Those are all challenges, but not ones that can't be overcome. How many of your wive's relatives can you honestly say have worked hard and made solid choices all their lives? I'm guessing very, very few and that you haven't invested a lot of your personal wealth and advantages in helping them out - because you know that it would be a bad gamble.
If we have absolutely no ability to foresee the future then why are we retraining these cold miners at all? It's just as likely that coal will come back in a big way in a few years and we'll regret that all the coal miners are sitting behind desks writing apps.
I'm not asking you to defend it, just saying that your criticism of it (or call it an observation, if you will) is unfounded. The "good samaritan" exclusion is irrelevant to the conversation, in fact the whole tangent about open software being "free" says nothing about whether software should be regulated like medical care.
You could make people liable for their free code just as we do for doctors. You would make it illegal for non certified people to offer code (free or otherwise) and you would sue them for their mistakes.
That is not to say that we should do that, but it's not crazy. We've made the choice that we don't want random people offering medical care, even if it often is better off than the care some people are getting today (in rural areas underrepresented by doctors and hospitals, e.g.).
I think your definition of doctor is narrower than your definition of programmer. Some doctors can cause great harm to a very large number of people, perhaps by giving bad advice (vaccines cause autism!), faking or doing a poor ass job in a study, creating poor hospital procedures (save time by not washing hands!),....
I'm not sure laws need to govern SSL, except perhaps for government use. Or perhaps only in the form of consumer protection, holding companies who are vulnerable liable, which will then make them more careful about where they get their software from.
I think it's a little more accurate to say that we have millions of people with skills that were marketable when they started working but over their career lifetime those skills no longer became useful.
That's not more accurate, the end result is the same.
I really do feel bad for these people because they didn't do anything "wrong" - the economy shifted under their feet and the profession that they expected to spend their lives in just happened to disappear.
These are not, for the most part, sudden changes. A 50 year old coal miner should have been able to see at age 20 that the industry was fragile and in decline, even if fracking accelerated the pace (which is debatable). That 20 yo made the easy, thoughtless decision at the time and now is paying the consequences. It's human to do so and we can certainly feel compassion for people who make bad choices, but let's not pretend they were blameless.
It's also not quite fair to say they are "mostly untrainable" but there is definitely a limited subset of things that you can be retrained for with a high school education and a professional lifetime spent in blue collar jobs.
If they were the kind of people who had the discipline and motivation to train for other jobs they wouldn't be stuck in the dead end job they have (or out of work for years). I think that's what he meant and I agree with him.
The US economy - like that of most advanced industrial nations - has shifted over the last several decades to outsourcing blue collar jobs and increasingly retaining onshore only "knowledge worker" and white collar roles. And many of these people are not educationally (or potentially mentally) suited to the jobs that are still here, which puts a premium on figuring out "what are the still extant jobs that they can be retrained for?" To Bloomberg's point, that is a hard question and the technology industry is not a panacea.
Nobody believes the technology industry is a panacea, although it's good for a sound bite. Also nobody believes every 50 yo coal miner can become a hotshot programmer. However, the technological jobs do provide a solution, even if it is imperfect. Some coal miners will retire, some will continue on in a declining market until retirement, some will move to other relatively mindless jobs, some will become cable repairmen or prison guards or work in construction , or any of the millions of jobs that don't require higher math and coding skills....
You don't have to envision a black faced coal miner writing apps. But certainly you can imagine the guy who installed your home theater or the guy who appraised your house being a competent programmer, which then makes those jobs open for ex coal miners.
Let's assume that's all true. What does that have to do with your "good samaritan" example? A doctor can't just offer free surgery with no "warranty" and be completely absolved of responsibility for any mistakes.
It would help if you didn't conveniently quote. =)
I conveniently quoted the specific lines I had issue with. If people want context the original post is conveniently linked right to it.
I never inferred that erroneus' comments were racist or discriminatory; simply that he presents his comments as a known truth. Just like the poster after him who was keen to toss out "AHA! RACISM!"
Those lines quoted do indeed imply that the original poster was racist and/or stereotyping all black (or deaf) people. Otherwise your quote makes no sense, again "all Blacks/African Americans do not think alike". Why bother saying that if you don't think that was the implication of the post you responded to?
I also note that there are commonalities, but those commonalities do not lead all those others would consider to be a member of said group into groupthink (that would be me admitting certain (read ALL) groups or cultures have commonalities).
It's kind of hard to get your meaning from this, but at face value it's empty political correctness. Of course, ALL groups have commonalities (within that group), that's kind of what makes them a group. If you're implying that ALL groups have the same commonalities then that just doesn't make any sense. Perhaps you want to restate this paragraph.
My point? Avoid doing it altogether (conveniently grouping).
Why? Ignoring the facts (in the form of statistics, in this case) does no good. Perhaps some, if not most, of the commonalities are trivial, but some represent serious problems that should be understood and addressed. In this case the assertion that both black ghetto culture limits self improvement is a topic of interest even if you disagree with it.
For one, not being able to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions is a huge benefit of the new plan. You may not see that now if you and your family do not have such a condition, but then you have just been lucky so far and underpaying in years past. To pay for this very important provision every healthy person must pay somewhat more and at some point you or your children will likely see the benefits of it.
I can tell you first hand all Blacks/African Americans do not think alike although we may for the most part have similar societal experiences in the US....
Do all white people think alike? Or all scientists or all...
Of course not. You're not saying anything here that isn't completely obvious. What you fail to recognize or admit is that, like the poster said, certain groups or cultures (or whatever) DO have statistical commonalities. It is certainly not racist or discriminatory to identify or even talk about such things; it only becomes so when you assume an individual must be exactly like the average member of the group he belongs to.
You don't have to stop voting or donating, you just have to stop doing it for the wrong causes. If you're on the right side, e.g. against Prop 8, you should be proud to stand up for your position, even if it means you won't get to run the NRA or be CEO of Hobby Lobby 20 years from now.
You are grossly misinterpreting what he said, showing a basic lack of understanding in logic. He never, ever said anything like replace 4 way stops with yield signs and they are equivalent. You might want to re-check the context and see that it's about roundabouts and roundabouts do not have the problems which you felt the need to go into oh so much detail about. (Not that the problems you mentioned don't have other solutions, just that they are irrelevant).
Another way to say what he meant is "if Americans understood and followed the yield to right principle they would have roundabouts instead of 4 way stops." That may or may not be true, but it is nothing like what your interpretation (and irrelevant rebuttal).
Clearly, my "false" was negating your "false", which I've demonstrated makes it quite correct. You could have also said "False. The sky is blue." and my "false" would still be just as appropriate. Making an irrelevant statement of fact after an incorrect statement doesn't magically make that prior incorrect statement any more true.
Do you have any understanding of how a roundabout works? Have you ever driven through one? It doesn't appear so.
Yes, the poster your responded to was wrong, but you go too far.
His poor timing shouldn't affect you or any other reasonable driver much at all. As you say, you would slow down (perhaps by a second) and that delay would be constant for every other timed light in the sequence. I have no sympathy for the drivers who you say need to decelerate and accelerate because of this guy as they are equally clueless as the jackrabbit.
The same principle applies to idiots on the freeway who tailgate and then have to brake/accelerate constantly to adjust to minor changes in the speed of the car in front of them. Just stay an extra second behind the second guy and it's no longer a problem (other than that you have to pay slightly more attention).
Your emotional and deeply flawed statistical interpretation of the facts is exactly why there needs to be more civilian oversight and officers held accountable for their actions at every interaction, not just like this one which goes tragically wrong.
Your kind of analysis also makes it "rational" to pull out your gun every time you encounter a black man on the street. Statistically, they are more likely to be criminals, so why take the risk?
Officers get shot at "fairly often"? Considering the millions of traffic stops it is a very small percentage, perhaps shooting first is not the best option in all cases.
If you think that old guy was moving "quite easily" you are certainly not anyone I would like to see carrying a gun. He had a difficult time just opening the door. At best, you might think he was really drunk, but that is also not a reason to shoot someone.
If you're unsure, then get back in the car, or maybe hide behind the door. This officer made a tragic mistake that was fortunately not fatal. In his defense the mistake was mostly not because he was a poor human being, just an average human being who was trained improperly (i.e. trained to shoot first).
This kind of tortured reasoning and hyperbole really diminishes what could have been a valid and informed complaint against the policy. It is absurd to claim that this will not reduce police misconduct without introducing some new causative factors.
Of course there will still be some police misconduct. Some officers will fail to turn on their cameras and some videos will mysteriously disappear. But when that happens it will take some combination of premeditation and conspiracy - which makes it far easier to detect patterns and account for than previously. At the very least, in those cases of abuse it will also make it far more likely that the victim will not suffer further penalty, by being falsely convicted.
You just said they could easily replace those $100k earners with cheaper employees, so why collude? Just go straight for that $90k worker from Idaho or that $60k worker from Bangalore, right? Unless your assumption were wrong, of course. Which it is.
Let's be clear that healthcare and health insurance are two very different things. I think you were conflating the two (as does the OP).
The OP is all hyped up about the insanity of having to pay tax on something that he doesn't use, and you echo that sentiment. First off, as part of society we pay taxes for things that we don't use all the time, whether it's national parks, schools, fire department,.... An a la carte system would be insane and untenable and no one in the world does it that way.
But he goes further (and again you seem to agree) to talk about paying for not using something. Do you see the difference between paying for something you don't use and paying for not using it? That's a critical difference. For example, everyone pays a little in tax (indirectly) to subsidize beef production, but nobody is paying for not eating at McDonald's. There is no special vegan tax, but if you're vegan you still pay to support something you don't use. Whether you agree with individual policies or not, this is the only practical method of taxation.
However, for the narrow view of the grid and healthcare that you mention they are equivalent, but that doesn't demonstrate the OPs point (or yours, I think) - just the opposite. You would never pay tax for not using the grid or for not using healthcare. What you pay tax for (now for healthcare and in the future for the grid) is insurance, access to those services when you need it. You may not be using the services now, but as you say everyone will eventually so it is fair to ask them to chip in.
As another poster said, if you were willing to sign an opt out form saying that you will never ask for public healthcare (or have access to the grid) then it's quite fair to let you do so. Otherwise you're just a free rider.
What in Jupiter's name are you talking about? Where do people get taxed for not going to school? I'm sure you can find a minor counter-example that does make sense, but this is most certainly not it.
Obamacare doesn't tax you for not using healthcare, they tax you for having health insurance and thus being unable to pay for the healthcare you will eventually need (and use). Likewise, Social Security isn't a tax for not being old yet.
How are you going to fit all of your belongings into a Tesla, anyway. Your fallacy is in assuming that one car is going to fulfill all of your needs, which is ridiculous. You own the car that optimizes for the vast majority of the time you use it, you don't get a pickup truck or a van (or a gasoline powered car) for the 1 time every 3 years that you need it. In the rare case that you relocate across country you spend the $1k to ship your Tesla, rather than waste $5k per year on gas just so you have that option.
Slashdot Mirror
Those are all challenges, but not ones that can't be overcome. How many of your wive's relatives can you honestly say have worked hard and made solid choices all their lives? I'm guessing very, very few and that you haven't invested a lot of your personal wealth and advantages in helping them out - because you know that it would be a bad gamble.
If we have absolutely no ability to foresee the future then why are we retraining these cold miners at all? It's just as likely that coal will come back in a big way in a few years and we'll regret that all the coal miners are sitting behind desks writing apps.
I'm not asking you to defend it, just saying that your criticism of it (or call it an observation, if you will) is unfounded. The "good samaritan" exclusion is irrelevant to the conversation, in fact the whole tangent about open software being "free" says nothing about whether software should be regulated like medical care.
You could make people liable for their free code just as we do for doctors. You would make it illegal for non certified people to offer code (free or otherwise) and you would sue them for their mistakes.
That is not to say that we should do that, but it's not crazy. We've made the choice that we don't want random people offering medical care, even if it often is better off than the care some people are getting today (in rural areas underrepresented by doctors and hospitals, e.g.).
I think your definition of doctor is narrower than your definition of programmer. Some doctors can cause great harm to a very large number of people, perhaps by giving bad advice (vaccines cause autism!), faking or doing a poor ass job in a study, creating poor hospital procedures (save time by not washing hands!), ....
I'm not sure laws need to govern SSL, except perhaps for government use. Or perhaps only in the form of consumer protection, holding companies who are vulnerable liable, which will then make them more careful about where they get their software from.
You kinda tanked your credibility by not being able to read a complete sentence.
I think it's a little more accurate to say that we have millions of people with skills that were marketable when they started working but over their career lifetime those skills no longer became useful.
That's not more accurate, the end result is the same.
I really do feel bad for these people because they didn't do anything "wrong" - the economy shifted under their feet and the profession that they expected to spend their lives in just happened to disappear.
These are not, for the most part, sudden changes. A 50 year old coal miner should have been able to see at age 20 that the industry was fragile and in decline, even if fracking accelerated the pace (which is debatable). That 20 yo made the easy, thoughtless decision at the time and now is paying the consequences. It's human to do so and we can certainly feel compassion for people who make bad choices, but let's not pretend they were blameless.
It's also not quite fair to say they are "mostly untrainable" but there is definitely a limited subset of things that you can be retrained for with a high school education and a professional lifetime spent in blue collar jobs.
If they were the kind of people who had the discipline and motivation to train for other jobs they wouldn't be stuck in the dead end job they have (or out of work for years). I think that's what he meant and I agree with him.
The US economy - like that of most advanced industrial nations - has shifted over the last several decades to outsourcing blue collar jobs and increasingly retaining onshore only "knowledge worker" and white collar roles. And many of these people are not educationally (or potentially mentally) suited to the jobs that are still here, which puts a premium on figuring out "what are the still extant jobs that they can be retrained for?" To Bloomberg's point, that is a hard question and the technology industry is not a panacea.
Nobody believes the technology industry is a panacea, although it's good for a sound bite. Also nobody believes every 50 yo coal miner can become a hotshot programmer. However, the technological jobs do provide a solution, even if it is imperfect. Some coal miners will retire, some will continue on in a declining market until retirement, some will move to other relatively mindless jobs, some will become cable repairmen or prison guards or work in construction , or any of the millions of jobs that don't require higher math and coding skills....
You don't have to envision a black faced coal miner writing apps. But certainly you can imagine the guy who installed your home theater or the guy who appraised your house being a competent programmer, which then makes those jobs open for ex coal miners.
Let's assume that's all true. What does that have to do with your "good samaritan" example? A doctor can't just offer free surgery with no "warranty" and be completely absolved of responsibility for any mistakes.
That's a terrible analogy. Just being unpaid wouldn't qualify you for good samaritan status. A fair analogy would be either:
1) The doctor is offering free non-emergency surgery (e.g.ACL repair)
or
2) A programmer rushes to fix the Heartbleed bug, but doesn't get it quite right so it is still flawed.
It would help if you didn't conveniently quote. =)
I conveniently quoted the specific lines I had issue with. If people want context the original post is conveniently linked right to it.
I never inferred that erroneus' comments were racist or discriminatory; simply that he presents his comments as a known truth. Just like the poster after him who was keen to toss out "AHA! RACISM!"
Those lines quoted do indeed imply that the original poster was racist and/or stereotyping all black (or deaf) people. Otherwise your quote makes no sense, again "all Blacks/African Americans do not think alike". Why bother saying that if you don't think that was the implication of the post you responded to?
I also note that there are commonalities, but those commonalities do not lead all those others would consider to be a member of said group into groupthink (that would be me admitting certain (read ALL) groups or cultures have commonalities).
It's kind of hard to get your meaning from this, but at face value it's empty political correctness. Of course, ALL groups have commonalities (within that group), that's kind of what makes them a group. If you're implying that ALL groups have the same commonalities then that just doesn't make any sense. Perhaps you want to restate this paragraph.
My point? Avoid doing it altogether (conveniently grouping).
Why? Ignoring the facts (in the form of statistics, in this case) does no good. Perhaps some, if not most, of the commonalities are trivial, but some represent serious problems that should be understood and addressed. In this case the assertion that both black ghetto culture limits self improvement is a topic of interest even if you disagree with it.
For one, not being able to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions is a huge benefit of the new plan. You may not see that now if you and your family do not have such a condition, but then you have just been lucky so far and underpaying in years past. To pay for this very important provision every healthy person must pay somewhat more and at some point you or your children will likely see the benefits of it.
I gather all deaf people do not think alike.
I can tell you first hand all Blacks/African Americans do not think alike although we may for the most part have similar societal experiences in the US....
Do all white people think alike? Or all scientists or all ...
Of course not. You're not saying anything here that isn't completely obvious. What you fail to recognize or admit is that, like the poster said, certain groups or cultures (or whatever) DO have statistical commonalities. It is certainly not racist or discriminatory to identify or even talk about such things; it only becomes so when you assume an individual must be exactly like the average member of the group he belongs to.
You don't have to stop voting or donating, you just have to stop doing it for the wrong causes. If you're on the right side, e.g. against Prop 8, you should be proud to stand up for your position, even if it means you won't get to run the NRA or be CEO of Hobby Lobby 20 years from now.
"Bullshit", successfully called.
You are grossly misinterpreting what he said, showing a basic lack of understanding in logic. He never, ever said anything like replace 4 way stops with yield signs and they are equivalent. You might want to re-check the context and see that it's about roundabouts and roundabouts do not have the problems which you felt the need to go into oh so much detail about. (Not that the problems you mentioned don't have other solutions, just that they are irrelevant).
Another way to say what he meant is "if Americans understood and followed the yield to right principle they would have roundabouts instead of 4 way stops." That may or may not be true, but it is nothing like what your interpretation (and irrelevant rebuttal).
Clearly, my "false" was negating your "false", which I've demonstrated makes it quite correct. You could have also said "False. The sky is blue." and my "false" would still be just as appropriate. Making an irrelevant statement of fact after an incorrect statement doesn't magically make that prior incorrect statement any more true.
Do you have any understanding of how a roundabout works? Have you ever driven through one? It doesn't appear so.
False. 4 way stops do not function as "yield to right".
4 way stops function as a stop regardless of the presence of any other cars. A yield sign does not.
False. That's not what he said.
Yes, the poster your responded to was wrong, but you go too far.
His poor timing shouldn't affect you or any other reasonable driver much at all. As you say, you would slow down (perhaps by a second) and that delay would be constant for every other timed light in the sequence. I have no sympathy for the drivers who you say need to decelerate and accelerate because of this guy as they are equally clueless as the jackrabbit.
The same principle applies to idiots on the freeway who tailgate and then have to brake/accelerate constantly to adjust to minor changes in the speed of the car in front of them. Just stay an extra second behind the second guy and it's no longer a problem (other than that you have to pay slightly more attention).
Your emotional and deeply flawed statistical interpretation of the facts is exactly why there needs to be more civilian oversight and officers held accountable for their actions at every interaction, not just like this one which goes tragically wrong.
Your kind of analysis also makes it "rational" to pull out your gun every time you encounter a black man on the street. Statistically, they are more likely to be criminals, so why take the risk?
Officers get shot at "fairly often"? Considering the millions of traffic stops it is a very small percentage, perhaps shooting first is not the best option in all cases.
If you think that old guy was moving "quite easily" you are certainly not anyone I would like to see carrying a gun. He had a difficult time just opening the door. At best, you might think he was really drunk, but that is also not a reason to shoot someone.
If you're unsure, then get back in the car, or maybe hide behind the door. This officer made a tragic mistake that was fortunately not fatal. In his defense the mistake was mostly not because he was a poor human being, just an average human being who was trained improperly (i.e. trained to shoot first).
This kind of tortured reasoning and hyperbole really diminishes what could have been a valid and informed complaint against the policy. It is absurd to claim that this will not reduce police misconduct without introducing some new causative factors.
Of course there will still be some police misconduct. Some officers will fail to turn on their cameras and some videos will mysteriously disappear. But when that happens it will take some combination of premeditation and conspiracy - which makes it far easier to detect patterns and account for than previously. At the very least, in those cases of abuse it will also make it far more likely that the victim will not suffer further penalty, by being falsely convicted.
You just said they could easily replace those $100k earners with cheaper employees, so why collude? Just go straight for that $90k worker from Idaho or that $60k worker from Bangalore, right? Unless your assumption were wrong, of course. Which it is.
If employees were so easy to replace then they wouldn't have bothered colluding in the first place.
Let's be clear that healthcare and health insurance are two very different things. I think you were conflating the two (as does the OP).
The OP is all hyped up about the insanity of having to pay tax on something that he doesn't use, and you echo that sentiment. First off, as part of society we pay taxes for things that we don't use all the time, whether it's national parks, schools, fire department, .... An a la carte system would be insane and untenable and no one in the world does it that way.
But he goes further (and again you seem to agree) to talk about paying for not using something. Do you see the difference between paying for something you don't use and paying for not using it? That's a critical difference. For example, everyone pays a little in tax (indirectly) to subsidize beef production, but nobody is paying for not eating at McDonald's. There is no special vegan tax, but if you're vegan you still pay to support something you don't use. Whether you agree with individual policies or not, this is the only practical method of taxation.
However, for the narrow view of the grid and healthcare that you mention they are equivalent, but that doesn't demonstrate the OPs point (or yours, I think) - just the opposite. You would never pay tax for not using the grid or for not using healthcare. What you pay tax for (now for healthcare and in the future for the grid) is insurance, access to those services when you need it. You may not be using the services now, but as you say everyone will eventually so it is fair to ask them to chip in.
As another poster said, if you were willing to sign an opt out form saying that you will never ask for public healthcare (or have access to the grid) then it's quite fair to let you do so. Otherwise you're just a free rider.
What in Jupiter's name are you talking about? Where do people get taxed for not going to school? I'm sure you can find a minor counter-example that does make sense, but this is most certainly not it.
Obamacare doesn't tax you for not using healthcare, they tax you for having health insurance and thus being unable to pay for the healthcare you will eventually need (and use). Likewise, Social Security isn't a tax for not being old yet.
How are you going to fit all of your belongings into a Tesla, anyway. Your fallacy is in assuming that one car is going to fulfill all of your needs, which is ridiculous. You own the car that optimizes for the vast majority of the time you use it, you don't get a pickup truck or a van (or a gasoline powered car) for the 1 time every 3 years that you need it. In the rare case that you relocate across country you spend the $1k to ship your Tesla, rather than waste $5k per year on gas just so you have that option.