|
VikingofRock posted:My Ph.D. is in physics. Nearly every single person I know from my program (both undergraduate and graduate, and including myself) fully intended to do physics research, but then found that academia was awful and left the field. Most of us went into software engineering or data science, and just gave up on using physics in our day jobs, despite the fact that we loved it so much that we all dedicated a decade to studying it. A few of us went into hardware design or green energy, and all of those people quit because the workplaces were so abusive. So now the only people who use physics in their daily lives are the people who went into the defense industry. It's not the choice I made, because I have a strong moral opposition to my work being used to kill people. (I chose software engineering, which, given everything about the tech sector, is its own can of moral worms.) But I understand why those people made that choice, and I don't really think it makes them bad people. The semiconductor and medical device industries are a good place to use physics every day and not make bombs. Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:It's pretty much this. I'm not sure how you can declare them separate so easily. More kids being trafficked and ending up in the labor market opens the employers to a larger legal risk. These laws are an attempt to shield themselves.
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 20:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 20:10 |
|
|
Janet Yellen said in an interview that if they "were forced to invoke" the 14th amendment in response to the debt ceiling not being raised, then it would provoke a constitutional crisis and an unpredictable amount of economic damage. She also reiterated the position of "no negotiation" and "Congress needs to be the one to lift the debt ceiling" without requiring the U.S. to resort to any extreme or emergency options. That is basically the same thing she has been saying for months, but the refusal to rule out the 14th amendment and implication that they might be forced to invoke it is the first time that someone in the executive branch has implied that it is something they are actively considering. https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1655474678062891009 DeadlyMuffin posted:The semiconductor and medical device industries are a good place to use physics every day and not make bombs. None of the kids who were trafficked were working legally. And those kids are themselves a small part of the already small amount of 14-year olds working. Arkansas, Iowa, etc. aren't all introducing those laws because they think it will allow people to traffic kids. Those laws were being passed around even before the reporting on that came out. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 20:39 on May 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 20:36
|
|
|
So can someone explain with more detail about using the 14th amendment to raise the debt ceiling? Most news that I'm reading just reports on the fact they're considering it and that's that. On it's face it doesn't seem like it primarily deals with debt. I'm curious about a clause or legal argument they might have. (Even if it's just a temporary one to stave off a debt crisis)
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 20:47
|
|
|
Nelson Mandingo posted:So can someone explain with more detail about using the 14th amendment to raise the debt ceiling? Most news that I'm reading just reports on the fact they're considering it and that's that. The 14th amendment has a clause that says, "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." It was basically added to the 14th amendment as part of reconstruction because the Union government feared that after letting the Southern states back into the Union, they might repudiate federal debt obligations used to fund the war and try to honor confederate debt. The 14th amendment argument is basically just taking that line extremely literally and saying that when congress passed the 14th amendment, they actually made the concept of a debt ceiling unconstitutional (even if it wasn't their direct intent with the 14th amendment) because it mandates that the government cannot default on its debt willingly.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 20:51
|
|
|
Nelson Mandingo posted:So can someone explain with more detail about using the 14th amendment to raise the debt ceiling? Most news that I'm reading just reports on the fact they're considering it and that's that. The 14th Amendment states: quote:The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. Meaning that Congress can't do this and the President must obligate the debt somehow and will invoke the 14th amendment to do so.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 20:52
|
|
|
Nelson Mandingo posted:So can someone explain with more detail about using the 14th amendment to raise the debt ceiling? Most news that I'm reading just reports on the fact they're considering it and that's that. The 14th Amendment posted:The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, [...] shall not be questioned. According to the argument, this clause means that the government is not allowed to intentionally default on debt, since that would be calling its validity into question. Thus, any law binding the government into a default is unconstitutional. Remember that there are two separate kinds of debt involved here. The debt of money the government owes as payment for services rendered is the debt which is constantly growing, this is the spending everyone loves to complain about. The bonds that the government sells on the open market to get money to pay for the first debt are the debts that are capped by the debt ceiling. haveblue fucked around with this message at 21:33 on May 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 20:53
|
|
|
Thank you. That definitely seems incredibly shaky but also good enough to bullshit your way through a crisis.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 20:57
|
|
|
Harold Fjord posted:The rate of profit has a tendency to fall and so more and more desperate measures are taken such as finding excuses to pay less than minimum wage. The relentless need under capitalism for companies to not simply be profitable, but growing every fiscal quarter, is a disease which has predictably led to most large companies doing it the easiest way possible, by slashing labor to the bone and doing everything possible to get around paying the minimum wage, including slave labor purchased from American prisons, heinous carve-outs of the minimum wage for people with developmental disabilities or children (particularly in agriculture), and apparently human trafficking and child labor. Capitalism is inherently unsustainable and this poo poo with child labor laws is only a natural outgrowth of that. If this stuff passes and gets normalized, there will certainly be more abominable things down the pike once the shareholders notice that their scrooge mcduck vaults are only 98% full.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 20:58
|
|
|
Ross Douthat, one of the largest early Ron DeSantis cheerleaders, has written an Op-Ed for the NYT where he has declared that he is giving on up DeSantis before he even formally announces. There's some self-defense in his explanation ("the media loves Trump and intentionally puts him front and center. Even Republicans who aren't crazy about Trump feel the need to defend him reflexively when they do that. DeSantis would be doing a lot better if it weren't for the media."), but not a great sign for Ron when one of your biggest boosters from all the way back in 2014 is throwing in the towel already. quote:It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like 2016 Again https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/06/opinion/are-anti-trump-republicans-doomed-to-repeat-2016.html
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 21:00
|
|
|
Nelson Mandingo posted:Thank you. That definitely seems incredibly shaky but also good enough to bullshit your way through a crisis. Oh it's definitely shaky. There are about a dozen better ways to address this, the most obvious being Congress eliminates the loving debt ceiling themselves. The 14th amendment was never supposed to mean this, but we were also never supposed to be in a situation where Congress pointed a fiscal gun at its own head and can't reach consensus on whether or not to put it down
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 21:01
|
|
|
koolkal posted:Shortage of labor pushed rich people to want to increase the labor pool, they called up one of the right wing groups that drafts boilerplate legislation that all the republicans distribute (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/03/anti-trans-transgender-health-care-ban-legislation-bill-minors-children-lgbtq/ or Chris Rufo for example) and suddenly you see a wave of states like Arkansas or Idaho passing these bills. I think they started using it in reaction to the pandemic caused labor shortages and the Fed’s have been looking for it recently, so now they want to legalize what they are already doing.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 21:45
|
|
|
Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Ross Douthat, one of the largest early Ron DeSantis cheerleaders, has written an Op-Ed for the NYT where he has declared that he is giving on up DeSantis before he even formally announces.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 21:59
|
|
|
Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Ross Douthat, one of the largest early Ron DeSantis cheerleaders, has written an Op-Ed for the NYT where he has declared that he is giving on up DeSantis before he even formally announces. I mean, we're pretty much beyond "not a great sign" with the spread looking like this over the past month:  That Emerson spread is only three points less than the same poll's spread between Biden & RFK Jr.--and that latter spread is with only 3 candidates being polled instead of 11, lol. I never thought they'd run against each other at all anyway. 
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 22:07
|
|
|
Looks like government employees' union is taking a shot at the constitutionality of the debt limit law, on 14th Amendment/separation of powers grounds:quote:A union of government employees on Monday sued Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and President Joe Biden to try to stop them from complying with the law that limits the government's total debt, which the lawsuit contends is unconstitutional. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/lawsuit-yellen-should-ignore-unconstitutional-debt-limit Complaint here: https://thehill.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/NAGE-Debt-Limit-Complaint.pdf So the 14th Amendment argument may get some early review.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 22:20
|
|
|
kronix posted:This is just such a ridiculous take. There’s tons of research that happens within the DoD because there’s a ton of funding thats there for things that advance science. Everything from GPS to Nuclear reactor designs that may ultimately save us from climate change are a direct result of DoD research. Heck the neutrino detection experiment in the homestake gold mine was partly funded by the military.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 22:38
|
|
|
VikingofRock posted:My Ph.D. is in physics. Nearly every single person I know from my program (both undergraduate and graduate, and including myself) fully intended to do physics research, but then found that academia was awful and left the field. Most of us went into software engineering or data science, and just gave up on using physics in our day jobs, despite the fact that we loved it so much that we all dedicated a decade to studying it. A few of us went into hardware design or green energy, and all of those people quit because the workplaces were so abusive. So now the only people who use physics in their daily lives are the people who went into the defense industry. It's not the choice I made, because I have a strong moral opposition to my work being used to kill people. (I chose software engineering, which, given everything about the tech sector, is its own can of moral worms.) But I understand why those people made that choice, and I don't really think it makes them bad people. Or video games where I did get to use physics occasionally
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 22:39
|
|
|
DEEP STATE PLOT posted:tell me more SA literally ate my reply about lunch with William Colby. Or perhaps it was by design. Hmmm.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 22:49
|
|
|
DeadlyMuffin posted:The semiconductor and medical device industries are a good place to use physics every day and not make bombs. yes I am being facetious
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 22:54
|
|
|
Professor Beetus posted:The relentless need under capitalism for companies to not simply be profitable, but growing every fiscal quarter, is a disease which has predictably led to most large companies doing it the easiest way possible, by slashing labor to the bone and doing everything possible to get around paying the minimum wage, including slave labor purchased from American prisons, heinous carve-outs of the minimum wage for people with developmental disabilities or children (particularly in agriculture), and apparently human trafficking and child labor. Capitalism is inherently unsustainable and this poo poo with child labor laws is only a natural outgrowth of that. If this stuff passes and gets normalized, there will certainly be more abominable things down the pike once the shareholders notice that their scrooge mcduck vaults are only 98% full. See, this is the part that bothers me: WHY does it have to keep growing? How did just being a profitable service people want become "not enough"? This whole system is made up, and the only thing keeping the system terrible and awful is that one of the made-up rules is innately unsustainable and has only been maintained thus far via unnecessary human suffering. So why keep doing it?
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 22:56
|
|
|
Space Cadet Omoly posted:See, this is the part that bothers me: WHY does it have to keep growing? How did just being a profitable service people want become "not enough"? This whole system is made up, and the only thing keeping the system terrible and awful is that one of the made-up rules is innately unsustainable and has only been maintained thus far via unnecessary human suffering. So why keep doing it? Because the shareholders want to get paid.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 23:02
|
|
|
the_steve posted:Well you can't have TOO much money coming into the household, or else people might start getting ideas above their station. Pretty sure the idea was that they could lower wages to compensate, ie: only the total household income matters, so they get more workers for cheaper by encouraging bigger households. Clarste fucked around with this message at 23:17 on May 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 23:14
|
|
|
Space Cadet Omoly posted:See, this is the part that bothers me: WHY does it have to keep growing? How did just being a profitable service people want become "not enough"? This whole system is made up, and the only thing keeping the system terrible and awful is that one of the made-up rules is innately unsustainable and has only been maintained thus far via unnecessary human suffering. So why keep doing it? Basically what kzin602 said, I'd add is because the people with the most money, whom capitalism is intended to benefit most, want to be able to acquire more money without having to perform any labor. Their primary income isn't wages, it's dividends or proceeds from selling or renting their investments, or interest from loans to banks or companies or individuals. The only way for this to happen is endless, unsustainable, rapacious growth at all costs.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 23:38
|
|
|
Space Cadet Omoly posted:See, this is the part that bothers me: WHY does it have to keep growing? How did just being a profitable service people want become "not enough"? This whole system is made up, and the only thing keeping the system terrible and awful is that one of the made-up rules is innately unsustainable and has only been maintained thus far via unnecessary human suffering. So why keep doing it? The mentality, as explained by the former owner of the company I work for is, "if you aren't growing (getting bigger, making more money) you're dying" and really, due to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, it is true to a certain extent in a capitalist market economy. If you aren't innovating or expanding, your comparative advantage in the marketplace will eventually disappear due to a myriad of reasons. The dynamism of the marketplace is supposed to be one of its strengths and if you don't continue to grow in some way, your company will eventually go out of business. True innovation though, especially in a mature marketplace is pretty hard to achieve, even if you want to, so to maintain your comparative advantage, you, as the owner, or the representative of ownership will do things like reduce labor costs by laying people off or limiting pay scales, or acquiring other companies to increase the volume of sales while making the same margins through efficiency of resources. Cutting labor costs is by far the easiest and cheapest of those options and the negative effects won't be felt for months or years down the road in a lot of cases. Look at Twitter for example, Elon cut 80% of the workforce and it still works, after a fashion. Long term it's hosed and that's what happens to most companies that cut labor costs to the bone but the overall trend, absent a counterbalancing force from a combination of labor unionism and government intervention is to minimize labor costs whenever possible and to get as large as possible. That's pretty much how you "win" capitalism.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 23:52
|
|
|
Space Cadet Omoly posted:See, this is the part that bothers me: WHY does it have to keep growing? How did just being a profitable service people want become "not enough"? This whole system is made up, and the only thing keeping the system terrible and awful is that one of the made-up rules is innately unsustainable and has only been maintained thus far via unnecessary human suffering. So why keep doing it? So I've always wondered if individual companies can avoid this sort of trap even thought they're publicly listed or if they just slapped immediately by the courts due to Dodge vs Ford motor co all over again.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 23:53
|
|
|
Space Cadet Omoly posted:See, this is the part that bothers me: WHY does it have to keep growing? How did just being a profitable service people want become "not enough"? This whole system is made up, and the only thing keeping the system terrible and awful is that one of the made-up rules is innately unsustainable and has only been maintained thus far via unnecessary human suffering. So why keep doing it? Unfortunately, the best answer to this that I've seen comes from here: quote:Moloch is introduced as the answer to a question – C. S. Lewis’ question in Hierarchy Of Philosophers – what does it? Earth could be fair, and all men glad and wise. Instead we have prisons, smokestacks, asylums. What sphinx of cement and aluminum breaks open their skulls and eats up their imagination? https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ (the rest of this blog is bad and off the right-wing deep end -- sortof a highbrow Joe Rogan from what I gather at least)
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 00:08
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:(the rest of this blog is bad and off the right-wing deep end -- sortof a highbrow Joe Rogan from what I gather at least) It's somehow worse, if you can believe it. SSC is very much out of the 'instead of actually doing any reading in a field we will simply reason it from first principles and call that Rationalism. Never mind that all our conclusions curiously align with our personal biases, this simply proves our personal biases are Rational.' FTX was absolutely shot through with these assholes. These are the Roko's Basilisk people. And if I just prompted you to look up what that is, I'm very sorry. e: SSC is like if AO3 did philosophy and didn't have standards. Doctor Yiff fucked around with this message at 00:31 on May 9, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 00:21
|
|
|
So basically, the answer I've gathered from these responses is that the "infinite growth" thing is necessary only because it provides a large amount of money to a small amount of people despite causing a large amount of damage to a large amount of people and doing long term damage to companies as a whole.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 00:22
|
|
|
Space Cadet Omoly posted:So basically, the answer I've gathered from these responses is that the "infinite growth" thing is necessary only because it provides a large amount of money to a small amount of people despite causing a large amount of damage to a large amount of people and doing long term damage to companies as a whole. 
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 00:23
|
|
|
Space Cadet Omoly posted:So basically, the answer I've gathered from these responses is that the "infinite growth" thing is necessary only because it provides a large amount of money to a small amount of people despite causing a large amount of damage to a large amount of people and doing long term damage to companies as a whole. And because we have not yet sufficiently re-organized society so as to stop it.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 00:26
|
|
|
Space Cadet Omoly posted:So basically, the answer I've gathered from these responses is that the "infinite growth" thing is necessary only because it provides a large amount of money to a small amount of people despite causing a large amount of damage to a large amount of people and doing long term damage to companies as a whole. Also because there are a thousand incentive structures at every layer of society encouraging this behavior and rewarding it. The machine is self perpetuating at this point.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 00:35
|
|
|
WarpedLichen posted:So I've always wondered if individual companies can avoid this sort of trap even thought they're publicly listed or if they just slapped immediately by the courts due to Dodge vs Ford motor co all over again. The real product of any public corporation is shareholder value. Apple does not make computers, they make stock value. This is why companies like bed bath and beyond imploded, the shareholders can direct the company to spend all it's capital in order to buy its own stock so that the shareholders can sell that stock to the company at an inflated price. The stock is now no longer backed by that capital as the company spent it all on itself, so the price crashes, but that's somebody else's problem now. Corporations want children working in feedlots and meat processing because those jobs are so brutal, so abusive and so damaging to the employees that if you, as a rational adult who can look up labor laws on the internet worked that job you'd be suing your employer after a week. Children, however are easy to manipulate and lack the facilities to understand their rights. Meat packing plants also regularly use illegal immigrant labor, but use the threat of deportation and prosecution for identity theft to keep employees in line. If you are the c level staff of a corporation, you have a duty to your shareholders to lobby for reduced worker rights and increasing abuse of your fellow man. Anything else is just leaving money on the table.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 00:40
|
|
|
Space Cadet Omoly posted:See, this is the part that bothers me: WHY does it have to keep growing? How did just being a profitable service people want become "not enough"? This whole system is made up, and the only thing keeping the system terrible and awful is that one of the made-up rules is innately unsustainable and has only been maintained thus far via unnecessary human suffering. So why keep doing it? Market competition. If you're not growing, but your competitors are, then your competitors will eventually overtake you and squeeze you out of the market. That's why morality is basically impossible under unrestrained free-market capitalism. Even if one company decides to give up on potential profitability for ethical reasons, another business will happily do those unethical things. Moreover, the extra profitability they gain from those unethical things will allow them to pull ahead of the ethical company in some way, eventually cutting into the ethical company's market share and income and reducing it to a minor player in the market at best. Given the choice between "basic human decency" or "make more money", companies that choose the latter will tend to take a dominant position over companies that choose the former. At least, unless there's external forces (such as a strong regulatory state) to prevent unethical conduct from being more profitable.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 00:54
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:And because we have not yet sufficiently re-organized society so as to stop it. Yeah, these honestly seem like very fixable problems. None of this is needed in any meaningful way, it's just a weird glitch that's being exploited instead of fixed. In the future, we should probably not structure our society in such a way that so many people's lives can be negatively effected by rich people gambling on the feelings and whims of other rich people by which I mean the stock market.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 00:59
|
|
|
DEEP STATE PLOT posted:tell me more Colby: I was at Activision when we started work on SpyCraft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycraft:_The_Great_Game quote:Spycraft: The Great Game is an adventure CD-ROM game published by Activision in 1996. It details the attempted assassination of the President of the United States and the CIA and SVR attempts to save him. Although the game was not approved by either organization, it tends to favour realism due to its coordination with former CIA director William Colby and former KGB Major-General Oleg Kalugin, who also appear in the game as themselves. So we're at Hamburger Hamlet with a few Activision people and Colby. I'm there because I'm running tech and did a lot of the CD stuff (Want some rye?). And I just had to ask Colby this: "When did you realize that we were not going to win in Vietnam?" (Colby ran the CIA office in Vietnam). He replied (paraphrasing): "1963 ... The Diem Coup, but we had to stay in it so not to lose face and there was always the chance we could pull it off." He also had spy stories to share.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 01:36
|
|
|
VideoGameVet posted:Colby: So to be clear, does everyone agree former CIA director William Colby is an irredeemable piece of poo poo for participating in the Vietnamese Holocaust for 12 year for no reason? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 02:14
|
|
|
kzin602 posted:Because the shareholders want to get paid. It should be noted that it used to be that investing in a mid-sized company that focused on long term stability was a very effective way to get paid. The modern stock market has basically destroyed traditional valuation and shareholder dividends in favour of gambling-adjacent speculation as the driving force of economic progress, though, Our acceptance, or rather active encouragement, of that, basically building the bitcoin-esque hype system in as a fundamental component of the modern economy, is a real issue. We aren't just doing capitalism at this point, we have intentionally embraced a kind of speculative capitalism that really accentuates many of its negatives. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 02:22 on May 9, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 02:18
|
|
|
fizzy posted:The United States' legal, justice and extrajudicial system, famous for not being willing to just kill whoever (unless you are poor or a member of a minority group). I see that my post was probated for being "Non-serious", whereas the post that I was replying to (an equally bare assertion that Singapore and China are "willing to just kill whoever") was not probated. What gives? Fart Amplifier posted:Easy to do when you're willing to just kill whoever.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 02:29
|
|
|
Doctor Yiff posted:SC is like if AO3 did philosophy and didn't have standards. Incorrect. The people on AO3 know that what they doing is inherently fake as opposed to these dweebs. And fairly infamously the site's only standard is "will not host something against US law."
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 03:08
|
|
|
fizzy posted:I see that my post was probated for being "Non-serious", whereas the post that I was replying to (an equally bare assertion that Singapore and China are "willing to just kill whoever") was not probated. What gives? The other one was not reported, though it likely should have been hit as well. If you have further questions, please continue the conversation by PMing me.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 03:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 20:10 |
|
|
All it takes is simply enforcing the laws that are on the books against the rich. For some reason, that doesn't happen, unless they stole a richer person's money.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2023 03:46
|
|
