Just look over what you said one more time and you'll see where you messed up. It's a difficult thing to think about so I don't blame you. The weavers were replaced, but they had other industries and jobs they could go to in their same skill level. In the past, people have been pushed up the chain, but there IS a limit, there IS an end. Eventually there won't be enough work for all those people to do that they are ABLE to do.
Can every displaced worker be retrained into a useful engineer, forever? No, I don't think so. So what happens when we reach some point where only 50% of the population needs to work, and there simply aren't any jobs available to the rest?
Except that Rand, like everyone else, was still stuck using a brain that was fossilized by traditional economic ideas. So her conclusions, even if they were true (and they're not), would only apply to past economies.
You're still thinking in terms of traditional economics (which I can easily tell by your obsession over things like "the FED", and government corruption), the whole point is that those paradigms are going to break down eventually and become useless to understand and manage the economic activity of humanity. Read the book before you try to talk about this because you're really just showing how little you understand of what's being said in this conversation.
The book I mentioned makes note of that. The author concludes that the Luddites were probably right in their assumptions, but a few hundred years too early. It has only been a fallacy so far because there has always been another sector available for displaced workers to move to. I'm not comfortable saying that will ALWAYS be the case, just because it has been in the past. It's not difficult for me to imagine a future Earth where there simply isn't enough work to go around for every human who wants a job. So the question is, what do those people do for a living? Not everyone is capable of being an artist or a creative type (or, more accurately, not everyone is capable of doing that well enough to make money at it), and people like that will be cut out of participating in the economy by no fault of their own. Simply being born with no remarkable skills (being of average intelligence) shouldn't cause someone to be sentenced to poverty by the cold laws of the economic system. If that's happening, the system is broken.
I encourage everyone to read The Lights In the Tunnel, as a primer on the coming age of technologically driven systemic unemployment.
Think of an idealized chip factory/company. The machines run themselves, AI systems design ever better version; raw material goes in one side and pallets of CPUs come out the other side.
This is a 100% capital intensive business, and has almost zero labor requirements. We're not there yet, obviously, but every year we'll get closer. Companies will be able to do more with less workers, prices will drop, and supply will be limited only by how much resources you have to turn into chips. That's ONE side of the equation. The other side is that such an efficient and streamlined business is destined to quickly go bankrupt.
In a capitalist economy, every worker is also a consumer. There will be no other sector of the economy to shunt those unemployed workers to, especially not at the level they were employed at previously, because all the other businesses have gone capital-intensive too. Strangely, the most secure jobs will be the lowest paid and traditionally least desirable jobs such as janitors, cleaners, cooks, and other services. It's actually easier to build an automated chip factory than it is to produce a robot that can do everything a human janitor can do. When you lay off a worker, you're also getting rid of a potential customer. Now, one business doing this when all the others don't would benefit and outcompete the others. So to keep up, they all have to become more efficient (which in modern times means becoming less labor intensive). Each business doing what's best for itself in isolation ends up ruining everything for everyone. This is a classic tragedy of the commons scenario, but it's applied to the mass market itself as the common good, something that most mainstream economists, politicians, and citizens don't yet accept.
Some questions: -How are cities and locales able to continue getting funded? -Would this system be able to collect enough revenue to fund our current government size? That's really not negotiable either, because even if we agree on drastic cuts they take time to implement, contracts still have to be fulfilled, etc. -Who would decide how much the basic cost of living is? How can it be kept from becoming another minimum wage trap, where it never gets raised and doesn't reflect the actual cost of living? -How does this system benefit people who have no income at all?
In order for that to work there'd need to be no sales tax also, or you'd have to make the cut off for tax free income 7-15% higher.
I think if something like what you're proposing was ever enacted the cut off would be some absurdly low number like our current "poverty line". In a lot of places you could double the official "poverty line" and you'd still find families struggling at that level (especially because they'd lose a lot of other forms of support).
If you're waiving/reimbursing taxes for those with the lowest income then it's not exactly a flat tax anymore is it? I would only support a "fair/flat" tax system if it also had a guaranteed minimum income component to replace all other forms of welfare. You'd get some minimum yearly salary in exchange for going to school/back to school or training for a new job or for being legitimately disabled and having no prospect of ever being able to support yourself. For this to work health insurance would have to be single payer too.
So now your flat tax system is something ridiculous like 60%-70% in order to keep the same standard of living for the poor/middle class who'd normally be disproportionately screwed by it. You'll probably say, "We don't WANT the same level of government spending to support people! That's the point of the flat tax is to instantly and drastically cut government funding and 'starve the beast'!" which would then expose the real fundamental split; one side believes there is a positive role for direct action by government to better society, the other side does not.
So why not just have a graduated income tax anyway? I mean a real graduated income tax. Where the top marginal rate goes to 99%? I've never seen a compelling argument that high marginal rates harm investment or innovation. If anything they do the opposite. The top 1% of earners won't be so inclined to hoard their wealth if they know it's going to be slowly drained away if they don't do anything with it. There are other clever things you can do like give tax benefits ONLY to companies who stop or reverse their off shoring activities. Give tax breaks to companies AFTER they create jobs. Don't just cut their taxes and hope they take that extra money and hire people, because the last 30 years have shown that they won't. They'll just use that money for higher executive pay and bonuses.
In the long run, labor always is on the decline for any particular industry. Meaning that capital becomes more important to reaching higher levels of efficiency the higher you go. Eventually businesses will be entirely capital heavy with almost no labor requirements. This will happen globally, not just in Western nations. Off-shoring is just the leading edge of the wave of systematic unemployment. Those workers in China may have gotten US factory jobs, but they're going to be replaced by machines soon (and already are, Foxconn replaced something like 3 million workers with robots recently). So those jobs aren't going to get shunted around anymore, they're simply going to disappear. And the new industries will never be able to soak up all that excess labor.
It's a bleak future if we don't realize that capitalism will ultimately destroy itself with systematic unemployment.
This is such bullshit. You're either outright lying about it all or you're so deluded by The Right's propaganda telling you to hate the poor because they are so well off (seriously, read that statement again) that you can't tell fiction from reality. If you qualify for government assistance and not paying income taxes THAT MEANS YOU DON'T HAVE MONEY. There is no magical twilight zone tax bracket where hard working Americans end up working harder, paying more, and getting less than the rung below them. If you think it's so great to be poor, ask for a pay cut to bring you down to their level. But you won't because it's bullshit and you know it.
The links can be shared publicly, as long as the encryption keys aren't. A blank file with the name of a copyrighted movie or song isn't a copyright violation. So with encryption there's no way to prove that what's inside the file has anything to do with the file's name. Without the key, you have no way of knowing what's inside, and no way of knowing if a copyright violation has occurred...and thus no legal recourse to get the file taken down.
But then the system isn't as useful, you're always trading off convenience for security. I can imagine some sort of "gray-net" where the links are shared publicly on a board for all to see, but the encryption keys are shared among a more elite group. To get the keys you have to become a trusted member (perhaps by offering up a certain amount of material yourself, and waiting a probationary period). And the keys could be changed often for new files.
Hmm...sounds like I have an idea for a site. Bayfiles already provided me with a back end system:p
I never cared for Firefly either, I thought it was pretty boring and uninspired, and poorly acted. But saying you don't like Firefly on the internet is like saying you don't like The Beatles to someone IRL. People get very offended for some reason.
The way he bucks the system and refuses to just accept the absurdity of our modern legal code is fantastic. He should be applauded. Here's a man who points out how ridiculous this lawsuit is by issuing a challenge that is as valid as the lawsuit being brought against him, and has about as much connection to "justice" as any traditional course of action would have.
I always cheer on the people who make their own rules, and refuse to roll over when bullies feel like they are entitled to always having things their way. Oppression of all kinds flows down, not up. If you're not on the very top of the heap, then you should be on the side of anyone fighting someone or something larger.
All those hacker conferences, I'm thinking of Pwn2Own, are exploits that: require user interaction such as visiting a hacked web page, require using the default and unchanged Safari browser. Running Firefox with noscript or even just a different browser would put an end to their "hacks". I'd be more impressed if they managed to root a machine without actually physically touching it, I'm not aware of that having happened yet--not to say it can't, but I don't think it has yet. I remember WinXP that could become infected simply by being connected to the internet and powered on. Is there anything even close to that for Linux/Mac?
Until I see a fully automated spreading worm, or viruses that can propagate through e-mail (bonus points if the user doesn't have to install anything, but requiring typing in your root pw is game over, I'd know something was up at that point) then I am going to remain convinced that the Unix security model is fundamentally superior to Windows, even if it has problems too.
And how are we choosing to deal with the deficit? Cuts to social programs and government funding. Revenues weren't even part of the discussion. That doesn't sound liberal progressive to me.
Infrastructure is expensive, which is why it was publicly financed in much of the country. It was then turned over to private enterprise. That's not how capitalism is supposed to function. Public risk and private profit will not create a system that is beneficial to all, or even most.
I'd like to pay a reasonable price for broadband, I'd also like everyone else to have access to it at a reasonable price because I am capable of seeing how enriching the entire society benefits me in the long run.
I think you're full of shit, which is probably why you decided to post AC while trolling. When examined from a social welfare point of view, Canada is miles ahead of the US. I doubt you're a Canadian citizen, despite having lived in Canada, and I suspect most or all of your rage at their system of government is because it works, and works well, and your personal ideology says that shouldn't be possible. So instead of learning from them, you hate their system because that's easier than giving up your ideology.
For as long as it's profitable (mistreating customers is ALWAYS profitable when you have a monopoly on a good or service that is essential, and Internet access is)...or the people all out rebel.
I don't see the latter happening in the US, sadly.
I agree with everything you said, and would add that affordable internet access is a necessity in the US today. Most employers will just assume you have it, and to access the internal shift scheduling system you'll need home internet access. It's just as bad, if not worse, than not having a phone. If an employer found out you had no home internet access they'd probably skip over you just as often as if they found out you had no phone number or home address; you're just not worth the hassle. Obviously this isn't true for all jobs, but definitely for some.
The US model is fundamentally broken because it used public money to finance private infrastructure. The lines themselves should be public, which the government leases to private business to provide internet service, and if a new company wants to start up, they get the same chance to compete as the big guys. Until we have something close to that we're not going to have fairness or equity in the distribution of this essential utility. Private enterprise alone is not going to take care of the poor and their needs, despite the fact that there are some basic needs common to everyone, regardless of their income. It's just not profitable to provide poor people with internet.
Not giving those people the hand up they need hurts everyone in the long run, it's a shame that the mindset of conservatism seems to be not to do what is ultimately most fiscally responsible, but what perpetuates their notion of capitalist karmic justice. You can't help the poor, because they deserve to be punished. They deserve to be punished, or at least allowed to suffer, so they will improve themselves. You don't get to examine if they have the means for self improvement or not, that's beyond the scope of the notion of justice that conservatism holds. If you didn't deserve to be treated like that, you wouldn't be poor.
Doing too much for people is also bad, but we are soooo far away from that in the US that we can afford to go full tilt toward The Welfare State without risking going over the ledge of left-wing extremism and taking TOO much care of people. We've lost our center in the US. Conservatives see us drifting farther to the left, when in reality we are pegged to the right and the momentum is still in that direction.
Internet access is no longer a luxury. It's a necessity to participate in modern life and culture. Just like not having a phone or permanent address will keep you from being able to get a job, not having net access will stop you from being able to do a lot of things that society just assumes you will be able to do.
Which is why the patent protection time limit needs to be shortened. Absent patent protection, a firm will simply keep their advancements as trade secrets for as long as they are able to keep it hidden. The trade off with a patent is that in exchange for telling the world how you did something clever, you get exclusive rights to make economic use of that invention for a time, and then when the patent expires anyone gets to use it and improve on it.
The solutions are simple, but not easy, for political reasons. End software and genetic patents, reduce the length of remaining valid patents. It's clear that the vast majority of businesses that have a stake in producing imaginary property wish for nothing to ever enter the public domain ever again--these same corporations are also the most effective lobbyists in the debate and have controlled the message for years, or decades depending on which specific industry you look at.
Slashdot Mirror
Just look over what you said one more time and you'll see where you messed up. It's a difficult thing to think about so I don't blame you. The weavers were replaced, but they had other industries and jobs they could go to in their same skill level. In the past, people have been pushed up the chain, but there IS a limit, there IS an end. Eventually there won't be enough work for all those people to do that they are ABLE to do.
Can every displaced worker be retrained into a useful engineer, forever? No, I don't think so. So what happens when we reach some point where only 50% of the population needs to work, and there simply aren't any jobs available to the rest?
Except that Rand, like everyone else, was still stuck using a brain that was fossilized by traditional economic ideas. So her conclusions, even if they were true (and they're not), would only apply to past economies.
You're still thinking in terms of traditional economics (which I can easily tell by your obsession over things like "the FED", and government corruption), the whole point is that those paradigms are going to break down eventually and become useless to understand and manage the economic activity of humanity. Read the book before you try to talk about this because you're really just showing how little you understand of what's being said in this conversation.
The book I mentioned makes note of that. The author concludes that the Luddites were probably right in their assumptions, but a few hundred years too early. It has only been a fallacy so far because there has always been another sector available for displaced workers to move to. I'm not comfortable saying that will ALWAYS be the case, just because it has been in the past. It's not difficult for me to imagine a future Earth where there simply isn't enough work to go around for every human who wants a job. So the question is, what do those people do for a living? Not everyone is capable of being an artist or a creative type (or, more accurately, not everyone is capable of doing that well enough to make money at it), and people like that will be cut out of participating in the economy by no fault of their own. Simply being born with no remarkable skills (being of average intelligence) shouldn't cause someone to be sentenced to poverty by the cold laws of the economic system. If that's happening, the system is broken.
I encourage everyone to read The Lights In the Tunnel, as a primer on the coming age of technologically driven systemic unemployment.
Think of an idealized chip factory/company. The machines run themselves, AI systems design ever better version; raw material goes in one side and pallets of CPUs come out the other side.
This is a 100% capital intensive business, and has almost zero labor requirements. We're not there yet, obviously, but every year we'll get closer. Companies will be able to do more with less workers, prices will drop, and supply will be limited only by how much resources you have to turn into chips. That's ONE side of the equation. The other side is that such an efficient and streamlined business is destined to quickly go bankrupt.
In a capitalist economy, every worker is also a consumer. There will be no other sector of the economy to shunt those unemployed workers to, especially not at the level they were employed at previously, because all the other businesses have gone capital-intensive too. Strangely, the most secure jobs will be the lowest paid and traditionally least desirable jobs such as janitors, cleaners, cooks, and other services. It's actually easier to build an automated chip factory than it is to produce a robot that can do everything a human janitor can do. When you lay off a worker, you're also getting rid of a potential customer. Now, one business doing this when all the others don't would benefit and outcompete the others. So to keep up, they all have to become more efficient (which in modern times means becoming less labor intensive). Each business doing what's best for itself in isolation ends up ruining everything for everyone. This is a classic tragedy of the commons scenario, but it's applied to the mass market itself as the common good, something that most mainstream economists, politicians, and citizens don't yet accept.
Some questions:
-How are cities and locales able to continue getting funded?
-Would this system be able to collect enough revenue to fund our current government size? That's really not negotiable either, because even if we agree on drastic cuts they take time to implement, contracts still have to be fulfilled, etc.
-Who would decide how much the basic cost of living is? How can it be kept from becoming another minimum wage trap, where it never gets raised and doesn't reflect the actual cost of living?
-How does this system benefit people who have no income at all?
In order for that to work there'd need to be no sales tax also, or you'd have to make the cut off for tax free income 7-15% higher.
I think if something like what you're proposing was ever enacted the cut off would be some absurdly low number like our current "poverty line". In a lot of places you could double the official "poverty line" and you'd still find families struggling at that level (especially because they'd lose a lot of other forms of support).
If you're waiving/reimbursing taxes for those with the lowest income then it's not exactly a flat tax anymore is it? I would only support a "fair/flat" tax system if it also had a guaranteed minimum income component to replace all other forms of welfare. You'd get some minimum yearly salary in exchange for going to school/back to school or training for a new job or for being legitimately disabled and having no prospect of ever being able to support yourself. For this to work health insurance would have to be single payer too.
So now your flat tax system is something ridiculous like 60%-70% in order to keep the same standard of living for the poor/middle class who'd normally be disproportionately screwed by it. You'll probably say, "We don't WANT the same level of government spending to support people! That's the point of the flat tax is to instantly and drastically cut government funding and 'starve the beast'!" which would then expose the real fundamental split; one side believes there is a positive role for direct action by government to better society, the other side does not.
So why not just have a graduated income tax anyway? I mean a real graduated income tax. Where the top marginal rate goes to 99%? I've never seen a compelling argument that high marginal rates harm investment or innovation. If anything they do the opposite. The top 1% of earners won't be so inclined to hoard their wealth if they know it's going to be slowly drained away if they don't do anything with it. There are other clever things you can do like give tax benefits ONLY to companies who stop or reverse their off shoring activities. Give tax breaks to companies AFTER they create jobs. Don't just cut their taxes and hope they take that extra money and hire people, because the last 30 years have shown that they won't. They'll just use that money for higher executive pay and bonuses.
In the long run, labor always is on the decline for any particular industry. Meaning that capital becomes more important to reaching higher levels of efficiency the higher you go. Eventually businesses will be entirely capital heavy with almost no labor requirements. This will happen globally, not just in Western nations. Off-shoring is just the leading edge of the wave of systematic unemployment. Those workers in China may have gotten US factory jobs, but they're going to be replaced by machines soon (and already are, Foxconn replaced something like 3 million workers with robots recently). So those jobs aren't going to get shunted around anymore, they're simply going to disappear. And the new industries will never be able to soak up all that excess labor.
It's a bleak future if we don't realize that capitalism will ultimately destroy itself with systematic unemployment.
This is such bullshit. You're either outright lying about it all or you're so deluded by The Right's propaganda telling you to hate the poor because they are so well off (seriously, read that statement again) that you can't tell fiction from reality. If you qualify for government assistance and not paying income taxes THAT MEANS YOU DON'T HAVE MONEY. There is no magical twilight zone tax bracket where hard working Americans end up working harder, paying more, and getting less than the rung below them. If you think it's so great to be poor, ask for a pay cut to bring you down to their level. But you won't because it's bullshit and you know it.
The links can be shared publicly, as long as the encryption keys aren't. A blank file with the name of a copyrighted movie or song isn't a copyright violation. So with encryption there's no way to prove that what's inside the file has anything to do with the file's name. Without the key, you have no way of knowing what's inside, and no way of knowing if a copyright violation has occurred...and thus no legal recourse to get the file taken down.
But then the system isn't as useful, you're always trading off convenience for security. I can imagine some sort of "gray-net" where the links are shared publicly on a board for all to see, but the encryption keys are shared among a more elite group. To get the keys you have to become a trusted member (perhaps by offering up a certain amount of material yourself, and waiting a probationary period). And the keys could be changed often for new files.
Hmm...sounds like I have an idea for a site. Bayfiles already provided me with a back end system :p
I never cared for Firefly either, I thought it was pretty boring and uninspired, and poorly acted. But saying you don't like Firefly on the internet is like saying you don't like The Beatles to someone IRL. People get very offended for some reason.
I also don't like The Beatles.
Censorship is always more offensive than the material being censored.
Those who can understand this are holders of a higher ethic, and it is no bad thing to force this standards on those who have yet to be elevated.
The way he bucks the system and refuses to just accept the absurdity of our modern legal code is fantastic. He should be applauded. Here's a man who points out how ridiculous this lawsuit is by issuing a challenge that is as valid as the lawsuit being brought against him, and has about as much connection to "justice" as any traditional course of action would have.
I always cheer on the people who make their own rules, and refuse to roll over when bullies feel like they are entitled to always having things their way. Oppression of all kinds flows down, not up. If you're not on the very top of the heap, then you should be on the side of anyone fighting someone or something larger.
Arab Spring, English Summer, and The Fall of America.
All those hacker conferences, I'm thinking of Pwn2Own, are exploits that: require user interaction such as visiting a hacked web page, require using the default and unchanged Safari browser. Running Firefox with noscript or even just a different browser would put an end to their "hacks". I'd be more impressed if they managed to root a machine without actually physically touching it, I'm not aware of that having happened yet--not to say it can't, but I don't think it has yet. I remember WinXP that could become infected simply by being connected to the internet and powered on. Is there anything even close to that for Linux/Mac?
Until I see a fully automated spreading worm, or viruses that can propagate through e-mail (bonus points if the user doesn't have to install anything, but requiring typing in your root pw is game over, I'd know something was up at that point) then I am going to remain convinced that the Unix security model is fundamentally superior to Windows, even if it has problems too.
You learn something new every day :)
And how are we choosing to deal with the deficit? Cuts to social programs and government funding. Revenues weren't even part of the discussion. That doesn't sound liberal progressive to me.
Infrastructure is expensive, which is why it was publicly financed in much of the country. It was then turned over to private enterprise. That's not how capitalism is supposed to function. Public risk and private profit will not create a system that is beneficial to all, or even most.
I'd like to pay a reasonable price for broadband, I'd also like everyone else to have access to it at a reasonable price because I am capable of seeing how enriching the entire society benefits me in the long run.
I think you're full of shit, which is probably why you decided to post AC while trolling. When examined from a social welfare point of view, Canada is miles ahead of the US. I doubt you're a Canadian citizen, despite having lived in Canada, and I suspect most or all of your rage at their system of government is because it works, and works well, and your personal ideology says that shouldn't be possible. So instead of learning from them, you hate their system because that's easier than giving up your ideology.
For as long as it's profitable (mistreating customers is ALWAYS profitable when you have a monopoly on a good or service that is essential, and Internet access is)...or the people all out rebel.
I don't see the latter happening in the US, sadly.
I agree with everything you said, and would add that affordable internet access is a necessity in the US today. Most employers will just assume you have it, and to access the internal shift scheduling system you'll need home internet access. It's just as bad, if not worse, than not having a phone. If an employer found out you had no home internet access they'd probably skip over you just as often as if they found out you had no phone number or home address; you're just not worth the hassle. Obviously this isn't true for all jobs, but definitely for some.
The US model is fundamentally broken because it used public money to finance private infrastructure. The lines themselves should be public, which the government leases to private business to provide internet service, and if a new company wants to start up, they get the same chance to compete as the big guys. Until we have something close to that we're not going to have fairness or equity in the distribution of this essential utility. Private enterprise alone is not going to take care of the poor and their needs, despite the fact that there are some basic needs common to everyone, regardless of their income. It's just not profitable to provide poor people with internet.
Not giving those people the hand up they need hurts everyone in the long run, it's a shame that the mindset of conservatism seems to be not to do what is ultimately most fiscally responsible, but what perpetuates their notion of capitalist karmic justice. You can't help the poor, because they deserve to be punished. They deserve to be punished, or at least allowed to suffer, so they will improve themselves. You don't get to examine if they have the means for self improvement or not, that's beyond the scope of the notion of justice that conservatism holds. If you didn't deserve to be treated like that, you wouldn't be poor.
Doing too much for people is also bad, but we are soooo far away from that in the US that we can afford to go full tilt toward The Welfare State without risking going over the ledge of left-wing extremism and taking TOO much care of people. We've lost our center in the US. Conservatives see us drifting farther to the left, when in reality we are pegged to the right and the momentum is still in that direction.
Internet access is no longer a luxury. It's a necessity to participate in modern life and culture. Just like not having a phone or permanent address will keep you from being able to get a job, not having net access will stop you from being able to do a lot of things that society just assumes you will be able to do.
Yup, which is why they should be banned outright.
Which is why the patent protection time limit needs to be shortened. Absent patent protection, a firm will simply keep their advancements as trade secrets for as long as they are able to keep it hidden. The trade off with a patent is that in exchange for telling the world how you did something clever, you get exclusive rights to make economic use of that invention for a time, and then when the patent expires anyone gets to use it and improve on it.
The solutions are simple, but not easy, for political reasons. End software and genetic patents, reduce the length of remaining valid patents. It's clear that the vast majority of businesses that have a stake in producing imaginary property wish for nothing to ever enter the public domain ever again--these same corporations are also the most effective lobbyists in the debate and have controlled the message for years, or decades depending on which specific industry you look at.