The study found that being divorced, being sick and other painful experiences have worse effects on a poor person than on a wealthier one."
The study also found that a spike nailed through the foot hurts less if you're rich. Probably because you can afford to have it pulled out without becoming homeless.
Can I get some of the money for reports like that, so I can get this spike pulled out of my foot?
I don't like M$ products and I don't like Apple's attitude. But, they are both easier to use for non-technical users than Linux. They are even easier to use for technical users, in many cases - for instance, if one wants to use an audio or video peripheral, finding a Linux driver for it often means hoping another Linux user wrote it, or you writing it yourself.
Linux is great and does a great many things, but it's not ready to replace Windows or OS X for the every day business user or at-home consumer.
I saw Shatner while flipping channels on another couple of shows that were before the original Star Trek - "Judgement at Nuremberg" and I think also a made-for-TV movie where he played a soldier. Both times I thought he was great - but both times he was also playing a strange kind of strident martinet - a little power-mad, even.
He seems to have fun with the arrogance, and great casting works with what actors most directly have inside them. He probably was both a good guy and a bit of a pompous ass, on the set. That said, there also is probably some jealousy and simple expansion of stories as they're told over and over for decades.
Well, any points that rely on Malthus are basically wrong. Malthus thought that:
a) food production only increases arithmetically - which is untrue. Thanks to technology it can expand exponentially.
b) populations always increase geometrically - which is also untrue. When societies become affluent, the rate of population growth drops drastically.
We should watch what we have, of course. But we are nowhere near the end due to overpopulation. We are facing many more difficulties re: global warming.
I thought I had already responded to this, but apparently it didn't get into Slashdot somehow...
So I'm a pro-free market, pro-small business, pro-worker, pro-environment capitalist.
Well then, we're probably more in agreement than disagreement. Because if you're for small business, for workers and for the environment, you must support sensible regulations that keep corporations in check. Without them, we're back in the robber baron days when railroad companies, mining companies, food and medicine companies et al were laws unto themselves, literally killing people with impunity and not doing a damn thing about it.
Ironically, it was because of anti-trust regulations that this happened.
No, that's not what caused it to happen. That was at most what created the opportunity for automotive companies to move in. It was still automotive companies that destroyed the streetcars - because it was in their best interest as companies, even if it was not in the best interest of the general public.
Which is the model that I'm talking about: when capitalism works great, it's because what profits companies also benefits the general public. When capitalism works badly, it's because what profits companies works against the general public - because all companies by design put profit first. Or, they simply don't last long as a company.
Which is when government is needed to step in - when companies are making profits in ways that perhaps benefit their customers, but **hurt people who aren't**. Because if companies aren't making money off people, they could care less about them.
This isn't because companies are evil or immoral - companies are amoral. They are basically profit-making machines. They just need safeguards like any other machinery.
As for the example of public transit, the thing is that its benefits are larger than the mere cost of individual travel. Like public education and like public roads, it improves the conditions even for individuals who never use them. They make it possible for people to get places without driving. Sure, in many cases driving is better - but it wouldn't be if **everyone** had to drive and then park.
Just like the public roads. I have driven across country on the Federal highway system maybe 4 times in my life - and that's probably more than most people. But I benefit every day from those roads being open to **everyone** regardless of whether they can pay or not. The goods, services, and free society they help create.
I can categorically state that this is false. Everyone's already figured out how to meter the sun.
Perhaps my description is incomplete. The full problem that's kept companies from being interested in developing solar, is not only how **they** can charge people for it - it's also how they can keep **other people** from getting it for cheap or for free.
Do you see what I mean?
Let's say you're a utility company. Which do you invest in? A plant with fuel that only you handle, such as gas, coal, or nuclear, that puts out power on lines you control - which makes you irreplaceable. Or, a plant that gets fuel from a source available to everyone - so, conceivably, people can just put solar panels on their roof and tell you to screw off.
Any smart company that wants to stay in business, will naturally pick the first option. Of course, other businesses come up who specialize only in Solar. So capitalism can provide a solution. But those businesses would still be almost nowhere if it weren't for a lot of non-corporate help, including free research and a huge amount of governmental tax breaks.
It would be nice to think the free market will solve everything. But it's simply not true. There is nothing in life that can solve an entire class of problems without tweaking, and I dare say there never will be ever.
Can we convert power into food now? Or even water? Does it magically eliminate trash and sewage? My electric bill is actually the lowest portion of my obligation to the city, even in this heat...
Your energy bill in utilities is actually only some of the money you spend on energy. There is the gas in your car; there is the energy used to build that car; and there is the energy used to manufacture and power every single thing we buy, use, or benefit from, including food.
Counted that way, energy remains a pretty significant portion of all our daily costs.
...you've confused prohibiting an action with causing an action. These are different things, and are impacted to differing degrees by different motivators.
Creating parks involves more than prohibiting an action. But, fine. Consider the construction of the Federal Highway System instead. This was done without profit, by the government. And it is in fact more sustainable as a system than any for-profit set of roadways - because it is created for the benefit of all users, and not just those who can generate the most profit for private individuals.
This is a non-sequitur. If monkeys can understand profit-based economics, then I hardly think the existence of billboards supports your point.
Your response is actually a non-sequitir. We're talking about humans; you stated that business does not require campaigning and education; I cited a specific case where profit DOES require campaigning and education.
If we were going to talk about monkeys, then I would also note that what works for primate groups is also "government action" - decisions made by parents and by leaders which do NOT profit them as individuals - but benefit the whole group *even at their individual expense* by placing the good of the group above their individual fortunes.
Profit is to us as dams to beavers, yes. But not so much Cap and Trade.
Actually, cap and trade is just as much to us as dams are to beavers. Animals that don't maintain an equilibrium with their resources die out. Whether or not Cap and Trade works specifically, it is a human attempt to keep our species' needs and resources in balance, with our species' specific tools - abstract thought.
Can we convert power into food now?
Irrelevant. You were discussing a hypothetical situation; I produced a hypothetical situation to counter it. We were not in either case discussing the practical possibilities, but the theoretical effects of such a situation on people.
Capitalism is rather like petroleum: Both have obvious and unfortunate faults.
Sure. And so is Feudalism, Monarchism, and every other governing system devised by man.
This is a fine ideal for plants and animals. Humans - being more complex - maybe, maybe not.
Here, I don't think my argument was clear. I was saying whatever works best, **including** capitalism.
I'm for what works. If it's called Capitalism, that's fine; if it's called Socialism, whatever; I don't care if it's called Peanut Butter.
Capitalism has freed a lot of people to create a lot of advances and progress. When completely unrestricted, it also has made possible some of the most extreme long-term subjugation ever seen.
There's a reason why we have restricted Capitalism with a safety net and regulations now.
Sure - for the CEO. As long as it makes more money for that company that quarter so the CEO can get a golden parachute at the end of the fiscal year - and retire to his house on 200 acres of private land.
And I'm curious if that surprises any one single person.
This guy's position is so obivous that I'd like to coin a new phrase for it - Teatarded.
I'm sorry for all those who are still trying to cling to the idea that the Republican party is still open for rational conservatives - the last true famous example of which may be Barry Goldwater.
I'm not missing the point - I'm disagreeing with it. I don't think that it is true enough to be a reliable principle, i.e. true more often than it's not.
My main disagreement is the implication that profit for individual businesses is the **only** way to motivate people to do a thing in a "natural, sustainable way".
As an example, there is no fiscal profit involved in maintaining national parks. They are a cost, in fact. So, according to the "profit is the only way that works" principle, our US parks system should have disappeared long ago.
Yes, profit was resisted via government action - **but with the full continued approval of the vast majority of the public**. This is not government acting ON the will of the people - this is government ENACTING the will of the people.
I'm also disagreeing with the notion that profit and/or business is a "natural motivator" that requires "no campaigning or education". If that were the case, there'd be no advertising. Why do we have advertising? To give people the inaccurate notion that one form of toothpaste or shampoo is so superior to all others that use of it will get them laid, etc.
And I'm also disagreeing with this notion that "government action" is any more or less unnatural than "corporate action". Both come from humans acting together in groups; they are both as natural to us as building dams is for beavers.
Imagine you could flip a switch and people could have all the power that they needed without needing to pay for it - they wouldn't *need* to work near as much, and 40 hours a week would have less of a controlling restrictive force on their lives.
I'm not advocating socialism - but we should be clear about all the faults accompanying capitalism as well. For this reason, I see no point in ruling either corporate OR governmental action. Whatever does best for the most people, while maintaining the most freedom especially for the innocent and least powerful.
They're easy to reproduce by people who want to bother with infrastructure. They can set up factories and plants to make them, it's true.
Gangs selling drugs would much rather keep infrastructure to a minimum. Extort farmers into growing the crops; ship the yield somewhere else for quick processing; ship the stuff somewhere else for sale.
They would much rather buy guns than add gun-making factories to that - or they'd already have their own gun-making factories too. Which doesn't seem to be what they're doing in Mexico.
I'm pretty sure the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan are buying weapons rather than making them, as well. I could be wrong in that; but it seems the Taliban is in a different position than even the Mexican gangs. Rather than having corrupted local governments and Federal forces, the Taliban actually IS the local governments in many areas.
Having the raw resources, a machine that stamps parts and a place to put them together is already several levels of infrastructure more than someone who's doing massively illegal things wants to bother with.
Once could say that cars also are easy enough to manufacture. It's still cheaper and better for criminals and terrorists around the world to just buy them. They'd rather have something effective and reliable without having to make it themselves.
Depends on the type of document, even then. I'm currently in a class for TV script writers, where I was told very clearly that their standard is two spaces after every period. This is probably to make it very clear for the actors, on reading their lines, where one sentence ends and another begins.
And then of course, an actor like Christopher Walken comes along and crosses out all the punctuation anyway...
Newspapers report the "Police Blotter" because it's news. It's not the police's job to report it.
This is the police taking a step further out of their purpose, to post pictures of people specifically to embarrass the arrested and flaunt their own power. And I find it pretty arrogant. Especially seeing how many police think they shouldn't even be videotaped while arresting people.
New Jersey cops and traffic court judges, their patrons, have some of the most consistently, mind-blowingly arrogant attitudes you'll ever find.
I'm recalling some personal experience with Mendham, NJ. The cops put up signs saying "Speed and receive a free ticket."
I loved the universe when this arrogance backfired and some people actually paid no fines for tickets, by pointing out these official signs could easily be interpreted as meaning the ticket would cost nothing. The signs came down pretty quickly afterwards.
Slashdot Mirror
The study found that being divorced, being sick and other painful experiences have worse effects on a poor person than on a wealthier one."
The study also found that a spike nailed through the foot hurts less if you're rich. Probably because you can afford to have it pulled out without becoming homeless.
Can I get some of the money for reports like that, so I can get this spike pulled out of my foot?
Because Linux is NOT "just as easy as Windows".
I don't like M$ products and I don't like Apple's attitude. But, they are both easier to use for non-technical users than Linux. They are even easier to use for technical users, in many cases - for instance, if one wants to use an audio or video peripheral, finding a Linux driver for it often means hoping another Linux user wrote it, or you writing it yourself.
Linux is great and does a great many things, but it's not ready to replace Windows or OS X for the every day business user or at-home consumer.
I saw Shatner while flipping channels on another couple of shows that were before the original Star Trek - "Judgement at Nuremberg" and I think also a made-for-TV movie where he played a soldier. Both times I thought he was great - but both times he was also playing a strange kind of strident martinet - a little power-mad, even.
He seems to have fun with the arrogance, and great casting works with what actors most directly have inside them. He probably was both a good guy and a bit of a pompous ass, on the set. That said, there also is probably some jealousy and simple expansion of stories as they're told over and over for decades.
Someone get the UN telecom to read slashdot.
Or, at least his nephew who walks him through how to reinstall MS Office.
Well, any points that rely on Malthus are basically wrong. Malthus thought that:
a) food production only increases arithmetically - which is untrue. Thanks to technology it can expand exponentially.
b) populations always increase geometrically - which is also untrue. When societies become affluent, the rate of population growth drops drastically.
We should watch what we have, of course. But we are nowhere near the end due to overpopulation. We are facing many more difficulties re: global warming.
I love the meta joke of this message being modded as "interesting".
Well then, we're probably more in agreement than disagreement. Because if you're for small business, for workers and for the environment, you must support sensible regulations that keep corporations in check. Without them, we're back in the robber baron days when railroad companies, mining companies, food and medicine companies et al were laws unto themselves, literally killing people with impunity and not doing a damn thing about it.
No, that's not what caused it to happen. That was at most what created the opportunity for automotive companies to move in. It was still automotive companies that destroyed the streetcars - because it was in their best interest as companies, even if it was not in the best interest of the general public.
Which is the model that I'm talking about: when capitalism works great, it's because what profits companies also benefits the general public. When capitalism works badly, it's because what profits companies works against the general public - because all companies by design put profit first. Or, they simply don't last long as a company.
Which is when government is needed to step in - when companies are making profits in ways that perhaps benefit their customers, but **hurt people who aren't**. Because if companies aren't making money off people, they could care less about them.
This isn't because companies are evil or immoral - companies are amoral. They are basically profit-making machines. They just need safeguards like any other machinery.
As for the example of public transit, the thing is that its benefits are larger than the mere cost of individual travel. Like public education and like public roads, it improves the conditions even for individuals who never use them. They make it possible for people to get places without driving. Sure, in many cases driving is better - but it wouldn't be if **everyone** had to drive and then park.
Just like the public roads. I have driven across country on the Federal highway system maybe 4 times in my life - and that's probably more than most people. But I benefit every day from those roads being open to **everyone** regardless of whether they can pay or not. The goods, services, and free society they help create.
Perhaps my description is incomplete. The full problem that's kept companies from being interested in developing solar, is not only how **they** can charge people for it - it's also how they can keep **other people** from getting it for cheap or for free.
Do you see what I mean?
Let's say you're a utility company. Which do you invest in? A plant with fuel that only you handle, such as gas, coal, or nuclear, that puts out power on lines you control - which makes you irreplaceable. Or, a plant that gets fuel from a source available to everyone - so, conceivably, people can just put solar panels on their roof and tell you to screw off.
Any smart company that wants to stay in business, will naturally pick the first option. Of course, other businesses come up who specialize only in Solar. So capitalism can provide a solution. But those businesses would still be almost nowhere if it weren't for a lot of non-corporate help, including free research and a huge amount of governmental tax breaks.
It would be nice to think the free market will solve everything. But it's simply not true. There is nothing in life that can solve an entire class of problems without tweaking, and I dare say there never will be ever.
Your energy bill in utilities is actually only some of the money you spend on energy. There is the gas in your car; there is the energy used to build that car; and there is the energy used to manufacture and power every single thing we buy, use, or benefit from, including food.
Counted that way, energy remains a pretty significant portion of all our daily costs.
Creating parks involves more than prohibiting an action. But, fine. Consider the construction of the Federal Highway System instead. This was done without profit, by the government. And it is in fact more sustainable as a system than any for-profit set of roadways - because it is created for the benefit of all users, and not just those who can generate the most profit for private individuals.
Your response is actually a non-sequitir. We're talking about humans; you stated that business does not require campaigning and education; I cited a specific case where profit DOES require campaigning and education. If we were going to talk about monkeys, then I would also note that what works for primate groups is also "government action" - decisions made by parents and by leaders which do NOT profit them as individuals - but benefit the whole group *even at their individual expense* by placing the good of the group above their individual fortunes.
Actually, cap and trade is just as much to us as dams are to beavers. Animals that don't maintain an equilibrium with their resources die out. Whether or not Cap and Trade works specifically, it is a human attempt to keep our species' needs and resources in balance, with our species' specific tools - abstract thought.
Irrelevant. You were discussing a hypothetical situation; I produced a hypothetical situation to counter it. We were not in either case discussing the practical possibilities, but the theoretical effects of such a situation on people.
Sure. And so is Feudalism, Monarchism, and every other governing system devised by man.
Here, I don't think my argument was clear. I was saying whatever works best, **including** capitalism. I'm for what works. If it's called Capitalism, that's fine; if it's called Socialism, whatever; I don't care if it's called Peanut Butter. Capitalism has freed a lot of people to create a lot of advances and progress. When completely unrestricted, it also has made possible some of the most extreme long-term subjugation ever seen. There's a reason why we have restricted Capitalism with a safety net and regulations now.
Sure - for the CEO. As long as it makes more money for that company that quarter so the CEO can get a golden parachute at the end of the fiscal year - and retire to his house on 200 acres of private land.
The Libertarian party? Agreed.
Cut with strychnine, IMHO. That's why they're so screeching irritable too.
And I'm curious if that surprises any one single person.
This guy's position is so obivous that I'd like to coin a new phrase for it - Teatarded.
I'm sorry for all those who are still trying to cling to the idea that the Republican party is still open for rational conservatives - the last true famous example of which may be Barry Goldwater.
I'm not missing the point - I'm disagreeing with it. I don't think that it is true enough to be a reliable principle, i.e. true more often than it's not.
My main disagreement is the implication that profit for individual businesses is the **only** way to motivate people to do a thing in a "natural, sustainable way".
As an example, there is no fiscal profit involved in maintaining national parks. They are a cost, in fact. So, according to the "profit is the only way that works" principle, our US parks system should have disappeared long ago.
Yes, profit was resisted via government action - **but with the full continued approval of the vast majority of the public**. This is not government acting ON the will of the people - this is government ENACTING the will of the people.
I'm also disagreeing with the notion that profit and/or business is a "natural motivator" that requires "no campaigning or education". If that were the case, there'd be no advertising. Why do we have advertising? To give people the inaccurate notion that one form of toothpaste or shampoo is so superior to all others that use of it will get them laid, etc.
And I'm also disagreeing with this notion that "government action" is any more or less unnatural than "corporate action". Both come from humans acting together in groups; they are both as natural to us as building dams is for beavers.
Imagine you could flip a switch and people could have all the power that they needed without needing to pay for it - they wouldn't *need* to work near as much, and 40 hours a week would have less of a controlling restrictive force on their lives.
I'm not advocating socialism - but we should be clear about all the faults accompanying capitalism as well. For this reason, I see no point in ruling either corporate OR governmental action. Whatever does best for the most people, while maintaining the most freedom especially for the innocent and least powerful.
Actually the opposite can be true - if something is truly intelligent and prudent, it can be difficult for private companies to make money on it.
This would be one of the main reasons why car companies bought and destroyed streetcars -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal
And also we don't have mass-produced solar power - no one's figured out yet how to put a meter on the Sun.
Therefore, the only way to be free is to be stupid and waste resources.
They're easy to reproduce by people who want to bother with infrastructure. They can set up factories and plants to make them, it's true.
Gangs selling drugs would much rather keep infrastructure to a minimum. Extort farmers into growing the crops; ship the yield somewhere else for quick processing; ship the stuff somewhere else for sale.
They would much rather buy guns than add gun-making factories to that - or they'd already have their own gun-making factories too. Which doesn't seem to be what they're doing in Mexico.
I'm pretty sure the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan are buying weapons rather than making them, as well. I could be wrong in that; but it seems the Taliban is in a different position than even the Mexican gangs. Rather than having corrupted local governments and Federal forces, the Taliban actually IS the local governments in many areas.
Stopping people from having a single piece of software is much harder to do than even banning access to a single website.
Having the raw resources, a machine that stamps parts and a place to put them together is already several levels of infrastructure more than someone who's doing massively illegal things wants to bother with.
Once could say that cars also are easy enough to manufacture. It's still cheaper and better for criminals and terrorists around the world to just buy them. They'd rather have something effective and reliable without having to make it themselves.
They very well may be better than US guns. My point is that homemade guns will not compare to professionally mass-manufactured ones.
But not good guns. If it was that easy to make reliable, accurate, durable guns then no one would ever buy them at American prices.
Depends on the type of document, even then. I'm currently in a class for TV script writers, where I was told very clearly that their standard is two spaces after every period. This is probably to make it very clear for the actors, on reading their lines, where one sentence ends and another begins.
And then of course, an actor like Christopher Walken comes along and crosses out all the punctuation anyway...
The Police will probably say it's "Using public shame as a deterrent". But what I think it is, is to flaunt their power.
Newspapers report the "Police Blotter" because it's news. It's not the police's job to report it.
This is the police taking a step further out of their purpose, to post pictures of people specifically to embarrass the arrested and flaunt their own power. And I find it pretty arrogant. Especially seeing how many police think they shouldn't even be videotaped while arresting people.
New Jersey cops and traffic court judges, their patrons, have some of the most consistently, mind-blowingly arrogant attitudes you'll ever find.
I'm recalling some personal experience with Mendham, NJ. The cops put up signs saying "Speed and receive a free ticket."
I loved the universe when this arrogance backfired and some people actually paid no fines for tickets, by pointing out these official signs could easily be interpreted as meaning the ticket would cost nothing. The signs came down pretty quickly afterwards.