The illusion of legitimacy is legitimacy. There is no measuring stick of legitimacy like there is a mathematically derived unit of measurement. If your people believe that you represent them, then they will support you.
What has happened is that the engine only works under certain circumstances and then it breaks down. I am of the belief that this occurs around the size where voters become voting blocs and people realize that they have zero say in anything anymore because the representatives don't even have to pretend to notice them as individuals any more.
Our society does not appear to be built on science, if it was, we wouldn't have half the debates we have now. Our society is built on what people are comfortable with and their moral viewpoints. And of course, it is owned by people who have a ton of money because they control the media and the discourse. We give lip service to the idea that the rich are not in control, but look at reality. The rich are in control. That's because they have real power and they are smart enough to know how to use it.
I agree that a distorted sense of reality might be a problem. I just have an issue with what you're suggesting is "a distorted sense of reality".
The biggest problem with the idea of having more "intelligent" people be the voters, or the idea of even the most "wise" people be the voters is not necessarily that they are wrong, but that no one believes that they are right.
You gave a political position which represents anti-communists, or at least free marketeers, as perhaps having a distorted sense of reality. That was your example.
However, what if they are right, despite your most earnest beliefs? I am not saying they are. If you had derided leftists in the same manner, I'd ask you the same question. What if the more intelligent people disagree with you, but you can't see it?
Ultimately, I agree that it is a bad policy to make only intelligent people able to vote, but for a different reason. If you rely on voters to tell you if you're "right" you're going to fail. What you want all of the people in the crowd to tell you is what they are comfortable with. You want the legislators to be right, or at least, willing to listen to people who have a higher chance of being right, like experts. You want the voters to select the option that they can live with.
People are going to believe what they believe. They still should get a vote, because otherwise they revolt and chaos happens. The government needs public support to avoid a revolution. That is why majorities are required, but also why sometimes majorities made up of feeble people fail. You want to have enough support for whatever position you pick to win a fight, should one break out. If a minority is well organized, it might win because the majority is weak.
Democracy cannot work if you use it as a truth-engine. It is a legitimacy engine, nothing more.
You want people to not be allowed to monopolize the vote because they disagree with you.
The other person thinks you're wrong and that such a monopolization is not a bad idea.
Neither of you has proven that communism is, or is not, evil.
And either way it is irrelevant. The idea is that the more intelligent people get into office and the polls. If the more intelligent people disagree with you, what does that say?
Democracy is not about making the correct choices. It is about making choices where everyone has participation. It is a vehicle for legitimacy.
One of the problems with democracy is that half of the people are of below average intelligence and wisdom. Democracy is still valuable because it allows the government to function more effectively because you don't get to simply enact things that hurt the greater mass of people without some form of consent from them.
However, turning democracy into a means of generating truth is fatally flawed. That's why the founding fathers were interested so much in making sure we were a republic, and not a full on democracy. They certainly knew how to construct an actual democracy or at least a much closer one than we have today.
I was once in a class where there was an answer that depended on a very simple math question. The class was a history class but dealt with some statistic or something. I answered the question in one way, the rest of the class answered it in another way. The teacher got the same answer as the rest of the class. I refused to concede I was wrong because I knew I was right. It was simple math, not rocket science. When they got exasperated with me, they called in a math teacher to shut me down. He actually shut them all down.
95% polled in that class would have believed in an incorrect answer to a very easily verifiable math question. 95% of them would have been wrong.
Admittedly, this doesn't happen often when things like simple math are involved, but it illustrated the point to me early on that voting on something doesn't make it right. In my opinion, experts should provide the solutions, and the people should vote on if they can accept the consequences of those solutions, laws, or whatever. When presented with a number of properly designed solutions, the people should have the right to accept the one that they feel right about. What they should not be doing is trying to legislate truth.
It helps to have an educated population, because then it becomes more clear that the experts know of which they speak. However, I'd rather have a way to ensure honest experts who present facts and conclusions and options, and people who know enough to take responsibly for the options they pick. What I am tired of are facts generated by polling, and experts who believe they know what is best for everyone else.
You should not have a quiz to be a voter, but perhaps we should have a quiz to be a legislator. Or better, expert bodies where you have to take a whole battery of tests to be admitted for candidacy.
I agree that rote memorization by itself is useless, but it is the basis for further understanding of history. If you want to understand the context of what a US President did, you better know when he was alive and in office. Even relatively minor US Presidents had big things happen during their Presidency.
Consider what would have happened if James Buchanan had taken a stronger line against secession in his lame duck months as president when the Civil War was getting off the ground. What? You didn't know he was the President for the first few months of the Civil War? Yes, you'd have to know when he was President to know that. He was about as minor as they come, but wouldn't it be better if some minor clerk-like executive like him stopped the war instead of needing someone like Lincoln to have to drive the country through years of the bloodiest conflict the world had seen to date?
Dates are important for context and context is necessary for analysis. And if you want to be able to talk about things like that without constantly looking shit up on Wikipedia, you start by knowing contexts of when things happened.
Given the retarded reaction of people to things that keep being resolved in History, only for them to pop up again, I'd think someone would be very interested in making sure most people understood history as best they could.
Perhaps. Although there is always going to be a temptation to cheat on things like tests.
Still, process and checks should have been able to catch this. It may be that the engineers did it, but the managers failed to enact a process to catch it because it was overhead and not important.
That said... if your goal was to prevent the cookie from being generated in the first place, you might be able to add a shim in there so that the cookie isn't created because it is already there.
Of course, even then, they're probably have code to regenerate the cookie if presented with a bad cookies.
Probably not. It most likely has some sort of key which it would refer to which you'd have to figure out. The best you'd get is filling their logs with Unhandled Exception errors, which given the way most people code these days, would just be a drop in the bucket for AOL or Verizon.
Not that I am suggesting I like monolithic structures, but clearly the 1950's companies succeeded at what they did, or they would have failed.
Of course in the 1950's there was more employment, better chance of an actual lifetime employment and an actual pension and benefits.
All see today are workaholics trying to make it fun to work all the time. Read the article. Zappos isn't successful because it is a cool place to work. It's successful because they've convinced people to work all the time. It's like Amazon with some Burning Man shit thrown in.
The goal of "Teal" seems to be in direct contradiction with the manner in which it was rolled out. You agreed with it, or you were generously allowed to have your severance package. Perhaps it was just the article's slant, but the people left over look like despair mixed with "edgy".
Reading the article, it looks like Zappos has decision making, it's all by Tony Hsieh.
It reads like the Lord of the Flies. They send people who get cut out by their "lead link" who is totally not a manager, to a place called the "Beach" where everyone studiously avoids you until someone who used to be an HR manager takes pity on you, and you write a journal explaining your journey on the path to ostracism to everyone, and then they realize there is a reason they hired you in the first place and decide to let you do your job. Happy tears and hugs ensue.
It sounds like a cult. Cults can be wildly successful operations too. Right up until they decamp to Guyana and start serving the Kool-aid.
There are days that I think some of these companies actually succeed in spite of themselves. And other days, I realize they succeed because they treat people like shit, but manage to convince them that it's actually brown gold.
No. That's a psychic manager. A good manager is one who works toward that goal. There's no way to anticipate all the issues and provide an completely proactive workplace. Too many variables.
If you have a manager who looks like they're doing nothing, then they're working a job that is too easy for them or someone else is doing their work.
Players are only employees in name. They're talent. That's different than a simple employee. They're an asset just like the stadium is. The real employees, like the coaches, are responsible for using the assets to the best possible effect for the franchise.
Management is built up as a more important position because managers issue directions and those directions are expected to be followed. Leaders need legitimacy, and businesses can't afford to have people get into steel cage matches to let a boss prove their dominance via trial by combat.
However, managers are held responsible for making sure things are done. CEOs yell a lot, but chances are, they've never yelled at you unless you're a manager. If someone on the team didn't do their job, you are asked whether you assigned the work, and if you put the processes in place to get it done. Only after you have proven all of that and some more proof are you even permitted to bring up individual performance. A manager who actually throws their own team member under the bus in a management meeting is considered pretty low. If your team fucked up, *you* fucked up. If you have a shitty team member, it is your job to see that they are counselled, and failing that, fired. You will be asked why you have allowed someone so shitty to continue working for you.
That shit may roll down hill to you from your boss, perhaps unfairly, but rest assured, if you get yelled at, your boss got yelled at first. Unless your boss is an asshole, of course.
Management also does require a lot of business knowledge and at least some of the skills of the people they are managing. That's generally why they're paid more, but not always more than a skilled worker elsewhere if they really are *that* good. The difference in salary is often not as big as you'd think. If I need someone to work for me desperately with the right skillset, they will make almost as much as I do and have none of the responsibility, except to me. That's why you'll find many former managers in non-managerial positions. Less stress, good pay.
In fact, it is the worst kind of boss. The one with no ability to organize the work, so they get yelled at when it doesn't happen, and no one has to do what they are told. When asked who is responsible for making it happen, everyone forms into a circle and points to their right.
You know what the most surprising part about being a boss is? Looking at tasks you think should be obvious and having to actually tell someone to do them.
Seriously, a not inconsiderable amount of my workday is making task lists, telling people to do them, and checking that they were done. Usually they are, but that one time I don't check it... no matter how obvious I thought it was... no matter how simple it would be to do... it doesn't happen and shitstorms ensue.
I think you could make a bossless workplace work, but you need a process that has strongly motivational feedback which keeps the people doing the work on task and keeps them doing the right thing by the right date. That's hard to do for people who are not fully invested.
Startup founders might be able to work that way, for instance. They have the motivation that this is their baby and they get all the credit if their idea works in addition to all the money. I just don't see that happening in a larger business unless they somehow hand people a chunk of it to profit from if they can. Sort of like a fund manager or something.
For everything else, you hire people who can focus on the tasks of the group and make the decisions to get them done.
Yes, but only to a point. There are inefficiencies in decreasing volume and of course, drawing down fossil fuel capacity will shut down productive refineries and cause job loss. Price of the fuel isn't simply a matter of how much inventory is available. If we increased production of oil, we'd probably be able to have even lower prices than we do now. It would run out sooner, but you'd have fully utilized refineries and the ability to get cheaper transport prices based on a higher guaranteed bulk to be transported over a set period of time.
Although I wouldn't suggest that you'd keep using a bad solution just to keep jobs, that doesn't prevent the issues with cutting back. Many of the jobs would not be easily retrained, which incurs a structural unemployment situation. You would also have under producing infrastructure that needs to be re-purposed or drawn down.
All of those costs of drawing down fossil fuel production would likely be borne by fossil fuel pricing, which would tend to make fossil fuels more expensive as it draws down. You might hit an equilibrium, but if it became a much less used commodity, there would still be a premium attached to it because of lower volume.
In no way would life continue as normal if the financial system collapsed.
The only chance it wouldn't be as much of a disaster is if the leaders were very fast and very pragmatic about it.
Chances are, you'd be looking at anarchy or martial law or both.
Locally, you might be able to work out a deal by which you could still get produce to people, but long range transportation, with all the risks that this entails requires the ability to invest in ventures with less certain outcomes. And we require a lot of things that are now shipped very long distances.
Please don't lump all conservatives in with the Tea Party. That's like saying that all progressives are eco-crazies.
As for the talk, presumably this guy did his research which, if done correctly, should be more scientific than your (or my) anecdotal evidence.
That said, it is clear that there are people who value some things more than others. I could believe that what he said is true, if you look at progressive vs. conservative labelled programs and platforms.
Fish are very well aware they are swimming in water, just as you or I are aware that we need air.
Of course, I know what the point are trying to make is, but I disagree.
People complain about "first world problems" all the time, but despite the idea that we are in some absolute sense better off than some guy in equatorial Africa, it doesn't matter. If you feel persecuted by certain actions, the feeling of persecution is real. It doesn't help to tell me that you have it worse than I do and leave it at that.
People kill themselves all the time because of bullying or social stigma or some other cause that, frankly, just makes their lives difficult, but does not end it. Yet we have nothing but understanding for those people, despite the fact that in other places in the world, they live poorer lives in terms of resources, the only difference being that they are so used to it, that they could even consider today's level of relative poverty to actually be a "good year" and be happy about it.
In this case, everyone feels persecuted, which is the major problem. I might feel persecuted, perhaps, because I worked extremely hard to make the grade, and the woman or the minority who didn't have to breezed into my school of choice. You can argue that it is "fair" to them to give them opportunity, and that is true, but opportunity provided to someone else, is opportunity denied to others.
You can point at a privilege unearned, but also unasked for, and suggest that someone not feel bad that they are denied an opportunity for that reason, but that's not going to cut it. That's exactly like saying that you are allowed into this school because you're white and I'm black. There is fundamentally no difference to the individual. Especially when the theoretical criteria for entry was supposed to have been merit, and not connections or exclusion.
Two people worked to master their schooling. The person who did not do as well got the position, and even if the person who lost out worked four times as hard and got an A+ instead of an A, they'd still be out of an opportunity to the B student or they'd simply consign some other student in the "wrong" group to lose their opportunity.
Perhaps the policy decision is the right one for the country. You can make that argument. What you cannot do is suggest that the people who feel the anger of discrimination are faking it. The truth is that our policy is currently that the solution to discrimination is discrimination. There is a price to that policy, and that price is anger. Please don't suggest that this should make people happy. It won't and it is wrong to expect that.
We know a child will be much more successful in life if they are raised by a mother and father.
No we don't "know" that because it isn't actually true. Most studies of this sort of thing badly confuse correlation with causation and fail to control for other factors. Having a mother and a father can help but the relationship between success (which you conveniently didn't define) and living in a traditional Norman Rockwell family is a weak one. What matters is having parents and guardians and family that are involved. Whether they are married or not is irrelevant.
Maybe on an individual level, in the sense that you have really bad parents, as opposed to the one single parent who is both saintly and super capable.
However, for the most part, I can't even see how you are making that argument. There is no benefit whatsoever to a single parent scenario, although there may be fewer disadvantages in specific cases if you delete an abusive parent from the mix.
There are some instances where it is unavoidable to have a single parent and I don't ever criticize the decision to care for the child you produced. What I would criticize is a program which increases suffering by rewarding bad decisions across the board in the name of misguided charity.
There are always going to be situations where things go badly for some people. The problem is that charity in some cases doesn't always end the problem, sometimes it simply moves the problem. If the problem is childhood starvation, then feeding the children would work, unless a damaged thought process in a parent keeps producing children, maintaining her or her family consistently at the level where checks are required. In that case, all you have done is give away more money, but now you have more children. And money is not the only thing needed to raise a child.
Having a single parent is not a determination of failure. If you were to suggest that you're happy, prosperous, and well-adjusted, I would believe you.
Nevertheless, it is a risk condition. If you're doing well, you're doing well in spite of that disadvantage, not because of it. When we take scenarios of single parenthood across the board in a society, it is a situation which carries costs. Those costs must be paid by someone. Therefore, it pays for us to not encourage any thought processes which make bad decisions more likely.
I didn't see a moral argument there. I saw an economic and pragmatic one.
A single mother is the sole breadwinner of a family. Consequently, she has fewer cycles for child rearing. This causes problems, full stop.
The same would go for a single father too, of course. I think the reason for focusing on mothers is that they end up with the babies most of the time.
Unless raped, a woman does have a choice whether to have sex or not. For that matter a man does too.
If you're suggesting that divorce or orphans are the other scenarios, programs or even better, private charity can focus on those scenarios without giving a green light to irresponsible behavior.
I'm not against giving money to people who need it, but there can be consequences to doing it in a certain manner. You're giving away other people's money for other people's bad decisions. There should be some way of ensuring that this charity does not actually magnify the problem and thus increase suffering.
That's true. I have a lot of sour grapes against the no bid contracts that I haven't gotten. That's only waste because I'm not getting money to do something without some sort of vetting process. I would totally love the situation if the government just gave me money and I didn't even have to compete.
That doesn't mean that the money isn't being wasted on me or the other people getting it.
Also, the *target* of the money isn't the waste, government waste is the process by which that money is first inefficiently disbursed by a government by following bureaucratic and labyrinthine regulations which are supposed to not only ensure fair distribution, and provide political benefits but also reporting and efficient use of those monies. And then *totally failing to do any of that (except the politics) and continuing to have gigantic budget overruns*
It is one thing to have a trillion dollar F-35, or a vastly expensive entitlement program. It is a completely different thing to have all of that *after* all of the wonderful regulations on top of regulations which are supposed to make those things "safe", "cheap", and "fair".
You could probably go to evil mega-corporations directly, buy "safe" and "fair" options off their luxury a la carte price list, and probably come in cheaper than having the government do it for "free".
Slashdot Mirror
The illusion of legitimacy is legitimacy. There is no measuring stick of legitimacy like there is a mathematically derived unit of measurement. If your people believe that you represent them, then they will support you.
What has happened is that the engine only works under certain circumstances and then it breaks down. I am of the belief that this occurs around the size where voters become voting blocs and people realize that they have zero say in anything anymore because the representatives don't even have to pretend to notice them as individuals any more.
Our society does not appear to be built on science, if it was, we wouldn't have half the debates we have now. Our society is built on what people are comfortable with and their moral viewpoints. And of course, it is owned by people who have a ton of money because they control the media and the discourse. We give lip service to the idea that the rich are not in control, but look at reality. The rich are in control. That's because they have real power and they are smart enough to know how to use it.
To be fair, for a big automaker, a "few" to them is probably around 100 people.
You may be able to use a process in place to either stop the boss' request cold, or alternately, to have a defense if the process did not exist.
Of course, Germany has some relatively strong worker protections, so I can't believe that an illegal order like that could not be challenged.
I agree that a distorted sense of reality might be a problem. I just have an issue with what you're suggesting is "a distorted sense of reality".
The biggest problem with the idea of having more "intelligent" people be the voters, or the idea of even the most "wise" people be the voters is not necessarily that they are wrong, but that no one believes that they are right.
You gave a political position which represents anti-communists, or at least free marketeers, as perhaps having a distorted sense of reality. That was your example.
However, what if they are right, despite your most earnest beliefs? I am not saying they are. If you had derided leftists in the same manner, I'd ask you the same question. What if the more intelligent people disagree with you, but you can't see it?
Ultimately, I agree that it is a bad policy to make only intelligent people able to vote, but for a different reason. If you rely on voters to tell you if you're "right" you're going to fail. What you want all of the people in the crowd to tell you is what they are comfortable with. You want the legislators to be right, or at least, willing to listen to people who have a higher chance of being right, like experts. You want the voters to select the option that they can live with.
People are going to believe what they believe. They still should get a vote, because otherwise they revolt and chaos happens. The government needs public support to avoid a revolution. That is why majorities are required, but also why sometimes majorities made up of feeble people fail. You want to have enough support for whatever position you pick to win a fight, should one break out. If a minority is well organized, it might win because the majority is weak.
Democracy cannot work if you use it as a truth-engine. It is a legitimacy engine, nothing more.
Frankly, either is an unproven assertion.
You want people to not be allowed to monopolize the vote because they disagree with you.
The other person thinks you're wrong and that such a monopolization is not a bad idea.
Neither of you has proven that communism is, or is not, evil.
And either way it is irrelevant. The idea is that the more intelligent people get into office and the polls. If the more intelligent people disagree with you, what does that say?
This is wrong headed for a very simple reason.
Democracy is not about making the correct choices. It is about making choices where everyone has participation. It is a vehicle for legitimacy.
One of the problems with democracy is that half of the people are of below average intelligence and wisdom. Democracy is still valuable because it allows the government to function more effectively because you don't get to simply enact things that hurt the greater mass of people without some form of consent from them.
However, turning democracy into a means of generating truth is fatally flawed. That's why the founding fathers were interested so much in making sure we were a republic, and not a full on democracy. They certainly knew how to construct an actual democracy or at least a much closer one than we have today.
I was once in a class where there was an answer that depended on a very simple math question. The class was a history class but dealt with some statistic or something. I answered the question in one way, the rest of the class answered it in another way. The teacher got the same answer as the rest of the class. I refused to concede I was wrong because I knew I was right. It was simple math, not rocket science. When they got exasperated with me, they called in a math teacher to shut me down. He actually shut them all down.
95% polled in that class would have believed in an incorrect answer to a very easily verifiable math question. 95% of them would have been wrong.
Admittedly, this doesn't happen often when things like simple math are involved, but it illustrated the point to me early on that voting on something doesn't make it right. In my opinion, experts should provide the solutions, and the people should vote on if they can accept the consequences of those solutions, laws, or whatever. When presented with a number of properly designed solutions, the people should have the right to accept the one that they feel right about. What they should not be doing is trying to legislate truth.
It helps to have an educated population, because then it becomes more clear that the experts know of which they speak. However, I'd rather have a way to ensure honest experts who present facts and conclusions and options, and people who know enough to take responsibly for the options they pick. What I am tired of are facts generated by polling, and experts who believe they know what is best for everyone else.
You should not have a quiz to be a voter, but perhaps we should have a quiz to be a legislator. Or better, expert bodies where you have to take a whole battery of tests to be admitted for candidacy.
I agree that rote memorization by itself is useless, but it is the basis for further understanding of history. If you want to understand the context of what a US President did, you better know when he was alive and in office. Even relatively minor US Presidents had big things happen during their Presidency.
Consider what would have happened if James Buchanan had taken a stronger line against secession in his lame duck months as president when the Civil War was getting off the ground. What? You didn't know he was the President for the first few months of the Civil War? Yes, you'd have to know when he was President to know that. He was about as minor as they come, but wouldn't it be better if some minor clerk-like executive like him stopped the war instead of needing someone like Lincoln to have to drive the country through years of the bloodiest conflict the world had seen to date?
Dates are important for context and context is necessary for analysis. And if you want to be able to talk about things like that without constantly looking shit up on Wikipedia, you start by knowing contexts of when things happened.
Given the retarded reaction of people to things that keep being resolved in History, only for them to pop up again, I'd think someone would be very interested in making sure most people understood history as best they could.
Perhaps. Although there is always going to be a temptation to cheat on things like tests.
Still, process and checks should have been able to catch this. It may be that the engineers did it, but the managers failed to enact a process to catch it because it was overhead and not important.
That said... if your goal was to prevent the cookie from being generated in the first place, you might be able to add a shim in there so that the cookie isn't created because it is already there.
Of course, even then, they're probably have code to regenerate the cookie if presented with a bad cookies.
Probably not. It most likely has some sort of key which it would refer to which you'd have to figure out. The best you'd get is filling their logs with Unhandled Exception errors, which given the way most people code these days, would just be a drop in the bucket for AOL or Verizon.
Not that I am suggesting I like monolithic structures, but clearly the 1950's companies succeeded at what they did, or they would have failed.
Of course in the 1950's there was more employment, better chance of an actual lifetime employment and an actual pension and benefits.
All see today are workaholics trying to make it fun to work all the time. Read the article. Zappos isn't successful because it is a cool place to work. It's successful because they've convinced people to work all the time. It's like Amazon with some Burning Man shit thrown in.
The goal of "Teal" seems to be in direct contradiction with the manner in which it was rolled out. You agreed with it, or you were generously allowed to have your severance package. Perhaps it was just the article's slant, but the people left over look like despair mixed with "edgy".
Reading the article, it looks like Zappos has decision making, it's all by Tony Hsieh.
It reads like the Lord of the Flies. They send people who get cut out by their "lead link" who is totally not a manager, to a place called the "Beach" where everyone studiously avoids you until someone who used to be an HR manager takes pity on you, and you write a journal explaining your journey on the path to ostracism to everyone, and then they realize there is a reason they hired you in the first place and decide to let you do your job. Happy tears and hugs ensue.
It sounds like a cult. Cults can be wildly successful operations too. Right up until they decamp to Guyana and start serving the Kool-aid.
There are days that I think some of these companies actually succeed in spite of themselves. And other days, I realize they succeed because they treat people like shit, but manage to convince them that it's actually brown gold.
No. That's a psychic manager. A good manager is one who works toward that goal. There's no way to anticipate all the issues and provide an completely proactive workplace. Too many variables.
If you have a manager who looks like they're doing nothing, then they're working a job that is too easy for them or someone else is doing their work.
Players are only employees in name. They're talent. That's different than a simple employee. They're an asset just like the stadium is. The real employees, like the coaches, are responsible for using the assets to the best possible effect for the franchise.
Management is built up as a more important position because managers issue directions and those directions are expected to be followed. Leaders need legitimacy, and businesses can't afford to have people get into steel cage matches to let a boss prove their dominance via trial by combat.
However, managers are held responsible for making sure things are done. CEOs yell a lot, but chances are, they've never yelled at you unless you're a manager. If someone on the team didn't do their job, you are asked whether you assigned the work, and if you put the processes in place to get it done. Only after you have proven all of that and some more proof are you even permitted to bring up individual performance. A manager who actually throws their own team member under the bus in a management meeting is considered pretty low. If your team fucked up, *you* fucked up. If you have a shitty team member, it is your job to see that they are counselled, and failing that, fired. You will be asked why you have allowed someone so shitty to continue working for you.
That shit may roll down hill to you from your boss, perhaps unfairly, but rest assured, if you get yelled at, your boss got yelled at first. Unless your boss is an asshole, of course.
Management also does require a lot of business knowledge and at least some of the skills of the people they are managing. That's generally why they're paid more, but not always more than a skilled worker elsewhere if they really are *that* good. The difference in salary is often not as big as you'd think. If I need someone to work for me desperately with the right skillset, they will make almost as much as I do and have none of the responsibility, except to me. That's why you'll find many former managers in non-managerial positions. Less stress, good pay.
In fact, it is the worst kind of boss. The one with no ability to organize the work, so they get yelled at when it doesn't happen, and no one has to do what they are told. When asked who is responsible for making it happen, everyone forms into a circle and points to their right.
You know what the most surprising part about being a boss is? Looking at tasks you think should be obvious and having to actually tell someone to do them.
Seriously, a not inconsiderable amount of my workday is making task lists, telling people to do them, and checking that they were done. Usually they are, but that one time I don't check it... no matter how obvious I thought it was... no matter how simple it would be to do... it doesn't happen and shitstorms ensue.
I think you could make a bossless workplace work, but you need a process that has strongly motivational feedback which keeps the people doing the work on task and keeps them doing the right thing by the right date. That's hard to do for people who are not fully invested.
Startup founders might be able to work that way, for instance. They have the motivation that this is their baby and they get all the credit if their idea works in addition to all the money. I just don't see that happening in a larger business unless they somehow hand people a chunk of it to profit from if they can. Sort of like a fund manager or something.
For everything else, you hire people who can focus on the tasks of the group and make the decisions to get them done.
Yes, but only to a point. There are inefficiencies in decreasing volume and of course, drawing down fossil fuel capacity will shut down productive refineries and cause job loss. Price of the fuel isn't simply a matter of how much inventory is available. If we increased production of oil, we'd probably be able to have even lower prices than we do now. It would run out sooner, but you'd have fully utilized refineries and the ability to get cheaper transport prices based on a higher guaranteed bulk to be transported over a set period of time.
Although I wouldn't suggest that you'd keep using a bad solution just to keep jobs, that doesn't prevent the issues with cutting back. Many of the jobs would not be easily retrained, which incurs a structural unemployment situation. You would also have under producing infrastructure that needs to be re-purposed or drawn down.
All of those costs of drawing down fossil fuel production would likely be borne by fossil fuel pricing, which would tend to make fossil fuels more expensive as it draws down. You might hit an equilibrium, but if it became a much less used commodity, there would still be a premium attached to it because of lower volume.
It is the End Times. I never thought this would ever happen.
Good bye everyone, it was fun while it lasted.
I'll be writing my "Hello apocalypse!" script in perl6 shortly.
In no way would life continue as normal if the financial system collapsed.
The only chance it wouldn't be as much of a disaster is if the leaders were very fast and very pragmatic about it.
Chances are, you'd be looking at anarchy or martial law or both.
Locally, you might be able to work out a deal by which you could still get produce to people, but long range transportation, with all the risks that this entails requires the ability to invest in ventures with less certain outcomes. And we require a lot of things that are now shipped very long distances.
Please don't lump all conservatives in with the Tea Party. That's like saying that all progressives are eco-crazies.
As for the talk, presumably this guy did his research which, if done correctly, should be more scientific than your (or my) anecdotal evidence.
That said, it is clear that there are people who value some things more than others. I could believe that what he said is true, if you look at progressive vs. conservative labelled programs and platforms.
Fish are very well aware they are swimming in water, just as you or I are aware that we need air.
Of course, I know what the point are trying to make is, but I disagree.
People complain about "first world problems" all the time, but despite the idea that we are in some absolute sense better off than some guy in equatorial Africa, it doesn't matter. If you feel persecuted by certain actions, the feeling of persecution is real. It doesn't help to tell me that you have it worse than I do and leave it at that.
People kill themselves all the time because of bullying or social stigma or some other cause that, frankly, just makes their lives difficult, but does not end it. Yet we have nothing but understanding for those people, despite the fact that in other places in the world, they live poorer lives in terms of resources, the only difference being that they are so used to it, that they could even consider today's level of relative poverty to actually be a "good year" and be happy about it.
In this case, everyone feels persecuted, which is the major problem. I might feel persecuted, perhaps, because I worked extremely hard to make the grade, and the woman or the minority who didn't have to breezed into my school of choice. You can argue that it is "fair" to them to give them opportunity, and that is true, but opportunity provided to someone else, is opportunity denied to others.
You can point at a privilege unearned, but also unasked for, and suggest that someone not feel bad that they are denied an opportunity for that reason, but that's not going to cut it. That's exactly like saying that you are allowed into this school because you're white and I'm black. There is fundamentally no difference to the individual. Especially when the theoretical criteria for entry was supposed to have been merit, and not connections or exclusion.
Two people worked to master their schooling. The person who did not do as well got the position, and even if the person who lost out worked four times as hard and got an A+ instead of an A, they'd still be out of an opportunity to the B student or they'd simply consign some other student in the "wrong" group to lose their opportunity.
Perhaps the policy decision is the right one for the country. You can make that argument. What you cannot do is suggest that the people who feel the anger of discrimination are faking it. The truth is that our policy is currently that the solution to discrimination is discrimination. There is a price to that policy, and that price is anger. Please don't suggest that this should make people happy. It won't and it is wrong to expect that.
We know a child will be much more successful in life if they are raised by a mother and father.
No we don't "know" that because it isn't actually true. Most studies of this sort of thing badly confuse correlation with causation and fail to control for other factors. Having a mother and a father can help but the relationship between success (which you conveniently didn't define) and living in a traditional Norman Rockwell family is a weak one. What matters is having parents and guardians and family that are involved. Whether they are married or not is irrelevant.
Maybe on an individual level, in the sense that you have really bad parents, as opposed to the one single parent who is both saintly and super capable.
However, for the most part, I can't even see how you are making that argument. There is no benefit whatsoever to a single parent scenario, although there may be fewer disadvantages in specific cases if you delete an abusive parent from the mix.
There are some instances where it is unavoidable to have a single parent and I don't ever criticize the decision to care for the child you produced. What I would criticize is a program which increases suffering by rewarding bad decisions across the board in the name of misguided charity.
There are always going to be situations where things go badly for some people. The problem is that charity in some cases doesn't always end the problem, sometimes it simply moves the problem. If the problem is childhood starvation, then feeding the children would work, unless a damaged thought process in a parent keeps producing children, maintaining her or her family consistently at the level where checks are required. In that case, all you have done is give away more money, but now you have more children. And money is not the only thing needed to raise a child.
Having a single parent is not a determination of failure. If you were to suggest that you're happy, prosperous, and well-adjusted, I would believe you.
Nevertheless, it is a risk condition. If you're doing well, you're doing well in spite of that disadvantage, not because of it. When we take scenarios of single parenthood across the board in a society, it is a situation which carries costs. Those costs must be paid by someone. Therefore, it pays for us to not encourage any thought processes which make bad decisions more likely.
I didn't see a moral argument there. I saw an economic and pragmatic one.
A single mother is the sole breadwinner of a family. Consequently, she has fewer cycles for child rearing. This causes problems, full stop.
The same would go for a single father too, of course. I think the reason for focusing on mothers is that they end up with the babies most of the time.
Unless raped, a woman does have a choice whether to have sex or not. For that matter a man does too.
If you're suggesting that divorce or orphans are the other scenarios, programs or even better, private charity can focus on those scenarios without giving a green light to irresponsible behavior.
I'm not against giving money to people who need it, but there can be consequences to doing it in a certain manner. You're giving away other people's money for other people's bad decisions. There should be some way of ensuring that this charity does not actually magnify the problem and thus increase suffering.
That's true. I have a lot of sour grapes against the no bid contracts that I haven't gotten. That's only waste because I'm not getting money to do something without some sort of vetting process. I would totally love the situation if the government just gave me money and I didn't even have to compete.
That doesn't mean that the money isn't being wasted on me or the other people getting it.
Also, the *target* of the money isn't the waste, government waste is the process by which that money is first inefficiently disbursed by a government by following bureaucratic and labyrinthine regulations which are supposed to not only ensure fair distribution, and provide political benefits but also reporting and efficient use of those monies. And then *totally failing to do any of that (except the politics) and continuing to have gigantic budget overruns*
It is one thing to have a trillion dollar F-35, or a vastly expensive entitlement program. It is a completely different thing to have all of that *after* all of the wonderful regulations on top of regulations which are supposed to make those things "safe", "cheap", and "fair".
You could probably go to evil mega-corporations directly, buy "safe" and "fair" options off their luxury a la carte price list, and probably come in cheaper than having the government do it for "free".
You need ID and a rooftop voting permit to do that.