Real democracies represent the people exercising their collective will to direct their society.

Real democracies don't immediately hand the reigns over to rich and cruel capitalists and surrender their hard won influence.

Anywhere you see Capitalism, you know you're not looking at a real democracy.

That's the way it SHOULD be.

Performances are naturally scarce, and can provide all the necessary funding.

Making things that are naturally abundant artificially scarce is wrong. It is economically wrong because it reduces our return on an already sunk investment, it is morally wrong because it causes needless hardship to massive numbers of people, and it is strategically wrong because cultured neighbours are safer neighbours to have than culturally starved savages.

There are valid arguments on the "for" side, but, in my judgement, they don't carry enough weight to overcome the "against" arguments.

No, its a system I built to fix a problem, and if it's not working precisely like it does in my minds eye, then it's wrong because I made a mistake, and I'm ok admitting that.

It's either a feature or a bug.

I understand what you are saying, but language that makes the computer sound like an out of control actor makes me sound like I'm not in control of my job and my dog ate my homework, so I make an effort not to use it. I think it makes me look less professional. Language that involves me saying things like "I designed it that way for these justified reasons, but we can discuss changing it", or "I'm not sure why it's responding this way, but it's my screw up and these are the resources I need to try and fix it and this is my confidence that I will succeed, do you want me to try." project a better image.

"The program doesn't know to check for the start date of a new lease when the old one expires, it just thinks it should activate it regardless."

What's wrong with "The program wasn't designed to check for the start date of a new lease when the old one expires, it just activates it regardless."

More accurate, less words, and no shifting responsibility for the situation to a "naughty program" in a manipulative subconscious effort to evade responsibility for what you built.

If someone is a celebrity, they get to have an ongoing dialog with the public. If you create an ugly first impression around a person by cherry picking their lives for dirt, they don't have the same opportunity. Don't you think that's an important difference?

Having a criminal record that can be checked by those who have a personal interest in researching your character isn't the same as having someone run around shouting that you are a thief to everyone. Maybe it happened a long time ago and you're a changed man.

But generating shame by focusing busy strangers attention on an ugly part of your life, causing an impression to be formed in a vacuum by people who had no interest in knowing the details in the first place and who will never learn when and why to let go of that... That is truly horrible, and we need to put a stop to it.

Openness in general makes everyone safer, but people who shame others by name make life worse for us all.

I don't want to maximize the number of good books at all cost, and I don't want people writing for a living and neglecting everything else, and I don't lie.

As long as there are more decent books to read than hours in the day, who cares?

Obviously yes. Predictable = deserved.

If 1/50 people write one book in their life, and 1/50 of them are good, and all of them get published because there is zero barrier to entry, we would have so many more books that were good than we do now.

People have more free time and better access to distribution than before. You're not entitled to your streetlamp lighting job, you know.

Sounds like you are at a company that probably values longevity of employment. Problem is there is a growing trend of companies that do not value long employment and drop their employees at a moments notice when the annual financials don't meet guidance. Consequently, us younger folk have no notion of company loyalty in us and will jump ship as soon as we get offered something better. Eventually you get to a point where you have moved up too high and are too old. You either find one of the rare senior positions, or you drop out once your employer spits you out.

Bad example. There is a push, but we're looking at pure protectionism. Doctors have the AMA guild with enough money to make it near impossible for a doctor without an MD from a US institution to get a license to practice medicine in the US. You could be a naturalized citizen with a MD from a top British med school and have no hope of ever practicing medicine in theUS without going back to school.

I have never seen a company have a problem getting an H1B visa for a highly skilled worker. Sometimes it takes a year, but I have never seen a company acting in good faith (paying very well for a unique relevant background) have trouble with this.

I don't understand. You point out that if companies just wanted cheap labor, they would outsource. But then you go on to point out exactly why you frequently would not want to outsource. But you use both to explain why cost of labor is probably not the issue?

This already exists for H1Bs and it is still being widely abused. They need to require companies pay them 150% the normal rate. If they are so desperately needed for their skills, this should not be a problem. We would also get to see how much of a shortage we really have.