161–170 of 173 posts
Lack of reliable service from plumbers, HVAC, appliance repair people. There are many people available but the quality and consistency of service is highly variable and chances of getting ripped off are high if you don't do your due diligence. I wish there was more standardization in these services where I don't have to worry about getting ripped off and can expect a decent quality of service without spending too muc…
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The two big problems with this idea, IMO, are: 1. You're heavily disincentivizing people from doing their most to earn more money. Assuming you buy into capitalism in the first place (which I do), the result of this is generally worse for society. Less new inventions, less new medicines, less new technologies, etc. 2. The second problem is more philosophical, but... what right does society have to take away someone's…
Capitalism does a lot to kill motivation on the right things. No matter how hard I work, I will never make as much money as some guy who sells cosmetics on Instagram. In Malaysia, we have architects quitting their jobs to become bakers, lawyers quitting to sell noodles. There's also the question on whether inventions, medicine, technology are what we should be optimizing for? Depression and mental health are high des…
>There's also the question on whether inventions, medicine, technology are what we should be optimizing for?
Only the whole economy can accurately decide what we should optimize for. If you try to centrally plan an economy, it will fail because you remove pricing from the equation which is a signal to where resources should be allocated. For things that may not have a current market, this is what privately funded research and charities should be used for.
>The real cost to inequality is that it correlates with political polarization
This is only an issue because for some reason we have decided we need these huge government bureaucracies to run our day to day lives. Without this, peoples politics wouldn't matter. As for the anti-police movement's, this is manly due to people starting to realize the only thing the police protect is the State. The anti-vaccine movement hasn't grown. The government and the media have changed the definition of anti-vaccine. If you don't believe the government should or has the right to implement vaccine mandates on the populace you are anti-vaccine. If you aren't sure there is evidence the vaccine slows the spread of COVID, you are anti-vaccine. So basically the government and the media have labeled anyone who is unsure about this specific vaccine to be the same as the person who believes essential oils will heal everything and that vaccines in general cause autism.
Problem of unjust societies. My kid will be a multimillionaire in his twenties without a single day of work while his equally capable peers will enface a life of limited opportunity because the best they can do is to work their ass off to pay rent. It is structural and it needs to change. A truly liberal idea could be to reset the "score" when the game is over. Try to be the best you can and earn as much as you can -…
Personally, I think inheritance is the ultimate expression of success = luck and should be capped hard with the remainder flowing back into support funds for things that help re-balance opportunities. However, most people I've brought this up with find the idea completely repulsive - the idea of "I want my kids to get the fruits of my labor" seems pretty ingrained.
Have a open source smalltalk environment running efficiently on mobile phones, so it is possible to develop applications directly on them Have an open source smalltalk environment with working concurrency, in order to efficiently use all the core available
There is also U8, which has an unusual UI, but it is Smalltalk. http://u8.smalltalking.net/
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Be aware that I haven't done this before, but I imagine it would go like this: 1. Figure out which field of science you are interested in 2. Find a couple of universities that teach this field of science or you think have someone specialising in that on staff 3. Go through their list of researchers 4. Pick one out and send them an email. Or if you cannot find a mail address, send an old school letter to the universit…
Perfect thank you. I'm also willing to go as far as funding researchers myself provided all controls are followed. How would you incentivise or why would any researcher want to help out in this endeavour from a seemingly stranger? How best to cover come this.?
As for whether or not they would want to help you out, it never hurts to try. Even if that particular researcher can't, he might be able to refer you to someone who can or depending on the scope of the research hook you up with a student in need of a thesis / project etc.
Academics often are in need of funding, if your idea has merit then I am sure you will he able to find someone that will research for you fairly quickly.
City to city high speed railway transit, so more railways. Last I checked, it would take me 24 hours to travel from Birmingham, Alabama to Chicago. It would route me through the northeast. Bham is almost due south of Chicago.
I hear you, but: - what’s the demand for travel from Birmingham to Chicago? - what’s the ecological cost of laying rail from Birmingham straight north? We could subsidize a lot of plane flights / busses on existing highway infrastructure before it makes sense to lay down rail, even between Birmingham and Nashville. And it looks like Birmingham > Nashville is a Never mind that train route runs right through Franklin,…
there is currently no amtrak from birmingham to nashville. the only way is via bus. obviously the south is very car-centric but that's a legacy of the infrastructure we built in the past. i don't see why we can't try to build infrastructure with a bigger emphasis on better public transit (primarily trains) rather than automobiles, so we can have that legacy in the future.
idk if the terrorist concern is a strong argument? you could make the same argument against planes. and how would an extremist with a rifle shut down a train? what is stopping them from doing that on a backed up, slow moving interstate highway, today? that seems easier to hit than a high speed train. have you ever shot a gun at a moving target? extremists with rifles are already, in 2022, a bigger risk in public spaces like churches and restaurants and malls and town squares and schools.
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I hear you, but: - what’s the demand for travel from Birmingham to Chicago? - what’s the ecological cost of laying rail from Birmingham straight north? We could subsidize a lot of plane flights / busses on existing highway infrastructure before it makes sense to lay down rail, even between Birmingham and Nashville. And it looks like Birmingham > Nashville is a Never mind that train route runs right through Franklin,…
cost is a good point, i didn't know that. maybe a realistic goal would be a direct train to chicago from birmingham. it doesn't have to be high speed. i just looked it up again, and it would take 40 hours. the route would go through atlanta to virginia and then it heads towards illinois. there is currently no amtrak from birmingham to nashville. the only way is via bus. obviously the south is very car-centric but tha…
Reasonably priced, usable, open source, open hardware mobile phones and PCs.