Do you really think they give a damn about privacy? If they care so much about privacy, wouldn’t they also be proclaiming how their website doesn’t track you and gobble identifying data? Or is it they are just hiding behind that argument because it sounds noble and their real concern is a business one?
Also, how secure do you think the state systems are that provide those ID’s?
Those places cost a lot of money to facilitate. They need to be cleaned and maintained. They require larger bathroom facilities due to the lengths of stays which also need to be cleaned and maintained. They need to pay people to do that. I fully understand that most wages aren’t enough to live on, but this is a direct effect of minimum wage laws. We can have living wages or we can have nice things at the expense of others essentially. But we really can’t have both and I am getting sick and tired of all the gd whining.
I'm sorry that you are growing tired of your fellow humans merely expressing their discontent. Maybe you can help with a solution, since you've heard about people's concerns? I know I try in my small corner of the world to make things better for those around me.
Other countries have higher minimum wage but more "third spaces", so I don't think this argument holds water. Also if the minimum wage increases, that puts pressure to increase all other wages.
The connection between wages and the number of third spaces is a little dubious. But, the complaint about whinging is valid - "Why can't a commercial organization create a third space for me, according to how I'd like it to be, or evn how it used to be" is the whinge I hear. Third places exist, but if it's not your favorite Starbucks, well, just move on.
I remember reading how in Tokyo you can find a lot of niche places even deep in city, with explanation given by small-time tailor (not some expensive main street kind of place) being given as that what he pays to rent the place is cheap enough.
While I'm not an expert in things Japan, from what I've seen the way they zone cities is far more mixed than the US/Canada model which leads to different property pricing behavior. In addition older buildings value can drop far more quickly there than here.
You act like nobody has ever conspired to do anything immoral before, like it’s some completely outlandish thing. History is rife with conspiracy. Maybe this guy did kill himself, but your attitude is quite unserious and ignorant.
I under that factory farming is absolutely ugly and there is a lot of low hanging fruit in how to improve it. But I never understand the extremist philosophy that no one should eat chickens or raise them in their back yard for eggs. Chickens simply don’t exist in the wild and are very far removed from the jungle fowl from which they came so long ago. If we stopped eating and raising them, they would go extinct. Is it better for a species to live in often poor conditions or to not exist entirely?
Is it better for a species to live in often poor conditions or to not exist entirely?
if those are the two choices, then i'd prefer the later.
but isn't there a third choice? to raise chicken in good conditions?
i suppose maybe that doing so would reduce the amount of chicken we can consume, and also raise the price, but i think that is preferable to letting them suffer.
While I get your overall point, I'd just like to point out the island of Kauai (and the rest of the islands of Hawaii). They have a massive wild chicken population.
There are certain “sex linked” breeds of chickens that it is obvious whether a new born chick is male or female as they will be either color a or color b. We raise chickens for eggs and got stuck with a couple roosters before we decided to only purchase sex linked chicks going forward.
I got smoked in the temple by a knee during jiu jitsu. I felt immediate pain that immediately subsided. No sypmtoms, so I kept rolling. When I got home, I realized that was pretty stupid and I started remembering hearing about people dying from minor blows to the temple. I stayed up late to make sure I was ok but still no headache or any symptoms. After several days of no symptoms, I eventually got a mild tension like headache that lasted for 3 weeks and felt generally run down, like I had just woken up all the time. And then I was fine. Long story short, head injuries are bizarre.
Buried in the complaint is an interesting part about why he lost his original insurance carrier, they stopped writing policies in FL. The personal injury lawyers in Florida are out of control. There are also a ton of staged accident rings that nobody is doing anything about. I’m surprised any insurance carriers exist in that state anymore.
> he lost his original insurance carrier, they stopped writing policies in FL. The personal injury lawyers in Florida are out of control.
I'm a little skeptical, this reminds me of past arguments of "blame malpractice lawsuits for exploding US medical costs, tort reform will fix it", which doesn't seem to have worked in the places where it was tried.
AFAICT most of the reasons insurers are pulling out of Florida involves the math around catastrophes like hurricanes.
I try not to be hateful but dealing with attorneys every day will make you truly despise their profession. This brightened my day. Now if we could only disbar a couple million more.
I’d love to see a legal system that is comprehensible enough for a layman so pro se is the go-to option and the lawyers are for the real tricky cases, or people who can’t or don’t want to even think about it.
Not happening, of course. Modern legal systems have incentives to build barriers.
(For what it’s worth, I’ve never needed a lawyer and I’ve dealt with immigration in two countries and some basic legal stuff. Wasn’t a rocket science - the worst of it were all the unwritten rules. But of course, that was quite simple and straightforward stuff - surely, there are legal issues that are much more complex.)
Alas, you wouldn't like a legal system which a layman could understand, any more than you'd like a computer which a layman could understand.
We are doing things, as a society and as a species, which take far longer than one individual lifetime to learn, so we divide up the work and specialize.
There's an important key difference - no one is forcing anyone to understand how computers work in detail, and the situation where one needs this specialized knowledge is quite uncommon. Thus, this can be left to the specialists.
I do believe, though, that everyone should probably know how the computers work at the extremely high level, though. Because virtually everyone deals with computers those days, so this knowledge is nearly essential. And if someone wants to learn more for whatever reason - they should be more than welcome to do so, without any artificial barriers. No one should ever say "computers are really hard, only licensed engineers should be allowed to... (idk what)"
In the same way of logic, consider that everyone is a part of a legal and political systems, whenever they want it or not. Which is why I'd like to make those as accessible as reasonably possible, with the basics well comprehensible so you don't normally need a lawyer.
I think a better comparison could be with electricians, plumbers or builders. And with those, no one should need a specialist to do basic stuff (like replacing a light bulb or installing a bidet), and no one should be actively discouraged from learning more advanced things.
I'm saying this as someone who re-wired a fire hazard of an old house (with copper-aluminium twists from '40s, no grounding, and so on) up to a proper code (checked with a real electrician, of course), installed a water heater after old one had failed, replaced a car radio, etc. - just because I had time and desire to learn and do it myself (also saved some money). At the same time, I've happily went to a mechanic when there was something with the starter and I'm about to call a contractor for a simple leaky faucet, just because I don't have time for this.
Computers or anything else - I'm all for all the modern man-designed systems to be understandable and/or serviceable. So anyone with a working brain can do things themselves if they want it and have time for it, and no one is forced to hire anyone unless they prefer it that way (which is totally fine - like you've said, we divide work and specialize, optimizing our resources). Save the obvious exceptions where the risk of harming others is too high - e.g. the building codes are there for a good reason.
And I'd say some legal systems look way too unnecessarily complicated (or poorly designed) to me. And popular culture is complicit in re-enforcing this isn't helping - it's reinforcing the current status quo. Which seems to contradict the whole idea of resource optimization.
// no one is forcing anyone to understand how computers work //
There is something very right about this, or the implication of this: Everybody, no matter how dumb or smart, rich or poor, educated or illiterate, is expected to comply with EVERY law, all day, everyday, 24/7, every minute of their lives. Whether they know about those laws or not.
So yeah, having a broadly understandable and accessible legal system is a necessity.
Nevertheless, at the rate we are inventing new algorithms (like LLMs), new financial techniques (like derivatives) and are going into new realms (like space), there are exponentially more opportunities for people to collaborate with each other--or, unfortunately--harm each other. So we need ever more laws. A few, simple laws just cannot give us all the protections we want, or create enough of a space for cooperation. There is an element of irreducible complexity.
I think there are many people who held no opinions about lawyers UNTIL they needed one :)
I personally have had only positive experiences, but I've heard the horror stories. Beyond just the expected divorce stuff. Of course what matters are the circumstances.
Also, how secure do you think the state systems are that provide those ID’s?