Was homosexuality really classified as a deviance, I was under the impression that it was classified as a mental illness.
In fact, homosexuality is deviant today, and is likely to remain so - as is being left-handed. Classifying something as deviant means not in line with social norms, it should not reflect a value judgment.
On the other hand, classifying something as an illness means that it is a condition that should be avoided and corrected if possible. Even then it isn't passing judgment on the person, but rather on the disease. Even so, the homosexual community had a big problem (rightly so IMO) with a medical body decreeing that homosexuality was something for which treatment should be sought.
Normally, yes that'd be true if the teleco's priced per bit traffic to remain revenue neutral. That'd never happen, they'd see this as a way to increase their revenue, and charge even modest users more.
That could happen, but in this situation I take solace in the fact that the telecos are greedy bastards. Hows that you say? Well I'll tell you. If the telecos were ever to roll out a pay per bit pricing scheme they'd price it so the low end users would pay the same - that way they could only increase their revenue. As soon as they do this anyone who is a moderate or heavy user is going to switch to another provider (assuming one is available). That teleco will see the influx of customers from when its competitor switched and reason that it ought to stay with the traditional pricing plan.
Yeah insurance on these phones might not be a huge income stream. Seriously $50 deductible for a (standard) $100 phone after paying a monthly service fee? Why would anyone buy that?
When I bought an LG phone from Verizon the sales rep told me that the UI that Verizon uses for all its phones was LG's. Apparently it is so good they made all the phone manufacturers load it. If I'd had more than 30seconds experience with the UI prior to being told this I'd have laughed in her face.
There was no social mobility yesterday, so we should be happy with what we can do today. Also the middle and lower classes are better off today than they were in feudal Europe, so we should be content. Is that what your saying? After all they're (mostly) not starving, so, let them eat cake.
We can and should do better. Wealth is, and always has been measured against those with the most. No, it isn't a zero sum game, but the money held by the wealthy for the express purpose of generating more wealth would better serve society if it were being spent. I'm all for letting people earn enormous sums of money - I'm against accumulation of more wealth by the wealthy. Am I jealous? Damn straight - but that doesn't make my position any less valid.
Just because reality is unkind to idealism (and I admit that my ideas are a bit to idealistic to be practical,) doesn't mean we should sit on our hands and be content with injustices.
If I had the option of being very wealthy and being able to give my kids every advantage, or being average and living in a world where kids succeeded on their own merits, and didn't need advantages, I'd choose the later.
So what you're saying is that because someone is poor they should temper their expectations? Now that may certainly be reality, but I wouldn't call it right.
Yes, there is something wrong with being born so rich that you never have to work a day in your life, and you can continue to become richer just by sitting on your *ahem* wealth.
There is nothing wrong with trying to improve your children's lives - there is something wrong with the piece of the pie the ultra-wealthy controls. While economics is certainly not a zero sum game, the fact remains every dollar in a private hedge fund is one less dollar available to the less well to do. The real problem is the hedge fund is so successful at increasing its worth - meaning while the poor work two jobs to pay rent, the rich do nothing and take their money.
I don't advocate any sort of workers revolution, I just think that it should be a little easier for the poor to hold onto their money, and a little harder for the rich.
While true that the vast majority of millionaires are self made, it is also true that the vast majority of millionaires have less than 5 million. That means that the vast majority of millionaires are only in the lower-upper class.
Also those with a million are >1% of the population. Combining those facts leads to the conclusion that while most of the upper class may be self-made, most of the wealth controlled by the upper-class is not. Also self-made can mean a variety of things, it is not the same to say that a white male born in Connecticut to an upper-middle class family who earns a million (the demographic from which the vast majority of "self-made" millionaires arise) is the same as a Hispanic woman born in Harlem is self-made. Personally, I'm more interested in discussing the Hispanic woman.
What do the rich gain from the hoax? The rich control investments, and therefore are dependent on labor. Labor that buys into the "American Dream" works harder, complains less, and is less likely to raise a stink over things like safety or benefits. They believe that if they work really hard at making widgets one day they will own the widget making factory, while in reality they are just toiling to create wealth for the wealthy. The middle class have only a marginally better chance of making it into the middle-upper class or above than the lower class, and they are also, by and large, labor.
my great-grandparents, were oil refinery workers... My generation were all college educated if they wanted to be, which I think amounted to all of us but one. We are all, both men and women, academics, professionals, and business owners.
So it took your family 120 years and four generations to go from middle-lower to upper-middle? Congratulations. This is exactly what I was talking about when I said the American dream is a hoax. It's a hoax, because (1) you haven't achieved real wealth, and (2) it takes too long, and is too hard to climb the socio-economic ladder. The "American Dream" is a rags to (real) riches story, not a rags to relative comfort story. It shouldn't take four generations of hard-workers to be able to afford a few luxury items, and it wouldn't if the top 1% didn't hoard 38% of the wealth.
Yes, asking for instant change is asking for too much, and asking for eventual parity is unrealistic, and unfeasible, and probably undesirable. However, asking to change the status quo isn't asking too much, especially when the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is widening.
Making it into the middle class would be an acceptable goal, if the middle class controlled an acceptable portion of the pie. That *might* have been the case from the 50's to the 80's, but today the upper 1% control more wealth than they have at any time since the great depression, and that is what I consider unacceptable.
Oh, and BTW, asking for women to get paid the same as men in the same job yesterday isn't asking too much.
I'll admit to not using particularly scientific figures, but I don't think I am over-reaching too much. According to the wikipedia, referencing the US census ~1.5% of all households had incomes exceeding $250,000. That sort of income puts you in the lower-upper class. It is possible, but very very hard for someone born into poverty to crack the top 1.5%. According to your own (very interesting) link 1/40th of the population move from the bottom quintile to the top quintile - note that the bottom quintile probably includes portions of the upper-lower class, and the upper quintile includes mostly the the upper-middle (all of the upper class are ~5% of the population). So, according to the NY Times 1 in 40 people make it from the upper-lower to the upper-middle - I'd say that going from middle-lower to lower-upper could accurately be described as herculean.
Moving one quintile doesn't mean jack, especially if you move between any of the middle three quintiles you will still be squarely in the middle class. In fact you can move from the second to the fourth and still have very little wealth.
An expensive home is the best first investment, because even if the housing market tanks if you can still pay your mortgage (your income isn't strictly dependent on the housing market) you still have some place to sleep. Yes, you are paying interest, but there are very few places where in the last 50 years the house has appreciated slower than the going mortgage rate. Housing is a safe investment, and for someone with little other money to invest (the middle-class) you'd better make safe bets. If you stop making payments on your house you may lose it, but it's not like all the money you've been paying disappears. If you suddenly can't afford a home, you should sell it ASAP, and not wait for the bank to foreclose - that way you can still make money.
I am in fact familiar with the concept of money...
The point here is social inequality. Money may be a proximate factor for social inequality, but I find it unlikely to be the ultimate cause. Money has been around a long time, and throughout that time there have been wide swings in social inequality - it seems desirable to minimize inequality, while maximizing both average and total wealth.
There are other ways to keep those born rich from staying rich, besides your modest proposal, such as inheritance and progressive taxes. These things exist today for that very purpose, but somebody's going to call any type of tax unfair. I think we could stand to be a tad more progressive, making things a little easier for the poor and a little harder for the rich and the corporation, especially in these days of increasingly consolidated wealth, shrinking middle class, and growing poverty.
Before anyone calls me a pinko commie, I think that that the promise of personal wealth is the greatest part of capitalism. However, the grubby capitalistic hand needs to be slapped from time to time to keep it from harding everybody else's cookies. Besides, while money necessarily provides an advantage, there is no reason why that advantage should pay such high dividends to the rich due mainly to its interest bearing nature, and yield such low returns to the poor.
Everyone gets a starting spot in life...and no, their not all equal... If they can do it...anyone can do it.
Just because person A with a less advantageous starting position can surpass person B doesn't mean that person C can surpass person B. Basically because someone succeeds doesn't mean anyone can succeed. In this post, as well as the other you make sweeping oversimplifications, there is more to socio-economic status than which income tax bracket you fall into, home life, neighborhood, and acquaintances all play major roles, and it cannot be said that just because one person hits 7's and 11's means that another superficially similar person has the same opportunities.
I've known many people that have started at combinations of all the disadvantages listed above, and some have been WAY more successful than I
That probably means that your economic status could be classified as middle-middle class or lower. Very, very few people can climb from the pit of upper-lower or below to upper-middle or above, and even if you knew one Rockefeller, it is nearly statistically certain that you don't know "many people" who have done so well (unless you work with professional athletes).
Mobility on the socio-economic ladder is normally distributed (actually probably log normal - meaning there is increasing resistance to movement the further from middle-middle you are). It is relatively easy to move from lower-middle to middle-middle, harder, but possible to move from lower-middle to upper-middle, quite difficult to go from lower-middle to lower-upper, damn near impossible to go from lower-middle to middle-upper, and going from lower-middle to upper-upper is a herculean task. Now if the starting point is middle-lower it is herculean to go to lower-upper, and it becomes a few in a hundred million chance to break into middle-upper.
Life isn't fair, and I'm never going to argue that government social programs can change that, but to say that anyone can succeed belies a great misunderstanding of poverty and wealth. I don't know what "that kind of wealth" referenced in The Millionaire Next Door is, but if most people got there by earning it then it isn't upper-upper class type of money, and probably not even upper-middle type money. A million bucks isn't what it used to be, and lots of families can get there just by buying a home and sitting on it for 20 years. More important is that earning your way into the millionaires club is still only the purview of people who start in the middle classes. It would be more instructive to talk about the people who rise 3 or more ranks (e.g. middle-lower to middle-middle) and then look at the opportunities available to them. If someone in the middle-lower class climbs three ranks then he can lower his chance of being killed by homicide, and maybe afford to send his kids to college (with student loans). If someone in the middle-middle climbs three ranks, he can afford to drive his S class to the country club.
The point is that avenues of investment and entrepreneurship that are open to the middle classes are barricaded against the poor. Hosts of people can't afford a house - the best first investment, and need to work menial jobs with little room for advancement to survive - you don't go from mail-boy to CEO simply by working your way up, not even Hollywood tries to sell that. The only ways you get middle-upper type money or above is investments (which the poor can't afford) or found a wildly successful (read fortune 1000) company (which the poor have neither the resources or the time for), or inherit it. You simply don't earn that kind of money by climbing a corporate ladder or even very successful entrepreneurship. Poverty is a self-defeating cycle - and to blame them for it is to endorse societies ills.
Sir, I'd like to subscribe to your social darwinism newsletter. Clearly the poor are that way because they deserve it.
Ever heard the phrase, "Where you start out in life is a good indication of where you'll finish?" Class mobility and the "American Dream" are largely hoaxes perpetrated by the rich on the middle and lower classes (kind of like the lottery, only you have to work much harder and invest much more, and the odds are much lower.) Sure some people were born dirt poor, and end up with money to burn, and some people are born with the silver spoon in their mouths and die on the streets, but the very vast majority of people will remain in the class they're born into for the rest of their lives. This is not a coincidence. (Read that last sentence again if you have to.) Another old gem is "It takes money to make money." and the poor don't have it.
All the personal motivation in the world might not overcome the socio-economic implications for being born poor, such as bad schools, dangerous environments, less leisure, and possibly most importantly the VP of Chase financial services doesn't live next door to you in section 8 housing - so you can't offer to mow his lawn when you're 7.
Why do you think single women *still* make less money than single men in the same jobs? Are they as a gender less motivated? That ignores the social consequences of being black or hispanic for instance, and the less opportunity at the same jobs, and with the increased probability of poverty, all of which are additive.
People can improve their stature in life, but the odds are stacked against them. While Paris will be just fine when she gets out of jail - and she doesn't have to give up TV. A poor person might never get a second (third?) chance for much less egregious missteps.
In short you're an ass, and you even give poor advice. For the middle class to get ahead they should buy the most expensive house they can afford (with a fixed interest mortgage).
Because they offer something valuable in return? Most people like, and are willing to pay for this service. Amateur (and professional) genealogists have been scouring court records for decades trying to find this info. I know that it would be worth $200 to show this kind of info at my family reunion.
Just because you don't find the service valuable doesn't mean the premise is creepy or silly, and having an organization maintain such a database is a requirement for such a service to function. Besides, maybe you'll get lucky and one of you progeny will convert to LDS and you'll make it into their version of heaven (for general/. info the reason the LDS run genealogy organizations is because they teach that if you convert all your ancestors will be saved - that and it might have something to do with money...)
Besides, isn't it slashdot that usually bemoans holding technology back based on preconceived or anachronistic notions about the way things should be?
Well, if the Selden patent is widely considered to be a disaster it is probably because it is tough to point to the first automobile, or the inventor of the automobile, (although I think the honor is usually given to Carl Benz.) It is a bit tougher in a case where there is less ambiguity around the first inventor - for example the Wright Brothers. While the patents surrounding wing warping and control surfaces themselves probably didn't advance aviation, that their invention and proof of concept did is undeniable. Also, as a direct result of the wing-warping patent we now have flaps. And is it really such a terrible thing if two bothers from Dayton make a mint after inventing the airplane?
I think the distinction is pretty clearly that Selden patented automobiles, whereas the Wright Brothers patented all kinds of inventions that led to the airplane - so the problem might be that over-broad patents are bad. But then again, if Selden's patent used the Otto Cycle rather than a modified Brayton cycle would it still have been a bad patent? I'm not convinced.
You know, with all the stats that get thrown around in these debates the one I'd really like to see is violent death per capita vs. population density in societies (controlled for socio-economic status) with both strict and lenient gun control laws.
It always bothers me when people bring up the low rate of violent crime in Canada with lots of guns, or the high crime rate in London with few guns. Hasn't sociology pretty well established that poor densely populated areas are universally more dangerous than middle class sparsely populated areas?
It doesn't even seem to me that it would be a study that would be too hard to do, but then again the outcome isn't obvious so it probably wouldn't get funded. And maybe that is the real point - neither the NRA nor the Brady backers know whether guns contribute to crime rates or death, and they'd rather keep getting donations to trot out slanted studies.
(apologies if this data is actually represented in the parent's link It doesn't look like it to me, but I'm paging though again now - does anyone have an executive summary?)
I single violent disturbance in the midst of a sufficiently large group of people to (a) make the police fear for their safety, and (b) to prevent them from readily getting at the offender will turn a peaceful gathering into a riot in short order. I've seen it happen. If one guy throws a rock, and the police gear up, then 5 minutes later 12 people are throwing rocks. After that you either have tear-gas, or burning buildings, or both.
If the protesters jeer at the instigator, and either let the cops in or kick the ass-hat out, then a crisis will be averted.
Because we DO know the outcome, maybe not specifically, but generally, and those generalities are built into our assumptions, whether we use the specific data or not. That is especially true for historical studies. For example, we know that feudalism died out, so we're inclined to negatively weight a feudalistic society against a monarchy. Historically that is valid. However, if a future feudal society were to emerge so much would have changed that the assumptions for negatively weighting feudalism would no longer be valid - and the model would have no predictive power. It all has to do with subtle interactions between "independent" variables, and the impossibility from separating things like fascism from the other variables like depression in the 30s and 40s.
There's freedom to assemble, and then there is a riot which I touched on in my first post. If riot acts are being used to disperse legal protests, then that is an entirely different manner. However, when someone throws a rock or a bottle, it ceases to be a legal protest (especially if the police can't get to the individual who threw the object due to the size of the crowd.)
While overthrowing a corrupt government might (in most cases) require non-peaceful means - if that is your goal, you can't really be surprised that the police aren't going to stand by and watch.
Slashdot Mirror
Was homosexuality really classified as a deviance, I was under the impression that it was classified as a mental illness.
In fact, homosexuality is deviant today, and is likely to remain so - as is being left-handed. Classifying something as deviant means not in line with social norms, it should not reflect a value judgment.
On the other hand, classifying something as an illness means that it is a condition that should be avoided and corrected if possible. Even then it isn't passing judgment on the person, but rather on the disease. Even so, the homosexual community had a big problem (rightly so IMO) with a medical body decreeing that homosexuality was something for which treatment should be sought.
Normally, yes that'd be true if the teleco's priced per bit traffic to remain revenue neutral. That'd never happen, they'd see this as a way to increase their revenue, and charge even modest users more.
That could happen, but in this situation I take solace in the fact that the telecos are greedy bastards. Hows that you say? Well I'll tell you. If the telecos were ever to roll out a pay per bit pricing scheme they'd price it so the low end users would pay the same - that way they could only increase their revenue. As soon as they do this anyone who is a moderate or heavy user is going to switch to another provider (assuming one is available). That teleco will see the influx of customers from when its competitor switched and reason that it ought to stay with the traditional pricing plan.
Yeah insurance on these phones might not be a huge income stream. Seriously $50 deductible for a (standard) $100 phone after paying a monthly service fee? Why would anyone buy that?
On verizons UI:
When I bought an LG phone from Verizon the sales rep told me that the UI that Verizon uses for all its phones was LG's. Apparently it is so good they made all the phone manufacturers load it. If I'd had more than 30seconds experience with the UI prior to being told this I'd have laughed in her face.
iPhone: Now removes thetans.
Limited time offer:
Fresh Andean Glacier water - limit twelve 1-Liter bottles per person. Paypal $4/bottle to AndersOSU
Hurry, offer only good while supplies last!
Oh my god! does that mean that there's worse to come? Alright I give, I'm finally installing those compact fluorescents.
Pfft, you must not have tried to get a rocket launch permit yet. I've got my orbiter ready to go, but the damn FAA are still dragging their feet.
There was no social mobility yesterday, so we should be happy with what we can do today. Also the middle and lower classes are better off today than they were in feudal Europe, so we should be content. Is that what your saying? After all they're (mostly) not starving, so, let them eat cake.
We can and should do better. Wealth is, and always has been measured against those with the most. No, it isn't a zero sum game, but the money held by the wealthy for the express purpose of generating more wealth would better serve society if it were being spent. I'm all for letting people earn enormous sums of money - I'm against accumulation of more wealth by the wealthy. Am I jealous? Damn straight - but that doesn't make my position any less valid.
Just because reality is unkind to idealism (and I admit that my ideas are a bit to idealistic to be practical,) doesn't mean we should sit on our hands and be content with injustices.
If I had the option of being very wealthy and being able to give my kids every advantage, or being average and living in a world where kids succeeded on their own merits, and didn't need advantages, I'd choose the later.
So what you're saying is that because someone is poor they should temper their expectations? Now that may certainly be reality, but I wouldn't call it right.
Yes, there is something wrong with being born so rich that you never have to work a day in your life, and you can continue to become richer just by sitting on your *ahem* wealth.
There is nothing wrong with trying to improve your children's lives - there is something wrong with the piece of the pie the ultra-wealthy controls. While economics is certainly not a zero sum game, the fact remains every dollar in a private hedge fund is one less dollar available to the less well to do. The real problem is the hedge fund is so successful at increasing its worth - meaning while the poor work two jobs to pay rent, the rich do nothing and take their money.
I don't advocate any sort of workers revolution, I just think that it should be a little easier for the poor to hold onto their money, and a little harder for the rich.
While true that the vast majority of millionaires are self made, it is also true that the vast majority of millionaires have less than 5 million. That means that the vast majority of millionaires are only in the lower-upper class.
Also those with a million are >1% of the population. Combining those facts leads to the conclusion that while most of the upper class may be self-made, most of the wealth controlled by the upper-class is not. Also self-made can mean a variety of things, it is not the same to say that a white male born in Connecticut to an upper-middle class family who earns a million (the demographic from which the vast majority of "self-made" millionaires arise) is the same as a Hispanic woman born in Harlem is self-made. Personally, I'm more interested in discussing the Hispanic woman.
What do the rich gain from the hoax? The rich control investments, and therefore are dependent on labor. Labor that buys into the "American Dream" works harder, complains less, and is less likely to raise a stink over things like safety or benefits. They believe that if they work really hard at making widgets one day they will own the widget making factory, while in reality they are just toiling to create wealth for the wealthy. The middle class have only a marginally better chance of making it into the middle-upper class or above than the lower class, and they are also, by and large, labor.
Yes, asking for instant change is asking for too much, and asking for eventual parity is unrealistic, and unfeasible, and probably undesirable. However, asking to change the status quo isn't asking too much, especially when the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is widening.
Making it into the middle class would be an acceptable goal, if the middle class controlled an acceptable portion of the pie. That *might* have been the case from the 50's to the 80's, but today the upper 1% control more wealth than they have at any time since the great depression, and that is what I consider unacceptable.
Oh, and BTW, asking for women to get paid the same as men in the same job yesterday isn't asking too much.
I'll admit to not using particularly scientific figures, but I don't think I am over-reaching too much. According to the wikipedia, referencing the US census ~1.5% of all households had incomes exceeding $250,000. That sort of income puts you in the lower-upper class. It is possible, but very very hard for someone born into poverty to crack the top 1.5%. According to your own (very interesting) link 1/40th of the population move from the bottom quintile to the top quintile - note that the bottom quintile probably includes portions of the upper-lower class, and the upper quintile includes mostly the the upper-middle (all of the upper class are ~5% of the population). So, according to the NY Times 1 in 40 people make it from the upper-lower to the upper-middle - I'd say that going from middle-lower to lower-upper could accurately be described as herculean.
Moving one quintile doesn't mean jack, especially if you move between any of the middle three quintiles you will still be squarely in the middle class. In fact you can move from the second to the fourth and still have very little wealth.
An expensive home is the best first investment, because even if the housing market tanks if you can still pay your mortgage (your income isn't strictly dependent on the housing market) you still have some place to sleep. Yes, you are paying interest, but there are very few places where in the last 50 years the house has appreciated slower than the going mortgage rate. Housing is a safe investment, and for someone with little other money to invest (the middle-class) you'd better make safe bets. If you stop making payments on your house you may lose it, but it's not like all the money you've been paying disappears. If you suddenly can't afford a home, you should sell it ASAP, and not wait for the bank to foreclose - that way you can still make money.
I am in fact familiar with the concept of money...
The point here is social inequality. Money may be a proximate factor for social inequality, but I find it unlikely to be the ultimate cause. Money has been around a long time, and throughout that time there have been wide swings in social inequality - it seems desirable to minimize inequality, while maximizing both average and total wealth.
There are other ways to keep those born rich from staying rich, besides your modest proposal, such as inheritance and progressive taxes. These things exist today for that very purpose, but somebody's going to call any type of tax unfair. I think we could stand to be a tad more progressive, making things a little easier for the poor and a little harder for the rich and the corporation, especially in these days of increasingly consolidated wealth, shrinking middle class, and growing poverty.
Before anyone calls me a pinko commie, I think that that the promise of personal wealth is the greatest part of capitalism. However, the grubby capitalistic hand needs to be slapped from time to time to keep it from harding everybody else's cookies. Besides, while money necessarily provides an advantage, there is no reason why that advantage should pay such high dividends to the rich due mainly to its interest bearing nature, and yield such low returns to the poor.
Mobility on the socio-economic ladder is normally distributed (actually probably log normal - meaning there is increasing resistance to movement the further from middle-middle you are). It is relatively easy to move from lower-middle to middle-middle, harder, but possible to move from lower-middle to upper-middle, quite difficult to go from lower-middle to lower-upper, damn near impossible to go from lower-middle to middle-upper, and going from lower-middle to upper-upper is a herculean task. Now if the starting point is middle-lower it is herculean to go to lower-upper, and it becomes a few in a hundred million chance to break into middle-upper.
Life isn't fair, and I'm never going to argue that government social programs can change that, but to say that anyone can succeed belies a great misunderstanding of poverty and wealth. I don't know what "that kind of wealth" referenced in The Millionaire Next Door is, but if most people got there by earning it then it isn't upper-upper class type of money, and probably not even upper-middle type money. A million bucks isn't what it used to be, and lots of families can get there just by buying a home and sitting on it for 20 years. More important is that earning your way into the millionaires club is still only the purview of people who start in the middle classes. It would be more instructive to talk about the people who rise 3 or more ranks (e.g. middle-lower to middle-middle) and then look at the opportunities available to them. If someone in the middle-lower class climbs three ranks then he can lower his chance of being killed by homicide, and maybe afford to send his kids to college (with student loans). If someone in the middle-middle climbs three ranks, he can afford to drive his S class to the country club.
The point is that avenues of investment and entrepreneurship that are open to the middle classes are barricaded against the poor. Hosts of people can't afford a house - the best first investment, and need to work menial jobs with little room for advancement to survive - you don't go from mail-boy to CEO simply by working your way up, not even Hollywood tries to sell that. The only ways you get middle-upper type money or above is investments (which the poor can't afford) or found a wildly successful (read fortune 1000) company (which the poor have neither the resources or the time for), or inherit it. You simply don't earn that kind of money by climbing a corporate ladder or even very successful entrepreneurship. Poverty is a self-defeating cycle - and to blame them for it is to endorse societies ills.
Sir, I'd like to subscribe to your social darwinism newsletter. Clearly the poor are that way because they deserve it.
Ever heard the phrase, "Where you start out in life is a good indication of where you'll finish?" Class mobility and the "American Dream" are largely hoaxes perpetrated by the rich on the middle and lower classes (kind of like the lottery, only you have to work much harder and invest much more, and the odds are much lower.) Sure some people were born dirt poor, and end up with money to burn, and some people are born with the silver spoon in their mouths and die on the streets, but the very vast majority of people will remain in the class they're born into for the rest of their lives. This is not a coincidence. (Read that last sentence again if you have to.) Another old gem is "It takes money to make money." and the poor don't have it.
All the personal motivation in the world might not overcome the socio-economic implications for being born poor, such as bad schools, dangerous environments, less leisure, and possibly most importantly the VP of Chase financial services doesn't live next door to you in section 8 housing - so you can't offer to mow his lawn when you're 7.
Why do you think single women *still* make less money than single men in the same jobs? Are they as a gender less motivated? That ignores the social consequences of being black or hispanic for instance, and the less opportunity at the same jobs, and with the increased probability of poverty, all of which are additive.
People can improve their stature in life, but the odds are stacked against them. While Paris will be just fine when she gets out of jail - and she doesn't have to give up TV. A poor person might never get a second (third?) chance for much less egregious missteps.
In short you're an ass, and you even give poor advice. For the middle class to get ahead they should buy the most expensive house they can afford (with a fixed interest mortgage).
Because they offer something valuable in return? Most people like, and are willing to pay for this service. Amateur (and professional) genealogists have been scouring court records for decades trying to find this info. I know that it would be worth $200 to show this kind of info at my family reunion.
/. info the reason the LDS run genealogy organizations is because they teach that if you convert all your ancestors will be saved - that and it might have something to do with money...)
Just because you don't find the service valuable doesn't mean the premise is creepy or silly, and having an organization maintain such a database is a requirement for such a service to function. Besides, maybe you'll get lucky and one of you progeny will convert to LDS and you'll make it into their version of heaven (for general
Besides, isn't it slashdot that usually bemoans holding technology back based on preconceived or anachronistic notions about the way things should be?
Well, if the Selden patent is widely considered to be a disaster it is probably because it is tough to point to the first automobile, or the inventor of the automobile, (although I think the honor is usually given to Carl Benz.) It is a bit tougher in a case where there is less ambiguity around the first inventor - for example the Wright Brothers. While the patents surrounding wing warping and control surfaces themselves probably didn't advance aviation, that their invention and proof of concept did is undeniable. Also, as a direct result of the wing-warping patent we now have flaps. And is it really such a terrible thing if two bothers from Dayton make a mint after inventing the airplane?
I think the distinction is pretty clearly that Selden patented automobiles, whereas the Wright Brothers patented all kinds of inventions that led to the airplane - so the problem might be that over-broad patents are bad. But then again, if Selden's patent used the Otto Cycle rather than a modified Brayton cycle would it still have been a bad patent? I'm not convinced.
You picked a pretty poor example. In 2004 the early front runner for the dems was Howard Dean.
You know, with all the stats that get thrown around in these debates the one I'd really like to see is violent death per capita vs. population density in societies (controlled for socio-economic status) with both strict and lenient gun control laws.
It always bothers me when people bring up the low rate of violent crime in Canada with lots of guns, or the high crime rate in London with few guns. Hasn't sociology pretty well established that poor densely populated areas are universally more dangerous than middle class sparsely populated areas?
It doesn't even seem to me that it would be a study that would be too hard to do, but then again the outcome isn't obvious so it probably wouldn't get funded. And maybe that is the real point - neither the NRA nor the Brady backers know whether guns contribute to crime rates or death, and they'd rather keep getting donations to trot out slanted studies.
(apologies if this data is actually represented in the parent's link It doesn't look like it to me, but I'm paging though again now - does anyone have an executive summary?)
I single violent disturbance in the midst of a sufficiently large group of people to (a) make the police fear for their safety, and (b) to prevent them from readily getting at the offender will turn a peaceful gathering into a riot in short order. I've seen it happen. If one guy throws a rock, and the police gear up, then 5 minutes later 12 people are throwing rocks. After that you either have tear-gas, or burning buildings, or both.
If the protesters jeer at the instigator, and either let the cops in or kick the ass-hat out, then a crisis will be averted.
Because we DO know the outcome, maybe not specifically, but generally, and those generalities are built into our assumptions, whether we use the specific data or not. That is especially true for historical studies. For example, we know that feudalism died out, so we're inclined to negatively weight a feudalistic society against a monarchy. Historically that is valid. However, if a future feudal society were to emerge so much would have changed that the assumptions for negatively weighting feudalism would no longer be valid - and the model would have no predictive power. It all has to do with subtle interactions between "independent" variables, and the impossibility from separating things like fascism from the other variables like depression in the 30s and 40s.
There's freedom to assemble, and then there is a riot which I touched on in my first post. If riot acts are being used to disperse legal protests, then that is an entirely different manner. However, when someone throws a rock or a bottle, it ceases to be a legal protest (especially if the police can't get to the individual who threw the object due to the size of the crowd.)
While overthrowing a corrupt government might (in most cases) require non-peaceful means - if that is your goal, you can't really be surprised that the police aren't going to stand by and watch.