Excellent plan! So now, the sole woman on the board can safely be referred to as the token female board member (no matter her qualifications).
But where, you may ask, should these companies go to find qualified female candidates??? I'm not too worried. I'm sure the wives, girlfriends, and daughters of the men on the board will do just fine.
Not good, enough, you say? No problem. We just need more laws! Or maybe we can should just have the all-knowing legislative geniuses in power choose the board themselves. Cause, you know, apparently they know best how to run a business.
You EVIL FASCIST TOOL OF THE PATRIARCHY! How dare you insinuate that people should be chosen on their merits, rather than on the basis of their gender, race, religion, and other arbitrary criteria decided by the all-knowing powers.
Again, you are absolutely on point. I would never recommend any "piece of fluff" for your library. So anyway, try reading The Machinery of Freedom.
All irony aside, you're kinda not wrong about inheritance. It's a problem. The problem with this problem, however, is that the solutions that have thus far been proposed have ultimately resulted in problems much, much greater than this one, and mostly don't actually do much to solve the issue, anyway. People who have enough money to care about where it will go when they go where they can't take it tend to have the wherewithal to find ways through, around, and under whatever Kafkaesque system is designed to confiscate their wealth. The only real beneficiaries of the labyrinth tend to be legislators, lobbyists, and lawyers,
I don't pretend to have answers, but I do know what fails. And I believe I might at least have the right questions in hand.
You are correct that this species you have labeled "the wealthy" possess disproportionate resources to dedicate to protecting their belongings. Then again, they also possess disproportionate wealth to protect, so it kinda makes sense.
As you think all this through, please keep in mind that your local police force is mostly funded by your the local community. What this means is that cops who serve wealthier communities are better equipped, better trained, and just better, since these forces can afford to pay better salaries. Add to this the fact that people are free to live in the community they choose, and what you get is essentially very similar to a privatized police force, paid by the people it serves. Not saying it's good or bad, right or wrong... but these appear to be the facts.
A side note: You should be careful what attributes you ascribe to "the wealthy", lest you, by some calamitous misfortune, one day find yourself among them.
I see you've been reading David Freedman's The Machinery of Freedom! Indeed, you make an excellent point. What you describe is, however, more like a libertarian fantasy (an unworkable one, imho, for certain specific reasons) than it is simply a capitalist society. Capitalism still implies some form of government, and, as such, a police force, but one focused on defending individual rights. If one considers one's body to be one's own property (and I would think it odd to think otherwise), then the whole of the law would indeed consist in defending property rights. If only life could be so simple.
The threat of violence is ever present if once aims to stop thieves from plundering one's belongings. You presumption that only "the wealthy" would be interested in preventing uninvited looters from entering their homes strikes me as a shade dogmatic. Indeed, force would be required to prevent theft, be it sanction by the power of the state or not. Force is required to enable theft, too.
"perfectly normal police behaviour in capitalist states" indeed! Just as in totalitarian states, communist states, authoritarian states, fascist states, and your presumed utopic socialist states, too. Hm... noticing the repeated word? I'm starting to see a pattern here.
Then again, in a truly capitalist state, if ever there were such a thing, the police would barely exist, as there would be very little public money for them. Sadly, such a place does not exist in our world.
well, who ever this anonymous coward was who wrote this, he only wrote it here, at least according to google. so, I'm guessing not a bot or a shill. personally, I'm willing to believe.
You see, Monopoly money is printed by Hasbro, with no natural constraints, much like fiat currencies (e.g., the USD) is printed by their respective governmental institutions.
Bitcoin (in fact, all cryptocurrencies) by contrast are more like gold. They are mathematically constrained to a very well-known limited supply, about 29 million in the case of bitcoin. The supply is well known. The only variable is the demand.
All money is artificial. I don't understand why this point is so hard for people to grasp. Money is worth whatever value people collectively ascribe to it. Bitcoin is no different in that regard.
How about owning those big bad companies? Then, when they make a profit, you, the soon-to-be-obsolete human in this equation, profit, too, and you can be happy. Maybe you won't make as fat a profit as those evil CEOs and billionaires, but maybe, just maybe, you can earn enough on your investment to live. That was, as I understood it, the idea from the very beginning of the 20th century.
The good news is, we don't need to re-invent the whole financial system. This already exists! It's called investing, and it's what we were all supposed to be doing for like the past 150 years or so. So sorry if you didn't get the memo....
Wow, 200 kWh per transaction! Can that really be true?
Much has been said about the energy consumed by the bitcoin network, but I wonder if anybody has every considered the energy used by the fiat currency/banking network? I don't just mean SWIFT and all the associated computers and routers needed to make it go, but also taking into account the construction and maintenance of all the bank branches, headquarters, and office space used by humans to process bank transactions. Plus all the energy used to commute to and from work every day.
I'm no expert... but I'm pretty sure bitcoin doesn't even come close.
Not only is Quantum faster than Chrome, in my very subjective experience, but, more importantly, it preserves the only reason that I continue using FF over Chrome: the search field.
search for something using the all-in-one search/address field
click one result
click through to several other pages
now decide you would like to refine/modify your search somehow. how? oh, simple. just retype the entire query again, since it has been cheerfully replaced by the address of the site you're currently viewing.
Now, do we all agree yet that a search field is a useful thing? Please, O design gurus, stop over simplicating our user interfaces. Yes, we need two mouse buttons, and we need a search field.
Please, do tell us more about your brilliant investment strategy. Or maybe we should just buy your upcoming book, How to Save Nothing and Spend Your Way to Financial Independence??
I've heard similarly braindead humans refer to their Android smartphone as a iphone. It seems "iphone" has become the Kleenex of smartphones. I therefore move that we remove that trademark protection, too.
"paper money is at least backed by... the full faith and credit of the US Government"
What does that even mean? Paper is backed by... the promise of printing more paper?
To be "backed by" something, in my understanding, means that it is a symbolic representation of that other thing. For example, if you store gold at my house, I can issue you a receipt. We agree that I will give this gold to anyone who presents me with this (paper) receipt. Hence, the paper is "backed" by gold. The paper literally says on it "1 gram of gold".
Cybercurrencies are not backed by anything, but we do have a mathematical guarantee that there is a fixed upper limit on the number of them that could ever exist. This is infinitely more rigorous than any human pinky-promise not to crank up the printing presses.
Fiat currencies are, likewise, backed by nothing. In case you hadn't heard the news, Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard back in the early 70's.
I think you understand me just fine. The problem is that everybody has their own "ideal" of what a perfect society would look like. The trick is to make the important distinction between one's personal preferences and what should carry the weight of the law. I may find people who wear backwards baseball caps really annoying... but it's a far cry from there to proposing a law against this kind of headgear. Too many people believe the government exists to do their personal bidding, to point guns at people who are not like them.
This is why government is not society. There are just too many opinions about what a society should look like.
Says Theresa May:
"The internet has brought a wealth of opportunity but also significant new risks which have evolved faster than society's response to them."
And by "society" you mean... you? The government?
Government is not nor should it act on behalf of "society". Try understanding the difference, and we can all get along just fine.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent plan! So now, the sole woman on the board can safely be referred to as the token female board member (no matter her qualifications).
But where, you may ask, should these companies go to find qualified female candidates??? I'm not too worried. I'm sure the wives, girlfriends, and daughters of the men on the board will do just fine.
Not good, enough, you say? No problem. We just need more laws! Or maybe we can should just have the all-knowing legislative geniuses in power choose the board themselves. Cause, you know, apparently they know best how to run a business.
Am I right???
You EVIL FASCIST TOOL OF THE PATRIARCHY! How dare you insinuate that people should be chosen on their merits, rather than on the basis of their gender, race, religion, and other arbitrary criteria decided by the all-knowing powers.
/sarcasm
Oh, I'm sure they will.... riiiiiiiiight after they adopt the metric system.
Again, you are absolutely on point. I would never recommend any "piece of fluff" for your library. So anyway, try reading The Machinery of Freedom.
All irony aside, you're kinda not wrong about inheritance. It's a problem. The problem with this problem, however, is that the solutions that have thus far been proposed have ultimately resulted in problems much, much greater than this one, and mostly don't actually do much to solve the issue, anyway. People who have enough money to care about where it will go when they go where they can't take it tend to have the wherewithal to find ways through, around, and under whatever Kafkaesque system is designed to confiscate their wealth. The only real beneficiaries of the labyrinth tend to be legislators, lobbyists, and lawyers,
I don't pretend to have answers, but I do know what fails. And I believe I might at least have the right questions in hand.
Unless, of course, one considers the wealthy to be people, too.
Regardless, I don't consider wealth to be a problem, really. Poverty... now that we could discuss.
That is a shame. Well, at least now you have.
You are correct that this species you have labeled "the wealthy" possess disproportionate resources to dedicate to protecting their belongings. Then again, they also possess disproportionate wealth to protect, so it kinda makes sense.
As you think all this through, please keep in mind that your local police force is mostly funded by your the local community. What this means is that cops who serve wealthier communities are better equipped, better trained, and just better, since these forces can afford to pay better salaries. Add to this the fact that people are free to live in the community they choose, and what you get is essentially very similar to a privatized police force, paid by the people it serves. Not saying it's good or bad, right or wrong... but these appear to be the facts.
A side note: You should be careful what attributes you ascribe to "the wealthy", lest you, by some calamitous misfortune, one day find yourself among them.
I see you've been reading David Freedman's The Machinery of Freedom! Indeed, you make an excellent point. What you describe is, however, more like a libertarian fantasy (an unworkable one, imho, for certain specific reasons) than it is simply a capitalist society. Capitalism still implies some form of government, and, as such, a police force, but one focused on defending individual rights. If one considers one's body to be one's own property (and I would think it odd to think otherwise), then the whole of the law would indeed consist in defending property rights. If only life could be so simple.
The threat of violence is ever present if once aims to stop thieves from plundering one's belongings. You presumption that only "the wealthy" would be interested in preventing uninvited looters from entering their homes strikes me as a shade dogmatic. Indeed, force would be required to prevent theft, be it sanction by the power of the state or not. Force is required to enable theft, too.
"perfectly normal police behaviour in capitalist states" indeed! Just as in totalitarian states, communist states, authoritarian states, fascist states, and your presumed utopic socialist states, too. Hm... noticing the repeated word? I'm starting to see a pattern here.
Then again, in a truly capitalist state, if ever there were such a thing, the police would barely exist, as there would be very little public money for them. Sadly, such a place does not exist in our world.
can somebody please convert this figure to brapples for me?
I'm calling my invention cash. Can I patent it??
well, who ever this anonymous coward was who wrote this, he only wrote it here, at least according to google. so, I'm guessing not a bot or a shill. personally, I'm willing to believe.
or....... not?
Not sure about "domain fronting", but this little hack still works:
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fyro.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F18%2F04%2F18%2F2338210%2Fgoogle-is-shuttering-domain-fronting-creating-a-big-problem-for-anti-censorship-tools&edit-text=
I just had this great idea for a fabulous new technology! I'm calling it CASH. Here are some of its features:
Not really.
You see, Monopoly money is printed by Hasbro, with no natural constraints, much like fiat currencies (e.g., the USD) is printed by their respective governmental institutions.
Bitcoin (in fact, all cryptocurrencies) by contrast are more like gold. They are mathematically constrained to a very well-known limited supply, about 29 million in the case of bitcoin. The supply is well known. The only variable is the demand.
All money is artificial. I don't understand why this point is so hard for people to grasp. Money is worth whatever value people collectively ascribe to it. Bitcoin is no different in that regard.
How about owning those big bad companies? Then, when they make a profit, you, the soon-to-be-obsolete human in this equation, profit, too, and you can be happy. Maybe you won't make as fat a profit as those evil CEOs and billionaires, but maybe, just maybe, you can earn enough on your investment to live. That was, as I understood it, the idea from the very beginning of the 20th century.
The good news is, we don't need to re-invent the whole financial system. This already exists! It's called investing, and it's what we were all supposed to be doing for like the past 150 years or so. So sorry if you didn't get the memo....
Wow, 200 kWh per transaction! Can that really be true?
Much has been said about the energy consumed by the bitcoin network, but I wonder if anybody has every considered the energy used by the fiat currency/banking network? I don't just mean SWIFT and all the associated computers and routers needed to make it go, but also taking into account the construction and maintenance of all the bank branches, headquarters, and office space used by humans to process bank transactions. Plus all the energy used to commute to and from work every day.
I'm no expert... but I'm pretty sure bitcoin doesn't even come close.
Not only is Quantum faster than Chrome, in my very subjective experience, but, more importantly, it preserves the only reason that I continue using FF over Chrome: the search field.
https://support.mozilla.org/en...
Here is the surprisingly obvious use case:
Now, do we all agree yet that a search field is a useful thing? Please, O design gurus, stop over simplicating our user interfaces. Yes, we need two mouse buttons, and we need a search field.
Please, do tell us more about your brilliant investment strategy. Or maybe we should just buy your upcoming book, How to Save Nothing and Spend Your Way to Financial Independence??
You don't want a job. What you want is income. Why is everybody so confused about this??
I've heard similarly braindead humans refer to their Android smartphone as a iphone. It seems "iphone" has become the Kleenex of smartphones. I therefore move that we remove that trademark protection, too.
So... "backed by" means "taxed"? Huh, that is a definition I had not heard before. Probably because you made it up?
"paper money is at least backed by ... the full faith and credit of the US Government"
What does that even mean? Paper is backed by... the promise of printing more paper?
To be "backed by" something, in my understanding, means that it is a symbolic representation of that other thing. For example, if you store gold at my house, I can issue you a receipt. We agree that I will give this gold to anyone who presents me with this (paper) receipt. Hence, the paper is "backed" by gold. The paper literally says on it "1 gram of gold".
Cybercurrencies are not backed by anything, but we do have a mathematical guarantee that there is a fixed upper limit on the number of them that could ever exist. This is infinitely more rigorous than any human pinky-promise not to crank up the printing presses.
Fiat currencies are, likewise, backed by nothing. In case you hadn't heard the news, Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard back in the early 70's.
I think you understand me just fine. The problem is that everybody has their own "ideal" of what a perfect society would look like. The trick is to make the important distinction between one's personal preferences and what should carry the weight of the law. I may find people who wear backwards baseball caps really annoying... but it's a far cry from there to proposing a law against this kind of headgear. Too many people believe the government exists to do their personal bidding, to point guns at people who are not like them.
This is why government is not society. There are just too many opinions about what a society should look like.
Says Theresa May:
"The internet has brought a wealth of opportunity but also significant new risks which have evolved faster than society's response to them."
And by "society" you mean... you? The government?
Government is not nor should it act on behalf of "society". Try understanding the difference, and we can all get along just fine.