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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On March 14 2014 10:55 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2014 09:36 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On March 14 2014 07:06 Roe wrote:On March 13 2014 12:09 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On March 13 2014 02:27 Roe wrote:
When has american culture ever valued hard work? It's always been about innovating and creating new technology that reduces the amount of work we have to do...The business culture has always been about squeezing every penny and making things more efficient - not just doing your job and calling it a day. If you really value hard work you'd put a freeze on all technological and commercial progress. Automation (or whatever) and valuing hard work are not mutually exclusive things. I won't speak for the country as a whole, but a protestant / puritan work ethic was part of new england culture back before the US was the US. Automation is done because humans don't want to do hard work. You sound like an old man - 'kids these days don't know how good they got it'  Well, that's true as well. Youth don't realize how many advantages and liberties and extra chances they have until they're too old to take advantage of them  Well, most kids - some are wiser. But I'm not sure what that has to do with automation and the will to less work. Do you think I'm just mad at the youngsters who aren't doing as much work as the ye olde people did? I'm only 24 johnny! I'm just making a straight forward argument about technological progress.
Oh I was just being cheeky. Of course automation can and is used to make life easier. So what though? Saying you value hard work doesn't mean that you value hard work, and absolutely nothing else.
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John Kerry: Russia has until Monday to reverse course in Ukraine
Secretary of State John Kerry warned of serious repercussions for Russia on Monday if last-ditch talks over the weekend to resolve the crisis in Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to soften its stance.
Kerry will travel to London for a Friday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of a Sunday referendum vote in the Crimea region to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
U.S. and European officials argue that Moscow is orchestrating the referendum and waging an intimidation campaign with thousands of Russian troops controlling the region. If Russian-backed lawmakers in Crimea go through with the Sunday referendum, Kerry said the U.S. and its European allies will not recognize it as legitimate under international law.
The U.S. and Europe on Monday would then unite to impose sanctions on Russia, Kerry told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday during a hearing on the State Department's budget.
“There will be a response of some kind to the referendum itself,” Kerry said. “If there is no sign [from Russia] of any capacity to respond to this issue ... there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday.” source
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On March 14 2014 10:07 IgnE wrote:
So if a district attorney exercises prosecutorial discretion is he rewriting the laws?
If the president exercises executorial discretion by not enforcing a statute is this different? I appreciate your attempts to conflate the issue. When the law becomes more about what we want to change about it today than about what's actually in it, then the rule of law is shattered. There is a clear division in the Constitution between which branch has law-writing power and which branch enforces the laws. This is so far beyond the meaning of discretion as to destroy the term. You need good job numbers? Okay, let's just change this passed law so nobody has to react to it. Midterms gonna be tough? Change it again. Egg on your face after saying, "If you like your plan, you can keep it?" Nah, we won't enforce it. Complete non-enforcement of multiple statutes is beyond discretion. Rewriting of this magnitude is far beyond the more mundane discretion of small circumstances versus rewrites.
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On March 14 2014 07:06 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2014 12:09 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On March 13 2014 02:27 Roe wrote:
When has american culture ever valued hard work? It's always been about innovating and creating new technology that reduces the amount of work we have to do...The business culture has always been about squeezing every penny and making things more efficient - not just doing your job and calling it a day. If you really value hard work you'd put a freeze on all technological and commercial progress. Automation (or whatever) and valuing hard work are not mutually exclusive things. I won't speak for the country as a whole, but a protestant / puritan work ethic was part of new england culture back before the US was the US. Automation is done because humans don't want to do hard work.
This is blatantly false. I agree with Jonny there.
Automation is done because it's profitable. If companies can pay a shitpile of poor people next to nothing to do the same task a series of expensive machines will do, the company isn't going to say "oh, shit, well these incredibly poor people don't want to work hard, so we'll waste money on these huge expensive machines instead". Just look at the export of manufacturing to the third world. It's not like those companies wanted to save Americans from working hard :/
I probably come at the issue from an entirely different angle than Jonny, though. "The value of hard work" is kind of a silly concept to begin with, I think it's a fucked up society that eschews the moral "value" of hard work but then allows the people with the most difficult, hard, and menial jobs to make wages (e.g. real value) barely enough to live off of so that they have to work twice as hard at two difficult, shitty jobs. Note that the people working these shit jobs are typically not the ones ranting about "American values of hard work", those people are usually wealthy people who, while undoubtedly working hard themselves (most of the time), don't have to work in the ridiculously depressing conditions described above. I view it as an ideology used to justify the privileged position the wealthy maintain at the expense of the poor. Those shit jobs will always exist, someone has to do them. People just construct ideological systems that don't require them to pay those people well, because the people working those shit jobs typically have less market power (low skill level resulting in a high labour supply).
People who really value hard work would value minimum wage laws, so that all types of "hard work" are rewarded at monetary values adequate to maintain a decent standard of living. If you work 40 hours a week, you should be able to feed your family healthy food and house them in a decent shelter. And don't give me this shit about minimum wages destroying jobs, it's pretty much been demonstrated that's a falsehood under most conditions.
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Why is profitability attractive?
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On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive?
I feel a fundamental philosophical discussion brewing...
Stop it 
On March 14 2014 15:44 Danglars wrote:John Kerry: Russia has until Monday to reverse course in UkraineShow nested quote +Secretary of State John Kerry warned of serious repercussions for Russia on Monday if last-ditch talks over the weekend to resolve the crisis in Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to soften its stance.
Kerry will travel to London for a Friday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of a Sunday referendum vote in the Crimea region to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
U.S. and European officials argue that Moscow is orchestrating the referendum and waging an intimidation campaign with thousands of Russian troops controlling the region. If Russian-backed lawmakers in Crimea go through with the Sunday referendum, Kerry said the U.S. and its European allies will not recognize it as legitimate under international law.
The U.S. and Europe on Monday would then unite to impose sanctions on Russia, Kerry told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday during a hearing on the State Department's budget.
“There will be a response of some kind to the referendum itself,” Kerry said. “If there is no sign [from Russia] of any capacity to respond to this issue ... there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday.” source
The real joke in this is the piecemeal response that we'll get against Russia. The most the west will do is sanctions, but EU doesn't want to lose some of its affordable natural gas. Also, the UK is likely going to exempt London (the only city in their entire country worth doing business with internationally). At best the US will show a strong arm, but Russia gets almost nothing from us anyways.
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On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive?
A profitable company/person/organization is (in theory) a sign that that organization is providing a value to society, thereby increasing the wealth and as a corollary the well-being of the people in that society. The way I see it, what is debatable is - 1. at what point does that extra wealth become excess, 2. If this wealth is concentrated in few hands does that really lead to the betterment of society, and 3. if that greater well being comes at the expense of creating externalities like environmental damage, then are we missing part of the equation when it comes to measuring and rewarding the value that an organization creates.
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France8650 Posts
On March 14 2014 22:44 TheFish7 wrote:A profitable company/person/organization is (in theory) a sign that that organization is providing a value to society, thereby increasing the wealth and as a corollary the well-being of the people in that society. The way I see it, what is debatable is - 1. at what point does that extra wealth become excess, 2. If this wealth is concentrated in few hands does that really lead to the betterment of society, and 3. if that greater well being comes at the expense of creating externalities like environmental damage, then are we missing part of the equation when it comes to measuring and rewarding the value that an organization creates.
Can you prove that a profitable "something" means it has value for the society ?
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You'd think over the 250 odd years of the country running that we'd run into the whole gridlock problem in a worse way at some point.
I'm talking about slavery didn't cause this many problems.
On March 14 2014 22:58 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2014 22:44 TheFish7 wrote:On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive? A profitable company/person/organization is (in theory) a sign that that organization is providing a value to society, thereby increasing the wealth and as a corollary the well-being of the people in that society. The way I see it, what is debatable is - 1. at what point does that extra wealth become excess, 2. If this wealth is concentrated in few hands does that really lead to the betterment of society, and 3. if that greater well being comes at the expense of creating externalities like environmental damage, then are we missing part of the equation when it comes to measuring and rewarding the value that an organization creates. Can you prove that a profitable "something" means it has value for the society ?
If a company is profitable it can grow with the incentive of becoming more profitable thus generating wealth for everyone.
Greed is good the cold war proved that at least.
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On March 14 2014 22:58 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2014 22:44 TheFish7 wrote:On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive? A profitable company/person/organization is (in theory) a sign that that organization is providing a value to society, thereby increasing the wealth and as a corollary the well-being of the people in that society. The way I see it, what is debatable is - 1. at what point does that extra wealth become excess, 2. If this wealth is concentrated in few hands does that really lead to the betterment of society, and 3. if that greater well being comes at the expense of creating externalities like environmental damage, then are we missing part of the equation when it comes to measuring and rewarding the value that an organization creates. Can you prove that a profitable "something" means it has value for the society ?
It has value to someone in society if they're willing to pay for it
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On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive?
Two biggies off the top of my head:
It means the owner can get paid, which is generally pretty important to the owner.
It means that the organization is financially sustainable.
The second one can be important even if your organization is a non-profit.
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On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive?
In short, it isn't necessarily.
There are aspects of it that are useful as a motivational goal in society as well as an information-management tool for the allocation of production to material and service goods in extremely complex production systems.
There are also many undesirable aspects of human systems that value profitability that can be partially redressed through policy.
My only real point is that automation is a lot more complex than "humans don't want to do work, so we automate".
If you read my previous post, I think that you would find I am largely agreeing with the sympathies that underlie your response to me.
Anyhow, I don't really have much more to add to the internet regarding this issue.
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On March 14 2014 22:16 aksfjh wrote:I feel a fundamental philosophical discussion brewing... Stop it Show nested quote +On March 14 2014 15:44 Danglars wrote:John Kerry: Russia has until Monday to reverse course in UkraineSecretary of State John Kerry warned of serious repercussions for Russia on Monday if last-ditch talks over the weekend to resolve the crisis in Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to soften its stance.
Kerry will travel to London for a Friday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of a Sunday referendum vote in the Crimea region to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
U.S. and European officials argue that Moscow is orchestrating the referendum and waging an intimidation campaign with thousands of Russian troops controlling the region. If Russian-backed lawmakers in Crimea go through with the Sunday referendum, Kerry said the U.S. and its European allies will not recognize it as legitimate under international law.
The U.S. and Europe on Monday would then unite to impose sanctions on Russia, Kerry told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday during a hearing on the State Department's budget.
“There will be a response of some kind to the referendum itself,” Kerry said. “If there is no sign [from Russia] of any capacity to respond to this issue ... there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday.” source The real joke in this is the piecemeal response that we'll get against Russia. The most the west will do is sanctions, but EU doesn't want to lose some of its affordable natural gas. Also, the UK is likely going to exempt London (the only city in their entire country worth doing business with internationally). At best the US will show a strong arm, but Russia gets almost nothing from us anyways.
This is an interesting point, and it's one that was brought up earlier. To make it quick: Are we having actually meaningful and important discussions, or is this just a political LR thread?
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On March 15 2014 00:52 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2014 22:16 aksfjh wrote:On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive? I feel a fundamental philosophical discussion brewing... Stop it On March 14 2014 15:44 Danglars wrote:John Kerry: Russia has until Monday to reverse course in UkraineSecretary of State John Kerry warned of serious repercussions for Russia on Monday if last-ditch talks over the weekend to resolve the crisis in Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to soften its stance.
Kerry will travel to London for a Friday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of a Sunday referendum vote in the Crimea region to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
U.S. and European officials argue that Moscow is orchestrating the referendum and waging an intimidation campaign with thousands of Russian troops controlling the region. If Russian-backed lawmakers in Crimea go through with the Sunday referendum, Kerry said the U.S. and its European allies will not recognize it as legitimate under international law.
The U.S. and Europe on Monday would then unite to impose sanctions on Russia, Kerry told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday during a hearing on the State Department's budget.
“There will be a response of some kind to the referendum itself,” Kerry said. “If there is no sign [from Russia] of any capacity to respond to this issue ... there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday.” source The real joke in this is the piecemeal response that we'll get against Russia. The most the west will do is sanctions, but EU doesn't want to lose some of its affordable natural gas. Also, the UK is likely going to exempt London (the only city in their entire country worth doing business with internationally). At best the US will show a strong arm, but Russia gets almost nothing from us anyways. This is an interesting point, and it's one that was brought up earlier. To make it quick: Are we having actually meaningful and important discussions, or is this just a political LR thread?
Going a bit meta here:
+ Show Spoiler +
Discussions pertaining to current policy seem apt for this topic. Discussions that break down all the way to fundamental philosophy seem a bit of a stretch, especially when that philosophy is outside the US cultural mainstream.
There are discussions that take place with political philosophy differences between major US parties. For example, the laissez-faire economic approach of the (far) right, and the regulative/interventionist economic policies of the (far) left. There's not really a basis for discussing the intricacies of Marxism or Anarchism in a US politics thread. In the same breath, there's little reason to discuss the semantic differences between each of our definitions of "profitability" and its implications. Since the discussion is really a proxy for Communism vs Capitalism, it makes little sense in a political discussion that doesn't even take the former side seriously.
Of course, this is just my personal opinion on the subject. I find it annoying.
On the Russia thing, anybody have an idea of what it would take to remove them from their permanent UN Security Council seat?
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On March 14 2014 21:23 BallinWitStalin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2014 07:06 Roe wrote:On March 13 2014 12:09 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On March 13 2014 02:27 Roe wrote:
When has american culture ever valued hard work? It's always been about innovating and creating new technology that reduces the amount of work we have to do...The business culture has always been about squeezing every penny and making things more efficient - not just doing your job and calling it a day. If you really value hard work you'd put a freeze on all technological and commercial progress. Automation (or whatever) and valuing hard work are not mutually exclusive things. I won't speak for the country as a whole, but a protestant / puritan work ethic was part of new england culture back before the US was the US. Automation is done because humans don't want to do hard work. This is blatantly false. I agree with Jonny there. Automation is done because it's profitable. If companies can pay a shitpile of poor people next to nothing to do the same task a series of expensive machines will do, the company isn't going to say "oh, shit, well these incredibly poor people don't want to work hard, so we'll waste money on these huge expensive machines instead". Just look at the export of manufacturing to the third world. It's not like those companies wanted to save Americans from working hard :/ I probably come at the issue from an entirely different angle than Jonny, though. "The value of hard work" is kind of a silly concept to begin with, I think it's a fucked up society that eschews the moral "value" of hard work but then allows the people with the most difficult, hard, and menial jobs to make wages (e.g. real value) barely enough to live off of so that they have to work twice as hard at two difficult, shitty jobs. Note that the people working these shit jobs are typically not the ones ranting about "American values of hard work", those people are usually wealthy people who, while undoubtedly working hard themselves (most of the time), don't have to work in the ridiculously depressing conditions described above. I view it as an ideology used to justify the privileged position the wealthy maintain at the expense of the poor. Those shit jobs will always exist, someone has to do them. People just construct ideological systems that don't require them to pay those people well, because the people working those shit jobs typically have less market power (low skill level resulting in a high labour supply). People who really value hard work would value minimum wage laws, so that all types of "hard work" are rewarded at monetary values adequate to maintain a decent standard of living. If you work 40 hours a week, you should be able to feed your family healthy food and house them in a decent shelter. And don't give me this shit about minimum wages destroying jobs, it's pretty much been demonstrated that's a falsehood under most conditions.
Why do people advocate raising the minimum wage laws when the high cash positions on corporate balance sheets are showing investing in more jobs is a money losing proposition? Executives are finding there are better returns in buybacks, dividends, marketable securities and inflation eating cash positions then investing in production and employees. The minimum wage employee needs to find a way to be more useful to society than demanding that they get higher wages and social handouts. Minimum wage jobs are not meant for those seeking living wages. "Would you like fries with that?" should be asked by students, housewives, and seniors, not those from 25-60 in prime working years.
Technology is great, it allows you to do more with less hours and people.
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On March 15 2014 01:31 aksfjh wrote:
On the Russia thing, anybody have an idea of what it would take to remove them from their permanent UN Security Council seat?
I don't even know if there's any legal framework to kick one of the permanent members out. The other four would probably just have to leave and found a new council or something like that.
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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Duke Energy says it plans to move three leaky coal ash pits away from North Carolina waterways, including one that coated 70 miles of the Dan River with toxic sludge.
Duke says it will take at least two years to clean up the Dan River site, and sites near Asheville and Charlotte. State regulators say Duke's plans fall short of cleaning up nearly three dozen leaky coal ash dumps spread across the state.
After the Feb. 2 spill, Gov. Pat McCrory and regulators gave Duke a March 15 deadline to provide details of how the company would stop pollution at the ash pits.
Duke President Lynn Good sent Department of Environment and Natural Resources Secretary John Skvarla a letter with details.
Source
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On March 15 2014 02:04 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2014 01:31 aksfjh wrote:
On the Russia thing, anybody have an idea of what it would take to remove them from their permanent UN Security Council seat? I don't even know if there's any legal framework to kick one of the permanent members out. The other four would probably just have to leave and found a new council or something like that.
Reading up on it, there is push to reform UNSC membership rules (and rules in general)... Some radical push to change them, inside or outside the UNSC, might be a plausible course of action that wouldn't play into the delicate situation of EU economics.
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On March 15 2014 00:52 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2014 22:16 aksfjh wrote:On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive? I feel a fundamental philosophical discussion brewing... Stop it On March 14 2014 15:44 Danglars wrote:John Kerry: Russia has until Monday to reverse course in UkraineSecretary of State John Kerry warned of serious repercussions for Russia on Monday if last-ditch talks over the weekend to resolve the crisis in Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to soften its stance.
Kerry will travel to London for a Friday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of a Sunday referendum vote in the Crimea region to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
U.S. and European officials argue that Moscow is orchestrating the referendum and waging an intimidation campaign with thousands of Russian troops controlling the region. If Russian-backed lawmakers in Crimea go through with the Sunday referendum, Kerry said the U.S. and its European allies will not recognize it as legitimate under international law.
The U.S. and Europe on Monday would then unite to impose sanctions on Russia, Kerry told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday during a hearing on the State Department's budget.
“There will be a response of some kind to the referendum itself,” Kerry said. “If there is no sign [from Russia] of any capacity to respond to this issue ... there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday.” source The real joke in this is the piecemeal response that we'll get against Russia. The most the west will do is sanctions, but EU doesn't want to lose some of its affordable natural gas. Also, the UK is likely going to exempt London (the only city in their entire country worth doing business with internationally). At best the US will show a strong arm, but Russia gets almost nothing from us anyways. This is an interesting point, and it's one that was brought up earlier. To make it quick: Are we having actually meaningful and important discussions, or is this just a political LR thread? From people like farva, kwark, and even IgnE, I've learned more reasons on a variety of issues why the left believes what they believe and rejects what they reject. That's a useful discussion for me to have, since even in local discussions (SoCal is pretty far left), some of these things don't come up that someone from the east coast or Europe considers the strongest case for their argument. The prior thread to this, the 2012 election thread, really was a pleasure to read and contribute.
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On March 15 2014 04:15 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2014 00:52 Roe wrote:On March 14 2014 22:16 aksfjh wrote:On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive? I feel a fundamental philosophical discussion brewing... Stop it On March 14 2014 15:44 Danglars wrote:John Kerry: Russia has until Monday to reverse course in UkraineSecretary of State John Kerry warned of serious repercussions for Russia on Monday if last-ditch talks over the weekend to resolve the crisis in Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to soften its stance.
Kerry will travel to London for a Friday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of a Sunday referendum vote in the Crimea region to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
U.S. and European officials argue that Moscow is orchestrating the referendum and waging an intimidation campaign with thousands of Russian troops controlling the region. If Russian-backed lawmakers in Crimea go through with the Sunday referendum, Kerry said the U.S. and its European allies will not recognize it as legitimate under international law.
The U.S. and Europe on Monday would then unite to impose sanctions on Russia, Kerry told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday during a hearing on the State Department's budget.
“There will be a response of some kind to the referendum itself,” Kerry said. “If there is no sign [from Russia] of any capacity to respond to this issue ... there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday.” source The real joke in this is the piecemeal response that we'll get against Russia. The most the west will do is sanctions, but EU doesn't want to lose some of its affordable natural gas. Also, the UK is likely going to exempt London (the only city in their entire country worth doing business with internationally). At best the US will show a strong arm, but Russia gets almost nothing from us anyways. This is an interesting point, and it's one that was brought up earlier. To make it quick: Are we having actually meaningful and important discussions, or is this just a political LR thread? From people like farva, kwark, and even IgnE, I've learned more reasons on a variety of issues why the left believes what they believe and rejects what they reject. That's a useful discussion for me to have, since even in local discussions (SoCal is pretty far left), some of these things don't come up that someone from the east coast or Europe considers the strongest case for their argument. The prior thread to this, the 2012 election thread, really was a pleasure to read and contribute.
To echo this, as much as I rag on posters like you, I do appreciate the input and point of view you (and others) bring to this topic. It challenges my perspective and helps me differentiate between rhetoric on (both sides) and substance. Being able to talk it out without having to do so all at once allows for better discussion as well, as opposed to what I put up with IRL.
Usually any hostility and anger I have is a reflection of my own frustration with the culture (engineers and programmers who are heavily libertarian) and region (wealthy north Texas who are establishment Republicans). I get to hear rhetoric every day and slogans for the deplorable Ted Cruz, as if he is MY hero. Seeing Fox News up in every shop and store gets old, so I take it out on you guys some times. >_>
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