The government can choose to seek a "sealed indictment" so that the accused is completely unaware of it until they are arrested. I think Assange surmised that this was the situation and assumed he would be extradited if he traveled to Sweden or any other country with whom the U.S. has an extradition treaty.
FTS, it seems like they are now claiming he actively assisted Snowden. They probably have a sealed indictment claiming that he actively assisted Manning.
Was the company really so naive as to not include verbiage granting them permission to do this in the "User Agreement" or "Terms of Use" that users are required to accept prior to installing the app?
Most cell phone apps require you to agree to forfeit your privacy for the privilege of using the app? Many of the agreements I've seen clearly specify that they will access just about everything on your phone, including the camera and microphone, to gather data about you.
I don't know of any studies which concluded that "hands free" talking is as dangerous as "other cell phone use" like texting.
Studies have definitely shown that the danger of having a "hands free" phone conversation while driving is on par with the risk of driving while talking on the phone using one hand to hold it up to your ear. i.e. it's the distracted mind and not the distracted hand which creates the risk.
Thanks for offering your perspective. I'm genuinely curious as to why it's so popular.
Yes, I know that they escaped.
"Karate moves and other things are metaphorical, and should give you a clue: they are still in the Matrix."
Oh, I clearly understand that they're still in the Matrix when they're doing their karate moves. That's the part that ruins it for me. Why can't the creatures who created this artificial reality conjure up an omnipotent Agent Smith? A virtual reality version of god rather than an Nth degree black belt in a suit? If you can see those fight scenes metaphorically, I suppose it works. Maybe I'll watch it again while trying to maintain that perspective and look for clues that this was the intent. I was so turned off by it that I might have missed some things. I saw it as a cheap plot device thrown in as an excuse to add some easily choreographed action scenes which seemed totally out of context.
Not just on/. It seems to me that these stories about AIs & automation/robots taking human jobs have been all over the place in the past few months. I consciously try to avoid most mainstream U.S. media, but I can't help some incidental exposure. I also listen to NPR ~ 2hrs/week and they've been doing a series of stories on this general topic as well.
It sure feels like a systematic effort at psychological conditioning. Is this simply the media trying to get back at Trump by blaming automation rather than immigration for displacing U.S. born workers? Is it just some current fad in the media which is going to pass when a majority of people get bored with it? Or perhaps it's just some distorted perception/selective attention on my part. It still feels sort of weird.
There was definitely some cool stuff in there. I'm just surprised that it makes so many short lists of best/favorite sci-fi films.
A sinister intelligence has enslaved humanity in an almost completely convincing virtual reality... cool concept so far... and the protagonists fight back by using karate moves? A silly plot device which ruined an otherwise promising story.
Almost all sci-fi films require a temporary suspension of certain disbeliefs, but the ridiculously contrived martial arts nonsense in The Matrix just killed it for me.
Go ahead & mock people while you keep losing elections by alienating millions of voters who lean Democrat but will vote Republican based on this one issue. Your last presidential candidate even went so far as to say that Australia-style gun confiscation is "worth considering".
If you're a Democrat, you'd be smart to tell your party to drop gun control from the platform. It's no coincidence that Democrats lost their decades-long majorities in both Congress and the Senate right after they passed the first major federal gun control law since 1968; A defeat from which they have never recovered.
This issue is a boat anchor on your party. After 22 years, isn't it time to cut your losses & move on to more important things?
We saw a story on/. last week reporting that farmers were using firmware developed by Ukrainian hackers to unlock their tractors. What do you think would happen if someone decided to start a commercial software company to sell similar products? I think they'd get slapped down immediately for violations of the DMCA. Remember that it's illegal even to assist someone in circumventing DRM. Farmers are also required to sign an EULA for use of the firmware. There are civil penalties for any 3rd party which interferes in a contractual relationship. John Deere would therefore sue any company which was openly trying to sell unlocking software to farmers by claiming that the EULA is a contract and the company is encouraging farmers to violate the terms.
How can the free market work when government has ruined any potential business model ? Government has created barriers which make a free market solution impossible, but as usual, a black market develops to fill the need.
Yes. People in the USA are being forced to subsidize the development of drugs for the entire rest of the world.
How can a drug that sells for $800 in one place cost $50,000 in the USA? Because the U.S. federal government makes it illegal to import or re-import that drug, or any prescription drugs. Repeal this ban and the price discrepancies disappear. Drug prices in the USA would fall quickly and dramatically.
The problem isn't with the development model. The problem is government.
We must agree to disagree then. I can't imagine that any sort of diplomatic pressure would have compelled Russia to accept Clinton's no fly zone. Especially if she, as CinC, had simply issued an order to start shooting down planes in Syrian airspace. I believe the Russians would have tested the U.S. government's resolve in one way or another and it easily could have set off an escalating series of reprisals. Yes, I'm sure they're pissed right now, but not nearly as pissed as they would be if a Russian plane had gone down in flames carrying a Russian pilot..
Refraining from use of military force doesn't mean "isolating" your country. You can maintain diplomatic relations and trade without meddling in the internal affairs of foreign nations. This policy of "regime change" & bombing/invading other countries are the idiotic policies, even when cloaked in the veil of humanitarianism. There are only two situations which justify use of military force: Response to attack, or prevention of imminent attack. In the case of Syria, neither of those apply. This attack is illegal and un-Constitutional just as sending U.S. warplanes into Syrian airspace is.
"Throughout 2016 we were told that Clinton would 'declare a no-fly zone over Syria'... "
Hopefully you noticed that one of the people who told us that was Hillary Clinton herself. It wasn't speculation by pundits or her political opponents, she said it directly on multiple occasions.
"and cause a war with Russia"
You tell me. Russian planes were flying missions in Syrian airspace. How do you think the Russians would have responded if the U.S. military started shooting down their planes?
There were plenty of reasons to vote for someone other than Clinton(like Gary Johnson), but yes, her stance on Syria was, by itself, a 100% compelling reason.
Maybe YOUR vision of utopia includes some forceful redistribution of wealth to ensure equality of outcomes and zero marginal benefit for extra work. That's MY vision of a dystopian hell & I would put up a fight before being dragged into it.
In my utopia, the more & better go to those who are talented, hard working and innovative, force is only used in response to force, and you & your egalitarian friends would be free to organize yourselves into your own utopian mini-society according to whatever principles you choose, without any outside interference.
"Do you really think Intel would invest £300m into improving diversity just because some 'SJWs' criticised them? "
Something along those lines, absolutely! Intel has been an extremely successful company with its predominately white, predominately male workforce. This "diversity" bullshit is nothing but a collective mental illness which permeates contemporary culture & Intel is trying to capitalize on it. The whole effort is a big public image campaign.
It's not just "some SJWs" criticizing them. Every single time this is discussed in the media, government or academia, the "whiteness" and "maleness" in the tech industry is framed in the context of a problem that needs to be solved.
It's even framed as a problem from a public policy standpoint! EEOC: "...the lack of diversity among high tech workers [has] become [a] central public policy [concern]."
You never (except in the comments section) hear the hypothesis that there just might be fundamental differences across the races and the sexes and that the composition of the workforce is a function of those differences. They also conveniently gloss over the fact that these evil white racists in tech seem to hire plenty of minorities of Asian/East Asian heritage. F*** Intel. If they're going to have a big PR campaign where white men are viewed as a "problem", they won't be getting my $$$.
"nothing in the hacked Hillary emails depicted illegal behavior"
It is illegal for a political campaign to coordinate strategy with a PAC. The Hillary e-mails certainly seem to depict a blatant disregard for this law.
Oh really? Can you explain WHY we have a Federal Reserve that creates money to buy U.S.Treasury Securities which pay interest if all of the interest is being paid back to the Treasury? If the Treasury Dept. can create an interest-bearing treasury security why can't it just as easily create the money?
The Federal Reserve is owned by private banks. The large commercial banks own shares of stock in the 12 regional federal reserve banks. These shares pay a guaranteed 6% dividend. That's a nice profit for the big banks, but The Fed reports this as an "operating expense" so it doesn't go back to the Treasury.
The Fed also pays interest to commercial banks which have deposits at the fed. This is also considered an "expense". Then you have all of the other normal operating expenses of a business. The tiny bit left over is the "profit" that goes to the Treasury Dept.
The Fed is a private corporation created by banks, owned by banks and operating in the best interest of banks. It's a curse on the people of the United States.
How do you draw a connection between "capitalism", an economic system, and the idea of certain people being above the law? Any problem with law is an issue with government, not the economic system. Even when industry is state-owned there is corruption and a double standard of justice. In the USA, I don't even think it's "de facto" anymore. Clearly, the ultra wealthy and government employees are above the law.
I'm just frustrated that "capitalism" seems to have become the catch-all term for every injustice in our society. Wealth and income inequality will always exist(unless we are all equally in a state of squalor) but the current degree of wealth inequality is not a result of "capitalism". It is the result of government granting special economic and legal privileges to a favored elite.
If you want to look for the root of economic injustice in our society, forget about taxes, government spending, minimum wage laws, etc. Start researching the monetary and banking system. The people in our society who get wealthy by actually producing things and providing valuable services aren't necessarily the bad guys. The parasites who accumulate wealth by shuffling money around and playing financial games while providing very few real services are the evil ones. A trillion dollar banker bailout isn't "capitalism" and I would argue that capitalism doesn't even exist when we have a small group of banker scumbags who are allowed to arbitrarily set interest rates.
Recall that Jesus threw the bankers(money changers?) out of the temple, and note the many scriptures condemning the practice of usury.
Oh, cripes. Are you suggesting that less & fewer are *sometimes* interchangeable? Wonderful. Just what we need is another ambiguity in this language.
I've heard the argument that what you have in your shopping basket ("groceries") is a fluid quantity because you don't talk about having a 'grocery'. That sort of makes sense. I think it's like quantum mechanics though. As soon as you take the groceries out of the basket and put them on the conveyor, they cease being fluid and become discrete "items".
I would refuse to shop in a place that has "10 items or less" on a sign.:-)
There's everything "wrong with it" when you've spent decades using "fewer" for that which is discrete and "less" only for that which is fluid or continuous. "10 items or less" just sounds wrong.
"the results around climate change HAVE been replicated"
You mean "replicated" in the sense that one guy ran a multiple least squares regression on a data set and someone else used the same technique on similar data and got similar results.
Science is done through observation and experiment. People studying climate change are looking at observations in a time series. They can't "replicate" the observations because they can't go back in time and re-do the measurements. Similarly, they can't "replicate" an experiment because they don't have a parallel earth to use.
"Science ain't religion" but this "climate change" gospel seems more like a religion every day.
Others have already suggested why this might not work, but if government perceives even the slightest possibility that their browsing histories might become public, they will just add an amendment to the bill making it illegal for THEIR data to be sold.
"So we take power away from those who 'wield the power', and come up with a better means."
I'm talking about "those who wield the power" in whatever system you come up with. Throughout human history, it's always been one person or a small group of people who wield power over everyone else and that power is always abused. Forcing people into collectivism fails because it destroys the incentive for any one individual to produce wealth. That's why you don't see people living and working in communes.
"The other thing we need to fix is the system of government..."
Isn't that essentially the same thing as finding a different means of deciding who wields the power?
There was an economist named Henry George who proposed that government should levy taxes on land, precisely because it is a shared and limited resource. i.e. we should all benefit from the un-earned value of that resource. He makes some good arguments and it might be a very good system of incentives. It still doesn't address the problem of corruption and abuse by those who wield the power to collect & distribute the taxes.
You either believe in the idea of sovereign nations with borders, autonomous governments & a national identity
OR
you believe in open borders, unfettered immigration and subverting national sovereignty to international institutions.
Trump, Steve Bannon, the Koch brothers and Putin are nationalists.
George Soros & The Rothschilds are globalists.
Wealthy people tend to be globalists because they benefit from policies like free trade & open borders, but it's not a given that a rich person is a globalist
"We need a society..." A: "where the essentials (food, shelter, healthcare) are taken care of," B: "where people can choose to do what they want with their life"
Those two things are completely antithetical except in science fiction utopias like the Star Trek universe or "The Culture" novels by Iain M. Banks.
In the real world, the people who wield the power to confiscate the wealth necessary to "take care of" (as you put it) your food, shelter and healthcare would never allow you to choose what you want to do with your life.
That does sound fascinating. Can you provide a link the study or any other info?
I can't seem to find the right combination of search terms.
There are tons of psychology and temperature experiments. Compensation/Overcompensation have their own meanings. There's a "placebo thermostat" experiment and plenty of "placebo button" experiments. We have the psychology of climate change, etc. etc.
I even found instructions about how to use the thermostats from the psych department at UC San Diego!
The U.S. federal government has a $4 TRILLION annual budget, more than 22% of GDP. State and local governments in the USA spend another 18% of GDP, so call it $7 TRILLION total in government spending. That's more than $20,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. Don't you think that's more than enough wealth to fund a government?
I'm glad that you feel you're getting value for your money. Would you feel any differently if 25% of your federal taxes were being used to bomb and kill people in foreign countries and to maintain a worldwide network of over 700 permanent military bases? How would you like paying taxes to house the largest per-capita prison population in the world? What if your schools were expensive as hell, but still produced sub-par results? We fund some absolutely enormous welfare programs for seniors, the poor & the disabled, but these programs are unsustainable. Anyone under age 50 is now paying taxes based on government promises that will never be kept. (I could go on)
And that's only the spending part. The U.S. federal government has also given us GATT, NAFTA, the WTO treaty, The Patriot Act, The Military Commissions Act, the FISA Revisions Act, the 2012 NDAA, established a ubiquitous and largely secret surveillance state and militarized our police forces. And even with the $1 trillion they spend on "defense" they can't "defend" our borders against an invasion by 20 million illegal immigrants.
And you wonder why a USA resident just might have a negative view of government and be opposed to any further taxation? Not only are we being screwed out of a huge portion of our wealth, many of us are paying for shit that we don't want and for future benefits that we will never receive.
Slashdot Mirror
The government can choose to seek a "sealed indictment" so that the accused is completely unaware of it until they are arrested. I think Assange surmised that this was the situation and assumed he would be extradited if he traveled to Sweden or any other country with whom the U.S. has an extradition treaty.
FTS, it seems like they are now claiming he actively assisted Snowden. They probably have a sealed indictment claiming that he actively assisted Manning.
Was the company really so naive as to not include verbiage granting them permission to do this in the "User Agreement" or "Terms of Use" that users are required to accept prior to installing the app?
Most cell phone apps require you to agree to forfeit your privacy for the privilege of using the app? Many of the agreements I've seen clearly specify that they will access just about everything on your phone, including the camera and microphone, to gather data about you.
I don't know of any studies which concluded that "hands free" talking is as dangerous as "other cell phone use" like texting.
Studies have definitely shown that the danger of having a "hands free" phone conversation while driving is on par with the risk of driving while talking on the phone using one hand to hold it up to your ear. i.e. it's the distracted mind and not the distracted hand which creates the risk.
Thanks for offering your perspective. I'm genuinely curious as to why it's so popular.
Yes, I know that they escaped.
"Karate moves and other things are metaphorical, and should give you a clue: they are still in the Matrix."
Oh, I clearly understand that they're still in the Matrix when they're doing their karate moves. That's the part that ruins it for me. Why can't the creatures who created this artificial reality conjure up an omnipotent Agent Smith? A virtual reality version of god rather than an Nth degree black belt in a suit? If you can see those fight scenes metaphorically, I suppose it works. Maybe I'll watch it again while trying to maintain that perspective and look for clues that this was the intent. I was so turned off by it that I might have missed some things. I saw it as a cheap plot device thrown in as an excuse to add some easily choreographed action scenes which seemed totally out of context.
Not just on /. It seems to me that these stories about AIs & automation/robots taking human jobs have been all over the place in the past few months. I consciously try to avoid most mainstream U.S. media, but I can't help some incidental exposure. I also listen to NPR ~ 2hrs/week and they've been doing a series of stories on this general topic as well.
It sure feels like a systematic effort at psychological conditioning. Is this simply the media trying to get back at Trump by blaming automation rather than immigration for displacing U.S. born workers? Is it just some current fad in the media which is going to pass when a majority of people get bored with it? Or perhaps it's just some distorted perception/selective attention on my part. It still feels sort of weird.
There was definitely some cool stuff in there. I'm just surprised that it makes so many short lists of best/favorite sci-fi films.
A sinister intelligence has enslaved humanity in an almost completely convincing virtual reality ... cool concept so far ... and the protagonists fight back by using karate moves? A silly plot device which ruined an otherwise promising story.
Almost all sci-fi films require a temporary suspension of certain disbeliefs, but the ridiculously contrived martial arts nonsense in The Matrix just killed it for me.
Have to rate that as my favorite sci-fi film.
A few films which, IMO, have not received the deserved praise / acknowledgment:
Ex Machina
Looper
Gattaca
A crummy B-movie that has received orders of magnitude more praise than it deserves:
The Matrix
"Democrats will take ma guns..."
Go ahead & mock people while you keep losing elections by alienating millions of voters who lean Democrat but will vote Republican based on this one issue. Your last presidential candidate even went so far as to say that Australia-style gun confiscation is "worth considering".
If you're a Democrat, you'd be smart to tell your party to drop gun control from the platform. It's no coincidence that Democrats lost their decades-long majorities in both Congress and the Senate right after they passed the first major federal gun control law since 1968; A defeat from which they have never recovered.
This issue is a boat anchor on your party. After 22 years, isn't it time to cut your losses & move on to more important things?
We saw a story on /. last week reporting that farmers were using firmware developed by Ukrainian hackers to unlock their tractors. What do you think would happen if someone decided to start a commercial software company to sell similar products? I think they'd get slapped down immediately for violations of the DMCA. Remember that it's illegal even to assist someone in circumventing DRM.
Farmers are also required to sign an EULA for use of the firmware. There are civil penalties for any 3rd party which interferes in a contractual relationship. John Deere would therefore sue any company which was openly trying to sell unlocking software to farmers by claiming that the EULA is a contract and the company is encouraging farmers to violate the terms.
How can the free market work when government has ruined any potential business model ? Government has created barriers which make a free market solution impossible, but as usual, a black market develops to fill the need.
Yes. People in the USA are being forced to subsidize the development of drugs for the entire rest of the world.
How can a drug that sells for $800 in one place cost $50,000 in the USA? Because the U.S. federal government makes it illegal to import or re-import that drug, or any prescription drugs. Repeal this ban and the price discrepancies disappear. Drug prices in the USA would fall quickly and dramatically.
The problem isn't with the development model. The problem is government.
We must agree to disagree then. I can't imagine that any sort of diplomatic pressure would have compelled Russia to accept Clinton's no fly zone. Especially if she, as CinC, had simply issued an order to start shooting down planes in Syrian airspace. I believe the Russians would have tested the U.S. government's resolve in one way or another and it easily could have set off an escalating series of reprisals. Yes, I'm sure they're pissed right now, but not nearly as pissed as they would be if a Russian plane had gone down in flames carrying a Russian pilot..
Refraining from use of military force doesn't mean "isolating" your country. You can maintain diplomatic relations and trade without meddling in the internal affairs of foreign nations. This policy of "regime change" & bombing/invading other countries are the idiotic policies, even when cloaked in the veil of humanitarianism. There are only two situations which justify use of military force: Response to attack, or prevention of imminent attack. In the case of Syria, neither of those apply. This attack is illegal and un-Constitutional just as sending U.S. warplanes into Syrian airspace is.
"Throughout 2016 we were told that Clinton would 'declare a no-fly zone over Syria'... "
Hopefully you noticed that one of the people who told us that was Hillary Clinton herself. It wasn't speculation by pundits or her political opponents, she said it directly on multiple occasions.
"and cause a war with Russia"
You tell me. Russian planes were flying missions in Syrian airspace. How do you think the Russians would have responded if the U.S. military started shooting down their planes?
There were plenty of reasons to vote for someone other than Clinton(like Gary Johnson), but yes, her stance on Syria was, by itself, a 100% compelling reason.
Maybe YOUR vision of utopia includes some forceful redistribution of wealth to ensure equality of outcomes and zero marginal benefit for extra work. That's MY vision of a dystopian hell & I would put up a fight before being dragged into it.
In my utopia, the more & better go to those who are talented, hard working and innovative, force is only used in response to force, and you & your egalitarian friends would be free to organize yourselves into your own utopian mini-society according to whatever principles you choose, without any outside interference.
"Do you really think Intel would invest £300m into improving diversity just because some 'SJWs' criticised them? "
Something along those lines, absolutely! Intel has been an extremely successful company with its predominately white, predominately male workforce. This "diversity" bullshit is nothing but a collective mental illness which permeates contemporary culture & Intel is trying to capitalize on it. The whole effort is a big public image campaign.
It's not just "some SJWs" criticizing them. Every single time this is discussed in the media, government or academia, the "whiteness" and "maleness" in the tech industry is framed in the context of a problem that needs to be solved.
e.g.
Wired: Intel isn't diverse enough
Gizmodo: The Alarming Downsides to Tech Industry Diversity Reports
It's even framed as a problem from a public policy standpoint!
EEOC: "...the lack of diversity among high tech workers [has] become [a] central public policy [concern]."
You never (except in the comments section) hear the hypothesis that there just might be fundamental differences across the races and the sexes and that the composition of the workforce is a function of those differences. They also conveniently gloss over the fact that these evil white racists in tech seem to hire plenty of minorities of Asian/East Asian heritage.
F*** Intel. If they're going to have a big PR campaign where white men are viewed as a "problem", they won't be getting my $$$.
"nothing in the hacked Hillary emails depicted illegal behavior"
It is illegal for a political campaign to coordinate strategy with a PAC. The Hillary e-mails certainly seem to depict a blatant disregard for this law.
https://theintercept.com/2016/...
Oh really? Can you explain WHY we have a Federal Reserve that creates money to buy U.S.Treasury Securities which pay interest if all of the interest is being paid back to the Treasury? If the Treasury Dept. can create an interest-bearing treasury security why can't it just as easily create the money?
The Federal Reserve is owned by private banks. The large commercial banks own shares of stock in the 12 regional federal reserve banks. These shares pay a guaranteed 6% dividend. That's a nice profit for the big banks, but The Fed reports this as an "operating expense" so it doesn't go back to the Treasury.
The Fed also pays interest to commercial banks which have deposits at the fed. This is also considered an "expense". Then you have all of the other normal operating expenses of a business. The tiny bit left over is the "profit" that goes to the Treasury Dept.
The Fed is a private corporation created by banks, owned by banks and operating in the best interest of banks. It's a curse on the people of the United States.
How do you draw a connection between "capitalism", an economic system, and the idea of certain people being above the law? Any problem with law is an issue with government, not the economic system. Even when industry is state-owned there is corruption and a double standard of justice. In the USA, I don't even think it's "de facto" anymore. Clearly, the ultra wealthy and government employees are above the law.
I'm just frustrated that "capitalism" seems to have become the catch-all term for every injustice in our society. Wealth and income inequality will always exist(unless we are all equally in a state of squalor) but the current degree of wealth inequality is not a result of "capitalism". It is the result of government granting special economic and legal privileges to a favored elite.
If you want to look for the root of economic injustice in our society, forget about taxes, government spending, minimum wage laws, etc. Start researching the monetary and banking system. The people in our society who get wealthy by actually producing things and providing valuable services aren't necessarily the bad guys. The parasites who accumulate wealth by shuffling money around and playing financial games while providing very few real services are the evil ones. A trillion dollar banker bailout isn't "capitalism" and I would argue that capitalism doesn't even exist when we have a small group of banker scumbags who are allowed to arbitrarily set interest rates.
Recall that Jesus threw the bankers(money changers?) out of the temple, and note the many scriptures condemning the practice of usury.
Oh, cripes. Are you suggesting that less & fewer are *sometimes* interchangeable? Wonderful. Just what we need is another ambiguity in this language.
I've heard the argument that what you have in your shopping basket ("groceries") is a fluid quantity because you don't talk about having a 'grocery'. That sort of makes sense. I think it's like quantum mechanics though. As soon as you take the groceries out of the basket and put them on the conveyor, they cease being fluid and become discrete "items".
I would refuse to shop in a place that has "10 items or less" on a sign. :-)
There's everything "wrong with it" when you've spent decades using "fewer" for that which is discrete and "less" only for that which is fluid or continuous.
"10 items or less" just sounds wrong.
"the results around climate change HAVE been replicated"
You mean "replicated" in the sense that one guy ran a multiple least squares regression on a data set and someone else used the same technique on similar data and got similar results.
Science is done through observation and experiment. People studying climate change are looking at observations in a time series. They can't "replicate" the observations because they can't go back in time and re-do the measurements. Similarly, they can't "replicate" an experiment because they don't have a parallel earth to use.
"Science ain't religion" but this "climate change" gospel seems more like a religion every day.
Others have already suggested why this might not work, but if government perceives even the slightest possibility that their browsing histories might become public, they will just add an amendment to the bill making it illegal for THEIR data to be sold.
"So we take power away from those who 'wield the power', and come up with a better means."
I'm talking about "those who wield the power" in whatever system you come up with. Throughout human history, it's always been one person or a small group of people who wield power over everyone else and that power is always abused. Forcing people into collectivism fails because it destroys the incentive for any one individual to produce wealth. That's why you don't see people living and working in communes.
"The other thing we need to fix is the system of government..."
Isn't that essentially the same thing as finding a different means of deciding who wields the power?
There was an economist named Henry George who proposed that government should levy taxes on land, precisely because it is a shared and limited resource. i.e. we should all benefit from the un-earned value of that resource. He makes some good arguments and it might be a very good system of incentives. It still doesn't address the problem of corruption and abuse by those who wield the power to collect & distribute the taxes.
Wealth is not the determining factor.
You either believe in the idea of sovereign nations with borders, autonomous governments & a national identity
OR
you believe in open borders, unfettered immigration and subverting national sovereignty to international institutions.
Trump, Steve Bannon, the Koch brothers and Putin are nationalists.
George Soros & The Rothschilds are globalists.
Wealthy people tend to be globalists because they benefit from policies like free trade & open borders, but it's not a given that a rich person is a globalist
"We need a society..."
A: "where the essentials (food, shelter, healthcare) are taken care of,"
B: "where people can choose to do what they want with their life"
Those two things are completely antithetical except in science fiction utopias like the Star Trek universe or "The Culture" novels by Iain M. Banks.
In the real world, the people who wield the power to confiscate the wealth necessary to "take care of" (as you put it) your food, shelter and healthcare would never allow you to choose what you want to do with your life.
That does sound fascinating. Can you provide a link the study or any other info?
I can't seem to find the right combination of search terms.
There are tons of psychology and temperature experiments. Compensation/Overcompensation have their own meanings. There's a "placebo thermostat" experiment and plenty of "placebo button" experiments. We have the psychology of climate change, etc. etc.
I even found instructions about how to use the thermostats from the psych department at UC San Diego!
https://psychology.ucsd.edu/ab...
Arrgggghhhh!
The U.S. federal government has a $4 TRILLION annual budget, more than 22% of GDP. State and local governments in the USA spend another 18% of GDP, so call it $7 TRILLION total in government spending. That's more than $20,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. Don't you think that's more than enough wealth to fund a government?
I'm glad that you feel you're getting value for your money. Would you feel any differently if 25% of your federal taxes were being used to bomb and kill people in foreign countries and to maintain a worldwide network of over 700 permanent military bases? How would you like paying taxes to house the largest per-capita prison population in the world? What if your schools were expensive as hell, but still produced sub-par results? We fund some absolutely enormous welfare programs for seniors, the poor & the disabled, but these programs are unsustainable. Anyone under age 50 is now paying taxes based on government promises that will never be kept.
(I could go on)
And that's only the spending part. The U.S. federal government has also given us GATT, NAFTA, the WTO treaty, The Patriot Act, The Military Commissions Act, the FISA Revisions Act, the 2012 NDAA, established a ubiquitous and largely secret surveillance state and militarized our police forces. And even with the $1 trillion they spend on "defense" they can't "defend" our borders against an invasion by 20 million illegal immigrants.
And you wonder why a USA resident just might have a negative view of government and be opposed to any further taxation? Not only are we being screwed out of a huge portion of our wealth, many of us are paying for shit that we don't want and for future benefits that we will never receive.