PurpleBoxDragon

The problems arises not in the easy to agree laws (murder, theft) or the easy to condemn laws (ban on homosexuality), but with the ones which are debatable on if responding with violence is justified. Many would say that violence against pot dealers isn't justified, but what about heroin dealers? What about opiate dealers? Pot dealers who sell to teens?

I think laws are a subset of inciting violence against others. It is more controlled than random mob violence, but it is still violence. For example, some extreme groups support adding laws that will require minorities to leave the country or be imprisoned. That they argue for doing this through the legal framework instead of random mob violence doesn't excuse it in any fashion.

>In a perfect world, we would be able to de-platform those that incite violence against others (for any reason)

Should we really do it for any reason? Are there not some groups of which a certain level of violence (enforced by the state) is good? I can think of many groups of people who engage in actions which we agree it is good to respond with some violence to enslave them in cages. Well, that is one interpretation of what we do when we put someone in prison, but I think we cannot divorce imprisoning someone or putting other punishments on them that are backed by imprisonment from the threat of violence that is put on prisoners to comply with the rules of imprisonment.

At the core, laws are enforced by violence or threat thereof and are largely based upon subjective morals. Talk about adding laws is thus talk about bringing violence to some group of people. And sometimes (say laws against murderer or theft), it is required for us to have a civilized society.

Treating names as unique identifiers? Quadruple ouch.

I'd assume it is to have a enormous front end library to handle all your complicated components and the author would be horrified by the prospect of every component written with a different front end library. It does present an issue if you literally have a single component that needs it, but I think this advice was aimed at cases where there are many such complicated components.

I once worked with a guy who built an app with everything done server side in web forms, including a datetime picker. It stands out in my memory as one of the worst pieces of software I've ever seen produced.

You do still have state, but with a MPA you have a cleaner break between each page and thus far less ability for state to persist and cause problems (though there are plenty of technologies to shoot yourself in the foot if you so desire). I wonder if the most optimal solution is to have a MPA but using some SPA technology. This reduces the overall state of every page, but still gives you decent technology to work with the state of the page that you just cannot do away with.

Just look back 50 or 100 years ago to find what was absolutely evil beyond question that is today seen as acceptable. Without freedom of speech, such groups have a much harder time changing social norms. I guess this isn't a problem if we think that today's norms recognizes all the groups that deserve it, but I feel this is the same hubris shown by every generation previous.

At some point we have to consider that internet exists because of the government. Where that is can be debated, but without government enforcing certain regulations and restrictions, the internet wouldn't exist. The companies that benefit directly from those regulations and restrictions should have the First Amendment apply to them, or else the regulations and restrictions should be removed.

Take the physical wires. They only exist spread everywhere because the government forced people to accept them and allowed companies to run wires over or under public land. At that point, the companies not benefiting from those wires are no longer fully private institutes.

I wonder how far this will eventually extend. For example, what about websites that have games on them (flash, html5, etc.)? What about websites that host game clients to be downloaded? MUDs could be decently accessible, but most games aren't at all accessible.

Intent of the law might be a better term, but it is clear that intent of the law makers does matter when it comes to court cases trying to decide the actual extents a law can be applied. Even the most legalese specific law can have major gaps depending upon how you read certain words. I've read court cases where judges had to go back to when a law was written, look at other laws, look at how the law was originally applied, and then take this all into account when determining if a specific action was legal or not under such a law.

I only pointed out what defending and using a certain statistic is discriminatory. I made no other arguments, and none directed toward the individual in question or their overall point. Now that you are aware of the discrimination that has historically been encoded into the laws in question, please allow the knowledge to soften the judgement of the behavior of calling that particular statistic into question, specifically when the behavior is saying it is something complex to be discussed and not totally dismissing the entirety of that statistic.

In some states, definitely in the past and perhaps even today though I haven't kept abreast of the law, there were different ages deemed legal for a relationship based on the genders involved. To defend the statistic is to, likely unknowingly, defend the discrimination the laws hold in both structure and application. I am not saying one should discount all cases covered under the law, but it does deserve some context given the sometimes sordid history of the laws.

>That said, I think he's wrong to devalue quota type approaches, because in some circumstances, particularly institutional ones in business and government, those are a very effective way to force a noncompliant culture to take its thumb off the scales.

Only for those groups who have a quota to ensure their fair representation. How often has there been a quota to fix well documented discrimination like that against those who are high functioning autistic?

>A good chunk of this is caused by our city repeatedly choosing awful vendors that bilk the city for crazy amounts of money, and provide trash as the final product.

How much of this is voters voting for politicians who are good at what is essentially a popularity contest instead of politicians who are capable of signing decent contracts? As long as voters don't care enough to change their voting habits this will continue to happen.

But scale is an important difference in legality and morality.

Consider the following example. Calling someone to ask them on a date is normal acceptable behavior. Doing it 20 times an hour, 3 hours a day, every day, quickly becomes immoral and illegal.

Is that really an unreasonable conclusion? Even if we ended all private prisons, you could potentially still have unions representing prison workers who would have some of the same lobbying concerns that private prisons possess (lobbying for harsher laws for profit motive, the difference being union member's paycheck and job instead of the companies bottom line). There is also a third group, which is the for-profit companies who are providing services, for a profit, to state owned prisons. These also have the same concerns, as they make more money the more prisoners incarcerated.

Now the three groups aren't equal, but they do exist on the same scale. For profit prisons are, IMO, the worst while the other two groups are of debatable ranking depending upon the size of the relevant organizations.

>I don't go out as often.

At what point do we begin to consider that choice stiffing the waiters you would've tipped if you did go out?

P.S. I also avoid going to coffee shops where tipping is expected.

>(and the expectation is in law, as evidenced by the lower minimum wage)

By that logic, tipping is not an expectation since the law says that if the tips do not equal enough to bring the worker's earning up to the minimum wage limit, then the employer has to pay them the actual minimum wage and not the tipping minimum wage.

Many employers will not follow the law, but the solution to that is to punish the employers and empower and incentive the employees to seek out enforcement of the law.

>A very easy, relatively pleasant way to get through life in the US if you're well-off enough that you routinely buy coffee in expensive coffee shops: just always tip. Anywhere there's a tip line. You never have to figure anything out, and sometimes people really appreciate it.

This echoes the sentiment that 'if you can't afford to pay a X% tip, you can't afford to buy the product'. Problem is that it seems to keep going up. It use to be 10, then 15, now it is closing in on 20 and in some areas 22 seems to be the expected. How far does this logic extend? If you can't afford to tip 50% then you can't afford it?

My preferred reaction has been to begin avoiding places where tipping is an option.

It won't be quadrupling the work load. It will be going from 15 credit hours to 20 credit hours. An increase of 33%, 50% being the upper limit for degrees with the least bit of cross over. This is because each degree will share the same general requirements and will count as each other's electives. Of course this won't work out for every combination nor for every degree program.

It will require a few things. For starters, from the first semester the student will need to know what degrees they are aiming for and plan accordingly with their advisers. It will require sacrificing some of the fun of college for a more practical approach. It will require giving up any hope of having no classes on a Friday. That's not about being talented though, but about discipline.

If the student will be taking out possible $100,000 or more and they can't do this, then they need to evaluate what they are about to do. Are they about to risk life long debt for an education or for a college experience? If they don't know if what they are studying is what they want to do, should they really be paying someone to teach them how to do it?

Also, if following their passion is something that is extremely difficult for them to learn, then perhaps college is not the right path for them to follow that passion. There has to be some realism on focusing on what you are good at.

This is all much easier when high schools adequately prepare people for college. I wonder how much of the increasing problems at the college level are a result of high schools providing educations of lowering adequacy.

Not all college degrees are created equal. Not all college experiences are created equally. Not all college prices are created equally.

Going to a specific college for a specific degree can be a really bad choice, while going to another for a different degree can quickly pay off. What high school graduates need is the ability to make these sorts of judgments.

For starters, they should consider getting two degrees in a 4 year period. Many students take more than 4 years to get a single degree which significantly increases loans while having less job prospects. By aiming at two degrees, a person can choose to learn something that fulfills them while also finding something they are decent at that they can tolerate for making a living if their dream job doesn't materialize.

Second, consider that some degrees are far less valuable unless you go past the undergraduate level, and so they need to take into account the cost of earning a graduate degree to see if it will pay off or not.

Third, consider scholarship offers and out of state/in state tuition costs. The cheapest college is rarely the best, but a university that will require 10k loans a year is likely to be a far better deal than one that requires 50k loans a year.

Fourth, learn to network and build references while in college.

All of these are things high schools could be better teaching their students about that would make what ever college they eventually pick a much better deal.

Fixed with fonts work well when you are using the alt key to work with multiple lines of code at once. This is especially helpful in the middle ground where the lines of code are similar enough that one can easily use a pattern but the extent needed to be written with that pattern doesn't justify creating some tool to automate writing the code.

Even libertarians would have issue with that definition when you try to say that you consent to the government's laws by continuing to live under the government.

>maybe we can go with something like a public defender for contract law.

Public defenders for criminal law is something massively broken to the extent that we have innocent people going to prison every day. It is a system to be disgusted at, not attempt to replicate.

Back when I had the freedom (or naivety and luck) to discuss far more controversial topics, I found that everyone wanted to ban free speech. Normally they would come up with some justification of why the particular speech doesn't count and claim they did stand for free speech and how dare I say that $controversial_topic dare count as a form of speech. While some people had far wider definitions of what doesn't count than others, I found a topic that they all agreed upon.

I would even go as far to suggest you would probably agree with them, at least for the most common form of speech I saw people wanting to ban. Think of the worst image you can that someone could share or possess.

Once we agree that some speech can be banned, or even that we can just declare certain things don't count as speech, we set the precedent that limits on free speech are acceptable.

>What if the contract is complicated and you end up having part of it invalidated in court?

Sounds like a feature, not a bug. Contracts have to be simple. If you can't do the transaction with a simple contract, you have to find a different method to carry out what ever is desired to be done.

Maybe that's the wrong approach then. Contracts have effectively been weaponized by those who can afford lawyers against those who can't, with those who can't rarely ever benefiting from any sort of contract. Perhaps the solution is to just remove the problem. End contracts entirely between people who can and can't afford contracts.

Sounds more like a business/product owner request given to a developer who has been told one too many times they are too negative when being given new stories to work on.

But I might just be projecting.

>The legitimate way

What determines legitimate? There is, of course, the law. But the law has numerous limits and abilities to be exploited. To some extent, the law of the past was violated by the RIAA and others, and so nothing they do could be considered legitimate. And on a very different line of reasoning, the law can be considered only a tax and thus it is legitimate to pay the tax once enforced.

>The music industry isn't "brib[ing] politicians" to "create artificial barriers" to people creating competing content.

They don't lobby for laws that do things such as lead to YouTube creating copyright systems they can then exploit to take out competitors? Using government to capture the EM spectrum so that indies cannot compete on it? No, they aren't being simplistic tropes that bribe the government to outlaw all competition directly, but I would suggest to not use that as one's only measurement.