activities be out in the open as simply banning them will do nothing but push them underground and into smoke filled rooms.
Money is speech when it is used to promote a political view.
It gives the wealthy disproportionate influence over governance. They have an established track record of setting up policies and institutions that are favorable to themselves and detrimental to society as a whole. That is not what free speech is for.
Only to the degree that regular people allow this to happen by apathy. Don't expect others or government to defend your views for you. That's never happened in history and there's no reason it should start now. If the wealthy have disproportionate influence over governance then it is because we gave it to them. The Bill Gates and others of the world can spread as much money as they like, but at the end of the day they get one vote and we get over 150 Million. Who really has the power here?
We would do well to remember that.
No, it isn't speech. It's used to provide you with a podium, but a podium is not speech, and has never been seen as such since the beginning of the US.
It's amusing that the Supreme Court has said on numerous occasions that the government has the right to regulate the means, location or time of speech (see: Anti-abortion protest laws, regulating where a mob can protest a convention, or better yet, limiting where someone can protest a speech by PRESIDENT BUSH) and yet you teatards have an issue with the Supreme Court regulating the MONEY used to make the speech. It's stupid.
Much as I said in a previous post, if you cannot make your point without using terms like 'teatards' then you really lose the debate right there. Further, your post contains a number of presumptions not the least of which being that I or those holding my views would somehow see the CU case as 'good' and would also see the gross failures of justice concerning some other SCOTUS rulings on the Free Speech question.
Speech is expression. If I don't own or control a TV network then realistically in this day and age one of the best ways I can express my beliefs is via the spending of money. Either on a company, or on or against a political candidate/position. I still maintain that the Left didn't get busted up about such things when it was "their" side doing it and only got upset over the CU case because now suddenly the Evil Right can do it too.
Also, you think Obama doesn't have/use free speech zones and other sorts of non-sense then you're deluding yourself. If you think that I don't see both as a terrible affront to Liberty then consider yourself corrected.
Anytime Congress passes serious reform, it gets struck down by a conservative Supreme Court that has no interest in reform and literally equates money with speech. The ONLY way to have serious reform that sticks is to...
1) Make sure Clinton gets into office in 2016, so she can appoint liberal judges once luddites and philistines like Scalia and Thomas are gone / die off.
2) Focus on an amendment to the Constitution that SPECIFICALLY says money is not speech for purposes of law.
That is it. Nothing else will do, because it will be OVERTURNED. Why is this so hard to understand, Lessig?
Sorry, you're wrong on many points but for the moment I'm only going to answer the cash != speech point. Money is speech when it is used to promote a political view. There simply is no other rational way to say it. The only reason the Left, of which you would appear to be one, are butt hurt about Citizens United is that the case has the effect of putting the Right on more equal footing with the Left's propaganda machine in the form of the majority of the media.
It was all good when Unions and various Left wing groups and causes could scream in the echo chamber but once CU broke the echo chamber and everyone could play now it is a bad thing. I'd think true Liberals, in theory those in favor of liberty one would imagine, would have cheered the ability for anyone to band together and form a PAC to promote their interests.
The pro-rights side has history, logic and statistics on their side. The Anti-rights side has dick jokes, fear, racism and lies. Who should we really be listening to here?
Fox news of course. It will tell you all about those pinko commies who want to take your guns away. Protect you precious!
Well, that's slightly more tasteful than a dick joke but still not anymore of a thoughtful comment. Want to try again?
... as usual go ape shit at slightest reason. Calm down morons, nobody is taking away you dick extensions.
There probably should be a debate rule much like Godwin's that says in any debate on guns or really anything else not actually involving such, the minute your side pulls out "dick extensions" or like phrasing you lose.
The pro-rights side has history, logic and statistics on their side. The Anti-rights side has dick jokes, fear, racism and lies. Who should we really be listening to here?
If you think same-sex couples should be discriminated against, you're a bigot,and debating bigots is as pointless as debating creationists or climate science denialists.
Point of order, surely you're not attempting to equate Equal Rights Under the Law with scientific disagreement. Surely you're not trying to say that saying that some people are more equal than others and disagreeing on anthropogenic climate change are the same thing. You're not, right?
One can be debated, the other cannot.
So how do explain people coming in and building giant expensive buildings in the city? The number of condos going up in my hood is insane. I guess they didn't the memo about rent control stopping them from making a decent profit. Only like 2% percent of the apartments are rent controlled.
Have you even looked for a decent apartment in the city? Because usually people that say " only way you can get a decent apartment is practically if someone dies." mostly know the city from watching Seinfeld episodes.
I will admit I have not. Of course, that's because no one would be willing to pay me what I'd require to work in "the city" let alone live there. I'd prefer to live in the part of the US which respects all my Rights and not just the ones they feel like respecting today.
An admittedly quick bit of research indicates that for more than it costs to buy a house with an acre of land where I live you can get yourself a 1 bedroom 1 bath cracker box in various parts of "the city". I'd rather not pay more and get one quarter the space.
Also, when you say "the city" as if it is the only city in the world it sounds all kinds of pretentious and self-important.
Cost of living in NYC, by which I mean a place to live, is sky high because of a combination of lack of physical space on the ground and rent control. There's no point in building giant expensive and nice apartment buildings when the government will just come in and force you to rent it out for far less than it ought to cost. Therefore supply is choked off, shortages result and the only way you can get a decent apartment is practically if someone dies.
Without rent control things would most likely still eventually get expensive because of lack of real estate but you'd also likely have people trying to build more options whereas right now what's the point?
make it worth their while. ... quit asking them to do things that are not in their best interest.
And that narrow view sums up the problem. Where is your sense of social responsibility? Or if not that, can you at least muster some enlightened self interest? You know, the thought that improving a neighborhood is in fact in your own interest, and that just moving into a neighborhood will improve it? That's assuming the business isn't one of those irresponsible sorts that sets a bad example by spewing pollution into the environment and then walking away from the mess they made, leaving it for the public or natural processes to clean up.
Except that spending my money to improve a crap hole neighborhood is almost certainly not in my best interests. It would cost far more money, have far greater risks and likely benefit me not at all beyond a PR move. Building a new corporate HQ in a blighted area is almost always going to be a moronically bad idea for nearly everyone concerned except the city which gets to tax you to hell and gone for the privilege. On top of that you're almost certainly going to have greater security concerns and far higher crime rates to deal with.
Can you imagine the recruiting message for getting new employees to work at said HQ? Come work in beautiful downtown Crimeville! AKs provided for your security! Only 12 muggings this week!
Yep, awesome idea.
Out here in the real world wealth is created by the process of work and innovation among other things. Wealth is not this finite pool where if I have more then you have less.
What an idealistic little world YOU live in.
Out here in the real world, wealth is hoarded, scammed, and crushed from those who can't afford to defend themselves against well-funded corporate legal teams. The rich get richer. Everyone else gets the shaft.
The American^H^H^H^H^H^HCapitalist Dream is a lie. The statistics paint a pretty grim picture about our so-called "economic mobility". Sure it's there, but it's mostly in the downward direction.
You're right, wealth is not a finite pool. It's a seesaw with a endless buffet in the middle. The big fat asses on one end of the seesaw make sure that they continue to stuff their faces so more and more food comes to them while everyone else is held helpless at the other end watching the gluttony.
Bitter much? I and several people I know worked their way well into the middle, if not upper middle, class by our own hard work and talent after starting out anywhere from poor to dirt poor. You can take your defeatist attitude and go right back to the sad little world you live in and continue hating on those who can and do make something of themselves.
As wealth is not finite, thanks for conceding that right off the bat, it cannot be hoarded therefore my point is correct and everything you said is defeated by that admission. QED. If you think that the American Dream is a lie then that too is your problem. Those who come here every day to live that Dream don't need people like you trying to drag them down.
Most people in this world who are well off got there by hard work and talent. If you can't hack it, that's your problem and not one that is the fault of the system or anything else or would you rather just take from those who can create and make? What a sad, gray and terrible world you live in.
You could suggest that it's still scarcity, but defining scarcity on an individual or even local level is a bit strange given the fairly globally connected world we live in.
You mean... a scarcity which is not natural? Artificial scarcity?
People are poor because other people can be, and want to be, rich, at the expense of other people if necessary.
There will never be any such thing as a "post scarcity" economy until humans stop being humans.
So, in your world wealth is finite and if I have more then by definition it is because I, directly or indirectly, took it from someone that has less? What a dreary and depressing little world you live in.
Out here in the real world wealth is created by the process of work and innovation among other things. Wealth is not this finite pool where if I have more then you have less.
There will never be a post scarcity economy until we figure out a way for virtually limitless energy. Not very cheap, but limitless and the ways to use it to directly provide goods. That is what makes the Federation run and allows people to work more or less only when they want to. The combination of replicators and limitless energy, which at this point may as well be magic. Coincidentally magic is pretty much required to make any socialist utopia run for too long so I guess one ought not be surprised.
One thing that is never answered in the ST universe is why would anyone want to be a waiter in a restaurant (or similar service job)? They show them from time to time but the number of people who feel their true calling in life is to bring people food and deal with crappy attitudes is vanishingly small so where do they come from?
Yeah, right now at $79 I just keep letting my Prime membership auto-renew because a) I'm lazy, and b) it does save me a little at Christmastime. But their video catalog is pretty limited - much of what I've tried to watch is TV shows where, it turns out, they've only included a few episodes you can access without paying more. And their Kindle Lending Library is likewise pretty limited - it's "all the Harry Potter books plus hundreds of authors you'll never want to read".
Really, even at $79 it's hard to justify. There's not a whole lot I *must* get in two days...
I'll probably just not renew this time around - free ground shipping is good enough. And, if they further limit that, I'll probably start frequenting other online stores. Pretty much everyone is on the web now; I just currently default to Amazon because of the "free" shipping.
Either you don't buy much in the way of electronics, or you live in a place with lots of options. I do buy a fair bit and live in a place where the best computer store is Best Buy. Sure, I could wait days and days for something to show up (and still pay for even that likely) or with Prime I can order as late as Thursday and have it no later than Saturday.
Given the alternative for someone in my position is to wait up to a week for something to show up, or buy it locally at highly inflated prices and just take whatever the local stores feel like carrying it's a pretty simple thing.
Newegg wants to charge 23 bucks to ship anything over night. Prime will do it for 3.99 and you only have to do that a handful of times for Prime to pay for itself.
Of course, YMMV.
Both factors make feedback cycles more rapid & precise. I wouldn't be surprised at all, if evidence existed that those poor backward horse-riding founders could conceive of this.
But again, this was very much a function of the state of technology and the limitations of travel and communications at the time. The feedback cycle today can be instantaneous, across the country. And while state representatives live closer to those they represent, that's not a function of state power. Members of Congress live near those they represent. We could have no recognition of states or any state governments and still have federal government representatives distributed across the US, representing people.
State and local government does lend itself to backwardness, which is probably why conservatives gravitate to it. The founders should be admired for the country they created, however if you brought them back today they wouldn't know what a computer is, what a semi automatic weapon was and why somebody shot up a movie theater with one, why all the homosexuals aren't in prison, and why there are so many free slaves walking around.
The giant difference is the amount of influence you have against your city or State government is far far greater than you do against anyone in Fed.gov. Depending on the size of the city you're in your Mayor may care what you personally think and say. The President of the US cares not one little bit what you personally think and your Senator's likely care little more. You're a number among millions and they are going to be far more influenced by someone down on K Street than you.
That's the point in the end. Your direct power over someone in the Fed.gov is very limited simply as a function of numbers. Your direct power over your State rep is far greater and in the end if your State sucks in your mind, you can relatively easily move to one that matches your view points. Don't like the conservatism of the Mid-west for instance, move to California or vice versa. The Founders reasonably foresaw this and they may have no idea what a computer was but that doesn't make the Federal system they crafted antiquated and we are poorer for having moved from it. They might wonder why there were so many "free slaves walking around" (or not, as many of them were abolitionists or proto-abolutionists) but they definitely would wonder why in the world we had let Fed.gov become the out of control leviathan it is and how in the world it has been allowed to reach into the life of every last man, woman and child.
A budget that can't be passed by the Senate and won't be signed by the President is not a real budget. It's a hope that they can still get reelected in their gerrymandered districts and still remain relevant.
Sorry, no. That logic would only apply if the budget were insane and passed by the House specifically to fail. In any case, if the Senate thought the budget was crazy they should have taken it up and voted it down. Instead they simply said "meh" to their Constitutional duties and ignored the budget for years and years.
Their bloody job is to take it up, vote it up or down and/or amend and return it. Not to bloody ignore it so they can avoid going on the record.
"Not only is G+ not forced upon you, at all, but it's one of the easiest social services to delete your account from, removing ALL your history (every post, every reply, every picture, every single trace of your existence). And to top it off, it allows you, before you delete your account, to download a .zip file of all your posts, if you want."
Says the AC with no link.
IT certainly has been forced on me and if there is an option to delete it short of deleting my accounts on gmail and youtube (which seem to have been merged without my consent) in the process it's far from obvious.
Odd, I was able to search and find a delete your google plus link easily. I do agree that it is slightly annoying they don't have a check box to not create the G+ profile but it isn't like they automatically fill it out and push everything into it. You have to manually go to G+ and finish the process if you want it, delete it if you don't.
The poster's stalker premise is also pretty silly. If I'm being stalked am I really going to be dumb enough to create accounts with my actual name on them? The whole thing still strikes me as a tempest in a teapot.