Please, we are a long way from revolution or mob rule.
It starts with voting, but it does not end there, nor has it ever ended there. Protests are an important part of democracy in America and everywhere, and always have been. Protests are the vehicle by which the public tells the politicians what they want, as opposed to being asked to choose between some preselected options. And in cases like this, where the options the politicians have given us do not offer a real choice, protests are most certainly appropriate.
And people don't want socialism. At least, no more socialism than the 1% already enjoys.
Mod parent up! Especially for this gem: "Don't use your own ignorance as an excuse to belittle the actions of those who have decided to stand up and say something."
So if you voted and you protest, that makes you a hypocrite? If you voted then you shouldn't be upset because the policies you voted for aren't the policies you got?
Frankly, that's bullshit.
I voted because I believed the politicians I voted for would look out for my interests. It turns out they do not, and it is only by voting that I discovered that voting does not work when both parties are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Wall Street and dedicated to helping Wall Street loot this country and my future. So I turned to protesting. There is absolutely nothing hypocritical or logically inconsistent on unserious about that. It's only in your bizarre world where protesting is fundamentally vulgar.
I really hate these stupid artificial barriers that people come up with for the protesters. You say that you can't protest if you voted because you're complicit, someone else will say that you can't protest if you don't even vote because you didn't even try working within the system first and therefore you don't believe in democracy or some bullshit. Some other person says the protest shouldn't be taken seriously because protesting is just a trendy thing that hipsters do for fun, while someone else might say if you've been leading the same rally for the same cause, religiously, for years, rain or shine, then you can't be taken seriously. Yet another says that if you have a bank account you aren't serious enough to protest, someone else would inevitably say that only those with bank accounts should have the right or cause to protest.
Mind you, these aren't criticisms from other protesters intent on maintaining ideological purity. That runs counter to the idea of the 99%. These are all criticisms I've heard made by people who would never be caught dead doing something as unsavory as actually taking risks for their beliefs or demanding to be heard. These are people who heap scorn and derision upon the protesters even though they believe in the same things the Occupy Wall Street movement stands for: hold accountable those who wrecked the economy, tax the rich their fair share, save our social safety net from the looters, bring the jobs back.
If anything the 99% is only 50% because the other 49% don't have the courage of their convictions and would rather cynically mock those of us that do as we fight for them.
In a word: stay! Stay, stay, stay! Go with your gut and stay where you are.
Loyalty is important to you, and it's important to the people you currently work with - with, not for. It's very questionable and unlikely that it will be valued at the company you are considering. Consider what you are leaving behind that you may not get back. A place where you are good friends with the upper management, and a shared sense of loyalty. These are intangibles that don't contribute to a paycheck but they do contribute to your job satisfaction. Your work is your life, and you must ask yourself if you are willing to work a job that you may hate but pays well, and how much time and income are you willing to give up to do something you love?
Also consider, if moving up the corporate ladder is important to you, this is a small company on the verge of their big launch. Odds are, even if they fail, that you will move up as the company grows, faster than if you join a smaller company. You know the dynamics of your company, not us, so you must be the judge of that.
This should be a no-brainer. Stick with your current job.
All of relativity is premised on the (very consistently verified) notion that speed isn't just distance/time as Newtonian mechanics would understand it, and that you must also take in to account the effects of gravity on spacetime.
It should also be pointed out that the big innovations that we all think of are mostly government projects. The space program, the highways and our national infrastructure. But for the last 30 years it just hasn't been fashionable to let the government do anything like that any more.
You mention agriculture. "Big" government is the reason we even have a stable food supply. All those subsidies we have for producing certain things and for not producing things, all of that keeps our food supply immune from the boom and bust of the business cycle.
I'm with parent. What changes are you talking about? You just sound like an old crank. "Everything was fine before those damn liberals came along and screwed everything up with their liberalism!" Stupid liberal things like evidence, I suppose.
While patents are certainly a huge problem, my touchy-feely sense is that innovation has been stagnating a lot longer than that, more like 40 years. I don't know if patents are to blame, though they certainly contribute, probably significantly more now than then.
This reminds me of a movie about Venezuela I saw about ten years ago, called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, documenting the right-wing, military-backed, and media-backed coup d'etat that overthrew a democratically-elected president. Many people rioted but nobody covered it. The demonstrations and their support had to be sustained independently, without the media's help, since the entire media supported the usurpers. There were many more aspects that were covered, such as just how vitriolic the political discourse was, and it seems that the US is already headed that way, in all those respects.
BTW, the unreported riots succeeded in restoring the president to power after 2-3 days. Some of the ringleaders of the coup fled to the US where I think they remain, the US being the only country to immediately recognize the illegitimate government, and, it was implied, had secretly supported the coup.
Americans are altogether more comfortable, and very anti-solidarity. There won't be real protests until things get much, much worse. You need conditions like they had in Tunisia and Egypt to get effective demonstrations, you also need a culture that doesn't instinctively denigrate the act of protesting.
Yahoo Mail's spam filtering is the least effective spam filtering known to man. Every day I get dozens of offers for credit cards, weight loss pills, penile enlargement pills, etc. How can they say with a straight face this is simply an overzealous spam filter?
And whoever heard of "residual delays?" That just means they blocked it on purpose, lied about it, and are now lying about fixing it.
Someone want to explain what Metro is? I don't like having to do background research to understand a./ summary. Mod me down if you have a problem with that, but I don't think too many people understand what Metro is yet.
The lawyers spent a lot of time and money battling Sony and defending your rights. You, as you implicitly acknowledge, just sat on your ass.
If it were up to me I would divide up the award the same way. Class-action lawsuits aren't some magical windfall whereby you should be entitled to massive riches, they exist to keep companies from acting fraudulently or illegally to enrich themselves in ways that are akin to being nickel and dimed to the rest of us.
The labels are paying for extensions on already-created works that only serve to enrich them at the expense of the public, and they have the gall to call file-sharers thieves? The system is broken and it's money that has broken it.
Thanks. I think you're absolutely right, but I'm afraid it will be more difficult to convince people to change their idea of what a free market is than to suggest to them a different focus. It probably doesn't dispossess them of any false notions, but I don't think it reinforces any either, and in this case when the two appear in conflict it makes sense.
The DOJ's point is that the merger is bad for competition to the extent that it reduces competition below some minimum acceptable level.
Markets are good because they foster competition, not because they lack government interference. Vibrant and healthy competition is what gives markets their value. It drives innovation, drives prices down, and quality up, which increases value to consumers.
Monopolies, on the other hand, are not compelled to innovate, and in this "free" market the monopoly is free to raise prices and reduce quality. Monopolies reduce value to consumers. The market dominated by a monopoly serves the monopoly, not consumers. And the monopoly will do everything it can to prevent competition from reestablishing itself for as long as it can. This is inevitable as long as a monopoly is dedicated to maximizing shareholder value. As long as a monopoly exists, I'd hardly call the market free.
The market, free or otherwise, should always serve consumers. As an ideological matter, this is more important than allowing a market to remain free to become dominated by a monopoly, whereupon it is no longer free anyway.
So at a certain point, yes, the government should tell companies to quit trying to gain market share. If it promotes or preserves competition, it isn't anti-competitive.
Free markets are far from perfect; monopolies are only the most obvious flaw. Additionally, it's arguable whether a market dominated by a private monopoly is actually free. Free from governmental force, sure, but that isn't the only kind of freedom that is implied by the term free market.
Slashdot Mirror
Please, we are a long way from revolution or mob rule.
It starts with voting, but it does not end there, nor has it ever ended there. Protests are an important part of democracy in America and everywhere, and always have been. Protests are the vehicle by which the public tells the politicians what they want, as opposed to being asked to choose between some preselected options. And in cases like this, where the options the politicians have given us do not offer a real choice, protests are most certainly appropriate.
And people don't want socialism. At least, no more socialism than the 1% already enjoys.
Mod parent up! Especially for this gem: "Don't use your own ignorance as an excuse to belittle the actions of those who have decided to stand up and say something."
They know exactly what they are protesting. You don't, or you don't want to. Go and listen to them. It is as obvious as the sky.
So if you voted and you protest, that makes you a hypocrite? If you voted then you shouldn't be upset because the policies you voted for aren't the policies you got?
Frankly, that's bullshit.
I voted because I believed the politicians I voted for would look out for my interests. It turns out they do not, and it is only by voting that I discovered that voting does not work when both parties are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Wall Street and dedicated to helping Wall Street loot this country and my future. So I turned to protesting. There is absolutely nothing hypocritical or logically inconsistent on unserious about that. It's only in your bizarre world where protesting is fundamentally vulgar.
I really hate these stupid artificial barriers that people come up with for the protesters. You say that you can't protest if you voted because you're complicit, someone else will say that you can't protest if you don't even vote because you didn't even try working within the system first and therefore you don't believe in democracy or some bullshit. Some other person says the protest shouldn't be taken seriously because protesting is just a trendy thing that hipsters do for fun, while someone else might say if you've been leading the same rally for the same cause, religiously, for years, rain or shine, then you can't be taken seriously. Yet another says that if you have a bank account you aren't serious enough to protest, someone else would inevitably say that only those with bank accounts should have the right or cause to protest.
Mind you, these aren't criticisms from other protesters intent on maintaining ideological purity. That runs counter to the idea of the 99%. These are all criticisms I've heard made by people who would never be caught dead doing something as unsavory as actually taking risks for their beliefs or demanding to be heard. These are people who heap scorn and derision upon the protesters even though they believe in the same things the Occupy Wall Street movement stands for: hold accountable those who wrecked the economy, tax the rich their fair share, save our social safety net from the looters, bring the jobs back.
If anything the 99% is only 50% because the other 49% don't have the courage of their convictions and would rather cynically mock those of us that do as we fight for them.
In a word: stay! Stay, stay, stay! Go with your gut and stay where you are.
Loyalty is important to you, and it's important to the people you currently work with - with, not for. It's very questionable and unlikely that it will be valued at the company you are considering. Consider what you are leaving behind that you may not get back. A place where you are good friends with the upper management, and a shared sense of loyalty. These are intangibles that don't contribute to a paycheck but they do contribute to your job satisfaction. Your work is your life, and you must ask yourself if you are willing to work a job that you may hate but pays well, and how much time and income are you willing to give up to do something you love?
Also consider, if moving up the corporate ladder is important to you, this is a small company on the verge of their big launch. Odds are, even if they fail, that you will move up as the company grows, faster than if you join a smaller company. You know the dynamics of your company, not us, so you must be the judge of that.
This should be a no-brainer. Stick with your current job.
Times a thousand times!
All of relativity is premised on the (very consistently verified) notion that speed isn't just distance/time as Newtonian mechanics would understand it, and that you must also take in to account the effects of gravity on spacetime.
It should also be pointed out that the big innovations that we all think of are mostly government projects. The space program, the highways and our national infrastructure. But for the last 30 years it just hasn't been fashionable to let the government do anything like that any more.
You mention agriculture. "Big" government is the reason we even have a stable food supply. All those subsidies we have for producing certain things and for not producing things, all of that keeps our food supply immune from the boom and bust of the business cycle.
I'm with parent. What changes are you talking about? You just sound like an old crank. "Everything was fine before those damn liberals came along and screwed everything up with their liberalism!" Stupid liberal things like evidence, I suppose.
While patents are certainly a huge problem, my touchy-feely sense is that innovation has been stagnating a lot longer than that, more like 40 years. I don't know if patents are to blame, though they certainly contribute, probably significantly more now than then.
My understanding was it was the other way around. Analog was "not digital" and analogue was as in "analogous to".
By your reasoning none of us should be interested in what you have to say.
Analogs? So that 1/3 are rocking turntables while the other 2/3 are all about the CDs or mp3s?
This reminds me of a movie about Venezuela I saw about ten years ago, called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, documenting the right-wing, military-backed, and media-backed coup d'etat that overthrew a democratically-elected president. Many people rioted but nobody covered it. The demonstrations and their support had to be sustained independently, without the media's help, since the entire media supported the usurpers. There were many more aspects that were covered, such as just how vitriolic the political discourse was, and it seems that the US is already headed that way, in all those respects.
BTW, the unreported riots succeeded in restoring the president to power after 2-3 days. Some of the ringleaders of the coup fled to the US where I think they remain, the US being the only country to immediately recognize the illegitimate government, and, it was implied, had secretly supported the coup.
Americans are altogether more comfortable, and very anti-solidarity. There won't be real protests until things get much, much worse. You need conditions like they had in Tunisia and Egypt to get effective demonstrations, you also need a culture that doesn't instinctively denigrate the act of protesting.
Yahoo Mail's spam filtering is the least effective spam filtering known to man. Every day I get dozens of offers for credit cards, weight loss pills, penile enlargement pills, etc. How can they say with a straight face this is simply an overzealous spam filter?
And whoever heard of "residual delays?" That just means they blocked it on purpose, lied about it, and are now lying about fixing it.
I wonder how many people does a protest need to meet your standards?
If ever there was an appropriate time for the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag, this is it.
Someone want to explain what Metro is? I don't like having to do background research to understand a ./ summary. Mod me down if you have a problem with that, but I don't think too many people understand what Metro is yet.
The lawyers spent a lot of time and money battling Sony and defending your rights. You, as you implicitly acknowledge, just sat on your ass.
If it were up to me I would divide up the award the same way. Class-action lawsuits aren't some magical windfall whereby you should be entitled to massive riches, they exist to keep companies from acting fraudulently or illegally to enrich themselves in ways that are akin to being nickel and dimed to the rest of us.
The labels are paying for extensions on already-created works that only serve to enrich them at the expense of the public, and they have the gall to call file-sharers thieves? The system is broken and it's money that has broken it.
Thanks. I think you're absolutely right, but I'm afraid it will be more difficult to convince people to change their idea of what a free market is than to suggest to them a different focus. It probably doesn't dispossess them of any false notions, but I don't think it reinforces any either, and in this case when the two appear in conflict it makes sense.
The government is not seeking to punish or pre-punish AT&T. It certainly isn't saying "or else".
Check out the Justice Department's complaint: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/August/11-at-1118.html
The DOJ's point is that the merger is bad for competition to the extent that it reduces competition below some minimum acceptable level.
Markets are good because they foster competition, not because they lack government interference. Vibrant and healthy competition is what gives markets their value. It drives innovation, drives prices down, and quality up, which increases value to consumers.
Monopolies, on the other hand, are not compelled to innovate, and in this "free" market the monopoly is free to raise prices and reduce quality. Monopolies reduce value to consumers. The market dominated by a monopoly serves the monopoly, not consumers. And the monopoly will do everything it can to prevent competition from reestablishing itself for as long as it can. This is inevitable as long as a monopoly is dedicated to maximizing shareholder value. As long as a monopoly exists, I'd hardly call the market free.
The market, free or otherwise, should always serve consumers. As an ideological matter, this is more important than allowing a market to remain free to become dominated by a monopoly, whereupon it is no longer free anyway.
So at a certain point, yes, the government should tell companies to quit trying to gain market share. If it promotes or preserves competition, it isn't anti-competitive.
Why do republicans always side with large corporations?
Fundraising.
Competition > free markets
Free markets are far from perfect; monopolies are only the most obvious flaw. Additionally, it's arguable whether a market dominated by a private monopoly is actually free. Free from governmental force, sure, but that isn't the only kind of freedom that is implied by the term free market.