One of the classic signs that you're dealing with someone with Aspergers is their inability to "get" things like metaphors or irony. It's not that they're stupid, it's simply that they are wired to see things in very black and white terms, and to tend to take things very literally.
Strictly speaking nuclear power is non-renewable, so it fails on that front. Second of all, no matter how you play it out, you either end up with reactors that produce incredibly toxic waste that remains that way for decades or centuries, or you end up with weapons-grade materials that threaten nuclear proliferation. Beyond that, nuclear is just about the most expensive form of energy there is. It makes sense in certain circumstances, but all in all, no one has ever actually produced reactors that don't require significant taxpayer subsidies to keep them going.
A better bet by far is to figure ways of improving energy storage.
Over half of all petroleum products end up as fuel of one sort or another (for transportation or energy). When demand for oil for transportation falls, it's going to cut into that significantly.
And you of course have the data to show they lack the intelligence, right? I mean, you wouldn't just be making that up to satisfy your own particular prejudices. That would make you a pretty vile and repugnant human being.
How is a distro's update problems Linux's problem. Linux is an operating system. If you bought a router or downloaded a router distro that can't do updates, well, that's your fault. I learned my lesson a long time ago. I spend a few extra bucks, by a small-form box with a cheap 32 bit or 64 bit CPU, a relatively small drive, usually an SSD, throw a mainline distro like Debian on it, and not only do I have a router, but I have a router that can do some pretty complex things since I have full control of iptables, not to mention being able to run anything else on it I please. I've got it to the point that I can get a router on a box in about an hour or so, from the point that I run the netinstall version of Debian.
It's why I roll my own routers with a long term support version of the distro I'm using, and why I run updates on a strict schedule. If you're buying some low-end shitty D-Link router, well you got what you paid for; a Linux box that's virtually never updated, that probably is running old versions of the kernel and other userland tools right out of the box. It's literally like booting a three year old version of unupdated Ubuntu and decrying the vulnerabilities of Linux.
A router running an OS that probably hasn't been patched in years, thus containing multiple vulnerabilities long ago patched, is hardly the same thing as an OS full of holes. That's like condemning Windows because of unpatched vulnerabilities in Windows XP and Vista.
Here's a tip. Don't buy shitty routers running years' old firmware, and expect that somehow the magic update faerie is going to make the vulnerabilities go away.
Where exactly was that ever the point of capitalism. The point of capitalism is to work towards a functioning economy that spreads benefits widely via the use of largely free markets. A strong middle class may be a byproduct of capitalism, but in reality, much of the middle class in the developed world relied upon well paying but relatively low-skilled jobs, and it isn't "socialism" that's destroying those jobs, it's robots.
The Victorian notions of charity had debtors prison and child labor. Relying on the good will of wealthy benefactors does not produce a reliable system of taking care of the poor.
Oh fuck off. There's nothing overtly socialistic about UBI, at least not more so than social security, unemployment benefits, welfare, Medicaid or dozens of other federal and state programs. The fact is that, other than health care, the US is largely as a "social democrat" as any other industrialized nation, and I'd say that single payer healthcare is probably going to be coming in the next decade or so as everyone finally declares defeat on trying to keep the ridiculous and expensive system going with the series of bizarre tweaks that both the ACA and the current Republican solutions represent.
In some ways UBI will be an improvement, because you can get rid of all these various programs, and get rid of a lot of the enforcement and investigation branches of these agencies. As everyone would get a base income, there would be no means testing, and "welfare fraud" would become a lot rarer.
One has to define what one means by "socialism". The countries you list are "social democratic", in that they have adopted some socialist elements like unemployment benefits, public health care and a social safety net, but their economies are still largely capitalist and free enterprise.
Venezuela, on the other hand, was basically taken over by a pack of kleptocrats masquerading as a socialists, who quoted Marx and Guevara even as they have spent the better part of two decades looting the country. Sure, there was lots of money to go around while oil prices were sky high, but their base criminality has been exposed by the collapse in oil prices. I doubt the likes of Chavez and Maduro were ever really socialists at all. Chavez, in particular, was pretty much a populist nationalist, one might even say an imperialist as he siphoned off billions to try to build some sort of Bolivarian Empire. Whatever gains the poor made in Venezuela were simply funded by what amounts to the world's most profitable lottery; plentiful long-chain hydrocarbons.
The countries you list are by and large technocratic in nature, in that elected governments of any ideological stripe still rely on a professional civil service which creates a sort base continuity in state organs regardless of the party in power. While there is doubtless corruption to be found, sadly that is a part of human nature, by and large they are governed by responsible people who are bound and limited by democratic norms.
The Republican Party of the mid-1800s is a helluva lot different beast than the Republican Party of today, as was the Democratic Party. Progressivism as a major political ideology didn't even really exist as a coherent political movement in the US, or really anywhere, until after the First World War, and modern Conservatism is largely a creation of Nixon and Reagan.
It's not going to be free, it's just that how it gets paid will change. I don't think a tax on robots is the best way to do it, but there will be changes in how governments draw revenue, but those revenues will still be drawn.
Exactly. It won't exactly be a Star Trek future, but with automation increasingly reducing the amount of outright toil, it will liberate many. If I didn't have to work 50 hours a week, but rather could work 25-30 hours a week, I'd probably spend a good deal more time writing, which is what I actually enjoy (not that I don't like my job).
Sure there will be layabouts, but according to all the libertarians and conservatives I talk to, there already are, but I suspect most people are quite capable of finding other productive things to occupy their time. And they'll have to, because sooner or later, as automation increasingly intrudes into many different industries, there simply won't be the demand for full time five day a week jobs.
Exactly. UBI would provide only the very basics; a humble abode and a few necessities. I for one would have no intention of living in a Tokyo-sized apartment eating just Soylent Green. It really is a fallacious claim.
Everyone's life is dependent on government, and has been since the first humans gathered together in units much larger than a few dozen families. The Libertarian philosophy you admire is simply a form anarchist fantasy. It could never exist, not in a society of any significant size.
If by that you mean they want to expand the number of people with disposable income, well sure, of course they do. Isn't that the whole fucking point of Capitalism? If wealth becomes concentrated in just a few demographics, then you have a serious economic problem, and history teaches that extreme wealth concentrations are a very bad thing for social cohesion and the economy. Even the Romans knew it, which is why they distributed bread to the populace of the city of Rome, because when they didn't, they had food riots that cost the wealthy a helluva lot more money then just "panem et circenses".
The Koch Brothers aren't going to be an issue in ten years. The base of their power, fossil fuels, is in a price decline that probably will never end, until oil and natural gas simply follow coal into oblivion. For the Koch Brothers, as with all the fossil fuel companies, the next 15-20 years is about maintaining economic conditions just long enough for them to eek out the last bit of profit fossil fuels can generate. In the long term, the Koch Brothers and their ilk will be irrelevant. Not that their accumulated wealth won't keep their families going for a while, but they'll be like the great robber barons of previous ages, each generation afterwards being less relevant.
The real power base going ahead is technology centers like Silicon Valley. Already companies like Apple are among the wealthiest entities to have ever existed in the history of humanity, and in the end they will be the center of economic gravity. The Kochs are dinosaurs. The Tim Cooks and Elon Musks of the world are the future, and these people are very much in the Progressive camp. Indeed, I'd say demographics in the US are decided blue, and all the gerrymandering in the world can't hold back that tide forever.
At some point it is going to become inevitable. You can't have entire segments of society literally starving to death because robots are doing most of their work, and the most they can get is 15-20 hours a week of work. The costs of just containing those social ills will bankrupt most developed nations. Yes, some of the super-wealthy may be able to buy their way out of this for a few more years, but the tipping point will be reached sometime in the next few decades, and it will be irrelevant what a few billionaires want.
The one thing Donald Trump's victory and the Brexit victory in the UK informed everyone is that if voters feel detached enough, and underserved enough (whether those sentiments are justified or not), the power of the ballot box still trumps (excuse the pun) all the wishes of the upper classes/elite. There's not very many super-wealthy people that actually wanted Trump or Brexit, but the power of democracy to run over top of the status quo, while not seen often, still exists, for better and for worse.
As to overpopulation, currently that's not even really a problem for the developed world. Most industrial nations have not achieved a level of automation where they can just simply distribute birth control to everyone and tell them to stop breeding. Japan is certainly moving very swiftly towards an automated economy, but in the meantime it still has to have a lot of East Asia, particularly South Korean, guest workers to fill the ever-growing demographic hole that is being fed by negative population growth. In the long term automation will reduce that need for population replacement, but in the meantime economies need to keep ticking. But in the long term, for economies to keep ticking, some sort of UBI will have to be instituted, whether the Koch Brothers like it or not.
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One of the classic signs that you're dealing with someone with Aspergers is their inability to "get" things like metaphors or irony. It's not that they're stupid, it's simply that they are wired to see things in very black and white terms, and to tend to take things very literally.
So a lot like the right wing press during the Clinton and Obama administrations then...
Strictly speaking nuclear power is non-renewable, so it fails on that front. Second of all, no matter how you play it out, you either end up with reactors that produce incredibly toxic waste that remains that way for decades or centuries, or you end up with weapons-grade materials that threaten nuclear proliferation. Beyond that, nuclear is just about the most expensive form of energy there is. It makes sense in certain circumstances, but all in all, no one has ever actually produced reactors that don't require significant taxpayer subsidies to keep them going.
A better bet by far is to figure ways of improving energy storage.
Of course they will, and if France is like elsewhere, it's likely as 2040 approaches, more and more people will be buying electric cars.
Over half of all petroleum products end up as fuel of one sort or another (for transportation or energy). When demand for oil for transportation falls, it's going to cut into that significantly.
And you of course have the data to show they lack the intelligence, right? I mean, you wouldn't just be making that up to satisfy your own particular prejudices. That would make you a pretty vile and repugnant human being.
The French aristocracy thought much the same, right up until their heads were being shoved into Madame Guillotine.
Thanks, but there's no way in hell I want systemd intruding on the kernel.
How is a distro's update problems Linux's problem. Linux is an operating system. If you bought a router or downloaded a router distro that can't do updates, well, that's your fault. I learned my lesson a long time ago. I spend a few extra bucks, by a small-form box with a cheap 32 bit or 64 bit CPU, a relatively small drive, usually an SSD, throw a mainline distro like Debian on it, and not only do I have a router, but I have a router that can do some pretty complex things since I have full control of iptables, not to mention being able to run anything else on it I please. I've got it to the point that I can get a router on a box in about an hour or so, from the point that I run the netinstall version of Debian.
It's why I roll my own routers with a long term support version of the distro I'm using, and why I run updates on a strict schedule. If you're buying some low-end shitty D-Link router, well you got what you paid for; a Linux box that's virtually never updated, that probably is running old versions of the kernel and other userland tools right out of the box. It's literally like booting a three year old version of unupdated Ubuntu and decrying the vulnerabilities of Linux.
A router running an OS that probably hasn't been patched in years, thus containing multiple vulnerabilities long ago patched, is hardly the same thing as an OS full of holes. That's like condemning Windows because of unpatched vulnerabilities in Windows XP and Vista.
Here's a tip. Don't buy shitty routers running years' old firmware, and expect that somehow the magic update faerie is going to make the vulnerabilities go away.
Where exactly was that ever the point of capitalism. The point of capitalism is to work towards a functioning economy that spreads benefits widely via the use of largely free markets. A strong middle class may be a byproduct of capitalism, but in reality, much of the middle class in the developed world relied upon well paying but relatively low-skilled jobs, and it isn't "socialism" that's destroying those jobs, it's robots.
The Victorian notions of charity had debtors prison and child labor. Relying on the good will of wealthy benefactors does not produce a reliable system of taking care of the poor.
Oh fuck off. There's nothing overtly socialistic about UBI, at least not more so than social security, unemployment benefits, welfare, Medicaid or dozens of other federal and state programs. The fact is that, other than health care, the US is largely as a "social democrat" as any other industrialized nation, and I'd say that single payer healthcare is probably going to be coming in the next decade or so as everyone finally declares defeat on trying to keep the ridiculous and expensive system going with the series of bizarre tweaks that both the ACA and the current Republican solutions represent.
In some ways UBI will be an improvement, because you can get rid of all these various programs, and get rid of a lot of the enforcement and investigation branches of these agencies. As everyone would get a base income, there would be no means testing, and "welfare fraud" would become a lot rarer.
One has to define what one means by "socialism". The countries you list are "social democratic", in that they have adopted some socialist elements like unemployment benefits, public health care and a social safety net, but their economies are still largely capitalist and free enterprise.
Venezuela, on the other hand, was basically taken over by a pack of kleptocrats masquerading as a socialists, who quoted Marx and Guevara even as they have spent the better part of two decades looting the country. Sure, there was lots of money to go around while oil prices were sky high, but their base criminality has been exposed by the collapse in oil prices. I doubt the likes of Chavez and Maduro were ever really socialists at all. Chavez, in particular, was pretty much a populist nationalist, one might even say an imperialist as he siphoned off billions to try to build some sort of Bolivarian Empire. Whatever gains the poor made in Venezuela were simply funded by what amounts to the world's most profitable lottery; plentiful long-chain hydrocarbons.
The countries you list are by and large technocratic in nature, in that elected governments of any ideological stripe still rely on a professional civil service which creates a sort base continuity in state organs regardless of the party in power. While there is doubtless corruption to be found, sadly that is a part of human nature, by and large they are governed by responsible people who are bound and limited by democratic norms.
The Republican Party of the mid-1800s is a helluva lot different beast than the Republican Party of today, as was the Democratic Party. Progressivism as a major political ideology didn't even really exist as a coherent political movement in the US, or really anywhere, until after the First World War, and modern Conservatism is largely a creation of Nixon and Reagan.
There will never be a cure for sociopaths, sadly, so yes, people like you will be around.
It's not going to be free, it's just that how it gets paid will change. I don't think a tax on robots is the best way to do it, but there will be changes in how governments draw revenue, but those revenues will still be drawn.
Exactly. It won't exactly be a Star Trek future, but with automation increasingly reducing the amount of outright toil, it will liberate many. If I didn't have to work 50 hours a week, but rather could work 25-30 hours a week, I'd probably spend a good deal more time writing, which is what I actually enjoy (not that I don't like my job).
Sure there will be layabouts, but according to all the libertarians and conservatives I talk to, there already are, but I suspect most people are quite capable of finding other productive things to occupy their time. And they'll have to, because sooner or later, as automation increasingly intrudes into many different industries, there simply won't be the demand for full time five day a week jobs.
Exactly. UBI would provide only the very basics; a humble abode and a few necessities. I for one would have no intention of living in a Tokyo-sized apartment eating just Soylent Green. It really is a fallacious claim.
Everyone's life is dependent on government, and has been since the first humans gathered together in units much larger than a few dozen families. The Libertarian philosophy you admire is simply a form anarchist fantasy. It could never exist, not in a society of any significant size.
If by that you mean they want to expand the number of people with disposable income, well sure, of course they do. Isn't that the whole fucking point of Capitalism? If wealth becomes concentrated in just a few demographics, then you have a serious economic problem, and history teaches that extreme wealth concentrations are a very bad thing for social cohesion and the economy. Even the Romans knew it, which is why they distributed bread to the populace of the city of Rome, because when they didn't, they had food riots that cost the wealthy a helluva lot more money then just "panem et circenses".
The Koch Brothers aren't going to be an issue in ten years. The base of their power, fossil fuels, is in a price decline that probably will never end, until oil and natural gas simply follow coal into oblivion. For the Koch Brothers, as with all the fossil fuel companies, the next 15-20 years is about maintaining economic conditions just long enough for them to eek out the last bit of profit fossil fuels can generate. In the long term, the Koch Brothers and their ilk will be irrelevant. Not that their accumulated wealth won't keep their families going for a while, but they'll be like the great robber barons of previous ages, each generation afterwards being less relevant.
The real power base going ahead is technology centers like Silicon Valley. Already companies like Apple are among the wealthiest entities to have ever existed in the history of humanity, and in the end they will be the center of economic gravity. The Kochs are dinosaurs. The Tim Cooks and Elon Musks of the world are the future, and these people are very much in the Progressive camp. Indeed, I'd say demographics in the US are decided blue, and all the gerrymandering in the world can't hold back that tide forever.
At some point it is going to become inevitable. You can't have entire segments of society literally starving to death because robots are doing most of their work, and the most they can get is 15-20 hours a week of work. The costs of just containing those social ills will bankrupt most developed nations. Yes, some of the super-wealthy may be able to buy their way out of this for a few more years, but the tipping point will be reached sometime in the next few decades, and it will be irrelevant what a few billionaires want.
The one thing Donald Trump's victory and the Brexit victory in the UK informed everyone is that if voters feel detached enough, and underserved enough (whether those sentiments are justified or not), the power of the ballot box still trumps (excuse the pun) all the wishes of the upper classes/elite. There's not very many super-wealthy people that actually wanted Trump or Brexit, but the power of democracy to run over top of the status quo, while not seen often, still exists, for better and for worse.
As to overpopulation, currently that's not even really a problem for the developed world. Most industrial nations have not achieved a level of automation where they can just simply distribute birth control to everyone and tell them to stop breeding. Japan is certainly moving very swiftly towards an automated economy, but in the meantime it still has to have a lot of East Asia, particularly South Korean, guest workers to fill the ever-growing demographic hole that is being fed by negative population growth. In the long term automation will reduce that need for population replacement, but in the meantime economies need to keep ticking. But in the long term, for economies to keep ticking, some sort of UBI will have to be instituted, whether the Koch Brothers like it or not.
Has he been shot?