The very reason why facebook exists is to sell the personal information of its users.
If this is all they did, it would be only half sleazy (still sleazy, because they would rely on obscuring the privacy disclosures and knowing people just click through the pages of legalese). But Facebook is going full sleazy, by also tracking and selling the personal information of people who don't use their sites, via shadow profiles. People have no way to know they're being tracked, and no way to opt out.
What could the AG have to gain by winning a lawsuit against a company that was doing exactly what they were telling their users - and customers - they were going to do?
At the very minimum, I hope to see a decision (or, even better, a law) that forbids companies to track anybody who hasn't explicitly opted in to being tracked. Facebook, Google and the other data vampires should be allowed to keep and use only information that can be directly traced to somebody who has opted in. If, for example, somebody has my e-mail address in his Google contacts or on his Facebook account, neither company should be allowed to use, sell or disclose it to 3rd parties without my specific permission. If, for example, Slashdot tattles on my IP and activity to Google via all the calls to gstatic, google-analytics and so on, Google should not be allowed to save or use this information, because I don't have a Google account and I haven't agreed to being tracked.
Of course, companies can make opt in a condition for using their properties: if you want to create a Facebook account, or use Google Maps, you must agree to tracking. But if you don't agree, and you don't even have accounts with them, they should not be allowed to track you.
I wouldn't think Google has a positive morality score. On the contrary, IMO Google is worse even than Facebook. Facebook are clumsy and obvious in their shenanigans, while Google is more subtle, and fights hard to keep a benign appearance. Mutatis mutandis, it's like comparing alley mugger Facebook to Mafia boss Google. Let's not forget that Google has pretty much invented the "invade people's privacy" business model. They're the main factor that shaped the permanent surveillance world we now live in, and who spoiled the Internet to the point where you need to take extraordinary measures to keep from being tracked and spied upon. Also, they're the biggest spender on lobbying in the USA; not something a company with "positive morality" would need.
And you haven't convinced me that making people be civil in a workplace environment leads to that.
The problem is that this mindset isn't limited to the workplace. It's already expanding to the outside world as well, where it freezes discussion, assaults freedom of speech, and stops the free exchange of ideas. It ignores presumptions of innocence, rules of evidence, context, or even logic. The thought policemen who introduce and enforce codes of conduct don't limit themselves to the work place - and why should they? There are no negative consequences for them, and it makes them important, when they have few merits otherwise (no wonder they dislike meritocracies). Some of them lead real life witch-hunts, looking for offences and thought crimes to punish. And they will find them, or else they will make them up - and, as we have already seen, accusation is enough in many cases.
I agree with the idea that it's nice to be nice, but some of the proponents are overdoing it and throwing the baby with the bathwater. The degenerate form of political correctness we're seeing recently, with idiocies like micro-aggression, or cultural appropriation, or replacing "fuck" with "hug" is particularly obnoxious.
Making niceness mandatory is a bad and dangerous direction to take. I don't want to live in a society of taboos - where you can't discuss some subject, use some word or dare to disagree with some opinion. There is a good reason why freedom of speech is the first amendment.
If they're such idiots, how'd they get China to back down?
But China didn't back down - at least not yet. At the moment it's all words, and even those don't appear to address the most important issues: mandatory Chinese majority ownership for companies trying to trade in China, mandatory transfer of intellectual property to the Chinese part and complete lack of enforcement of intellectual property laws against copycat Chinese companies. I reserve my judgement on the matter until I see concrete results - especially on those issues.
This is a pattern for Trump. He comes in all blustery, calls various dictators and criminals "good guys", gets a bunch of mostly empty promises or some meaningless changes, then boasts on Twitter about his amazing successes and drops the issue. He has no followup, and no attention span. See North Korea. He got a bunch of words, preened before the cameras, agreed to cancel the South Korea-USA joint exercises, then forgot the whole thing. In the meantime, North Korea has dismantled their old nuclear testing site at Punggye-ri (which was due for closing anyway), then got right back at their tricks. North Korea cancelled the November 7 meeting with Pompeo, and now got the USA to agree not to require a complete list of nuclear weapons and missile sites from North Korea prior to next year's summit (according to Mike Pence's Nov 15 interview with NBC). I believe there is a high chance that the China thing will go the same way.
Only difference is in the US private companies keep scores on you instead of the government.
The issue, though, is that data collected by private companies does not stay securely in the company's databases.
Instead, private firms sell and share it to all and sundry (which is, after all the reason why they collected it). The government still gets all the data, while being able to deny they're collecting it themselves. At least in China you know who's the big bad; in America, the responsibility is so diluted there is no way to find somebody to blame.
Also, various companies' databases provide hackers and other malefactors with rich seams of information to dig into (ironically, Chinese are probably safer this way than Americans, since I'd imagine the Chinese government databases are better protected, and the penalties for hacking them are much more serious).
However, looking at the object's trajectory I find it interesting that it passes so close to the sun - almost as if it was targeted this way.
Of course, if it had passed too far from the sun, we wouldn't have seen it at all. Still, I'd expect interstellar objects within say the orbit of Jupiter to be noticed. However, Oumuamua's closest approach to the sun (at 38,100,000 km) hit a circle less than 1/400 of the area of Jupiter's orbit. It does seem a bit weird to me for the first interstellar object ever observed to get so close to the sun by random chance.
For an interstellar ship, there are however good reasons to pass so close to a star - for example, to use its gravity for an assist, or maybe recharge its batteries.
It's not stupidity. Say what you want about Google, but they're not stupid, and they don't hire stupid people. They're well aware that enabling Javascript is not going to improve security - and they don't care. Google's goal is to maximize tracking, not to improve security.
What it is is arrogance and complete disdain for their users. Google has no qualms about stating howlers like this one with a straight face, because it knows a majority of users are not very knowledgeable, and won't realize they're being lied to. Those folks will feel reassured by Google's message and open themselves to all the tracking Google (and everybody else) can squeeze in.
only as long as users meaningfully make the choice to not want to be tracked. Changing defaults screwed this entire principle.
I don't see things quite this way; the whole approach is really weaselly to begin with. The ad industry knows full well that the majority of users don't have the information or knowledge to make this meaningful choice. It cynically intended to use the consumers' lack of information to profit from them, at the same time touting its virtuousness in providing this scam of a standard. When somebody - Microsoft in this case - takes a measure to protect users by default, the ad industry throws a hissy fit, and discards the whole standard. The very fact they were able to do this demonstrates how much of a lie the DNT standard was.
Let me suggest an analogy: a city's Thieves Guild objects to a new municipal ordinance that requires all new homes to have a lock. They propose a competing standard: citizens that are concerned about their possessions should put a sign on the lawn, saying "Please don't rob this house, Mr. Thief", and they promise they won't rob those houses, as long as there aren't very many of them around. Of course, most citizens don't know that the standard exists, and they don't put the signs up. When a home builder starts installing the sign on all new houses, some citizens - like the GP - accuse them of breaking the standard and forcing the poor Thieves Guild into ignoring signs and robbing houses anyway. They say home owners who really don't want to be robbed should instead make a meaningful choice and install the lawn signs themselves. Does this sound ok to you?
You say Microsoft broke DNT because they actually used the header, so poor tracking networks had no choice but ignore it. You don't seem to realize that your complaint is a real life example of a catch 22: ad slingers promise they'll respect the DNT header only as long as users promise not to use it.
The reality behind this absurd design is more interesting: the alleged "standard" had never been anything more than a publicity stunt orchestrated by Google and their (at that time) lapdog Mozilla. The reason why they did that was to block a competing DNT mechanism, proposed by Microsoft as a W3C standard. Microsoft's design stopped your browser from connecting to a tracker site completely. It didn't rely on the tracker's good will and honesty; it was a pro-consumer, not pro-ad industry solution.
Google realized the danger, and proposed a different mechanism (the current "standard"). Via their membership in the Digital Advertising Alliance and other ad industry groups (participants in the W3C's standardization commitee), they forced it through, with great fanfare, thus blocking the consumer-friendly alternative.
The ridiculousness of the design was obvious at the time. Just a few things: it's impossible to enforce your settings against a non-cooperating site. It's impossible to even confirm whether your request is being honored. There's no mechanism for a site to notify you in advance that it won't respect the DNT header. Add the fact that it's opt-out (leaving the less-technical majority of users unprotected by default), and it's pretty clear who the "standard" was for - hint: it was not for consumers.
If you want to blame somebody, you should pick Google and Mozilla. All Microsoft did is call the ad industry's bluff and expose Google's DNT for the lie it always was.
Actually you are proposing to take from creators. So even you need them for your theory.
No, I'm not. To super-simplify: I'm proposing robot shoe factories. People will have shoes, and the only "taking" is from robots, who don't own anything. Your only argument is that the owners of the capital (that is, of the factory) will be deprived. But this is precisely the fallacy you're falling to: ownership of capital is not creation.
Supply is always limited. There isn't one thing on Earth, that isn't limited.
This is another fallacy, because we don't need unlimited supplies of anything. We need sufficient supplies only - in this discussion, sufficient to ensure a comfortable living for all humans (what UBI is about). That can be ensured without depleting the whole
There is only one Gordon Ramsay.
So what? Much as someone may like Gordon Ramsay's cooking, one can live comfortably without ever going to one of his restaurants. You must understand UBI is not supposed to get everybody a wallet full of Lamborghinis - it's Universal Basic Income, not Universal Trust Fund Kid Income.
There is only limited people willing to do farming.
Hence automation. Already relatively few people are needed in farming (the CIA World Factbook puts the total percent of workers in farming plus forestry plus fishing to only 0.7 percent of the USA workforce).
you are saying to take money from those, who create value and spread them evenly
I believe this is one of the bad assumptions that lead you to a faulty conclusion. You confuse the owners of capital with the creators of value. This is incorrect. It's not the rich that create value. For example, Paris Hilton doesn't clean up rooms at the Hilton, nor does she administer the logistics of her family hotels. She is only rich because she was lucky to be born in the Hilton family.
The creators of value have been always the entrepreneurs and the workers, not the owners of capital. Capital is a tool used in creating value, but it's not creating value by itself. This fact has been successfully suppressed by the rich, who have used their wealth and propaganda tools to raise ownership of capital to an almost mystic quality. As a result, in this supposedly most egalitarian of countries, the rich have a totally undeserved glamour, and regular people react with knee-jerk rejection to initiatives that would somehow hurt ownership of capital.
So there will be a deficit on the side of creators of value.
This already exists. The people who work don't get the full value of their work. It goes to the owners of the company, who often don't do anything creative.
To eliminate this deficiency, creators will have to earn more money.
Once you realize owners of capital aren't creators, you'll realize this is irrelevant. There is no need of "creators" to ensure most of the needs of regular people. A fully automated shoe factory can make shoes with just a few maintenance people.
To earn more money, they will have to raise the prices. Raised prices means that general public will have nominally more money, but can afford less-per-dollar. And the circle is closed.
The "circle" exists only if the supply is limited - either by natural or artificial monopolies. Your mistake is ignoring the continuous rise in automation and productivity, and therefore the rise in supply. To return to the previous example, if people have the choice to get cheap shoes from the robot factory, "creator" shoes become a luxury item, and few care if they raise their price. People who want luxury items items will pay the premium, but the majority of people will now be able to afford shoes.
I've fractured 2 orbitals, a hand, a foot, my nose twice, toes a dozen times, and so on. I've had 3 hernia repairs, teeth removed, an appendectomy, half a dozen eye surgeries, had a tooth drilled without any numbing agents, and so on.
This would more be taking issue with the claimed expert.
I may have misunderstood your post then; did you mean they'll say what happened in Eastern Europe was no true communism (but the real one will be all rainbows and ponies), or they'll say I misunderstood whatever I saw, and I should believe them and not my lying eyes?
Or, maybe you mean they'll argue my claims of living in Eastern Europe are lies? Sure, I am just a guy on the Internet, and I may be lying, but it's a really weak argument for their position (whoever "they" are). While I can't be arsed to bring proof I lived there, there are lots of well documented histories, movies and chronicles of life under communism in Eastern Europe, which anybody can consult, and they'll support my points.
There are however plenty of Scottish people in the world:-)
Ah, but is there any proof any of them are true Scotsmen?
The crux of their argument would be that neither have you.
Of course, of course. That's how the "no true Scotsman" fallacy works, isn't it? No matter what counter-examples one offers, they aren't going to be the "true" whatever.
don't pay your taxes and you'll go to jail. We accept a certain level of tyranny in exchange for the benefits of a functioning government and civilization.
That's the kind of rhetoric that stops me from taking libertarians seriously. No, paying taxes is not tyranny, having to get a license to be allowed to drive doesn't make a country a dictatorship, and having to serve all your store's customers no matter what their race or sex isn't slavery either.
when you do the large scale ownership transfer (transferring, let us remember, the _means_ of production, not the fruits of said production) inevitably a violent dictator inserts themselves into the chaos that follows and takes it all for them selves.
You have things backwards. You don't expropriate the means of production first and then get a dictatorship. You get the dictatorship first, and use it to forcefully "transfer" the means of production. Remember that, according to Marx and Engels, dictatorship (of the proletariat) is a necessary stage in the transition to communism; Engels pointed to the Paris Commune as an example of dictatorship of the proletariat - and we know how well that worked out.
The cost of FREE will always collapse the system. Because those receiving services and those providing services have no skin in the game and will completely disregard those stuck with the bill (Middle Class Tax Payers).
Easy counter-example: Germany. Contrary to your statement, it doesn't appear to be collapsing, even though it offers free tuition.
Also, you see the problem on a very narrow time frame - but, after leaving college, the receivers of services earn larger salaries on average, and therefore pay larger taxes, so they do pay for their tuition.
There is also the Australian model, where tuition is free, but people who graduated pay back the tuition via a certain percent added to their tax. This payment is dependent on their income, so a graduate that doesn't manage to get a large enough income will not pay this extra tax. As a result, a student doesn't have to worry too much about crushing debt on graduation.
Slashdot Mirror
The very reason why facebook exists is to sell the personal information of its users.
If this is all they did, it would be only half sleazy (still sleazy, because they would rely on obscuring the privacy disclosures and knowing people just click through the pages of legalese). But Facebook is going full sleazy, by also tracking and selling the personal information of people who don't use their sites, via shadow profiles. People have no way to know they're being tracked, and no way to opt out.
What could the AG have to gain by winning a lawsuit against a company that was doing exactly what they were telling their users - and customers - they were going to do?
At the very minimum, I hope to see a decision (or, even better, a law) that forbids companies to track anybody who hasn't explicitly opted in to being tracked. Facebook, Google and the other data vampires should be allowed to keep and use only information that can be directly traced to somebody who has opted in. If, for example, somebody has my e-mail address in his Google contacts or on his Facebook account, neither company should be allowed to use, sell or disclose it to 3rd parties without my specific permission. If, for example, Slashdot tattles on my IP and activity to Google via all the calls to gstatic, google-analytics and so on, Google should not be allowed to save or use this information, because I don't have a Google account and I haven't agreed to being tracked.
Of course, companies can make opt in a condition for using their properties: if you want to create a Facebook account, or use Google Maps, you must agree to tracking. But if you don't agree, and you don't even have accounts with them, they should not be allowed to track you.
Google absolutely does honor robots.txt.
How about the Do Not Track header?
Googles positive morality score
I wouldn't think Google has a positive morality score. On the contrary, IMO Google is worse even than Facebook. Facebook are clumsy and obvious in their shenanigans, while Google is more subtle, and fights hard to keep a benign appearance. Mutatis mutandis, it's like comparing alley mugger Facebook to Mafia boss Google. Let's not forget that Google has pretty much invented the "invade people's privacy" business model. They're the main factor that shaped the permanent surveillance world we now live in, and who spoiled the Internet to the point where you need to take extraordinary measures to keep from being tracked and spied upon. Also, they're the biggest spender on lobbying in the USA; not something a company with "positive morality" would need.
He later tweeted that the trade -- selling some of his Bitcoin holdings while buying the call options -- was profitable.
I noticed that when you ask consistently losing gamblers how they're doing, they'll very often say they're about even, or maybe a little up...
Methinks it will be a tempest in a teapot...
And you haven't convinced me that making people be civil in a workplace environment leads to that.
The problem is that this mindset isn't limited to the workplace. It's already expanding to the outside world as well, where it freezes discussion, assaults freedom of speech, and stops the free exchange of ideas. It ignores presumptions of innocence, rules of evidence, context, or even logic. The thought policemen who introduce and enforce codes of conduct don't limit themselves to the work place - and why should they? There are no negative consequences for them, and it makes them important, when they have few merits otherwise (no wonder they dislike meritocracies). Some of them lead real life witch-hunts, looking for offences and thought crimes to punish. And they will find them, or else they will make them up - and, as we have already seen, accusation is enough in many cases.
I agree with the idea that it's nice to be nice, but some of the proponents are overdoing it and throwing the baby with the bathwater. The degenerate form of political correctness we're seeing recently, with idiocies like micro-aggression, or cultural appropriation, or replacing "fuck" with "hug" is particularly obnoxious.
Making niceness mandatory is a bad and dangerous direction to take. I don't want to live in a society of taboos - where you can't discuss some subject, use some word or dare to disagree with some opinion. There is a good reason why freedom of speech is the first amendment.
If they're such idiots, how'd they get China to back down?
But China didn't back down - at least not yet. At the moment it's all words, and even those don't appear to address the most important issues: mandatory Chinese majority ownership for companies trying to trade in China, mandatory transfer of intellectual property to the Chinese part and complete lack of enforcement of intellectual property laws against copycat Chinese companies. I reserve my judgement on the matter until I see concrete results - especially on those issues.
This is a pattern for Trump. He comes in all blustery, calls various dictators and criminals "good guys", gets a bunch of mostly empty promises or some meaningless changes, then boasts on Twitter about his amazing successes and drops the issue. He has no followup, and no attention span. See North Korea. He got a bunch of words, preened before the cameras, agreed to cancel the South Korea-USA joint exercises, then forgot the whole thing. In the meantime, North Korea has dismantled their old nuclear testing site at Punggye-ri (which was due for closing anyway), then got right back at their tricks. North Korea cancelled the November 7 meeting with Pompeo, and now got the USA to agree not to require a complete list of nuclear weapons and missile sites from North Korea prior to next year's summit (according to Mike Pence's Nov 15 interview with NBC). I believe there is a high chance that the China thing will go the same way.
Only difference is in the US private companies keep scores on you instead of the government.
The issue, though, is that data collected by private companies does not stay securely in the company's databases.
Instead, private firms sell and share it to all and sundry (which is, after all the reason why they collected it). The government still gets all the data, while being able to deny they're collecting it themselves. At least in China you know who's the big bad; in America, the responsibility is so diluted there is no way to find somebody to blame.
Also, various companies' databases provide hackers and other malefactors with rich seams of information to dig into (ironically, Chinese are probably safer this way than Americans, since I'd imagine the Chinese government databases are better protected, and the penalties for hacking them are much more serious).
To start with the obvious, IANAA(stronomer).
However, looking at the object's trajectory I find it interesting that it passes so close to the sun - almost as if it was targeted this way.
Of course, if it had passed too far from the sun, we wouldn't have seen it at all. Still, I'd expect interstellar objects within say the orbit of Jupiter to be noticed. However, Oumuamua's closest approach to the sun (at 38,100,000 km) hit a circle less than 1/400 of the area of Jupiter's orbit. It does seem a bit weird to me for the first interstellar object ever observed to get so close to the sun by random chance.
For an interstellar ship, there are however good reasons to pass so close to a star - for example, to use its gravity for an assist, or maybe recharge its batteries.
The stupidity is strong.
It's not stupidity. Say what you want about Google, but they're not stupid, and they don't hire stupid people. They're well aware that enabling Javascript is not going to improve security - and they don't care. Google's goal is to maximize tracking, not to improve security.
What it is is arrogance and complete disdain for their users. Google has no qualms about stating howlers like this one with a straight face, because it knows a majority of users are not very knowledgeable, and won't realize they're being lied to. Those folks will feel reassured by Google's message and open themselves to all the tracking Google (and everybody else) can squeeze in.
The people it might disincentive are maybe 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the user base.
I told you at least 1000000000000000000000 times to stop exaggerating...
only as long as users meaningfully make the choice to not want to be tracked.
Changing defaults screwed this entire principle.
I don't see things quite this way; the whole approach is really weaselly to begin with. The ad industry knows full well that the majority of users don't have the information or knowledge to make this meaningful choice. It cynically intended to use the consumers' lack of information to profit from them, at the same time touting its virtuousness in providing this scam of a standard. When somebody - Microsoft in this case - takes a measure to protect users by default, the ad industry throws a hissy fit, and discards the whole standard. The very fact they were able to do this demonstrates how much of a lie the DNT standard was.
Let me suggest an analogy: a city's Thieves Guild objects to a new municipal ordinance that requires all new homes to have a lock. They propose a competing standard: citizens that are concerned about their possessions should put a sign on the lawn, saying "Please don't rob this house, Mr. Thief", and they promise they won't rob those houses, as long as there aren't very many of them around. Of course, most citizens don't know that the standard exists, and they don't put the signs up. When a home builder starts installing the sign on all new houses, some citizens - like the GP - accuse them of breaking the standard and forcing the poor Thieves Guild into ignoring signs and robbing houses anyway. They say home owners who really don't want to be robbed should instead make a meaningful choice and install the lawn signs themselves. Does this sound ok to you?
You say Microsoft broke DNT because they actually used the header, so poor tracking networks had no choice but ignore it. You don't seem to realize that your complaint is a real life example of a catch 22: ad slingers promise they'll respect the DNT header only as long as users promise not to use it.
The reality behind this absurd design is more interesting: the alleged "standard" had never been anything more than a publicity stunt orchestrated by Google and their (at that time) lapdog Mozilla. The reason why they did that was to block a competing DNT mechanism, proposed by Microsoft as a W3C standard. Microsoft's design stopped your browser from connecting to a tracker site completely. It didn't rely on the tracker's good will and honesty; it was a pro-consumer, not pro-ad industry solution.
Google realized the danger, and proposed a different mechanism (the current "standard"). Via their membership in the Digital Advertising Alliance and other ad industry groups (participants in the W3C's standardization commitee), they forced it through, with great fanfare, thus blocking the consumer-friendly alternative.
The ridiculousness of the design was obvious at the time. Just a few things: it's impossible to enforce your settings against a non-cooperating site. It's impossible to even confirm whether your request is being honored. There's no mechanism for a site to notify you in advance that it won't respect the DNT header. Add the fact that it's opt-out (leaving the less-technical majority of users unprotected by default), and it's pretty clear who the "standard" was for - hint: it was not for consumers.
If you want to blame somebody, you should pick Google and Mozilla. All Microsoft did is call the ad industry's bluff and expose Google's DNT for the lie it always was.
Only the ones who knew how to spell "alluded".
I think he really meant to say "deluded".
Actually you are proposing to take from creators. So even you need them for your theory.
No, I'm not. To super-simplify: I'm proposing robot shoe factories. People will have shoes, and the only "taking" is from robots, who don't own anything. Your only argument is that the owners of the capital (that is, of the factory) will be deprived. But this is precisely the fallacy you're falling to: ownership of capital is not creation.
Supply is always limited. There isn't one thing on Earth, that isn't limited.
This is another fallacy, because we don't need unlimited supplies of anything. We need sufficient supplies only - in this discussion, sufficient to ensure a comfortable living for all humans (what UBI is about). That can be ensured without depleting the whole
There is only one Gordon Ramsay.
So what? Much as someone may like Gordon Ramsay's cooking, one can live comfortably without ever going to one of his restaurants. You must understand UBI is not supposed to get everybody a wallet full of Lamborghinis - it's Universal Basic Income, not Universal Trust Fund Kid Income.
There is only limited people willing to do farming.
Hence automation. Already relatively few people are needed in farming (the CIA World Factbook puts the total percent of workers in farming plus forestry plus fishing to only 0.7 percent of the USA workforce).
you are saying to take money from those, who create value and spread them evenly
I believe this is one of the bad assumptions that lead you to a faulty conclusion. You confuse the owners of capital with the creators of value. This is incorrect. It's not the rich that create value. For example, Paris Hilton doesn't clean up rooms at the Hilton, nor does she administer the logistics of her family hotels. She is only rich because she was lucky to be born in the Hilton family.
The creators of value have been always the entrepreneurs and the workers, not the owners of capital. Capital is a tool used in creating value, but it's not creating value by itself. This fact has been successfully suppressed by the rich, who have used their wealth and propaganda tools to raise ownership of capital to an almost mystic quality. As a result, in this supposedly most egalitarian of countries, the rich have a totally undeserved glamour, and regular people react with knee-jerk rejection to initiatives that would somehow hurt ownership of capital.
So there will be a deficit on the side of creators of value.
This already exists. The people who work don't get the full value of their work. It goes to the owners of the company, who often don't do anything creative.
To eliminate this deficiency, creators will have to earn more money.
Once you realize owners of capital aren't creators, you'll realize this is irrelevant. There is no need of "creators" to ensure most of the needs of regular people. A fully automated shoe factory can make shoes with just a few maintenance people.
To earn more money, they will have to raise the prices. Raised prices means that general public will have nominally more money, but can afford less-per-dollar. And the circle is closed.
The "circle" exists only if the supply is limited - either by natural or artificial monopolies. Your mistake is ignoring the continuous rise in automation and productivity, and therefore the rise in supply. To return to the previous example, if people have the choice to get cheap shoes from the robot factory, "creator" shoes become a luxury item, and few care if they raise their price. People who want luxury items items will pay the premium, but the majority of people will now be able to afford shoes.
It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
Well, aren't we fortunate to have both now.
Enjoy yourself! (It's Later than You Think)
Bows head in ...
No. The name has always been Minitruth.
I've fractured 2 orbitals, a hand, a foot, my nose twice, toes a dozen times, and so on. I've had 3 hernia repairs, teeth removed, an appendectomy, half a dozen eye surgeries, had a tooth drilled without any numbing agents, and so on.
God, that must have been pretty busy day!
Actually Google provides better privacy for users. [...] AMP pages are great if you like your privacy.
Thanks for providing the daily doublethink guidance from Minitruth.
As St Augustine famously said, "You don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind's blowing."
Heretic! It was "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows". Burn the witch!
This would more be taking issue with the claimed expert.
I may have misunderstood your post then; did you mean they'll say what happened in Eastern Europe was no true communism (but the real one will be all rainbows and ponies), or they'll say I misunderstood whatever I saw, and I should believe them and not my lying eyes?
Or, maybe you mean they'll argue my claims of living in Eastern Europe are lies? Sure, I am just a guy on the Internet, and I may be lying, but it's a really weak argument for their position (whoever "they" are). While I can't be arsed to bring proof I lived there, there are lots of well documented histories, movies and chronicles of life under communism in Eastern Europe, which anybody can consult, and they'll support my points.
There are however plenty of Scottish people in the world :-)
Ah, but is there any proof any of them are true Scotsmen?
The crux of their argument would be that neither have you.
Of course, of course. That's how the "no true Scotsman" fallacy works, isn't it? No matter what counter-examples one offers, they aren't going to be the "true" whatever.
don't pay your taxes and you'll go to jail. We accept a certain level of tyranny in exchange for the benefits of a functioning government and civilization.
That's the kind of rhetoric that stops me from taking libertarians seriously. No, paying taxes is not tyranny, having to get a license to be allowed to drive doesn't make a country a dictatorship, and having to serve all your store's customers no matter what their race or sex isn't slavery either.
when you do the large scale ownership transfer (transferring, let us remember, the _means_ of production, not the fruits of said production) inevitably a violent dictator inserts themselves into the chaos that follows and takes it all for them selves.
You have things backwards. You don't expropriate the means of production first and then get a dictatorship. You get the dictatorship first, and use it to forcefully "transfer" the means of production. Remember that, according to Marx and Engels, dictatorship (of the proletariat) is a necessary stage in the transition to communism; Engels pointed to the Paris Commune as an example of dictatorship of the proletariat - and we know how well that worked out.
The cost of FREE will always collapse the system. Because those receiving services and those providing services have no skin in the game and will completely disregard those stuck with the bill (Middle Class Tax Payers).
Easy counter-example: Germany. Contrary to your statement, it doesn't appear to be collapsing, even though it offers free tuition.
Also, you see the problem on a very narrow time frame - but, after leaving college, the receivers of services earn larger salaries on average, and therefore pay larger taxes, so they do pay for their tuition.
There is also the Australian model, where tuition is free, but people who graduated pay back the tuition via a certain percent added to their tax. This payment is dependent on their income, so a graduate that doesn't manage to get a large enough income will not pay this extra tax. As a result, a student doesn't have to worry too much about crushing debt on graduation.