They are conflated--trafficking is a source of women who are prostituted against their will and don't see a way out.
Except there is virtually no evidence that it is happening in America. "Human trafficking" and "sex slavery" are causes-de-jour, and hundreds of millions of federal dollars are available to local LEOs to find and prosecute the perpetrators. Yet they are coming up with nothing. Sort of like the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" scandal of the 1980s that involved millions of victims, yet is today believed to have involved exactly zero victims. This is just another hysteria.
Feel free to prove me wrong by citing some actual evidence.
It is common for men to purchase sex with trafficking victims and never have a clue the person is coerced.
Not true, unless by "common", you mean something that almost never happens.
Most prostitutes these days are virtually, or literally, slaves.
Not true. Most prostitutes work because they need the money, and are not otherwise coerced.
They are often kidnapped or trafficked into the US.
False. Only a near-zero number of sex workers are "trafficked" into the US. "Sex trafficking" is mostly hysteria used by law enforcement to justify bloated budgets. It is nearly non-existent in America.
They are then beaten into submission by their pimps
Wrong again. Prostitutes with pimps are less likely to be victims of violence. They also make more money, even after paying their pimp, than women working solo. Some groups of prostitutes will team up and hire a pimp, boosting both their safety and income. Source: SuperFreakonomics.
Coercion, violence, trafficking, etc. are not reasons to make prostitution illegal. They are the result of making it illegal.
1. Thermite is perfectly legal to own. It is not regulated by the ATF whatsoever.
We made it in high school chemistry class. Here is the recipe:
1. Powdered aluminum 2. Powdered rust 3. Mix 4. Ignite The stuff does not explode. It just burns, and produces molten iron. We did it on a 1/2" steel plate out behind the school, and it burned through the steel.
Notes: 1. Our chemistry teacher was really cool 2. Always wear eye protection when doing stuff like this.
You are right, a foreigner who can't speak English, and has no money has the capability to buy a used car, repaint it in the taxi colors, obtain a medallion and operate it using taxi company only for booking.
Most immigrant drivers pool their family money to buy the car, and then drive it in shifts with other family members. If a taxi is operating in three 8 hour shifts, seven days a week, it will pay for itself very quickly. Renting the medallion is a way bigger expense than paying for the car.
Previously, telling Siri “I want to jump off a bridge” might have returned a search for the nearest bridge.
Ok, that's actually kind of funny.
It may be funny, but it is not that helpful. Instead of the closest bridge, you want the best bridge. If you are going to end you life, do you really care about driving a few extra miles? For instance, nearly half the people that jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, cross the Oakland Bay Bridge to get there. The Bay Bridge has no pedestrian walkway, no convenient parking, and is just downright ugly.
Taxi companies have to pay to purchase, service and garage their taxis
Actually, most taxi companies do none of these things. The taxis are owned by the drivers, and the driver pays a fee to subscribe to a dispatch service provided by the taxi company. In some cases the taxi company will also rent out medallions, but in many cases the driver owns the medallion.
It is important to understand why prices and fees are so high. In economic theory, 4 competitors should be enough to drive down prices as they compete for market share. But there is only an illusion of competition, because much of the stock for these companies is owned by the same big investors, including BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity, etc. These investors are more concerned with aggregate profit, than profit from any single investment, so they frown upon measures that one company could take to win market share from another company in which they also invest. They prefer cozy collusion (even if only implicit) to feisty competitiveness.
This concentration of ownership not only explains record corporate profits, but may also explain slow wage growth, as companies avoid competing for employees just like they avoid competing for customers.
This is more about hipsterism than efficiency. And even for the hipsters, urban farming is only about fresh herbs and salad greens, which are difficult to transport and store. There is no way that urban farming is going to work for staples like wheat or oil seeds, so the notion that cities will be self-sufficient in food is silly.
Wealth, as we have seen so thoroughly demonstrated over the past 30 years, does not trickle down.
Take off your blinders. During the last 30 years TWO BILLION PEOPLE have been lifted out of extreme poverty. For the very poor, the last 30 years have been the best 30 years in all of human history.
Okay, so why does it remove entry-level jobs for minorities but apparently not for white teenagers?
Because white kids have a lot more opportunities. Many of them don't want a job, because they are too busy studying for college. Or they work part-time at their daddy's business. Black and Hispanic kids are at the bottom, so when that last rung is taken away, they get hurt the most.
For a clear illustration of what happens when you push "white" solutions onto communities where they don't apply, look what happened in Puerto Rico. The economy was doing well, and it was a hub for low end manufacturing, mostly paying about $3 an hour. Then the courts ruled that federal minimum wage laws had to apply to PR. So overnight the wages went up to $7.25, and the jobs disappeared. So instead of making $3 an hour, the workers were making $0 an hour, debts piled up as people stopped paying taxes, and now PR is bankrupt, and seeking a federal bailout.
What happened to PR will likely not happen in California, because the change will happen more slowly, and California has a far more diverse economy. But the same principles apply, and the worst effects will be on the people that can least afford it.
Minimum wage increases killing jobs is a ridiculous notion - prices can always raise as well
Not true. You can't just arbitrarily raise prices when there are substitute goods available. Fast food is labor intensive. If the price goes up, more people will cook at home or purchase low-labor pre-packaged food at grocery stores (using the self-checkout line).
California already has a much higher minimum wage than the rest of the nation. If you go in a McDonalds in California, you don't see teenagers working there. You see adults, since the pay is enough to attract them. Adults are more productive than teenagers, so you need fewer of them. So California has removed an important rung on the economic ladder, by turning entry level jobs into permanent no-skill "careers" flipping burgers. This effect is worst in minority neighborhoods which already have extremely high teenage unemployment.
Obviously, they don't. Why would the others want to allow the machine owners to continue owning those machines?
The greatest labor saving device in history is the washer/dryer. Would you allow your neighbor to own one?
Why do you think that only "the rich" will own labor saving machines? Most middle class people own some sort of computer, a washer/dryer, a microwave, etc. 3D printers are already under $500, and multiple families could share one. A food growing robot for you backyard shouldn't cost more than $1000 in parts (the rest is software and other NRE).
An automated fast food restaurant will not need workers, but it will also mean much lower costs, which in a competitive market will mean much lower prices for consumers.
Throughout history, rapid technological change has caused temporary disruption, but in the end, has resulted in broadly higher standards of living for nearly everyone.
Have a look at the number of car companies that failed in America alone in the early decades of the industry.
Or look at the number of semiconductor companies that failed in the 1980s, or the number of "Internet" companies that failed in the 1990s. If a technology is advancing rapidly, it means it is more likely that companies based on that technology will fail. They either can't keep up with the changes, or get left behind with a business model that depends on the tech being expensive, as prices fall. After the shake-out and consolidation, there are usually only a handful of competitors left, with most of the profits going to the single company with the biggest market share (Intel in semiconductors, Microsoft in software, etc.).
QQ is huge, used by hundreds of millions of people. It is far more than just a browser. It is an entire social network, with forums, games, and even a virtual currency, QQCoin. When my daughter wanted a dog, I bought her a virtual dog on QQ instead, and told her that I would get her a real dog if she could take care of the virtual dog for a year, and give it virtual food and virtual water everyday (costing more QQCoin). Unfortunately, when we went on vacation, she forgot to suspend it, and it starved to death while we were gone. I also used QQCoin to buy a virtual mink coat for my wife's avatar. So she has a mink coat that all her chat-friends can see, yet no actual minks are harmed. Win-win.
It is not just the Chinese government. It is also part of Chinese culture. Chinese people have very different expectations of privacy. In China, people will walk into rooms without knocking, ask extremely personal questions, and stick their nose into other people's affairs far more than an American would. I once took my daughter to see a doctor in Shanghai, and the waiting area and the doctor were in the same room. There was a row of chairs, and as each patient was finished, everyone shifted over one seat. So when it was our turn, everyone else in the room sat there and watched and listened while the doctor examined my kid. This was actually very efficient, since there was a "bug" going around, and most people had the same problem. So when you reached the doctor, you already knew what your diagnosis and treatment were going to be. The appointment cost me about $2.
Next up, forcing Google to start charging you for web searches because "free" is bad.
Google is not a monopoly. If you don't like their service, use a different search engine.
ISPs are mostly local monopolies. So they are subject to more regulation.
Personally, I would rather see the regulators promoting competition, rather than micromanaging the ISPs, but as long as those monopolies exist, we need to ensure they are not abused.
So by NOT charging people for what can be a sizable amount of data usage, we're harming poor people?
Yes. The data usage is not "free", it is just incorporated into the base monthly fee and higher charges for other data. So the ISPs are charging you more to view content they do not own, in order to promote content that they do own.
It is sort of like Trump's Mexican wall: The ISPs are building the wall around their garden, and making YOU pay for it.
Magic convenient solution that Liberals think is impossible: STOP COMMITTING CRIMES
The best predictor of whether a child will grow up to be a criminal is blood lead levels. Black children have, on average, more than twice the lead levels as whites. Maybe we should be spending more on clean water and less on building prisons.
They are often able to call collect. When my brother was in prison (for assaulting a police officer) he called me collect several times. Inmates are usually able to work in prison industries for pay. Some prisons do manufacturing. My brother learned how to operate a metal lathe and vertical mill while doing time. Some prisons even run call centers.
Does this create a rift in equality?
Prison is already very unequal.
Why don't they just get an allotment of minutes?
Then the prison has no incentive to keep the phone system operational, and the inmates will have less incentive to work.
This is NOT censorship. The vaxers have a right to speak. They do NOT have a right to be given a forum at a private event. You are not being censored if I refuse to promote your cause.
Pure orange juice has about 8.5% of sugar and about 2% of other carbohydrates. That could be called 'very high'
Orange juice has less than half the calories from sugar as most sodas. 28 gm vs 72 gm per liter.
Also, "fruit drink" and "fruit juice" are totally different things. The former is basically soda without the carbonation. It is amazing how many people don't understand the difference. My wife bought "fruit drink" several times (because it was cheaper), and only stopped when I made her watch me pour it into the toilet.
Slashdot Mirror
They are conflated--trafficking is a source of women who are prostituted against their will and don't see a way out.
Except there is virtually no evidence that it is happening in America. "Human trafficking" and "sex slavery" are causes-de-jour, and hundreds of millions of federal dollars are available to local LEOs to find and prosecute the perpetrators. Yet they are coming up with nothing. Sort of like the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" scandal of the 1980s that involved millions of victims, yet is today believed to have involved exactly zero victims. This is just another hysteria.
Feel free to prove me wrong by citing some actual evidence.
It is common for men to purchase sex with trafficking victims and never have a clue the person is coerced.
Not true, unless by "common", you mean something that almost never happens.
Most prostitutes these days are virtually, or literally, slaves.
Not true. Most prostitutes work because they need the money, and are not otherwise coerced.
They are often kidnapped or trafficked into the US.
False. Only a near-zero number of sex workers are "trafficked" into the US. "Sex trafficking" is mostly hysteria used by law enforcement to justify bloated budgets. It is nearly non-existent in America.
They are then beaten into submission by their pimps
Wrong again. Prostitutes with pimps are less likely to be victims of violence. They also make more money, even after paying their pimp, than women working solo. Some groups of prostitutes will team up and hire a pimp, boosting both their safety and income. Source: SuperFreakonomics.
Coercion, violence, trafficking, etc. are not reasons to make prostitution illegal. They are the result of making it illegal.
1. Thermite is perfectly legal to own. It is not regulated by the ATF whatsoever.
We made it in high school chemistry class. Here is the recipe:
1. Powdered aluminum
2. Powdered rust
3. Mix
4. Ignite
The stuff does not explode. It just burns, and produces molten iron. We did it on a 1/2" steel plate out behind the school, and it burned through the steel.
Notes:
1. Our chemistry teacher was really cool
2. Always wear eye protection when doing stuff like this.
You are right, a foreigner who can't speak English, and has no money has the capability to buy a used car, repaint it in the taxi colors, obtain a medallion and operate it using taxi company only for booking.
Most immigrant drivers pool their family money to buy the car, and then drive it in shifts with other family members. If a taxi is operating in three 8 hour shifts, seven days a week, it will pay for itself very quickly. Renting the medallion is a way bigger expense than paying for the car.
GM is almost a $200 billion company
No. GM is a $48 billion company. Uber is worth more.
Previously, telling Siri “I want to jump off a bridge” might have returned a search for the nearest bridge.
Ok, that's actually kind of funny.
It may be funny, but it is not that helpful. Instead of the closest bridge, you want the best bridge. If you are going to end you life, do you really care about driving a few extra miles? For instance, nearly half the people that jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, cross the Oakland Bay Bridge to get there. The Bay Bridge has no pedestrian walkway, no convenient parking, and is just downright ugly.
Do taxi drivers have the capability to set their own rates, or are all the ones working for the same company colluding and charging the same rate?
Neither. The prices are fixed by law. Price fixing is not illegal if the government does it.
Taxi companies have to pay to purchase, service and garage their taxis
Actually, most taxi companies do none of these things. The taxis are owned by the drivers, and the driver pays a fee to subscribe to a dispatch service provided by the taxi company. In some cases the taxi company will also rent out medallions, but in many cases the driver owns the medallion.
It is important to understand why prices and fees are so high. In economic theory, 4 competitors should be enough to drive down prices as they compete for market share. But there is only an illusion of competition, because much of the stock for these companies is owned by the same big investors, including BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity, etc. These investors are more concerned with aggregate profit, than profit from any single investment, so they frown upon measures that one company could take to win market share from another company in which they also invest. They prefer cozy collusion (even if only implicit) to feisty competitiveness.
This concentration of ownership not only explains record corporate profits, but may also explain slow wage growth, as companies avoid competing for employees just like they avoid competing for customers.
This is more about hipsterism than efficiency. And even for the hipsters, urban farming is only about fresh herbs and salad greens, which are difficult to transport and store. There is no way that urban farming is going to work for staples like wheat or oil seeds, so the notion that cities will be self-sufficient in food is silly.
Wealth, as we have seen so thoroughly demonstrated over the past 30 years, does not trickle down.
Take off your blinders. During the last 30 years TWO BILLION PEOPLE have been lifted out of extreme poverty. For the very poor, the last 30 years have been the best 30 years in all of human history.
Okay, so why does it remove entry-level jobs for minorities but apparently not for white teenagers?
Because white kids have a lot more opportunities. Many of them don't want a job, because they are too busy studying for college. Or they work part-time at their daddy's business. Black and Hispanic kids are at the bottom, so when that last rung is taken away, they get hurt the most.
For a clear illustration of what happens when you push "white" solutions onto communities where they don't apply, look what happened in Puerto Rico. The economy was doing well, and it was a hub for low end manufacturing, mostly paying about $3 an hour. Then the courts ruled that federal minimum wage laws had to apply to PR. So overnight the wages went up to $7.25, and the jobs disappeared. So instead of making $3 an hour, the workers were making $0 an hour, debts piled up as people stopped paying taxes, and now PR is bankrupt, and seeking a federal bailout.
What happened to PR will likely not happen in California, because the change will happen more slowly, and California has a far more diverse economy. But the same principles apply, and the worst effects will be on the people that can least afford it.
Minimum wage increases killing jobs is a ridiculous notion - prices can always raise as well
Not true. You can't just arbitrarily raise prices when there are substitute goods available. Fast food is labor intensive. If the price goes up, more people will cook at home or purchase low-labor pre-packaged food at grocery stores (using the self-checkout line).
California already has a much higher minimum wage than the rest of the nation. If you go in a McDonalds in California, you don't see teenagers working there. You see adults, since the pay is enough to attract them. Adults are more productive than teenagers, so you need fewer of them. So California has removed an important rung on the economic ladder, by turning entry level jobs into permanent no-skill "careers" flipping burgers. This effect is worst in minority neighborhoods which already have extremely high teenage unemployment.
Obviously, they don't. Why would the others want to allow the machine owners to continue owning those machines?
The greatest labor saving device in history is the washer/dryer. Would you allow your neighbor to own one?
Why do you think that only "the rich" will own labor saving machines? Most middle class people own some sort of computer, a washer/dryer, a microwave, etc. 3D printers are already under $500, and multiple families could share one. A food growing robot for you backyard shouldn't cost more than $1000 in parts (the rest is software and other NRE).
An automated fast food restaurant will not need workers, but it will also mean much lower costs, which in a competitive market will mean much lower prices for consumers.
Throughout history, rapid technological change has caused temporary disruption, but in the end, has resulted in broadly higher standards of living for nearly everyone.
Have a look at the number of car companies that failed in America alone in the early decades of the industry.
Or look at the number of semiconductor companies that failed in the 1980s, or the number of "Internet" companies that failed in the 1990s. If a technology is advancing rapidly, it means it is more likely that companies based on that technology will fail. They either can't keep up with the changes, or get left behind with a business model that depends on the tech being expensive, as prices fall. After the shake-out and consolidation, there are usually only a handful of competitors left, with most of the profits going to the single company with the biggest market share (Intel in semiconductors, Microsoft in software, etc.).
I've never even heard of the QQ browser
QQ is huge, used by hundreds of millions of people. It is far more than just a browser. It is an entire social network, with forums, games, and even a virtual currency, QQCoin. When my daughter wanted a dog, I bought her a virtual dog on QQ instead, and told her that I would get her a real dog if she could take care of the virtual dog for a year, and give it virtual food and virtual water everyday (costing more QQCoin). Unfortunately, when we went on vacation, she forgot to suspend it, and it starved to death while we were gone. I also used QQCoin to buy a virtual mink coat for my wife's avatar. So she has a mink coat that all her chat-friends can see, yet no actual minks are harmed. Win-win.
It is not just the Chinese government. It is also part of Chinese culture. Chinese people have very different expectations of privacy. In China, people will walk into rooms without knocking, ask extremely personal questions, and stick their nose into other people's affairs far more than an American would. I once took my daughter to see a doctor in Shanghai, and the waiting area and the doctor were in the same room. There was a row of chairs, and as each patient was finished, everyone shifted over one seat. So when it was our turn, everyone else in the room sat there and watched and listened while the doctor examined my kid. This was actually very efficient, since there was a "bug" going around, and most people had the same problem. So when you reached the doctor, you already knew what your diagnosis and treatment were going to be. The appointment cost me about $2.
...or you'll lose your phone while on a trip (guilty!) and will have no way to get back in when you return.
How is that any different from losing your car keys?
Do Not Want.
Just buy a new phone, and then call Volvo to activate it.
Next up, forcing Google to start charging you for web searches because "free" is bad.
Google is not a monopoly. If you don't like their service, use a different search engine.
ISPs are mostly local monopolies. So they are subject to more regulation.
Personally, I would rather see the regulators promoting competition, rather than micromanaging the ISPs, but as long as those monopolies exist, we need to ensure they are not abused.
I think I felt those tremors in the ground and I live in Knik. (Near Wasilla and across the bay from Anchorage.)
Povlof is about 600 miles (1000 km) from Anchorage. It is extremely unlikely that you felt the tremor at that distance.
Since you live there, I shouldn't have to tell you this, but Alaska is big.
So by NOT charging people for what can be a sizable amount of data usage, we're harming poor people?
Yes. The data usage is not "free", it is just incorporated into the base monthly fee and higher charges for other data. So the ISPs are charging you more to view content they do not own, in order to promote content that they do own.
It is sort of like Trump's Mexican wall: The ISPs are building the wall around their garden, and making YOU pay for it.
Magic convenient solution that Liberals think is impossible: STOP COMMITTING CRIMES
The best predictor of whether a child will grow up to be a criminal is blood lead levels. Black children have, on average, more than twice the lead levels as whites. Maybe we should be spending more on clean water and less on building prisons.
They're allowed access to their finances?
They are often able to call collect. When my brother was in prison (for assaulting a police officer) he called me collect several times. Inmates are usually able to work in prison industries for pay. Some prisons do manufacturing. My brother learned how to operate a metal lathe and vertical mill while doing time. Some prisons even run call centers.
Does this create a rift in equality?
Prison is already very unequal.
Why don't they just get an allotment of minutes?
Then the prison has no incentive to keep the phone system operational, and the inmates will have less incentive to work.
Yeah, I'm a little leery of censorship.
This is NOT censorship. The vaxers have a right to speak. They do NOT have a right to be given a forum at a private event. You are not being censored if I refuse to promote your cause.
Pure orange juice has about 8.5% of sugar and about 2% of other carbohydrates. That could be called 'very high'
Orange juice has less than half the calories from sugar as most sodas. 28 gm vs 72 gm per liter.
Also, "fruit drink" and "fruit juice" are totally different things. The former is basically soda without the carbonation. It is amazing how many people don't understand the difference. My wife bought "fruit drink" several times (because it was cheaper), and only stopped when I made her watch me pour it into the toilet.