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Comment Re:I'm shocked ... (Score 1) 249

That doesn't work either as has been found out in many cities because when people lose their licenses they also tend to lose their jobs and then everything else. I think it's Sweden that has a system where you ticket amount is determined by your ability to pay. Essentially they take a half a days wage and multiply that out based on how sever the infraction is. It got quite funny when a rich guy was on the hook for a 50k speeding ticket.

Comment Re:I'm shocked ... (Score 4, Insightful) 249

Really. It's not possible to extrapolate anything from that number. After all one of the biggest abuses of policing is the way that they deliver routine tickets in such volume that it financially cripples a community. Ferguson has more warrants for arrest than people and almost all of them are for failure to pay traffic fines. Living in fear of a police officer pulling you over for being over the limit by a single MPH (Yes this does happen) and giving you a ticket that will put you in debt for years (and possibly prison) is the very definition of abuse.

Granted not all of that rests on the heads of cops. Most of it resides on the government and court system that allow loan sharks to take over the collections of tickets in a way that traps the people in debt. These agencies offer to take over collections for free but then add a service charge to ticket payed by the person cited. All of the money that the person pays goes towards that fee until it is payed off, but the fee keeps increasing with missed payments. The result is that these people are stuck in a cycle of payments until a warrant goes out for their arrest for failing to pay a ticket and then they are sent to prison.

As the Ferguson report on policing practices said: when the city mayor asked the police chief to deliver 10% more revenue he responded "we can try."

I'm sure that most of these stops were perfectly routine. Doesn't mean that the police aren't being abusive.

Comment Re:Behavior that is rewarded is repeated .... (Score 4, Interesting) 334

There was an interesting article on the BBC about the US and UK's refusal to pay hostage ransoms. They showed that It resulted in far less hostage taking for those two countries compared to the other European nations that did pay the ransoms, but they also showed that it also made the situations for those who were kidnapped far worse than the other countries.

Comment Re:Non Sequitor (Score 1) 334

Drones and people are not the same thing. Drones get their targets overwhelmingly from SIGINT provided by the NSA.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdQiz0Vavmc

Oftentimes drones are sent to kill based only on a cell phone signature with no other verification. Its how you get circumstances like a hellfire missile being fired at a group of people going to a wedding.

http://www.democracynow.org/20...

The people pushing those buttons have no idea who is being killed by what gets fired. Furthermore all of those enemy combatants killed by drones are only as a result of the government redefining the definition of "enemy combatant" to mean a male between the ages of 13 and 55 in a warzone. Drones kill civilians by an overwhelming majority and the person pushing the button never knows the difference.

Comment Re:Decent (Score 1) 482

The first thing that you do with your cash flow is pay your people. Everyone gets paid after because without you people you are nothing.

Experienced and driven people are what attract investment, and they are what makes you profitable. Investors usually use you ideas as a formality but when they choose to invest they will be looking towards what kind of employees you can attract. That's the reason why Tesla's shares are at $181. Because Elon Muck has the drive, experience, charisma, and track record to get that investment, and no one cares if Tesla won't be profitable until 2020. Businesses can survive for quite a while without profits, but they die pretty fast without people.

Don't believe me then lets try an experiment with two businesses. In one case they don't pay their employees salary for a month and in the other they don't pay the shareholders for a month. See which one dies sooner.

As far as the stunt being for PR I don't think that is the primary motivation here. As I said before even with the stock options (based on the calculations of a previous poster) he is still slashing his salary from 2.2M to 400K. That is a very large drop in money for something that is just designed to generate PR especially seeing as how our spending budgets tend to grow to fit how much money we make. And even if his salary climbs again so what? He should be paid in proportion to how well his company is doing especially if he founded the the thing.

Comment Re:Socialism! (Score 4, Insightful) 482

Clearly a comment from someone who has never been without money. FYI it costs a lot of money to start your own business, and those who live paycheck to paycheck are very much short on options when quitting means they are homeless. Money gives you options. Lower income people have less options because they have less money, and the reason they have less money is because the money is being scalped by higher income people who have the options, granted by wealth, to do something like influence an election or lobby for a lower minimum wage.

also:
The fact that some people have more choices doesn't mean that you have less

Did you actually read this statement? Do you realize that it contradicts itself or are you just that blinded by you unsubstantiated ideology that you cannot see reason?

Comment Re:Decent (Score 3) 482

Slashing your own take in by 75% isn't a PR stunt anymore, and he has the benefit of ensuring he will have the pick of the litter in terms of talent for his company. Who wouldn't want to work for a guy that doubles your salary to look out for you? The most important part of running a company is getting the right people and keeping them happy. With this one move he has done both with a perfect ten.

Comment Re:WWJD? (Score 1) 1168

Yes, plenty of well deserved outrage mostly from non-homosexuals. Assuming the group was not the benefit of a mass movement how do you propose that 3.8% of a population[1] can significantly impact a local economy or business?

The reason that so many people leap to the LGBT communities defense is because they correctly surmise that a threat to freedom and just anywhere is a threat to freedom and injustice everywhere.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States

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