gph

>So what if it turns out that industrial monoculture techniques are vastly oversold (they almost certainly are)

Maybe some of the more recent techniques of industrial monoculture are oversold, but the steady rise of yields since the 1940s [1] make me feel like you're talking up a much bigger game than is actually the case. Perhaps the cost of some of Monsantos latest GMOs and pesticides isn't worth it. But throwing out the entire industrial monoculture paradigm is absolutely not cost effective. If it was more farmers would have figured it out by now. They aren't that dumb.

[1] https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/images/Co...

>there are plenty of farms that have switched to being fully organic while increasing yields and profits.

But probably not corn or any of the other staple crops. It's going to be hard to get the same yields of those without using modern industrial monoculture techniques.

Not to take away from the content, but this article reads like something a freshman wrote for a class project.

Never a central tenet, but I've seen/heard some conjecture around UBI that it would help lift people out of the poverty trap, and this could help them find a path to fulfillment that for many might lead to a fulfilling job/career that's done as much for passion as profit.

It's not something I've heard strongly voiced or considered, certainly surprised to see it defined as the aim of UBI as this article puts it. But then again there's a million definitions of UBI out there right now.

I don't think we should be encouraging an average Ubuntu user to download and install anything from source that has an actively maintained package. Average users of Ubuntu/Linux should only use the maintained Firefox package that comes pre-installed on basically every major dist these days.

I think Firefox or anyone else would be doing a disservice to an average user to make them think they need to manually install this software outside their package manager.

How meta. You must be a super clever person with original thoughts to add to every discussion.

Did saying this make you feel better about yourself or something?

Because it's a ridiculously naive statement at best. More likely just some sanctimonious BS you decided to post to signal how much of a good person you are.

Like seriously, what world do you live in where you can't picture a person doing something to take advantage of another person? Have you read literally anything in history?

>But its not like battery technology is advancing so quickly, and prices dropping so fast, that this is only just becoming profitable

I wonder if there was even the capability to manufacture such a large order at the given price point before Tesla built their gigafactory.

Libertarianism. I hear they are testing it out in Oregon.

/s

Did you read the entire article? It's not really 'free to everyone', it's not like it's magic money. It's more like a transfer of tax revenue from Tokyo to rural communities, with a bit of a kickback to the tax payers.

And while your vision sounds nice, the end of the article made it sound more like it's become a race to the bottom with most rural towns offering the maximum amount allowed in gift vouchers which people resell for cash.

So it's mostly just a convoluted tax distribution/credit system in a lot of ways. And as much as it would be nice to have something like what you wrote, it would be near impossible to set out rules such that it didn't become another cynical race to maximize profits by attracting 'donors'. Even if you outlawed gift cards, there's always going to be some good/commodity a community can offer that will hold a liquidable cash value.

Fair, I overlooked that.

But given the unique situation of Detroit, and the fact that US cities are generally organized in quite a different fashion to Chinese cities there's really no good use in comparing the two IMO.

Eh, I think both you and the poster below are making a mistake in using the population of the city center of Detroit. The city center is making a bit of a comeback, but the majority of the population lives in the surrounding metro area, which still has a population of roughly 3.7 million.

And before you complain about that being a much bigger area, here's the land area for metro Detroit compared to some of China's biggest cities:

Detroit metro: 1,337.1 sq mi

Guangzhou Urban: 1,483.95 sq mi / ~11 million

Shanghai Urban: 1,550 sq mi / ~24 million

Chengdu Urban: 1,760.0 sq mi / ~11 million

Chinese cities typically have boundaries roughly equivalent to US metro areas. They certainly have larger populations than Detroit, but not as much as you guys think.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Detroit

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangzhou

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai

[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu

The early smart people are now rich smart people. The late smart people aren't very smart after all.

That's not really anything like a commune. It's basically a grocery store you work at for discounts. I don't doubt it quite beneficial and nice, but really doesn't answer anything about the OPs question.

I mean, they'll still have to license the tech from Cruise, they'll just be licensing from a company they have a minority stake in.

You can't just use tech from some other company even if you are part-owner. Heck I don't think you can even do that from a fully-owned subsidiary. They have to have structural/legal independence or it's really just a different branch of the same company.

Sort of. But considering that they are diverting a ton of tax revenue into charities, and the fact hat being a large donor to various charities and endowments can create large status and influence gains, especially for their legacy heirs, I think it's completely fair to ask whether this is truly charity or rich people setting themselves, their families, and their pet causes to be better off in the future instead of paying their fair share of taxes that could be used in a more direct way for the betterment of all in society (I know that's a contentious statement given our current government/politics, but we shouldn't write policy to allow diverting taxes for personal gain just because the government can be corrupt/inefficient)

Anecdata. There were undoubtedly many other engineers working just as hard as Musk at other startups that never turned into Paypal.

You can credit him and his cohorts for having the foresight to work on products/services that turned out to be winners, especially given that he's followed that success with other potentially successful ventures. But I don't buy that work alone got Musk where he is.

No it doesn't. They use the proper medical term in the very same sentence, and continue to use psychogenic death except in a direct quotation from a doctor.

You have to be pretty damn anal to think using a colloquial term suddenly discredits all the other information in that article.

I think it's a bit more nuanced then that. If you dig into this case a bit it seems pretty likely that this Scott guy "worked" for Dixon in some capacity and even if Dixon didn't pull the trigger he provided the weapon and was at the scene of the crime when it happened. I think the most likely explanation is that this killing was directly related to him being a drug dealer and him having one of his gang members kill someone else. Like doesn't it seem a bit odd that this other guy was so willing to take the fall? Sounds like a lackey trying to protect his boss.

Just saying, I don't think that was just an excuse. I think they had good reason to believe this guy was a bit of a low level crime boss/gang leader and they decided it'd be better to put him away even if he didn't technically pull the trigger. Yea it's an abuse of the justice system in a lot of ways and I don't condone it, but I don't think it's as easy as saying the DA just wanted to randomly pin the murder on someone else.

You're the one saying they cost an astronomical amount that would preclude poor people from affording them, but that seems refutable by the fact that GPS trackers are commercially available for truck fleets[0] as well as tracking pets[1]. I see nothing over 200 dollars. So show some sources if you really think GPS trackers would be prohibitively expensive as currently deployed.

[0]https://www.gpsinsight.com/gps-tracking-benefits/what-is-the...

[1]https://www.pcmag.com/roundup/354245/the-best-pet-trackers-a...

>But gps trackers, paid by the defendant, will then become just another bail bond

Why do you think a gps tracker would be that expensive? And why do you think a defendant would have to foot the entire bill? It's not like they are a one-time use piece of equipment.

But you're not really addressing the actual problem that the GP was stating. Disabled individuals want to be gainfully employed, but under the minimum wage law no one would hire them.

Your 'right thing to do' just negatively disrupted the lives of most disabled folks without much benefit other than upholding your ideal.

Well what the right thing to do depends on whether we're thinking idealistically or pragmatically. Idealistically everyone deserves the same right to minimum wage protection. But if we followed our ideals in this situation then most disabled folks wouldn't be hired at all.

So what's the 'right' thing to do? I don't know what you mean by putting economics on a higher pedestal. If something isn't economically sustainable then what does it even mean to do the right thing?

I think that's a perfectly fair description, they didn't say 'remote' they said 'secluded wildness'. And besides Thunder Bay isn't just 'nearby', it's separated by at least 30 miles of Lake Superior, and there's not much in the way of major development on the rest of Keweenaw peninsula.

Or put another way I'd consider places on the opposite side of the Cheasapeake to be secluded wildness even tho they are technically only 30-50 miles from downtown baltimore.

>I betcha there are 10,000 people just doing children’s services in NYC

Ok, but we aren't talking about UBI replacing CSA or really any of the local services are we? It's not like child abuse is going to disappear because everyone gets a UBI check. A lot of the state and county level social services are not going to be obsoleted because of UBI. I would think it's more of a federal/national program meant to replace federal/national social services.

>a huge amount of the money spent on benefits are used just for administration.

I think a lot of people way overestimate the administrative costs. For example U.S. Social Security administrative costs are around 6 billion a year. Sounds like a lot but it's only 0.7% of the total cost of the program[1]. Sure there's a handful of different programs all with their own costs, but it's maybe 20-50 billion a year. That's not that much considering UBI might increase spending by trillions.

[1] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/admin.html

>Bank employees were instructed to tell prospective clients to lie about their income

But is there explicit proof of this? I didn't think there was, but maybe I'm wrong. I thought at best the argument would be more like:

"Bank executives set up incentives for their employees that they knew would encourage fraudulent behaviour."

But printing the money is only useful in that it manipulates the market price to go that 10% higher which is where you make the profits.

If they printed that money and everyone found it worthless and the market didn't response they wouldn't have a business model.

Edit: I guess I should say that's the conjecture of those saying Tether was created purely for profit based on market manipulation. I don't have an inside knowledge on what was going through the heads of those at bitfinix who created it.

Wasn't the main part of the allure to blockchain/crypto to be better than democratic societies and institutions? After all that's what they are trying to replace right? Governments can't be trusted and all that?

I think it's well past that point. Now that there's serious wealth tied up in these projects and people have become millionaires and even billionaires on an unproven technology the general tech community is not going to give it the benefit of the doubt. This isn't just some experiment between crypto-nerds anymore. It's big business. It must stand up to the scrutiny now, and those that support it and have invested heavily in it should want that too.

I'm a bit ambivalent, there's clearly a lot of scams and way too high valuation. But something useful will likely come out of it all. And that something will likely be what can stand up against the backlash.