jack daniels and weed, feeling festive as fuck right now
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jack daniels and weed, feeling festive as fuck right now
As far as I'm aware, I'm the only person before you to post about both dumping and tripping at the same time.Quote:
Originally Posted by aubreymcfate
And I hope your experience was more positive than that which I posted about.
I was so determined to pay to watch the Interview. And for the past 30 min. that's what I've been trying to do. Give Sony money. According to http://www.theinterview-movie.com/ you can get it on Youtube, Google Play, Xbox Live and a site ironically named seetheinterview.com where you CANNOT SEE THE INTERVIEW. Youtube: doesn't carry it. Google Play: no luck either. Xbox Live: do not have an Xbox, probably doesn't carry it either, because these services ingeniously detect that I am not connecting from america, so they do not sell it to me. Who can honestly complain about how much the industry is suffering from piracy with this shit going on? If you're not privileged enough to be canadian or american you have to wait, sometimes up to a year for a movie to be released in your country, if at all. Back when they had to literally float the celluloid across the atlantic, maybe there was some justification for this, but for a digital release? This blows my mind. What a colossal fuck up.
So now I'm getting it from kickass.so at because that is the only way I can watch that movie if I want to watch it abroad. I wish I could just paypal Seth Rogan directly and not deal with any of this shit.
Piracy is the Lord's work.Quote:
Originally Posted by oskar
Gabe Newell proved it's not about consumers wanting to get things for free, but about consumers wanting better service. Hollywood and other incumbencies have been slow to adapt. People don't pirate things they would otherwise buy. Piracy is the Lord's work because subversion of industry norms is an important driver of innovation and growth. Incumbents have a natural disadvantage since altering their business models cuts into current market share, but it has to be done.
Eventually, there will likely be no piracy because the industry will have all shifted to a Valve sort of model. Well, there would probably still be *some* piracy since there would still be those who simply don't have the money, but that's not revenue loss and is instead free advertisement.
http://i.imgur.com/H3wb4Zg.jpg
Inspired me to name my rocket launcher in TF2 "Gaben, guide my hand"
Yeah, I've long been confused by the initial theater release, followed by a delayed consumer release by way of dvd/vod. It really seems like the studios are just propping up the cinema industry at this point, because that seems like the only reason to not just release it through streaming services as soon as the last edit is done and the appropriate marketing has taken place. Am I missing something?
I think the main dynamic at play here is that incumbents have incentive to not change business models. For example, in the Walmart vs Amazon battle, many think Walmart should just go full speed ahead with online retail, but the reality is that doing so would undercut its B&M retail revenues. In a lot of ways, Walmart is better off not adapting even if it means that a decade from now Amazon crushes their market share. For Walmart to get ahead of the game, they need some seriously intelligent thinkers with iron-fisted control of the company, with no shareholders to hamstring reinvention. But they don't have this and they won't get itQuote:
Originally Posted by boost
The giant Hollywood network is neck deep in these disadvantages of incumbency. They have loads of capital and contracts invested in maintaining the status quo. They are incapable of shifting models by much due to all the varied interests, and their preferred analyses show them losing revenue even if they were to. There is definitely still money in their model. I'm pretty sure it's more than ever before. If anything, I don't think the problem is them trying to stick with their model, but in having legal backing to undercut new competition. Most intellectual property laws are outdated
As a side note, this is a big plus for theory that supports majorly wealthy individuals. Newell rules Valve with an iron-fist. He owns >50% of it, and he has the fullest capacity to enact what he thinks is right. The product of this is a revolutionary company that is about 16 steps ahead of its competitors. Valve could not do this without the king at the top because its agenda would be muddied due to multiple parties with varied interests, resulting in little creative change to keep everybody happy.
I feel like I didn't answer your questionQuote:
Originally Posted by boost
They're not jumping to VOD because there are tons of people who wish to pay a lot of money to see films first and on the big screen. A company like Netflix may eventually be able to make a killing with instant streaming new release "blockbusters", but they couldn't if they did it right now and if they did it would probably be a part of much larger model. Or it could just be that the cinema will always be the premiere experience. People will pay a lot for a small increase in value. The closer Hollywood can make its releases anticipated live events with spectacular delivery (like UFC), the better it is for them
Frankly I never liked the cinema experience. Maybe back when home systems were garbage was it fun, but now everything about the home experience is better.
Variety and freedom is what we want.
HBO can make its incredible product because it is contracted to the cable company for their premium brand. Cable companies shovel money to HBO just to keep it boutique, and this allows HBO to experiment with high-quality/low-viewership shows in ways that no other networks can.
Amazon and Netflix will probably eventually finance their own major hits and release them on their paid services even if it means they'd take a hit that they otherwise wouldn't if they released them on the big screen, because of the increased revenues for their main business the releases would generate.
Google will probably create something entirely different as Youtube becomes such a juggernaut of content that its stars create full-length features for release on Youtube in unique ways that fit its model
What I see happening with Youtube is, as some of its talents become stars rivaling the popularity and skills of Hollywood names, Google will fork over mountains of cash to keep them from leaving Youtube for Hollywood. This would open the door for Google to finance projects those stars want to do and would probably force Google to enter the industry. As it is now, they have little to gain from that, but if the path forward forces them down that road, it could be something they end up gaining from. It would be silly of them to try to enter the market prematurely.
Which gets to a point about economics that most people hate: employees should be paid what they're worth. One of the best ways to cripple a business is to overpay what its employees do not successfully negotiate for
I think even the feature length concept is borderline antiquated. The roughly 90 minute model comes from a balance between offering an extended spectacle that will get people out of their homes and in the theater, and the amount of time people will sit comfortably at length. Should the theatrical release model go by the wayside, the feature length concept will only be propped up by nostalgia and the inertia created by our expectations.
Nah, I think the youtube model is attractive enough for content creators, and doesn't require much if any additional incentive. If you listen to enough podcast, you'll hear this being talked about. The old media comes with all sorts of strings attached, success in it is terribly fleeting because of all the middle men capable of sacking your career intentionally or not, and the money is not always better, especially in the long run.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Quote:
Which gets to a point about economics that most people hate: employees should be paid what they're worth. One of the best ways to cripple a business is to overpay what its employees do not successfully negotiate for
You're railing against the dangers of one extreme, but ignoring the dangers of the other and opposite.
https://www.duolingo.com
Holy shit this thing is fantastic! I never needed french since school, but the stuff this makes me remember is insane. This might be the best language learning app in existence.
I strongly agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by oskar
What's that?Quote:
Originally Posted by boost
Welfare for everybodyQuote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Some form of disruptive proletariat movement, which could potentially be violent but would certainly be harmful to the economy.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Oh I see what you're getting at. You're saying that if workers don't get compensated enough, they'll rebel, which will create other more serious problems.Quote:
Originally Posted by boost
Which is true, but only if we assume systematic wage suppression. Competition between market actors does the opposite. Companies can't suppress wages unless provided legal means to do so. If in a free market, a company (or a bunch of companies) attempt to suppress wages, they just end up losing talent and market share to any other company with half a brain.
Even in our current system, where the state intervenes substantially and there exist many suppressive forces from that, compensation is still increasing. It tends to not take the form of wages since high income taxes and payroll taxes incentivize it in benefits instead. This is an attempt by companies to increase productivity by increasing compensation of its employment, yet it has a deleterious side effect in distorting the market of benefits. The best example of this is probably how a significant vehicle for ramping healthcare costs is the ramping of demand for services through company benefits.
You won't find a disruptive proletariat movement outside of an authoritarian state regime. A proletariat movement is a response to a lack of competitive forces, brought on by an abundance of competition-stifling laws. The beauty of choice and competition is that it incentivizes companies to pay employees based on productivity
Right, but we don't have a free market, and in our current system labor does need to be empowered, else the balance tip too far.
On another note.. I haven't heard anything about the universal minimum income stuff that was getting buzz some time back. What are your thoughts on that? Is it possible that something of that sort could create a better society? And maybe I should rephrase that-- is it possible that a universal minimum income could be much easier to get to, compared to a true free market, but would still offer a dramatic improvement to society?
Decreasing regulations on industry does just that. I agree that labor should be empowered. I also think business and consumers should be empowered. The biggest areas of improvement we can do for all of the above is stopping the state from creating disparities. Workers' biggest enemy is the state. Unless you're talking about "Labor", which is a pseudo-monopoly granted special status by law. "Labor" and its legal backing is responsible for all sorts of awful things for workers, businesses, and consumers, like lack of competition in broadband, mountains of red tape for any projects, and high costs for the purpose of pricing non-Labor members out of the market.Quote:
Originally Posted by boost
I've posted this beforeQuote:
On another note.. I haven't heard anything about the universal minimum income stuff that was getting buzz some time back. What are your thoughts on that? Is it possible that something of that sort could create a better society? And maybe I should rephrase that-- is it possible that a universal minimum income could be much easier to get to, compared to a true free market, but would still offer a dramatic improvement to society?
https://medium.com/@morganwarstler/g...s-1d068ac5a205
This would be infinitely better than the current system, but just about anything sensible would be better since the current system deeply discourages productivity
That said, I think no welfare is better than even the most well constructed welfare system. That means an absence of welfare in everything: education, healthcare, wage floors, a bunch of others. The reason I think this is that the primary burden on the poor in this country is high costs of these services and the high barrier to entry into employment, both of which are mainly a product of the welfare state. They're also a product of the regulatory state, with all sorts of harmful laws including licensing and zoning. It isn't that the poor suffer from a lack of revenue, but from a lack of social mobility. The left-wing thinks it understands this, which is why it pushes for more subsidization of services for the poor, but that really just increases the problem by increasing the costs of the services and making it even more difficult to get work and develop skills.
The US pays assloads for education. It is gargantuanly expensive, yet we get very little value from it. Only a fraction of what we learn in the system goes towards our overall productivity and prosperity. Not to mention it has rewired culture norms in such strange ways that we believe things like teenage rebellion is normal. Regulations and welfare in healthcare have turned something that inherently probably would cost less than food into something that costs so much it is gobbling up the economy, and almost nobody is truly getting better care.
Without going to far with it, the basis for why welfare doesn't work is that it displaces costs. It promotes overuse of a service or product, which increases its costs, which is a feedback loop that is tough to shut down. In a hypothetical system without welfare and burdensome regulations, employment and increasing skillsets would be about as easy as walking through the park. It's the attempt to eliminate this problem by throwing money at it that the problem grows even larger. The problem would be eliminated by value selection of choice, which allows a fluid cost/benefit analysis even at the poorest, most inadvertent levels
Higher education is a great example of this. Two decades ago, you didn't need a bachelors degree to get a good white collar job, but now you do. Why? Because that was when the government decided it would guarantee college loans to anybody and everybody. Now college is virtually mandatory and ridiculously expensive. Everybody is going into massive debt, losing years of productivity due to opportunity costs, and finally getting employment doing things far beneath their education levels. Education in this country is a behemoth of waste, entirely because it's welfare. College subsidies do not help the poor at all. Instead they make it that much harder for the poor to get employment and develop skills. The barrier to entry in good employment is oh so much higher because of education subsidies.
sorry for making such huge posts. i just get going and going. it should be noted im a political and policy junkie. i can go at it for days
On zoning:
What is the mechanism you propose to replace it? I am well aware of how absurd zoning can be, and I think there are tons of places for improvement, but it is absolutely necessary for a planned city. And if you think the idea of a planned city is a bad one, then I'm pretty sure you've never been to Boston, London, Bangkok, etc. And once you leave the urban areas, zoning is naturally relaxed since as properties spread out, the need for zoning decreases and the cost of enforcement goes up.
On guaranteed income:
Yeah, this plan sounds pretty awesome. Part of me does want to see a GI without any strings-- I'm not sure exactly how it would work, but I think the author of that article is imagining a world and circumstances that fit with his vision instead of fitting his vision to a more realistic world and circumstance. But maybe I'm also not imagining a robust enough rating system since he used eBay's as an example and eBay's system has been better than nothing but nonetheless abysmal since its inception.
But, yeah, while we may be on opposite ends of what we think is wrong with the proposal, we both can agree that it would be far far better than what we have now. So, if only I could bring the bleeding hearts in on this and you could convince the Atlas Shrugged thumpers that this is a great compromise...
Ebola has hit the UK (one case, in Scotland, which is as far from me in the very tip of the southwest as could be) so I feel as a responsible parent I should buy a shotgun, a few gallons of water and some tinned food just in case. I mean, this could be the beginning of the very zombie apocalypse survival adventure I've been waiting for and how stupid would I feel if I didn't prepare
Might get an axe and bow and arrow just in case, and something to dip the arrow tips in that will burn.
Assuming the zombie thing doesn't happen, I'll be at a wedding in two weeks, sharing a table with a famous wreckhead rock star who happens to be in a relationship with one of my partners very good friends. In all probability nothing more than a small amount of polite chitchat will take place, but if the opportunity presents itself to get fucked up with a rock star, you should take that opportunity, right?
If the drinking works out, you can invite him back to your place to shoot stuff.
Gotta yooooz that shotgun for sumthin'
A "guaranteed income" is yet another example of institutionalized theft. You're half a step away from a full-on raging communist shithole by then.
yeesh another monster incoming. i really am sorry. i try to not leave holes
I have no idea about specifics because they're technical and involved. What I do know is that zoning is a mess because of state ownership. This is what perpetuates things like height limits in Silicon Valley because enough voters tell their politicians that's what they want, and the politicians have to back it even though it stalls economic growth a ton. If all land was privately owned, we would see some major reorganizations that would eliminate most of these sorts of problems since the cost-benefit analyses that go into them are based on profits of the investors instead of votes for the politicians.Quote:
Originally Posted by boost
Even things like homelessness and traffic jams are probably a product of state ownership of key zones in cities or regulations of business. One way this is a factor in creating homelessness is that urbanization tends to carry with it the need for workers with higher skills, which prompts immigration of workers with those skills. Yet many residents who "were there first" yet lack or don't build needed skills don't get nudged out because the state maintains all sorts of regulations and properties to help them. But what this does is keeps those low-skilled residents from living in places where they can use their skills to best their situation. A double whammy is that the city around them gets more and more expensive from basic supply and demand. So we end up with a bunch of people who would not be struggling financially if they migrated elsewhere, yet are struggling because they're stuck in the city. Stuck by their own design, by voting for politicians who craft policies to keep them there
That isn't true for most low-skill people in cities though. Most can still get work since lots of low-skill jobs are still done in cities. But on the margins it hurts the low-skill.
Another real easy example is that if all property was owned by non-state entities, vagrancy simply wouldn't be a thing to the degree it is with a government that owns lots of property where the homeless can reside and the enforcers of the law don't kick them out. The non-homeless would view the state kicking out the homeless as a humanitarian catastrophe, but the facts are that the last place homeless people should be is in expensive cities. If they migrated into the country, where things are cheap and virtually all jobs are low-skill, there wouldn't be that many homeless anymore
To be sure, I don't support the state forcing homeless out of cities, but I do support private entities not allowing vagrancy on their property if that's their choice. All of that said, if cities were privately owned, I doubt the homeless would be forced out since there would be a lot of private organizations with the agenda of rehabilitation, on whose property and in whose programs the homeless could choose to reside and participate.
As for traffic jams, they're the last thing we would get in privately owned cities. Walk into any store and the owners/managers/employees are doing their best to streamline everything. There is some wait during rushes, and it all sorta depends, but the jams are nothing compared to what happens in government establishments or government roads. This is because the economic incentive of owners of business is profits. They want more customers. They want a swift experience. They are always looking for new ways to streamline the experience. But the incentive for government in its upkeep of roads is nothing of the sort. Its primary incentive is a streamlined experience for government vehicles (everybody seems to have forgotten that one). Its secondary and tertiary incentives appear to just be about keeping people from raging so hard that the politicians in charge lose their jobs. That's why there are billions of potholes causing all sorts of damage to vehicles and jams that persist for hours. For the state to solve those problems, they lose money, but in a privately owned environment, solving those problems makes money.
I think the standard democratic view of the world has things completely backwards. People tend to view the state as a moral good and for-profit organizations as a moral bad, but the truth is that it is by the competitive pursuit of profit that good is created and by the lack of this pursuit by the state that it does bad. I think it's a little ironic that people fear private ownership of things because they think it will create grand monopolies, yet they think the solution is to allocate those grand monopolies to the state. Especially ironic since private ownership doesn't create monopolies. Only in the most obscure and inconsequential ways do markets have monopolies, and those tend to get subverted rather easily. But it takes the deaths of millions to subvert the state monopoly....only to erect a new state monopoly
It won't happen. An overhaul like this requires some people losing their specific subsidy, and that alone is good enough to halt change. Even something like a hugely positive tax overhaul where we close loopholes that distort the market and create "bubbles" while also lowering tax rates to make the effect neutral isn't feasible since there will be losers in that transaction.Quote:
On guaranteed income:
Yeah, this plan sounds pretty awesome. Part of me does want to see a GI without any strings-- I'm not sure exactly how it would work, but I think the author of that article is imagining a world and circumstances that fit with his vision instead of fitting his vision to a more realistic world and circumstance. But maybe I'm also not imagining a robust enough rating system since he used eBay's as an example and eBay's system has been better than nothing but nonetheless abysmal since its inception.
But, yeah, while we may be on opposite ends of what we think is wrong with the proposal, we both can agree that it would be far far better than what we have now. So, if only I could bring the bleeding hearts in on this and you could convince the Atlas Shrugged thumpers that this is a great compromise...
The solution, I think, is just gradual tax reductions of any sort (preferably on income, payroll, and capital), and effective privatization that would end up reducing government obligations. Both of these are feasible, but they have to be slow and steady. Even more importantly I think what we need is a cultural shift in sensibilities. The Religious Right and left-wing have one major thing in common: they want a strong state that tells everybody what they can and can't do. Both sides think they have the moral high-ground.
Maybe a cultural shift requires calling people out on their bullshit. Like when somebody with an iphone complains about capitalism and says the state should stop corporations from whatever. Maybe we should point out to them how human civilization has had state control for thousands of years and it never created the iphone, yet just a couple centuries of burgeoning support for capitalism has given them those magic wands in their hands.
Lots of interesting points, few of which I think I can meaningfully respond to and continue this discussion.
I would like to snipe this one though:
No, not at all. The entity is doing all it can to streamline everything, or at least that is where all the incentives are. The employees are doing all they can to keep getting paid and either get paid more or do less work, or at least that is where the incentives are. The entity needs to co-opt the diverging incentives of the individuals to fulfill it's goals. The state is the greater entity, and the businesses are the employees, or at least that's the best way to work your analogy. What you're proposing is that the business should not impose rules on its employees, and they should just be allowed to set up the store in a way that best serves their individual interest. The store would be chaos.Quote:
Walk into any store and the owners/managers/employees are doing their best to streamline everything.
TL;DR: You're either ignoring the tragedy of the commons, or you're taking a huge leap of faith that the market will self correct in a way that will solve for this dilemma. The latter seems like an absurd position, especially since the dilemma's causality is the purported source of all that is great in a free market.
Also fuck Obama, fuck Obamacare and fuck anybody who supports Obamacare.
lol spoon
If you actually weren't talking out your ass, I might engage you.
I think businesses should absolutely impose rules on their employees. Literally any rules they want, because that entity and the profits of the owners/investors live or die by the employees choosing to participate in those rules. An entity with bad enough rules loses talent and sales to a business with better onesQuote:
Originally Posted by boost
The key is choice and competition. Without those, what we're really discussing is a monopoly no different than a legal state.
We find this dynamic at play in every industry where government has little involvement. Like software. The last thing a software company can get away with is being shitty to its employees. The companies have very little power to suppress wages or cut costs attaining to the work environment because any one that does just loses talent to the others who don't. The competition has incentive to not abuse its workers for exactly this reason
If the popular Hobbesian view was true, we would not be seeing companies like Google do every little thing it can to make the work environment spectacular. Read any ol article that portrays the popular view of the world, and you'd think corporations are breaking their backs to crush the workers, but that simply isn't true. Even the infamous Koch Industries is reportedly awesome for its employees. I've heard tell that it's one of the few large corporations that organizes mostly on merit instead of status and priors (like education certificates)
As for tragedy of the commons, check out wisdom of crowds
More specifically about TotC, markets definitely correct for this. How? Supply and demand. The TotC is a depleting of resources for the purpose of individual gain. In a large economy, this just doesn't happen because everything is priced. It's not a coincidence that the go-to example for TotC is a wholly uncompetitive, tiny proto-nation on Easter Island. In our modern economy, a move towards resource depletion brings with it substantial costs and a subsequent move against its use. Markets self-correct this superbly; whereas states do a pretty awful job. Just look at rising costs in healthcare and education. Those are not market-based in the slightest
Just a couple bullet-points for why this is true of healthcare: (1) A while back the state made it illegal for most competent practitioners to practice. The AMA lobbied the government hard enough and this has virtually kicked out all cheap care from the market. Overall this colossal supply restriction is costing trillions in waste. Nobody can do anything about it because the government has made it illegal to challenge. (2) During WW2, the government made it illegal to raise wages. This promoted companies to raise compensation via healthcare benefits. Ever since, this tie of employment to healthcare has caused a cascade of overuse, which in turn increases costs by making demand outpace supply. (3) Everything from Medicare, Medicaid, to the ACA displaces costs of individual healthcare choices onto others, which in turn promotes overuse. It's not a coincidence that the best healthcare system, which spends only a fraction on care that we do (Singapore), is structured in such a way that most expenses are out of pocket (mandated savings programs). This means healthcare consumers only consume what they need/want instead of what they can get.
I very much enjoy this discussion BTW. I hope anybody who cares to point out problems with my arguments does so.
Jeb Bush wins the presidency in 2016. Ya can take that to the bankQuote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
Forcing people to pay for over-priced coverage that underdelivers is CHANGE.Quote:
Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
My favorite part of it is that people who make 100% of the poverty level are able to get great policies for $20 a month. Meanwhile, if you make 98% of the poverty level, you can get absolutely no help whatsoever from the government (neither Federal nor state) in a lot of places including where I live in North Carolina.
I completely agree that he wins against any democrat. I'm only slightly less-than-certain that he beats other Republicans.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Right, so I think I pretty much agree with your explanation of how the market corrects for TotC in the examples you used. But we were more specifically talking about city planning, zoning, etc. In this realm, the resources concerned are not as tangible, for example, airspace, number of entrances/exits in a given stretch of road, etc. Pretty much, I'm thinking more of TotC scenarios in which the end game is not a depletion of a finite resource, but a stalemate in which inefficiency is mandatory, else you give your competitor an edge.
Quote:
I think businesses should absolutely impose rules on their employees. Literally any rules they want, because that entity and the profits of the owners/investors live or die by the employees choosing to participate in those rules. An entity with bad enough rules loses talent and sales to a business with better ones
The key is choice and competition. Without those, what we're really discussing is a monopoly no different than a legal state.
Right, so the mechanism to respond to an under-performing state needs to be better. A voting system that doesn't encourage two (and in all practical ways only two) centrist political parties, and maybe the possibility for a recall referendum could be a viable solution, no?
The parties/candidates that cannot hold office because they renege on campaign promises will not be able to fund successful campaigns, pay to employ talented staffers, etc etc.
Like, dude, we need a state, so I'm just always weary when everything that you tap into your keyboard can be summed up by "gubment bad." It's like people who claim all police are bad, and furthermore that the institution itself is inherently bad, but, like, you know, you don't want to live in a world without police.
Yeah, I think I flip this. I think the GOP winning the house gives the Democrats a lot of ammo for their 2016 presidential run, but for Jeb to beat back his republican competitors and come out ahead in the primary, all he has to do is pander to the base a little without going full retard to the point that the pundits will mock his ability to win in the general.Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
Yeah, I think this has been a good chat.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Outside of that enormous problem, I think the even bigger problem stems from the widespread belief that the state must regulate safety. It is for this reason that it is illegal for any but the most stringent and expensive medical facilities to exist. Everybody thinks the government is saving us from ourselves when it makes licenses so tough to get that only those with expensive educations can provide care. The practitioners then end up being majorly overqualified for the work they perform. There are probably about a million people in the country who have the know-how to provide quality care for 98% of visits, yet they are legally prohibited from doing so.Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
The change we need is for people to realize that it isn't government that keeps us safe, but markets. Cops are not keeping streets safe, the people who live on them are. Houses are not kept from falling over because of building regulations but because home construction is a business where the primary incentive for its investors is homes that don't fucking fall over. Food isn't making us sick because of the FDA but because people won't buy food from companies that have a reputation of selling contaminated food. When I was a kid, I remember a health crisis at Jack in the Box. The company had to completely change its image after that, not because of anything the government did, but because people stopped eating there. It did so by doing everything it could to not make people sick
The government does not protect us. It protects itself from us.
I fucking hate America.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
I think that is a very good observation, and the answer is that I don't think anybody knows how the chips would fall. However, it is important to note that there is not just one city. We currently have some very small competition between state governments trying to do things like attract businesses from other states, but I think that pales in comparison to the competition between city boards would be if all property was private. I think the basis is that in a market, the cost-benefit analysis reigns supreme; whereas, it doesn't in a state. So even with finite resources in a specific city, the cost-benefit analysis works better than the vote-politician dynamicQuote:
Originally Posted by boost
Europe is much more advanced than we are in this regard, yet that has solved none of its problems. Europe is in full-on disaster mode today, and honestly I think we'd be in for WW3 if it wasn't for global trade and the known impossibility for any European state to create a dominant military. That's just fun speculation though. The point is that Europe is better at what you suggest yet it hasn't improved their policies. Arguably it makes their policies worse.Quote:
Right, so the mechanism to respond to an under-performing state needs to be better. A voting system that doesn't encourage two (and in all practical ways only two) centrist political parties, and maybe the possibility for a recall referendum could be a viable solution, no?
The parties/candidates that cannot hold office because they renege on campaign promises will not be able to fund successful campaigns, pay to employ talented staffers, etc etc.
I do want to live in a world without police. Also I don't think that because some police are bad it means all are bad; instead I think that the system is fundamentally dysfunctional, which means that "the police" as a whole is inherently a problem.Quote:
Like, dude, we need a state, so I'm just always weary when everything that you tap into your keyboard can be summed up by "gubment bad." It's like people who claim all police are bad, and furthermore that the institution itself is inherently bad, but, like, you know, you don't want to live in a world without police.
Let me explain why I think we shouldn't have police:
I seriously do not believe that they are responsible for safety and security in communities. If they were, then wouldn't it mean that places where there are more police are places that quickly become the safest? Yes, I think it would, but that isn't what we see happening. What we see is all the safe regions being where the people themselves do not tolerate an insecure environment, and the police do very little there. We see in the places where the police are the most, perpetuation of an unsafe community.
Police almost never stop crime in process, but regular people do on a regular basis. Because of our belief in the police state and the illegality of many forms of private protection, the people depend on the police to provide them security, yet the police rarely live up to the standards. Just take the recent riots for example. I contend that private property was damaged precisely because all the businesses rely on the police for protection. Yet if instead, the businesses knew that their only protection was what they created on the merits, they would already have a system in place that truly benefits them over the costs and protects them from vandalism.
Consider what the fundamental duty of the police is. Is it to protect and serve? No. That is a lie. It is to uphold the laws, to protect the state. This is why the overwhelming majority of what cops do is just patrol the streets, looking for anybody speeding, rolling at stops, or without updated tags, so they can ticket them for state revenues. The police spends almost all of their time harassing citizens.
As for more indepth policing, like homicide investigations or SWAT type enforcement, that stuff could be handled so much more easily by private organizations on contract by insurance companies on contract with individuals and communities who choose to pay for those services.
Taxes are you being forced to pay for what you're told you need. Why does freedom of choice work for everything except for those handful of arbitrary things the state says we need?
Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
I think this is a whole lot of cherry picking. Building codes are the reason San Francisco doesn't look like Haiti after an earthquake. The idea of regulations is that the reputational risk tolerance of a company does not adequately provide the level of safety we want. Maybe this can change with better systems for tracking and reporting reputation, but that certainly doesn't currently exist. A guy doing shoddy residential electrical wiring in the absence of a licensing system could work for decades without A) even knowing he is doing shoddy work and B) without any calamities coming to fruition due to his shoddy work. If and when catastrophe does strike, losing his reputation as an electrician is not sufficient punishment and his shoddy bookkeeping will likely make it impossible to warn all his clients of the electrical fire brewing in their walls. The reason we have licensed and bonded contractors, and it is a common requirement to be one, is for this very reason: "common sense" does not account for all sorts of possibilities for calamity, and the delay in negative consequences can be so vast that it's unreasonable to expect reputation alone to be an effective safeguard.
The thing is that there's no Republican to beat him. The establishment guys, Walker and Christie, will suffer in ways Bush won't, and the evangelicals have too little power and will back Cruz for the lose. Rand Paul is a darkhorse, but I don't think he can beat Bush and I think he cares more about playing a long game of shifting the party's priorities.Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
Bush's VP will probably be Rob Portman, John Kasich, or Mike Pence. This will all but cinch Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado FTW. Jeb is really strong in ways I don't think the media understands
I like a Jeb presidency.Quote:
Originally Posted by OngBonga
He doesn't hail from the evangelical base that his brother did. His policies as governor in Florida revolve around tax cuts, regulation reduction, and increasing school choice. All good stuff. He is one of the only Republicans who can get pro-immigration policy done.
As for the problems with the GWB presidency:
He didn't create the 08 crisis. Many blame him for that, but his effect on that is tiny to non-existent. It was a long-term congressional housing policy issue and Federal Reserve monetary policy issue.
The Iraq War probably would have been just as much of a disaster under a Democrat. Hussein was going rogue and he needed to be taken out, even Dennis Kucinich would have done it. The problem arose due to the occupation being wholly inadequate, the solutions for which are only speculative and generally wouldn't have been feasible. "Installing democracy" is not something that could work. Probably the only thing that would have worked short of annexation (which wouldn't have worked for duh reasons), is merely just taking out Hussein and then letting his military install a new dictator ASAP, with the knowledge that if he gets out of line, he too would be crushed beneath the heel of the international community.
I don't know how we can prove it, but I disagree.Quote:
Originally Posted by boost
If you were right, I think it would necessarily mean that private industry owes all of its positive attributes to government oversight.
Anecdotally, I am the son of a residential general contractor and have worked in the field. I know many people from framers to electricians to plumbers to excavators. They get work on their reputations. The only thing the building department does is delete productive hours so the contractors can wait in line downtown or wait for an agent to find his way to the site to approve something (sometimes this is a whole day affair). The worst part of the construction industry is the building department and its silly rules and halting schedule. It's so bad that most of its agents don't even know the material as well as the contractors, and the contractors are then forced to expend a lot of time and energy into "fixing" something in such a way that the building department understands it and can approve it, even though it doesn't improve safety at all.
I believe the view you're expressing, the "snake oil con", is mostly a myth. It is extremely hard to get work doing something that you haven't been able to prove you know how to do properly. This is true in all industries where the product or service is of real consequence. In construction, tons of stuff is done under the table (without government oversight), and virtually none of it comes from workers who have tricked others into giving them work. People are mostly very skeptical of who they give their money to. The construction industry is enormous and it's almost entirely referral and reputation based.
Snake oil only works as long as it is in a realm of the unimportant. And it only works when its faults are a mere benign effect, not a deleterious one. Besides, it isn't that safety can only be promoted by the state. Private companies can promote safety far more effectively. It's not like a lack of an FDA would make consumables a free-for-all. Instead the industry would have all sorts of insurance companies and reputations on the line, all upheld by choice of consumers. Instead of one FDA that is paid for by forced taxation, we would have three or twenty or however many, and they would all survive on the merits of their analyses instead of on their ability to keep the taxed populace from rebelling too hard
My problem with Jeb is his fucking surname. GWB is a bastard war criminal, and you guys are about to vote in his fucking brother. They're feeding you lot stupid juice.
I wonder if it's just a coincidence that since Malaysia convincted GWB and Tony Blair in their absence at their war crimes court, they've "lost" three planes.
The torture situation is frustrating. But I think it has little to do with the president and a lot to do with the powers congress allocates the CIA and other secretive agencies. It appears that GWB never signed off on the torture, and it is reasonable to assume that a Democratic administration may not have been altogether better.Quote:
Originally Posted by OngBonga
It's a tough issue for sure, but I'm not convinced it's something that can be pinned on the surname. Doing so is wholly unscientific at the least
One point to make: Obama was about as much of an outsider as possible, and, um, he's been pretty bleh. People have taken this to mean that we need another outsider, but hey this is where I say people are stupid and don't know what they need. Queen Victoria was fucking queen of all things yet she presided over the path towards a constitution that would ultimately subvert her family's power. The state needs state insiders to get things done. Of course the preference is state insiders who wish to intelligently marginalize the state
Ok so you'd have no problem if Hans Hitler got voted into germany?Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
I obviously just made that name up before anyone takes me seriously.
The point about the surname is that you're allowing a corrupt dynamsty to continue to dominate American politics. Jeb's father is not exactly an angel. These people need to be banned from politics, not given the highest office. Jeb is going to be under exactly the same influence that GWB was under. Does anyone actually think GWB was running the country? If he was, you'd be in even more shit than you already are; he couldn't run a pub quiz.
Then again you guys voted GWB in after he blatantly stole an election. Fuck it, you deserve them.
Vote Bush, dickheads.
Voting in a different president will not change the bold.Quote:
Originally Posted by OngBonga
Also, the word "allowing" is not completely accurate. It's not in the hands of the voters at this point.
Well at least someone seems to have an idea what's going on.Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
You're right, American democracy is a joke.
So is ours, for that matter. I'm not just anti-American. I hate the British too. We're equally as fucking dumb.
The popular vote for the presidency is a sham. The president is elected by the Electoral College. The electoral college is appointed, not voted for, and therefore do not represent the general public.
Furthermore:
In most states the electoral college casts their votes before the voting booths have closed.
In most states the electoral college is not required by law to vote in a way that reflects the popular majority.
In most states, that state's electoral college votes as a block, openly denying any subtlety in that state's preferred candidate.
While most of the votes cast by an American citizens matter, the vote for president is irrelevant.
Growing up, I was taught that the electoral college is in place because the founding fathers did not trust the election of the president to the citizens.
How many intelligent people here are actually pro universal suffrage and direct democracy?
Dynasty is the popular claim, but the word is thrown about loosely in this case that I think disagrees with the intention of the wordQuote:
Originally Posted by OngBonga
GWB didn't steal the election, the right-wingers on the SCOTUS arguably played partisan politics so that the results that favored him weren't overturned. They had a legitimate claim even though I disagree with it.
GWB was running the country as much as Obama has been
Many of your points assume it is right to favor democracy. I don't. I don't know to which degree I think this, but I think that empowering the vote is an utter disaster. Voters tend to cast their votes on their own moral authoritarianism more than any other factor. If all of the most popular sentiments were enacted, we'd be up shit creek without a paddle
Dictatorships aren't any better. They're probably worse, but it's important to remember that it's a mistake to think too highly of democracy. I agree with the founders' wariness of entrusting policy to the people. Only in a small number of ways do the people have a good sense of what they want/need. Anytime the issue is marginally technical or the effects are indirect (which is almost always), voters tend to make bad choices
The only idea I've come across that could potentially fix this is making it legal to sell your vote. This would keep the poor and uninformed from being disenfranchised (while giving them extra cash), yet would allow those who construct policy to be those with the greatest expertise and the most skin in the game.
Just a handful of "small" changes could make all the difference. Another is making it illegal for the government to give contracts to entities that have lobbied them. This is the campaign finance reform Rand Paul wants to do, and it's currently the only non-batshit proposal I've seen
I would personally prefer Rand Paul or Scott Walker to Bush, but for the most part Bush is a good idea.
I am not, but I am pro-open borders. Ironically, that would be infinitely more empowering to the disenfranchised than any voting scheme, yet I doubt we could get even 10% of the American left to support it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renton
Darwin award candidate right here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH68...ature=youtu.be
Because I will murder you for not embedding that video.Quote:
Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
http://i.imgur.com/VDQly3Z.gif
Sorry. I was on shift and I wanted to share it and get back to work. I noticed that I didn't get it 100% correct, but that the link looked like it would work, so I let it go for a bit.
I intended to come back and properly embed the vid when I got off shift, but you took care of it, like a bro.
Thanks, bro.
You can't actually get another guy from the Bush dynasty become president, that would be so messed up. Just.. remember George W. Bush and all the shit he pulled?
What shit was that? I'm not being snide, I really want to know.Quote:
Originally Posted by jackvance
As far as I can tell, the main problem of his presidency was his voting base was evangelicals (Jeb's isn't). The religious authoritarian policies he enacted were a problem, but the worse of this was the cultural move towards religious authoritarian sentiments. Ofc 9/11 probably played the biggest role in that.
The biggest plus of his presidency was probably the tax cuts and those rebates late in his presidency. The media won't talk about them except in a bad light, but what I've seen from economists is that they were significant successes for the economy
Also note that being a Bush doesn't mean he's the same. GHWB and GWB were much different presidents
HAPPY NEW YERZ FTR! HAVE A GOOD ONE
TIL Nico & Vinz are from Norway. What
I love lamp
U my boyQuote:
Originally Posted by MrFerguson91
How to farm humans:
http://www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ah...ation#t-747782
I have to advertise duolingo again, because it's amazing even if you don't give a shit about their business model: https://www.duolingo.com/
This was in Darwin, of all places.Quote:
Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
What a tit. He made a right bloody mess of the cash machine, he might have been successful if only he wasn't so fucking stupid.
Yeah. I must have caught it out of the corner of my eye* that it happened near Darwin, Australia when I posted it.Quote:
Originally Posted by OngBonga
The news story from which I got the link made it sound like the police were calling him a vandal, not a thief, whom had done this before.
* Eyes don't have corners, FYI.
So I just had a -15 BI downswing at 10nl that was driving me fucking crazy. I think I lost at least 5 BI purely due to tilt, maybe more, idk, I was playing godfuckingawful as the beats hit me one after another. Started tiltraising against anyone I had a note against. So I did what any sensible person would do and moved up to 50nl and cut down to one table. One hour and +3 BI's later and I think I'll call it a night, somehow not broke. Here's to fucking gambling.
Yes they do. Maybe not the eyeball itself, but the socket does, and the socket is part of the area I would define as "eye".Quote:
* Eyes don't have corners, FYI.
Strong stakes selection. After dumping 15 BIs, you were due.Quote:
Originally Posted by OngBonga
Actually my thinking was even more retarded than that. I figured that if I'm going broke, then I'll be fucked if it's happening at 10nl due to morons hitting two outers, or me tilting T3o top pair into jacks, etc. I decided to gamble with my stars roll, and if I blew it, I had my FTP roll to grind shitty stakes with. It wasn't a sense of "I'm due an upswing", it was me being utterly demoralised by losing half my roll in a few hours and taking chances to recover losses. Many poker players have gone broke doing what I did. It was stupid, but it was at least a calculated risk. Calculated as in I didn't give a shit what happened.Quote:
Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
I wish their was a gif of someone punching into a calculator and it returning "YOU'RE FUCKING UP"Quote:
Originally Posted by OngBonga
Or "AINT NO WHERE BUT UP FROM HERE"
Took off to Roanoke for a couple of days over New Years and did the museum and food thing. This was pretty fun:
http://www.taubmanmuseum.org/main/si...jpg?1407865029
Quote:
Sculptor Ralph Eaton’s first large-scale site-specific museum project draws from nearly three decades of “laying bare the absurdities” of our culture’s fascination with “junk.” Commissioned by the Taubman Museum of Art, Fuzzy Kudzu (2013-14) transforms the City of Roanoke Atrium into an otherworldly fantasyland, where a thirty-foot cascade of white furry tendrils made from restructured stuffed animals spills over the central balcony, countering the building’s architecture in ways both welcoming and unsettling. The title of the monumental work refers to the Kudzu plant familiar to any Southerner, an invasive summertime vine that enshrouds anything in its path. Likewise are we as a culture being overtaken by mass-produced stuff. “We are a dysfunctional species,” Eaton declares, “and my work is about finding the humor and beauty in the absurdity of it all.”
Fuzzy Kudzu is stitched almost entirely from used stuffed animals donated by the local Roanoke Goodwill. Most of its “pelt” is recycled from discarded teddy bears, bunnies, and kittens, each taken apart by the artist and reassembled into over fifty “vines” ranging from twenty to thirty-four feet. Weighing nearly a ton, Fuzzy Kudzu is comprised of faux fur fabric, polyester fiberfill, and more than one thousand stuffed animals. Open for interpretation, the resulting shape can be seen as a waterfall, tree trunk, or column—something immediate and organic, yet elegantly classical. Like much site-responsive sculpture, it also morphs with changes in light, be it the movement of the sun or black lights trained across its soft, articulated surfaces. (Source)
I'm thinking about my hair too much lately. I have finally gotten to the point in my life where I know how to groom a beard. I won't post any pictures, but you'll have to believe me when I say that it's glorious. I have wonderful Jim Jarmush hair when it's grown out except for a growing bald spot on top where jews put their jew hats. Which is probably why they put the hats there. I checked if I had any jewish ancestry, but when it turned out it certainly wouldn't be enough for a free trip to Israel, I stopped looking further. So now I'm in a dilemma. Do I want to go full Ginsberg and just grow it out anyway like I don't care, or do I commit to my insecurities and go with the Galifiniakis in Hangover II look.
http://www.celebrity-sunglasses-find...fianakis-1.jpg
Lolwat?!
http://youtu.be/TcJlq1RjRYk
Lolwat!?
Awesome, looks like a possible apprentice of Derren Brown decided to use his powers for evil.Quote:
Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
Derren Brown performing the same stunt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q2KGGMc1EM
Did you stand in the column of fluffy bourgeois angst, just 'cause you don't belong there?Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
Seems the only reasonable approach to this installation.
Finally the evil derren Brown! World domination must surely follow, after a battle between good and evil if course.
I'm on a webinar hosted by Microsoft right now, and they don't have the audience on mandatory mute. The meeting is a total disaster, hold music keeps playing, echo keeps kicking in, we keep hearing mutters in the background. The IM chat is split between people raging at how hard it is to follow and people who are just laughing in their face.
The "Unmute" button is just sitting right there, tempting me to click it and pull some hilarious troll.
Lol, there was just a child's voice whining/yelling in the background. Chat is like: "The echo's back." "That's not an echo, it's a child's voice!" etc. I am learning nothing, but I do not feel as though my time is wasted.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...etting-crimes/
Kids these days.
So their voip software is less capable than mumble?Quote:
Originally Posted by surviva316
http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-...image,29553/?2
Muslims these days.
If there is one good thing to come out of this, it's that the european left finally pulls their heads out of their collective asses and admits that there is a fundamental problem with islam today, and that that is not condemning people based on race and believe, it's condemning people for their moral values.
There was a discussion about an islamic school opening here. The only people protesting were the far right. The far right in austria is borderline retarded. Not retarded as in dumb. Retarded as in the medical term. There is no comparison to the US. Imagine Ted Nugent had fetal alcohol syndrome and you dropped him off a ladder 50 times and then clone him... badly, a hundred times, there you have the austrian far right. And these were the only people crying out that we might not want a medieval indoctrination center in the middle of a first world city. I don't blame people for seeing it as just another religion that gets hijacked by some radicals, but the press and politicians should really know better. It's a political movement at its core and it needs to be gently but actively pushed back into the desert.
http://i.imgur.com/L7TU8wH.jpgQuote:
Originally Posted by oskar
I have to repeatedly remind myself how prevalent islam is in western europe. It's like 6% of the euro population, compared with 0.8% in the american continents.
In unrelated news, Blueprint for Armageddon V just dropped a couple of days ago. Been waiting anxiously for this and it slipped by me.
Dan Carlin is awesome.
spoiler alert: armageddon will only happen via asteroid impact
What about supernova?
Eh I guess. We tend to hear all about them but haven't seen any of their destruction so I'm left wondering if they're even a concern.
I'll rephrase to "celestial hazards".
There's a thing called a hypervelocity star. Apparently what can happen when one supermassive star in a two star syststem collapses into a black hole is that it can slingshot the other star at a million miles an hour through the galaxy. I wonder if any civilization ever got hit by one of those and whether they were thinking it was their fault.
Supernovas terrify me. Apparently there's one called wr-104 that could potentially already have gone supernova and the gamma rays could already be on their way to us, and if it was just on the right rotaional axes it could evaporate us immediately.
ffs it's not Islam that's the problem. The problem is those who are trying to stir up religious tension. Where did al-qaeda come from? They were created by the Yanks in the late 70's, to bait the Soviets into a war they couldn't win, ultimately leading to their downfall. They're not pushing Muslim agenda, they're pushing Western agenda. They were created by the West, just like ISIS.
Their tactics are working. Religious intolerance is on the rise. Look at everyone blaming Islam for something a few evil people did. It's like blaming Judaism for Israel's war crimes. The people to blame are hiding behind religion, they don't speak for religion. What fucking god would condone such actions? Not one that any sane person should worship.