Speaking as a non-American, to the rest of the world those are indeed wacky right-wing laws. You have to have been brought up in a political monoculture not to see that.
No, Texas bans abortions from 6 weeks onwards (except when the mother's life is in danger). That's decidedly not more liberal than the majority of the world.
How absurd. How is Texas anti-human for non-whites? For the poor? For women?
The only thing that could be argued is "anti women" would be the abortion bill. But a lot of people don't view that as a woman's rights issue. The "my body my choice" argument is about the same as if a single father advocated to kill his infant and claimed "my life my choice". The 9 months of pregnancy are by no means more of an invasion of autonomy than the following 18 years of care.
For the poor? See https://itep.org/whopays/ -- we have the second most inequitable tax system in the nation, where the poor pay the highest effective rate. We also have no expanded Medicaid, so the rate of uninsured is twice the national average. The State of Texas blocked Austin's sick leave ordinance (https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/05/texas-supreme-court-...). All this affects women and minorities disproportionately -- we're above the national average for maternal mortality, and non-white women are at disproportionate risk above that.
Losing black people doesn't mean Austin is "anti black". SF also lost minorities when the tech scene blew up.
Texas doesn't even have state income tax.
The state isn't and shouldn't be responsible for ensuring everyone has medical insurance. That's an individual responsability.
Blocking the sick leave ordinance just put us in line with the majority of the country. Not exactly a radical move.
Edit:
Also citations not from a .org would be great. I don't need a write up to wade through. Your data should be able to speak for itself if it's legitimate.
Oh man... The wall of text we'd need to discuss this.
Anti abortion laws impact one segment (and the sub segments within, obviously) of society: women. Before you start talking about men's rights and whatnot, please consider not doing that. Nothing grows inside you. Anyway, these laws ONLY IMPACT WOMEN. The US has a ridiculously high Maternal Mortality rate for a "developed" nation and it's worse for non-whites:
For many, abortion is the safe option but making it illegal means it's harder for the poor (which are disproportionately non-white) means they will either have to have back room abortions (remember that talking point in the 80s?) or have babies, which will increase the mortality rate for non-whites even further.
Know what we love? Forcing women to have babies. Know what we don't love? Their kids. Our social support structure in this state is abysmal. So now we're forcing people to have kids that we won't help them with, driving further into poverty, so we can talk about how minorities are The Problem.
But wait! These kids are US citizens, surely they can grow up and vote for change! Not so. We are big fans of gerrymandering. It's a Texas art form and the lines are constantly shifting in obvious ways that basically make voting more of a spectacle than a real thing. We draw lines through minority neighborhoods to split their votes with surrounding neighborhoods that are rich white folks.
And this is all just stuff I can type out on my phone because it's such a common discussion point that I don't have research it any more. We could for hours about laws that are on the books already and those that have been added recently and those that are coming up but if you read this far, I'm already surprised. Texas is tailor made for white republican men and those that that orbit them. Our state laws are giant piles of hypocritical BS. We use one argument to support a thing and the opposite to support another and they're bought and paid for by gun and Christian lobbying.
We're not forcing anyone to have kids. 99% of would be abortions are preventable by just practicing safe sex. Yes I know there's the 1%, but let's talk about the overwhelming majority here.
If you can't afford children, be a responsible adult and don't have them.
I wasn't talking about men's rights, but a humans right to life. How do you justify a mother opting to kill her unborn child while still condemning the killing of a born child? Again, 9 months of gestation is absolutely not more an invasion of autonomy than the following 18 years of care. To believe that its okay to kill a fetus 3 months into pregnancy but not okay to kill a newborn is pure mental gymnastics. In most abortions the aborted fetus would have developed into a healthy, functioning human being had you not prevented it. That's murder. You're taking away a humans opportunity for life.
Texas law has no exceptions for rape or incest. In these circumstances, you are literally forcing someone to have a child after they've been violated. Abbott's argument is "Rape is a crime. And Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets."
What have they been doing up to this point? Texas outpaces the nation in rape and has been trending upward.
Know what else is illegal? Gun possession by violent criminals. Didn't Abbott also claim that if we made it harder for 18 year old white boys to get AR-15s then only the criminals would have guns? Why not apply the same logic in two places? (I own guns, I like shooting, I'm just no a fan of being full of shit and I believe in common sense fun laws, like most gun owners.)
I know that last bit was a different topic but it illustrates some of the absolute mess that exists in TX politics. They can't even avoid using contradictory arguments in public statements. This is a bad state run by bad people who will say and do absolutely anything to defend the status quo, even if it means saying two opposing things in almost the same breath.
So you focused on a fraction of a percent of abortion cases rather than the overwhelming majority that happen because the mother and/or father couldn't be bothered to have safe sex. I explicitly said in my comment lets talk about the majority. Marijuana causes some fraction of a percent of the population to go into a temporary psychosis, that doesn't mean it should be illegal.
Why do you single out 18 year old white boys specifically? Was there a law that restricted 18 year old white men from purchasing guns that got shot down? If so, good. That's sexist and racist.
Ah. So because it's on a small portion (cite your sources) that we harm irreparably, then it's ok. Cool beans. What was I thinking. Harming the most vulnerable to protect the majority is stupid math. You're also make an assertion about the majority without providing any data, so it's not fact but feeling.
Re: the white boy problem
Because as a an adult white male, I am allowed to call out my own. The perpetrators of most school shootings have been young, white, men. My wife isn't allowed to say it because she'll be shouted down by "not all men" and minorities can't say it because we'll call them racist and point out the one or two times a minority did it. Not enough white men are pointing at the common denominator (aside from "gun") and it's our responsibility to do so.
Black men are also responsible for the majority of firearm murders ala gang violence, the total number of which make the number killed in school shootings look miniscule by comparison, but I don't see you calling them out. I bet you'll say it's a systemic issue. No chance the white school shooters are dealing with any systemic issues themselves? Perhaps people like you who seem to have an unreasonable disdain for young white men?
Just because you've internalized self-hatred and white-guilt doesn't give your the right to project that on the rest of the population.
I'm just happy to know you're concerned for their safety. We should do something about that too. Know what might work? Gun control.
Know what might really help? Ending cycles of poverty. Know a way we could do that? By not forcing them into poverty. Birth control is not free (it was but you killed Planned Parenthood, remember that?). So maybe everyone should stop having sex. That's realistic, right? Oh wait...
So you're concerned about gang violence, which is generally an issue for the most impoverished, who likely don't have healthcare and may not have the money for other birth control devices and you've forced the most well know women's health organization out of business, who used to provide these things for free and you want to force them to have babies, knowing they don't have money, creating more poverty and more desperation and higher likelihoods of violence and then... Shit. Did it come right back around?
Math is hard. Let's go shopping.
ps- I don't have internalized guilt. I haven't massacred one single school. I'm just not blind to the fact that almost all the people who have look like me and I'm smart enough to know that the only people who anyone will listen to (not everyone but most) are the ones who look like me because the only response you can muster is that I just feel guilty, which is ridiculous, I feel angry and sad.
I can't find a "WIC doesn't cover birth control article" but I can't one that says it does. I can also find the FAQ from PP that says they'll give you free birth control but if you're in a red state, they won't exist.
Not only is there work in this area, it's a not a leap at all. A minor application of critical thinking and logic makes cause and effect pretty simple. This has always been about forcing personal feelings onto others. We make a giant show of being anti-choice and then talk down to the poor and point out the issues in poverty stricken areas to make ourselves feel better, ignoring the clear evidence that this is a self fulfilling issue.
This was fun but I'm going to go back to getting the hell out of here, literally. I have packing to do.
Sure, but some things don’t warrant all that many words. Bless your heart: I hope you have many life experiences that help you enrich your perspective and add nuance to your worldview.
It's incredible that when you disagree with someone, your assumption is that they lack life experience and have a naive worldview. Because surely if they were wiser, they'd agree with you, right?
If you truly have a good response to the things I mentioned, I'd like to hear them. Your current behaviour truly is incredibly condescending.
>99% of would be abortions are preventable by just practicing safe sex.
Non-substantial and uncited statistic. 99% of pregnancy is prevented by safe sex.
>Yes I know there's the 1%, but let's talk about the overwhelming majority here.
Unsubstantiated ratio. Assumption that safe-sex is universally possible. It’s a privilege that not all get to enjoy, and abortion is the edge-case of human behavior that addresses those situations.
>If you can't afford children, be a responsible adult and don't have them.
Assumption of full reproductive autonomy.
>Again, 9 months of gestation is absolutely not more an invasion of autonomy than the following 18 years of care.
Moral hazard.
>In most abortions the aborted fetus would have developed into a healthy, functioning human being had you not prevented it. That's murder. You're taking away a humans opportunity for life.
In law we call this “but-for” analysis. Essentially, “but for” someone aborting a fetus, the fetus “would have developed into a healthy, functioning human being.”
Everything else up to this point was fine but the last point is where the “bless your heart” materialized in my soul. Would that we could guarantee the health and functioning of humans, simply by not aborting them.
They say “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans,” but in your case it’s “If you want to make God laugh, tell him his plans.”
Okay my exact percentages are probably wrong, the point being the vast majority of abortions could be prevented by safe sex.
Safe sex is absolutely universally possible. Free condoms are given out all over the place, and in places where they aren't it's probably better to practice abstinence until you're ready than kill unborn children so you can get a quick nut.
In cases except rape, which are a small minority of abortions, there is reproductive autonomy.
Elaborate on "moral hazard".
I explicitly said most. Not all. Most. Most abortions, like most births, would have resulted in a healthy adult human. You're responding to a misreading of what I said.
My dudebro, you are the living answer to your own questions.
You couldn’t pay me or my wife enough money to move back to Austin, let alone anywhere else in Texas, and we called it home for longer than anywhere else we’ve been since. Enjoy the hellhole.
On top of restricting women’s healthcare, there is also the lack of parental and sick leave laws, and extended disability leave for women who give birth. Probably a lack of adequate breastfeeding laws too. And of course, non existent min hourly and salaried wage laws.
I would never subject my wife/daughter to that kind of society, as long as I have the means not to.
My wife is also a physician. The level of care provided to low-income patients is barely existent compared to a state like Massachusetts, both some of the places she has practiced. Have you seen the state of Medicaid in Texas?
Go expose yourself to it and you’ll see how Texas is anti-poor.
Alternatively, the decreased risk may incentivize larger or more frequent investments and simultaneously draw in newer investors and make it easier for them to take the plunge.
It does allow the rich to get richer if the company does well, but it also facilitates startup funding and could very well be the difference between a startup getting the funding it needs to be successful or it getting denied due to risk factors.
Right but you phrase it like some horrible thing when it's a net positive for the investors, the business owners/folders, and the broader economy. Just because "the rich get richer" doesn't mean it's inherently bad and that others don't also get richer. It's not a 0 sum game.
"should not have their critical needs outweighed for the mere convenience of the majority"
I *strongly* disagree here. A small subsection of the population should not be able to impose their self-percieved "needs" on the remaining 99%. You're the individuals who care about this, it's your responsibility to put in the necessary foot work.
It's incredibly arrogant and presumptuous to try and argue that any overwhelming minorities desires should be seen as needs and imposed upon everyone else and drawing a comparison to accessibility is disingenuous at best. You aren't literally unable to use an application because they don't spell out every bit of minutia regarding their telemetry, nor are you born with physical/mental disadvantages that somehow necessitate your privacy policy desires.
No one is preventing you from monitoring your own network activity, sandboxing your machine, using a VPN, or a multitude of other steps you can take to monitor and protect your privacy.
I'm not blaming the victim because they aren't victims. They voluntarily choose to use software and are upset when it doesn't live up to their arbitrary standards, standards they themselves are doing nothing to reach when it's perfectly within their abilities to do so.
If you complained about how much you hate trackpads but refused to buy a USB mouse I wouldn't say that mice should be mandatory accessories bundled with every laptop sale, I'd say you should buy a mouse yourself or stop complaining about it.
What an absurd statement. Next you'll say private property it "immoral".
Open source software is wonderful and I love when companies create and support FOSS. That said, to say it's immoral not to give away the work you produced/paid to produce is ridiculous. You're not taking anyone freedom away by providing proprietary software. As I believe another commenter replied, they're free to not use it or develop the software on their own.
If it's too difficult for them to replicate or for a competing FOSS product to exist, then it probably is complex enough to warrant payment.
> What an absurd statement. Next you'll say private property it "immoral".
No, absolutely not. Private property is a precursor to free software. I own a computing machine, therefore I have a natural right to control what my computing machine will compute.
> That said, to say it's immoral not to give away the work you produced/paid to produce is ridiculous.
You don't have to give anything away. Free Software means you can share your program with whoever you want, including nobody.
> You're not taking anyone freedom away by providing proprietary software.
That would be true, if proprietary software meant "no source code available" (that's usually called Freeware). But in reality, there are laws like DCMA that actually do restrict your freedom, in a literal sense.
What makes software different from any other labor, intellectual property, or physical property? Should a musician not be able to charge for their music? An artist for their art? An architect for their designs? A mason for laying the bricks?
You do own your computing machine, which means you have the right not to use proprietary software. That doesn't mean that proprietary software itself isn't moral if the user chooses to run it. You seem to believe that any software which isn't free is also abusive, when that's clearly not the case. Many software companies that develop proprietary software are profitable and are so without abusing their users.
DCMA only "restricts your freedom" so far as someone else intellectual property is concerned. If that software had never been created there wouldn't be the "freedoms" surrounding it to restrict. It's also usually illegal to buy a painting and then sell prints of that painting so your freedom is likewise "restricted". While I agree that some parts of DCMA aren't ideal, the broad argument of proprietary software "restricting your freedom" because of it is fallacious.
> What makes software different from any other labor, intellectual property, or physical property?
Nothing, and that's the whole point! If I buy a house, I can repaint it, tear down a wall or do whatever I please (as long as I stay within the boundaries of the law).
If I buy a painting I can move it, hang it upside down, improve the mysterious smile by adding a moustache with a magic marker or make whatever changes to it that I see fit.
If I buy a record, I can sample it, mix it however I please, listen to it backwards so I can listen to the subliminal ALL HAIL SATAN message it hides.
However, if I buy a piece of proprietary software I can do... nothing, except tick or untick some boxes in the settings menu that the developer bothered to put there.
That's fair for software that's a one time purchase. But most modern software is subscription based, and is more akin to renting an apartment where you're more restricted in what you can modify.
Legally, I agree that we should be able to modify whatever software we purchase so long as we don't redistribute it. I don't believe, however, that the engineers should be required to hand over the source code for us to do it.
Car mods are usually legal, but no one is demanding schematics from the manufacturer to help them go about it.
The user (of the proprietary software) is forced to execute on his machine whatever computation that software tells him to. He has no way of knowing what that computation does or modify it. In this case, developer holds unjust power over the user because the developer can make the software do whatever he wants, and even change the behavior of the program by auto-updating it over the network - and the user is completely powerless against the developer.
Yes, he can choose not to be a user (of the proprietary software). That does not make proprietary software any less immoral. Being able to refuse to be a part of a pyramid scheme doesn't make pyramid schemes any less immoral.
Your saying that this being a possibility means all proprietary software is immoral is like saying that since some businesses are pyramid schemes, all businesses are immoral.
Spyware is immoral, I agree. That doesn't make all proprietary software immoral and collecting relevant usage data doesn't make it Spyware.
> Your saying that this being a possibility means all proprietary software is immoral is like saying that since some businesses are pyramid schemes, all businesses are immoral.
No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that proprietary software is immoral because it takes away an important human freedom - the freedom to control our own computation. You're said "ok but what if someone agrees to use proprietary software?" then I said "that does not make proprietary software any less bad".
> Private property is a precursor to free software. I own a computing machine, therefore I have a natural right to control what my computing machine will compute.
A couple things:
1. You don't need ownership to have rights related to privacy or control. You don't have to be a homeowner to have a right against people invading your home. The hackers who started the free software movement were not primarily computing on devices they personally owned.
2. Personal ownership of computing devices is not necessarily what the term 'private property' refers to. Personal ownership of computing devices is very much possible without private _property_: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_v...
> You don't have to be a homeowner to have a right against people invading your home.
"Your home", as in: a home you have ownership rights to. You may only be renting those rights for a limited time, but your right not to have your home invaded is still grounded in the rights of ownership you hold in the home.
There are no "rights related to privacy or control" without ownership.
> Personal ownership of computing devices is not necessarily what the term 'private property' refers to.
"In some economic systems, such as capitalism, private and personal property are considered to be exactly equivalent." — Your Wikipedia link
So in the systems which matter there is no difference. Only broken economic systems such as socialism, Marxism, and left-anarchism attempt to draw a distinction between personal and private property. Personal property is just that part of private property that those in power (whether a lone dictator or an egalitarian collective) doesn't consider useful or significant enough to be worth taking for itself.
I question the bias of your sample. Almost every one I've known who possesses any self-taught coding knowledge has gotten there specifically because they don't buy the "wage slavery" narrative and wanted a valuable skill. I'm from a very low income community and family so I imagine that if the type of person you're claiming exists were so predominant I'd have run into at least a few of them.
They didn't say they wanted to learn new things, they wanted to learn a new language. I can want to learn how to drive a race car in addition to my Toyota Corrola without wanting to lear how to operate a crane (though that would be pretty interesting honestly).
Where is the joy of learning a new language if not for learning new concepts? It just does not make sense to me. Learning a new standard library and build tools and all that stuff? Is that much fun?
People want to learn a new language for reasons: perhaps they want to learn new concepts, perhaps they want a language that's faster, perhaps they want a more mature ecosystem, perhaps they want to increase their employability. There aren't people who "want to learn a new language" as their ultimate end goal.
Maybe go is faster than any other language they've used? I'm not contending the fact that they have a reason for wanting to learn go as that new language. Just that your claiming they clearly weren't interested in learning since they didn't choose some esoteric language is fallacious.
> Maybe go is faster than any other language they've used?
Quite possibly! That would be consistent with my point that they chose Go for practical reasons, rather than to learn for the sake of learning, as KaiserPro was suggesting.
If you want to learn for the sake of learning, you'll learn a different paradigm, rather than rehash the same thing with a slightly different flavour. Also probably your productivity will tank.
Can it not be both? Someone can want to learn for the sake of learning, and then filter further using practicalities. I'd love to learn every programming language out there, but it wouldn't be possible, we only have a limited amount of time in this life, so I'll instead learn the ones that are the most practical to learn. Java, however practical, may not be interesting to me so I may not learn it. Piet is super interesting, but not all that practical so I'll probably never learn it.
It doesn't have to be a single variable equation. I can learn something both to learn it and for practical reasons.
The OP claimed only 2-3 people in each company are "responsible" for the success of said company. You do not need to be the only person in the world who can do a job to have some, or even major, responsibility for the success of an organization.
I think you may be misinterpreting what OP meant (or perhaps I am, that's a real possibility). I read that as "There are only 2-3 specific people whose skills and contributions were so essential to the orgs success that the org would have failed without them specifically." Where you might have a front end developer who is technically "responsible" for facilitating millions of online transaction, there are likely thousands of other devs who could have done the same work. Among the 2-3 OP was referencing, there are very few who could have done what they did.
The case I was making is, it takes many people to turn a startup into a unicorn, and many of them are integral and make massively important contributions that, without them, would not have occurred. The degree to which those people are replaceable is difficult to say precisely, as it varies per person and per company, but I don't think being irreplaceable is the bar for being considered responsible. If a fireman pulls a kid out of a burning building, we don't care that many other fireman could have also done the same thing. The individual who did the critical work is responsible.
I have been at unicorn companies with C-suite executives that are clearly useless, or worse, net detractors playing political games that the people under them have to work around to get shit done. I have been at companies where one engineer is single-handedly keeping parts of the lights on, or conceptualizing and architecting critical systems, having an outsized impact well beyond their title and compensation. There seems to be a false idea here that the way companies run is "top down" - ie. the Collison brothers set out all the goals and strategies and products, and then the employees just execute their vision like pawns. Maybe there are companies like that, but I've never seen one, particularly a fast growing one.
I guess I just disagree that the number of people who would be deemed "responsible" for Stripe's success is 2-3. That seems, frankly, unbelievable to me having worked in companies with hundreds or thousands of employees and seeing how many different people it takes to build something massive, innovative, with multiple product or business lines. Not just taking marching orders but exercising their creativity, judgement, expertise, leadership skills etc.
It's difficult to take that article with more than a grain of salt when there's clear political bias and a lack of proper sourcing from the start. Of course political bias is inevitable, but to claim that our gun laws are the result of a takeover by "a minority of radical extermists" is ridiculous.
Then when referencing hard numbers and talking about the influence the NRA may have had, she doesn't back that up with anything. Her "notes" are mostly other highly opinionated articles. Had she followed any form of standard or proper notation[1] it'd be easier to believe her. But usually when people fail to make their sources easily available it's because they don't have them/they are low quality.
Just to add another comment to this. Typically when someone claims that something which is supported by a large percentage or even the majority of a given population is the result of "extremism", they themselves are like the extremists, for better or for worse.
The fact that the majority of Americans have voted time and time again to get our gun laws to where they are today is my source. It's not "extremism" if it wins by popular vote.
> The fact that the majority of Americans have voted time and time again to get our gun laws to where they are today is my source.
Your gun laws are made by politicians who are elected for a wide variety of reasons, not just their stance on firearms. So I think its rather a stretch to say that you have the gun laws that you have due to them being the will of the majority. In fact, according to Gallup, the majority in the US (over many decades) want stricter gun control [1, particularly the second chart].
(And I'm sure the $190 million [2] that gun-rights lobby groups have spent in over the last 24 years contributed to the laws being the way they are.)
> It's not "extremism" if it wins by popular vote.
That sounds worryingly like the usual justification for the Tyranny of the Majority to me. Not everything that is popular is unextreme or justified - and history is full of instances where societies have ended up in a hole due to this type of reasoning. Democracy isn't just about voting, its about to manage differences.
Nevertheless, a large number of US citizens committed to the defense of their right to keep and bear arms simply isn't "a minority of radical extremists", regardless of the vehemence of your disagreement.
There is not much political will for more gun control right now.
Indeed. Prior to the 1968 Gun Control Act, you could order pretty much any gun through the mail.
The political violence and radicalism of the 60’s drove the legislation. Only automatic weapons were controlled before that.
So seems silly to claim “radicals took over the NRA” when any type of gun control is a very recent phenomenon. Hell, even during the 80’s most of the US had incredibly lax gun control laws compared to what is being suggested today.
I don't understand why "any type of gun control is a very recent phenomenon" means that a claim that "radicals took over the NRA" is "silly". Whats the reasoning?
The claim is that the NRA was "radicalized". However, the same time the NRA was "radicalized", new more restrictive gun control law was pursued.
Why would anyone be surprised the NRA went from "all about recreational shooting" to "aggressive gun rights organization" at the same time restrictive guns laws were introduced? They had no reason to aggressively oppose gun control laws because none were being discussed.
It's like saying a homeowner "suddenly became violent" when someone tried to break into his home. There was nothing "sudden" about it, it was a response to an external trigger.
