The article is not speaking about an encryption flaw or anything like that, but about a backdoor - a feature that allows Facebook, without any code changes on your device or other intrusion - to eavesdrop on any conversation you are having.
A good encryption would be impenetrable even to the vendor. It should not allow the keys to be changed underneath you. It should not warn you afterwards about this fact, and only if you have a special option enabled, but it should tell you before it does a key change, and require your consent.
VR helmets also have an additional advantage: Privacy. When I can put it on in the train, plane, etc. and tune out the crowd around me, that's a good thing.
It is not the same problem, though. A self-driving car needs to navigate from A to B by itself. The Tesla autopilot is closer to an airplane autopilot and requires a human driver at the wheel ready to take over, so if it can cover 90% of the drive, it's absolutely fine.
For example, my current way to work is largely freeways and if my car could manage that part by itself, which by time takes the largest part, I'd be happy to manually drive the first and last few km. While a completely autonomous car would be cute, I'd be happy to take a 90% solution.
With the current state of our politics I'm not so sure we deserve to be great anymore.
Newsflash: You never did.
Greatness isn't deserved, it just happens, often as an accident of history. In the case of the USA, because Europe tore itself apart in two wars that a) destroyed its industrial base b) either killed or drove away a lot of its most capable scientists and engineers, many to the USA and c) make the transition from colonial empires times to modern times more rough, so places like the British Empire simply disintegrated and still haven't recovered.
The USA is the big winner of WW2 and was coasting on that for a long time, but that time is coming to an end. Now you are having the tough transition period. Tech and media kept you up after the industrial base went away to China, but now that is failing, too. There's great tech coming out of Europe and Asia now, and Hollywood is losing its grip on the media/culture market because they are greedy fuckers and only re-re-re-hash the same old ideas. Meanwhile China and India are creating their own movie industries, and even the believed-to-be-almost-dead european cinema is picking up again. Heck, there are really good SciFi movies coming out of Russia right now.
Trump is calling back to a time with ignorance to history. The circumstances that made America great have changed.
Never underestimate the power of the status quo. In the end, the government is run by the people working in the various government offices, departments and such. The boss at the top makes big waves, but underneath, the ocean is calm.
The same was thought about Bush Jr. - he would destroy the USA, drive it against the wall, etc. etc. - in the end, he was a terrible president but the boat didn't sink.
But you're arguing for placing pre-emptive barriers on what you think are "the right level of local". I'm saying, if you have open trade borders and price in the cost of externalities (like a carbon tax), then the market will work itself out in terms of where the "right level of local source" is.
That's exactly what I'm saying. That distance and cost of transportation should matter more. The only reason we have global trade at this scale is that a log of the costs are outsourced and externalised. The economic impact of global trade is incredible, easily dwarves private cars, for example.
I don't know if I buy that. Employment participation rates vary from decade to decade.
You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. When my father finished schools, company representatives were waiting in front of the schools to catch young men (mostly, at that time) immediately and offer them contracts. We were literally importing foreign workers because we didn't have enough people to fill all the available jobs.
but that's not full employment.
That's semantics. Nobody cares how many people have a job or not. What matters is if those who are looking for a job can find one or not. Employment as a percentage of population makes no sense at all (children, pensioners, etc.).
And I don't think impeding progress Luddite-style is the answer. Nor do I think impeding progress "anti-trade" style is the answer either.
We know that globalisation isn't the answer, either.
But here's the thing: The more self-sufficient you are, as a country or continent or just ill-defined local region, the less you will be dragged down when some men in suits made a bad gamble at the casino called stock exchange, which by all rights should have zero effect on the real economy.
what if every city was to produce their own crops of every type instead of importing/exporting from other areas? Would that be more or less efficient?
Once you price in long-distance trade at something resembling the real cost to the planet, local crops are suddenly a lot more efficient. Ignore money and prices for the moment, argue just with natural resources, working time, etc. - things that are real. Now explain me how eating meat from cows bred in South America on wheat brought in from Russia can by any means you choose be more efficient than meat from local cows fed local wheat.
Expand that idea to a global scale and you have your answer to why shipping from China or Brazil for certain things can be better.
For certain things, sure.
For everything? Not without a distortion factor, which is the monetary system.
Depends how many people you can convince to watch it at your place. You could charge them a few bucks and share the experience. Oh wait, we just re-invented cinema, right?
Home cinema setups have become really affordable. I've got THX at home, full HD with 3D optional (didn't buy the glasses yet) and my screen size is about 3m diagonal. Projectors for the win. I pity people with TVs.:-)
The main reason left to go to a cinema is that the screen is bigger and the sound system is fantastic. Everything else you can have at home.
With a good home cinema setup, you can come close, and you have none of the expensive popcorn, queues, guy next to you getting on your nerves, obnoxious advertisement and other bullshit. Plus you can pause the movie to get a drink from the kitchen and cuddle your cats while watching.
Cinema is on the way out. Once Hollywood understood the lesson that the music industry had to understand, things will get better.
The equivalent of "stop outsourcing" would be like Wyoming blocking imports of almonds from CA just because it wants its own local almond farmers to have business.
I agree that the question isn't borders. If you are in Texas, northern Mexico is more "local" than NYC. But in either case, China is not local.
People *are* permanently unemployed. Not a large percentage of the population but unemployment has never been 0. Ever. I'd say what well-intentioned tariffs we've passed to try to keep unemployment down aren't working very well. And with the upcoming onslaught of automation...I don't see how you *can* keep people from being unemployed for long periods of time.
The part that's never zero is called "structural unemployment", and was mentioned in the part that you cut. People between jobs, people who are moving, etc. But unemployment-because-you-cant-find-a-job is not god-given, and in fact in various countries around the world there have been periods when this unemploymend was zero.
"the upcoming onslaught of automation" - the 60s called. They want their argument back.
Rather than cling onto the idea that everyone needs to be employed (when reality obviously isn't letting that happen), perhaps it's time to revisit how we make sure every citizen is taken care of in a post-industrial society and this idea that "everyone needs to work".
Oh, I agree on that. I've had periods in my life without a formal job (self-employed, my own small company, not working very much) that were wonderful except for the not-much-money part. If that were somehow covered, I'd immediately go back to working 20 hours a week, or 80 hours a week on stuff that I love.
Trade and technology are the 2 pillars that create wealth
How we are all caught in the Silicon Valley mantra and the Venture Capitalist religion. Most of the really large and powerful companies in the world are not called Google and Facebook. They are energy companies, food companies, and a dozen others. Trade and technology matter, but you buy an iPhone every year while you buy food every day.
. It also makes him a huge liability if they run into financial difficulty
History proves you wrong. Fords model worked, your bullshit is just that.
Considering that i device sales have flatlined or in some cases decreased,
And Apple is still insanely profitable, so your point is what, exactly?
Not many people gives a shit where it's made - they just want it cheap.
That is my point. Because it's been drilled into our heads that profit aka "buy cheap" is the only margin of success, the only thing important. My mother still bought her meat and vegetables at farms whenever she could, because knowing where it comes from and being able to trust its quality was another important value. Having an actual business relation used to be important, now we just use some price comparison website to save ten cents. But when you buy the same stuff from the same guy all the time, things become possible that Amazon won't do for you. That has value.
There are a few areas left where more than profit thinking is alive. Many people go to the same restaurants again and again, even if they're not the cheapest, but they're the best (in food quality, taste, atmosphere, whatever is important to you). I've had restaurants where I can sit down, say hi to the owner and order "the usual", and I don't care if there's another restaurant nearby where the food is ten cents cheaper.
Yes, not many people care. But maybe they should. Maybe we should pay the real price of global trade. Just putting a price on the ecological damage of these container ships (have you seen them? What comes out of your cars exhaust pipe is refreshing clean air compared to theirs) would instantly make local manufacturing economically interesting again.
People don't yet make the connection between the social systems downfall and the increase in global trade. Or that them buying cheap shit on Amazon is the reason their uncle is out of a job. Or that there is an inherent contradiction in the shouts of politicians who a) want you to earn less money and b) want you to spend more on consumption.
If you put people out of a job because you outsourced the factory to a low-income country, there are less people left to buy whatever your factory makes. It really is that simple.
Really? Your house is chinese, your gasoline japanese and your food korean? I mean, not by taste but manufactured there? That's amazing.
You might spend 90% of your disposable income on some electronics from Asia, but for the average household, that is about 20% or so of the total income. The rest goes for rent (or mortgage), food, taxes, insurances and other stuff that is part of the local economy.
You don't want to get rid of that. You don't want to slow down the economy by making goods more expensive. What you *want* is to allow companies to make tons of profit, *tax* that profit and use that money to pay people who were unemployed due to jobs moving away.
Have you thought that through?
So in the end, you will make everything abroad, only companies earn money, and everyone lives from the taxes? I don't think that is a sustainable economic model.
What you want is a balance between a strong local economy and beneficial trade. You want to import cars from Germany because they just make the best cars, and movies from Hollywood because they make the best movies (bear with me, it's only an example) and iPhones from China because they make the best electronics. But you want to grow your food locally because shipping it halway around the world doesn't improve its quality, and everything where it doesn't matter where it is made you want to make locally because global shipping is a major contributor to climate change and it's just crazy.
You do not want people permanently on unemployment benefits. There is no imaginable scenario where that is beneficial to anyone. You want unemployment to be a transition phase, for people between jobs.
There is more to the system then just who makes profits. There is also the psychological damage of unemployment, there is the fact that you become dependent on your suppliers, there is the fact that you don't want to lose the capability of manufacturing, even if outsourcing somewhere else would be cheaper, there is the whole insanity of global trade which would be prohibitively expensive in its current form if most of the cost (especially the environmental one) wouldn't be externalized.
There are reasons beyond profit that should guide an economy. The pure quarterly-profit perspective is the main damage the financial industry has done to the world. We now all think the way that stock brokers do, without realizing how narrow and limited their perspective is.
So much crying and so little understanding of systems theory.
Sure, americans want more money than chinese children. However, what does it cost to support all the unemployed people and to fight the higher crime and other problems that come with unemployment?
Also, money goes in circles. The american worker paid well will spend a large part of his salary on some other american business (say, the fast food store near work, the gas station on his way to work, etc.) while the chinese child spends his money somewhere in China.
Ford was the first to understand that paying his workers well would actually give him an advantage - if they can afford to buy one of his cars, they will. The same is true of this. Maybe the price of iPhones will rise - or maybe more people will buy them and the price stay the same. Or something inbetween.
It's too easy to just cry that prices will rise. In fact, that's usually a strawman.
Both sides in this information war are using propaganda.
Does Russia spend money to improve its image, including on social media? You can bet they do. Just like every other country in the world. Are there people paid to troll anti-russian comments? I wouldn't be surprised. But the question the article raises is a good question as well: Are there people paid to troll pro-russian comments? I wouldn't be surprised, either. And frankly speaking to me it seems like it, because if you post anything pro-russian or just with a balanced view, you do get shouted down as a Putin-lover or whatever.
Ever walk down the street in the city and a bum comes up to you begging? He can smell and look offensive. Should that be censored?
Yes. My purpose of being there is not to be a begging target, I didn't invite him to approach me, he is, in Internet terms, spamming me.
Ever been on a farm and smell the pigs or the cow manure? That's offensive.
But it is a necessary part of the operation of the farm. It is a direct consequence without which the farm could not function. In Internet terms, it's the annoying login dialog.
Ever see guts at the scene of a car wreck? That's offensive.
That is an unintended side-effect, not desired by anyone and not intentionally inflicted upon me by anyone. In Internet terms, it's lag or slow loading times.
You are comparing completely different things, not understanding that for some of them, there is no reason we should have to endure them (for the record: The proper solution is that the bum doesn't exist, our society is rich enough that every homeless person is a shame to us all)
Get off your ass, unplug, get out there into the real world and get offended! Trust me, it gets easier after the first few times. And you'll probably realized that being offended isn't anywhere near the worst thing that can possibly happen to you
I'm with you on that there's no right to not be offended. However, I can absolutely want to protect myself from what I don't like. I keep my house clean because I don't like trash and smells. I keep my door closed because I want to decide who I invite in and who not. I don't hang disgusting pictures on my walls, etc. I can filter my view of the world. You have a right to Free Speech, but not a right to force me to listen. Individual filters are a necessity or we would all drown in spam. What we need to prevent is centrally controlled filters.
Uh, Obama didn't lose the popular vote either time (the last president who was elected despite losing the popular vote was Bush in 2000.) In fact, he won an absolute majority (not merely plurality) of the popular vote both times. Not sure what you expected people to complain about there?
There's a lot more broken than the imaginary "popular vote" or the EC. There's the whole gerrymandering issue, the voting machines debacle, the voter registration issues, the fact that many people are stopped from voting, that the voting is on a working day and a hundred more.
I wouldn't even agree that the EC is broken as a concept. It's a slightly odd way of doing it, but there were and are reasons for making it this way, and while they can be discussed and maybe don't apply to the world of today anymore, many of the issues I listed above are much more clear-cut examples of why the election system is fundamentally broken.
As I said in other comments, it's so funny that there is so much uproar over how the system is broken and needs to be fixed now that Trump has won, but there was no such thing after Obama won. I don't like people who complain about the system only in the event of a defeat.
I'm not discussing if the rural vs. city divide is good or smart or anything, only that it's real. And yes, Trump probably would not have gained tons of votes in NYC even with massive advertisement, but there are swing states and "ignored" states, where more votes could have been gained easily. Maybe. If it mattered enough to either candidate to try.
The whole system is broken. Fixing it with a law about the EC is like fixing a plane that's falling into pieces in mid-air with some duct tape and pretending everything is fine.
Election reform - yes, necessary, your system is as fucked up as they come, if someone were tasked to create a really bad election system for a movie and they showed this, the director would tell him to come back with something at least halfway believable.
I don't agree with the "red state vs. blue state" bullshit everyone throws out there. A lot of "blue" states are actually dark red if you look at the county level. The divide isn't between states, it is largely between city folks and rural folks. That is not unique to the USA, btw. - here in Europe there are very similar patterns.
Now for the popular vote - no, it does not matter. The rules of the election give it no weight or consequences. Since all candidates know the rules, they also adapt their campaign strategy to these rules, and they don't even try to win the popular vote. They try to win swing states, and states with many votes in the EC. If the so-called "popular vote" would have an impact on the result, the campaign strategies would be different, and the results would be different.
Again, pointing to this "popular vote" is like announcing that your running style was more beautiful - when everyone knew that it's a race for time. Everyone loved Eddie the Eagle, but nobody gave him a gold medal.
Yes, the EC is theoretically free in how they cast their votes. But with the two-party system so strongly ingrained in american politics, you really think that all those Republicans will vote for a Democrat, when they have both houses?
There is maybe a theoretical chance that a surprise hardcore republican candidate appears, but again if there were such a move, one would have to be on the horizon already. I could imagine such a switch in the Democrat camp, if Hillary had won, because Bernie Sanders didn't just disappear after the nomination, he continued on the same path as always and still has a presence, and if for reasons of some scandal or other the Democrats had to drop Hillary at the last second, he could still become POTUS.
But I don't see anyone in the Republican party who could pick up the torch if, say, Trump were hit by a bus tomorrow. Too much fragmentation.
That's why I said "yes, theoretically... but really, come on."
I'm a conservative, a liberal, a socialist and many other things. Maybe if you weren't subject to the black-and-white painting you accuse others of, your view of the world would be more wide?
I'm pro-Trump because Hillary would have been a terrible danger to the rest of the world, Trump at least is only dangerous to America. I'm a liberal when it comes to personal freedom and liberties (in fact, I held the european EFF domain for a time), and a socialist when it comes to economic policies (big fan of Bernie for that reason).
The world isn't simple. But some questions are simple. Did you bang your secretary is a yes or no question and any answer more complicated than that is a cover-up attempt. Did you steal that candy? Do you love your wife? Is that child yours or not? Is the pope a catholic? Some things are black-or-white, yes-or-no. Doesn't mean everything is. The mistake of stupid people everywhere and the most common trick of demagogues everywhere is to start with straightforward examples and assume that all the world is so clear-cut. The mistake of wanna-be-smartasses and pseudo-philosophers everywhere is to start with complicated examples and assume that all the world is difficult and nuanced.
Slashdot Mirror
He is missing the point.
The article is not speaking about an encryption flaw or anything like that, but about a backdoor - a feature that allows Facebook, without any code changes on your device or other intrusion - to eavesdrop on any conversation you are having.
A good encryption would be impenetrable even to the vendor. It should not allow the keys to be changed underneath you. It should not warn you afterwards about this fact, and only if you have a special option enabled, but it should tell you before it does a key change, and require your consent.
VR helmets also have an additional advantage: Privacy. When I can put it on in the train, plane, etc. and tune out the crowd around me, that's a good thing.
It is not the same problem, though. A self-driving car needs to navigate from A to B by itself. The Tesla autopilot is closer to an airplane autopilot and requires a human driver at the wheel ready to take over, so if it can cover 90% of the drive, it's absolutely fine.
For example, my current way to work is largely freeways and if my car could manage that part by itself, which by time takes the largest part, I'd be happy to manually drive the first and last few km. While a completely autonomous car would be cute, I'd be happy to take a 90% solution.
That's what I said: Terrible, but the USA still exists, right?
With the current state of our politics I'm not so sure we deserve to be great anymore.
Newsflash: You never did.
Greatness isn't deserved, it just happens, often as an accident of history. In the case of the USA, because Europe tore itself apart in two wars that a) destroyed its industrial base b) either killed or drove away a lot of its most capable scientists and engineers, many to the USA and c) make the transition from colonial empires times to modern times more rough, so places like the British Empire simply disintegrated and still haven't recovered.
The USA is the big winner of WW2 and was coasting on that for a long time, but that time is coming to an end. Now you are having the tough transition period. Tech and media kept you up after the industrial base went away to China, but now that is failing, too. There's great tech coming out of Europe and Asia now, and Hollywood is losing its grip on the media/culture market because they are greedy fuckers and only re-re-re-hash the same old ideas. Meanwhile China and India are creating their own movie industries, and even the believed-to-be-almost-dead european cinema is picking up again. Heck, there are really good SciFi movies coming out of Russia right now.
Trump is calling back to a time with ignorance to history. The circumstances that made America great have changed.
Never underestimate the power of the status quo. In the end, the government is run by the people working in the various government offices, departments and such. The boss at the top makes big waves, but underneath, the ocean is calm.
The same was thought about Bush Jr. - he would destroy the USA, drive it against the wall, etc. etc. - in the end, he was a terrible president but the boat didn't sink.
But you're arguing for placing pre-emptive barriers on what you think are "the right level of local". I'm saying, if you have open trade borders and price in the cost of externalities (like a carbon tax), then the market will work itself out in terms of where the "right level of local source" is.
That's exactly what I'm saying. That distance and cost of transportation should matter more. The only reason we have global trade at this scale is that a log of the costs are outsourced and externalised. The economic impact of global trade is incredible, easily dwarves private cars, for example.
I don't know if I buy that. Employment participation rates vary from decade to decade.
You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. When my father finished schools, company representatives were waiting in front of the schools to catch young men (mostly, at that time) immediately and offer them contracts. We were literally importing foreign workers because we didn't have enough people to fill all the available jobs.
but that's not full employment.
That's semantics. Nobody cares how many people have a job or not. What matters is if those who are looking for a job can find one or not. Employment as a percentage of population makes no sense at all (children, pensioners, etc.).
And I don't think impeding progress Luddite-style is the answer. Nor do I think impeding progress "anti-trade" style is the answer either.
We know that globalisation isn't the answer, either.
But here's the thing: The more self-sufficient you are, as a country or continent or just ill-defined local region, the less you will be dragged down when some men in suits made a bad gamble at the casino called stock exchange, which by all rights should have zero effect on the real economy.
what if every city was to produce their own crops of every type instead of importing/exporting from other areas? Would that be more or less efficient?
Once you price in long-distance trade at something resembling the real cost to the planet, local crops are suddenly a lot more efficient. Ignore money and prices for the moment, argue just with natural resources, working time, etc. - things that are real. Now explain me how eating meat from cows bred in South America on wheat brought in from Russia can by any means you choose be more efficient than meat from local cows fed local wheat.
Expand that idea to a global scale and you have your answer to why shipping from China or Brazil for certain things can be better.
For certain things, sure.
For everything? Not without a distortion factor, which is the monetary system.
Depends how many people you can convince to watch it at your place. You could charge them a few bucks and share the experience. Oh wait, we just re-invented cinema, right?
Home cinema setups have become really affordable. I've got THX at home, full HD with 3D optional (didn't buy the glasses yet) and my screen size is about 3m diagonal. Projectors for the win. I pity people with TVs. :-)
The main reason left to go to a cinema is that the screen is bigger and the sound system is fantastic. Everything else you can have at home.
With a good home cinema setup, you can come close, and you have none of the expensive popcorn, queues, guy next to you getting on your nerves, obnoxious advertisement and other bullshit. Plus you can pause the movie to get a drink from the kitchen and cuddle your cats while watching.
Cinema is on the way out. Once Hollywood understood the lesson that the music industry had to understand, things will get better.
The equivalent of "stop outsourcing" would be like Wyoming blocking imports of almonds from CA just because it wants its own local almond farmers to have business.
I agree that the question isn't borders. If you are in Texas, northern Mexico is more "local" than NYC. But in either case, China is not local.
People *are* permanently unemployed. Not a large percentage of the population but unemployment has never been 0. Ever. I'd say what well-intentioned tariffs we've passed to try to keep unemployment down aren't working very well. And with the upcoming onslaught of automation...I don't see how you *can* keep people from being unemployed for long periods of time.
The part that's never zero is called "structural unemployment", and was mentioned in the part that you cut. People between jobs, people who are moving, etc.
But unemployment-because-you-cant-find-a-job is not god-given, and in fact in various countries around the world there have been periods when this unemploymend was zero.
"the upcoming onslaught of automation" - the 60s called. They want their argument back.
Rather than cling onto the idea that everyone needs to be employed (when reality obviously isn't letting that happen), perhaps it's time to revisit how we make sure every citizen is taken care of in a post-industrial society and this idea that "everyone needs to work".
Oh, I agree on that. I've had periods in my life without a formal job (self-employed, my own small company, not working very much) that were wonderful except for the not-much-money part. If that were somehow covered, I'd immediately go back to working 20 hours a week, or 80 hours a week on stuff that I love.
Trade and technology are the 2 pillars that create wealth
How we are all caught in the Silicon Valley mantra and the Venture Capitalist religion. Most of the really large and powerful companies in the world are not called Google and Facebook. They are energy companies, food companies, and a dozen others. Trade and technology matter, but you buy an iPhone every year while you buy food every day.
. It also makes him a huge liability if they run into financial difficulty
History proves you wrong. Fords model worked, your bullshit is just that.
Considering that i device sales have flatlined or in some cases decreased,
And Apple is still insanely profitable, so your point is what, exactly?
Not many people gives a shit where it's made - they just want it cheap.
That is my point. Because it's been drilled into our heads that profit aka "buy cheap" is the only margin of success, the only thing important. My mother still bought her meat and vegetables at farms whenever she could, because knowing where it comes from and being able to trust its quality was another important value. Having an actual business relation used to be important, now we just use some price comparison website to save ten cents. But when you buy the same stuff from the same guy all the time, things become possible that Amazon won't do for you. That has value.
There are a few areas left where more than profit thinking is alive. Many people go to the same restaurants again and again, even if they're not the cheapest, but they're the best (in food quality, taste, atmosphere, whatever is important to you). I've had restaurants where I can sit down, say hi to the owner and order "the usual", and I don't care if there's another restaurant nearby where the food is ten cents cheaper.
Yes, not many people care. But maybe they should. Maybe we should pay the real price of global trade. Just putting a price on the ecological damage of these container ships (have you seen them? What comes out of your cars exhaust pipe is refreshing clean air compared to theirs) would instantly make local manufacturing economically interesting again.
People don't yet make the connection between the social systems downfall and the increase in global trade. Or that them buying cheap shit on Amazon is the reason their uncle is out of a job. Or that there is an inherent contradiction in the shouts of politicians who a) want you to earn less money and b) want you to spend more on consumption.
If you put people out of a job because you outsourced the factory to a low-income country, there are less people left to buy whatever your factory makes. It really is that simple.
Really? Your house is chinese, your gasoline japanese and your food korean? I mean, not by taste but manufactured there? That's amazing.
You might spend 90% of your disposable income on some electronics from Asia, but for the average household, that is about 20% or so of the total income. The rest goes for rent (or mortgage), food, taxes, insurances and other stuff that is part of the local economy.
You don't want to get rid of that. You don't want to slow down the economy by making goods more expensive. What you *want* is to allow companies to make tons of profit, *tax* that profit and use that money to pay people who were unemployed due to jobs moving away.
Have you thought that through?
So in the end, you will make everything abroad, only companies earn money, and everyone lives from the taxes? I don't think that is a sustainable economic model.
What you want is a balance between a strong local economy and beneficial trade. You want to import cars from Germany because they just make the best cars, and movies from Hollywood because they make the best movies (bear with me, it's only an example) and iPhones from China because they make the best electronics. But you want to grow your food locally because shipping it halway around the world doesn't improve its quality, and everything where it doesn't matter where it is made you want to make locally because global shipping is a major contributor to climate change and it's just crazy.
You do not want people permanently on unemployment benefits. There is no imaginable scenario where that is beneficial to anyone. You want unemployment to be a transition phase, for people between jobs.
There is more to the system then just who makes profits. There is also the psychological damage of unemployment, there is the fact that you become dependent on your suppliers, there is the fact that you don't want to lose the capability of manufacturing, even if outsourcing somewhere else would be cheaper, there is the whole insanity of global trade which would be prohibitively expensive in its current form if most of the cost (especially the environmental one) wouldn't be externalized.
There are reasons beyond profit that should guide an economy. The pure quarterly-profit perspective is the main damage the financial industry has done to the world. We now all think the way that stock brokers do, without realizing how narrow and limited their perspective is.
So much crying and so little understanding of systems theory.
Sure, americans want more money than chinese children. However, what does it cost to support all the unemployed people and to fight the higher crime and other problems that come with unemployment?
Also, money goes in circles. The american worker paid well will spend a large part of his salary on some other american business (say, the fast food store near work, the gas station on his way to work, etc.) while the chinese child spends his money somewhere in China.
Ford was the first to understand that paying his workers well would actually give him an advantage - if they can afford to buy one of his cars, they will. The same is true of this. Maybe the price of iPhones will rise - or maybe more people will buy them and the price stay the same. Or something inbetween.
It's too easy to just cry that prices will rise. In fact, that's usually a strawman.
Both sides in this information war are using propaganda.
Does Russia spend money to improve its image, including on social media? You can bet they do. Just like every other country in the world. Are there people paid to troll anti-russian comments? I wouldn't be surprised. But the question the article raises is a good question as well: Are there people paid to troll pro-russian comments? I wouldn't be surprised, either. And frankly speaking to me it seems like it, because if you post anything pro-russian or just with a balanced view, you do get shouted down as a Putin-lover or whatever.
Ever walk down the street in the city and a bum comes up to you begging? He can smell and look offensive. Should that be censored?
Yes. My purpose of being there is not to be a begging target, I didn't invite him to approach me, he is, in Internet terms, spamming me.
Ever been on a farm and smell the pigs or the cow manure? That's offensive.
But it is a necessary part of the operation of the farm. It is a direct consequence without which the farm could not function. In Internet terms, it's the annoying login dialog.
Ever see guts at the scene of a car wreck? That's offensive.
That is an unintended side-effect, not desired by anyone and not intentionally inflicted upon me by anyone. In Internet terms, it's lag or slow loading times.
You are comparing completely different things, not understanding that for some of them, there is no reason we should have to endure them (for the record: The proper solution is that the bum doesn't exist, our society is rich enough that every homeless person is a shame to us all)
Get off your ass, unplug, get out there into the real world and get offended! Trust me, it gets easier after the first few times. And you'll probably realized that being offended isn't anywhere near the worst thing that can possibly happen to you
I'm with you on that there's no right to not be offended.
However, I can absolutely want to protect myself from what I don't like. I keep my house clean because I don't like trash and smells. I keep my door closed because I want to decide who I invite in and who not. I don't hang disgusting pictures on my walls, etc.
I can filter my view of the world. You have a right to Free Speech, but not a right to force me to listen. Individual filters are a necessity or we would all drown in spam. What we need to prevent is centrally controlled filters.
Letting computers decide what is offensive and what is not. What could possibly go wrong?
Uh, Obama didn't lose the popular vote either time (the last president who was elected despite losing the popular vote was Bush in 2000.) In fact, he won an absolute majority (not merely plurality) of the popular vote both times. Not sure what you expected people to complain about there?
There's a lot more broken than the imaginary "popular vote" or the EC. There's the whole gerrymandering issue, the voting machines debacle, the voter registration issues, the fact that many people are stopped from voting, that the voting is on a working day and a hundred more.
I wouldn't even agree that the EC is broken as a concept. It's a slightly odd way of doing it, but there were and are reasons for making it this way, and while they can be discussed and maybe don't apply to the world of today anymore, many of the issues I listed above are much more clear-cut examples of why the election system is fundamentally broken.
As I said in other comments, it's so funny that there is so much uproar over how the system is broken and needs to be fixed now that Trump has won, but there was no such thing after Obama won. I don't like people who complain about the system only in the event of a defeat.
I'm not discussing if the rural vs. city divide is good or smart or anything, only that it's real. And yes, Trump probably would not have gained tons of votes in NYC even with massive advertisement, but there are swing states and "ignored" states, where more votes could have been gained easily. Maybe. If it mattered enough to either candidate to try.
The whole system is broken. Fixing it with a law about the EC is like fixing a plane that's falling into pieces in mid-air with some duct tape and pretending everything is fine.
Election reform - yes, necessary, your system is as fucked up as they come, if someone were tasked to create a really bad election system for a movie and they showed this, the director would tell him to come back with something at least halfway believable.
I don't agree with the "red state vs. blue state" bullshit everyone throws out there. A lot of "blue" states are actually dark red if you look at the county level. The divide isn't between states, it is largely between city folks and rural folks. That is not unique to the USA, btw. - here in Europe there are very similar patterns.
Now for the popular vote - no, it does not matter. The rules of the election give it no weight or consequences. Since all candidates know the rules, they also adapt their campaign strategy to these rules, and they don't even try to win the popular vote. They try to win swing states, and states with many votes in the EC. If the so-called "popular vote" would have an impact on the result, the campaign strategies would be different, and the results would be different.
Again, pointing to this "popular vote" is like announcing that your running style was more beautiful - when everyone knew that it's a race for time. Everyone loved Eddie the Eagle, but nobody gave him a gold medal.
Wasn't intended as such.
Yes, the EC is theoretically free in how they cast their votes. But with the two-party system so strongly ingrained in american politics, you really think that all those Republicans will vote for a Democrat, when they have both houses?
There is maybe a theoretical chance that a surprise hardcore republican candidate appears, but again if there were such a move, one would have to be on the horizon already. I could imagine such a switch in the Democrat camp, if Hillary had won, because Bernie Sanders didn't just disappear after the nomination, he continued on the same path as always and still has a presence, and if for reasons of some scandal or other the Democrats had to drop Hillary at the last second, he could still become POTUS.
But I don't see anyone in the Republican party who could pick up the torch if, say, Trump were hit by a bus tomorrow. Too much fragmentation.
That's why I said "yes, theoretically... but really, come on."
That's a lot of wishful thinking. We can continue this discussion after the EC has cast its votes.
I'm a conservative, a liberal, a socialist and many other things. Maybe if you weren't subject to the black-and-white painting you accuse others of, your view of the world would be more wide?
I'm pro-Trump because Hillary would have been a terrible danger to the rest of the world, Trump at least is only dangerous to America. I'm a liberal when it comes to personal freedom and liberties (in fact, I held the european EFF domain for a time), and a socialist when it comes to economic policies (big fan of Bernie for that reason).
The world isn't simple. But some questions are simple. Did you bang your secretary is a yes or no question and any answer more complicated than that is a cover-up attempt. Did you steal that candy? Do you love your wife? Is that child yours or not? Is the pope a catholic? Some things are black-or-white, yes-or-no. Doesn't mean everything is. The mistake of stupid people everywhere and the most common trick of demagogues everywhere is to start with straightforward examples and assume that all the world is so clear-cut. The mistake of wanna-be-smartasses and pseudo-philosophers everywhere is to start with complicated examples and assume that all the world is difficult and nuanced.
Smug enough for you?
Has the election reform now being requested been attempted (and then blocked by Republicans) ?
yes or no question