Either that or the ignorant morons who insisted AIDS was god's way of punishing homosexuals for being, um, homosexual, yet again proved to be full of shit.
Because the/. editors think you're all gay and at risk of AIDS.
Look, if you're too lazy to write a decent troll couldn't you just copypasta old GNAA posts or something? Because this is pitiful enough make me feel bad for you.
What does that mean? Lots of nonsense and no constructive comments to further the discussion.
What discussion? Until the gaming industry brings to table evidence that they've changed, there's nothing to discuss. Why would anyone negotiate with someone who's simply trying to stall endlessly to avoid having to actually do anything?
If you continue to support the company doing something you don't like your the idiot and boycotting all companies won't solve the problem.
You said yourself this is an industry-wide problem. So don't be surprised that the entire industry is being held accountable as a whole. And yes, that will solve the problem, by crashing the entire industry to make room for a less malevolent version if that's what it'll take.
I have no idea what this is suppose to mean in this context.
Exactly what the very previous paragraph explained: if you act like a villain, you get treated like one, no matter how much you whine about it. Astroturfing won't change that any more than lifelong debt slavery sentences did. Nothing will.
You seem bitter about something but I'm not sure what.
Not at all - I have enough backlog to last me over the coming crash and reboot. And I doubt you'll have trouble finding another group who'll refuse to believe the universe won't make an exception for them to shill for. It's still not fun to watch an entire industry march to its doom over delusions of grandieur.
Scientific results exists even if you personally cannot confirm them. The point is that someone can confirm them, and does.
And the obvious rebuttal is a whole lot of people can confirm their invisible sky gods.
Someone's confirmed (some) God's existence? Really? Do you have any links? What kind of test did they use? Is US opening an embassy in Heaven?
Honestly, you'd think confirming the existence of any supernatural being would be bigger news than Congress being morons... but I guess Slashdot will get to this story in a week or so.
But don't worry. With any luck we'll trigger the clathrate gun, methane release from melting permafrost or some other positive feedback loop soon, at which point you can move to Step 5 and enjoy your disaster. Just hang in there a little bit longer.
I'm just happy I don't have any children, so if you win I can just exit stage left and leave yours to curse your memory.
I honestly think that, on a personal level, they do believe it. But when it comes to their base and who actually pays for their campaigns (Koch brothers, oil money, etc) then they will vote as they have been told to do by their paymasters.
That is probably true for many more issues than this, and not just for politicians. I don't think most people have really made the adjustment to the fact that in a democracy, their opinions matter, so forming them based on ideology - or even what's best for yourself rather than the whole country - is ultimately self-destructive. So we've ended up in a situation analogous to someone moving away from his parents for the first time and spending his time partying while the bills and trash pile up around him, and it's just a matter of how hard he needs to crash to admit that his new freedom also means that he needs to do something about them.
Oh well, incompetence isn't going anywhere until it's no longer needed, so should US and EU fall one petty dictator or another is going to screw up bad enough to cause a new Magna Carta sooner or later. Might take a few thousand years of hard lessons more, but having to repeat the class is the price of failing grade. And hopefully only that, seeing how we now have the ability to burn the whole school down with atomic fire, and ourselves with it...
"Flood plains" have nothing to do with sea level rises...
A flood occurs when either water supply is increased or water drainage is decreased (or both) beyond usual variance. If sea levels rise, drainage in low areas is decreased since pushing seawater out of the way slows down rivers. So it seems likely that flood plains will grow upstream and cover new areas, while existing plains get worse and more frequent floods.
The article (or shall I say shameless advertisement) goes out of its way to talk about how much they shower the growing plants with "nutrients," but says not one iota about the nutritional content of the final product and how it compares to organic or conventionally grown produce.
How could any of these be different? Salad is a living creature, not a dish made by a cook. The only things that can change are the relative abundances of various cell types (and lots of variance there means the salad will simply die instead of growing), and what extra crap - herbicide, bird poop, etc - gets a ride to your stomach on it (where a sealed building is pretty much unbeatable).
At the end of the day the internal practice of a company is your business in the way that you can choose to avoid buying their products. In my opinion steeping to their level by not being just is encouraging people to do that to all companies good or bad.
It sucks to realize your cunning plan depended on other people not reacting to your defections in ways you don't want them to, doesn't it? But the only effective response to realizing bad karma actually hurts is not to blame karma, or your victims, or even anyone who sees those victims and decides you're fair game, but to change your actions.
I'd say "welcome to real life", but like I pointed out before, even fairy tales do keep pointing this out.
I dunno, have EA and friends started paying overtime yet?
Robbers getting scammed isn't going to get much sympathy, especially when they're themselves trying to scam the public out of their resale rights. Let the games industry become respectable if they want to be treated with respect; and if they continue acting like a bunch of evil overlords, they should bloody well expect the public to side with the rogues looting their ill-gotten gains - their very products depict excactly that scenario over and over again.
But I guess no one likes admitting they are the villain in their own story.
And you're going to spot more and more as the world moves on. You can be bitter about that and reminisce about bad old days when people were forced to pretend bullshit designed to keep everyone in their place wasn't bullshit, or you can let them go and enjoy the good progress brings. Either way they won't return.
That's stupid or disingenuous bullshit. Emoji makes an expressed thought harder to understand, while the HTML presentation coupled with a web browser makes it easier. It's exactly the opposite.
So it's you who's disingenius here. Or, to put it bluntly, a complete hypocrite. Especially since your own grip on the English language appears to be tenuous at best, as demonstrated below.
I don't expect if I get a polite response, and since you appear to understand English,
Pity you can't write it:-D. Perhaps you should focus more on your own language skills rather than those of others.
Such as when displaying a short message, for example. They are typically displayed in system font sizes, which are usually non-trivial to change for the average user.
So now average user's convenience matters. Of course, they seem to be just fine with smileys since they keep using them... So perhaps it's you who finds changing font size non-trivial?
Why is everything HTML to you? Is that the only technology you "understand"?
HTML is cross-platform, allows embedding images, and is often used to render messages, so your "small-smiley" scenario could theoretically happen with it. Was that really too hard to figure out?
Never mind, rhetorical question. I see little reason to continue this, since it's obvious you have nothing besides playing(?) dumb to add. So long, and the next time you have trouble with technology simply ask for help, rather than coming up with a ridiculous tale about trying to protect "idiots" from too much convenience.
As opposed to freedom fighters who blow people up in order to "liberate" them?
It's not the religion of Islam but the religion of violence - the idea that the ends justify the means - that creates terrorists. And violence is pretty much universally worshipped on Earth, in forms ranging all the way from ritualistic animal sacrifice to all-out war. Our future depends on if it's a true universal constant or a mere option that could potentially be unchosen before our luck runs out and we wipe ourselves out.
First, I am quite capable of retrieving the page content via telnet.
But did you? Y'know, to practice your skills?
Second, the page content was actually deliberately formatted to be interpreted with a web browser. A whole layer of material was added to the content specifically to make that convenient.
So your convenience matters, but other people should "exercise their language skills". How utterly unsurprising.
In what way am I using grammar or spelling to silence people? I am trying to encourage grammar and spelling, so that people can have a voice. You are trying to encourage people to engage in the digital equivalent of baby talk, so that they can never express a complex thought. You've got it completely backwards, fucko. You want to disempower. I want to empower.
So tell me: if smileys enable "stupid people" (to use your elitist terminology) to express the thoughts they wish, which is the logical requirement for them to replace some other form of communication, such as written text, in what way would disabling them "empower" said people? All it does is make communication less convenient and thus less frequent. Of course, if that's your actual goal, your means make perfect sense.
If you insist on being a disingenuous douchebag, you can only talk meaningless shit.
I assure you, my dislike of your ideas and attitude is quite sincere. Also, perhaps you shouldn't call people "idiots" and expect a polite response. Douchebags exist to deal with shit, after all.
There's plenty of places where you're not allowed to zoom, yet where emoji can appear.
Such as? And in any case, if they can render modern fonts, which are vector graphics, making said smileys part of the font should actually solve this problem. Or at least let you read the HTML source, which you above imply you're capable of doing.
Seriously, everything you said was wrong. Why do you even bother?
Because malevolent bullcrap like yours is slowing down progress everywhere I look. If you want to communicate solely through six-page hand-bound letters written in calligraphed Oxford English, that is certainly your right. And if someone else chooses to use pornographic smileys to imply that getting a blowjob from a duck turned out to be a bad idea, that's theirs. But no - you insist on having a say on how they may or may not communicate, for their own good of course.
No, there are plenty of utter imbeciles who totally don't get sarcasm.
I get sarcasm perfectly well. Specifically, I get how it can be used as a cover against all criticism while in the process of repeating a lie often enough that it gets accepted as a part of the general culture of a community. MRA bullshit is like furry porn: it spreads and takes root anywhere it's left alone. But that comparison is unfair, since the most disgusting cartoon porn about imaginary creatures is ultimately not harming anyone, it's simply an eyesore, while your crap is directly and actively hindering humanity's efforts to rise above its past and seek a better tomorrow.
You creeps already shat on fedoras, the concept of equality, and any man who's actually been mistreated by a female to the extent of needing help (no, women not liking you is not mistreatment, it's your cue to take a long hard look at yourself), do you absolutely must soil Slashdot too?
No. Why would you think I did? Apart as a rhetorical prelude to your following tirade, of course, but surely an expert communicator like you you could launch into one without having to twist other people's words into a springboard?
Instead of expecting people to exercise their language skills, we're just enabling stupid people to be more stupid.
And believing that you of course used a telnet client to read this discussion and post your message, since a "browser" makes the process easier, thus letting even you manage it? Or does it only apply to skills you already (mistakenly think you) are good at, thus completely coincidentally maximizing the chance that you have an unfair advantage in any interaction?
Grammar and spelling exist to faciliate efficient communication. Trying to use them as a barrier to silence people you dislike for whatever reason means you not only missed the mark, but somehow managed to get a bullseye on your own asshole. Though judging by your attitude, that's easier for you than most.
Their last motivation to learn to speak properly was to communicate with other idiots like themselves, and emoji shits on that.
Smileys are only relevant to written text, not spoken word. Furthermore, unless it's one specific emoji you're concerned about, it's "emojis shit", not "emoji shits".
Meanwhile, they're actually a really shitty way to communicate, because they are far more difficult to tell apart on a small screen than are words.
This is the first and only relevant or even remotely intelligent point you've made in your own sad attempt to communicate. And if you insist on using a mobile device which lacks a zoom function yet supports less-used unicode characters, and use this device for the type of communication where it's critical to be able to tell a smiley from a frowney, it might actually make sense to ask people to take this into account when messaging you. But frankly, that sounds like a very specific corner case that has little if any relevant to designing technical standards for common use.
Emoji are stupid, and people who use them are stupid by extension. But we knew that, because if they weren't, they would have just written what they meant instead of using an ambiguous sad face fucking a duck.
And yet your message would had been improved by replacing most of its content with oral bestiality. At least then you could had blamed it on a computer virus rather than whatever is infecting your central nervous system, and even if you'd failed you'd come across as a mere pervert rather than an arrogant shithead who wants to make life more difficult to other people for the mere reason that you think it should be. It would also have provided more value to this discussion, or any discussion.
we moved on from hieroglyphs, we dont need to be going back to them
We moved on from hieroglyphs since writing by hand was so tedious anyone bothering could be assumed to be serious in unclear cases. Since writing and sending messages has moved on to an everyday form of personal communication, it also requires a concise way to express tone and emotion a non-professional writer can manage. And in practice that means some form of smileys, so we can as well optimize them.
Technology exists to serve people's needs, after all.
And seriously, I simply cannot comprehend this logic. The (incredibly common) logic used by people like you is based on the following premises:
No, it's based on the idea that women are unreliable, immoral and not really sapient and will thus throw their lover under the bus the second it seems profitable, even if the long-term results are negative.
The "logic" is incomprehensible because society has advanced to the point where saying the main premise out loud is frowned upon. But people can read between lines, so as long as sexism will exist in any form it will always resurface. Dehumanization and discrimination are the two sides of the same ugly thing, after all.
A strong man's fist is a deadly weapon. You're telling me a fighter waving his fist in your face will traumatize you equally compared to a gun under your nose?
Why wouldn't it? Guns have no magical powers fists lack that cause the (mental) trauma. It's the violence that does, and as you yourself noted, fists are all you need for that.
I'm betting Google's own dancing monkeys will be as annoying as ever.
Do they need to be? They're no longer competing with a zillion other animations to be the most attention-grapping thing around. The evolutionary arms race is over, so the optimal ad is one that the user notices but isn't annoyed by - after all, developing and installing ad blockers is hard work which people aren't going to do without reason, and besides, who wants to have their brand associated with annoyance if that's not required to be noticed?
I'm cautiously optimistic about this. Google has both the means and motive to turn online ads from an accursed scourge to reasonable suggestions you might be willing to take. Time will tell if they'll also have the wisdom to do so.
Bullshit. I think we're more likely to see a revolution with the current approach. For example, your willingness to destroy industries because you don't think their wages are high enough.
I agree that current approach will lead to ruin. I simply disagree on how to avoid it. Specifically, I'd enact an unconditional and irremovable citizen wage sufficient to live and function in modern society (food, home, water, electricity, car where it's necessary or public transit where it's sufficient, and Internet connection) and then repeal everything except safety regulations (and even those could be at least considerably eased after people got used to the fact that they can afford to say no). This would simultaneously kill industries that relied on exploiting desperate people, guarantee a level of domestic demand, allow pruning of bureaucracy on both public and private sectors and give companies total flexibility in hiring and firing without crushing anyone underfoot while at it.
Basically, ensure there's one armor-plated ox who can fight off the bears, and everyone will likely be better off.
Why do you think the Gilded Age proves your point? That period was the transition from former colonies to superpower. They must have been doing a lot of things right.
Right? That depends. Do you value superpower status more than not having lots of poverty? I don't, so I think Gilded Age sucked.
The classic "we didn't want those jobs anyway!" response. If they're paying someone to do something, then there's some value to it. I suggest letting it going on rather than burning another hole in the economy and society.
Just like there's an upper bound an employer is willing to pay to get job X done, there's also a lower bound to what dire consequences - such as what level of poverty - a potential employee is willing to suffer to avoid doing X. This means that a society where X gets done has some positive utility for the employer and negative utility for the employee compared to one where it won't. The total utility of doing X dips into negative if the upper bound is low, because the negative utility to the employee of doing the job has fixed components, for example wasting their limited time to do things they don't care about.
In other words, your desire to have a cheap Big Mac isn't more important than the pain of someone who just barely prefers flipping them to homelessness.
Slashdot Mirror
"What biblical character you most resemble" is a popular pastime in those circles, or so I've heard, so just point them to Revelation: "Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon."
Who knows, it might actually result in some self-reflection.
Look, if you're too lazy to write a decent troll couldn't you just copypasta old GNAA posts or something? Because this is pitiful enough make me feel bad for you.
Oh. Well played.
What discussion? Until the gaming industry brings to table evidence that they've changed, there's nothing to discuss. Why would anyone negotiate with someone who's simply trying to stall endlessly to avoid having to actually do anything?
You said yourself this is an industry-wide problem. So don't be surprised that the entire industry is being held accountable as a whole. And yes, that will solve the problem, by crashing the entire industry to make room for a less malevolent version if that's what it'll take.
Exactly what the very previous paragraph explained: if you act like a villain, you get treated like one, no matter how much you whine about it. Astroturfing won't change that any more than lifelong debt slavery sentences did. Nothing will.
Not at all - I have enough backlog to last me over the coming crash and reboot. And I doubt you'll have trouble finding another group who'll refuse to believe the universe won't make an exception for them to shill for. It's still not fun to watch an entire industry march to its doom over delusions of grandieur.
Someone's confirmed (some) God's existence? Really? Do you have any links? What kind of test did they use? Is US opening an embassy in Heaven?
Honestly, you'd think confirming the existence of any supernatural being would be bigger news than Congress being morons... but I guess Slashdot will get to this story in a week or so.
I guess the computer you used to post that message works by magic, then.
Which is Step 4.
But don't worry. With any luck we'll trigger the clathrate gun, methane release from melting permafrost or some other positive feedback loop soon, at which point you can move to Step 5 and enjoy your disaster. Just hang in there a little bit longer.
I'm just happy I don't have any children, so if you win I can just exit stage left and leave yours to curse your memory.
That is probably true for many more issues than this, and not just for politicians. I don't think most people have really made the adjustment to the fact that in a democracy, their opinions matter, so forming them based on ideology - or even what's best for yourself rather than the whole country - is ultimately self-destructive. So we've ended up in a situation analogous to someone moving away from his parents for the first time and spending his time partying while the bills and trash pile up around him, and it's just a matter of how hard he needs to crash to admit that his new freedom also means that he needs to do something about them.
Oh well, incompetence isn't going anywhere until it's no longer needed, so should US and EU fall one petty dictator or another is going to screw up bad enough to cause a new Magna Carta sooner or later. Might take a few thousand years of hard lessons more, but having to repeat the class is the price of failing grade. And hopefully only that, seeing how we now have the ability to burn the whole school down with atomic fire, and ourselves with it...
A flood occurs when either water supply is increased or water drainage is decreased (or both) beyond usual variance. If sea levels rise, drainage in low areas is decreased since pushing seawater out of the way slows down rivers. So it seems likely that flood plains will grow upstream and cover new areas, while existing plains get worse and more frequent floods.
How could any of these be different? Salad is a living creature, not a dish made by a cook. The only things that can change are the relative abundances of various cell types (and lots of variance there means the salad will simply die instead of growing), and what extra crap - herbicide, bird poop, etc - gets a ride to your stomach on it (where a sealed building is pretty much unbeatable).
It sucks to realize your cunning plan depended on other people not reacting to your defections in ways you don't want them to, doesn't it? But the only effective response to realizing bad karma actually hurts is not to blame karma, or your victims, or even anyone who sees those victims and decides you're fair game, but to change your actions.
I'd say "welcome to real life", but like I pointed out before, even fairy tales do keep pointing this out.
I dunno, have EA and friends started paying overtime yet?
Robbers getting scammed isn't going to get much sympathy, especially when they're themselves trying to scam the public out of their resale rights. Let the games industry become respectable if they want to be treated with respect; and if they continue acting like a bunch of evil overlords, they should bloody well expect the public to side with the rogues looting their ill-gotten gains - their very products depict excactly that scenario over and over again.
But I guess no one likes admitting they are the villain in their own story.
And you're going to spot more and more as the world moves on. You can be bitter about that and reminisce about bad old days when people were forced to pretend bullshit designed to keep everyone in their place wasn't bullshit, or you can let them go and enjoy the good progress brings. Either way they won't return.
Smileys make it easier for the people who use them to express their thoughts. That is why they use it. And you know that too, at least based on your comment: "Instead of expecting people to exercise their language skills, we're just enabling stupid people to be more stupid. Their last motivation to learn to speak properly was to communicate with other idiots like themselves, and emoji shits on that."
So it's you who's disingenius here. Or, to put it bluntly, a complete hypocrite. Especially since your own grip on the English language appears to be tenuous at best, as demonstrated below.
Pity you can't write it :-D. Perhaps you should focus more on your own language skills rather than those of others.
So now average user's convenience matters. Of course, they seem to be just fine with smileys since they keep using them... So perhaps it's you who finds changing font size non-trivial?
HTML is cross-platform, allows embedding images, and is often used to render messages, so your "small-smiley" scenario could theoretically happen with it. Was that really too hard to figure out?
Never mind, rhetorical question. I see little reason to continue this, since it's obvious you have nothing besides playing(?) dumb to add. So long, and the next time you have trouble with technology simply ask for help, rather than coming up with a ridiculous tale about trying to protect "idiots" from too much convenience.
As opposed to freedom fighters who blow people up in order to "liberate" them?
It's not the religion of Islam but the religion of violence - the idea that the ends justify the means - that creates terrorists. And violence is pretty much universally worshipped on Earth, in forms ranging all the way from ritualistic animal sacrifice to all-out war. Our future depends on if it's a true universal constant or a mere option that could potentially be unchosen before our luck runs out and we wipe ourselves out.
But did you? Y'know, to practice your skills?
So your convenience matters, but other people should "exercise their language skills". How utterly unsurprising.
Really? Because this is what you actually wrote: "Instead of expecting people to exercise their language skills, we're just enabling stupid people to be more stupid. Their last motivation to learn to speak properly was to communicate with other idiots like themselves, and emoji shits on that."
So tell me: if smileys enable "stupid people" (to use your elitist terminology) to express the thoughts they wish, which is the logical requirement for them to replace some other form of communication, such as written text, in what way would disabling them "empower" said people? All it does is make communication less convenient and thus less frequent. Of course, if that's your actual goal, your means make perfect sense.
I assure you, my dislike of your ideas and attitude is quite sincere. Also, perhaps you shouldn't call people "idiots" and expect a polite response. Douchebags exist to deal with shit, after all.
Such as? And in any case, if they can render modern fonts, which are vector graphics, making said smileys part of the font should actually solve this problem. Or at least let you read the HTML source, which you above imply you're capable of doing.
Because malevolent bullcrap like yours is slowing down progress everywhere I look. If you want to communicate solely through six-page hand-bound letters written in calligraphed Oxford English, that is certainly your right. And if someone else chooses to use pornographic smileys to imply that getting a blowjob from a duck turned out to be a bad idea, that's theirs. But no - you insist on having a say on how they may or may not communicate, for their own good of course.
I get sarcasm perfectly well. Specifically, I get how it can be used as a cover against all criticism while in the process of repeating a lie often enough that it gets accepted as a part of the general culture of a community. MRA bullshit is like furry porn: it spreads and takes root anywhere it's left alone. But that comparison is unfair, since the most disgusting cartoon porn about imaginary creatures is ultimately not harming anyone, it's simply an eyesore, while your crap is directly and actively hindering humanity's efforts to rise above its past and seek a better tomorrow.
You creeps already shat on fedoras, the concept of equality, and any man who's actually been mistreated by a female to the extent of needing help (no, women not liking you is not mistreatment, it's your cue to take a long hard look at yourself), do you absolutely must soil Slashdot too?
No. Why would you think I did? Apart as a rhetorical prelude to your following tirade, of course, but surely an expert communicator like you you could launch into one without having to twist other people's words into a springboard?
And believing that you of course used a telnet client to read this discussion and post your message, since a "browser" makes the process easier, thus letting even you manage it? Or does it only apply to skills you already (mistakenly think you) are good at, thus completely coincidentally maximizing the chance that you have an unfair advantage in any interaction?
Grammar and spelling exist to faciliate efficient communication. Trying to use them as a barrier to silence people you dislike for whatever reason means you not only missed the mark, but somehow managed to get a bullseye on your own asshole. Though judging by your attitude, that's easier for you than most.
Smileys are only relevant to written text, not spoken word. Furthermore, unless it's one specific emoji you're concerned about, it's "emojis shit", not "emoji shits".
This is the first and only relevant or even remotely intelligent point you've made in your own sad attempt to communicate. And if you insist on using a mobile device which lacks a zoom function yet supports less-used unicode characters, and use this device for the type of communication where it's critical to be able to tell a smiley from a frowney, it might actually make sense to ask people to take this into account when messaging you. But frankly, that sounds like a very specific corner case that has little if any relevant to designing technical standards for common use.
And yet your message would had been improved by replacing most of its content with oral bestiality. At least then you could had blamed it on a computer virus rather than whatever is infecting your central nervous system, and even if you'd failed you'd come across as a mere pervert rather than an arrogant shithead who wants to make life more difficult to other people for the mere reason that you think it should be. It would also have provided more value to this discussion, or any discussion.
Is it just me, or does every article become an MRA self-pity fest nowadays? Honestly, this crap makes me miss the creationists....
We moved on from hieroglyphs since writing by hand was so tedious anyone bothering could be assumed to be serious in unclear cases. Since writing and sending messages has moved on to an everyday form of personal communication, it also requires a concise way to express tone and emotion a non-professional writer can manage. And in practice that means some form of smileys, so we can as well optimize them.
Technology exists to serve people's needs, after all.
Do those people by any chance bear an uncanny resemblance to scarecrows?
No, it's based on the idea that women are unreliable, immoral and not really sapient and will thus throw their lover under the bus the second it seems profitable, even if the long-term results are negative.
The "logic" is incomprehensible because society has advanced to the point where saying the main premise out loud is frowned upon. But people can read between lines, so as long as sexism will exist in any form it will always resurface. Dehumanization and discrimination are the two sides of the same ugly thing, after all.
Why wouldn't it? Guns have no magical powers fists lack that cause the (mental) trauma. It's the violence that does, and as you yourself noted, fists are all you need for that.
Do they need to be? They're no longer competing with a zillion other animations to be the most attention-grapping thing around. The evolutionary arms race is over, so the optimal ad is one that the user notices but isn't annoyed by - after all, developing and installing ad blockers is hard work which people aren't going to do without reason, and besides, who wants to have their brand associated with annoyance if that's not required to be noticed?
I'm cautiously optimistic about this. Google has both the means and motive to turn online ads from an accursed scourge to reasonable suggestions you might be willing to take. Time will tell if they'll also have the wisdom to do so.
We have.
I agree that current approach will lead to ruin. I simply disagree on how to avoid it. Specifically, I'd enact an unconditional and irremovable citizen wage sufficient to live and function in modern society (food, home, water, electricity, car where it's necessary or public transit where it's sufficient, and Internet connection) and then repeal everything except safety regulations (and even those could be at least considerably eased after people got used to the fact that they can afford to say no). This would simultaneously kill industries that relied on exploiting desperate people, guarantee a level of domestic demand, allow pruning of bureaucracy on both public and private sectors and give companies total flexibility in hiring and firing without crushing anyone underfoot while at it.
Basically, ensure there's one armor-plated ox who can fight off the bears, and everyone will likely be better off.
Right? That depends. Do you value superpower status more than not having lots of poverty? I don't, so I think Gilded Age sucked.
Just like there's an upper bound an employer is willing to pay to get job X done, there's also a lower bound to what dire consequences - such as what level of poverty - a potential employee is willing to suffer to avoid doing X. This means that a society where X gets done has some positive utility for the employer and negative utility for the employee compared to one where it won't. The total utility of doing X dips into negative if the upper bound is low, because the negative utility to the employee of doing the job has fixed components, for example wasting their limited time to do things they don't care about.
In other words, your desire to have a cheap Big Mac isn't more important than the pain of someone who just barely prefers flipping them to homelessness.