patricius

11 ms·

61.
by patricius 8y ago
If a company behaves badly enough towards its customers it will start losing customers and revenue, so the incentives are aligned with providing customers - no matter how far removed shareholders are from the communities you mention - a ser
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by patricius 8y ago
Shareholders are also people. Some shareholders are large and rich. Some are small. Some are pension funds that want their members to receive dividends and returns. And maybe I am a pessimist, but I haven't seen that many examples of g
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by patricius 8y ago
I come from one of those nations. There could be many explanations for why things are the way they are in the US and not in some other nations. Maybe federal or state legislation makes it more expensive for competitors to compete. Maybe the
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by patricius 8y ago
The money has got to come from somewhere. If you want the municipality to run an ISP, then you either have to tax the citizens for the services or take funds from somewhere else. Either way, can we be sure that good intentions from democrat
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by patricius 8y ago
I am also using Tachyons together with Mithril. I can’t recommend it enough.
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by patricius 8y ago
I just have to mention Mithril.js ( https://mithril.js.org/ ) here as an alternative to React. It has built-in routing and XHR, and I think it is fairly easy to learn. Combined with the (optional) streams library, it makes de
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by patricius 8y ago
I think it is impossible to ever reach consensus on what is the right balance between freedom and regulation, especially because regulation is not decided upon with that goal in mind. Whatever gets votes or whoever has the most lobbying pow
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by patricius 8y ago
Just remember that inequality per se is not a bad thing. Capitalism seems to me to be the only way to get people out of poverty, which is, of course, what we want.
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by patricius 8y ago
Danish person here. How does it work? Will the background check reveal what crime was committed, or just that you are a felon? I could imagine knowing the specific crime could influence the final decision on hiring or not, no?
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by patricius 8y ago
> You must be American. I'm Danish :-) > People have laid out how this "free" services, like education or healthcare, can lead to a more productive, fairer society (e.g. less people off work sick, because they go and ge
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by patricius 8y ago
> It appears surprising to you that not everyone is precise in what they say. Sometimes people say what they mean and sometimes they mean what they say. But lots of times they don’t. If this is a surprise to you then I implore you to rec
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by patricius 8y ago
> If I get a Rolex watch as a gift, and a friend asks how much I paid for it, I would not be wrong to say "I got it for free." The fact that someone else paid for it doesn't change the fact that it was free for me. The dif
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by patricius 8y ago
> It's a cost on society, not on the individual pupil, just like how the education is a gain to the society at large, while the individual effort of the individual may seem negligble. What is society in this sense but a collection o
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by patricius 8y ago
Because when someone writes "the state pays your tuition", it hides the fact that people pay your tuition. Or, depending on your view, you yourself will pay for your tuition through taxes. A lot of people forget, when making a s
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by patricius 8y ago
Yes, and that is the great deceit of taxation and political resource allocation. Somebody still has to earn the money and bring about the resources and services used through the public sector. It seems to me a lot of people forget that, whe
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by patricius 8y ago
Well, if we can redefine free to mean "I will let someone else pay for it" or "I will pay for it at some later date", then sure...
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by patricius 8y ago
Of course there is a difference. You let others pay for your choices (studying). But it doesn't make it free.
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by patricius 8y ago
I know this is a trite comment, but no, you still pay through taxes. The state has no money. I too live in a country with tax-financed universities.
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by patricius 8y ago
> Yes, but the burden of proof lies with those who prefer an alternative. If you want to demonstrate an alternative is better, you need an honest and in depth comparison with the current. Just saying "the current sucks" isn&#x2
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by patricius 8y ago
You know who is also good at propaganda? Government and state. Can you prove that FDA improves the outcome? Is FDA somehow free from lobbying, or are the people working there consistently uninfluenced by certain counterproductive incentives
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by patricius 8y ago
Yeah. I feel pretty lonely here... :'(
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by patricius 8y ago
I agree. Just because a thing exists (the FDA or taxes for instance), doesn't make it a good thing.
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by patricius 8y ago
I agree
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by patricius 8y ago
Getting a drug approved by the FDA is pretty expensive. Abolishing the FDA, thereby reducing the cost of introducing the drug, might be the real solution here.
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by patricius 9y ago
> I think you choose to use a redefined "voluntary" to refer to things that are clearly not (a ploy frequently used by certain corporate funded 'libertarian' think tanks). By doing this, a source of relatively uncheck
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by patricius 9y ago
I’m not saying that there is no coercion. Coercion leads to an involuntary transaction. It is not a degree of voluntary/involuntary.
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by patricius 9y ago
If I don’t give you my wallet, I face starvation. I could choose to steal from you but that would be immoral. I personally don’t have any control over any food. If I go the supermarket, they threaten to starve me if I don’t hand over my mon
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by patricius 9y ago
It is voluntary whether he chooses to hand over his wallet. Edit: Irrelevant comment.
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by patricius 9y ago
But that is exactly an example of an involuntary transaction including threat of violence or murder.
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by patricius 9y ago
Nah, no single decision was made about keeping a huge portion of the population on the edge of desperation. And companies are not generally to blame for people's desperation, unless they somehow cheat or commit fraud (usually in collus

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