I can't speak for everyone, but when I was 18 I had 100% certainty that I would graduate, get into a good-paying job, and the debt would be easy-peasy. This certainty came from a mix of parents/relatives/teachers saying "Definitely go to college, you can do great things" and the university I selected having a heavily-integrated intern program and "facts" like 98% placement. So I went to this private, out-of-state, very expensive university, took out loans to cover not only tuition (I got very little in scholarships) but food, room, books, gas money, etc. I knew it was a lot of money, but it seemed like a temporary thing.

I was extremely stupid doing so, of course; I was blinded by the idea that getting a degree from this university somehow guaranteed me a nice job. Along the way, not a single person spoke up to say "Hey, making taking out $20-$30K in loans every year is a really bad idea." My parents even co-signed some of my early loans. And then I graduated into the 2008 recession.

Now, seven years later, I still owe $110,000. Minimum payment is $900 monthly, about 1/3 of my take-home pay.

In 2016, Microsoft will help both Democrats and Republicans streamline the process in a fashion that will hopefully avoid the embarrassing result from 2012, when Mitt Romney was declared the winner on caucus night only for Rick Santorum to emerge as the true victor when all votes were counted weeks later.

Or we could, you know, just not announce the winner for at least 24 hours, just to give everything time to come in. Just as accurate, far less wasted tech.

The problem here isn't some counting machine, it's Americans wanting to know right the fuck now about something that doesn't matter RTFN. (Thanks, 24 hour news channels!) Technology won't solve that; it will only mean that people clamp onto that first announced result harder, and after weeks when someone goes "whoops we had a bug" it will cause more consternation.

Loathe? American cable companies love Americans. Americans will put up with paying for dozens of channels that will never be watched, then paying more for a few extra channels that they actually want. Americans will complain about poor service/high price and threaten to leave and even go down to dial-up, but never do. Americans will happily vote against whatever the cable companies create a "grassroots" campaign to stop. If the cable company slows down service as a bribery tactic, Americans will blame the third party company if the cable company tells them it's the third party's fault.

It's only now that cable companies are somewhat starting to loathe Americans, who are increasingly demanding proper explanations for their bills, accountability for proper service, net neutrality, and fixing loopholes in corporate tax laws.

wide-spread /wid.spred/
adjective
affecting the affluent or oligarchy

Technically, it seems that it's not Disney hiring the H1-Bs; it's one of those consulting/contracting companies based in India that get the majority of them. The H1-Bs were approved for the consulting company, who can hire them out to any company that contracts with them in America.

And so we have a nice, giant loophole that means that, even if the government wasn't the pet of corporate interests and would make sure laws were followed, nothing can be done to either company.

(Disclaimer: This is all from my understanding; I could be wrong.)

Agreed. That's why it's good to find a niche in programming, where the tasks that the programming is for are the interesting things. For instance, I do Data Translation (I think that's the term), which means that I am taking data sent to my company in a wide variety of formats and turning it into data that our program(s) can read. This often requires research and planning, and at this point a lot of the Data Translation programming is rote implementation of stuff I've already written (perhaps a few adjustments here or there.)

I still have to do a lot of non-interesting stuff, but I try to focus on the interesting as much as possible and automate the rest.

At 30 years young, I would like to invest more in my 401K, but I'm far more focused on my massive student loans ($109,000 left to go!) at the moment and put only 1% into the program.

Because this isn't about deterring active crime. It's about monitoring the population at large, compiling the data, and then if someone gets on the bad side of The Man they can go through the data to find ways to discredit or arrest said someone.

It's not about deterrence, or threat assessment, it's about threat creation and control.

The problem is that productivity is much harder to quantify than $/sqft. Most people who want to or succeed in forcing these open floor plans on others prefer to take easy numbers, like that $/sqft, or lines of code/hr, as estimates for what things and people are worth over things like code quality or worker productivity and morale.

I was a big supporter of his 2008 Presidential bid until that happened. I still somewhat supported and voted for him, but I did so in an "eat your vegetables" kind of way.

Then he did a bunch of other stuff and I went "hell no" in 2012 and voted third party (Gary Johnson.)

I'd argue that someone who doesn't own a car still indirectly benefits from the road infrastructure just like I benefit indirectly from our public education system.

The difference between school taxes and a scheme like this is that you can still pay for your share of road usage, even if you rarely or never drive yourself. You probably have packages delivered to you, and a vehicle is needed to deliver them. The vehicle has one of these devices, and gets charged for its road usage. The company won't eat those charges, though; they'll be included in the price that you or someone else paid to have the package shipped.

Ignoring the pitfalls of such a program, this would encourage the delivery service to minimize the number of miles it drives to save on both gas and this road usage tax/fee/whatever.

There's no such indirect method for paying for schools that I'm aware of.

The problem with those parliaments, to my understanding, is that citizens do not vote for a person, they vote for a party. Then the party gets to appoint people to fill their allotted seats. This, in my opinion, removes a layer of accountability between the politicians and the people. Not that America has a great system of accountability, but it's more direct than that system.

I would like us to have some sort of weighted/preferential/rank voting in America. Get rid of the first-past-the-pole thing, but you still vote for specific people. If 50% of people would prefer Candidate A, the other 50% would prefer B, but 80% of both sides would be okay with Candidate C, then Candidate C is the best choice. With first-past-the-pole, though, it turns into A vs B, and few people realize C is even running.

I think that, should we ever see the death of advertising revenue at large (one can only hope), surviving sites will maintain in one four categories:

1) Paywall, as you mention
2) Branded, as we see with Buzzfeed and sponsored articles
3) Fandom, where the site is mainly a labor of love and paid for out of pocket, soliciting donations to help now and then (some webcomics used to do this)
4) Patreon writ smaller

For those who don't know, Patreon is a combination of DeviantArt and Kickstarter: artists, content creators, etc. can get an account, and users can be patrons to that account/artists/whatever for as little as $1/mo. This is usually for more direct interaction with the artist in question than the general viewership might get. I imagine either Patreon itself, or a new, competing service, going into smaller amounts (say, starting at 25c/mo) for supporting websites or groups at large with fewer/smaller patron rewards. What is lost in large monthly donations is made up for with volume. So someone pays Patreon $5/mo, and then can divide that up between their favorite sites. I'm not aware of any sites using Patreon this way, but it would not surprise me at all if some already do.

- Frequently provides a strong incentive for copy-cat content, 0 content websites, click-bait, plagiarized content websites to exist, and to be profitable

I hate these so much. They spam StumbleUpon, and there is one particular site that uses over a dozen different domain names just to get around site blocks on StumbleUpon. I will cackle with glee when they die in flames.

Too bad they didn't extend that out to us living on the bleeding edge of the city limits, right by I-25. :/

The project gets done anyway, but the work gets moved to Canada or India or China

So you've already tried hiring in Iowa, or Colorado, or Montana, or Mississippi? Every American state and territory before looking out of the country?

If not, why not? You complained about time zones, but a time difference of 4-5 hours is better than 11-12. Because they're not in the Bay area? Neither are the folks in Canada or India or China. Are you requiring that folks from other states move to the Bay area? I'm sure there are a lot of people that, even for good money, would not want to move at all. (And, again, neither would the folks in Canada or India or...)