Since 95% of the tests failed, it's pretty obvious that there is in fact pretty much no one trying to take weapons on board planes in order to take them down; they would have succeeded multiple times since 9/11 otherwise.
So what you're saying is we should stop screening for weapons and explosives? Yes or no.
Right, still can't actually address the point. At least you're predictable. Oh no! Someone made a point I don't want to address! Quick, act like a three year old! And do it again! Hilarious.
I'm not making allegations, I'm explaining what happened. The consulate was attacked by a well armed local terrorist franchise that had carefully planned their evening project. Everyone on the US side new within hours (even as it was happening) exactly what had occurred. The White House certainly did. They then went about a deliberate campaign of lying about what happened, because telling the truth about it would have been acknowledging that a key part of their at-the-time ongoing re-election campaign was their narrative about how exactly such terrorist groups were "on the run" and losing their ability to cause trouble. The event demonstrated that their often repeated campaign talking point was either itself a lie, or reflected a remarkably obtuse/naive understanding of what was happening on the ground in places like Libya.
The GP was questioning the existence of a US counter-example of what we see regularly in the Russian/Ukraine mess (where Russia blatantly lies about what's happening on the ground, using all sorts of classical methods in their media, including the professional trolls discussed in TFA). I said that we had a close example that we could examine - where something that happened on the ground and was well understood by everyone in defense and intelligence, right up the food chain to the White House, was never the less lied about for weeks in the service of spinning for the imminent election. They sent people like Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton out to deliberately troll, multiple times, in order to muddy the waters and distract from the fact that what happened was taking the fun out of part of their re-election campaign narrative.
Now if you can point me to a faked ISIS attack on American soil right before an election that was done by some political group stateside, I'd be interested to hear about it.
Well, we can get close. US embassies and the like are usually thought of as US soil, though I'm not quite sure how we treat consulates. But when we did have a recent (immediately before an election) planned, coordinated terrorist attack on one (in which a US ambassador was killed, along with three others), the official government reaction was to immediately spin out a transparently phony explanation meant to prop up the administration's campaign narrative about how such terrorists were on the run, and that the attack was actually a result of an insulting YouTube video, and that the locals just couldn't stop themselves from burning and murdering. Does that count? Does extensive lying about it in order to flip the narrative around during the peak of campaign season count, or do they have to actually stage the attack themselves to fit the profile? I think that sending administration officials out to media outlets to repeatedly lie about it, push the known BS into social media and then summarize it later as "what difference, at this point, does it make?" is a pretty good parallel, if not exactly the same model.
It's always interesting to spot the people who cannot address the situation directly, but think they're cool with the 6th-grade ad hominem. Thanks, though, for indirectly pointing out that I'm exactly right in asking what I asked. You couldn't have made it clearer.
So what you're saying is that we should stop doing the things that the TSA does, because there is no longer going to be a problem with people wanting to take weapons onboard aircraft.
Or are you saying that it's un-American to use one organization to screen for that sort of thing, but it's perfectly American to let dozens or hundreds of un-coordinated individual companies and organizations do so? Please be specific instead of ranting.
It's impossible to stop all terrorists. We're simply reacting to the last attack, because there's no realistic way to stop the next one.
But if you don't react to the last one, then the last one will be used again (because it works). Are you thinking that if we didn't step up explosives/weapons scans and secure cockpit doors (you know, defenses against "old" attacks), that no terrorist with any self respect would repeat a very successful previous attack because... it would seem out of fashion and not as rakish to do what someone else did? Come on now.
EVERY SINGLE AIRPORT related "attack" was directly caused by the US... propaganda
Considering your embrace of fiction, here, the irony in your assertions is pretty fantastic.
And leaving aside, for the moment, your fictional narrative... your understanding of "entrapment" is incorrect. Not that it applies in any case you're mentioning, anyway.
If you can't control the plane anymore than all that is left to you is a Libyan style attack where you attempt to cause the plane to crash over a populated area.
Which of course they've tried multiple times. In two cases, the only reason they didn't kill a lot of people was technical trouble with their explosive devices - they had suicidal killers in place, ready to kill themselves and everyone onboard (and ideally, a lot of people on the ground in, for example, Detroit on Christmas day)... but their QA teams fell short. Minor technical stuff. In the third case (that we know about), it was intelligence that made them aware of the printer-bombs in cargo, which were also an attempt to take down a large plane on approach. Just because such tactics aren't as sexy as flying into skyscrapers doesn't meant they weren't and aren't happy to keep picking away at that option as their technical skill improves. And groups like ISIS have a large group of crazies with lots of cash to work with.
"See? This is proof we need to spend more on the TSA for training and to hire "better" people!"
I don't quite follow. Are you frustrated because those things are actually true? Because this does indeed look largely like a quality-of-the-people-working issue.
My god, the thought that the new generation might have new moral values: what is the world coming to?
Really? You think a "new generation" is so simple-minded that they can't use reason to put together a value system that arrives at the same destination as so many others? You think it's a good thing to change out values like... stealing people's stuff is morally bad? Like, using your l33t haxx0r skills to ruin someone's reputation for the lulz is bad? You're confusing the tools and technologies that a new generation finds at their disposal with being somehow related to the philosophical underpinnings of their value system.
I'm delighted that, despite the fastest growing population in the world appearing to embrace medieval theocratic nonsense as the basis of their value system, that at least a fair portion of the world has gone more down the route of using reason to examine and reinforce their moral code. Yes, a "new generation" may indeed show less of the superstition-based trappings surrounding the fringes of judeo-christian culture, but basic stuff like "don't use your new [whatever technology] to steal people's shit" doesn't mean that a moral code based on that reasonable observation that doing so is objectively bad means that changing [whatever technology] means the moral code is changing. Just, sometimes, the venue in which it's applied.
That's why pretending that it's malware that's the issue, and not abusive thieves and vandals (people), is an act of moral cowardice. Because it's the same old stuff, different playing field. People who focus on the gun, the car, the piece of viral code, whatever - they're too chickenshit to address what's actually at play: other people whose world views are broken enough to make malicious use of the tools. People scared of making value judgments about other people always, always reach for the tool as the villain. That says more about that person than it does about the actual villain.
I would dissect your rant if I thought it merited a response
Hey look! You're doing it right now. That's actually pretty funny.
Are you equal in intelligence, as the next person?
No. I'm smarter than a lot of people, and many many people are smarter than me.
Did you ever get a "b", or score a 99 on a test
Oh, I've done MUCH worse than that.
Why condemned them
Why are you asking me? Have I condemned anybody? I'm condemning those who try to pretend that nothing bad is ever anybody's fault. That (relative to the article we're talking about, here) fact that focusing on the tools people use (or mis-use) and ignoring the fact that it's people using those tools is intellectual laziness and often cowardice in the face of political correctness.
Some may be better in an urban, or a wilderness environment. Why complain, you are not robots.
So you agree - people are different, and not all are equal. But ignoring that, we're talking about when people use tools (like malware) to steal other people's assets and reputations.
Of course there is. I'm describing a pervasive, increasingly toxic type of craziness that impacts nearly every bit of public discourse that pops up when anything bad is being discussed. If such discussions were generally rational, there'd be nothing to have to talk about. But rational discussions involving causality and agency are now considered rude, like gluten.
It's no longer fashionable to associate human character, judgement, and action with unpleasant results. Malice? There is no malice. There is only the problematic tool or technology, against which we should rage. It's not murder, it's a "gun death." It's not a reckless jackass badly flying a GoPro in a crowded place, it's a "drone incident." It's not a bad driver, it's another "SUV death." It's not a criminal trying to steal your savings or reputation, it's "malware."
Talking out loud about how actual humans are responsible for the stupid or evil shit they do is no longer acceptable. That would mean assessing their intelligence, or making a considered moral judgement, based on some sort of, you know, identifiable value system. We can't have that! We'd need to post Trigger Warnings near any discussion that might result in the horrifying prospect of recognizing that not everyone is as smart as everyone else, or calling an evil actor evil, because, you know, judging. Much better to talk only about the scary tools, never about the people. Hey, Russian credit card scammers and bot farmers are really the victims, here - the malware made them use it. Probably of some sort of western patriarchal influence and whatnot.
We need Sanders to use the same tactics to block any Republican cuts to Social Security.
They shouldn't be just "Republican" cuts - the Democrats should also be enthusiastically behind reforming that transfer tax program. If you think that program is a good thing, you should also be solidly behind changes to it, like raising the age at which money starts flowing from people who are working to those who have retired. If you are reflexively against doing the things necessary to prevent such entitlement programs from completely swamping the federal budget, then you are part of the problem, and part of why it will ultimately implode, leaving nobody with that program's annual transfers.
OK then, let's stick with the language. You're prepared to dispense with all of the founders' other personal-arms-ownership-related writings and commentary at the time because you're can't get your head around their punctuation choice as you seek to conflate and flip upside down the words they've chosen to use. But think about it, and translate some of their other ideas into more typical modern language, noting how it's actually possible to put two clauses into one sentence to improve conveying how important they are, related to one another. Like, the so-obvious-it-goes-without-saying implication baked into the 4th, as they use that amendment to also limit government power as used against the people...
"Because it's sometimes going to be necessary for the government to search someone's house, papers, and personal effects in the course of a criminal investigation, the government shall not infringe on the privacy of one's personal home, affairs and property without showing probable cause and specific objectives." See how that flows? Breaking that up into two sentences would make it less clear the point of the amendment is to preserve individual liberty despite the need for state or federal power that might - uncontrolled by the constitution - encroach too readily on personal freedom.
As for some of your other points:
If this was about local militias being a counter-balance for a standing FEDERAL army, they would have said as much, if not in the amendment itself, but in the large body of other surrounding writings and debate. But almost all of the founders' writings at the time, and their commentary specifically surrounding that topic explains their urge, having raised and used such an army to settle things with the British, to not have such a thing on a permanent basis. Most figured that the best bet was to let locals (at the state level) maintain militias as they saw fit... but anticipating exactly the sort of clamp-down on personal liberty they experienced with the Crown, they made it part of the charter of the country to point out that at no level of government could the obvious need for military units be considered grounds to prevent "the people" from keeping and bearing arms.
And before you try to explain that "the people" doesn't refer to individuals, ask yourself why they chose exactly that same phrase ("the people") when describing who should be personally free from government over-reach when they wrote the 4th Amendment and referred to personal home, papers, etc. Read it, and the use of that phrase, in the same context.
Apparently you do not know the meaning of the word "Why".
Are you that unable to make the connection? Nobody is entitled to someone else's work on terms not offered by the person who creates the work. The bogus, straw-man question of why someone would thing that "poor" people aren't entitled to art and entertainment is pure BS. There is an abundance of both, offered by artists and channeled through all sorts of outlets at no cost to people who want to consume it. If they want extra choices and convenience in order to get work that the people who create it would like to charge for, then not having that cash handy doesn't suddenly entitle them to that work.
I can't afford an original Picasso print. So, I should be entitled to it because I'm too poor to pay for it?
And... what does this have to do with things being worth what people are willing to pay for them?
Regardless: yes, being successful has a lot to do with culture. As in, it's a damn shame when people who aren't equipped (or dedicated to) raising successful kids go ahead and have kids anyway. Look at Baltimore. Kids going to school and learning how to be humans and winding up as fairly comfortable middle class people, just miles from kids who get exactly as much (and often more) spent on them at school, who have subsidies available for college and countless other programs, but whose neighborhoods tend to be full of poverty and squalor.
For you, it's all about race. Because you're lazy, and/or you don't want to stick your neck out and talk honestly about family and neighborhood culture. Culture is not race.
And while you're deliberately mis-reporting and muddling things: Costco's basic membership is only $55. And there is no credit check necessary - feel free to pay cash. And an entire family, and every friend or neighbor they want to bring with them, can walk in and load up on things at sensible prices and check out on one person's card. Your fake barriers to spending less on things like commodity food are BS, and you know it.
Sure would be convenient if there was a Costco in easy walk-up range in those rough neighborhoods in West Baltimore, right? Ask the liberal democrats who've been running that city for decades why that specific area is so hostile to investment, why the people who live there are scared to carry bags of groceries down the sidewalk, and why it's so hard to find people willing and able to work in stores.
Being born poor and white is STILL a better result than being born black and richish
Really? Shall we start comparing the life prospects of poor white kids in Appalchia to the kids born to dual income white collar households places mostly black areas like PG County, outside of DC? Yeah, don't trouble yourself. BSing about it won't change it, as much as you'd strangely LIKE the narrative you're going on about to be true. Why, I don't know.
Try as you might you'll never see a robot replace the Koch bros, the Hienz family or even a Mitt Romney.
Or George Soros. Of course, he has thousands of mindless activist 'bots doing his bidding, so at least he's contributing to the botpocalypse in his own way.
Nothing is worth more than manufacturing cost +20%
Spoken exactly like someone who has never actually run (or even participated, with his eyes open) a retail business. You obviously have no notion, whatsoever, of what labor costs, what retail rent costs, what liability insurance costs, what taxes look like, or how little is left if you only mark things up 20%. Actually, there's nothing left. You're giving things away at that point... but not for long, because you'll be bankrupt shortly.
A trillionaire could pay whatever he liked for something that no one else could possibly afford. If you have enough money prices are meaningless.
And yet one of the main reasons that people go from being, say, lower middle class to "well off" (or rich) is by not being stupid with their money. I know several people who've being The Evil Rich after years and years of hard work, and they still shop at Costco, buy lightly used cars, and only spend what they think it's worth on bigger ticket things.
So what if a rich person doesn't care that the drink at a hipster bar costs $20, while for you that would be a stupid waste of money? There are billions of people in the world for whom what you would spend on a drink is still an insane luxury purchase. You aren't really foggy on this, are you? It's called a market.
Bullshit theory. I've bought many things in my life that clearly aren't worth what I was willing to pay for them.:/
Then why did you buy them? You made the decision that the purchases were what you decided to spend. That's what those items were worth at the time you reached for your wallet.
More to the point, why do people feel that the poor shouldn't have access to art or entertainment?
People who don't want to pay what the artist is asking (either directly, or through whatever agent/company the artist has chosen to work with) are 100% entitled to opt instead for entertainment and art offered to them at no charge by other people. How is this confusing to you?
Slashdot Mirror
Since 95% of the tests failed, it's pretty obvious that there is in fact pretty much no one trying to take weapons on board planes in order to take them down; they would have succeeded multiple times since 9/11 otherwise.
So what you're saying is we should stop screening for weapons and explosives? Yes or no.
Right, still can't actually address the point. At least you're predictable. Oh no! Someone made a point I don't want to address! Quick, act like a three year old! And do it again! Hilarious.
I'm not making allegations, I'm explaining what happened. The consulate was attacked by a well armed local terrorist franchise that had carefully planned their evening project. Everyone on the US side new within hours (even as it was happening) exactly what had occurred. The White House certainly did. They then went about a deliberate campaign of lying about what happened, because telling the truth about it would have been acknowledging that a key part of their at-the-time ongoing re-election campaign was their narrative about how exactly such terrorist groups were "on the run" and losing their ability to cause trouble. The event demonstrated that their often repeated campaign talking point was either itself a lie, or reflected a remarkably obtuse/naive understanding of what was happening on the ground in places like Libya.
The GP was questioning the existence of a US counter-example of what we see regularly in the Russian/Ukraine mess (where Russia blatantly lies about what's happening on the ground, using all sorts of classical methods in their media, including the professional trolls discussed in TFA). I said that we had a close example that we could examine - where something that happened on the ground and was well understood by everyone in defense and intelligence, right up the food chain to the White House, was never the less lied about for weeks in the service of spinning for the imminent election. They sent people like Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton out to deliberately troll, multiple times, in order to muddy the waters and distract from the fact that what happened was taking the fun out of part of their re-election campaign narrative.
Now if you can point me to a faked ISIS attack on American soil right before an election that was done by some political group stateside, I'd be interested to hear about it.
Well, we can get close. US embassies and the like are usually thought of as US soil, though I'm not quite sure how we treat consulates. But when we did have a recent (immediately before an election) planned, coordinated terrorist attack on one (in which a US ambassador was killed, along with three others), the official government reaction was to immediately spin out a transparently phony explanation meant to prop up the administration's campaign narrative about how such terrorists were on the run, and that the attack was actually a result of an insulting YouTube video, and that the locals just couldn't stop themselves from burning and murdering. Does that count? Does extensive lying about it in order to flip the narrative around during the peak of campaign season count, or do they have to actually stage the attack themselves to fit the profile? I think that sending administration officials out to media outlets to repeatedly lie about it, push the known BS into social media and then summarize it later as "what difference, at this point, does it make?" is a pretty good parallel, if not exactly the same model.
It's always interesting to spot the people who cannot address the situation directly, but think they're cool with the 6th-grade ad hominem. Thanks, though, for indirectly pointing out that I'm exactly right in asking what I asked. You couldn't have made it clearer.
So what you're saying is that we should stop doing the things that the TSA does, because there is no longer going to be a problem with people wanting to take weapons onboard aircraft. Or are you saying that it's un-American to use one organization to screen for that sort of thing, but it's perfectly American to let dozens or hundreds of un-coordinated individual companies and organizations do so? Please be specific instead of ranting.
It's impossible to stop all terrorists. We're simply reacting to the last attack, because there's no realistic way to stop the next one.
But if you don't react to the last one, then the last one will be used again (because it works). Are you thinking that if we didn't step up explosives/weapons scans and secure cockpit doors (you know, defenses against "old" attacks), that no terrorist with any self respect would repeat a very successful previous attack because ... it would seem out of fashion and not as rakish to do what someone else did? Come on now.
EVERY SINGLE AIRPORT related "attack" was directly caused by the US ... propaganda
Considering your embrace of fiction, here, the irony in your assertions is pretty fantastic.
... your understanding of "entrapment" is incorrect. Not that it applies in any case you're mentioning, anyway.
And leaving aside, for the moment, your fictional narrative
If you can't control the plane anymore than all that is left to you is a Libyan style attack where you attempt to cause the plane to crash over a populated area.
Which of course they've tried multiple times. In two cases, the only reason they didn't kill a lot of people was technical trouble with their explosive devices - they had suicidal killers in place, ready to kill themselves and everyone onboard (and ideally, a lot of people on the ground in, for example, Detroit on Christmas day) ... but their QA teams fell short. Minor technical stuff. In the third case (that we know about), it was intelligence that made them aware of the printer-bombs in cargo, which were also an attempt to take down a large plane on approach. Just because such tactics aren't as sexy as flying into skyscrapers doesn't meant they weren't and aren't happy to keep picking away at that option as their technical skill improves. And groups like ISIS have a large group of crazies with lots of cash to work with.
"See? This is proof we need to spend more on the TSA for training and to hire "better" people!"
I don't quite follow. Are you frustrated because those things are actually true? Because this does indeed look largely like a quality-of-the-people-working issue.
My god, the thought that the new generation might have new moral values: what is the world coming to?
Really? You think a "new generation" is so simple-minded that they can't use reason to put together a value system that arrives at the same destination as so many others? You think it's a good thing to change out values like ... stealing people's stuff is morally bad? Like, using your l33t haxx0r skills to ruin someone's reputation for the lulz is bad? You're confusing the tools and technologies that a new generation finds at their disposal with being somehow related to the philosophical underpinnings of their value system.
I'm delighted that, despite the fastest growing population in the world appearing to embrace medieval theocratic nonsense as the basis of their value system, that at least a fair portion of the world has gone more down the route of using reason to examine and reinforce their moral code. Yes, a "new generation" may indeed show less of the superstition-based trappings surrounding the fringes of judeo-christian culture, but basic stuff like "don't use your new [whatever technology] to steal people's shit" doesn't mean that a moral code based on that reasonable observation that doing so is objectively bad means that changing [whatever technology] means the moral code is changing. Just, sometimes, the venue in which it's applied.
That's why pretending that it's malware that's the issue, and not abusive thieves and vandals (people), is an act of moral cowardice. Because it's the same old stuff, different playing field. People who focus on the gun, the car, the piece of viral code, whatever - they're too chickenshit to address what's actually at play: other people whose world views are broken enough to make malicious use of the tools. People scared of making value judgments about other people always, always reach for the tool as the villain. That says more about that person than it does about the actual villain.
I would dissect your rant if I thought it merited a response
Hey look! You're doing it right now. That's actually pretty funny.
Are you equal in intelligence, as the next person?
No. I'm smarter than a lot of people, and many many people are smarter than me.
Did you ever get a "b", or score a 99 on a test
Oh, I've done MUCH worse than that.
Why condemned them
Why are you asking me? Have I condemned anybody? I'm condemning those who try to pretend that nothing bad is ever anybody's fault. That (relative to the article we're talking about, here) fact that focusing on the tools people use (or mis-use) and ignoring the fact that it's people using those tools is intellectual laziness and often cowardice in the face of political correctness.
Some may be better in an urban, or a wilderness environment. Why complain, you are not robots.
So you agree - people are different, and not all are equal. But ignoring that, we're talking about when people use tools (like malware) to steal other people's assets and reputations.
There is a level of craziness to this post
Of course there is. I'm describing a pervasive, increasingly toxic type of craziness that impacts nearly every bit of public discourse that pops up when anything bad is being discussed. If such discussions were generally rational, there'd be nothing to have to talk about. But rational discussions involving causality and agency are now considered rude, like gluten.
It's no longer fashionable to associate human character, judgement, and action with unpleasant results. Malice? There is no malice. There is only the problematic tool or technology, against which we should rage. It's not murder, it's a "gun death." It's not a reckless jackass badly flying a GoPro in a crowded place, it's a "drone incident." It's not a bad driver, it's another "SUV death." It's not a criminal trying to steal your savings or reputation, it's "malware."
Talking out loud about how actual humans are responsible for the stupid or evil shit they do is no longer acceptable. That would mean assessing their intelligence, or making a considered moral judgement, based on some sort of, you know, identifiable value system. We can't have that! We'd need to post Trigger Warnings near any discussion that might result in the horrifying prospect of recognizing that not everyone is as smart as everyone else, or calling an evil actor evil, because, you know, judging. Much better to talk only about the scary tools, never about the people. Hey, Russian credit card scammers and bot farmers are really the victims, here - the malware made them use it. Probably of some sort of western patriarchal influence and whatnot.
We need Sanders to use the same tactics to block any Republican cuts to Social Security.
They shouldn't be just "Republican" cuts - the Democrats should also be enthusiastically behind reforming that transfer tax program. If you think that program is a good thing, you should also be solidly behind changes to it, like raising the age at which money starts flowing from people who are working to those who have retired. If you are reflexively against doing the things necessary to prevent such entitlement programs from completely swamping the federal budget, then you are part of the problem, and part of why it will ultimately implode, leaving nobody with that program's annual transfers.
OK then, let's stick with the language. You're prepared to dispense with all of the founders' other personal-arms-ownership-related writings and commentary at the time because you're can't get your head around their punctuation choice as you seek to conflate and flip upside down the words they've chosen to use. But think about it, and translate some of their other ideas into more typical modern language, noting how it's actually possible to put two clauses into one sentence to improve conveying how important they are, related to one another. Like, the so-obvious-it-goes-without-saying implication baked into the 4th, as they use that amendment to also limit government power as used against the people...
... but anticipating exactly the sort of clamp-down on personal liberty they experienced with the Crown, they made it part of the charter of the country to point out that at no level of government could the obvious need for military units be considered grounds to prevent "the people" from keeping and bearing arms.
"Because it's sometimes going to be necessary for the government to search someone's house, papers, and personal effects in the course of a criminal investigation, the government shall not infringe on the privacy of one's personal home, affairs and property without showing probable cause and specific objectives." See how that flows? Breaking that up into two sentences would make it less clear the point of the amendment is to preserve individual liberty despite the need for state or federal power that might - uncontrolled by the constitution - encroach too readily on personal freedom.
As for some of your other points:
If this was about local militias being a counter-balance for a standing FEDERAL army, they would have said as much, if not in the amendment itself, but in the large body of other surrounding writings and debate. But almost all of the founders' writings at the time, and their commentary specifically surrounding that topic explains their urge, having raised and used such an army to settle things with the British, to not have such a thing on a permanent basis. Most figured that the best bet was to let locals (at the state level) maintain militias as they saw fit
And before you try to explain that "the people" doesn't refer to individuals, ask yourself why they chose exactly that same phrase ("the people") when describing who should be personally free from government over-reach when they wrote the 4th Amendment and referred to personal home, papers, etc. Read it, and the use of that phrase, in the same context.
Apparently you do not know the meaning of the word "Why".
Are you that unable to make the connection? Nobody is entitled to someone else's work on terms not offered by the person who creates the work. The bogus, straw-man question of why someone would thing that "poor" people aren't entitled to art and entertainment is pure BS. There is an abundance of both, offered by artists and channeled through all sorts of outlets at no cost to people who want to consume it. If they want extra choices and convenience in order to get work that the people who create it would like to charge for, then not having that cash handy doesn't suddenly entitle them to that work.
I can't afford an original Picasso print. So, I should be entitled to it because I'm too poor to pay for it?
Regardless: yes, being successful has a lot to do with culture. As in, it's a damn shame when people who aren't equipped (or dedicated to) raising successful kids go ahead and have kids anyway. Look at Baltimore. Kids going to school and learning how to be humans and winding up as fairly comfortable middle class people, just miles from kids who get exactly as much (and often more) spent on them at school, who have subsidies available for college and countless other programs, but whose neighborhoods tend to be full of poverty and squalor.
For you, it's all about race. Because you're lazy, and/or you don't want to stick your neck out and talk honestly about family and neighborhood culture. Culture is not race.
And while you're deliberately mis-reporting and muddling things: Costco's basic membership is only $55. And there is no credit check necessary - feel free to pay cash. And an entire family, and every friend or neighbor they want to bring with them, can walk in and load up on things at sensible prices and check out on one person's card. Your fake barriers to spending less on things like commodity food are BS, and you know it.
Sure would be convenient if there was a Costco in easy walk-up range in those rough neighborhoods in West Baltimore, right? Ask the liberal democrats who've been running that city for decades why that specific area is so hostile to investment, why the people who live there are scared to carry bags of groceries down the sidewalk, and why it's so hard to find people willing and able to work in stores.
Being born poor and white is STILL a better result than being born black and richish
Really? Shall we start comparing the life prospects of poor white kids in Appalchia to the kids born to dual income white collar households places mostly black areas like PG County, outside of DC? Yeah, don't trouble yourself. BSing about it won't change it, as much as you'd strangely LIKE the narrative you're going on about to be true. Why, I don't know.
Try as you might you'll never see a robot replace the Koch bros, the Hienz family or even a Mitt Romney.
Or George Soros. Of course, he has thousands of mindless activist 'bots doing his bidding, so at least he's contributing to the botpocalypse in his own way.
Nothing is worth more than manufacturing cost +20%
Spoken exactly like someone who has never actually run (or even participated, with his eyes open) a retail business. You obviously have no notion, whatsoever, of what labor costs, what retail rent costs, what liability insurance costs, what taxes look like, or how little is left if you only mark things up 20%. Actually, there's nothing left. You're giving things away at that point ... but not for long, because you'll be bankrupt shortly.
A trillionaire could pay whatever he liked for something that no one else could possibly afford. If you have enough money prices are meaningless.
And yet one of the main reasons that people go from being, say, lower middle class to "well off" (or rich) is by not being stupid with their money. I know several people who've being The Evil Rich after years and years of hard work, and they still shop at Costco, buy lightly used cars, and only spend what they think it's worth on bigger ticket things.
So what if a rich person doesn't care that the drink at a hipster bar costs $20, while for you that would be a stupid waste of money? There are billions of people in the world for whom what you would spend on a drink is still an insane luxury purchase. You aren't really foggy on this, are you? It's called a market.
Bullshit theory. I've bought many things in my life that clearly aren't worth what I was willing to pay for them. :/
Then why did you buy them? You made the decision that the purchases were what you decided to spend. That's what those items were worth at the time you reached for your wallet.
It, and everything else, are worth exactly what people are willing to pay for them.
You really don't actually think about the things you say, do you.
More to the point, why do people feel that the poor shouldn't have access to art or entertainment?
People who don't want to pay what the artist is asking (either directly, or through whatever agent/company the artist has chosen to work with) are 100% entitled to opt instead for entertainment and art offered to them at no charge by other people. How is this confusing to you?