Well, looks like one troll will be introduced to a new kind of "peer to peer sharing".
But the fines should be made sufficient to cover the outlay that the targets had to pay Prenda, plus the "pain and suffering"/lost work days etc. that have been due to this.
I'm just finding all this quite sad; seems like ethics is treated as just another obstacle to circumvent to make a profit/gain more personal power these days. Politics, business and even on the personal level.
Well, I think things will be coming full circle. In days gone by, I remember the news (the big news anyway) being something a journalist worked away on for some time, following up leads, evaluating, and getting to a truth (or at least a stab at being impartial) of the matter. That's how they won big awards, and gained reputation, for uncovering things that needed to be uncovered, and for spending weeks, months, or years tracing stories, going through all kinds of data, analysing and filtering out the extraneous junk to come up with a solid timeline, and a solid set of facts. Yes, sometimes the stories were couched in sparkly language, but it was based on solid evidence. With the rising of the internet, 'news' had to compete with "blogging" as a source, and rather than staying reputational (big news outlets meant high quality news with long term stories), they chose to dive to the bottom of the barrel, and treat journalism as something to be acquired as cheaply as possible. This, I suspect, was exacerbated by people going "Oh, we can get our news through this 'free' site", and not worry about reputation, as they were used to having a high reputation source available, and assumed all news was of that quality. Now, we're in the situation where there really isn't a high quality source of news. Almost everything has descended to tabloid, retweet, copy/paste of blogs and unverified releases. And people are starting to worry that they're being told porkies. Well, duh! That's what you get for having no high quality, objective news source. Now people are scrabbling to find that objective source via "fact checkers" which are themselves often relying on funding. The only possibilities I can see are to have a subscription basis for high quality online paper that is as objective as possible, presents facts, and avoids sensationalising, or do it as an "open" project, such as Wikipedia, except for news (a lot more time pressure on the volunteer moderators etc.). But one thing's for sure, we need that high quality journalism back. And it needs to earn its reputation.
Both of those (taxes and healthcare as infrastructure) are moderate left. There's a lot of capitalist sense to having free healthcare (as in, you have a ready pool of _healthy_ workers to pull from at any point, increasing flexibility). Increased bands of tax for the very rich is moderate in that it doesn't prevent anyone from becoming super rich, and doesn't in any way stigmatise that. It merely states that above a certain threshold, you can afford to pay more from your income to support the infrastructure that lets people efficiently go about their business, and maintains infrastructure that you would use in your business dealings to make more money.
I'm a skeptic, and pretty consistent. I've spent years combing through the published papers, and working out which ones are based on evidence, and which are based on pseudoscience and opinion. While not a guarantee I'm right in things, it sets the bar pretty high in most of the things I'd debate on (always open to being swayed by good evidence, but it rarely appears). Stating what the evidence shows often gets me the label of 'far right' or so on, despite being fairly oriented with the moderate left (US political surveys always peg me as a Democrat). Quite simply, people use these 'tags' so that they can first set you up as "the enemy", and once that's done, dehumanise you, or pathologise you (those two are endemic on the left), and once they've done that, they have you framed such that anything you say isn't worth listening to because you're "other". It's one of those mental "short cuts" that stop people having to think critically, or undergo the discomfort of having to work through cognitive dissonance, and perhaps change their stances. Because, you know, every opinion is equal, and evidence is irrelevant, because opinion and rights! Both political wings are guilty of this kind of behaviour, but I find the left leaning to be far more threatening in their responses and readiness to pathologise.
Interestingly, under 30, the average pay of a woman is greater than the average pay of a male. This is left out of all the 'gap' stories, as it indicates exactly what the media don't want people perceiving; women aren't oppressed, they're actually doing rather better than average.
It's exactly why I hate Identity Politics. It raises an "us v them" mentality, mandates that any slight, or any perceived wrong (such as being passed over for promotion) has to be because you're a member of group (x). It couldn't be anything other than that. Once you start looking through the world from that perspective, everything becomes about that. Despite the extremely high likelihood that you're wrong (occam's razor; the fewer assumptions you make, the more likely you are to have a correct assessment). Assuming (x)ism is one hell of an assumption to make.
Essentially, the education system has told a generation (or two now) that evidence doesnâ(TM)t matter. You donâ(TM)t have to be correct, rigorous or diligent in working out what the hell is going on; you just have to express yourself, be confident in your conviction and never let anyone tell you youâ(TM)re wrong. And in this pursuit of self affirmation, itâ(TM)s the worldâ(TM)s responsibility to keep you safe, no matter what you choose to do. So, now we arrive at a position where pseudoscience is running rampant, people arenâ(TM)t equipped with the critical thinking skills to delve deep and discern fact from fiction and relevance from irrelevance, and thereâ(TM)s an overwhelming attitude of opinion being the gold standard, and if thatâ(TM)s dangerously flawed itâ(TM)s someone elseâ(TM)s job to protect them from any consequences so they donâ(TM)t need to change their opinion. And now, again, itâ(TM)s âoeoutsourcing critical thinkingâ, conditioning people to believe even more that what they read must be true because an app hasnâ(TM)t flagged it as false. Critical thinking though be core in education, and everyone should be taught to debate. How to build logical progressions (and just as important, how to build false ones, so you can better spot the tricks others use when trying to manipulate you). How to win and lose gracefully. And how to exercise that marvellous tool we have called a brain, rather than switching it off and just using the mouth.
Considering that Antibiotic use for anything other than illness has been illegal for a long time, and it costs money, I think you're woefully misinformed in current day agricultural practice. Pesticides and fertilisers are sparingly used (and agriculture does a lot of research on the minimum spray doses they can use; after all, that costs money too). So your 'we need is a prohibition on medicating animals that aren't sick' already exists.
Ah, you've fallen into the age old trap of believing that a deity/messiah would behave the way you want. I have a sneaky suspicion that the any returned Jesus would decry the SJWs as much as the political machinations of the church/political parties and the rest of the divisive ideologies.
Useful clarification! It'd be interesting to see if there's a rebuttal from the company that produces this, so that there's at least some form of rounded discussion, rather than the blunt hammer of "rouse the mob" that seems to go for journalism these days.
It's horrible when a child has problems like that. However, there are an endless amount of things that can cause that to happen, and the vast majority have nothing to do with a vaccine being given, and is a classic example of the post hoc logical fallacy. If there had been a diagnosis that supported the vaccine being responsible, I'm fairly sure you'd have remembered the syndrome that would be associated with it, and the abreaction that led to the neurological decline (as would they, as in the linked cases where a vaccine has been shown to cause harm, then there are fairly hefty sums paid out by medical insurance). The statistics and possible reactions are well known, and balanced on risk (for example, the risk of vaccinating is a very small chance of small harm, and a vanishingly small chance of major harm. The risk of not vaccinating is no risk of the immediate small or major harms, with several orders of magnitude higher risk of experiencing small, major and catastrophic harm). That's why medicine carries insurance. The option is for everyone to cease vaccination, then know the joys of polio, smallpox and the like.
Wow, that's a lot of logical fallacies in one tirade. Not vaccinating a child that doesn't have a medical reason not to vaccinate increases risk of permanent damage or death to that child. If they contract a disease that vaccines cover, that becomes actual harm caused (hey, it's fine for me to dangle my child out of a 10 story building because it doesn't harm them).
Oh, we see the difference very clearly. But they are both wrong (c.f. the dangling child out of a window above). Can you clarify the reasons for that decision that actually make sense? No anti-vaxxer I've encountered ever has.
Science is not "forced" on people at all. This is where you're absolutely losing the plot in its entirity. Science does not say that boys are girls and vice versa. It actually says there's a variety of chromosomal arrangements that give varying phenotypes. Which is entirely correct. And there are cases where people subjectively feel that they are in the wrong body. If they want to do something that makes their life subjectively better, I'm all for that, as long as they're not tyrannical enough to force me to call them something special, or give them special treatment. Granted, there are outliers that allow gender reassignment to minors, but this is generally though of as unethical until they reach majority and have a firm grasp on what sexuality is, and stabilise on it. This link explains it fairly well (and it's science!): https://www.joshuakennon.com/t...
Unborn fetusus have cognition well below later gestation. If you believe that it's never ok to terminate for the 'people' rationale at this level, then you need to stop killing things from bacteria through to insects (and definitely animals bred for food, or fished). Strict veganism with no cleaning products for you.
Yes, there are links between single parent families and children underperforming quite significantly. What does this have as an argument against vaccination?
I'm all for people having different views, but there are definite limits on that. If you're increasing risk of serious harm to the child, and many people around you, then that's where I draw the line. That's the old "If your sober driving works so well for you, why should my drunk driving scare you?". Basically, you're choosing to increase risk of harm (up to and including permanent physical damage and death) for arbitrary groups of people, and the child that remains unvaccinated, in exactly the same fashion as a drunk driver does with the car. There's a reason that people get pulled for DUI, and that's it.
I am in agreement that two parent families produce superior results in general to single. But that has nothing to do with vaccination status, so is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
I believe that the Pope has a religious exemption from paying taxes as head of the Catholic Church. That's why the Discordians had a time when anyone could be a Pope of the Discordians.
Nope, it's nowhere near functional immunity. It's an increased resistance (and usually quite a fair distance from 100%), which helps reduce an effective virulence, so it doesn't transmit as effectively (this is generally how herd immunity works; it reduces the spread probability so that the disease peters out before it can gain a proper foothold, eventually becoming non-viable is it doesn't mutate a lot). Repeats are used to keep the immune system "remembering" it. Repeated massive exposure doesn't increase risk of failure, it generally does nothing. Unless your 'massive exposure' is a dose so high it becomes toxic (water is toxic at massive doses, so is everything else).
Vaccination doesn't sicken you. Strike one. It just activates the immune system response. Medical need is that everyone be vaccinated for herd immunity, and aim at eradication of the diseases, so medical need is all (so by that argument, we're under-vaccinating by people being dicks). Stupid agenda? Oh, why can't we just go back to the days of polio and smallpox. They were so much better.
34% of people voted for Brexit. About 32% voted against it. The rest hadn't a clue what it actually was they were supposed to be voting for (the options given were no change, or magical unicorns that crap gold and make all your problems disappear). That's why lots are disgruntled, as it's not really a representative number, considering abstentions. Certainly not a good figure to base changing the direction of an entire nation on.
And some people have political views that make absolutely no rational sense (which is how politicians get in that make no rational sense). I heartily approve calling them out on that and saying bluntly that they make no rational sense. All sides of the political spectrum have these kinds of people in, because they can be charming at times.
Hmm.. I think the flu shots still contain thiomersal, which has an organic derivative of mercury in it, but that's no problem. If you worried about the individual atoms that comprised a molecule, instead of its molecular traits, you'd never have salt (which is essential to humans), as it would both explode and poison you with the sodium and the chlorine that makes it up. Thiomersal is safe as a molecule.
Yes, and we pay for it. The Californians have a cap on how much they can charge for electricity, which puts a cap on how much can be spent on resources for implementing new connections, maintaining old equipment, staff hires etc. You'd be amazed at how quickly a profit (that adds to war chest to be able to put a capital spend into upgrading legacy equipment) turns into a loss when you start putting top of the range things into cost fixed product, when by regulation, the standard is sufficient. And even when you put in the top notch stuff, things _still_ go wrong, as that's the nature of entropy and statistics. And when there's a loss, you lose staff. Which means you likely can't maintain, so things go wrong. Or you can't actually afford to patch things up you know are going wrong. So the customer complains and you get fined. But you can't put your prices up to cover costs because state laws say that's not allowed. There's that age old addage: Quality, speed and cost. Pick any two. There's a requirement that things are implemented now. New connection to a forest miles from anywyere? Needs to be done NOW. And at that fixed low cost (vastly below cost for the supplier). Guess what happens. What would be interesting would be a tabula rasa analysis of what it _should_ cost to provide the service, with the staffing, to the area based on statistical trends available from company records. Have this priced up by independents. Sure, it's costly, but it'll provide a baseline that'll inform policy as to whether caps placed on cost are actually viable or not. It's easy to set a price and say "It's your problem to sort that bit out, we're blameless for any issues that may arise". Sometimes, it's not possible to meet arbitrary targets. That really needs to be understood.
What this article seems to be is an attempt to turn a complex, and multivariate issue into a univariate soundbite. Which leads to flawed conclusions, as nobody wants to try and understand the nuance. Far easier to bring out the torches and pitchforks.
Quantity is not quality. FB is the home of memes. G+ was the home of quite a few interesting discussions.. To be honest, I much preferred G+, the problem being not enough of my friends used it, as they already had Facebook, which I can entirely understand.
There's a very amusing book I'm reading at the moment, that covers a dystopian future where the identity politicians win. And what happens to the world when a genuine threat arises.
As with most good satire, there's a strong kernel of truth at the heart of it. Have a read (It's called "Protocol" by M.M Holt).
There are some definite laughs in there, but I really, heartily wouldn't recommend it if you take your identity politics seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
To record your own Dubstep track, fill an old washing machine with typewriters and push it down a long set of stairs.
Well, looks like one troll will be introduced to a new kind of "peer to peer sharing".
But the fines should be made sufficient to cover the outlay that the targets had to pay Prenda, plus the "pain and suffering"/lost work days etc. that have been due to this.
I'm just finding all this quite sad; seems like ethics is treated as just another obstacle to circumvent to make a profit/gain more personal power these days. Politics, business and even on the personal level.
Well, I think things will be coming full circle.
In days gone by, I remember the news (the big news anyway) being something a journalist worked away on for some time, following up leads, evaluating, and getting to a truth (or at least a stab at being impartial) of the matter. That's how they won big awards, and gained reputation, for uncovering things that needed to be uncovered, and for spending weeks, months, or years tracing stories, going through all kinds of data, analysing and filtering out the extraneous junk to come up with a solid timeline, and a solid set of facts.
Yes, sometimes the stories were couched in sparkly language, but it was based on solid evidence.
With the rising of the internet, 'news' had to compete with "blogging" as a source, and rather than staying reputational (big news outlets meant high quality news with long term stories), they chose to dive to the bottom of the barrel, and treat journalism as something to be acquired as cheaply as possible.
This, I suspect, was exacerbated by people going "Oh, we can get our news through this 'free' site", and not worry about reputation, as they were used to having a high reputation source available, and assumed all news was of that quality.
Now, we're in the situation where there really isn't a high quality source of news. Almost everything has descended to tabloid, retweet, copy/paste of blogs and unverified releases. And people are starting to worry that they're being told porkies.
Well, duh! That's what you get for having no high quality, objective news source.
Now people are scrabbling to find that objective source via "fact checkers" which are themselves often relying on funding.
The only possibilities I can see are to have a subscription basis for high quality online paper that is as objective as possible, presents facts, and avoids sensationalising, or do it as an "open" project, such as Wikipedia, except for news (a lot more time pressure on the volunteer moderators etc.).
But one thing's for sure, we need that high quality journalism back. And it needs to earn its reputation.
Both of those (taxes and healthcare as infrastructure) are moderate left. There's a lot of capitalist sense to having free healthcare (as in, you have a ready pool of _healthy_ workers to pull from at any point, increasing flexibility).
Increased bands of tax for the very rich is moderate in that it doesn't prevent anyone from becoming super rich, and doesn't in any way stigmatise that. It merely states that above a certain threshold, you can afford to pay more from your income to support the infrastructure that lets people efficiently go about their business, and maintains infrastructure that you would use in your business dealings to make more money.
I'm a skeptic, and pretty consistent. I've spent years combing through the published papers, and working out which ones are based on evidence, and which are based on pseudoscience and opinion.
While not a guarantee I'm right in things, it sets the bar pretty high in most of the things I'd debate on (always open to being swayed by good evidence, but it rarely appears).
Stating what the evidence shows often gets me the label of 'far right' or so on, despite being fairly oriented with the moderate left (US political surveys always peg me as a Democrat).
Quite simply, people use these 'tags' so that they can first set you up as "the enemy", and once that's done, dehumanise you, or pathologise you (those two are endemic on the left), and once they've done that, they have you framed such that anything you say isn't worth listening to because you're "other".
It's one of those mental "short cuts" that stop people having to think critically, or undergo the discomfort of having to work through cognitive dissonance, and perhaps change their stances. Because, you know, every opinion is equal, and evidence is irrelevant, because opinion and rights!
Both political wings are guilty of this kind of behaviour, but I find the left leaning to be far more threatening in their responses and readiness to pathologise.
Interestingly, under 30, the average pay of a woman is greater than the average pay of a male. This is left out of all the 'gap' stories, as it indicates exactly what the media don't want people perceiving; women aren't oppressed, they're actually doing rather better than average.
It's exactly why I hate Identity Politics. It raises an "us v them" mentality, mandates that any slight, or any perceived wrong (such as being passed over for promotion) has to be because you're a member of group (x). It couldn't be anything other than that.
Once you start looking through the world from that perspective, everything becomes about that. Despite the extremely high likelihood that you're wrong (occam's razor; the fewer assumptions you make, the more likely you are to have a correct assessment). Assuming (x)ism is one hell of an assumption to make.
Essentially, the education system has told a generation (or two now) that evidence doesnâ(TM)t matter. You donâ(TM)t have to be correct, rigorous or diligent in working out what the hell is going on; you just have to express yourself, be confident in your conviction and never let anyone tell you youâ(TM)re wrong. And in this pursuit of self affirmation, itâ(TM)s the worldâ(TM)s responsibility to keep you safe, no matter what you choose to do.
So, now we arrive at a position where pseudoscience is running rampant, people arenâ(TM)t equipped with the critical thinking skills to delve deep and discern fact from fiction and relevance from irrelevance, and thereâ(TM)s an overwhelming attitude of opinion being the gold standard, and if thatâ(TM)s dangerously flawed itâ(TM)s someone elseâ(TM)s job to protect them from any consequences so they donâ(TM)t need to change their opinion.
And now, again, itâ(TM)s âoeoutsourcing critical thinkingâ, conditioning people to believe even more that what they read must be true because an app hasnâ(TM)t flagged it as false.
Critical thinking though be core in education, and everyone should be taught to debate. How to build logical progressions (and just as important, how to build false ones, so you can better spot the tricks others use when trying to manipulate you). How to win and lose gracefully. And how to exercise that marvellous tool we have called a brain, rather than switching it off and just using the mouth.
Considering that Antibiotic use for anything other than illness has been illegal for a long time, and it costs money, I think you're woefully misinformed in current day agricultural practice. Pesticides and fertilisers are sparingly used (and agriculture does a lot of research on the minimum spray doses they can use; after all, that costs money too).
So your 'we need is a prohibition on medicating animals that aren't sick' already exists.
Ah, you've fallen into the age old trap of believing that a deity/messiah would behave the way you want.
I have a sneaky suspicion that the any returned Jesus would decry the SJWs as much as the political machinations of the church/political parties and the rest of the divisive ideologies.
Useful clarification! It'd be interesting to see if there's a rebuttal from the company that produces this, so that there's at least some form of rounded discussion, rather than the blunt hammer of "rouse the mob" that seems to go for journalism these days.
It's horrible when a child has problems like that.
However, there are an endless amount of things that can cause that to happen, and the vast majority have nothing to do with a vaccine being given, and is a classic example of the post hoc logical fallacy.
If there had been a diagnosis that supported the vaccine being responsible, I'm fairly sure you'd have remembered the syndrome that would be associated with it, and the abreaction that led to the neurological decline (as would they, as in the linked cases where a vaccine has been shown to cause harm, then there are fairly hefty sums paid out by medical insurance). The statistics and possible reactions are well known, and balanced on risk (for example, the risk of vaccinating is a very small chance of small harm, and a vanishingly small chance of major harm. The risk of not vaccinating is no risk of the immediate small or major harms, with several orders of magnitude higher risk of experiencing small, major and catastrophic harm).
That's why medicine carries insurance. The option is for everyone to cease vaccination, then know the joys of polio, smallpox and the like.
Wow, that's a lot of logical fallacies in one tirade.
Not vaccinating a child that doesn't have a medical reason not to vaccinate increases risk of permanent damage or death to that child. If they contract a disease that vaccines cover, that becomes actual harm caused (hey, it's fine for me to dangle my child out of a 10 story building because it doesn't harm them).
Oh, we see the difference very clearly. But they are both wrong (c.f. the dangling child out of a window above). Can you clarify the reasons for that decision that actually make sense? No anti-vaxxer I've encountered ever has.
Science is not "forced" on people at all. This is where you're absolutely losing the plot in its entirity. Science does not say that boys are girls and vice versa. It actually says there's a variety of chromosomal arrangements that give varying phenotypes. Which is entirely correct. And there are cases where people subjectively feel that they are in the wrong body. If they want to do something that makes their life subjectively better, I'm all for that, as long as they're not tyrannical enough to force me to call them something special, or give them special treatment.
Granted, there are outliers that allow gender reassignment to minors, but this is generally though of as unethical until they reach majority and have a firm grasp on what sexuality is, and stabilise on it. This link explains it fairly well (and it's science!): https://www.joshuakennon.com/t...
Unborn fetusus have cognition well below later gestation. If you believe that it's never ok to terminate for the 'people' rationale at this level, then you need to stop killing things from bacteria through to insects (and definitely animals bred for food, or fished). Strict veganism with no cleaning products for you.
Yes, there are links between single parent families and children underperforming quite significantly. What does this have as an argument against vaccination?
I'm all for people having different views, but there are definite limits on that. If you're increasing risk of serious harm to the child, and many people around you, then that's where I draw the line. That's the old "If your sober driving works so well for you, why should my drunk driving scare you?".
Basically, you're choosing to increase risk of harm (up to and including permanent physical damage and death) for arbitrary groups of people, and the child that remains unvaccinated, in exactly the same fashion as a drunk driver does with the car. There's a reason that people get pulled for DUI, and that's it.
I am in agreement that two parent families produce superior results in general to single. But that has nothing to do with vaccination status, so is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
That's an ethics violation, and should have them struck off.
It's damn nasty though in the complications:
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/ab...
I believe that the Pope has a religious exemption from paying taxes as head of the Catholic Church. That's why the Discordians had a time when anyone could be a Pope of the Discordians.
Nope, it's nowhere near functional immunity. It's an increased resistance (and usually quite a fair distance from 100%), which helps reduce an effective virulence, so it doesn't transmit as effectively (this is generally how herd immunity works; it reduces the spread probability so that the disease peters out before it can gain a proper foothold, eventually becoming non-viable is it doesn't mutate a lot).
Repeats are used to keep the immune system "remembering" it.
Repeated massive exposure doesn't increase risk of failure, it generally does nothing. Unless your 'massive exposure' is a dose so high it becomes toxic (water is toxic at massive doses, so is everything else).
Vaccination doesn't sicken you. Strike one. It just activates the immune system response.
Medical need is that everyone be vaccinated for herd immunity, and aim at eradication of the diseases, so medical need is all (so by that argument, we're under-vaccinating by people being dicks).
Stupid agenda? Oh, why can't we just go back to the days of polio and smallpox. They were so much better.
You forgot the "fork" option.
34% of people voted for Brexit. About 32% voted against it. The rest hadn't a clue what it actually was they were supposed to be voting for (the options given were no change, or magical unicorns that crap gold and make all your problems disappear).
That's why lots are disgruntled, as it's not really a representative number, considering abstentions. Certainly not a good figure to base changing the direction of an entire nation on.
And some people have political views that make absolutely no rational sense (which is how politicians get in that make no rational sense). I heartily approve calling them out on that and saying bluntly that they make no rational sense.
All sides of the political spectrum have these kinds of people in, because they can be charming at times.
Hmm.. I think the flu shots still contain thiomersal, which has an organic derivative of mercury in it, but that's no problem. If you worried about the individual atoms that comprised a molecule, instead of its molecular traits, you'd never have salt (which is essential to humans), as it would both explode and poison you with the sodium and the chlorine that makes it up.
Thiomersal is safe as a molecule.
You realise that it's infectious in its incubation period, before people get symptomatic, right?
Yes, and we pay for it. The Californians have a cap on how much they can charge for electricity, which puts a cap on how much can be spent on resources for implementing new connections, maintaining old equipment, staff hires etc.
You'd be amazed at how quickly a profit (that adds to war chest to be able to put a capital spend into upgrading legacy equipment) turns into a loss when you start putting top of the range things into cost fixed product, when by regulation, the standard is sufficient. And even when you put in the top notch stuff, things _still_ go wrong, as that's the nature of entropy and statistics. And when there's a loss, you lose staff. Which means you likely can't maintain, so things go wrong. Or you can't actually afford to patch things up you know are going wrong. So the customer complains and you get fined. But you can't put your prices up to cover costs because state laws say that's not allowed.
There's that age old addage: Quality, speed and cost. Pick any two.
There's a requirement that things are implemented now. New connection to a forest miles from anywyere? Needs to be done NOW. And at that fixed low cost (vastly below cost for the supplier). Guess what happens.
What would be interesting would be a tabula rasa analysis of what it _should_ cost to provide the service, with the staffing, to the area based on statistical trends available from company records. Have this priced up by independents. Sure, it's costly, but it'll provide a baseline that'll inform policy as to whether caps placed on cost are actually viable or not. It's easy to set a price and say "It's your problem to sort that bit out, we're blameless for any issues that may arise". Sometimes, it's not possible to meet arbitrary targets. That really needs to be understood.
What this article seems to be is an attempt to turn a complex, and multivariate issue into a univariate soundbite. Which leads to flawed conclusions, as nobody wants to try and understand the nuance. Far easier to bring out the torches and pitchforks.
Quantity is not quality.
FB is the home of memes. G+ was the home of quite a few interesting discussions.. To be honest, I much preferred G+, the problem being not enough of my friends used it, as they already had Facebook, which I can entirely understand.
There's a very amusing book I'm reading at the moment, that covers a dystopian future where the identity politicians win. And what happens to the world when a genuine threat arises.
As with most good satire, there's a strong kernel of truth at the heart of it. Have a read (It's called "Protocol" by M.M Holt).
There are some definite laughs in there, but I really, heartily wouldn't recommend it if you take your identity politics seriously.