I wish people would do studies as to how many of those diseases are caused by tobacco itself and how many by the additives pumped into the cigarettes and commercial tobacco and how many by the sheer pollution of our environment.
Let me guess: You're a smoker. The rationalizing is clearly visible here.
Look, nobody gives two fucks about the tobacco plant. When people say "tobacco" in this context, they mean cigarettes, so it really doesn't matter what the exact source of the problem is. Unless you grow your own tobacco, the difference is academical.
Nobody killed people by driving and smoking, for example.
From what I remember, both substances cause a lot of death in innocent bystanders, just over different time periods.
On the contrary, we should teach less people to code. Half-knowledge is worse than no knowledge. I'd rather we invest in improving code quality than code quantity.
Look at the App Store. Do we need another 5000 rip-off cheap games by people learning to code, or do we need a smaller, but finer selection?
Yes, people don't need faster horses. But that exactly is what "non-coding programming" (have we all forgotten the lessons from the "visual programming" times already???) actually is.
I'll tell you what the equivalent of a car is: Siri and Wolfram Alpha. Knowledge and calculation engines, which will allow regular people to do computing without a computer. This a few years into the future and (finally!) all those managers can stop using Excel for their business tables.
Somehow I suspect that if you were offered a CEO position that pays 500x more than the office workers, your position would change.
Of course. But not every CEO is a cleptomaniac psychopath, only maybe half of them. You can take this unjustifiable salary and still decide to vote for and otherwise support change in a more sane direction. You probably wouldn't want to refuse from all the 500x because it's really cute to have lots of money, but you could agree that with 400x you would not starve and the nagging of your wife that she can't afford a fifth Vertu phone would stop after a while, but 100 other people would have a massive improvement to their lives.
There's a world between giving everyone the same salary (extremist communism) and giving 99% of the money to 1% of the people (extremist capitalism). Here in Europe, we had this balance for half a century, and it was intentionally maintained by the elites because they understood that with communism active nearby, impoverishing the general population would lead to revolutions. Now that the alternative is gone, the way is finally free for a new feudalism, and another thousand years of dark age.
Austerity is imposing honesty into the equation and it will take another 10-20 years to fix properly.
I live in Germany, the main driving force behind the austerity politics. We are still doing well compared to Greece and Spain, but compared to Germany 20 years ago, the country is in ruins.
Anyone who claims that austerity is successful needs an appointment with a shrink.
We firmly reject any policies that might move us toward fiscal responsibility.
Stop repeating the bullshit that the corporate media feeds you.
Greece has had a balanced budget in 2014, something that Germany (its biggest creditor) wanted to accomplish in 2015, but failed.
The greek problem is that the EU regulations that determine what amount of debt is considered acceptable is based on GDP. With the cuts in spending that the Troika demanded, GDP has imploded, putting Greece into the impossible situation where even a decrease in absolute debt was still an increase in debt-as-percentage-of-GDP, which is the figure that the EU rates the "success" of the fiscal policy on.
TL;DR: A welfare system requiring people to work is slavery and only motivates maintenance of the welfare state, which is already a problem.
I agree on the slavery part, but which welfare state? What we had in welfare state has been demolished systematically, and what is left is so basic that people don't die from hunger on the streets and that's it. In many western countries in 2015, considerable parts of the population don't have basic health coverage, and can't afford to pay for medical care except in dire emergencies. Given that we put people on the moon and the super-rich fly private jets and banks can gamble with what amounts to the total budget of small countries, I say that's a shame.
It's perfectly fine to have a division between people by wealth, and that working hard and being smart can give you spoils that being lazy and stupid doesn't, but unless we can lift up the whole of society and not just the top 5%, we should be ashamed of ourselves. And I say that as someone who for most of his life has been in those 5% because frankly speaking that's not as exclusive as it sounds. If you work in IT or engineering, you're almost guaranteed to be there, because the 95% are the people in the call centers, the taxi drivers, the secretary, the guys in the coffee shop and the TSA goons at the airport and so on and so forth.
We don't have a welfare state. What we have is civilization. And we need it, because without this "welfare" aspect, with unchained brutal capitalism, we would very fast end in a state where slavery is actually a good idea because it would improve the lower classes lives.
Only to americans and those with zero sense of history.
I've been following this development with interest for a while. A few of his moves are unusual, some calculatedly so, but most of his politics would not have raised an eyebrow in Europe 20-30 years ago.
Only after the neoconservative demolition of the mix of social and market politics that made Europe successful after WW2, we see moderate desires for social equality as "radical left-wing". Really? Minimum salary that makes you not live on the streets? Refusing to cut jobs and reduce government spending that has been proven for several years to reduce GDP and destroy the local economy, aka your chance to pay back the debt?
The greeks are in a trap. They are in debt like crazy, but how much debit is "allowed" by EU regulations is calculated based on GDP. If the measures to save money also reduce the GDP, your "allowed" debt shrinks, making you be more over the allowed limit, even though you reduced your actual debt. Anyone with three brain cells should realize this path leads to nowhere and a different path is required. But the Troika did nothing but raise the pressure, so what else were the greeks to do?
Except that as it turns out it's actually extraordinarily useful.
Yes, it is. As long as you never forget it's an approximation. When it's used as a propaganda tool, however, you need to be even more aware of that.
There are pros and cons
Exactly. That's what the simplified propaganda from any extremist side doesn't understand. Neither the "government, government, we want more government" (btw., does it really exist? I've yet to see someone like that, I think they're a figment of the imagination of the other side) nor the "de-regulate everything, if corporations poison my water supply, it's my fault" idiots understand that never in the history of mankind has any ideology been proven 100% correct.
I've been following with interest the debate about government-regulated taxis versus free-market Uber.
One is real and the other one is a lie. There is no such thing as a free market. It's a theory the same way that in physics class you learn Newton mechanics without friction and air resistance and other distracting details.
But in the real world, these things exist. In the real world, no market outside simulations satisfies all the criteria of a free market. However, people really like the idea, so companies like Uber ride on the wave of sympathy.
Many of the arguments against Uber are bullshit, I will grant you that. However, you forget one very important thing: Uber enters a market dominated and defined by government-regulation. Do not for one second believe that the market would look the same if it had only Uber. Look to any country without government regulation on taxis for an idea of what it would be like. Uber has to behave and satisfy certain standards because people are used to them because they've always had them, thanks to government regulation.
I've been waiting for something like that for a long time and wondered where it would come from.
Personally, I'm a big fan of short-time rental companies (where you pick up a car wherever you find it, and drop it when you're at your destination, and someone else will take it from there). And the only problem is that at certain times, cars pool up in certain areas. So at times, the nearest car is quite far away. Or if you go to the center - no parking space.
How cool would it be to have a car that you just exit at your destination, and it'll go and find a parking space on its own? And when you need it, you open an app on your smartphone, and the nearest car comes to pick you up.
For me, that is exactly what the future of transportation in cities is going to look like. Robot cars for short distance travel.
He went to give courses in a gold rush topic at the gold rush time. Don't think you can get anywhere near his success teaching Programming in C++ or Knitting or whatever. I'm not saying you can't make a buck, but the story is about being in the right place at the right time more than about online education.
Great idea. Let's fight gender imbalance with intentional discrimination...
I'm so happy I went through school before the PC mania made it borderline illegal to be male. Maybe that distance makes me see more clearly that the reason for these gender imbalances lies as much in the classroom as the reason for elementary school teachers being predominantly female.
If you want to fix a problem of culture and society that leads to gender imbalances in certain professions or fields, you can't do it without looking at culture and society. You've got a problem in your database and you're fixing the webserver, so to speak.
And, frankly speaking, if girls simply don't like computing as much as boys do, then WTF is wrong with that? As long as teachers are not actively running around telling girls to stay away from the computer room, maybe the problem isn't in the school, and maybe it's not even a problem at all?
Hypothetically speaking, if I'm desperate to get somewhere, and I'm willing to pay *whatever it takes*, why is it a good idea to limit the surge pricing?
Because other people will pay for your desire.
Or what about having an auction system where each person that wants a ride indicates how much they're willing to pay for it? Would you want to cap that as well?
Economists are big fans of auctions and say that's the most fair method to distribute resources. Economists, however, are not known for taking social, cultural or human values into account in their simple models.
So yes, I would. Man, it really isn't so difficult. Get some history lessons on when and why the taxi business became regulated.
I'm sure all Uber drivers are responsible, altruistic people and they will only offer you a lift if they are in possession of specially equipped and certified snowstorm-safe vehicles.
In Econ 101 you also learn about horizontal and vertical pricing.
Basically, if the surge price is reasonably high, most drivers will be available. From 1.0 to 1.5 you may raise the number of drivers considerably, but from 3.0 to 3.5 you will probably not motivate many more drivers to go out and drive - most available drivers will already be on the road, and the few who decide against it will not change their mind here because if 3.0 doesn't motivate them, then 3.5 most likely won't because they have important reasons to stay home.
A cap on such elastic pricing is almost always a good idea.
Why do rich people not live in Africa and Asia where the climate is good? Safety and convenience. If you don't want to spend your life in a castle defending your riches, you go somewhere where culture, society and government will do that job for you.
Strangely, many don't see this as a service worth paying for, which is largely a semantic problem. Maybe we should tackle it there, and instead of taxes, we should collect a "wealth-protection service fee".
But Credit Suisse's report doesn't tell the whole story.
It doesn't take into account how much it costs to buy goods in each country, for example. Half a million pounds might buy a one-bedroom flat in central London, but in other countries it could buy a mansion.
It also doesn't take into account income. As a result, many well-paid young people in Western countries may fall into the bottom 50% of wealth - either because they still have student debt to pay off, or because they know how to live well, and spend all their income.
I am extremely sceptical about all these doomsday scenario media reports.
If you do not know something for sure, "follow the money" is always good advise. For example, why would someone who makes his money on the stock market give free advise to the rest of the world by warning them about an imminent market collapse? It makes no sense. If I knew (or were sure about) such an event, I would put my money into short options and become mega-rich.
But, of course, if you expect the opposite, such a press statement can lead a critical mass of people to disinvest, temporarily lowering prices, convincing others that you are right and the crash has begun, so they do the same, and then you buy at the low point.
The same with all the "super-rich are investing in getaways" bullshit. It's a really great tool to convince the wannabe-super-rich (aka the simply rich) to follow (or believe they are following), because that's what they do. In all layers of society, people tend to emulate the next-higher-up from their own status, because that is where they want to be.
Maybe I'm overly cynical or just blind, but thinking about not only what is being said, but also who is saying it and why seems to me to be a good idea.
Could be, as I rent and don't buy, I don't drive cars older than a few years.
I know the Toyotas and Hondas are famous for their reliability. My first car was a used Honda and it had almost no signs of being used before.
That said, old Mercedes cars are also legendarily reliable. My GF wants to buy a used SLK for exactly that reason - they are cute and almost as good as new, for a fraction the price.
Are you aware that BMW and Mercedes reliability has gone into the toilet since the 1980s?
The M3 I drove last year begs to differ. As did the SLK the year before.:-)
Maybe they have problems, I don't know, I don't own a car, I just rent them pretty often, and I'll take one of those every day over almost any brand. At least until my car rental company gets Teslas.
Just think of a auto drive loosing control and plowing through a school crossing killing a dozen children. Who or what is responsible? The passenger? Or the computer?
The school that put its children on the fucking Autobahn, a high-speed road that is by law off-limits to pedestrians, bicycles and anything else that can't reach and maintain the minimum speed of 60 km/h.
Slashdot Mirror
People don't start smoking because it's addictive: they start smoking because it's enjoyable.
Which, given how rewards in the brain work, are close relatives.
I wish people would do studies as to how many of those diseases are caused by tobacco itself and how many by the additives pumped into the cigarettes and commercial tobacco and how many by the sheer pollution of our environment.
Let me guess: You're a smoker. The rationalizing is clearly visible here.
Look, nobody gives two fucks about the tobacco plant. When people say "tobacco" in this context, they mean cigarettes, so it really doesn't matter what the exact source of the problem is. Unless you grow your own tobacco, the difference is academical.
Nobody killed people by driving and smoking, for example.
From what I remember, both substances cause a lot of death in innocent bystanders, just over different time periods.
On the contrary, we should teach less people to code. Half-knowledge is worse than no knowledge. I'd rather we invest in improving code quality than code quantity.
Look at the App Store. Do we need another 5000 rip-off cheap games by people learning to code, or do we need a smaller, but finer selection?
Yes, people don't need faster horses. But that exactly is what "non-coding programming" (have we all forgotten the lessons from the "visual programming" times already???) actually is.
I'll tell you what the equivalent of a car is: Siri and Wolfram Alpha. Knowledge and calculation engines, which will allow regular people to do computing without a computer. This a few years into the future and (finally!) all those managers can stop using Excel for their business tables.
Somehow I suspect that if you were offered a CEO position that pays 500x more than the office workers, your position would change.
Of course. But not every CEO is a cleptomaniac psychopath, only maybe half of them. You can take this unjustifiable salary and still decide to vote for and otherwise support change in a more sane direction. You probably wouldn't want to refuse from all the 500x because it's really cute to have lots of money, but you could agree that with 400x you would not starve and the nagging of your wife that she can't afford a fifth Vertu phone would stop after a while, but 100 other people would have a massive improvement to their lives.
There's a world between giving everyone the same salary (extremist communism) and giving 99% of the money to 1% of the people (extremist capitalism). Here in Europe, we had this balance for half a century, and it was intentionally maintained by the elites because they understood that with communism active nearby, impoverishing the general population would lead to revolutions. Now that the alternative is gone, the way is finally free for a new feudalism, and another thousand years of dark age.
Austerity is imposing honesty into the equation and it will take another 10-20 years to fix properly.
I live in Germany, the main driving force behind the austerity politics. We are still doing well compared to Greece and Spain, but compared to Germany 20 years ago, the country is in ruins.
Anyone who claims that austerity is successful needs an appointment with a shrink.
We firmly reject any policies that might move us toward fiscal responsibility.
Stop repeating the bullshit that the corporate media feeds you.
Greece has had a balanced budget in 2014, something that Germany (its biggest creditor) wanted to accomplish in 2015, but failed.
The greek problem is that the EU regulations that determine what amount of debt is considered acceptable is based on GDP. With the cuts in spending that the Troika demanded, GDP has imploded, putting Greece into the impossible situation where even a decrease in absolute debt was still an increase in debt-as-percentage-of-GDP, which is the figure that the EU rates the "success" of the fiscal policy on.
TL;DR: A welfare system requiring people to work is slavery and only motivates maintenance of the welfare state, which is already a problem.
I agree on the slavery part, but which welfare state? What we had in welfare state has been demolished systematically, and what is left is so basic that people don't die from hunger on the streets and that's it. In many western countries in 2015, considerable parts of the population don't have basic health coverage, and can't afford to pay for medical care except in dire emergencies. Given that we put people on the moon and the super-rich fly private jets and banks can gamble with what amounts to the total budget of small countries, I say that's a shame.
It's perfectly fine to have a division between people by wealth, and that working hard and being smart can give you spoils that being lazy and stupid doesn't, but unless we can lift up the whole of society and not just the top 5%, we should be ashamed of ourselves. And I say that as someone who for most of his life has been in those 5% because frankly speaking that's not as exclusive as it sounds. If you work in IT or engineering, you're almost guaranteed to be there, because the 95% are the people in the call centers, the taxi drivers, the secretary, the guys in the coffee shop and the TSA goons at the airport and so on and so forth.
We don't have a welfare state. What we have is civilization. And we need it, because without this "welfare" aspect, with unchained brutal capitalism, we would very fast end in a state where slavery is actually a good idea because it would improve the lower classes lives.
radical left-wing government's policies
Only to americans and those with zero sense of history.
I've been following this development with interest for a while. A few of his moves are unusual, some calculatedly so, but most of his politics would not have raised an eyebrow in Europe 20-30 years ago.
Only after the neoconservative demolition of the mix of social and market politics that made Europe successful after WW2, we see moderate desires for social equality as "radical left-wing". Really? Minimum salary that makes you not live on the streets? Refusing to cut jobs and reduce government spending that has been proven for several years to reduce GDP and destroy the local economy, aka your chance to pay back the debt?
The greeks are in a trap. They are in debt like crazy, but how much debit is "allowed" by EU regulations is calculated based on GDP. If the measures to save money also reduce the GDP, your "allowed" debt shrinks, making you be more over the allowed limit, even though you reduced your actual debt. Anyone with three brain cells should realize this path leads to nowhere and a different path is required. But the Troika did nothing but raise the pressure, so what else were the greeks to do?
Except that as it turns out it's actually extraordinarily useful.
Yes, it is. As long as you never forget it's an approximation. When it's used as a propaganda tool, however, you need to be even more aware of that.
There are pros and cons
Exactly. That's what the simplified propaganda from any extremist side doesn't understand. Neither the "government, government, we want more government" (btw., does it really exist? I've yet to see someone like that, I think they're a figment of the imagination of the other side) nor the "de-regulate everything, if corporations poison my water supply, it's my fault" idiots understand that never in the history of mankind has any ideology been proven 100% correct.
Short distance travel? Walk.
Please don't be an idiot. In context, it should be obvious that "short distance" doesn't mean 500 metres.
How is your road funding going, by the way? $65 billion in bail-outs to the delightfully insolvent highway trust fund
Please don't be an idiot. Nothing in my post was USA specific, and btw. I'm a German and road funding is perfectly fine over here, thank you.
I've been following with interest the debate about government-regulated taxis versus free-market Uber.
One is real and the other one is a lie. There is no such thing as a free market. It's a theory the same way that in physics class you learn Newton mechanics without friction and air resistance and other distracting details.
But in the real world, these things exist. In the real world, no market outside simulations satisfies all the criteria of a free market. However, people really like the idea, so companies like Uber ride on the wave of sympathy.
Many of the arguments against Uber are bullshit, I will grant you that. However, you forget one very important thing: Uber enters a market dominated and defined by government-regulation. Do not for one second believe that the market would look the same if it had only Uber. Look to any country without government regulation on taxis for an idea of what it would be like. Uber has to behave and satisfy certain standards because people are used to them because they've always had them, thanks to government regulation.
I've been waiting for something like that for a long time and wondered where it would come from.
Personally, I'm a big fan of short-time rental companies (where you pick up a car wherever you find it, and drop it when you're at your destination, and someone else will take it from there). And the only problem is that at certain times, cars pool up in certain areas. So at times, the nearest car is quite far away. Or if you go to the center - no parking space.
How cool would it be to have a car that you just exit at your destination, and it'll go and find a parking space on its own? And when you need it, you open an app on your smartphone, and the nearest car comes to pick you up.
For me, that is exactly what the future of transportation in cities is going to look like. Robot cars for short distance travel.
This.
He went to give courses in a gold rush topic at the gold rush time. Don't think you can get anywhere near his success teaching Programming in C++ or Knitting or whatever. I'm not saying you can't make a buck, but the story is about being in the right place at the right time more than about online education.
Great idea. Let's fight gender imbalance with intentional discrimination...
I'm so happy I went through school before the PC mania made it borderline illegal to be male. Maybe that distance makes me see more clearly that the reason for these gender imbalances lies as much in the classroom as the reason for elementary school teachers being predominantly female.
If you want to fix a problem of culture and society that leads to gender imbalances in certain professions or fields, you can't do it without looking at culture and society. You've got a problem in your database and you're fixing the webserver, so to speak.
And, frankly speaking, if girls simply don't like computing as much as boys do, then WTF is wrong with that? As long as teachers are not actively running around telling girls to stay away from the computer room, maybe the problem isn't in the school, and maybe it's not even a problem at all?
And with Flash, which has active exploits running around...
ROFL.
What a strawman. Which hypothetical investment banker will take Uber and what happened to his limousine and private driver?
Hypothetically speaking, if I'm desperate to get somewhere, and I'm willing to pay *whatever it takes*, why is it a good idea to limit the surge pricing?
Because other people will pay for your desire.
Or what about having an auction system where each person that wants a ride indicates how much they're willing to pay for it? Would you want to cap that as well?
Economists are big fans of auctions and say that's the most fair method to distribute resources. Economists, however, are not known for taking social, cultural or human values into account in their simple models.
So yes, I would. Man, it really isn't so difficult. Get some history lessons on when and why the taxi business became regulated.
I'm sure all Uber drivers are responsible, altruistic people and they will only offer you a lift if they are in possession of specially equipped and certified snowstorm-safe vehicles.
In Econ 101 you also learn about horizontal and vertical pricing.
Basically, if the surge price is reasonably high, most drivers will be available. From 1.0 to 1.5 you may raise the number of drivers considerably, but from 3.0 to 3.5 you will probably not motivate many more drivers to go out and drive - most available drivers will already be on the road, and the few who decide against it will not change their mind here because if 3.0 doesn't motivate them, then 3.5 most likely won't because they have important reasons to stay home.
A cap on such elastic pricing is almost always a good idea.
This exactly.
Why do rich people not live in Africa and Asia where the climate is good? Safety and convenience. If you don't want to spend your life in a castle defending your riches, you go somewhere where culture, society and government will do that job for you.
Strangely, many don't see this as a service worth paying for, which is largely a semantic problem. Maybe we should tackle it there, and instead of taxes, we should collect a "wealth-protection service fee".
From the very article you link to:
But Credit Suisse's report doesn't tell the whole story.
It doesn't take into account how much it costs to buy goods in each country, for example. Half a million pounds might buy a one-bedroom flat in central London, but in other countries it could buy a mansion.
It also doesn't take into account income. As a result, many well-paid young people in Western countries may fall into the bottom 50% of wealth - either because they still have student debt to pay off, or because they know how to live well, and spend all their income.
I am extremely sceptical about all these doomsday scenario media reports.
If you do not know something for sure, "follow the money" is always good advise. For example, why would someone who makes his money on the stock market give free advise to the rest of the world by warning them about an imminent market collapse? It makes no sense. If I knew (or were sure about) such an event, I would put my money into short options and become mega-rich.
But, of course, if you expect the opposite, such a press statement can lead a critical mass of people to disinvest, temporarily lowering prices, convincing others that you are right and the crash has begun, so they do the same, and then you buy at the low point.
The same with all the "super-rich are investing in getaways" bullshit. It's a really great tool to convince the wannabe-super-rich (aka the simply rich) to follow (or believe they are following), because that's what they do. In all layers of society, people tend to emulate the next-higher-up from their own status, because that is where they want to be.
Maybe I'm overly cynical or just blind, but thinking about not only what is being said, but also who is saying it and why seems to me to be a good idea.
Could be, as I rent and don't buy, I don't drive cars older than a few years.
I know the Toyotas and Hondas are famous for their reliability. My first car was a used Honda and it had almost no signs of being used before.
That said, old Mercedes cars are also legendarily reliable. My GF wants to buy a used SLK for exactly that reason - they are cute and almost as good as new, for a fraction the price.
Are you aware that BMW and Mercedes reliability has gone into the toilet since the 1980s?
The M3 I drove last year begs to differ. As did the SLK the year before. :-)
Maybe they have problems, I don't know, I don't own a car, I just rent them pretty often, and I'll take one of those every day over almost any brand. At least until my car rental company gets Teslas.
Just think of a auto drive loosing control and plowing through a school crossing killing a dozen children. Who or what is responsible? The passenger? Or the computer?
The school that put its children on the fucking Autobahn, a high-speed road that is by law off-limits to pedestrians, bicycles and anything else that can't reach and maintain the minimum speed of 60 km/h.