Without IP, your car would be a heap of raw materials like steel, plastic, rubber, leather etc. These raw materials are cheap and constitute a tiny fraction of the retail price of the car. You're paying for IP and the processing of these raw materials.
Without IP, my car might be more or less advanced, that's all. On one hand there would be less incentive to research new features, on the other, the manufacturer could incorporate any they want without paying license fees. And as new manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing, drive down the cost of making one-off prototypes, research will become cheaper and eventually reach the point where hobbyists can engage in it. At that point IP will unquestionably be a hindrance, if it isn't already.
How could that possibly be avoided? Real economy works in terms of supply and demand. When demand exceeds supply, companies hire more people and we have an economic boom; when supply exceeds demand, people get fired and we have a depression. However, most people get their income in the form of wages, and wages have been falling for decades now, thus the demand necessary to keep the economy going simply isn't there anymore. The only fix would be to force those wages up worldwide or enact a generous guaranteed minimum income; but the elites of any one country can get more for themselves by pricing their domestic labour as cheaper than competitors and the international labour movement is too weak to counter that by itself. Thus governments are left with various forms of economic voodoo to try and stall the downward spiral.
Even if you agree that these are necessary measures you'd have to agree they should only be temporarily.
They are, in the sense that they can't stop the economic collapse.
Seriously, their business is to rip off small businesses.
As opposed to what? You can't sell if no one's buying, and they can't buy if they don't have income. Wages have been in decline for decades now, so a company that doesn't rip off someone has little chance of success because your product, no matter how good, isn't more important than food. And small businesses typically have desperation, some remaining cash reserves to take, but not enough to put up a fight in court over misleading marketing, making them the ideal victims.
Even Google ultimately amounts to a Red Queen's Race: you pay them to keep even with your competitors, who do the same. But as the total buying power of consumers continues to decline, so will the income from online advertising, so Google's business model is just as doomed as any other. Vultures acting in increasingly brazen bad faith will gorge themselves on the carcassess for a while, and then die in turn. As will the rest of us, since how many here can actually live off the land with no outside help, even in the form of defending said land from other desperate people?
It's rather ironic: markets got so efficient they optimized away the spare income that was their engine. And now every further increase in efficiency only makes the situation worse, because one person's expenditure is another's income, so every cutting of costs further contracts economy in an uncontrollable tailspin that's approaching the point of no return: breakdown of basic life support systems and the resulting riots and revolutions. So I guess Marx got the last laugh after all.
While there are different "reasons" given all the time, the unassailble fact that humanity is in everlasting war means either we are doing what we like to do (my thesis) or we are the very definition of masochists, forever drawn to something we hate to do.
Do the people who ask you if you'd like fries with your Big Mac like their jobs? Very unlikely. Are they doing them because they're masochists? No. They're doing them because they're forced to. Who forces them? Nobody in particular; the surrounding culture has been set up in such a way that their options are "serve fries or starve".
We build hells for ourselves all the time, not because we're masochists but because we're still getting a hang of this whole sapience thing. Taking current situation lasting forever as "unassailable fact" is a perfect example of where improvements are still needed.
Plus you seem to be arguing that humans don't enjoy killing each other? It's what we do best.
Aside from the odd serial killer... no. There's no evidence whatsoever that killing another human being is anything but psychologically devastating, and that's not even getting into the chance of dying yourself. It's why every war is coupled with a massive propaganda effort typically aimed at dehumanizing the intended target and justifying the whole deal.
Unfortunate perversions brought by accidents of cultural evolution shouldn't be confused with human nature, even if our socities wish we did. But those same evolutionary forces are bringing the era of warfare to an end, since modern technological civilization is just plain incompatible with war, due to the dependence on extremely expensive infrastructure. Fighting on or near your own territory is shooting yourself in the foot, and even the US is going bankrupt under the burden of maintaining the ability to project force far away.
Just look at how European colonial empires collapsed after fighting a major war, resulting in the birth of EU to stop Europe from going up in flames again. Or how Cuban missile crisis came within a single officer's decision from escalating into full-scale nuclear war, resulting in two superpowers which frankly hated each other ultimately negotiating an arms reduction deal. Or look at how Soviet Union collapsed in large part because it kept wasting its resources in military it couldn't actually use. Or, for that matter, the price modern-day Russia is paying for Putin's little adventure in Ukraine.
One way or another, war has no future, because the historical window of opportunity where you have sufficient organization to fight one yet insufficient technological ability to cause any real damage is closing. The main reason it still exists is force of habit.
That's exclusively their problem. They didn't know? They should. They are officers for a reason and get enormous wages for a reason.
Managers get enormous wages because they're part of the good old boys club who's members set each other's wages - in other words, corruption. However, their job description is management, not technical expertise. Expecting them to know what a specialist working under them knows is unreasonable, and if enforced, will simply limit technology to whatever a single human non-expert can hold in his head. That's not good for anyone except buggy whip makers.
If they can make a convincing case that all this was the sole action of a lower rank employee, good,
Not for the scapegoat it won't be. Nor for anyone who'll have to deal with the resulting culture of ass-covering and plausibly deniable orders.
it is the high officers the ones that set the vision, mission and values of the company and the ones that should guard them.
No, it's not. It is the stock market that sets the values of a publicly traded company. As long as companies only purpose is to generate profit for their owners, it is utterly dishonest to make speeches about their "values" - they have none save money because they're not allowed to.
Peer pressure makes otherwise decent humans do things they wouldn't on their own. Peer pressure works on structures formed from humans, such as companies and nations, too. And peer pressure is ultimately just the expectations of a particular culture and system guiding its parts in their functions. For companies it manifests in the form of having their success or failure measured in terms of finances, rather than in terms of ethical conduct or benefit to mankind. If you want to change that, I'm all for it; but it'll require changing capitalism itself. Individuals and companies, even extremely corrupt ones like Kenneth Lay or SCO, are ultimately just doing what they've been taught; blaming them is both unjust and pointless. Unless, of course, the point is trying to defend the system itself from criticism.
We don't know if this comes right from the top, or whether it was one geek's idea of cool software.
We also don't know that it wasn't Hitler coming out of hiding in South America, ripening the last remaining piece of Third Reich for a corporate takeover to start another bid for world domination. Or the lizard people of Regulus trying to sneak attack humanity through pollution. Or the Devil himself getting ready for Carmageddon.
Ripped off by getting better performance than they would have if the emissions controls were in 'test mode' all the time?
Ripped off by getting something that pollutes more than advertised - and, presumably, will have less power than advertised if that issue is ever fixed.
And, if you're worried about 'harmful fumes', you wouldn't have bought a stinky, polluting, smoke-spewing diesel in the first place.
And they didn't. They bought a clean diesel. Only it turns out it's not clean after all, because Wolkswagen lied. And let's hope this was the only scam Volkswagen ran, and there's no other problems, for example with safety features.
But you needn't worry. Volkswagen is a huge company; we all know it'll get away with this. Laws are for us, not our masters.
A video game is an audiovisual work, and Nintendo has the exclusive right under copyright law to perform its works publicly.
So does this mean that Twitch is a criminal enterprise? Also, does this mean that any game review is in violation copyright law, since they are derivative works based on the original audiovisual work? Also, you're leaving something out: a game is an interactive audiovisual work. A recording of a speedrun is not interactive.
I strongly suspect that Nintendo doesn't have any legal standing whatsoever, and they're simply abusing the DMCA because there's no legal consequences for doing so and Youtube is pretty infamous for selling out its users when anyone asks.
Did they actually make the disclosure, or was it buried somewhere in a 50-page legalese boilerplate document that exists precisely to hide anything important?
Because there's lying, lying by omission, and lying by drowning someone in so much irrelevant detail important things go unnoticed. All are forms of intentional deception, and none should be excused.
How we treat criminals is also unfortunate, but probably outside the scope of this conversation â" suffice to say, it's doing nothing to help us "win the war on drugs".
Unfortunately, treatment of criminals is very much in the scope of this conversation, because certain ways to treat them - such as private prison industry or the desire to prove one's righteousness by attacking "evil" people, such as felons - create perverse incentives to manufacture more of them. That is the mechanism behind every witch hunt, and that is what the war on drugs is now, no matter what it might have started as.
There are people who hate and fear nothing as much as someone doing something labeled bad in their moral code and getting away with it. That's fine if "bad" means molesting kids, and not so fine if "bad" means smoking pot. And when their code is questioned some people drift towards moderation while others go to fanatical extremes to silence their own doubts. The end result is pretty much the same, whether it's called Inquisition, Al-Qaida or a SWAT team: a bunch of murderous thugs looking for new victims whose life the specific code they use to excuse their inexcusable actions lets them ruin with good conscience.
Treatment of criminals is at the very heart of the War on Drugs because "criminal" is just the specific form the concept of subhuman takes in the US. You can't have bread and circuses without a steady stream of acceptable victims to feed to the lions, after all. And like they say, the Dark Side is the quick and easy path to power, so the powerful are only too happy to sell their souls to it - as are the weak, all too often. After that decision's made, the only thing left is deciding who'll make the most convenient sacrifice. In the US it's the criminals, in the EU refugees (historically Jews), in Islamic world infidels. Dunno about the rest of the world.
What all this means is that the War on Drugs is a symptom, but the disease itself is something ancient and very nasty.
If a stranger asks you in person, "Have you done any of the following illegal things, and how?" then how you answer it depends on a lot more than your desire to be honest. And if it's an online survey, well, just fuck off.
Or they could simply go through the seller listings on said online markets. Multiply the amount of reviews with the list price and you get a rough lower estimate of total sales. True, some of those might be the seller astroturfing, but the site takes a cut from every sale so spamming is costly, and not worth it unless the market actually is very big.
They were so special that they were going to change the world forever and usher in a new utopian age.
And they did. Look at the US or the EU - or, for that matter, China. All are led by people who think they're building shining futures for themselves. That these shining futures always become nightmares for everyone else is neither accidental nor new. After all, if the parisians were comfortable rather than starving your Versailles could be a bit more opulent, whether it's personal wealth (US), new gold standard (Euro) or dreams of restoring lost glory (China).
Now they're just old fogeys and the world still has war and poverty and nuclear weapons.
What the world has is plenty of people who consider war, poverty and nuclear weapons as acceptable price to pay for their personal utopias.
Then when they get arrested they will be educated. Ignorance of the law is not a valid defense. This is an excellent example of why that has to be the case.
This is an excellent example of why "well how the hell was I supposed to know that was illegal" should be a perfectly valid defence. No person can possibly memorize every single law in the books, much less actually utilize that knowledge in decision-making, so if breaking nonsensical laws out of ignorance is a felony, then the only way to avoid becoming one is to never do anything new - and even then you're relying on your normal routine not suddenly becoming illegal.
The point of law isn't to throw as many people in prisons as possible. If a law will destroy people's lives for not realizing that playing with a perfectly ordinary, store-bought toy would be illegal, then that law should be null and void on that basis.
Require sellers of drones to demand proof of an operator's license before they can sell their product. Then nobody can argue that they did not know AND we have a means to ensure appropriate training and use.
And as a - undoubtedly completely unintended - side effect, it'll effectively kill the technology before it can change status quo by killing the mass market.
No, automation is the way to go, bot because of safety and because drones that rely on automation for safety don't require operator line-of-sight - or even necessarily operator, period. Which, I guess, scares a lot of people, apparently even here on Slashdot. I suppose nerds are no exception to the rule that you become more conservative as your mind calcifies with age.
All of that should be part of the visa submission.
Or you could simply make the visa submission a legally binding open job offer. It gets published for some reasonable amount of time, and if a local appears who you can't prove before a court doesn't meet your written qualifications, they get the job or a year's pay at going market rate as severance. Also, if no locals can be found the visa holder is also entitled to said severance, should their employment be terminated before the contract expires.
An employer who honestly can't find someone to fill a position either because there aren't any or because they simply suck at advertising open jobs should find the system neutral or even beneficial. On the other hand, weasels paint a big fat target on their wallets. And employees and economists both get some trustworthy data about what skills are in demand.
As it happens, the Dune society would collapse without it.
I imagine those flames will burn at least as fiercely, if your society promises something and fails to deliver rather than just doesn't deliver.
Imagine less and think more. Once things descend into violence it doesn't really matter what sparked it.
Also, I imagine the actual minimum quality of life is way below what you think it should be.
People get resentful when they get less than they think they deserve. If enough people get resentful you get trouble. So it's not what you or I imagine, it's what Joe Average imagines. And Joe has grown up in a consumer society where his desires are constantly stroked by every company competing for his waning purchasing power.
One thing we've discovered in democratic societies is that most people can carry their own straw most of the time.
They can't grow their own food, since they have no land to do so, nor the skills or physical conditioning to farm it without tools they can't afford. They can't simply go West and start their own homestead since there's no place left to do so. They can't employ themselves because they don't have the capital to mass-produce stuff and cottage industry is not competitive expect in extremely specialized niche areas which require skills Joe Average doesn't have and has no capacity to acquire - because valuable skills are valuable precisely because the supply is limited.
So no, most people can't carry their own straw. They need to be integrated to the economic system to survive, and that means they need income. This is the world capitalism built, and this is the world it will also have to deal with.
Not my problem that you can't overcome the failure of communism. People have this quirky sense of fairness.
Of course it's your problem if society collapses around you. You're simply letting your own quirky sense of fairness tell you it shouldn't be your problem, and confusing that with reality.
The idea that need should determine what you deserve has been epicly parodied long ago and a lot of people agree with that.
Whereas I've noticed a lot of people are more concerned about whether other people "deserve" something good than what the effects of them not getting it will be. Then they act bitter and surprised when such twisted priorities result in decisions that are bad for both them and those others, never mind that that's exactly what they asked for.
That's not an option. Every society has a certain minimum quality of life and perceived fairness it can get away with before it goes down in flames. Both Europe and US are exhibiting signs of a gathering storm, for example in the form of increasing hostility towards immigrants.
I see this as creating a cost and then passing it on to the employer. And this is a typical straw on a camel's back situation. It's not an isolated passing of cost on to employers, but part of a mass of ongoing costs added to businesses. Eventually something will break.
The problem is, that straw must be carried by some camel. Currently the choices are either employees, employers or public sector. Employees are hopelessly in debt, as is the society, so that leaves employers. If they can't or won't carry it either, then we're headed for another age of revolutions.
How about making recommendations for pragmatic reasons, like for the future of your society?
Any attempt to do anything that might get in the way of corporate profits gets shot down as communism. Any attempt to do anything through public sector gets shot down as socialism. Any attempt to do anything with your personal resources is too little to have any effect unless other people join in, which they won't because tragedy of the commons. So pragmatically speaking, there's not much point worrying about the future of our societies since them going over the edge is pretty much a done deal due to having no functional steering mechanisms left because the anti-government "Invisible Hand takes care of it!" types purposefully broke them all, as dictated by their pseudo-religion.
Like all other worker rights, it will just mean slightly lower pay rises over the next few years as the employers recover the costs.
So does this mean the employers would otherwise pay more than they can get away with and still maintain sufficient workforce, presumably out of the goodness and generosity of their hearts? Because I'm pretty sure shareholders wouldn't like that.
But hey, the faster people are convinced there's no way up for them under the current system, the faster we can get the next wave of communist revolutions underway and start rebuilding the economy. So keep up the good work, comrade.
It might be harmful for one person to star in pornography, or watch it, or both, while it might be okay or even beneficial for another. It might have effects that reach beyond the participants and affect third parties; some of those third parties might be harmed, some helped. All of these need to be taken into account when judging pornography, just like any other thing. "Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly."
It's true, religion is the only modern intellectual force motivating a human to act in ways befitting an exalted stature (philosophy jumped the shark long ago, which is why its dead now), or even acknowledging this stature, so until the various studies into the obvious become mainstream (if they ever do...our kafka world, as portrayed in the popular media, has come to entertain that a man can marry another man as a man marries a woman and that a man can be a woman, or a woman an man, if he or she so chooses...) religion will have to suffice.
Methinks I'm taking that exalted stature far more seriously than you by respecting people's decisions about who and what they are, rather than holding them beholden to the particular shape their envelope of dust happens to exhibit in this world, or my personal tastes and prejudices linked to those shapes. That is what "exalted" means, after all: elevated in rank. And that means people judge traditions and laws, not the other way around. "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."
But you hate religion, religion is bad, there is no source and everything just happened, and that is the intelligent viewpoint
Perhaps you should reconsider your position in these issues a bit. To err is human, after all. And sins are forgiven, so you are free to admit them and change. A confession won't be used against you like in Earthly courts, so there's nothing to gain from refusing to, except misery. That is the point of Christianity, as far as I can tell: bad choices were made when we were a young species and didn't know any better, and now that we are older and wiser it's time to reconsider them and grow up. And the process won't be finished this side of Judgement Day.
No, "General Welfare" has a specific meaning which does not translate to "The Government must create jobs".
"General welfare" is English. It doesn't need to be translated.
The Government can not create jobs, it can only transfer wealth.
US Government currently directly employs around 2.7 million people. How many people it pays indirectly through companies providing it goods and services is anyone's guess.
You are attempting to put a modern spin on the terminology instead of sticking to the original meaning.
You are attempting to pretend plain English is some moon language so you can twist it to mean whatever you want it to mean, because you disagree with what it actually says.
Want me to agree with you, show me where our Government can generate revenue to create jobs.
So "general welfare" now means "making a profit"?
Also, don't lie. Your disagreement is based on a combination of ideology of what the Constitution should say, being too lazy to try and change it so it would actually say so, and being too dishonest to simply accept that. You aren't going to agree with me unless you'll grow a backbone or switch ideologies.
Oh well, I hope you're at least enjoying your fantasies rather than taking them seriously enough to cause you distress.
HINT: It was never given that ability.
HINT: I haven't claimed that the government could or should make a profit.
Collecting taxes to pay someone, like a military person or Senator, is transferring wealth.
Of course it is. And because the utility curve of wealth isn't flat but asymptotically approaches some finite value, transferring wealth from more wealthy to less wealthy typically increases the total utility - or "general welfare" - of a population.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States
Which does not translate to the Government being responsible for creating jobs. It translates to not interfering with jobs and protecting the public from racketeers and similar criminals.
"General welfare" is consistent with both courses of action. If one of them is against your personal political beliefs, then lobby for the Constitution to be amended. Don't "translate" English into English to get around what it actually says because that risks other people with conflicting beliefs doing the same.
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Without IP, my car might be more or less advanced, that's all. On one hand there would be less incentive to research new features, on the other, the manufacturer could incorporate any they want without paying license fees. And as new manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing, drive down the cost of making one-off prototypes, research will become cheaper and eventually reach the point where hobbyists can engage in it. At that point IP will unquestionably be a hindrance, if it isn't already.
How could that possibly be avoided? Real economy works in terms of supply and demand. When demand exceeds supply, companies hire more people and we have an economic boom; when supply exceeds demand, people get fired and we have a depression. However, most people get their income in the form of wages, and wages have been falling for decades now, thus the demand necessary to keep the economy going simply isn't there anymore. The only fix would be to force those wages up worldwide or enact a generous guaranteed minimum income; but the elites of any one country can get more for themselves by pricing their domestic labour as cheaper than competitors and the international labour movement is too weak to counter that by itself. Thus governments are left with various forms of economic voodoo to try and stall the downward spiral.
They are, in the sense that they can't stop the economic collapse.
As opposed to what? You can't sell if no one's buying, and they can't buy if they don't have income. Wages have been in decline for decades now, so a company that doesn't rip off someone has little chance of success because your product, no matter how good, isn't more important than food. And small businesses typically have desperation, some remaining cash reserves to take, but not enough to put up a fight in court over misleading marketing, making them the ideal victims.
Even Google ultimately amounts to a Red Queen's Race: you pay them to keep even with your competitors, who do the same. But as the total buying power of consumers continues to decline, so will the income from online advertising, so Google's business model is just as doomed as any other. Vultures acting in increasingly brazen bad faith will gorge themselves on the carcassess for a while, and then die in turn. As will the rest of us, since how many here can actually live off the land with no outside help, even in the form of defending said land from other desperate people?
It's rather ironic: markets got so efficient they optimized away the spare income that was their engine. And now every further increase in efficiency only makes the situation worse, because one person's expenditure is another's income, so every cutting of costs further contracts economy in an uncontrollable tailspin that's approaching the point of no return: breakdown of basic life support systems and the resulting riots and revolutions. So I guess Marx got the last laugh after all.
Do the people who ask you if you'd like fries with your Big Mac like their jobs? Very unlikely. Are they doing them because they're masochists? No. They're doing them because they're forced to. Who forces them? Nobody in particular; the surrounding culture has been set up in such a way that their options are "serve fries or starve".
We build hells for ourselves all the time, not because we're masochists but because we're still getting a hang of this whole sapience thing. Taking current situation lasting forever as "unassailable fact" is a perfect example of where improvements are still needed.
Aside from the odd serial killer... no. There's no evidence whatsoever that killing another human being is anything but psychologically devastating, and that's not even getting into the chance of dying yourself. It's why every war is coupled with a massive propaganda effort typically aimed at dehumanizing the intended target and justifying the whole deal.
Unfortunate perversions brought by accidents of cultural evolution shouldn't be confused with human nature, even if our socities wish we did. But those same evolutionary forces are bringing the era of warfare to an end, since modern technological civilization is just plain incompatible with war, due to the dependence on extremely expensive infrastructure. Fighting on or near your own territory is shooting yourself in the foot, and even the US is going bankrupt under the burden of maintaining the ability to project force far away.
Just look at how European colonial empires collapsed after fighting a major war, resulting in the birth of EU to stop Europe from going up in flames again. Or how Cuban missile crisis came within a single officer's decision from escalating into full-scale nuclear war, resulting in two superpowers which frankly hated each other ultimately negotiating an arms reduction deal. Or look at how Soviet Union collapsed in large part because it kept wasting its resources in military it couldn't actually use. Or, for that matter, the price modern-day Russia is paying for Putin's little adventure in Ukraine.
One way or another, war has no future, because the historical window of opportunity where you have sufficient organization to fight one yet insufficient technological ability to cause any real damage is closing. The main reason it still exists is force of habit.
Try to make up your mind.
Which, in turn, makes you a villain in world's story... so why should anyone care?
Managers get enormous wages because they're part of the good old boys club who's members set each other's wages - in other words, corruption. However, their job description is management, not technical expertise. Expecting them to know what a specialist working under them knows is unreasonable, and if enforced, will simply limit technology to whatever a single human non-expert can hold in his head. That's not good for anyone except buggy whip makers.
Not for the scapegoat it won't be. Nor for anyone who'll have to deal with the resulting culture of ass-covering and plausibly deniable orders.
No, it's not. It is the stock market that sets the values of a publicly traded company. As long as companies only purpose is to generate profit for their owners, it is utterly dishonest to make speeches about their "values" - they have none save money because they're not allowed to.
Peer pressure makes otherwise decent humans do things they wouldn't on their own. Peer pressure works on structures formed from humans, such as companies and nations, too. And peer pressure is ultimately just the expectations of a particular culture and system guiding its parts in their functions. For companies it manifests in the form of having their success or failure measured in terms of finances, rather than in terms of ethical conduct or benefit to mankind. If you want to change that, I'm all for it; but it'll require changing capitalism itself. Individuals and companies, even extremely corrupt ones like Kenneth Lay or SCO, are ultimately just doing what they've been taught; blaming them is both unjust and pointless. Unless, of course, the point is trying to defend the system itself from criticism.
We also don't know that it wasn't Hitler coming out of hiding in South America, ripening the last remaining piece of Third Reich for a corporate takeover to start another bid for world domination. Or the lizard people of Regulus trying to sneak attack humanity through pollution. Or the Devil himself getting ready for Carmageddon.
Or it could had been a manager wanting a bonus.
Know your place, shut your face.
Don't you just love our brave new world?
Ripped off by getting something that pollutes more than advertised - and, presumably, will have less power than advertised if that issue is ever fixed.
And they didn't. They bought a clean diesel. Only it turns out it's not clean after all, because Wolkswagen lied. And let's hope this was the only scam Volkswagen ran, and there's no other problems, for example with safety features.
But you needn't worry. Volkswagen is a huge company; we all know it'll get away with this. Laws are for us, not our masters.
So does this mean that Twitch is a criminal enterprise? Also, does this mean that any game review is in violation copyright law, since they are derivative works based on the original audiovisual work? Also, you're leaving something out: a game is an interactive audiovisual work. A recording of a speedrun is not interactive.
I strongly suspect that Nintendo doesn't have any legal standing whatsoever, and they're simply abusing the DMCA because there's no legal consequences for doing so and Youtube is pretty infamous for selling out its users when anyone asks.
Did they actually make the disclosure, or was it buried somewhere in a 50-page legalese boilerplate document that exists precisely to hide anything important?
Because there's lying, lying by omission, and lying by drowning someone in so much irrelevant detail important things go unnoticed. All are forms of intentional deception, and none should be excused.
Unfortunately, treatment of criminals is very much in the scope of this conversation, because certain ways to treat them - such as private prison industry or the desire to prove one's righteousness by attacking "evil" people, such as felons - create perverse incentives to manufacture more of them. That is the mechanism behind every witch hunt, and that is what the war on drugs is now, no matter what it might have started as.
There are people who hate and fear nothing as much as someone doing something labeled bad in their moral code and getting away with it. That's fine if "bad" means molesting kids, and not so fine if "bad" means smoking pot. And when their code is questioned some people drift towards moderation while others go to fanatical extremes to silence their own doubts. The end result is pretty much the same, whether it's called Inquisition, Al-Qaida or a SWAT team: a bunch of murderous thugs looking for new victims whose life the specific code they use to excuse their inexcusable actions lets them ruin with good conscience.
Treatment of criminals is at the very heart of the War on Drugs because "criminal" is just the specific form the concept of subhuman takes in the US. You can't have bread and circuses without a steady stream of acceptable victims to feed to the lions, after all. And like they say, the Dark Side is the quick and easy path to power, so the powerful are only too happy to sell their souls to it - as are the weak, all too often. After that decision's made, the only thing left is deciding who'll make the most convenient sacrifice. In the US it's the criminals, in the EU refugees (historically Jews), in Islamic world infidels. Dunno about the rest of the world.
What all this means is that the War on Drugs is a symptom, but the disease itself is something ancient and very nasty.
And they did. Look at the US or the EU - or, for that matter, China. All are led by people who think they're building shining futures for themselves. That these shining futures always become nightmares for everyone else is neither accidental nor new. After all, if the parisians were comfortable rather than starving your Versailles could be a bit more opulent, whether it's personal wealth (US), new gold standard (Euro) or dreams of restoring lost glory (China).
What the world has is plenty of people who consider war, poverty and nuclear weapons as acceptable price to pay for their personal utopias.
Its analysts - many of them fluent in Russian, Mandarin, Portuguese or 21 other languages - infiltrate the underground, blend in, and with any luck, they've got the exploits already.
This is an excellent example of why "well how the hell was I supposed to know that was illegal" should be a perfectly valid defence. No person can possibly memorize every single law in the books, much less actually utilize that knowledge in decision-making, so if breaking nonsensical laws out of ignorance is a felony, then the only way to avoid becoming one is to never do anything new - and even then you're relying on your normal routine not suddenly becoming illegal.
The point of law isn't to throw as many people in prisons as possible. If a law will destroy people's lives for not realizing that playing with a perfectly ordinary, store-bought toy would be illegal, then that law should be null and void on that basis.
And as a - undoubtedly completely unintended - side effect, it'll effectively kill the technology before it can change status quo by killing the mass market.
No, automation is the way to go, bot because of safety and because drones that rely on automation for safety don't require operator line-of-sight - or even necessarily operator, period. Which, I guess, scares a lot of people, apparently even here on Slashdot. I suppose nerds are no exception to the rule that you become more conservative as your mind calcifies with age.
Or you could simply make the visa submission a legally binding open job offer. It gets published for some reasonable amount of time, and if a local appears who you can't prove before a court doesn't meet your written qualifications, they get the job or a year's pay at going market rate as severance. Also, if no locals can be found the visa holder is also entitled to said severance, should their employment be terminated before the contract expires.
An employer who honestly can't find someone to fill a position either because there aren't any or because they simply suck at advertising open jobs should find the system neutral or even beneficial. On the other hand, weasels paint a big fat target on their wallets. And employees and economists both get some trustworthy data about what skills are in demand.
As it happens, the Dune society would collapse without it.
Imagine less and think more. Once things descend into violence it doesn't really matter what sparked it.
People get resentful when they get less than they think they deserve. If enough people get resentful you get trouble. So it's not what you or I imagine, it's what Joe Average imagines. And Joe has grown up in a consumer society where his desires are constantly stroked by every company competing for his waning purchasing power.
They can't grow their own food, since they have no land to do so, nor the skills or physical conditioning to farm it without tools they can't afford. They can't simply go West and start their own homestead since there's no place left to do so. They can't employ themselves because they don't have the capital to mass-produce stuff and cottage industry is not competitive expect in extremely specialized niche areas which require skills Joe Average doesn't have and has no capacity to acquire - because valuable skills are valuable precisely because the supply is limited.
So no, most people can't carry their own straw. They need to be integrated to the economic system to survive, and that means they need income. This is the world capitalism built, and this is the world it will also have to deal with.
Of course it's your problem if society collapses around you. You're simply letting your own quirky sense of fairness tell you it shouldn't be your problem, and confusing that with reality.
Whereas I've noticed a lot of people are more concerned about whether other people "deserve" something good than what the effects of them not getting it will be. Then they act bitter and surprised when such twisted priorities result in decisions that are bad for both them and those others, never mind that that's exactly what they asked for.
That's not an option. Every society has a certain minimum quality of life and perceived fairness it can get away with before it goes down in flames. Both Europe and US are exhibiting signs of a gathering storm, for example in the form of increasing hostility towards immigrants.
The problem is, that straw must be carried by some camel. Currently the choices are either employees, employers or public sector. Employees are hopelessly in debt, as is the society, so that leaves employers. If they can't or won't carry it either, then we're headed for another age of revolutions.
Any attempt to do anything that might get in the way of corporate profits gets shot down as communism. Any attempt to do anything through public sector gets shot down as socialism. Any attempt to do anything with your personal resources is too little to have any effect unless other people join in, which they won't because tragedy of the commons. So pragmatically speaking, there's not much point worrying about the future of our societies since them going over the edge is pretty much a done deal due to having no functional steering mechanisms left because the anti-government "Invisible Hand takes care of it!" types purposefully broke them all, as dictated by their pseudo-religion.
So does this mean the employers would otherwise pay more than they can get away with and still maintain sufficient workforce, presumably out of the goodness and generosity of their hearts? Because I'm pretty sure shareholders wouldn't like that.
But hey, the faster people are convinced there's no way up for them under the current system, the faster we can get the next wave of communist revolutions underway and start rebuilding the economy. So keep up the good work, comrade.
It might be harmful for one person to star in pornography, or watch it, or both, while it might be okay or even beneficial for another. It might have effects that reach beyond the participants and affect third parties; some of those third parties might be harmed, some helped. All of these need to be taken into account when judging pornography, just like any other thing. "Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly."
Methinks I'm taking that exalted stature far more seriously than you by respecting people's decisions about who and what they are, rather than holding them beholden to the particular shape their envelope of dust happens to exhibit in this world, or my personal tastes and prejudices linked to those shapes. That is what "exalted" means, after all: elevated in rank. And that means people judge traditions and laws, not the other way around. "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."
No. I do, however, hate it when people "tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them."
"And anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell."
Perhaps you should reconsider your position in these issues a bit. To err is human, after all. And sins are forgiven, so you are free to admit them and change. A confession won't be used against you like in Earthly courts, so there's nothing to gain from refusing to, except misery. That is the point of Christianity, as far as I can tell: bad choices were made when we were a young species and didn't know any better, and now that we are older and wiser it's time to reconsider them and grow up. And the process won't be finished this side of Judgement Day.
"General welfare" is English. It doesn't need to be translated.
US Government currently directly employs around 2.7 million people. How many people it pays indirectly through companies providing it goods and services is anyone's guess.
You are attempting to pretend plain English is some moon language so you can twist it to mean whatever you want it to mean, because you disagree with what it actually says.
So "general welfare" now means "making a profit"?
Also, don't lie. Your disagreement is based on a combination of ideology of what the Constitution should say, being too lazy to try and change it so it would actually say so, and being too dishonest to simply accept that. You aren't going to agree with me unless you'll grow a backbone or switch ideologies.
Oh well, I hope you're at least enjoying your fantasies rather than taking them seriously enough to cause you distress.
HINT: I haven't claimed that the government could or should make a profit.
Of course it is. And because the utility curve of wealth isn't flat but asymptotically approaches some finite value, transferring wealth from more wealthy to less wealthy typically increases the total utility - or "general welfare" - of a population.
"General welfare" is consistent with both courses of action. If one of them is against your personal political beliefs, then lobby for the Constitution to be amended. Don't "translate" English into English to get around what it actually says because that risks other people with conflicting beliefs doing the same.