171–180 of 194 posts
If you missed Asimov's Zeroth Law [0], then yes, you did.
That being said, since, AFAIK, we don't know how to program robots with Asimov's Laws anyway, I'm not sure how relevant that is.
[0] "A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm." (with the expected modifications to the First, Second and Third Laws).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So things we disagree with now can just be labelled as idiocy? And no matter how much you and other statists hate neoliberalism and how it's taken over the world, thing is the world has never been so rich, so peaceful and people have never lived so long and so healthy in the whole history of humanity. So, if neoliberalism is having a bad effect on the world, I wonder what it would do if it had a good effect. I would…
Neoliberalism (of the Milton Friedman kind) hasn't taken over the world. It gained traction in the mid 70's, peaked in the 00's and is now, thankfully, slipping back from its extreme heights. Also, pmarca's particular interpretation of neoliberalism is what I was referring to as idiotic, not the broader concept as a whole (which I think is also very flawed but can at least respect). Let's not confuse well regulated f…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My policy preference would be a law that creating a universal wage subsidy of $7.75 an hour, thus guarantees every worker a total wage of at least $15 an hour. I really like this idea. Lately I've been thinking about minimum wage laws (SF, $15/hr min wage, etc) and something about it rubs me the wrong way. It feels like minimum wage laws are a convenient way for governments to take all the credit for improving the…
You do realize that every time minimum wages are raised like this the cost(s) are simply passed on through to the consumers. The net effect is that the cost base rises with the wage base, so no one actually gets ahead - the nominal price point is just set to a higher figure.
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It's the "few regulations as possible" part of neoliberalism that has, for me at least, been the unquestionable failure. The following could all have been avoided or had the scope of their damage drastically reduced had better regulation been in place: LTCM and the Asia crisis in the 90s, the flood of bad IPOs in the dotcom era, the subprime and CDO disaster that sparked 2008, the asset bubbles over the last three de…
I just don't understand how 2008 was obviously because of deregulation. Not only is that a contestable claim, but you're simplifying the entire crash to a convenient cause that clearly confirms your biases. Just take a walk over to Wikipedia[1], and you can clearly see that ascribing the crash in 2008 to only deregulation is complete and utter nonsense: The Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 established an…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the "few regulations as possible" part of neoliberalism that has, for me at least, been the unquestionable failure. The following could all have been avoided or had the scope of their damage drastically reduced had better regulation been in place: LTCM and the Asia crisis in the 90s, the flood of bad IPOs in the dotcom era, the subprime and CDO disaster that sparked 2008, the asset bubbles over the last three de…
I just don't understand how 2008 was obviously because of deregulation. Not only is that a contestable claim, but you're simplifying the entire crash to a convenient cause that clearly confirms your biases. Just take a walk over to Wikipedia[1], and you can clearly see that ascribing the crash in 2008 to only deregulation is complete and utter nonsense: The Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 established an…
We live in the techno-utopia today. Food and shelter are not problems anymore. If it were otherwise, we would all be farmer-lumberjacks. It used to be like this, but it's solved now. We have enough for everybody - it's just about spreading the goods a little bit more evenly.
We live in the techno-utopia today. Food and shelter are not problems anymore. If it were otherwise, we would all be farmer-lumberjacks. It used to be like this, but it's solved now. We have enough for everybody - it's just about spreading the goods a little bit more evenly.
Really? Have you seen the solved problems of food and shelter in places like Detroit?
> Taxi drivers protesting Uber aren’t saying that they want apps out of their cabs. Of course they aren't saying that, it would be political suicide to say it. But given the stubborn resistance to even using the credit card readers forced on them by utility commissions, do people really think that cabbies are aching to have apps between them and their customers that would thwart their ability to skip inconvenient far…
I feel like both the left and the right are trying to take us back to some idealized version of the 1950's. I want a political movement based on creating a new and better future, not hanging on to shreds of the past. We now have the technology and resources necessary to provide everyone with adequate food, housing, healthcare, and education. That's what I want, not more "job creation" or preservation of obsolete jobs…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just don't understand how 2008 was obviously because of deregulation. Not only is that a contestable claim, but you're simplifying the entire crash to a convenient cause that clearly confirms your biases. Just take a walk over to Wikipedia[1], and you can clearly see that ascribing the crash in 2008 to only deregulation is complete and utter nonsense: The Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 established an…
My understanding was that Freddie (and later Margaret Thatcher's imitation with selling council houses in the UK) were policy decisions made on advice from the then nascent neoliberal movement.