>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

The function of over-the-top personalities like Coulter and Limbaugh is to make the slightly less over-the-top rhetoric of FOX seem more objective and reasonable. I wonder if liberals would do better if they had their own Coulters, Becks and Limbaughs? Probably not. Air America (a liberal analog to right wing talk radio) did not attract enough liberal listeners to stay afloat. As phony as Air America was, it didn't approach the level of dishonesty you find in right wing talk radio or on FOX news. I think liberals prefer more intellectual sources of information, like NPR, PBS and print media.


Air America sucked because it just wasn't funny or fun to listen to. No Rush Limbaugh isn't that funny really...he's more annoying. Sean Hannity though...he's damn good at what he does and he's funny, I could have a genuine funny conversation with him without stabbing him in the eyes. I tried with Air America...Liberals aren't funny when they're scolding people.

The function of over-the-top personalities like Coulter and Limbaugh is to make the slightly less over-the-top rhetoric of FOX seem more objective and reasonable. I wonder if liberals would do better if they had their own Coulters, Becks and Limbaughs? Probably not. Air America (a liberal analog to right wing talk radio) did not attract enough liberal listeners to stay afloat. As phony as Air America was, it didn't approach the level of dishonesty you find in right wing talk radio or on FOX news. I think liberals prefer more intellectual sources of information, like NPR, PBS and print media.

that was thoroughly enjoyable. Not enough to keep myspace afloat, but enjoyable.

Mad props to the crew for keepin that girl afloat.

When I was teaching in Sweden we had problems with mostly foreign students cheating. It's possible that everyone was cheating equally much but the Swedish students didn't get caught as often. I got it explained to me that foreign students had a lot of pressure to do well and they always took as many courses as they could simultaneously which inevitably led to them "having" to cheat.

I also had it explained to me that the foreign students were the ones keeping the school afloat since every course they got through and every education they finished brought in money for the school. Some courses were a joke, they made them easy just to keep the throughput high.

The blame can be spread far and wide. Students were lazy etc (I was lazy too sometimes). Planning new courses could be a nightmare. The formula went like this: Out of 100 students applying to a course, only 50 would finish the course (or even show up) and only 25 would get a passing grade. Still you needed lecture rooms and equipment and everything else for the 50+ people. If you made the course too hard and not enough people passed, the school took a hit.

I taught a course in programming that was initially intended for around 30 people, but almost 200 people signed up and over 100 showed up. Panic. I was officially only a teaching assistant but the main teacher didn't really know programming (she was a doctorate and dumped the whole course in my lap) and now suddenly I was lecturing a class of 100+ students, mostly foreign, with little or no computer experience (they dont have the same amount of equipment abroad apparently), most of them studying 150% and studying for re-exams at the same time. I think in the end around 20 students passed (I wrote the exam and the course responsible cleared it without reading it and realizing I'd made it "too hard"). I know it sounds like I'm just making this stuff up. But it really happened. In Sweden (!).

I guess I don't have a moral of the story, I'm just venting Seeing things from the other side I realized what a mess education could be.

>> ^Porksandwich:

I was a computer science major in my 4th year...so I was in a lot of classes with graduate students. They had a few extra things on exams and projects they had to do for their graduate portion of the class. What was hilarious is that most of them were Indian and most of them came in to class with what looked like a xerox copy of each others work with their name signed to it, and this went on all quarter. On the last exam one of them sat next to me and was obviously trying to cheat off my exam, so I spent awhile writing down false answers and making them very easy to read because this whole Indian group of students seemed to ride on each others work and no one called them on it. While I saw undergraduate US citizens being busted for the same thing (I can only assume this was motivated by money and enrollment/scores).
So after I knew I wouldn't have enough time to keep up the false answers, I hurried up and changed all my work hunched over my test so he couldn't read it anymore and finished. Turned it in and told the professor that he was copying off me and the two Indians in front of us were sharing answers with him. I mean you'd have to be blind to not see the guys turn around during the test multiple times.

And on my exit interview for the school I ranked it down and told them that I was pissed that those Indian students were never punished, since them cheating off undergrads makes it appear that undergrads are the ones cheating if you just look at the data and assume graduate students should know the answers. Plus I marked off some things for other stuff. And the dean of my school changed my numbers scores to higher scores because he would question me on something and I'd say "Maybe, but I feel my personal experience warrants that score." He would say something like "But isn't that too harsh, so maybe we should......" and I'd disagree, but he'd still change the score.
It's kind of a shame when you like the subject you study but the people teaching it to you make a mockery of the university by having double standards for the various grads/undergrads and ethnic groups. They still call me up and want alumni donations, and I tell the people calling my story and why I won't ever donate to that university...and why they should transfer out ASAP. Assuming they don't have a heavy Indian accent....

Shut your filthy fuckin' mouth. You're a complete and utter asshole, whatever the fuck your actual name is.

Don't assume you know a goddamn thing about me or my friend.

He's probably the most kind-hearted and forgiving person I've met and I WON'T have your sorry ass make a mockery of all his hard work and generosity.

His only wish was to own a small business.

Tho since the no-good lyin' sack of shit that sold the pizzeria to him falsified documents, he was unaware the income was overstated until the first quarter was up.

By then, she had disappeared.

He sacrificed sleep, his performance at his day job, and his sanity to keep his investment afloat.

Most months he was lucky to break even.

He took out a second mortgage on his house.
Sunk in $300,000 in additional loans over 4 years.
Exhausted all his resources and back ups.
Yet never saw a goddamn cent in return.

Despite ALL of this, he still paid me well over minimum wage for a year and a half.
Right out of his own pocket essentially

So next time, before you go mount your sure-as-shit high horse of righteousness.

Make certain you know what the FUCK you're talkin' about, alright.


>> ^joedirt:

Your pizzaria guy is just a jerk. Yes minimum wage did go up, do he is paying more.. But in reality he was paying way too little for like 10 years. So, yes minimum wage goes up in step functions while cost of living and inflation go up linearly. So for like 5 years min wage employees are getting screwed and for like 2 or 3 years employers are paying more than "usual". But no, jerkoff pizza guy didn't magically have to shell out extra thousands of dollars. (which is probably like 1/2 the profit from a few weeks)

Shut your filthy fuckin' mouth. You're a complete and utter asshole, whatever the fuck your actual name is.

Don't assume you know a goddamn thing about me or my friend.

He's probably the most kind-hearted and forgiving person I've met and I WON'T have your sorry ass make a mockery of all his hard work and generosity.

His only wish was to own a small business.

Tho since the no-good lyin' sack of shit that sold the pizzeria to him falsified documents, he was unaware the income was overstated until the first quarter was up.

By then, she had disappeared.

He sacrificed sleep, his performance at his day job, and his sanity to keep his investment afloat.

Most months he was lucky to break even.

He took out a second mortgage on his house.
Sunk in $300,000 in additional loans over 4 years.
Exhausted all his resources and back ups.
Yet never saw a goddamn cent in return.

Despite ALL of this, he still paid me well over minimum wage for a year and a half.
Right out of his own pocket essentially

So next time, before you go mount your sure-as-shit high horse of righteousness.

Make certain you know what the FUCK you're talkin' about, alright.





In reply to this comment by joedirt:

Your pizzaria guy is just a jerk. Yes minimum wage did go up, do he is paying more.. But in reality he was paying way too little for like 10 years. So, yes minimum wage goes up in step functions while cost of living and inflation go up linearly. So for like 5 years min wage employees are getting screwed and for like 2 or 3 years employers are paying more than "usual". But no, jerkoff pizza guy didn't magically have to shell out extra thousands of dollars. (which is probably like 1/2 the profit from a few weeks)

His example of why we should keep pre-industrial societies afloat is a shit knife? I agree completely, but I don't necessarily know that's a solid argument. However, it was an awesome tale!

Wasn't expecting that vagina monologue. You could probably cut out at least half of that and it would still be saying the same thing. I didn't think you would protest the fallacies so much. Hmmm.

How much do you know about the Renaissance? Preceding it in the Medieval times, monarchs had large royal treasuries, so they maintained the power and influence. If you were born into a lower class, then that's where you stayed. Then the merchant class arose, and they created competing currencies, a way to trade amongst themselves, a way to create wealth for themselves, and eventually they developed influence over the ruling class.

It was the traders vs. the nobility. A major power shift was transpiring as royal treasuries were no longer sustainable because they weren't producing 'new wealth', however 'new wealth' was being created by commerce among the commoners. Effectively, the common families pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and created a new class (the middle class). This threatened the monarchs, so they decided to lay claim to the wealth created by the merchant class, they forced them to use a centralized currency, and they created these charters where the merchant class were granted permission to do various jobs. Eventually the monarch took the power back and the people were offered a chance to create wealth in trade for a centralized currency.

This shows how the free market was working and working well. It also shows how government, or in this case the monarch, created a centralized currency (Keynesian anyone?), laid claim to the wealth created by the merchant class (income tax, property tax, etc), and ultimately forced people to acquire permission to work by forming corporate charters (corporation/government collusion).

Today, if you want to start a business, you must file with the government and get permission to do so. Sure you can file as DBA which is less expensive than becoming incorporated or filing an LLC, but it's still asking permission. And you must use the centralized currency of the Federal government to trade and pay debts. And the government is entitled to your wealth, through property tax, income tax, sales tax, etc. And it becomes too prohibitively expensive to keep a business afloat unless you're part of the elite rich nobility that can afford to keep their corporate charter. See any parallels?

I don't really buy this argument. They say less money is kept in Canada, but for a lot of third world countries their food exports are what is keeping them afloat, so is that such a bad thing?

Also there's a reason that market forces don't lead to growing locally: Because it's less efficient. Transporting food from each individual farm costs too much in comparison. If you actually sit down and calculate all the fuel that is burned when getting local food (between both farmer and consumer) you see how any environmental argument for this falls apart rather quickly.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I think that's a key point. When the US has eschewed "socialist" welfare state programs as it has generally done over the last 30 years - in favour of free enterprise and privatisation - the result has been to concentrate wealth at the top of the spectrum with the country club set. I don't see any free enterprise solution to this.

Victorian England had a lot of concentrated wealth at the top, and a huge pool of poor workers and very little regulation. That led to work houses and rampant pollution. It also (thankfully) led to a strong labour uprising that redistributed that wealth with a progressive tax system, creating a large middle-class. Bad for the rich? Absolutely. Vastly better for the whole country? Definitely, yes.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^blankfist:
@NetRunner, you offered the following as your utopian idea for new government:
1. regulated market.
2. welfare state
That's exactly what we have now. Exactly. Government regulates every single industry. Every one. We have a massive welfare state. Our economy is also going to shit and entrepreneurs cannot stay afloat with all the regulations in order to create more jobs. It's a recipe for failure.
Why not give free market Capitalism a chance? Your regulated markets and welfare state spending simply is not sustainable.

I'm starting to get curious, do you ever read my comments all the way to the end?
Maybe I need to be less whimsical. My point was that today's flawed reality is a utopia compared to your utopian proposals.
As for "why not give free market capitalism a chance", I may as well say "why not give Marxist Communism a chance"? I mean, obviously real communism has never been tried -- just ask the modern communists.
There's been no radical boost to growth during America's 30-year march to the right, and shrinking the welfare state and dismantling unions hasn't boosted the median income, so why would we ever keep marching on until we get to the ultimate extreme?
The modern progressive movement isn't on a march towards communism, it's trying to optimize society through an iterative scientific process. We look at things that have failed, or things that have worked elsewhere, and try to learn from them, and build a better mousetrap.
I don't really know what the end-state of modern liberalism looks like. I think it will always be looking to change and evolve over time as new problems and new solutions present themselves.

>> ^blankfist:

@NetRunner, you offered the following as your utopian idea for new government:
1. regulated market.
2. welfare state
That's exactly what we have now. Exactly. Government regulates every single industry. Every one. We have a massive welfare state. Our economy is also going to shit and entrepreneurs cannot stay afloat with all the regulations in order to create more jobs. It's a recipe for failure.
Why not give free market Capitalism a chance? Your regulated markets and welfare state spending simply is not sustainable.


I'm starting to get curious, do you ever read my comments all the way to the end?

Maybe I need to be less whimsical. My point was that today's flawed reality is a utopia compared to your utopian proposals.

As for "why not give free market capitalism a chance", I may as well say "why not give Marxist Communism a chance"? I mean, obviously real communism has never been tried -- just ask the modern communists.

There's been no radical boost to growth during America's 30-year march to the right, and shrinking the welfare state and dismantling unions hasn't boosted the median income, so why would we ever keep marching on until we get to the ultimate extreme?

The modern progressive movement isn't on a march towards communism, it's trying to optimize society through an iterative scientific process. We look at things that have failed, or things that have worked elsewhere, and try to learn from them, and build a better mousetrap.

I don't really know what the end-state of modern liberalism looks like. I think it will always be looking to change and evolve over time as new problems and new solutions present themselves.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

No, I live in a welfare state. Compared to Australia, the US is a RonPaulian fever dream.

>> ^blankfist:

@NetRunner, you offered the following as your utopian idea for new government:
1. regulated market.
2. welfare state
That's exactly what we have now. Exactly. Government regulates every single industry. Every one. We have a massive welfare state. Our economy is also going to shit and entrepreneurs cannot stay afloat with all the regulations in order to create more jobs. It's a recipe for failure.
Why not give free market Capitalism a chance? Your regulated markets and welfare state spending simply is not sustainable.

@NetRunner, you offered the following as your utopian idea for new government:

1. regulated market.
2. welfare state

That's exactly what we have now. Exactly. Government regulates every single industry. Every one. We have a massive welfare state. Our economy is also going to shit and entrepreneurs cannot stay afloat with all the regulations in order to create more jobs. It's a recipe for failure.

Why not give free market Capitalism a chance? Your regulated markets and welfare state spending simply is not sustainable.

i hope u like this blog, a favorite of mine. He doesn't agree with me, my big thing is the trillions of domestic and corporate debt have become a drag on the economy like when japan kept their zombie banks afloat. anyway here's the link.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr10/structural-monopolies04-10.html