Wrong. Advertisement works, that is why it's a billion dollar industry. You think you don't read billboards and ignore other ads? Think again. Your brain picks them up long before it even tells your conscious mind about it. Filtering it out is an intentional process that takes effort (tiny, but effort). And images and emotions are processed by your mind if you want it or not.

No, it is not.

Advertisement created this idea of free services being paid by advertisement. There was a different time in this world, when you paid for your newspaper at the kiosk, and if you wanted to have a website for your journal, you would pay a hosting company.

There were also shared-cost services long before things became commerzialised. Back in FIDOnet days, email was transported by phone lines, and a bunch of people would come together, one of them set up a small server that would do the long-distance delivery and the others would pay him a buck or two a month to cover his phone bills while they got their mail for free or very cheap at local rates.

There is no reason that Facebook could not charge for its service. Except that the advertisement industry has created the concept of everything being free. Nowadays, having a pay service is not viable, not for any sane reasons, but simply because of this parlour trick.

Radio and TV in the time when they were sent by radio waves (and not digitally via cable) are about the only things where there are actual technical reasons why a pay service is not going to work. You can use encryption, but in pre-ubiquituous-computing times, it dramatically raises costs for new customers who need a hardware box.

But those times are over. Today, I challenge you to name one service that for technical or other reasons that were not artificially created (i.e. the expectation of customers that it should be free) has to use advertisement. I don't think you can. Everything that can be monetized by advertisement could be monetized in other ways.
The "there are no alternatives" claim is a damned lie, in politics as well as in business.

Not really, no. He's just saying what I've been thinking (and saying, but since I'm not a reknown philosopher, few listen) for many years.

If you know anything at all about the mind and the brain, you understand that attention isn't free. That even "filtering out" advertisement (and we don't really, we just consume it unconsciously) takes up valuable mind-effort. That living in a city is stressful in parts because our brains are constantly busy, busy, busy with the environment, running a million-year-old program that constantly scans the area for potential threats or mates, and advertisement intentionally triggers those subroutines all the time (why do you think "sex sells"?).

Advertisement is a massive drain of resources, and the best thing I've ever done for myself was to throw out my television and stop listening to the radio. At least the inside of my home is mostly ad-free.

I think a lot of it is due to something I was observing just the other day: Americans, by and large, seem to feel that the way things are now (or were at some idealized point in the past 50 years) is The Way It Was Meant To Be—not just a good way, but the divinely-intended end result of all of history. Thus, changing things from that point is not only a bad idea, but to some extent, impossible. It's just not something that their brains can even conceive of.

Unless, of course, the things you're changing are in an attempt to bring about the End Times. Then it's totally allowed.

(Though this statement of the problem does make heavy reference to believing in a divine plan, I've seen the same sort of mentality in people who weren't particularly religious. They just still couldn't wrap their brains around the idea that the way things are wasn't the way things would/should be forever.)

Dan Aris

So what you're saying is, "That's no true No True Scotsman fallacy!"

;-)

Dan Aris

That's not something that's happening in a vacuum. An awful lot of that sort of movement is arising precisely because profits from increased productivity are not, in fact, "trickling down" to regular people—particularly since the 2008 recession, but it's a trend that's held true since the late 1970s.

Create a bunch of good jobs, increase working wages (as opposed to executive compensation and "investment" income) across the board, and I guarantee you'd see those movements shrink significantly.

Dan Aris

That would only be true if he had said that technology increases jobs in every field—or, perhaps more pertinently, increases jobs in proportion to their current distribution.

He didn't. He just said that it increased jobs overall—that is, if there were 950 farm jobs and 50 office jobs before a particular technological advance, maybe there are 1450 office jobs and 50 farm jobs after. Significant increase in total jobs, even though people who can only do farm work got the shaft.

Now, perhaps his point could be debatable, but it doesn't mean anything remotely like what you've said here.

Dan Aris

Hate? I'm not the one vehemently claiming that male privilege doesn't exist and using words designed specifically to demean women.

Dan Aris

The problem is, most people—no matter how big an asshole they are—don't actually believe they're assholes. And almost nobody likes being called an asshole, or admitting it, even if they believe they are one.

Dan Aris

Of course men face problems, and everyone faces problems. Can you actually read the post you're replying to?

(Emphasis added) That's what privilege is: it's not having problems that other groups do because you're not a member of that group.

If you think privilege isn't real, that doesn't prove you're a big strong man. It proves you're a bloody idiot who hasn't a clue about history or current events. Given the way you talk about it, it seems to also prove that you're a self-centered misogynistic bastard who's scared that with the rise of equality and greater awareness of the problems of sexism and, yes, male privilege, society will start to turn against you because you're unwilling to leave behind your bigotry and actually try being a real human being.

Dan Aris

They are being biased against the "right" kind of people. So it's all fine. Remember: Racism, sexism, etc, etc are all fine so long as you are targeting the Right People(tm) and so long as you are doing it For The Greater Good(tm). :P

s/leftist/uncaring, selfish bastard/

Dan Aris

Works very well. You can set it at any height you like. Not too expensive either, at least as compared to other motorized adjustable desks. I'm pleased with it overall.

That bears repeating with regards to Germany's debts: What happened after WWI was the winning countries said "You have to pay us back for all the costs of the war." Never mind any of the other problems, something like that was totally unsustainable. Germany was being made to pay the (often inflated) costs incurred by other countries in the war. That was devastating economically. Forgiving that is really a no brainer as it should not have happened int eh first place.

Also let's not forget the other part of the post war issues: Germany got occupied and told what was what (same with Japan). It isn't like this was a negotiation where they said "Can you forgive some of our debt?" and the allies said "Oh ok." No, they surrendered, unconditionally, and the country was occupied and split. On the East side it was straight out annexed and made part of the USSR, and on the West side there was heavy allied military presence and participation in running the country.

I mean I guess if Greece wants the same, they want someone else to come in and take over their country and dictate how things are going to be for years, or decades, then ok. However seems a little silly to say you want the kind of financial consideration that happened in wartime, but none of the rest of what came with it.

A big one is just that the US controls both its currency and its monetary policy (meaning taxing and spending). That manes that it can take the steps it feels necessary to deal with loan repayments, such as increased inflation and/or a weaker currency. It doesn't have to convince other countries of it, it runs the currency.

An even bigger one at this point is that the dollar is the world's reserve currency. Things are settled in dollars on the international stage, meaning that the US can't have a current account crisis. It makes the dollars, things are paid for in dollars, so it can make more dollars to pay for things. It is unique in that situation. While it could change, that is how it stands.

In fact, that is part of the reason the US is able to borrow so much, and in some ways needs to. People and nations want to put their money in what they see as a safe reserve, and the dollar is one they seek. To make that possible, the US has to issue debt instruments. They have to be able to buy US dollars.

Yet another difference is that the US has high tax compliance. Most people in the US pay their taxes. There are those that cheat or outright evade, but they are the minority. That, combined with a generally quite low tax burden (compared to most first world nations the US has very low taxes), means that raising taxes in the US is a very valid strategy. People won't be happy, but they'll pay. Greece has real issues with tax avoidance which makes tax increases problematic.

Still another difference is in what the economy produces. Despite what you may have heard on whiny online sites, the US makes a lot of stuff. It is the #2 producer of durable goods after China, and only slightly. It builds lots of things that others in the world want. A good example would be microprocessors. Both Intel and AMD are US companies, and Intel fabs most of their newest CPUs in the US. The chips that run most computers in the world come from the US. Makes the economic situation rather different than a place that relies heavily on tourism.

Finally there's the issue of who owns the debt. Most of the US's debt, about 65%, is owned by the US itself. Of that a large part is intragovernmental holdings, and then debt held by the federal reserve. Of the nations that do hold US foreign debt the two largest, Japan and China, do so for strategic reasons to keep their currency cheap compared to the dollar and thus have a strategic interest in keeping that debt. Greece on the other hand, owes most of its debt to other countries.

It is far to simplistic to look and say "Oh this is all the same!" Public debt is actually a pretty complex issue.