They're never dealt with harshly though. Their idea of a punishment is a paid vacation (=suspension), after which the thug is free to do his thing again.
-7 karma · joined May 15, 2015
- How much for taking me from here to <Place X>?
- That would be $40.
- Alright, let's go.
If you were feeling more adventurous, you could opt for a small(er) provider without an established reputation, but it would cost a bit less than Toober. Most likely, there would be no problem.
> All businesses must be licenced.
Why? Why the hell would a grocery store need a license and what for? I'm not asking for "because the government says so", because the government says a lot of things that don't actually make sense. Is there a good, objective reason for all businesses to have to be licensed and how would the license help?
> Taxi licensing is special because of their special circumstance.
What does that mean? What are the special circumstances? It's just people with cars and people who need to go places.
> (a) 'forget' about picking up people of a certain skin color
Suppose there was no regulation for taxis. Now suppose a big taxi company had emerged. Let's call it "Toober". Now Toober, just like most companies, wants to make as much money as possible.
Do you think people accusing its drivers of racism would be conducive to that goal, and if not, do you think Toober would do something about racist drivers?
What about the drivers? They want money too, right? So if there was a racist driver working for Toober, and he knew Toober doesn't tolerate racism because it's bad for their image and thus, bottom line, don't you think the driver would refrain from behaving in a racist way so that he could keep his job?
> (b) refuse fare to a certain district they don't like
Don't like? Because it somehow displeases them like Justin Bieber's music displeases a lot of guys? What sense would it make for a taxi to leave money on the table because he finds a district distasteful?
> (c) arbitrarily set fares depending on what they see as people's willingness to pay--like say setting the fare for single women outside nightclubs to 3x the normal rate.
Again, imagine Toober getting complaints about discrimination. On the other hand, getting home safely from a night out is a more valuable service than just getting from Place A to B in less dangerous situation, so maybe it's alright to charge a bit more.
Sure, three times the normal rate would be too much, but another taxi company would be free to offer a better rate, and people would take it.
Do you see why regulation is not necessary at all? Whenever the government says it's doing something for your safety or for fairness, you can be 100% sure the results and real reasons are different.
The real reason why we have taxi regulations is to maintain a state-supported taxi-cartel.
Fundamentally, it's as simple as buying a pound of cheese from a supermarket. It's just a transaction between people.
So why should taxi drivers have to get "licensed"? What exactly is that license? What does it represent besides going through a burdensome ordeal? How would getting licensed increase safety in any way? It's not like anyone wants to experience a car crash.
The real point of the exercise is to maintain a state-supported taxi-cartel. Higher prices for the masses, and higher profits for the cartel. Desperation and hardship for the debt-slave drivers.
Their lives must be miserable without The Queen's "taximeter"!
It's also worth noting that there's nothing inherently evil or distasteful about proprietary software. It's proprietary exactly because it's meant to produce a monetary return on the time and effort invested in it.
Whether you aim for monetary gain, and with what degree of certainty, is just a personal choice you make.
In reality, it's just a question of what they want to do, and whether they can get away with it. For example, if an officer insists on seeing your ID even if the rulebook says you don't have to show it, he can escalate until he gets his way.
A police officer can saw off your leg and feed it to some crocodiles if he wants to, and no one's looking or filming.
But of course, this misconception is central to the belief in "the rule of law", which keeps us misguidedly comfortable with the fact that there's a bunch of guys in blue costumes who can abuse you as they please, confiscate all your cash, shoot your dog, or just ruin your life on a whim.
That recycling thing is a nice little rent-seeking operation, and the other stuff is just typical economy-crippling bureaucratic bullshit.
I guess you've escaped Germany by now?
You're wrong about him being wrong. He said there's no one European culture, and you even agree with him:
> Of course there are still cultural differences between Greeks and Irish.
Any juicy examples you could tell us about?
Actually, value is subjective. For example, if I didn't know I could sell a Van Gogh for a lot of money, it would be just as worthless to me as anything else I don't want.
In other words, a Van Gogh, just like everything else, has no "intrinsic value" that everyone would recognize.
Now if I could buy a Van Gogh for $5000 and sell it for $10000, I'd be happy to buy one. But if I could only sell it for $5500 it wouldn't be worth the trouble for me.
That's subjective value at work again. In the latter case, I'd value the time needed to buy and sell the painting higher than the $500 I could get from the exchange.
Oh come on. You know they did emerge, as mediums of exchange, which is what money/currency fundamentally is. You're making a meaningless distinction to cover your ass.
> Oh, please. How many people would give up a job to live on $30 a week?
We're talking about a Basic Income, where the idea is to get enough money to live on, right? That most definitely would cause many people to just stop working because they wouldn't need to anymore, even if the BI happened to be too low for you to stop collecting your phat paychecks. You get that, yes?
That's still not the kind of speech that needs to be protected and heard, as I'm sure you're aware. So I can't see a reason to spend this much time discussing yelling "fire" in a theater.
> All of this is different from what you portrayed, which was incarcerating someone for yelling "fire!" in a theater purely on grounds of doing so, regardless of whether there was/wasn't a fire and whether (in case there was) it posed a threat.
I portrayed nothing of the sort. Here's what I originally said:
>> In other words, say what you like, but don't be surprised when they haul you off to a concentration camp for being a naughty little thought-criminal, huh?
But nevermind, we've probably wasted enough of each other's time here.
The point was just that there are much more obvious problems with people in positions of power than not being able to distinguish with punishment for using one's vocal chords and punishment for whatever it caused.
It's also worth noting that governments don't give us our rights - they're inherent in our nature as human beings.
When a government declares that its citizens have the right to free speech, they mean it with the caveat of "as long as they're not a threat to our continued rule". The fact that's exactly how they operate can be seen throughout history.
Well maybe they weren't in their right minds?
> If someone is considering a cause opposed by government, then surveillance will not stop most of them, but spur them on and prove to them that they can not trust their own government.
You can both believe in your cause, and distrust your government, but while being scared shitless of speaking out. So, I wouldn't say that surveillance works against governments.
There's a certain point before which awareness of mass-surveillance may cause negative sentiment towards the government, especially without being managed effectively with propaganda, but after another point.. you're in North-Korea.
You do realize that the kind of speech that needs to be protected is not the kind with negative consequences for innocent bystanders, don't you? It's not like I'm defending yelling "fire!" in a movie theater.
The poster whom I responded to didn't seem aware of these distinctions, which is why I snarked at him.
> Do I really have to explain the concept?
No, you don't.
> Apparently some people can't discern the difference between punishment of speech and punishment for consequences of speech. Obviously such people need be kept out of legislative office.
But I guess it's alright to have liars, crooks and wannabe-tyrants in there?
Alright. Try melting steel with your mind. It's reasonably likely that's never been attempted before, so I guess it's not pointless to try, right?
You're basically just saying "extreme statements are unlikely to be true", but while that's often an accurate observation, especially when discussing groups of people, it's not really relevant to what I said.
On the other hand, what I said earlier boils down to "it's pointless to attempt something that can't be done". I fail to see how that warrants lodging a complaint like yours.
But that doesn't work because Schelling points are subjective. You can't reliably convince everyone that some specific arbitrary threshold should never be crossed, because it will surely lead to doom. Some might agree, and others will see things in a different way.
That's why it's pointless to even try, and that's why it's pointless to think about freedom of speech in terms of Schelling points.
So how about just pretending there's a Schelling point at 100% of freedom of speech? Any concession from that will inevitably lead to more, and besides, losing our freedom of speech is not a clear-cut phenomenon anyway.
It's a bit like new currency entering circulation at various points in the economy - some people's perceptions of what's acceptable will shift before others', but will in turn affect the perceptions of others around them. Freedom of speech rots in arbitrary, unpredictable and uneven ways.
In other words, say what you like, but don't be surprised when they haul you off to a concentration camp for being a naughty little thought-criminal, huh? It's your fault for saying whatever you said! You should have been more careful!
I propose accepting that aggressing against others is immoral, and applying that principle consistently. Can you guess where that would lead us?
You're still behaving as if you didn't understand that it is very much possible to refrain from accepting trades, even if your counterparty is stinking rich. If you don't consider five million dollars worth the loss of dignity from a blowjob, then you won't do it. I can imagine someone choosing to not accept that trade. Maybe they're doing just fine and don't need the money that bad?
> Asking someone who is dangling from a cliff for all their money in exchange for pulling them up, for example, is not a trade I am interested in promoting.
Sure, that would be highly scumbaggy of you, but that's not the kind of deal I was suggesting either.
> Yet this is precisely the kind of trade upon which capitalism is built.
Now there's a claim that requires backing.
> Under capitalism, many / most exchanges are not voluntary.
Complete nonsense. We all go through voluntary exchanges every day, any time you go shopping for groceries for example.
> If I'm rich and I hire a private army to coerce you into doing something, does it really make any difference whether I call myself a king? From your standpoint we haven't really "abolished" political power.
Coercion is immoral, and what you'd be doing is irrelevant to capitalism. But yeah, political power is basically thuggery - it's just that people don't see that from underneath their brainwashing.