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Comment Re:As an IT Manager (Score 1) 545

On one hand, people should get paid for putting in extra hours.

No, and that misconception is part of the problem. People should get paid more for accomplishing more, regardless of how much time they spend on it. I'm no fan of long work weeks, but that just means that expectations ought to be set based on what an average employee can accomplish in 35-40 hours rather an 50-60. If you happen to be less productive than the average employee you can either put in more time or settle for a lower salary.

However, that's more or less how it already works for salaried positions. If most employees were already putting in 45-50 hours when you signed up, then you should have considered that when negotiating your salary. It's wrong to look at it as if you'd agreed to 40 hours and were later forced to work extra "for free". Even if the policy changed after you were already working there, you can always renegotiate. (And if that isn't an option due to competition for your job, it's a sign that you're already getting a relatively good deal which other candidates would be glad to accept.)

Comment Re:Why only FBI? (Score 2) 109

If they have a warrant, they'll have no problem with a consumer device. "We have a warrant. Decrypt your phone or we arrest you". This is similiar to "We have a search warrant. Tell your guards to step aside, and open your safe for us. Or we arrest you."

The warrant means that you have to stand aside while they perform the indicated search or seizure. It doesn't mean you have to help them. (You might choose to open the safe rather than see it destroyed when they're going to get into it one way or the other. That doesn't really apply to encrypted data.) If they want your assistance in gathering information then they need a subpoena, not a warrant, and that comes with a different set of restrictions and penalties for non-compliance.

Comment Re:delusional libertarian (Score 1) 602

That position wasn't libertarian in the slightest. You can tell because it claimed that there was a (non-zero) "fair share" of taxes. Libertarian means the Non-Aggression Principle, which leaves no room for taxation.

As for your proposal... you do realize that you've described a flat income tax, right? It would significantly reduce taxes on the "1%ers", who currently pay much more more in taxes, proportionally, than they receive in income. That would certainly be a nice first step.

Comment Re:Why tax profits, why not income? (Score 1) 602

That's a $50 profit (ignoring expenses related to producing that hour of labor such as the cost of an office).

You're ignoring far more than just the cost of an office. Useful labor isn't produced ex nihilo. What about the cost of having you available at that time and place, properly educated and prepared to perform the task? That's a huge cost, even amortized across all 100,000 or so of your lifetime working hours, and you can't deduct any of it. At a minimum there should be a depreciation schedule for the cost of raising a child to an employable age, including the cost of the college education required for most jobs, on top of the $10-30k or so of basic annual living expenses.

Or we could just set the standard deduction at the median income, somewhere around $50k. That's probably a reasonable approximation for what an average employee's time is worth.

Comment Re:Great (Score 1) 602

People don't give up their natural rights when they form a corporation, but that does not mean that the corporation has all those same rights.

The corporation per se is an artificial construct and as such has no natural rights (or for that matter, ability to exercise them). But people acting in the name of the corporation retain all the same rights which they have when acting for themselves. What they can each do individually, they can also do collectively. They don't lose rights just because they happen to be coordinated.

Comment Re:Great (Score 1) 602

We then expect everyone to pay their fair share into said pot given that they are sharing said resources.

The problem with that line is that you're not giving anyone a choice—you choose to make the service available to everyone, and then turn around and use said availability as circular justification for taking the money. It's not reasonable to charge someone for a service when there was never any mutual agreement on the terms, even if they clearly benefited from it. If you want to recover your costs, negotiate first, then provide the service.

Comment Re:Why not abolish corporate taxes entirely? (Score 1) 602

And this is why corporations make short-term decisions. The person making the decision gets his bonus today. The shareholders get their dividends today. The consequences (if any) come for the shareholders 5 years from today.

And this is why those whose decisions have a significant, long-term effect on the value of the company get their bonuses in the form of stock options dated 5-10 years from now rather than cash. If they make short-sighted decisions that come back to haunt the company later, their bonuses (often a significant part of their overall compensation) become worthless.

This is also why investors should carefully consider a company's history and policies and whether there might be any skeletons lurking in the its closets before purchasing shares.

Comment Re:Why tax profits, why not income? (Score 1) 602

Of course you take the job; 75% of the extra income goes into your pocket.

You're assuming that all else is equal. Of course you'd take the raise if it meant more money for the same work, even if 99% of the increase was wasted on taxes. But that isn't realistic; a better-paying job generally means more work, more stress, perhaps relocating to a new area. It may also require extra capital investment in the form of training or certification. If you only get 75% of the marginal income, while still paying 100% of the marginal cost, then changing jobs seems rather less worthwhile. The fact that individuals effectively pay income tax on (economic) revenues rather than profits amplifies the problem immensely. Their main expenses, the time and effort they put in to their jobs, are highly limited resources and yet are not deductible for tax purposes.

This has somewhat less of an effect on corporate income taxes, since a business's economic profit more closely parallels its accounting profit. Which is not to say that there is no effect; even for a business not all costs are deductible, or even readily measurable, and there is a point of diminishing returns; the taxes make the returns diminish that much faster relative to the costs.

Comment Re:Yuh Huh (Score 1) 436

Speech should absolutely be protected—even threatening speech. However, if you say (credibly) that you're going to do something, other people should also be able to take you at your word and respond accordingly. That isn't punishment for the speech, it's a reasonable preemptive response to the action you claimed to be planning.

The usual rules for preemptive responses apply: there must be a reasonable expectation that the action is imminent and would result in irreversible harm.

Comment Re:Job Offer (Score 1) 523

Public liabilities are private assets.

They're one kind of private asset. There are others. Eliminating all public liabilities would not eliminate all private assets. Also note that the effects are not as evenly distributed as this simplistic balance-sheet view would suggest; "public liability" refers to the majority of future taxpayers who will be made to service the interest on the debt, while the interest-generating "private assets" end up in the hands of those select few with the ready capital (both financial and political) to purchase them. Not the sort of thing to promote if you favor a more equitable distribution of wealth.

Comment Re:But the case hasn't even started! (Score 1) 119

State and local law may vary and require acceptance of Federal Reserve Notes in satisfaction of a debt. LEGAL tender does not in and of itself mean MANDATORY tender.

When it comes to debts, that's pretty much exactly what it means:

Legal tender is variously defined in different jurisdictions. Formally, it is anything which when offered in payment extinguishes the debt.
Legal Tender

If someone who owes you a debt offers to pay the full value in legal tender (regardless of the original form of the debt), you can either take what they're offering or give up on collecting. In general the offer must be exact; if someone who owes you $5 hands you a $100 bill, that legally satisfies the debt but you are under no obligation to provide change.

This doesn't mean that all transaction must involve legal tender, or that you can be compelled to trade goods or services for legal tender. It only applies to debts. If you insist on payment up front, rather than extending credit, then no debt is created and you can make the transaction conditional on whatever payment method you prefer. (Barring laws in the more restrictive jurisdictions outlawing alternate forms of payment, which is a separate issue.)

Comment Re:So you use Radio instead, eh? (Score 1) 48

... there's no distortion mechanism present that should allow frequencies lower than 69KHz to be created. There's no modulation done on the 69KHz carrier, the carrier is on/off keyed ...

No signal which carries information can be perfectly distortion-free. Just switching the carrier on and off is a form of modulation (akin to a continuous wave RF transmitter), with a bandwidth dependent on just how quickly the amplitude is switched, which is related in turn to the maximum rate of data transmission. This can easily result in signal components below the carrier frequency.

However, a quick search suggests that harbor seals respond to frequencies as high as 180 kHz in water (with a peak sensitivity around 32 kHz), so they may well be able to hear the tags' carrier frequency directly.

Comment Re: Hire the Russians hackers to prevent police ac (Score 1) 86

so no single point can link you to your destination

In this case there are (potentially) many points. No one node can connect the source and destination of a given connection, but if the attacker monitors or controls enough of the internal routing nodes then it's not that difficult to analyse the timing and build up a statistical model linking the endpoints over time. For that matter, a busy .onion site would tend to stand out no matter how obfuscated the routing, simply because of the increased traffic.

Comment Re:Let lawyers do it free, in exchange for % damag (Score 1) 268

Groupon's tablet is not software. No overlap.

That isn't true. They're calling the tablet's software "Gnome(TM)" as well:

Groupon (www.groupon.com) today announced Gnome, a new tablet-based platform...

"When it's complete, Gnome will serve as an operating system..."

Groupon Launches Gnome(TM) — A Tablet Solution that Helps Merchants Run Their Business and Connect with Customers

Even if they were carefully using the name to refer to just the table rather than a "platform" (which would also describe GNOME(TM)), just imagine the hilarity which would ensue if some random company decided to market a "Windows(TM) tablet" without first clearing it with Microsoft(TM). Also note that there are existing Point-of-Sale terminals running the GNOME(TM) desktop environment.

Comment Re:What was quote about Internet and censorship? (Score 1) 200

The phrase "turn about is fair play" comes to mind. You always have the option of responding to another's actions in kind. You can't claim a right which you don't extend to others. The thief has no legitimate claim to property rights; the murderer cannot claim a right not to be killed.

Is it evil if I use violence to force you to give up the property that promised to give to me?

If it was a mere promise, then yes. A promise of future action is not binding in the way that an actual transfer of ownership would be. (This is a consequence of inalienable self-ownership; the property rights themselves are transferable, but there is no right to make someone else act in a certain way.) On the other hand, if we had an established contract transferring the ownership to you, then by refusing to turn the property over after you became the owner I have stolen it from you. Withholding property from its rightful owner is an act of theft however it came to be in one's possession. At that point you would be free to respond in kind.

If you want assurance that a promised action will be carried out you can stipulate a performance bond, which is a conditional future transfer of ownership—not "I will perform the service" or even "I will give you the property if the service is not performed", but "the property is yours as of this future date if the service is not performed". You still can't compel the person to perform, but in the event that they don't, they already gave you the rights to the designated property when they agreed to the contract.

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