In case you're not aware, Chinese cars have the same or even better quality than US, European and Japanese cars. Their electric vehicles are cheap and high quality, it's really impressive.
> "... Each one of us, of course," the Controller meditatively continued, "goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous."
I think of bottles as being like filter bubbles: once one is aware filter bubbles exist, it's possible to play with moving them around. Once one is aware of the bottle and how the bottling process works, it's possible to attempt to play with it as well.
> "When people are born, they all start good, but even though they all start out about the same, you ought to see them after they have had time to become different from one another by picking up habits here and there!"
Because a government can be held accountable to its voters, and laws about transparency and equal access whereas private charities can't. Given the option, people will chose to transfer their wealth to those in their own tribe, and not to those outside of it.
Government accountability is a tricky thing, as you have a limited number of choices, each of which has a basket of different positions on a very large number of issues. Since you can only make one (of a few) choice(s), voters each have a very limited ability to hold the government accountable on a few issues.
Charities are held to account by a very different constituency (the donors), who are in a much more powerful position.
I'm also not sure your assertion that "people will chose to transfer their wealth to those in their own tribe, and not to those outside of it" holds much water. I think donors often give to causes which affect people very different from themselves, and anyway, your state or nation is really just a different sort of tribe. Given some convincing evidence, I might believe that state-welfare programs are more equitable than private charities, but I have not seen such evidence.
I don't understand why people have so many issues with charity... you want the government to forcibly take money from the rich and give it to the poor- but when they do that organically- it's somehow worse?
Ultimately it boils down to an allocation problem. If you think that wealthy folks can better allocate surplus value into social programs than the government then you will support private donation schemes. If not, you support the "welfare state" and an expanded social safety net. This is a debate worth having, but I don't think HN is going to be a good venue for such a debate.
"forcibly take money" I assume refers to levying taxes. I think you'll find that governments that don't levy taxes generally produce less liveable societies than those that do.
The person I was responding to clarified his position on taxes. Maximizing taxation is reductio ad absurdum, whereas there are quite a few examples of countries that don't rely on tax income to maintain themselves.
> "But the Saudi government—a highly autocratic regime—has historically resisted taxing its citizens for a reason: Taxes empower people to demand more from their government, and they can often be a trigger for democratization. “Taxation plays a profound role in the rise of democracy,” Sven Steinmo, a political-science professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told me."[0]
I'm hearing an argument here that charitable giving is somehow inferior to taxation- or that amicably receiving charity is somehow less dignified than asking the government to take it for you through force. That's really what I'm responding to here...
My belief is that forcing somebody to do anything against their will is inherently immoral. Taxation is included in that. It's not that simple of course- it's all relative, and sometimes taxation can do enough good to outweigh that morality.
>My belief is that forcing somebody to do anything against their will is inherently immoral. Taxation is included in that. It's not that simple of course- it's all relative, and sometimes taxation can do enough good to outweigh that morality.
The problem with this argument is that it can be used to shutdown any government service. I can easly say, I don't have kids so I won't support schools. Or I don't like police/firefighters so I won't pay for them. I don't like parks so I won't pay. I drink water so I won't pay.
Any such society wouldn't survive. Either the next generation would simply be taken over by a competent government with an educated workforce and functioning social services. At some point you have to think beyond yourself ask what is needed to keep America alive.
I'm not sure that the person you are responding to is making a dignity argument on the topic of government assistance versus private giving. On this topic, I usually come across these arguments:
1) in an economic downturn, one would expect charitable givings to decrease due to economic contraction. I think the evidence from the 2008 recession is somewhat mixed on this topic. Most governments, not reliant on personal donations, do not face the same sort of budget issues (which is another debate).
2) Charities have the ability to discriminate. They can choose how to allocate donations in ways that can include or exclude certain segments. This is in some respects true as well for government spending, but once again boils down to the allocation problem.
3) economies of scale. Larger organizations are often less redundant than a group of smaller organizations, reducing overhead.
> My belief is that forcing somebody to do anything against their will is inherently immoral. Taxation is included in that. It's not that simple of course- it's all relative, and sometimes taxation can do enough good to outweigh that morality.
Since you are not fully opposed to taxation, would you accept a taxation scheme for a government program if an independent and well researched study showed that government spend outperformed private programs by 2.5x, 10x, etc.? Or is it more that any issue that could be addressed via private charitable organizations should be off-limits for the government?
To me, it's not just "could be addressed via charity" because most anything could be, but it's more about how essential the service is.
Basic education, housing, medical care, and food/water are areas that are so essential that having them be government run makes sense to me. I'd still prefer them to be as-local-as-practical, since I believe that accountability of government is increased the more local government is. I don't want the United Nations running my local elementary school as an extreme example.
I think that allowing for non-profit/charitable causes to exist and to have contributions to them be tax-deductible is still beneficial to society. I don't want the government deciding which churches are worthy of existing (that's problematic on multiple levels) and neither do I want to penalize someone who believes their church provides important enough community services to be worthy of support over someone else who believes that an art museum or the opera is worthy of support (whether that was via-government or via-donations).
There is no amount of government efficiency in supporting churches that would cause me to turn that over to the government.
There is no amount of private efficiency in providing for national defense that would cause me to turn the military over to private interests to run.
Tax-deductible charitable giving means that people get to decide where their money goes on their own. There's no democratic process in the appropriation of their money.
This means the wealthier you are, the more say you have in appropriating what could be government money. If you make millions per year, you can potentially apportion more money than some citizens make in a decade. You effectively have more power in the government than many other citizens who should have the same capacity for change.
> Why would my charitable giving give me power in the government?
I feel like I already outlined this, but it bears repeating. Taxation gives money to the government and the government decides how to spend it. If the government spends it poorly we can vote out those who use it improperly. You can't vote Jeff Bezos out of the country.
> Everything could be government money, my house could be a government house, my wife could be a government woman, etc.
Technically a percentage of you house is claimed by the government through property tax and your wife isn't property and I hope you know that.
I think GP was objecting to your somewhat casual "[that money] could be government money" and then drawing a link from there to "effectively have more power in the government" which isn't at all obvious to me nor the GP how charitable giving gives you that special government (monopoly on the use of force) power. It did not strike me that they lacked an understanding of the mechanics of taxation.
> means that people get to decide where their money
Yes, that's exactly what it means, because, as you say it's "their" money. A pretty fundamental part of ownership is deciding what to do with something.
You really think government should be telling people how and where to spend their money?
> You really think government should be telling people how and where to spend their money?
Nope. And you are free to spend your money how you want. The point missed here is that when it's tax-deductible that money _would_ have been local/state/federal money.
The government already decided you need to return that money back to the community/country. If they give you the power to choose who gets it, they've given you the ability to appropriate government funds.
It's interesting that your feeling that "academia is dying, and dare i say irrelevant", to me, is exactly what brought us here and to the status quo you're complaining about. Maybe return to academia and improve things there?
Can you elaborate on this? How did the decline of academia lead to the status quo posed by the OP? And how would returning to academia make any difference? My perception is that there are bad financial incentives driving the decline of academia, so I don’t necessarily believe it’s a problem that can be solved entirely within the system.
I wish Firefox had a good multi-account support like Chrome has. That, and the fact that iOS 14 might allow to set your default browser would make me move to use Firefox everywhere.
Read the top comment regarding Containers. I think FF has the BEST multi-account support. Just login to different accounts using different containers. Your cookies/logins in one are isolated from the others. Currently have three Gmail accounts open and pinned in multiple containers.
Multi-account works great with containers, far superior to chrome.
What you mean is probably multi-profile. I have never used that with chrome, but with FF I can go to about:profiles to open a new one or (according to a quick search) have a shortcut to the profile switcher or to a specific profile. What does Chrome do better?
I haven't used Chrome in a long time, but this is the primary major thing I miss from it (possibly the only thing).
E.g. we have a family computer that my spouse and I use. I have set up separate profiles for us and forced Firefox to ask which profile to use on launch. But this means that if she has the browser open and has stepped away, I can't just open a new window, switch to my profile, and do things under it. I have to fully quit the browser and restart it.
If I remember correctly, with Chrome the profile was essentially tied to the logged in account and it was possible to have multiple windows open to different accounts. With Firefox you need to sign out of a Sync account before logging in to another.
> I have to fully quit the browser and restart it.
You can use about:profiles and click the "Launch profile in new browser" button for the relevant profile. The UI is not amazing, and I would not recommend it to a non-techie given all the noise in it, but it does work....
Out of curiosity, why not have another user account on the computer? Windows is pretty simple to move between user accounts as is Linux and, although I haven't use macOS recently enough to comment, it was pretty easy the last time I did.
I'm sure our use cases are different but I'd like to understand yours better.
Here's a longer explanation. https://www.brycevandyk.com/dissecting-firefoxs-no-remote-op... By default, Firefox looks for an already running instance and attaches to it, opening a new window in the existing session. --no-remote disables that connecting behavior.
By default if the browser is running, the command you run will use RPC to pass your instructions to this browser. This maybe isn't what a seasoned Unix person would expect software to do but it matches expectations from many GUI users.
The --no-remote flag tells Firefox that no, you really want another Firefox.
With the new(ish) Containers feature, you can have different accounts in different tabs. They are color-coded so you can tell which container each tab is in. Just long-press or right-click the New Tab button to choose which container the new tab opens under. So e.g. you could log in to Twitter in your container, open a new tab in her container, and log in to a different Twitter account there.
Containers are a vastly superior experience to profiles, at least for my use. I still have all my history, bookmarks etc., just different cookies&stuff for the things I open in the various containers I use.
On iOS, all the browsers share the Content Blockers you install and enable in Settings (system wide). Install Firefox Focus (a single tab browser), which comes with its own Content Blocker.
Obligatory "Firefox on iOS isn't really Firefox, as iOS App Store rules ban browser engines" reply. ALL iOS browsers are basically just skins on top of Safari's WebKit.
An off topic question, but I would appreciate feedback: I have tried the DuckDuckGo browser on my iPad, and it seems like it provides good privacy features even though it is layered on WebKit. Any opinions of DuckDuckGo vs. Firefox on iOS?
Why do you consider the time playing Everquest wasted? It was what you wanted to do, you did it and had fun. Now you want to do something else and that's fine.
I think that if you do something for large amounts of time, but doesn't bring you much value then it could be considered wasted. The problem is people probably don't realize it's been wasted until later.
I used to play a lot of video games, and while not all of the time I would consider 'wasted' I definitely could have used some of the time doing something else that would have made my life better today.
There is an opportunity cost to everything you do. Time is the only truly limited resource in life, you should try to use it as wisely as possible. Everyone needs some leisure time, but it shouldn't be the majority of how you spend your life.
Sometimes you can get caught up in a 'grass is always greener' syndrome. That is, imagining that your life would have been so much better had you done X instead of Y.
Chances are, in an alternate reality, you'd just be stressing about a different set of things.
I agree and I'm sure that for everything you do, there could always be something better in hindsight.
I was mostly referring to things that you put lots of time into, but don't get much long-term value in return. For example gaming grants you short-term fun, but (for the most part) doesn't give much for long-term. Money/reputation/progression doesn't mean much outside of the game/s you play. In some cases you could "sell" your account, but the amount you get would probably be less than .25 cents/hour that you put in.
I _really_ enjoyed the first year of WoW. It was a childhood fantasy come true to explore the world I grew up with. The rest of the years it was just something I knew, a routine I was in, and where my social life was. Looking back, I really wish I walked away much sooner.
I lost my mom this year to the same cancer and I get really excited with any advancements that are made in this area. I feel like we're still playing with sticks and stones in terms of pancreatic cancer treatment. The whole surgery plus chemotherapy is just barbaric.
