Awwww.... how cute. Changing the subject, are we? Let me just clarify your position for you: I want a government big enough so that it protects me from people I don't like, but too small to protect those who don't like me from me.
Of course, you'd be the knight in shining armor saving everyone around you, so no one would need to be protected from you. Everything you do would be for the greater good of everyone around you. I'm sure of it.
Congratulations, you can't read, and are using the Federalist papers as a bible. 1) When he's talking about a pure democracy, he's talking about what's commonly known as direct democracy. The Swiss are the closest thing we have to one, and it's still pretty far away from one. When he's talking about a republic, he's talking about what's commonly known as representative democracy. 2) He's acknowledging that it only applies to very small groups of people. Communes have been frequently tried, and most of them don't last all that long. That's why they're not the model for large-scale governments. 3) If you'd read further, you'd realize that the Federalist papers are still worried about factionalism in a representative democracy, and hope that representatives don't band together in a way that mimics the banding together of people in a direct democracy. Guess what happens to people in any situation? They band together. 4) You're quoting someone constructing a theoretical position of government as if it is a reality. In other words, you're no better than priests quoting the bible and pretending that it is literally the truth. The founding fathers were smart and well educated, but they weren't infallible. Merely saying "Constitution!" or "Federalist Papers!" means nothing. All it tells me is that you don't think.
Keep digging that libertarian hole. I haven't found one yet who deserves any respect.
I know that Atlas Shrugged is powerful stuff for a teenage boy dipping his toes into political theory for the first time. Don't be too harsh on yourself when you grow out of that phase.
Wow. You really haven't thought your position through, have you? I mean, at all. And by that, I mean that you really have no idea what a government is, how it comes about, what wars are, what causes them, what law enforcement is, or anything related to how humans operate, collaborate, and build societies. I hope you're somewhere in middle school, and you've just not gotten to that part in your education, because otherwise, that kind of ignorance has to be willful.
And by the way, yes, I am confusing libertarian with communists. They both completely fail in providing workable solutions. The best they have is a partial list of facts.
1) A democracy is where 51% of the people decide the needs and force it on the other 49%
1) That's not what a democracy is. Read up on it. 2) As opposed to a system where a minority decides the needs and forces it on the majority? That's why I find libertarians so adorable. They can identify problems, but are utterly blind as to the alternatives. To quote a famous guy who has seen some systems: "Democracy is the worst government system, except for all the others."
2) Most libertarians support the idea of a police force and law enforcement.
And yet, they utterly fail to comprehend that that is what is behind the the power of the government, and behind any abuse that they perceive. That's why they are so contemptible: their preferences are all diametrically opposed, and they are, for some reason, incapable of understanding that.
It is much easier to control "Boss Hog" in some rural county than it is to control "Hitler" in Europe.
Oh, aren't you cute. Taking your history and sociology lessons from a TV show.
I want unbridled liberty. It is messy, ugly and free
Oh, it sure is. Why don't you move to all those countries with tiny national governments that barely reach outside of the capital? You have complete freedom to do whatever the hell you want. As does everyone else around you. Oh, right, those countries aren't "real" libertarian countries. Just like the USSR, China, Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, North Korea and others weren't and aren't "real" communist countries.
Here's a dirty, little secret of your mantra of " Libertarianism oppose to abuses of power, and only want a government big enough to stop abuses of power." Any government that is big enough to stop abuses of power is big enough to be the root cause of them. The only thing stopping abuses of power are the people who are in power. Libertarians are essentially envisioning a benevolent dictatorship, with its scope limited to personal property. Always forgetting that the only thing you truly own is what you can carry in both hands, running at full tilt. And that it is the biggest gun that controls what else you can call property. Better hope that it is yours, comrade.
The problem is that libertarians always try to make the distinction that they're not anarchists and that they're not like the current government, but they fail to do so in any sort of workable manner. Let's take your example of a standing army for defense.
1) It needs to be funded. 2) It needs to be commanded.
1 requires taxes, an organization to collect it, laws on what is taxed, lawmakers to write those laws, courts to enforce those laws, lawyers to argue court cases, law enforcement officers to enforce court decisions, and it's suddenly government all the way down. We're right back to where we were before.
In order for 2 not to be just a different name for a warlord, the commander in chief needs to be an elected civilian. That means elections, representative bodies, separation of powers, and, well, you get the drift. The founding fathers weren't stupid, and created a pretty good system. That same system is what we have today.
Furthermore, a standing army isn't to deal with local warlords, it is to deal with external threats. A police force is there to deal with local warlord-wannabes who think that the government shouldn't have a monopoly on the use of force, and who think that they are better at running the local community than the elected bodies.
There are two types of libertarians. Those who think that government should be tiny, with everyone being some glorious self-sufficient pioneer in the new world. Those are the ones who should be hanging out in Somalia and Sudan, but don't, because those places a shit holes of failed states. Then there are those who think that government should be smaller, specifically in the areas that tells them that they can't do what they want or to do what they don't want to. All other areas, specifically those that they benefit from, are exactly a-ok. Those are called free-riders, and have been identified as a problem since the dawn of time when it comes to the allocation of resources.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: today's brand of American libertarians are the European communists of old: they identify problems just fine, but are advocating completely unworkable solutions and are willing to shit all over everyone else to implement them.
No, I understood you. I just made my point badly: that the disasters are already happening, and people still deny something's wrong. Civilizations don't collapse, they crumble. Bit by bit.
I noticed that you do not support that statement with any sort of citation. It wouldn't be because it just happens to fit your world view, and you're too lazy to actually look up some statistics, would it?
There's the slight issue of enforcement of tort law. A weak central government that has no teeth will not be able to enforce the decisions by the courts, which means that we're back to citizens enforcing the courts decisions on their own. Or at least, whatever they think the court said...
Unless, of course, you want to argue that the government has an active local law enforcement arm, that is properly funded by taxes, and that the laws are actively debated by an appointed set of representatives to make sure that they reflect the local needs. You know, like a democracy or something.
No. Patently, you're not. You are completely unable to deal with the very real problem of warlords stepping into any power vacuum, and all the abuses that come from that. You just happen to think that a) you'll be the one in power, and b) you'll be the benevolent ruler of your little plot land, happily living in communion with all those around you. Unfortunately for you, every single time a power vacuum happens due to the disintegration of a central state, your theory is put to the test, and it fails absolutely miserably.
But without government they at least won't have a ready-made system available to amplify their offenses and shield them from the consequences.
What you utterly fail to comprehend is that there is always a power center. It can either be one in which the population is invested in and which can be changed without bloodletting, aka a republic of some sort, or it can be one that doesn't. Both will always claim to have some sort of legitimacy - even if for some it is just the barrel of a gun.
We oppose the government specifically because it embodies the systematic abuse of power, and, unlike other criminal organizations, maintains the pretense that its abuses are somehow "legitimate".
You're so adorable. You're main beef with the government is that you don't like its claim to legitimacy, and therefore think it's as bad as actual criminal organizations. Let me guess - white, under 30, never lived in an actual failed state. Probably come from some rich suburb.
Oh, right, the old argument that "if you're truly open and interested in diversity, you'll let me shit all over openness and diversity, including your own, and you will be happy about it."
Here's the dirty little secret that you're trying hide with that platitude: some ideas are objectively terrible, lead to social disaster, and go against everything the Enlightenment and the revolutions of the 18th century fought for. As a result, the people who espouse those terrible ideas should be called out and ostracized. And while you're right that no party has a monopoly on good ideas, there's only one party that is actively promoting anti-science ideas, segregation, and a general Galt's Gulch approach to society. As soon as the republicans stop being loony, I'll vote for them again.
In the meantime, stop shitting in my cereal and telling me that it is chocolate.
You might be able to use a dictionary, but you clearly lack reading comprehension. A prediction, to qualify as any sort of useful prediction, requires some bit of information that can be acted on. What they said was that the odds of Mt Fuji blowing up increased, but we have no idea by how much or how that would translate into an actual date.
Furthermore, they didn't say that it got close to an eruption, but that the odds increased. Put down the dictionary, and pay more attention to what you read.
There is paranoia, and then there is you. Here's the deal: if you're worried about backdoors in your routers, it doesn't matter what you use - your security is hosed. Same if you're worried about backdoors in password managers - what makes you think that your browser doesn't have one? Your OS? The instant you type in your password, even if it is a 50 random character one that you keep on a steel plate in a vault, it is gone.
You think you're being secure, but you're just being lazy. Specifically, you're being lazy about your security analysis, and actually have no idea what the ramifications are of something being insecure. To extend your analogy to your approach, you think that a padlock is bad, so you put all of your stuff into three separate bins that you then keep in storage locker that is protected not by a padlock, but by door and lock system. Congratulations, you're still making the same mistake all the password manager users are doing. Except you're not aware of it, and therefore much more open to getting exploited.
What - ocean acidification that kills off shellfish, warmer waters that kill off reefs, warmer climates that spread pine borer beetles to brand new areas causing billions in forestry damage and millions in local business damage, the current droughts in Texas and CA that have caused millions in agricultural losses - that's not enough?
Oh, right, it isn't. Some people will say that it isn't happening until the sea floods their house and their crops and animals die. It took famously seven plagues to convince the pharao that something was amiss. I'm guessing that we'll need our own seven plagues in a year before anything happens.
Then please tell me: how does this decision not apply to any other "sincerely held religious belief of a closely held corporation"? The SCOTUS might say that the decision is only supposed to apply to these particular scenarios, but I can't see how you can distinguish one sincerely held religious belief from another. Unless, of course, you let the government get into the business of deciding which religious beliefs trump which.
Then again, this is already happening, thanks to some enlightened congress critters wanting to legislate Baptist beliefs into government law.
The problem is that the only difference between your libertarian and your anarchist is that the anarchist goes to the logical end of "all government intervention is bad", and the libertarian just happens to support exactly the intervention that you like.
In other words, it's just another form of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
The Hobby Lobby owners are not forced to pay for other people's contraception out of their own pocket. However, they decided to form a corporation to take advantage of a lot of tax and liability incentives. Apparently, the SCOTUS decided that incorporating is all upside and zero downside.
Can I form a corporation, and, because I sincerely believe that paying taxes is immoral (I'll even provide some documentation that I sincerely believe that), not pay taxes on any money I take in through the corporation?
Yeah, didn't think so. Don't hide your religious bigotry behind a legal construct.
Presumably, they are producing something with 10x the value.
The key word is right there: Presumably. Are they? As far as I can tell, most CEOs can be replaced by chipmunks for at least 6 months at a time, and absolutely nothing happens. What's more, I can think of quite a few high-profile cases where a chipmunk would have produced better results (hello, Carly). The only thing I know for sure is that the bigger the pyramid atop which the CEO sits, or the bigger the flow of money that runs across his (or, in much fewer cases, her) desk, the bigger the pay check. I see little correlation with actual productivity.
Does an Engineer who designs a bridge which is depended on to transport hundreds of thousands (or millions) of people over its lifetime safely deserve the same amount of money as someone who's job it is to answer tech support calls, and who can't even solve your problems because they are just reading from a script and don't actually have any skills?
Since you're so wonderfully loading the question, I'm going to rephrase it a little bit. Does a civil engineer deserve less money than a marketing director whose sole job is to pump out pretty graphics to tell others what to buy and his bosses what that money went to? Because civil engineers, especially those starting out, make diddly squat.
You could argue that being a CEO is easy, and it probably looks that way from the outside, but it's not something most people would do without proper compensation. You never really get any time off. Your every action is under public scrutiny.
You haven't met many CEOs, have you? Those that are CEOs or owners of small companies are indeed extremely busy. They also make shit money. Those that make the obscene salaries on the other hand have enough time for mistresses, hobbies and extra-curricular activities - far more so than any working drone underneath them.
Because TSA is there to protect us from imbicilic terrorists, even though 9/11 was orchestrated by degreed engineers, physicians, etc.?
Or just maybe it's not about terrorists but rather obedience conditioning, and they need a new rule once in a while to keep the people regressing (from presumption of Constitutional rights).
False dichotomy. Your tinfoil hat is on too tight.
Most likely, they actually believe their drivel. The stupidity that is rampant even at well-run corporations would indicate that something far more susceptible to politics, theater and attracting the least qualified would result in positions like this. The TSA is utterly useless and needs to be abolished. Too bad that's only going to happen the day that we wholesale dissolve Congress, remove the POTUS, scrap all existing rules, and start from scratch.
You kinda got it right. Corporate social networks are there to promote the distribution of information. But for God's sake, do NOT call them "Facebook for the Enterprise", "Enterprise Social Network", or anything like it. Do not mention enterprise, do not mention facebook, twitter, instagram, or any other idiotic time killer. Call it what you want - "Acme's place for Engineers to comment on feature update requests from PMs", "Worldwide Information Sharing Platform", just don't use the Facebook analogy.
Second, employees are asking for tools to better share information. Sharing your latest beer run or cake social pictures is not information. Sales people want to know if someone knows someone at corp A, where they just got a meeting for. Support people want to know if anyone has seen weird behavior x that isn't documented anywhere, and hasn't been tagged in a case yet. Others want to know if there are some good presentations on a topic so that they don't have to create them by hand, or just want to get in touch with someone in a particular position but who they have never met. An enterprise social network helps that.
Here's the third issue, and this is where most corporate social networks fall down. It has to be used by the execs, and the execs have to show to everyone how to use it right. If they start posting pictures of their latest executive retreat where everyone has a Margarita in hand, or they start to talk about what movie they saw over the weekend, shit will irretrievably go in the shitter. Lack of adoption of a corporate social network is always and every time the fault of the corporate leaders. Whether the execs, or just the people everyone wants to listen to.
No, not personal data. PRIVATE data. Plus, Google is handling other companies' data that has been put by them onto the public internet. Why the fuck is Google responsible for what is in it? Are you going to blame trash collectors for what people throw out on the highway?
Slashdot Mirror
Awwww.... how cute. Changing the subject, are we? Let me just clarify your position for you: I want a government big enough so that it protects me from people I don't like, but too small to protect those who don't like me from me.
Of course, you'd be the knight in shining armor saving everyone around you, so no one would need to be protected from you. Everything you do would be for the greater good of everyone around you. I'm sure of it.
Congratulations, you can't read, and are using the Federalist papers as a bible.
1) When he's talking about a pure democracy, he's talking about what's commonly known as direct democracy. The Swiss are the closest thing we have to one, and it's still pretty far away from one. When he's talking about a republic, he's talking about what's commonly known as representative democracy.
2) He's acknowledging that it only applies to very small groups of people. Communes have been frequently tried, and most of them don't last all that long. That's why they're not the model for large-scale governments.
3) If you'd read further, you'd realize that the Federalist papers are still worried about factionalism in a representative democracy, and hope that representatives don't band together in a way that mimics the banding together of people in a direct democracy. Guess what happens to people in any situation? They band together.
4) You're quoting someone constructing a theoretical position of government as if it is a reality. In other words, you're no better than priests quoting the bible and pretending that it is literally the truth. The founding fathers were smart and well educated, but they weren't infallible. Merely saying "Constitution!" or "Federalist Papers!" means nothing. All it tells me is that you don't think.
Keep digging that libertarian hole. I haven't found one yet who deserves any respect.
I know that Atlas Shrugged is powerful stuff for a teenage boy dipping his toes into political theory for the first time. Don't be too harsh on yourself when you grow out of that phase.
Wow. You really haven't thought your position through, have you? I mean, at all. And by that, I mean that you really have no idea what a government is, how it comes about, what wars are, what causes them, what law enforcement is, or anything related to how humans operate, collaborate, and build societies. I hope you're somewhere in middle school, and you've just not gotten to that part in your education, because otherwise, that kind of ignorance has to be willful.
And by the way, yes, I am confusing libertarian with communists. They both completely fail in providing workable solutions. The best they have is a partial list of facts.
1) A democracy is where 51% of the people decide the needs and force it on the other 49%
1) That's not what a democracy is. Read up on it.
2) As opposed to a system where a minority decides the needs and forces it on the majority? That's why I find libertarians so adorable. They can identify problems, but are utterly blind as to the alternatives. To quote a famous guy who has seen some systems: "Democracy is the worst government system, except for all the others."
2) Most libertarians support the idea of a police force and law enforcement.
And yet, they utterly fail to comprehend that that is what is behind the the power of the government, and behind any abuse that they perceive. That's why they are so contemptible: their preferences are all diametrically opposed, and they are, for some reason, incapable of understanding that.
It is much easier to control "Boss Hog" in some rural county than it is to control "Hitler" in Europe.
Oh, aren't you cute. Taking your history and sociology lessons from a TV show.
I want unbridled liberty. It is messy, ugly and free
Oh, it sure is. Why don't you move to all those countries with tiny national governments that barely reach outside of the capital? You have complete freedom to do whatever the hell you want. As does everyone else around you. Oh, right, those countries aren't "real" libertarian countries. Just like the USSR, China, Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, North Korea and others weren't and aren't "real" communist countries.
Here's a dirty, little secret of your mantra of " Libertarianism oppose to abuses of power, and only want a government big enough to stop abuses of power." Any government that is big enough to stop abuses of power is big enough to be the root cause of them. The only thing stopping abuses of power are the people who are in power. Libertarians are essentially envisioning a benevolent dictatorship, with its scope limited to personal property. Always forgetting that the only thing you truly own is what you can carry in both hands, running at full tilt. And that it is the biggest gun that controls what else you can call property. Better hope that it is yours, comrade.
The problem is that libertarians always try to make the distinction that they're not anarchists and that they're not like the current government, but they fail to do so in any sort of workable manner. Let's take your example of a standing army for defense.
1) It needs to be funded.
2) It needs to be commanded.
1 requires taxes, an organization to collect it, laws on what is taxed, lawmakers to write those laws, courts to enforce those laws, lawyers to argue court cases, law enforcement officers to enforce court decisions, and it's suddenly government all the way down. We're right back to where we were before.
In order for 2 not to be just a different name for a warlord, the commander in chief needs to be an elected civilian. That means elections, representative bodies, separation of powers, and, well, you get the drift. The founding fathers weren't stupid, and created a pretty good system. That same system is what we have today.
Furthermore, a standing army isn't to deal with local warlords, it is to deal with external threats. A police force is there to deal with local warlord-wannabes who think that the government shouldn't have a monopoly on the use of force, and who think that they are better at running the local community than the elected bodies.
There are two types of libertarians. Those who think that government should be tiny, with everyone being some glorious self-sufficient pioneer in the new world. Those are the ones who should be hanging out in Somalia and Sudan, but don't, because those places a shit holes of failed states. Then there are those who think that government should be smaller, specifically in the areas that tells them that they can't do what they want or to do what they don't want to. All other areas, specifically those that they benefit from, are exactly a-ok. Those are called free-riders, and have been identified as a problem since the dawn of time when it comes to the allocation of resources.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: today's brand of American libertarians are the European communists of old: they identify problems just fine, but are advocating completely unworkable solutions and are willing to shit all over everyone else to implement them.
Oh, look, an ad hominem. What, you think a 2-bit actor or a fratboy scion would be effective government leaders?
At least pretend you can stick to the topic.
No, I understood you. I just made my point badly: that the disasters are already happening, and people still deny something's wrong. Civilizations don't collapse, they crumble. Bit by bit.
Accidental bank foreclosures are rare.
I noticed that you do not support that statement with any sort of citation. It wouldn't be because it just happens to fit your world view, and you're too lazy to actually look up some statistics, would it?
There's the slight issue of enforcement of tort law. A weak central government that has no teeth will not be able to enforce the decisions by the courts, which means that we're back to citizens enforcing the courts decisions on their own. Or at least, whatever they think the court said...
Unless, of course, you want to argue that the government has an active local law enforcement arm, that is properly funded by taxes, and that the laws are actively debated by an appointed set of representatives to make sure that they reflect the local needs. You know, like a democracy or something.
Libertarians are opposed to all abuses of power,
No. Patently, you're not. You are completely unable to deal with the very real problem of warlords stepping into any power vacuum, and all the abuses that come from that. You just happen to think that a) you'll be the one in power, and b) you'll be the benevolent ruler of your little plot land, happily living in communion with all those around you. Unfortunately for you, every single time a power vacuum happens due to the disintegration of a central state, your theory is put to the test, and it fails absolutely miserably.
But without government they at least won't have a ready-made system available to amplify their offenses and shield them from the consequences.
What you utterly fail to comprehend is that there is always a power center. It can either be one in which the population is invested in and which can be changed without bloodletting, aka a republic of some sort, or it can be one that doesn't. Both will always claim to have some sort of legitimacy - even if for some it is just the barrel of a gun.
We oppose the government specifically because it embodies the systematic abuse of power, and, unlike other criminal organizations, maintains the pretense that its abuses are somehow "legitimate".
You're so adorable. You're main beef with the government is that you don't like its claim to legitimacy, and therefore think it's as bad as actual criminal organizations. Let me guess - white, under 30, never lived in an actual failed state. Probably come from some rich suburb.
Oh, right, the old argument that "if you're truly open and interested in diversity, you'll let me shit all over openness and diversity, including your own, and you will be happy about it."
Here's the dirty little secret that you're trying hide with that platitude: some ideas are objectively terrible, lead to social disaster, and go against everything the Enlightenment and the revolutions of the 18th century fought for. As a result, the people who espouse those terrible ideas should be called out and ostracized. And while you're right that no party has a monopoly on good ideas, there's only one party that is actively promoting anti-science ideas, segregation, and a general Galt's Gulch approach to society. As soon as the republicans stop being loony, I'll vote for them again.
In the meantime, stop shitting in my cereal and telling me that it is chocolate.
You might be able to use a dictionary, but you clearly lack reading comprehension. A prediction, to qualify as any sort of useful prediction, requires some bit of information that can be acted on. What they said was that the odds of Mt Fuji blowing up increased, but we have no idea by how much or how that would translate into an actual date.
Furthermore, they didn't say that it got close to an eruption, but that the odds increased. Put down the dictionary, and pay more attention to what you read.
There is paranoia, and then there is you. Here's the deal: if you're worried about backdoors in your routers, it doesn't matter what you use - your security is hosed. Same if you're worried about backdoors in password managers - what makes you think that your browser doesn't have one? Your OS? The instant you type in your password, even if it is a 50 random character one that you keep on a steel plate in a vault, it is gone.
You think you're being secure, but you're just being lazy. Specifically, you're being lazy about your security analysis, and actually have no idea what the ramifications are of something being insecure. To extend your analogy to your approach, you think that a padlock is bad, so you put all of your stuff into three separate bins that you then keep in storage locker that is protected not by a padlock, but by door and lock system. Congratulations, you're still making the same mistake all the password manager users are doing. Except you're not aware of it, and therefore much more open to getting exploited.
What - ocean acidification that kills off shellfish, warmer waters that kill off reefs, warmer climates that spread pine borer beetles to brand new areas causing billions in forestry damage and millions in local business damage, the current droughts in Texas and CA that have caused millions in agricultural losses - that's not enough?
Oh, right, it isn't. Some people will say that it isn't happening until the sea floods their house and their crops and animals die. It took famously seven plagues to convince the pharao that something was amiss. I'm guessing that we'll need our own seven plagues in a year before anything happens.
Then please tell me: how does this decision not apply to any other "sincerely held religious belief of a closely held corporation"? The SCOTUS might say that the decision is only supposed to apply to these particular scenarios, but I can't see how you can distinguish one sincerely held religious belief from another. Unless, of course, you let the government get into the business of deciding which religious beliefs trump which.
Then again, this is already happening, thanks to some enlightened congress critters wanting to legislate Baptist beliefs into government law.
The problem is that the only difference between your libertarian and your anarchist is that the anarchist goes to the logical end of "all government intervention is bad", and the libertarian just happens to support exactly the intervention that you like.
In other words, it's just another form of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
The Hobby Lobby owners are not forced to pay for other people's contraception out of their own pocket. However, they decided to form a corporation to take advantage of a lot of tax and liability incentives. Apparently, the SCOTUS decided that incorporating is all upside and zero downside.
Can I form a corporation, and, because I sincerely believe that paying taxes is immoral (I'll even provide some documentation that I sincerely believe that), not pay taxes on any money I take in through the corporation?
Yeah, didn't think so. Don't hide your religious bigotry behind a legal construct.
Presumably, they are producing something with 10x the value.
The key word is right there: Presumably. Are they? As far as I can tell, most CEOs can be replaced by chipmunks for at least 6 months at a time, and absolutely nothing happens. What's more, I can think of quite a few high-profile cases where a chipmunk would have produced better results (hello, Carly). The only thing I know for sure is that the bigger the pyramid atop which the CEO sits, or the bigger the flow of money that runs across his (or, in much fewer cases, her) desk, the bigger the pay check. I see little correlation with actual productivity.
Does an Engineer who designs a bridge which is depended on to transport hundreds of thousands (or millions) of people over its lifetime safely deserve the same amount of money as someone who's job it is to answer tech support calls, and who can't even solve your problems because they are just reading from a script and don't actually have any skills?
Since you're so wonderfully loading the question, I'm going to rephrase it a little bit. Does a civil engineer deserve less money than a marketing director whose sole job is to pump out pretty graphics to tell others what to buy and his bosses what that money went to? Because civil engineers, especially those starting out, make diddly squat.
You could argue that being a CEO is easy, and it probably looks that way from the outside, but it's not something most people would do without proper compensation. You never really get any time off. Your every action is under public scrutiny.
You haven't met many CEOs, have you? Those that are CEOs or owners of small companies are indeed extremely busy. They also make shit money. Those that make the obscene salaries on the other hand have enough time for mistresses, hobbies and extra-curricular activities - far more so than any working drone underneath them.
Because TSA is there to protect us from imbicilic terrorists, even though 9/11 was orchestrated by degreed engineers, physicians, etc.?
Or just maybe it's not about terrorists but rather obedience conditioning, and they need a new rule once in a while to keep the people regressing (from presumption of Constitutional rights).
False dichotomy. Your tinfoil hat is on too tight.
Most likely, they actually believe their drivel. The stupidity that is rampant even at well-run corporations would indicate that something far more susceptible to politics, theater and attracting the least qualified would result in positions like this. The TSA is utterly useless and needs to be abolished. Too bad that's only going to happen the day that we wholesale dissolve Congress, remove the POTUS, scrap all existing rules, and start from scratch.
You kinda got it right. Corporate social networks are there to promote the distribution of information. But for God's sake, do NOT call them "Facebook for the Enterprise", "Enterprise Social Network", or anything like it. Do not mention enterprise, do not mention facebook, twitter, instagram, or any other idiotic time killer. Call it what you want - "Acme's place for Engineers to comment on feature update requests from PMs", "Worldwide Information Sharing Platform", just don't use the Facebook analogy.
Second, employees are asking for tools to better share information. Sharing your latest beer run or cake social pictures is not information. Sales people want to know if someone knows someone at corp A, where they just got a meeting for. Support people want to know if anyone has seen weird behavior x that isn't documented anywhere, and hasn't been tagged in a case yet. Others want to know if there are some good presentations on a topic so that they don't have to create them by hand, or just want to get in touch with someone in a particular position but who they have never met. An enterprise social network helps that.
Here's the third issue, and this is where most corporate social networks fall down. It has to be used by the execs, and the execs have to show to everyone how to use it right. If they start posting pictures of their latest executive retreat where everyone has a Margarita in hand, or they start to talk about what movie they saw over the weekend, shit will irretrievably go in the shitter. Lack of adoption of a corporate social network is always and every time the fault of the corporate leaders. Whether the execs, or just the people everyone wants to listen to.
What's the problem with knowing that someone got charged for assault in a case that is very understandable?
The right to be forgotten is a terrible solution to the problem of people not being able to judge others properly.
No, not personal data. PRIVATE data. Plus, Google is handling other companies' data that has been put by them onto the public internet. Why the fuck is Google responsible for what is in it? Are you going to blame trash collectors for what people throw out on the highway?
You don't understand statistics very well, do you? Or how actuarial tables work.