This move by Twitter has been completely misunderstood. It is difficult to find a platform more committed to free speech than Twitter.
What has changed is that what used to be a global censorship is now limited to the governments that force the material offline.
In the past, if a country in which Twitter was doing business told them to pull a tweet, they'd have to pull it around the world. Now, it will a. only be pulled in the country that ordered the Tweet censored, b. the person who wrote it will find out about it, and c. the chilling effects clearing house will be notified.
Every country will censor something. The US will censor state secrets, libel and slander, and threats. In France, denying either the Armenian or Jewish holocausts will be censored. In some countries, blasphemy is censored. In Germany, any discussion of the Nazis is censored. Before this policy by Twitter, all those things would result in a global ban.
I really don't understand the outrage (I do understand the outrage at the governments which censor, but not at Twitter.) Is reading comprehension so universally bad?
Um, of all the countries on that list, only Ireland has a higher minimum wage than the US.
Countries with a higher minimum wage than the US include:
United Kingdom Australia Luxembourg Netherlands
Ireland
Belgium
France
New Zealand
Canada
San Marino
Switzerland
Though Germany, Finland, Switzerland, and Denmark's minimum wage is not mandated by national policy, they are mandated by universal collective bargaining. Denmark's is, effectively, the highest of them all, at about $20 per hour. It's minimum wage by a different mechanism that the US one.
Besides, the question of when adding payroll increases profits depends also on the labor costs of their competitors. If their competitors enjoy virtual slave-labor, then the pricing pressure comes into play. That's why high minimum wages need to come hand-in-hand with high tariffs.
Yet the countries with the highest minimum wages generally have high productivity rates, low social inequality, etc. You want low minimum wages, or none? Try Latin America, China, Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia. You want high minimum wages and low inequality? Germany, the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, Japan.
The freedom to hire and fire, and the question of freeloaders, is separate from that of wage minimums.
Tripling the cost of everything at Wal-Mart isn't a problem. Because it means that people will be spending less at Wal-Mart: we have had an economy where consumer goods were ridiculously cheap, buying them didn't provide local jobs, yet the costs of housing, health care and education were skyrocketing. Because the last three are generally not amenable to a globalized economy, cheap credit was creating an inflationary climate for the first (essentially the banks gave out enough credit that everyone bid up the price of housing, then the banks could take over the homes when the credit bubble burst: a pretty sweet scheme for them, really.) People are poor because they can't afford housing, health care and education, not because they need more crap from Wal-Mart.
If we don't allow low wage jobs, then low skilled people can't get work at all.
No.
If you don't allow low wages, then people will have to choose whether they still want the work done or not. If it is important or necessary, they will pay more for the work.
Rational employers will employ as few people as they can get away with for as little money as they can get away with (except for executive staff, for some reason.) Raising the bottom limit changes the "can get away with" element of that equation. Entry level is entry level, but forcing labor costs on the bottom up will generally have benefits all around - increased markets, less inequality, etc.
There is a third factor: religion has be characterized as simple "belief," but it really is often a recasting in metaphysical language of cultural and social value systems - which, in conjunction with economic and political realities, produce things like the nuclear family, the household as couple-managed, ideas of romantic love, etc. The wedges that we try to drive into all that to create a rational society ultimately flounder on the
Monogamy is more than a religious value: it is a social model. I do welcome societal and legal support for experimenting beyond that model, but I don't want an equivalence made between religious opposition to same-sex relationships - which, more than just being a social model, is also a reflection of the inalterable structures of desire and bonds of love between people who would form the same kind of relationships with members of the other sex - and a social norm of monogamy. But the idea that you can have a "value neutral" society is ultimately futile.
See, you think politics are like a game of Risk. I would guess that's because either you're young, or have little personal life experience. We are talking about very real, very personal issues: children, families, etc. Things that are more real, in many ways, than your belief in national mono-cultures.
The fly in your ointment is that the family is a fundamental unit of socio-politics, but you're trying to turn the isolated individual, free to enter into contracts, into the unit of socio-politics. The problem is that fiction works only for atomized adults who are also free to move anywhere they like. Reality is messier. The ties that keep people to a place, get them to change places, and tie people together are not and never have been as clean as you imply.
I actually do think we will have gay marriage within about 15 years in the US. Even among Republicans, it has the support of most people under the age of 30. It used to be a wedge issue among the Democratic base: it has now become a wedge issue among the Republican base. (Eg, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/26/gay-marriage-the-new-democratic-wedge-issue.html) Just like you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who admits to supporting segregation now, in 30 years you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who defends denying these kind of rights to same-sex couples.
The polygamy question is a red herring. Polygamy is not based on orientation - it's a cultural practice. So is polyamory. Any of us might be polygamous if we had a culture that supported it. We would be unlikely to change our orientation based on cultural norms (and attempts to do so have spectacularly failed.)
My child has dual-citizenship by birth - all children of US citizens are US citizens. But do you realize what a mess you're making of it? That wouldn't help her in your described situation. I was able to go to her country for the birth, but what if it were the other way around - a non-US father who wants to be there for the birth process of an American-resident (and thus insured) mother? Would you also tell him to "wait in line?"
There are a lot more of these cases than you think. I'm also a product of a bi-national relationship.
I have work and a career in the US, and she is going to be a full-time parent for a while. End of explanation. If the situation were reversed, yes, it is easy for a citizen of any country to sponsor a married partner to immigrate, even before a child exists.
In her country (the UK) she could have sponsored me even if we were a same-sex couple.
My wife is a non-citizen: our child was born outside the US. If we had gone through the normal process, I would not have seen him until he was 5 years old. Not acceptable, and horrible: your nationalist chauvinism has apparently trumped all other values, and is despicable.
There are too many aspects to marriage that go beyond simply the contractual agreements between its participants: the ability to sponsor immigrants, the assumption of inheritance, the ability to make decisions for the other when they're incapacitated, tax benefits, etc. The first one is a big deal to a lot of people: look up the phrase "love exiles" someday.
It may be administered by counties, but insofar as it has repercussions for taxes, immigration, and a slew of other legalities on every scale, I don't quite think you could say it's just a county issue.
Having a job that one truly enjoys is a privilege. If you do, you should generally be grateful - even if you were able to make plans to make it happen, because you're still lucky that the job market supports it. Next year, it might not, and you might have to do something you don't enjoy.
Ron Paul doesn't break the mold nearly as much as you think. He is something of a federalist, but that's the point: federalism is mostly friendly to resource-extraction and manufacturing industries (that are more hampered by regulations, especially labor and environmental ones.) I could never vote for him - his opposition to a Federal role in protecting civil rights for minorities is a dealbreaker - although perversely he can keep me from voting for Obama, because I won't vote for Empire, either, and Paul is the only anti-imperialist candidate in the race. But he still does have a base, a specific constituency, and an agenda. It's no accident that 95% of Stormfront members, including the founder, endorse him, "State's rights" has a rich history as a code-word. Also, when state's rights includes restrictions on inter-state immigration and commerce, as well, I'll re-consider it. Otherwise, one could keep property in a state with no property tax, rent a tiny flat and work in one with no income tax, and enjoy all the benefits offered by the most generous, etc.
No. Because his "reasoned and well written opinion" is not backed up by the policies actually supported by Democratic legislatures and presidents, which have also enriched a lot of people "at the top." What he ascribes to the Republicans is actually a fairly universal consensus in both parties: called, variously, "neoliberalism," the "American consensus," etc. The Democrats are comfortable with a concentration of wealth in the top of the financial services sector, in the top of various cultural industries and "brand" firms, in all the things that make up the tertiary economy. Now, that happens to coincide with the interests of some other groups: generally, those economies prosper when there is more retail activity - that is, when the market is spread out wide. This is especially true for IT, culture/entertainment, and retail sectors. Policies which "dislodge" a bit of the wealth are useful to those sectors, but not ones which encourage saving. The Republicans' interest bloc thrives more with B2B; labor costs reduce the dynamism of B2B economics, and so they are less likely to want to increase the minimum wage, are a bit more interested in keeping the pressure on the worker so that they don't take too much of their employers' revenues, etc. But ultimately, they are both serving the interests of the (different) elites who fund them, back them, hang out with them, etc.
I disagree. The real difference between the leaderships of the two party is which elite interests they represent.
The Republicans are largely the party of the primary economy and part of the secondary economy (resource extraction, agriculture and base manufacturing.) The cultural values that they support - religious values, etc. - are those which coincide with that sector. The democrats are largely the party of the tertiary (and past) economies - some manufacturing, but mostly services, especially financial services and the culture industry. Their cultural values are also thus in line: cosmopolitanism, a sense of "progress" (very important in sectors of the economy that emphasize changing styles, such as retail.) These elites agree on a lot, but they disagree on enough things - where they want public sector activity and where they don't, for example - that the different parties do compete.
The social / cultural values things - the left's diversity, the right's "family values" - are mostly window-dressing.
The nation-state is not the only, nor the strongest, unit of human association. I have more in common with many Canadian, Europeans and South Americans - including affiiliation by family and work - that with most US citizens. National citizenship should be an administrative category, a mechanism for participating in the public sphere - not a team sport.
Intern-culture is out of control in the entertainment industry, and ensures that only those with prosperous families or trust funds will really be able to get in.
Oddly enough, there is a pretty sizable intersection between people who don't care about global warming, or have no interest in mitigating it, and those people who are staunchly against open borders.
Slashdot Mirror
This move by Twitter has been completely misunderstood. It is difficult to find a platform more committed to free speech than Twitter.
What has changed is that what used to be a global censorship is now limited to the governments that force the material offline.
In the past, if a country in which Twitter was doing business told them to pull a tweet, they'd have to pull it around the world. Now, it will a. only be pulled in the country that ordered the Tweet censored, b. the person who wrote it will find out about it, and c. the chilling effects clearing house will be notified.
Every country will censor something. The US will censor state secrets, libel and slander, and threats. In France, denying either the Armenian or Jewish holocausts will be censored. In some countries, blasphemy is censored. In Germany, any discussion of the Nazis is censored. Before this policy by Twitter, all those things would result in a global ban.
I really don't understand the outrage (I do understand the outrage at the governments which censor, but not at Twitter.) Is reading comprehension so universally bad?
Um, of all the countries on that list, only Ireland has a higher minimum wage than the US.
Countries with a higher minimum wage than the US include:
United Kingdom
Australia
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Ireland
Belgium
France
New Zealand
Canada
San Marino
Switzerland
Though Germany, Finland, Switzerland, and Denmark's minimum wage is not mandated by national policy, they are mandated by universal collective bargaining. Denmark's is, effectively, the highest of them all, at about $20 per hour. It's minimum wage by a different mechanism that the US one.
Besides, the question of when adding payroll increases profits depends also on the labor costs of their competitors. If their competitors enjoy virtual slave-labor, then the pricing pressure comes into play. That's why high minimum wages need to come hand-in-hand with high tariffs.
No, it's called Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Norway.
Yet the countries with the highest minimum wages generally have high productivity rates, low social inequality, etc. You want low minimum wages, or none? Try Latin America, China, Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia. You want high minimum wages and low inequality? Germany, the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, Japan.
The freedom to hire and fire, and the question of freeloaders, is separate from that of wage minimums.
Tripling the cost of everything at Wal-Mart isn't a problem. Because it means that people will be spending less at Wal-Mart: we have had an economy where consumer goods were ridiculously cheap, buying them didn't provide local jobs, yet the costs of housing, health care and education were skyrocketing. Because the last three are generally not amenable to a globalized economy, cheap credit was creating an inflationary climate for the first (essentially the banks gave out enough credit that everyone bid up the price of housing, then the banks could take over the homes when the credit bubble burst: a pretty sweet scheme for them, really.) People are poor because they can't afford housing, health care and education, not because they need more crap from Wal-Mart.
We plan to change reality. It's changed before, it can change again.
Huge tariffs is one way, and not the only way, to change that reality.
If we don't allow low wage jobs, then low skilled people can't get work at all.
No.
If you don't allow low wages, then people will have to choose whether they still want the work done or not. If it is important or necessary, they will pay more for the work.
Rational employers will employ as few people as they can get away with for as little money as they can get away with (except for executive staff, for some reason.) Raising the bottom limit changes the "can get away with" element of that equation. Entry level is entry level, but forcing labor costs on the bottom up will generally have benefits all around - increased markets, less inequality, etc.
There is a third factor: religion has be characterized as simple "belief," but it really is often a recasting in metaphysical language of cultural and social value systems - which, in conjunction with economic and political realities, produce things like the nuclear family, the household as couple-managed, ideas of romantic love, etc. The wedges that we try to drive into all that to create a rational society ultimately flounder on the
Monogamy is more than a religious value: it is a social model. I do welcome societal and legal support for experimenting beyond that model, but I don't want an equivalence made between religious opposition to same-sex relationships - which, more than just being a social model, is also a reflection of the inalterable structures of desire and bonds of love between people who would form the same kind of relationships with members of the other sex - and a social norm of monogamy. But the idea that you can have a "value neutral" society is ultimately futile.
See, you think politics are like a game of Risk. I would guess that's because either you're young, or have little personal life experience. We are talking about very real, very personal issues: children, families, etc. Things that are more real, in many ways, than your belief in national mono-cultures.
The fly in your ointment is that the family is a fundamental unit of socio-politics, but you're trying to turn the isolated individual, free to enter into contracts, into the unit of socio-politics. The problem is that fiction works only for atomized adults who are also free to move anywhere they like. Reality is messier. The ties that keep people to a place, get them to change places, and tie people together are not and never have been as clean as you imply.
I actually do think we will have gay marriage within about 15 years in the US. Even among Republicans, it has the support of most people under the age of 30. It used to be a wedge issue among the Democratic base: it has now become a wedge issue among the Republican base. (Eg, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/26/gay-marriage-the-new-democratic-wedge-issue.html) Just like you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who admits to supporting segregation now, in 30 years you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who defends denying these kind of rights to same-sex couples.
The polygamy question is a red herring. Polygamy is not based on orientation - it's a cultural practice. So is polyamory. Any of us might be polygamous if we had a culture that supported it. We would be unlikely to change our orientation based on cultural norms (and attempts to do so have spectacularly failed.)
My child has dual-citizenship by birth - all children of US citizens are US citizens. But do you realize what a mess you're making of it? That wouldn't help her in your described situation. I was able to go to her country for the birth, but what if it were the other way around - a non-US father who wants to be there for the birth process of an American-resident (and thus insured) mother? Would you also tell him to "wait in line?"
There are a lot more of these cases than you think. I'm also a product of a bi-national relationship.
I have work and a career in the US, and she is going to be a full-time parent for a while. End of explanation. If the situation were reversed, yes, it is easy for a citizen of any country to sponsor a married partner to immigrate, even before a child exists.
In her country (the UK) she could have sponsored me even if we were a same-sex couple.
My wife is a non-citizen: our child was born outside the US. If we had gone through the normal process, I would not have seen him until he was 5 years old. Not acceptable, and horrible: your nationalist chauvinism has apparently trumped all other values, and is despicable.
There are too many aspects to marriage that go beyond simply the contractual agreements between its participants: the ability to sponsor immigrants, the assumption of inheritance, the ability to make decisions for the other when they're incapacitated, tax benefits, etc. The first one is a big deal to a lot of people: look up the phrase "love exiles" someday.
It may be administered by counties, but insofar as it has repercussions for taxes, immigration, and a slew of other legalities on every scale, I don't quite think you could say it's just a county issue.
I sign public keys while wearing a condom.
Having a job that one truly enjoys is a privilege. If you do, you should generally be grateful - even if you were able to make plans to make it happen, because you're still lucky that the job market supports it. Next year, it might not, and you might have to do something you don't enjoy.
Ron Paul doesn't break the mold nearly as much as you think. He is something of a federalist, but that's the point: federalism is mostly friendly to resource-extraction and manufacturing industries (that are more hampered by regulations, especially labor and environmental ones.) I could never vote for him - his opposition to a Federal role in protecting civil rights for minorities is a dealbreaker - although perversely he can keep me from voting for Obama, because I won't vote for Empire, either, and Paul is the only anti-imperialist candidate in the race. But he still does have a base, a specific constituency, and an agenda. It's no accident that 95% of Stormfront members, including the founder, endorse him, "State's rights" has a rich history as a code-word. Also, when state's rights includes restrictions on inter-state immigration and commerce, as well, I'll re-consider it. Otherwise, one could keep property in a state with no property tax, rent a tiny flat and work in one with no income tax, and enjoy all the benefits offered by the most generous, etc.
No. Because his "reasoned and well written opinion" is not backed up by the policies actually supported by Democratic legislatures and presidents, which have also enriched a lot of people "at the top." What he ascribes to the Republicans is actually a fairly universal consensus in both parties: called, variously, "neoliberalism," the "American consensus," etc. The Democrats are comfortable with a concentration of wealth in the top of the financial services sector, in the top of various cultural industries and "brand" firms, in all the things that make up the tertiary economy. Now, that happens to coincide with the interests of some other groups: generally, those economies prosper when there is more retail activity - that is, when the market is spread out wide. This is especially true for IT, culture/entertainment, and retail sectors. Policies which "dislodge" a bit of the wealth are useful to those sectors, but not ones which encourage saving. The Republicans' interest bloc thrives more with B2B; labor costs reduce the dynamism of B2B economics, and so they are less likely to want to increase the minimum wage, are a bit more interested in keeping the pressure on the worker so that they don't take too much of their employers' revenues, etc. But ultimately, they are both serving the interests of the (different) elites who fund them, back them, hang out with them, etc.
Are you replying to me? Because that's essentially what I said.
I disagree. The real difference between the leaderships of the two party is which elite interests they represent.
The Republicans are largely the party of the primary economy and part of the secondary economy (resource extraction, agriculture and base manufacturing.) The cultural values that they support - religious values, etc. - are those which coincide with that sector. The democrats are largely the party of the tertiary (and past) economies - some manufacturing, but mostly services, especially financial services and the culture industry. Their cultural values are also thus in line: cosmopolitanism, a sense of "progress" (very important in sectors of the economy that emphasize changing styles, such as retail.) These elites agree on a lot, but they disagree on enough things - where they want public sector activity and where they don't, for example - that the different parties do compete.
The social / cultural values things - the left's diversity, the right's "family values" - are mostly window-dressing.
The nation-state is not the only, nor the strongest, unit of human association. I have more in common with many Canadian, Europeans and South Americans - including affiiliation by family and work - that with most US citizens. National citizenship should be an administrative category, a mechanism for participating in the public sphere - not a team sport.
Intern-culture is out of control in the entertainment industry, and ensures that only those with prosperous families or trust funds will really be able to get in.
Oddly enough, there is a pretty sizable intersection between people who don't care about global warming, or have no interest in mitigating it, and those people who are staunchly against open borders.
In other words: invest in popcorn futures.