No? You're entire post is based on the idea that Unions are inherently bad. For a capitalist they are. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Marx predicted that capital would flow to where ever labor's cheapest in a constant race to the bottom, but all anyone can remember about him is that a few dictators borrowed one of his books for rhetoric.

Did it ever cross your mind that there is a _reason_ Unions formed? Have you ever heard the phrase "Nasty, brutish and short"? Have you seen pictures of the Mini-Guns used by "private" security employed by mines in the 70s to intimidate workers?

Whatever else you think, you _want_ Unions. You _need_ Unions. Unions are labor organized to seek better and safer working conditions. Nothing more or less. Hell, there's another story on /. here today talking about the death of the 40 hour work week in America. It's a statistical fact that wages have declined and productivity has increased. What in God's name are you planning to do by your little lonesome against multi-billion dollar corporations? Seriously, do you think Toyota is going to keep paying a living wage out of the kindness of their Hearts? It's the sacrifice of the Union man and the competition for those Union Jobs that's why Toyota is paying those wages in the first place. And before you bring it up, no, they don't need you to buy their cars. They have plenty of other buyers, and they really don't need that many. They can just raise the price and sell fewer.

I could go on, and on, and on, but seriously man. You don't know of what you speak. Go work in a meat packing plant for a decade and tell me you don't need Unions.

Calling it "Workaholism" implies we have a choice. Companies are demanding we do more with less. If you don't like it there's not much you can do. The job market sucks, and it's never going to get any better. Off-shoring and abundant work Visas guarantee that. You're given X amount of work to do and Y amount of time and if you don't do X you're fired, so you put in extra hours. Again and again and again. Heck, it's even worse for the Visa holders. They're practically indentured serfs. If they don't put the hours in it's back to where they came from with a black mark to boot. And those are the guys we're competing with for jobs....

Heck, is it just me or can nobody in the American Media do anything except blame the workers? Maybe it's because the capitalists own the media... Heck, I don't know.

Browsers are really, really, really hard to make, and Microsoft, Mozilla and Google all give theirs away for free, insuring anyone who tries to compete also has to do the same. Opera couldn't make any money. They're trying to survive.

And if you think these are bad times for browsers then you have no idea my friend. Not too long ago it was IE or nothing. And what Monoculture? We've got 3 major players all meeting the standards pretty well (4 if you count webkit/safari, which with iOS installs is nothing to sneeze at). Office is a Monoculture. Browsers? Not so much. :)

the real threat to your freedom is an ultra wealthy oligarchy that's been steadily chipping away at your wages for 40 years. More than anything else money is freedom, since if you're financially destitute you'll do what they say when they say. Dictator's don't oppress for the shear giddy joy of it, whatever the sci-fi books you read when in high school/college say. They oppress because they've taken a disproportionate amount of wealth for themselves and oppression and poverty is how you keep it.

I'd like to see us stop blaming a few well meaning bureaucrats and administrators for the horrors wrought by the ultra wealthy. Probably not gonna happen though, what with them controlling the media and all...

Ah, so what you're saying is all I need is about $100k is raw wealth and I'm set? Saying "If you own your house" doesn't really fly in this situation. A lot of these people have already sold their houses paying for medical disasters. Medicare doesn't kick in until you're destitute or 65, and even then there are copays for the Meds (hence the $100-$200 mo). Medicare is _insurance_, not Socialized Medicine :(...

from http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258

Social Security: Another 24 percent of the budget, or $814 billion, paid for Social Security, which provided monthly retirement benefits averaging $1,294 to 37.9 million retired workers in December 2013. Social Security also provided benefits to 2.9 million spouses and children of retired workers, 6.2 million surviving children and spouses of deceased workers, and 11 million disabled workers and their eligible dependents in December 2013.

I know very few places where $1300/mo is enough to live on when you're over 65 and/or disabled. America doesn't have Nationalized Socialized medicine. Even if you manage to get on one of the State run programs you're laying out $100-$200/mo just for meds (God Bless the Big Pharma). Then there's Rent, food, transportation (to the doctor's appointments that are keeping you alive) etc, etc. I know a few ppl on SS Disability, and they live very, very shitty lives.

So can you tell me, why is it we can get a man on the moon but we can't take care of a few million old people and a few million disabled? Are we really that pathetic as a country that we can't just solve this problem?

because so far the only thing I see trickling down is piss. Seriously. At the risk of being marked troll, can I just ask why we don't lower _all_ regressive taxes and _raise_ progressive taxes? Income tax of 90% makes sense when it's on your income AFTER $1 million/year. It means that if you want to be really, really, sickeningly wealthy you really have to work at it. Or you have to actually _invest_ that money instead of sitting on it and grinding the entire economy to a halt with your greed. The 1% have something like 50% of their assests in CASH. That's cash that's doing nothing in our economy. They're basically ending all human progress in an effort to hang on to their wealth and status. Heck, that's more or less the end game of conservationism. :(

not the riders. The drivers are usually taking it as a second (or third) job to make ends meet.

At the risk of being modded troll, what innovation? All of the tech that powers these sites was built by other people. The only thing these guys did is get enough capital to fend off lawsuits.

I guess what really bugs me about these ride share guys is the real reason they're so big: massive unemployment and 40 years of declining wages. People don't participate in ride share sites for fun. I know taxi and limo drivers. They're some of the most abused people in the world. They're 'independent contractors' only in so long as it involves not getting the benefits of being employees (unemployment insurance, heath care, etc).

Fix the broke ass economy and all this 'innovation' would go away tomorrow. Christ, $16 billion in ipo value build on the corpse of the American Middle Class.

for only $19.99. :P

Yep, it's a by product of the military industrial complex that's been propping up our economy since the end of WWII. Since we couldn't have socialism we just built lots of army vehicles. And that means lots of surplus and a heavily militarized police force. I don't think anyone really planned it, it's just one of the twisted distortions from our way of keeping the economy going...

when the riots hit LA people were surprised that the rioters stuck to their own neighborhoods and basically trashed their own communities. What nobody mentioned was the reason why. Large numbers of armed police cordoned off the wealthy neighborhoods and kept the looters from spilling over.

It's not so much the ruling class here, as the upper class. Even the upper middle class. Basically, if you're going to abandon the poor the their fate you need to build walls to keep 'em out...

we offshored most of our manufacturing. XBoxes are made in Mexico because they can dump the waste in that country and nobody cares. Google "Cancer Village" too sometime...

if you're not a Christian. If you don't believe he was the son of god then he was just preacher whose particular sect took off. The Roman Emperor that convertered to Christianity after being 'saved' is the real power behind Christianity...

All the carriers will be doing this soon. Your cell phone will eventually replace your credit cards (the industry is just waiting on Apple to put a NFC in the iPhone, and Apple is just trying to figure out how to charge the CC industry for the privilege :P ).

This is basically the beginning of the end of Credit Card fraud. For all we love to romanticize hacker thiefs the reality is that in 10 years big data + cheap powerful handheld computers + geolocation will make it damn near impossible to commit. The only thing holding it back was that it was cheaper to let the fraud happen. With computing power getting cheaper and more common place that's not true anymore.