pmiller2

65 ms·

1. 721.▲
   by pmiller2 6y ago

   I've been there, too. Let me tell you, at $15K, you had better hope you're young and healthy. If not, you're in for a world of financial hurt. It's kind of interesting that we have to rely on a social program that didn
2. 722.▲
   by pmiller2 6y ago

   Hey, so, quick question... if I'm not debating in good faith, how do you explain my total lack of downvotes in this thread, and your multiple downvotes? Seems like someone understood what I was saying and agreed, yeah? Maybe I'm
3. 723.▲
   by pmiller2 6y ago

   Okay then. Let's look at a 1930s salary, and tell me how you afford all that stuff: > From 1935 to 1936 the median family income was $1,160. An annual wage of $1,000 or more placed a family in the middle-income range. The middle-in
4. 724.▲
   by pmiller2 6y ago

   Okay, so, you can't live in NYC like you can in the 1930s. Where else can't you live? Or, rather, must one live in the middle of nowhere to live the 1930s idyll? If that's all you want to claim, then I claim I can live like
5. 725.▲
   by pmiller2 6y ago

   I don't have to show you how any of those businesses get customers without Facebook ads. You granted me that they exist without Facebook, therefore they must have customers. As for harms of Facebook, here are 6, from the most cursor
6. 726.▲
   by pmiller2 6y ago

   Okay, sketch out a 1930s New York City lifestyle in New York City, then. Tell me how I can go to the doctor. Tell me how I can continue to live, if I'm a diabetic. Tell me how I, personally, can live, considering I have asthma, and alb
7. 727.▲
   by pmiller2 6y ago

   No. You are claiming that Facebook ads are a mechanism that lowers those barriers. I claim the barrier isn't that big to begin with for most of them (photographer, baker, astrologer, limo driver), and that, even if some of the others
8. 728.▲
   by pmiller2 6y ago

   Then, why do you ascribe value to Facebook and its ads for enabling the people you know to enter those occupations? That was literally your point, wasn't it? You just told me I could do the same thing, and get started by spending $
9. 729.▲
   by pmiller2 6y ago

   By the fact that modern political and social theorists continue to refine and develop the theories behind this form of government. By the fact that the reason it frequently doesn't work is that capitalism can't allow it. A count
10. 730.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    But, that's not the "typical" house anymore. You're equating the very cheapest houses and apartments today with the median/typical house from then. You can't even live where you could in 1930 for the same mo
11. 731.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    Do you really think that cloth makers, leatherworkers, bakers, therapists, astrologists, dice makers, photographers, limo drivers, DJs, hair stylists, etc. can't exist without Facebook ads? Obviously they can. In fact, most of thes
12. 732.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    It is not possible. Housing, medical care, movie tickets, college tuition, prescription drugs, and a host of other things have gone up in price far faster than inflation since then. You can't even buy a house that was around when Key
13. 733.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    At the point where the value of human labor drops so low that humans become viable over machines again, why even bother with money at all? You'd be looking at essentially a post-scarcity world, although subject to the finite resources
14. 734.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    This is roughly what I've been telling the HODLers among my friends and acquaintances for years: there is no intrinsic, fundamental reason why BTC has value. It has value because people say it has value. And, if that sounds awfully
15. 735.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    I think those could be considered non-bullshit jobs. And, if social necessity were how work were allocated, rather than what makes capitalists the most money, we'd almost certainly see more tree planters and animal rescuers and homele
16. 736.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    There has to be a certain point where maintaining the machines becomes more expensive than the labor they would replace. That's just simple supply and demand, as the very act of automation would vastly increase the supply of labor. T
17. 737.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    > At the very least, I think you should be uncomfortable with the fact that you live in a system that compels you to have a job, particularly if that job is neither necessary for your own well-being nor the well-being of others. Believe
18. 738.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    > If we can automate 90% of manual and low-skip labor, who makes up the remaining population responsible for completing those tasks and how are they incentivized to continue performing those tasks? Well, supposing it's all automated
19. 739.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    Bingo. Billionaires and large corporations are what's holding us back from the future Keynes envisioned, where we'd be working ~15 hours a week. The reserve army of labor is necessary to keep the numbers going up and to the righ
20. 740.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    Well, we have invented it. It's just that nobody's either brave enough, or fed up enough with capitalism to try it.
21. 741.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    Well, we also live closer to the edge of an environmental Armageddon than ever, if that makes you feel any better about questioning capitalism.
22. 742.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    Isn't it terrible to be coerced by the machines of capitalism into a life of involuntary toil?
23. 743.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    Well, okay, what makes BTC inherently worth anything, then? Who cares that someone, somewhere, some time ago, solved some useless math problem? Why dedicate the equivalent of 7 nuclear power plants' worth of electricity[0] to it, whe
24. 744.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    What exactly makes XRP worth anything, though? Isn't it theoretically pegged to the USD?
25. 745.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    Thank you, as well, for recognizing what I was saying, and that, while I made statements involving race, there was no malicious racism behind any of it.
26. 746.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    Does anybody else know what the nature of the "tampering sensor" and why there are exactly 2 of them? I'm guessing the reason for multiples is redundancy, but, then, why not 3 or more? Also, amusingly, I read "Fall dete
27. 747.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    Thank you. I appreciate that you recognize what I wrote here versus what some people apparently want to read into it. And, just to continue the anecdote where the camera turned my friend green, y'all know it's not like anybody sai
28. 748.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    Right, but the newest of the first 4 links are still 6 months old. Six months is an eternity in the world of technology, ya know? How much is 6 months converted into units of "new JS frameworks," BTW? ;)
29. 749.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    Facial recognition can work with ordinary facemasks. I don't have a link handy, but I'm sure Google can produce one, given the timeliness of the question. As to your question, I also wonder about such things as: * Makeup: https:
30. 750.▲
    by pmiller2 6y ago

    Again, that is a distinction without a difference. A photographer certainly can compensate for skin tone versus how the final result will be rendering, for instance, by using lighting, provided the scene is under the photographer's co