I did. You spent most of it lecturing people who use cars. I explained to you why you were wrong to do so.
6,296 karma · joined March 8, 2011
If done right, it is likely the most durable material to use for siding. Will last for hundreds of years. Same with bricks if well maintained.
All other kinds of siding deteriorate quickly in comparison.
I am keeping an eye on the new cement siding that's now on the market, that's very interesting.
Some engineering solutions have purely business justifications.
For example, take a look at the Tesla Model X and its Falcon Wing Door. It is very clearly a stupid design from an engineering perspective, but is sufficiently unique to have its own name. It also very obviously draws everyones attention when used and draws attention to the product which further promotes it. So while everyone else has normal doors ... you have special doors. On top of that, the owner can say that they have an SUV without those pesky mini-van doors which obviously work better, but then you're driving a mini-van.
Similarly, while everyone else is using a vanilla database that does its job and warrants no special attention ... we're using blockchain! We're new, we're special, etc.
It's marketing, not engineering.
H1B is a visa. They are visitors.
That being said, visitors should be able to work and so should their relations if they are allowed to visit as well. One shouldn't need the blessings of the federal government to earn a living.
I don't need to imagine. If you work that minimum wage job for ONE DAY, you'll have 100 bucks in your pocket. You know what you can do with that money? You can buy a ten year old enterprise grade server that's been decommissioned and is for sale on eBay, with free shipping. Now you go on /r/homelab and get free help to get it up and running. All the software is free.
There are always excuses, but let's not sit here and pretend like things are more difficult now than they were before. They've never been easier and we've never had as much opportunity.
When I was growing up, any capable computer, used or new, was $3k and there was no internet, no help, and no free software.
No, but there is a political movement in the United States toward a universal income upon which anyone can live comfortably and this is a symptom of that. Jobs that were previously considered in the realm of "teenager jobs" are now perceived as actual career tracks and a means toward a living. I'm not sure how flipping burgers is a career, but to each his own. On the other side, those same jobs are also being heavily assaulted by automation.
No, it can't. Because they can always walk into a hospital and receive treatment, even if they have no capacity to pay. A hospital may not refuse treatment.
> Or let them be served by an unregulated transportation providers
Like Uber?
Interestingly enough, if an unregulated method of transportation becomes popular enough, it gets regulated, not regulated out of existence.
If that's the percentage being charged and that's the best a person can do, that means that person has a very high chance of defaulting on the loan.
Which would explain why nobody else wants to lend to that person. With your regulations, that financial institution would not exist. You can't regulate people into losing money. They'll just shut down.
You've now deprived the person of a legal financial option of borrowing money. You think they won't borrow anyway? They will. From a loan shark. They'll go into the black market.
They'll end up paying more for that loan since the shark now needs to cover the legal risk involved and if they don't pay it back, they may end up with broken legs.
How is that better?
Quite a bit more, apparently. See the other comments here. There are startups trying to tackle the problem.
Regulation is not the answer. Competition is.
If you feel you can provide better service at a lower cost, the field is wide open.
Those very same consumers. Large, established players do not want to even touch that customer base because it represents a high risk and a low payoff.
These are the only financial services these people have access to. Cutting that off is not a solution.
Encouraging competition and increasing the number of players will reduce the "obscene fees". People aren't stupid, they'll always pursue the lowest cost option.
A good article/video to listen about this topic:
https://reason.com/reasontv/2017/04/13/lisa-servon-banking-c...
What of the thousands whose lives are destroyed by shoddy journalism who aren't famous enough to even be recalled? I sincerely hope all of these yellow journalism outfits go out of business. It won't happen, but one can hope.
This isn't true. We have overwhelming evidence that these "skills" originate in different parts of the brain in all humans and if we disable those parts, those "skills" disappear. Those parts of the brain are unique and have their own structures. There is strong evidence that they require unique "hardware" and as such, are a "special kind of intelligence".
Emotional
Logical
Intuitive
Social
Computational
Instinctive
Sexual
Experiential
and I can keep going, but you should get the point.
I agree with the first part, but disagree with the second. Rather, partially disagree. Most agencies are inept. There are some out there that run a very tight ship and it is a pleasure to work for them. They tend to be larger and have a system for handling contractors.
That said, since it's always less profitable, you're always better off having your own clients.
Those are specific examples of corruption here in the US. Are you asserting that you wouldn't be able to find the same corruption, for example, in China?
Please provide a single example of corruption that can occur under capitalism, but wouldn't occur under another economic system. Because I'm asserting they do not exist.
> And @humanrebar already put this in abstract form: "It's worth noting that luminary capitalists like Adam Smith were very much concerned with privately enabled rent seekers in addition to government enabled ones"
Yes, he was perfectly right to. There are always private parties. Even under communism.
How so? Is corruption different somehow depending on the ideological foundations of the system? Corruption is corruption. Every system has rules. When you subvert those rules for personal gain, that's corruption.
It seems like corruption is simply endemic to the human condition. It has nothing to do with capitalism/communism/etc. Whatever the system happens to be, we will find a way to corrupt it.
That's what I said.
> 25% of the federal government is roughly 800,000 workers who have gotten a $0.0 paycheck yesterday, while most of them were forced to keep working.
I calculated off of a million, so that's still below that.
> The fact that airports keep working are because these TSA Agents + Air Traffic controllers have decided that keeping the airports open are more important than getting a paycheck.
Pretty sure they're required to keep working by law?
> Salute them next time you see one and thank them for their sacrifice.
What? What sacrifice? They're going to get paid when this is over. They also took the job knowing something like this happens every other year. This is not new.
I realize this is being portrayed in the media as a total government shutdown, but that's really not the case.
The US has multiple levels of government. Federal, State, County, and Municipal.
State, County, and Municipal governments (which are the ones that really provide essential services), are operating normally.
For the Federal government, any self-sufficient or quasi-self-sufficient operations (like the USPTO, USPS, etc.) are unaffected. Any operations that already had their budgets passed are unaffected.
We're talking about a fraction of the total government here. There's more drama here than anything else.
Yes, there are people whose lives are affected, but they're a small fraction of the population. I believe there were estimates of 400k? Even if we bump that up to a million to be conservative, we're talking about 0.25% of the population.