ralfn

This confusion is understandable, but liberals never cared about the working middle class. Its just that in the US, the democratic party is a big tent of liberals, socialists and progressives, and the other side is a big tent of evangenicals, libertarians and conservative.

The ones that (claim to) care about the working class are the socialists. Liberalism comes from the French revolution, and is exported to the world through Amsterdam (appropiate in this topic!) and its value system is the foundation of modern day capitalism and enterpreneurship by free individuals (no matter how you pray or what you say) in a republic (every vote equal). So standard, you take it for granted.

You find the same disconnect between values in the other tent. Libertarians preaching small government for a republic ticket, even though every republican president has ended up spending more money than any president before.

One of the big downsides of first-past-the-pole is that a political world simplified to just two sides, doesn't do most people justice. Don't vote for the democrats if you want socialism. Don't vote for the republicans if you want libertarianism.

Evangelicals and progressives on the other hand, can do bussiness with the liberals and conservatives, since what they want isn't incompatible. Liberals hear progressives talk about 'inclusion' and they hear 'more customers' (hello, rich gay couples) or 'cheap labour' (hello, poor immigrants) and they get all wet in their stock portfolio.

Sidenote: If you ever wonder what America would look like when its just libertarians and socialists having to come together .. its called Burning Man, where autonomous libertarians feed socialist hippies, without liberal transactions or conservative judgment.

I can't speak for the rest of the world, but here in the Netherlands, it wouldn't have been the state that would come down 'hard'. (its the other cab drivers, physically assaulting you)

As a response to this kind of energy, we actually ended up liberizing our cab market a lot more before Uber came. And when Uber came here there was no good will for the existing established cab companies, because people considered them borderline mobsters.

There is though. The general consensus of free societies is that the democratically elected government regulates speech and not the market.

The problem is youtube/facbeook/instagram/linked-in perform functions that one would normally classify as 'public space'. Obviously that might need some level of policing, because some speech is criminal (like a threat of violence made to another person). But private companies shouldn't be forced to police.

I blame the lack of regulations much more than the for profit companies trying to make a profit (they are legally bound to pursuit profit by their stock holders).

The trouble is the US is allergic to do such a thing, and when another country starts regulation the companies of one of their biggest trade ally's...

So, please, uncle Sam. Can you please make sure the ToS of facebook and the like, is written by your congress. So that there is direct democratic influence on it? Even Facebook will like a lot better that way, because it actually allows them to stop pretending to be 'the facebook state' and can just go back to 'facebook, the for profit company'.

Because when you run out of ICU space, there is triage. There was triage last week. There is triage next week.

Who gets care first?

My point is that many people who are unvaccinated would prefer this, than to be forced to be vaccinated. (and they are effectively forced now in many places)

There were two arguments used to justify this imposition:

(a) - the herd immunity helps protect those can't protect themselves (too young, too old, immuno compromised)

(b) - it overwelms the health care infrastructure making it so that in certain places people can't get emergency care because the ICU's are full

Now the first argument (a) seems to be not true, and the second argument (b) seems to me like 'personal responsibility'. If you want to freedom to make these decisions for yourself (such as to get vaccinated), you are only accountable for the consequences of that for yourself.

The idea that you demand to not be vaccinated, but still get first-come-first-served emergency medical care at the expense of others, sounds to me entitled, spoiled and selfish.

That is just bullshit. The people complaining about their AirBnB neighbours are mostly in Zuid. Definitely in not Social housing.

Please don't start projecting left/right schoolyard tribe politics in an international context. You embarrass our country.

Usage of the phrase "left" and "right" is already dumb when Americans do it. But at least with their first past the pole democracy it is somewhat fitting.

We have many political parties that differ in more than one dimension. From immigration to taxation to gay rights.

Just go back to Dumpert already.

For example. Not intended to be exhaustive.

It's still is an important insight though. The vaccines do not lead to herd immunity.

There isn't a viable herd immunity strategy yet, which implies very young, very old and immuno compromised individuals are still at risk.

It also means 'encouraging' people to take the vaccine won't help, except to keep those people out of the ICU, and if that's the intent it seems more 'freedomy' to me to just not treat unvaccinated covid patients when it peaks.

Because herd immunity is the argument used to defend mandatory vaccinations, and it appears to be a false argument.

How is that 'the best'. Only Silicon Valley thinks that is a valid legal excuse for anything. If you can't operate within the law you can't operate.

The US better start regulating their companies or you end up with a trade war due to the whole world including Europe just kicking these vendors out of the market entirely and permanently

Some people in my country fail to realize that in this case the Dutch state did not invest in the education of these people. I suspect the math works out.

>You should also cosider wages and disposable income.

As one would consider purcasing power, healthcare costs, student debts, good public infrastructure, public spaces, physical safety, quality of water, quality of air, amount of people owining firearms, amount of conspiracy nuts, reliability of things like heat and electricity, the level of institutational racism, human rights, freedom of speech, etc. Lets not even dive in the fact that healthy high quality food is so much more expensive in the US.

In the end, the list of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_livable_cities does not contain many US cities at all.

This notion that you are rewarded better for the same work in the US is just not true. You have to work more, you have to put up with more abuse, you have to spend more time travelling to work, your roads are shit, your public transit is none existing. If you get into a small car crash, you have to worry for a bit if the other person will drive on (stucking you with a bill), or bring a gun (because they might just be angry and armed!). Your kids live in a cage in suburbia and after working all those hours, you will have to drive them around for them to go anywhere except their own house.

If you can't do what you do in a way that isn't this harmful to the world, then you always have the choice to just stop it.

These are all smart people. They could be working on anything else and be successful at it. But they are scared of change. The money is too good.

I just wish the people working at facebook that are decent, that they would just leave and go work somewhere else.

And that we stop debating whether Zuckerberg is redeemable. He is not. He is a psycho. He is why it escalates this much. He is a monster. Beyond all the lies, he intends the damage he does to the world. Maybe someone bullied him as a child. Maybe he is just not well. I don't know.

This is the part that scares me. Not the amount of resources, but the shitty quality that still comes out of those processes.

I suppose scaling up organisations is even harder than scaling up infrastructure.

This example is actually great, because Whatsapp won the market anyway, with a small team against "more resources than whole countries". Facebook ended up buying it.

Remember how Google lost to youtube and had to buy it too?

To me it seems large organisations use anti competitive behavior to be able to compete against smaller entities, because when it comes to quality large organisations just can't compete against smaller ones.

Or why large chain restaurants generally don't win michelin stars.

And even the successful stuff by large companies tend to be small teams. Think Google Maps or Gmail, which were created by small independent teams. If the whole company could mess with those products they would have likely failed.

Unemployment in northern Europe is lower than in comparable places in the US with the same labour rights.

I can imagine unemployment in Southern Europe to be higher, but I am curious what you think you are comparing.

Here is something else to think about: it's safer to hire Americans because they will work 60 hours a week, never take a sick day, won't get pregnant and even if you give them vacation days they won't use them. So they are about 3/5 of the price of your typical European employee. A much better value proposition.

In return some of this will burn them out and put them on edge. This will likely have cultural, political and social consequences. If only we could give our American friends the sleep, reflection and family time they so much deserve.

It's a standard. If we change it, it needs a new name..

However, I am worried that this new standard is harder for languages and ecosystems to support consistently, because it requires a much more involved parser.

Then again, if YAML can do it.. (and that must be a parser created in the depths of hell).

2. Yes Japan is very racist. Other countries can be racist too.

3. You are making up straw man arguments:

>I’ve even seen people lately claim that striving to always do better and improve your life or maintain a high standard of living or make a better life for your kids is actually racist!

Source?

4. If you find yourself spending a lot of time trying to argue you are a not racist...

The Dutch housing bubble consists of 4 factors:

- interest rate on mortgages has been tax deductible

- new developments are limited due to environmental considerations

- it's the safest "on the books" wealth storage in all of Europe (it has been a good investment since the 16th century)

- the Netherlands outclasses it's direct neighbours in quality of life and urbanisation. It's #1 best location in the world to raise children. This leads to many many people wanting to move to the Netherlands. They are not coming for the jobs or our great personalities (sarcasm) they come for the nice living conditions, the great bicycle and public transit infrastructure. The great roads. The good education. The livability of our towns and cities. And we can't really scale it up further. It's all of the country already. You can be in the middle of nowhere in Frisia and jump on a lightrail or see a proper safe bike detour due to some new construction. From small suburbia to big inner cities. We really need Germany, Belgium and Denmark to step their game up. Release some of the pressure. (PS. Denmark is actually stepping up and will get there soon)

It's like the difference between a commuter on bike here in the Netherlands (more than 30% of all trips) vs the handful of cyclists in spandex with some fragile unsafe bike wanking about how light their bike is.

One is a cult, where it becomes part of someone's identity, one is just person trying to get to work.

We should have the discipline to realize that the people carrying the flag of anything are the least likely to be true representatives of the thing.

Your answer would suggest rational thinking does not come natural to us. That it requires a lot of discipline, external tools and culture.

That would suggest that the rational thinking itself does not take place in the brain, even when humans contribute to it.

Im not an expert about neurological stuff, but did anyone discover any hardware in our brains that does something beyond 'induction'?

Is this notion of divergent/converged thinking based on anything objectively measurable? How do I make a machine that tells me if a given thought is convergent or divergent? Or is this all just cultural constructs similar to believe systems?

I'm especially tempted to be extra skeptical with anything that attributes a particular metaphysical superiority to human thinking over machines or animals. Is that skepsis an example of convergent or divergent thinking?

I'm sorry if my question make an actual expert cringe. But perhaps it can be an opportunity to enlighten simple minds like me further...

In between golden principles and everyday court are a lot of pragmatic laws and regulations. That is where I would like to see reform. To help the system full fill it's ideals and principles, especially the blindness of the justice.

I'll go find a doctor. That was definitely not my intention.

Although it seems impossible to measure how much water is stored in the deep soil, it is often possible to notice if it runs out. We had that last summer in the Netherlands. I suppose knowing we reached zero, and knowing the influx (mm rain, and the flow of the Rhine), and then also knowing the outflow means you can make a some sound estimate.

However, that requires a high density of weather stations and tooling at the influx and outputs.

It's not something you can just do through some regulation targeted at the water company. You'll need a specific branch of the government, since messing with water affects everyone, from erosion to trade, to agriculture to climate (the presence of water makes the climate a more mild climate)

In the Netherlands, this is all done by an independent water government, a democracy older than our democracy itself. It even predates notions of citizenship.

They play judge, jury and executioner, while hiding their internal discussions, goals and actions in secrecy.

A democratic and free state would be wise not allow a competing for profit government. It shouldn't share the right to regulate a market with other entities anymore than they should share the monopoly of violence.

I understand you are likely living in a country with a subpar government, but your mentality is short sighted and inconsistent.

If you like regulated markets so much why don't like you want the democratically elected government to regulate a market?

And if you like free markets so much why are you using an iPhone? And why don't you want the government to protect that free market from anti competitive undermining?

Companies shouldn't be allowed to regulate a market as they see fit, anymore than that a property owner can administer Sharia law.

Nobody is an island. All our actions affect others. The fact that your personal wellbeing or displeasure is the first thing that comes to your mind speaks to the quality of your character.

Although arresting and jailing someone is not being justice being administered, it is facilitating justice and fact finding and it itself is indeed an act of violence.

The problematic part is that sexual harassment is a crime though. Both the act and accusation warrant court. Not to fire someone from their job, but to prosecute them under criminal law.

2. The state is the only authorized monopoly of violence and they should treat unproven and untrue as identical, and the only place where that decision is made is in a courtroom.

3. The 'believe the victims' activists however are rightfully (IMHO) suggesting to break principle #2 because there is institutional and systemic supression of the rule of law being applied properly. I would consider this civil disobedience.

4. The state needs to get it's act together and administer the law properly. Only through reform can they regain the legitimacy that is required for #2.

5. Those reforms should focus on racism, sexism and classism. It should focus on what part of the law is too ambiguous for either law enforcement and the judiciary branch.

6. This might include actually blinding the court, i.e. offer only verifiable facts that are admissable and can not be utilized as widgets for race, gender or social economic positions.

If you don't think the legal system has a problem ask yourself why every lawyer recommends the defendant to wear a suit to court. How could it matter if the process was assumed to be without bias.

Pay 1 dollar less today. Pay 10 dollars more in the future on everything, the second the smaller local store goes out of business.

At this rate why even bother with the pretext or capitalism. As long as price dumping is tolerated those with the most wealth can buy a monopoly.

If you choose the largest and cheapest vendor for something you are failing yourself, your friends and family and your neighbours.

If you let Microsoft do this, you might as well get on your knees and kiss the feet of Jeff Bezos. One company should be enough for everyone.

And then we don't need this feature anymore either, because there will be no choice. We won't even need advertising anymore.

Not the way a car, a phone, a hairdresser, a movie or Google maps does. The economy is just what everyone does/make. Think of the opportunity cost of all that human resource being wasted on a pyramid/ponzi scheme, which does not produce any value. It only redistributes it, poorly. Yeah thanks. We really need more gambling infrastructure with even less oversight.

If we would make a list of important things we want to explore further, how would crypto be on it? Why?

It's ok as a storage of wealth, but the amount of investment money and energy wasted on this stuff. And in the end it's going to bankrupt gullible idiots that put their pension in dogecoin. Maybe in the US you just let these morons starve, but in the most of the world, you wouldn't. So it makes sense to protect society against having to bail out suckers from a completely useless and pointless economic exploitation.

So I can imagine banning on on the sheer notion the existence is a net loss for society.

Here in the Netherlands we always had this problem and we engineered around it. We were prepared for a once in a 100 year event (based on models on the 90'ties). Our current calculations however suggest this will happen once every couple of years now.

It is the reason we have 0 casualties thus far. But all those investments we made only made economic sense in the assumption it would solve the problem for a very long time..

It looks like to prevent property damage (and the emotional price of not feeling safe in your own house) we would need to spend that money again and again. Unclear if it will be enough, because the as a society we lost the ability to predict the climate changes . It's too chaotic now. We need more datapoints