And what does it take for Congress to officially, legally say "the United States of America withdraws from the such-and-such treaty"? Because it's starting to look more and more like we seriously need to, from more than one.
You are assuming inflation, but that's not a safe assumption.
The economy is driven primarily by consumer spending, and consumer spending is driven primarily by the largest consumer demographic: the Baby Boom generation. This is true in Europe as well as the USA. Both had their Baby Booms at approximately the same time, for the same fundamental reason: the end of WWII.
Thing is, that means that across Europe and the US, the largest consumer demographic, across the board, is now starting to or preparing to retire. That means withdrawing from the consumer economy, saving money, and beginning to draw upon pensions and retirement accounts. To put it simply and bluntly, they are currently in the process of transitioning from driving the economy to being a drag on it, which will continue until the bulk of the generation is dead.
In saying this, I'm not trying to heap blame upon them. It's not their fault they were all born in a big mass like that, and this is simply the natural consequence of it, as nearly the entirety of our history since their birth has been. But what that means is that what lies ahead is not inflation, but deflation. Economic contraction. If you want to see the future of the USA and Europe, look at the recent history of Japan, who had their baby boom earlier and tried to deal with the inevitable cliff the same way we did: money-printing by their central bank to stave off deflation, which hasn't worked for them any more than it has for us.
Any economic "projections" that show future growth as an extrapolation of past years are simply delusional. Unless we fundamentally restructure our economic system and enact a bunch of reforms that, realistically, are never going to happen, the Western world is inevitably on a downward course for the next few decades.
Re: You don't need to watch tv for them to make money off of you -- Re:
Network TV absolutely is funded by commercials. At my last job we made software to help manage the logs (ie. schedules and playlists) for broadcast media stations, and we had some extremely advanced algorithms to optimize placement of ads on their logs. I can't talk about the details, but let me just say that some very serious money flows into the companies' coffers by selling advertising time. Our software managed several billion dollars worth of ad revenue per year.
But I thought the DMCA's "safe harbors" were supposed to protect innovative companies who did nothing wrong, and keep them safe from vexatious litigation like this. That's why we need to keep it around... right?
(For the benefit of the pedantic, yes, there's an obvious exception today that was not an issue in Sun Tzu's time. We could end any conflict very quickly by the use of nuclear weapons, but that would not be less horrific than conventional warfare. That's why we don't do it. Just posting this here so no one tries to use it to poke holes in my position that don't actually apply.)
You really ought to read over that amendment again.
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Due process is not just "a process that you do"; it has a real purpose, and that purpose is to be as sure as possible that someone is guilty before you punish them. But there's a very good reason that exception is in there: when someone is actively making war on you and putting the public in danger, the highest duty is to put a stop to it as quickly as possible.
A doctor might cauterize a severe injury even though it causes horrible, irreparable damage to the tissue, because it can prevent something even worse from happening: having the patient bleed out. This is the same basic principle, and it's been known for thousands of years, and formalized at least as far back as Sun Tzu, the guy who literally wrote the book on war. His basic, overarching doctrine was surprisingly simple to articulate: you do everything necessary to end the conflict quickly, no matter how brutal the necessary actions may be, because it is still much less horrible and destructive than a long, drawn-out war.
So yes, by all means, let's hold to what the Constitution says, all of it, not simply cherry-picking parts that we find helpful. It was written by guys with actual experience in issues like this.
And it's always worth remembering that they weren't the only ones. Keep in mind Abraham Lincoln, who said "the Constitution is not a suicide pact."
Really? This stuff has been all over the news for a few years now.
Is this the same news media that... you know, I don't even need to finish that question, do I?
On a personal note, I was amused that you said you're a pacifist -- because I am not a pacifist. We both seem to be falling on the opposite side of this issue than most would have expected. :)
My overarching view is basically the model of civilization. It's founded on reciprocity and mutual trust. You behave in a civilized manner towards me, I behave in a civilized manner towards you, and even when we don't agree on everything, we can still work together so you and me and the rest of our society in general all benefit from it. I walk around without carrying a big weapon and suspiciously looking everywhere to see who might be watching me, I leave myself potentially wide open to attack, because I can trust that those around me extend me and each other that same level of trust, even though they don't know me and I don't know them. Mutual trust and reciprocity.
But when somebody willfully chooses to step outside that fundamental framework, they have placed themselves outside of it. Disregarding someone else's fundamental rights necessarily involves forfeiture of your own. It's offensive, the very height of hypocrisy in fact, to run roughshod over other people and then cynically appeal to people's sense of fair play in order to avoid justice, and people have an innate understanding of this. It's why so many are outraged at the lack of legal consequences in the banking world after 2008, just to give one example
The consequence of disregarding someone else's fundamental right to life if a simple, logical extrapolation of that principle.
First, the "reduced harm" argument only works if we use drone strikes in situations where otherwise we would have sent in troops or conducted a serious bombing campaign.
Why? Are you seriously saying more people are being killed, and more harm and misery is being inflicted, by drone strikes than what happened when we had actual boots-on-the-ground combat operations going on? If so, you really need to take a second look at the numbers.
Second, the drones are so cheap and easy to deploy, and have so little visibility outside of the military itself, that they are being used in situations where it's far from clear that action is needed at all. We strike targets that we merely think might be related to terrorists of some ill-defined sort. Often, we're wrong. In the past, we would have given a LOT more thought to military action before doing it. That's all out the window now. Drones let us be a "shoot first, ask questions later" power.
[citation needed]
This is nothing more than the same sort of "oooo! This is new and unfamiliar and therefore it must be scary and dangerous" moral panic that Techdirt usually (and rightly!) spends its time taking apart. I'm a pacifist, but also a realist, and as distasteful as it is to have to admit it, there are some people in the world who simply need killing. That's the ugly, unfortunate reality of the world in which we live. So the real moral question is, how to go about killing them in the least horrific and destructive manner possible?
The answer, obviously, is assassination, and like in so many other areas (which Techdirt frequently comments positively on,) modern technology provides a more efficient, less wasteful way to go about it. As cool as newer and better methods of distributing entertainment content is, this is something that actually matters. Forget making record labels and movie studios obsolete; we're beginning to develop technology that can make armies obsolete, and all the blood and horror that they bring along with them! Why are so many people around here talking like that's a bad thing?
We seem to PREFER big shows of force with seal teams and black ops helicopters.
I assume you're referring to taking down Bin Laden? That was not a "big show of force." A "big show of force" was what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan; it was even sold in almost exactly those terms. ("Shock and awe," a "surge," etc.)
What we did with Bin Laden was exactly what we should have done at the very beginning. It's what I was saying we needed to do since September 2001: have the CIA find Osama Bin Laden and send a Special Forces team to assassinate or capture him, without wasting tons of lives, time and money on pointless warfare.
...OK, what we did was almost right, aside from that last part. :(
Personally, I don't see what all the fuss is about. If we find a serious terrorist who's out to cause trouble, I'd much rather see them taken down by a targeted strike (with or without drones) than the alternative, the conventional method involving armies, combat operations, and all the misery, collateral damage, and death that that implies.
Wouldn't you? And more to the point, wouldn't you prefer it that way if you were living nearby? Given the choice between possibly becoming collateral damage myself and having it not be a possibility in the first place, I know which one I'd vote for...
...and the sort that the rest of society never seems to understand. Now he's looking at doing it yet again with the Hyperloop project, and just look at how many people are saying the same stupid stuff about it that they said about Tesla...
The "good faith" caveat has resulted in some head scratching and reasonable questions -- and we hope that Musk clarifies this position with a clearer explanation.
It seems pretty clear to me. As an engineer, if I did and said something like that, here's what I would mean by it:
"Go ahead and use this, but play nice. I'm placing a lot of trust in you guys, and if you abuse that trust by doing something stupid, such as using our patents but then turning around and trying to frivolously sue us for patent infringement, keep in mind that I can and will revoke permission. So don't."
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Probably best not to compare the numbers...
Seeing the drunken high-speed chase, the way he endangered multiple innocent lives, the way he assaulted the police officers, the way he continued to violently resist arrest even when it was clear he had no chance, to the point where the police officers had good reason to believe he was high on PCP... none of this context which was suspiciously absent from the video that got broadcast would have made people perceive the situation differently?
There's a very good reason the officers were found to not be at fault when tried by an actual impartial jury: they did exactly what was necessary to subdue a dangerous lunatic who had already demonstrated that he was a danger to them, to himself and to innocent bystanders. This was by no means a case of police brutality, but a camera told a different story, and the rest is history.
53 people died in the ensuing riots, with thousands severely injured and around $1 billion in property damage, and every last bit of it is on the heads of the idiotic news hounds who chose to put sensationalism and ratings above common sense, journalistic ethics, or basic honesty.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Probably best not to compare the numbers...
If cops are so afraid of having their actions being visible, then they shouldn't be cops.
I don't think it's "their actions being visible" they're afraid of; it's having their actions completely misrepresented, taken out of context, and causing worse problems.
A video recording is a great thing for showing what actually happened, except that it only shows what the camera was pointing at while it was running. If you present Act 2 like it was the entire play... well, just look at the Rodney King riots for one completely non-hypothetical example of what can (and did!) go wrong.
If you were a cop, would you want to end up at the center of another mess like that one?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Probably best not to compare the numbers...
Most now accepted cameras as another part of the job, said Sgt Josh Lindsay. A self-confessed technophile, he said they provided context to contentious incidents partially captured by bystanders' phones. "Now you can see the [suspect] punching the officer twice in the face before he hits him with his baton."
Yes, the whole Rodney King thing would have played differently, wouldn't it?
This is always the first thing I think of when I hear about police officers having trouble with being recorded. It's hard to blame them; who would want to be the next guy at the center of a media report that sets off a riot because they neglected to show what happened a minute or two earlier?
On the post: Massachusetts Ignores 5th Amendment; Says Defendant Can Be Forced To Decrypt His Computer
Re:
On the post: A Year And A Half Later, Unlocking Your Phone One Step Closer To Being Legal
Re: Re: Trade agreement ratification
On the post: Why TAFTA/TTIP Isn't Worth It Economically, And How We Can Do Much Better
Re: Re:
The economy is driven primarily by consumer spending, and consumer spending is driven primarily by the largest consumer demographic: the Baby Boom generation. This is true in Europe as well as the USA. Both had their Baby Booms at approximately the same time, for the same fundamental reason: the end of WWII.
Thing is, that means that across Europe and the US, the largest consumer demographic, across the board, is now starting to or preparing to retire. That means withdrawing from the consumer economy, saving money, and beginning to draw upon pensions and retirement accounts. To put it simply and bluntly, they are currently in the process of transitioning from driving the economy to being a drag on it, which will continue until the bulk of the generation is dead.
In saying this, I'm not trying to heap blame upon them. It's not their fault they were all born in a big mass like that, and this is simply the natural consequence of it, as nearly the entirety of our history since their birth has been. But what that means is that what lies ahead is not inflation, but deflation. Economic contraction. If you want to see the future of the USA and Europe, look at the recent history of Japan, who had their baby boom earlier and tried to deal with the inevitable cliff the same way we did: money-printing by their central bank to stave off deflation, which hasn't worked for them any more than it has for us.
Any economic "projections" that show future growth as an extrapolation of past years are simply delusional. Unless we fundamentally restructure our economic system and enact a bunch of reforms that, realistically, are never going to happen, the Western world is inevitably on a downward course for the next few decades.
On the post: Would You Compromise Your Computer For One Cent An Hour? New Study Says Many Are Happy To Do Exactly That
Re:
On the post: Supreme Court Uses The Bizarre 'Looks Like A Cable Duck' Test To Outlaw Aereo
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Supreme Court Uses The Bizarre 'Looks Like A Cable Duck' Test To Outlaw Aereo
Re: You don't need to watch tv for them to make money off of you -- Re:
On the post: Supreme Court Uses The Bizarre 'Looks Like A Cable Duck' Test To Outlaw Aereo
On the post: Court To Government On Attempt To Bury Drone Memo: You'd Have A Case If You'd Bother To Shut Your Mouth Once In Awhile
Re: Re:
On the post: Court To Government On Attempt To Bury Drone Memo: You'd Have A Case If You'd Bother To Shut Your Mouth Once In Awhile
Re:
Due process is not just "a process that you do"; it has a real purpose, and that purpose is to be as sure as possible that someone is guilty before you punish them. But there's a very good reason that exception is in there: when someone is actively making war on you and putting the public in danger, the highest duty is to put a stop to it as quickly as possible.
A doctor might cauterize a severe injury even though it causes horrible, irreparable damage to the tissue, because it can prevent something even worse from happening: having the patient bleed out. This is the same basic principle, and it's been known for thousands of years, and formalized at least as far back as Sun Tzu, the guy who literally wrote the book on war. His basic, overarching doctrine was surprisingly simple to articulate: you do everything necessary to end the conflict quickly, no matter how brutal the necessary actions may be, because it is still much less horrible and destructive than a long, drawn-out war.
So yes, by all means, let's hold to what the Constitution says, all of it, not simply cherry-picking parts that we find helpful. It was written by guys with actual experience in issues like this.
And it's always worth remembering that they weren't the only ones. Keep in mind Abraham Lincoln, who said "the Constitution is not a suicide pact."
On the post: Court To Government On Attempt To Bury Drone Memo: You'd Have A Case If You'd Bother To Shut Your Mouth Once In Awhile
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Is this the same news media that... you know, I don't even need to finish that question, do I?
My overarching view is basically the model of civilization. It's founded on reciprocity and mutual trust. You behave in a civilized manner towards me, I behave in a civilized manner towards you, and even when we don't agree on everything, we can still work together so you and me and the rest of our society in general all benefit from it. I walk around without carrying a big weapon and suspiciously looking everywhere to see who might be watching me, I leave myself potentially wide open to attack, because I can trust that those around me extend me and each other that same level of trust, even though they don't know me and I don't know them. Mutual trust and reciprocity.
But when somebody willfully chooses to step outside that fundamental framework, they have placed themselves outside of it. Disregarding someone else's fundamental rights necessarily involves forfeiture of your own. It's offensive, the very height of hypocrisy in fact, to run roughshod over other people and then cynically appeal to people's sense of fair play in order to avoid justice, and people have an innate understanding of this. It's why so many are outraged at the lack of legal consequences in the banking world after 2008, just to give one example
The consequence of disregarding someone else's fundamental right to life if a simple, logical extrapolation of that principle.
On the post: Court To Government On Attempt To Bury Drone Memo: You'd Have A Case If You'd Bother To Shut Your Mouth Once In Awhile
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Court To Government On Attempt To Bury Drone Memo: You'd Have A Case If You'd Bother To Shut Your Mouth Once In Awhile
Re: Re: Re:
Why? Are you seriously saying more people are being killed, and more harm and misery is being inflicted, by drone strikes than what happened when we had actual boots-on-the-ground combat operations going on? If so, you really need to take a second look at the numbers.
[citation needed]
This is nothing more than the same sort of "oooo! This is new and unfamiliar and therefore it must be scary and dangerous" moral panic that Techdirt usually (and rightly!) spends its time taking apart. I'm a pacifist, but also a realist, and as distasteful as it is to have to admit it, there are some people in the world who simply need killing. That's the ugly, unfortunate reality of the world in which we live. So the real moral question is, how to go about killing them in the least horrific and destructive manner possible?
The answer, obviously, is assassination, and like in so many other areas (which Techdirt frequently comments positively on,) modern technology provides a more efficient, less wasteful way to go about it. As cool as newer and better methods of distributing entertainment content is, this is something that actually matters. Forget making record labels and movie studios obsolete; we're beginning to develop technology that can make armies obsolete, and all the blood and horror that they bring along with them! Why are so many people around here talking like that's a bad thing?
On the post: Court To Government On Attempt To Bury Drone Memo: You'd Have A Case If You'd Bother To Shut Your Mouth Once In Awhile
Re: Re: Re:
I assume you're referring to taking down Bin Laden? That was not a "big show of force." A "big show of force" was what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan; it was even sold in almost exactly those terms. ("Shock and awe," a "surge," etc.)
What we did with Bin Laden was exactly what we should have done at the very beginning. It's what I was saying we needed to do since September 2001: have the CIA find Osama Bin Laden and send a Special Forces team to assassinate or capture him, without wasting tons of lives, time and money on pointless warfare.
...OK, what we did was almost right, aside from that last part. :(
On the post: Court To Government On Attempt To Bury Drone Memo: You'd Have A Case If You'd Bother To Shut Your Mouth Once In Awhile
Re:
Wouldn't you? And more to the point, wouldn't you prefer it that way if you were living nearby? Given the choice between possibly becoming collateral damage myself and having it not be a possibility in the first place, I know which one I'd vote for...
On the post: Of Course Tesla Wasn't Just Being Altruistic In Opening Up Its Patents: That's The Whole Point!
Re: Re: Why altruistic?
On the post: Of Course Tesla Wasn't Just Being Altruistic In Opening Up Its Patents: That's The Whole Point!
It seems pretty clear to me. As an engineer, if I did and said something like that, here's what I would mean by it:
"Go ahead and use this, but play nice. I'm placing a lot of trust in you guys, and if you abuse that trust by doing something stupid, such as using our patents but then turning around and trying to frivolously sue us for patent infringement, keep in mind that I can and will revoke permission. So don't."
On the post: Stingray Documents Show Law Enforcement Using 'Terrorism' To Obtain Equipment To Fight Regular Crime
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Probably best not to compare the numbers...
There's a very good reason the officers were found to not be at fault when tried by an actual impartial jury: they did exactly what was necessary to subdue a dangerous lunatic who had already demonstrated that he was a danger to them, to himself and to innocent bystanders. This was by no means a case of police brutality, but a camera told a different story, and the rest is history.
53 people died in the ensuing riots, with thousands severely injured and around $1 billion in property damage, and every last bit of it is on the heads of the idiotic news hounds who chose to put sensationalism and ratings above common sense, journalistic ethics, or basic honesty.
On the post: Stingray Documents Show Law Enforcement Using 'Terrorism' To Obtain Equipment To Fight Regular Crime
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Probably best not to compare the numbers...
I don't think it's "their actions being visible" they're afraid of; it's having their actions completely misrepresented, taken out of context, and causing worse problems.
A video recording is a great thing for showing what actually happened, except that it only shows what the camera was pointing at while it was running. If you present Act 2 like it was the entire play... well, just look at the Rodney King riots for one completely non-hypothetical example of what can (and did!) go wrong.
If you were a cop, would you want to end up at the center of another mess like that one?
On the post: German Newspapers Want Google To Pay Them For Appearing In Search Results (Even As They Try To Rank Higher)
Dear Mr Fuhrman,
If 100 million Euros is nothing to you, could you please send me a bit of nothing?
On the post: Stingray Documents Show Law Enforcement Using 'Terrorism' To Obtain Equipment To Fight Regular Crime
Re: Re: Re: Re: Probably best not to compare the numbers...
This is always the first thing I think of when I hear about police officers having trouble with being recorded. It's hard to blame them; who would want to be the next guy at the center of a media report that sets off a riot because they neglected to show what happened a minute or two earlier?
Next >>