Science and empiricism are not passed genetically. Most of the smartest people I know well were raised in restrictive, conservative, and quite frankly stupid families.
Social Darwinism and other misused applications of evolution are possibly the most dangerous ideas to surface in the last couple centuries. Don't support ignorant and dangerous ideas, even on a superficial, sarcastic level.
Percent below poverty level and income per capita--fascinating, but do these account for the fact that the cost of living in Alabama is amongst the LOWEST in the nation?
Yes, poverty level takes into account cost of living.
I can sit here and go through every single statistic posted and point out the flaws in it, but I shouldn't have to-- I thought you sophisticated, educated, and intelligent Northern and West Coast folks were supposed to know that there are "lies, damn lies, and statistics"?
I don't know why you think I'm ragging on Alabama, I've been there and it's mostly good, especially when compared to neighboring states. You have some excellent schools and some beautiful land. I wasn't there for long but the people seemed very friendly. But statistically it is significantly poorer, less educated, and less healthy than most states, which is common for the Deep South. For example, from the original poster, Alabama ranks #1 in diabetes cases per capita, #7 in obestity, and 46th in the percentage of people that have bachelor's degrees. Those are facts, whether or not you want to recognize them. There's no massaging statistics, those are simple numerical measurements. If you would like to point out the flaws in any of those statistics I am more than happy to listen.
And for the record, not that it should matter at all, I'm from Colorado. If you don't think there's a difference between a 14% obesity rate and 24% obesity rate, or 8.9% of the population having diabetes vs. 4.9%, or having 9 deaths per 1,000 births vs. 6, or having 36% of the population with bachelor or better degrees vs. 22% you're absolutely insane. Those are massive differences.
Exactly. Instead of pushing people into post-secondary who don't really need or want it, why don't we work on improving our absolutely terrible, horrible, god-awful secondary school system. Our post-secondary system is (IMHO) the best in the world, and we don't need to dilute that and destroy it. What we need to do is make sure that people get the basic education that they need from 7-12th grade. Our secondary school system needs to change dramatically. People that aren't interested in academics drop out early because there's nothing more for them that they want to learn (when they could at the very least be learning a trade), while the smartest get held back by mediocre students. It's a one-size-fits-all mentality that doesn't really work.
You need to look at the rates there genius, not the overall number. Of course California is going to be higher than all the others, they have more people! In rape, gonorrhea, suicides, AIDS cases, syphilis, HIV deaths, and new AIDS cases California ranks middle-of-the-pack to near the top when you look at the per capita rates. Other than motor vehicle theft (California has by far the most vehicles per capita so no surprise there) I couldn't find the other stats so I don't know. But if you're honestly arguing that the deep south doesn't have a problem with health and education, you're crazy. And for the record I don't live in California, and in general I really dislike California.
Of course, I'm not doing any of those things--I'm posting on Slashdot--but that's not the point.
When I have lived in cities, I felt about the same way you did. It felt good to know there's 50 different bars and clubs I could go to within a few miles, but I never actually did go to more than a few. Where I live now (middle of nowhere, population ~15k) I really have about the same habits I did in the city. The difference being now I have tons of outdoor recreation that was out of my reach in the city. And I use that regularly. For the occasional concert I really want to see or sporting event, etc. I can drive a few hours. With the internet you can really stay connected to most of the cultural happenings in the world. It really is just a lifestyle choice. If it's a decent town, I imagine for most people the difference would be pretty superficial.
No, this is a sale. They're trying to get rid of old inventory that's no longer selling well. It's only considered predatory pricing if you successfully drive a competitor out and then raise the prices. The Zune would actually have to be beating the iPod for anything remotely resembling predatory pricing to occur.
I'm not sure what makes people think that in a city of 30 or 50k that there isn't a lot of diversity of opinions. I always find it much easier to avoid people I don't like in cities. The neighborhoods are all more or less divided on race and income. Most people try as hard as possible to live in neighborhoods with people that share the same culture and ideas as them. I'm speaking mostly about Western and Midwestern cities because that's my experience. I'm sure New York is probably different just because of the sheer amount of people packed into such a small space, but in most US cities I've been to, people are more apt to surround themselves with similar thinking people than in the country, because in the country you don't really have the ghettos you have in large cities. If there are only a couple grocery stores, *everybody* shops there. If there is only one school, *all the kids* go to school there.
But anyway, as I said YMMV. Your arguments make sense, I just have a problem with people who think anybody living outside of NY, San Fran, and Chicago (or any number of cities you want to list) is a complete moron. If anybody honestly believes that they need to pull their head out of their ass and get out more. Disagreeing with somebody politically or philosophically doesn't make the other person an inbred cretin.
I am so goddamn sick of seeing tripe like this being moderated up when it was recognized correctly in the GP as the shit it is. I have a couple points to debunk your arrogant asshole elitisim:
1) You seem to be making the assumption that everyone in urban areas are intelligent. Really? You are going to tell me with a straight face that your average blue collar worker in NY is any smarter than a farmer in Iowa? Bullshit. Maybe if you only look at urban professionals you might be on to something, but in my experience the most ignorant and idiotic people I've ever met have been born and rised in inner cities. YMMV.
2) You make the assumption that there is something innate to being from New York or San Francisco that makes you smarter. But a huge percentage of those urbanites who are intelligent and well-educated are emigrants who were raised and educated by the "uneducated white trash, eating, drinking, sleeping, and living the Bible, the small print on Wal-Mart labels, and little else." The intelligent, educated people move to the big cities because, well, they're big cities. That's where the most opportunity lies.
But no, you're right, everyone that lives a different lifestyle or has different beliefs than you does so because they're stupid and uneducated. I can totally see where you're coming from. You're very deep and insightful.
Both you and the ID'er are both about 1600 years behind the times on this argument. St. Augustine wrote that evil is not something in itself, but simply an absence of God's goodness. For example, you wouldn't say darkness exists as an actual physical property, it's simply an absence of light. So instead of having good and evil, you really have good and "less good".
Don't try and point out gaps in the logic of serious theology. You may be able to make uneducated people look like idiots, but the religious system itself is more or less flawless. The smartest people in the Western world have been working on ironing out any logical inconsistencies for the better part of two millennia.
That's why it's extremely important to point out the difference in what is logically correct, and what has been proven empirically. That's the true basis for the scientific system. You can't disprove a religion. If you could, they would be relics of the past.
If this trend continues, the entire argument against hyper-violent games will be moot, because they will be relegated to the niche market of 17+-year-old males. The younger kids don't seem to care any more. And that's the way it should be.
That's like saying hyper-violent movies won't exist anymore because Bee Movie or Ratatouille is the top grossing movie on any given weekend. Remember, the generation that enjoys extremely violent video games now is the same generation that made Super Mario 3 the highest selling game in history. And even if the market is restricted to males ages 17-30, that's pretty much the most coveted demographic for any entertainment product. It's hardly a niche. Your argument doesn't hold any water.
Distance isn't the only factor. It also matters how many stops you have between the two. The NE corridor will be the first to adopt high speed trains (they already have to a very small extent) because there are several large cities in a relatively small area. But the west coast will never happen unless *heavily* subsidized. I mean heavily even by world standards, not just US.
For example, LA-San Fran is about the same as Paris-Frankfurt, except the area between Paris and Frankfurt is densely populated. Between LA and San Francisco is a lot of farmland and practically nothing else. San Francisco to Seattle is longer than Paris-Berlin with only one large city in between and nearly uninhabited land most other places. Same thing with New York-Chicago. And even in the Northeast population density is much lower than equivalent sized cities in Europe.
IMO, outside of Boston-DC the only possibility for high speed train will be among cities that are relatively close such as San Diego-LA, Chicago-Milwaukee, Seattle-Vancouver,etc.
It wouldn't entirely surprise me to one day see a San Diego-San Fran or Chicago-NY high speed route in my lifetime, but I'm not exactly holding my breath. Even with significant government support (something Americans are nowhere near ready to give) it's still a sketchy proposal.
And it's not just the US. Canada is a lot more supportive of government programs such as the ones that would be needed to build a high speed rail service. If I see a Toronto-Montreal high speed train before Boston-Washington I'll stand corrected, but I'm pretty sure it's not *just* a problem with the government and mindset of the people.
One thing you forget is those comments about the iPod were pretty accurate. The first gen iPod wasn't very good, even when compared against other players of the day. But it was good enough to get early adopters and Apple kept improving the hardware and software until it slowly turned into the machine we know today. Amazon got to the market first, so if they keep improving and manage the product as well as Apple did I predict the same type of success. But that doesn't mean the comments aren't accurate.
The "e" part only takes out one tiny slice of the cost...the actual printing...which is pretty small over a large enough production.
Also the distribution costs and markups by however many more middlemen there are in physical distribution vs. digital. You could also sell it at a lower margin because you don't have to have huge warehouses and workers staffing those warehouses. It's not inconceivable that a digital book could sell for 75% the price of a physical copy and still turn a profit.
Next to that, people have no incentive to use Linux at all.
You're forgetting what's so special about OSS. It's completely free. "Linux" isn't trying to compete with anybody. People that contribute to OSS do so because they want software to do what they want it to do without any restrictions.
By definition, as long as people are developing for Linux people will be using Linux. Who cares how many people run proprietary OSes as long as Linux does what the people who write it want it to do. That's really the whole point, isn't it?
What about numerous UFO observations, Loch Ness etc? are you suggestion those should be regarded as proof of existence since there have been numerous observations and murky photographs?
Those are different in that it's usually one person alone, and can be accounted for by other effects.
Rogue waves are much different. Most ships on the open ocean have large crews. Even if it's only four or five people that's enough to move it out of the "crackpot with severe mental issues" category. And these are/were reported *constantly*. We're talking multiple ships in multiple places of the world at a pretty steady pace. That's enough that people should consider the possibility *something* is going on and adjust their experiments to try and find that something instead of blindly dismissing it as a myth.
Yes, science works by being skeptical, but it also works by assuming anything that hasn't been disproven is possible. It's easy to get in a position of being too skeptical, just because most theories are false. But it's just as vital to science that we keep an open mind and not dismiss something as impossible that hasn't been disproven. Call it the Carl Sagan principle.
It would be a more accurate statement that cannabis is genetically disposed to pleasing humans. Millennia of cultivation have made the most human-friendly properties of the plant (including intoxication) more potent while minimizing the less helpful properties.
The Maya hadn't died out. Quite the contrary, there were (and are) huge populations of Mayan people in Yucatan and Guatemala. They just weren't the dominant civilization at the time the Spanish arrived. There were probably about a million "Mayans" (exact numbers being impossible to come by for many reasons) while Central Mexico may have had as many as 25 million people (most estimates put it in the 10-15 million range).
More likely what will happen is either a marginal candidate for one of the main parties or an independent candidate will end up getting a large enough amount of the vote that it will scare the mainstream part of the parties. They will then co-op parts of the other candidate's platform. You could see this with the Republicans after Ross Perot and to a much smaller extent the Democrats after Ralph Nader. Once it gets closer to election time, you may also see the Republican candidate come out gunning for the current administration as well.
What the hell do you do about it? Like the United Kingdom [1] you have a first-past-the-post system of electing government. What this means is that you have two parties who exchange power at regular intervals with very little prospect of a third, forth or fifth party getting in to the running.
In my view, this is no improvement whatsoever on the aristocratic feudal system that the whole American enterprise was meant to fix. In the United Kingdom the Catholic aristocracy and the Protestant aristocracy fought for political supremacy down a number of centuries.
[1] - I want to preface it with this comment with this - our country is no better and everything I say here can be said of the United Kingdom.
If you don't know very much about the history of the US, you may think this is an accident. It's not. Basically the American government was created as an extension of the English-style government. There really was no intention to "fix" the aristocratic nature of government. They thought the English system was the best in the world. Other than federalism[1] the US has the same basic governmental system as England circa 1776 but with a greater legal guarantee of civil rights.
The president = the king, the house of representatives = the house of commons, the senate = the house of lords, very similar judiciary, etc. If you keep that in mind, it's really no surprise that the US and UK have very similar political climates, they basically arise out of the same system.
[1] Federalism is obviously an important difference between the two. In this conversation I don't think it's relevant, however, since the federal government has grown in power over the years and people outside the US (and a surprising amount inside) see the US federal gov't as being synonymous with all government in the US.
It's not that people are stupid, it's just that they're written off.
No, there really are stupid people in the world. I don't really know why I would have to point that out. And as the OP pointed out, jobs are getting more complex while automation is driving out the bottom whatever % of people who simply don't have the skills to compete in a modern economy. Those are facts.
So instead of Godwinning the thread like a douchebag because what he said might be non-PC, why not add to the conversation? This is a real problem. And it's not like he was suggesting eugenics as the best idea. But what do we do with people who, for whatever reason, can't really contribute in a society?
Common decency is not as common as you think. That's why we have international law, because people from different cultures have *gasp* different laws and ideas of what is common courtesy.
I don't know, you're now seeing a lot of bands do the exact opposite of what you describe. They make their name on an indy label and the internet, then proceed to get a much better deal from the record company to break into the mainstream (example off the top of my head being Arcade Fire). And in the UK bands like Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs et al were household names without ever signing a major label deal. So while your argument makes logical sense, I think recent examples have shown that artists can gain large numbers of fans without record companies pushing them.
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Science and empiricism are not passed genetically. Most of the smartest people I know well were raised in restrictive, conservative, and quite frankly stupid families.
Social Darwinism and other misused applications of evolution are possibly the most dangerous ideas to surface in the last couple centuries. Don't support ignorant and dangerous ideas, even on a superficial, sarcastic level.
Yes, poverty level takes into account cost of living.
I don't know why you think I'm ragging on Alabama, I've been there and it's mostly good, especially when compared to neighboring states. You have some excellent schools and some beautiful land. I wasn't there for long but the people seemed very friendly. But statistically it is significantly poorer, less educated, and less healthy than most states, which is common for the Deep South. For example, from the original poster, Alabama ranks #1 in diabetes cases per capita, #7 in obestity, and 46th in the percentage of people that have bachelor's degrees. Those are facts, whether or not you want to recognize them. There's no massaging statistics, those are simple numerical measurements. If you would like to point out the flaws in any of those statistics I am more than happy to listen.
And for the record, not that it should matter at all, I'm from Colorado. If you don't think there's a difference between a 14% obesity rate and 24% obesity rate, or 8.9% of the population having diabetes vs. 4.9%, or having 9 deaths per 1,000 births vs. 6, or having 36% of the population with bachelor or better degrees vs. 22% you're absolutely insane. Those are massive differences.
Exactly. Instead of pushing people into post-secondary who don't really need or want it, why don't we work on improving our absolutely terrible, horrible, god-awful secondary school system. Our post-secondary system is (IMHO) the best in the world, and we don't need to dilute that and destroy it. What we need to do is make sure that people get the basic education that they need from 7-12th grade. Our secondary school system needs to change dramatically. People that aren't interested in academics drop out early because there's nothing more for them that they want to learn (when they could at the very least be learning a trade), while the smartest get held back by mediocre students. It's a one-size-fits-all mentality that doesn't really work.
You need to look at the rates there genius, not the overall number. Of course California is going to be higher than all the others, they have more people! In rape, gonorrhea, suicides, AIDS cases, syphilis, HIV deaths, and new AIDS cases California ranks middle-of-the-pack to near the top when you look at the per capita rates. Other than motor vehicle theft (California has by far the most vehicles per capita so no surprise there) I couldn't find the other stats so I don't know. But if you're honestly arguing that the deep south doesn't have a problem with health and education, you're crazy. And for the record I don't live in California, and in general I really dislike California.
When I have lived in cities, I felt about the same way you did. It felt good to know there's 50 different bars and clubs I could go to within a few miles, but I never actually did go to more than a few. Where I live now (middle of nowhere, population ~15k) I really have about the same habits I did in the city. The difference being now I have tons of outdoor recreation that was out of my reach in the city. And I use that regularly. For the occasional concert I really want to see or sporting event, etc. I can drive a few hours. With the internet you can really stay connected to most of the cultural happenings in the world. It really is just a lifestyle choice. If it's a decent town, I imagine for most people the difference would be pretty superficial.
No, this is a sale. They're trying to get rid of old inventory that's no longer selling well. It's only considered predatory pricing if you successfully drive a competitor out and then raise the prices. The Zune would actually have to be beating the iPod for anything remotely resembling predatory pricing to occur.
I'm not sure what makes people think that in a city of 30 or 50k that there isn't a lot of diversity of opinions. I always find it much easier to avoid people I don't like in cities. The neighborhoods are all more or less divided on race and income. Most people try as hard as possible to live in neighborhoods with people that share the same culture and ideas as them. I'm speaking mostly about Western and Midwestern cities because that's my experience. I'm sure New York is probably different just because of the sheer amount of people packed into such a small space, but in most US cities I've been to, people are more apt to surround themselves with similar thinking people than in the country, because in the country you don't really have the ghettos you have in large cities. If there are only a couple grocery stores, *everybody* shops there. If there is only one school, *all the kids* go to school there.
But anyway, as I said YMMV. Your arguments make sense, I just have a problem with people who think anybody living outside of NY, San Fran, and Chicago (or any number of cities you want to list) is a complete moron. If anybody honestly believes that they need to pull their head out of their ass and get out more. Disagreeing with somebody politically or philosophically doesn't make the other person an inbred cretin.
I am so goddamn sick of seeing tripe like this being moderated up when it was recognized correctly in the GP as the shit it is. I have a couple points to debunk your arrogant asshole elitisim:
1) You seem to be making the assumption that everyone in urban areas are intelligent. Really? You are going to tell me with a straight face that your average blue collar worker in NY is any smarter than a farmer in Iowa? Bullshit. Maybe if you only look at urban professionals you might be on to something, but in my experience the most ignorant and idiotic people I've ever met have been born and rised in inner cities. YMMV.
2) You make the assumption that there is something innate to being from New York or San Francisco that makes you smarter. But a huge percentage of those urbanites who are intelligent and well-educated are emigrants who were raised and educated by the "uneducated white trash, eating, drinking, sleeping, and living the Bible, the small print on Wal-Mart labels, and little else." The intelligent, educated people move to the big cities because, well, they're big cities. That's where the most opportunity lies.
But no, you're right, everyone that lives a different lifestyle or has different beliefs than you does so because they're stupid and uneducated. I can totally see where you're coming from. You're very deep and insightful.
Fuck you.
Both you and the ID'er are both about 1600 years behind the times on this argument. St. Augustine wrote that evil is not something in itself, but simply an absence of God's goodness. For example, you wouldn't say darkness exists as an actual physical property, it's simply an absence of light. So instead of having good and evil, you really have good and "less good".
Don't try and point out gaps in the logic of serious theology. You may be able to make uneducated people look like idiots, but the religious system itself is more or less flawless. The smartest people in the Western world have been working on ironing out any logical inconsistencies for the better part of two millennia.
That's why it's extremely important to point out the difference in what is logically correct, and what has been proven empirically. That's the true basis for the scientific system. You can't disprove a religion. If you could, they would be relics of the past.
That's like saying hyper-violent movies won't exist anymore because Bee Movie or Ratatouille is the top grossing movie on any given weekend. Remember, the generation that enjoys extremely violent video games now is the same generation that made Super Mario 3 the highest selling game in history. And even if the market is restricted to males ages 17-30, that's pretty much the most coveted demographic for any entertainment product. It's hardly a niche. Your argument doesn't hold any water.
Distance isn't the only factor. It also matters how many stops you have between the two. The NE corridor will be the first to adopt high speed trains (they already have to a very small extent) because there are several large cities in a relatively small area. But the west coast will never happen unless *heavily* subsidized. I mean heavily even by world standards, not just US.
For example, LA-San Fran is about the same as Paris-Frankfurt, except the area between Paris and Frankfurt is densely populated. Between LA and San Francisco is a lot of farmland and practically nothing else. San Francisco to Seattle is longer than Paris-Berlin with only one large city in between and nearly uninhabited land most other places. Same thing with New York-Chicago. And even in the Northeast population density is much lower than equivalent sized cities in Europe.
IMO, outside of Boston-DC the only possibility for high speed train will be among cities that are relatively close such as San Diego-LA, Chicago-Milwaukee, Seattle-Vancouver,etc.
It wouldn't entirely surprise me to one day see a San Diego-San Fran or Chicago-NY high speed route in my lifetime, but I'm not exactly holding my breath. Even with significant government support (something Americans are nowhere near ready to give) it's still a sketchy proposal.
And it's not just the US. Canada is a lot more supportive of government programs such as the ones that would be needed to build a high speed rail service. If I see a Toronto-Montreal high speed train before Boston-Washington I'll stand corrected, but I'm pretty sure it's not *just* a problem with the government and mindset of the people.
One thing you forget is those comments about the iPod were pretty accurate. The first gen iPod wasn't very good, even when compared against other players of the day. But it was good enough to get early adopters and Apple kept improving the hardware and software until it slowly turned into the machine we know today. Amazon got to the market first, so if they keep improving and manage the product as well as Apple did I predict the same type of success. But that doesn't mean the comments aren't accurate.
Also the distribution costs and markups by however many more middlemen there are in physical distribution vs. digital. You could also sell it at a lower margin because you don't have to have huge warehouses and workers staffing those warehouses. It's not inconceivable that a digital book could sell for 75% the price of a physical copy and still turn a profit.
You're forgetting what's so special about OSS. It's completely free. "Linux" isn't trying to compete with anybody. People that contribute to OSS do so because they want software to do what they want it to do without any restrictions.
By definition, as long as people are developing for Linux people will be using Linux. Who cares how many people run proprietary OSes as long as Linux does what the people who write it want it to do. That's really the whole point, isn't it?
Those are different in that it's usually one person alone, and can be accounted for by other effects.
Rogue waves are much different. Most ships on the open ocean have large crews. Even if it's only four or five people that's enough to move it out of the "crackpot with severe mental issues" category. And these are/were reported *constantly*. We're talking multiple ships in multiple places of the world at a pretty steady pace. That's enough that people should consider the possibility *something* is going on and adjust their experiments to try and find that something instead of blindly dismissing it as a myth.
Yes, science works by being skeptical, but it also works by assuming anything that hasn't been disproven is possible. It's easy to get in a position of being too skeptical, just because most theories are false. But it's just as vital to science that we keep an open mind and not dismiss something as impossible that hasn't been disproven. Call it the Carl Sagan principle.
It would be a more accurate statement that cannabis is genetically disposed to pleasing humans. Millennia of cultivation have made the most human-friendly properties of the plant (including intoxication) more potent while minimizing the less helpful properties.
The Maya hadn't died out. Quite the contrary, there were (and are) huge populations of Mayan people in Yucatan and Guatemala. They just weren't the dominant civilization at the time the Spanish arrived. There were probably about a million "Mayans" (exact numbers being impossible to come by for many reasons) while Central Mexico may have had as many as 25 million people (most estimates put it in the 10-15 million range).
It's not anywhere near half, but your point still stands.
More likely what will happen is either a marginal candidate for one of the main parties or an independent candidate will end up getting a large enough amount of the vote that it will scare the mainstream part of the parties. They will then co-op parts of the other candidate's platform. You could see this with the Republicans after Ross Perot and to a much smaller extent the Democrats after Ralph Nader. Once it gets closer to election time, you may also see the Republican candidate come out gunning for the current administration as well.
You might want to check your logic. Ron Paul is a Republican.
If you don't know very much about the history of the US, you may think this is an accident. It's not. Basically the American government was created as an extension of the English-style government. There really was no intention to "fix" the aristocratic nature of government. They thought the English system was the best in the world. Other than federalism[1] the US has the same basic governmental system as England circa 1776 but with a greater legal guarantee of civil rights.
The president = the king, the house of representatives = the house of commons, the senate = the house of lords, very similar judiciary, etc. If you keep that in mind, it's really no surprise that the US and UK have very similar political climates, they basically arise out of the same system.
[1] Federalism is obviously an important difference between the two. In this conversation I don't think it's relevant, however, since the federal government has grown in power over the years and people outside the US (and a surprising amount inside) see the US federal gov't as being synonymous with all government in the US.
How to get rid of chlamydia.
No, there really are stupid people in the world. I don't really know why I would have to point that out. And as the OP pointed out, jobs are getting more complex while automation is driving out the bottom whatever % of people who simply don't have the skills to compete in a modern economy. Those are facts.
So instead of Godwinning the thread like a douchebag because what he said might be non-PC, why not add to the conversation? This is a real problem. And it's not like he was suggesting eugenics as the best idea. But what do we do with people who, for whatever reason, can't really contribute in a society?
Common decency is not as common as you think. That's why we have international law, because people from different cultures have *gasp* different laws and ideas of what is common courtesy.
I don't know, you're now seeing a lot of bands do the exact opposite of what you describe. They make their name on an indy label and the internet, then proceed to get a much better deal from the record company to break into the mainstream (example off the top of my head being Arcade Fire). And in the UK bands like Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs et al were household names without ever signing a major label deal. So while your argument makes logical sense, I think recent examples have shown that artists can gain large numbers of fans without record companies pushing them.