False dichotomy. Your tinfoil hat is on too tight.

Most likely, they actually believe their drivel. The stupidity that is rampant even at well-run corporations would indicate that something far more susceptible to politics, theater and attracting the least qualified would result in positions like this. The TSA is utterly useless and needs to be abolished. Too bad that's only going to happen the day that we wholesale dissolve Congress, remove the POTUS, scrap all existing rules, and start from scratch.

You kinda got it right. Corporate social networks are there to promote the distribution of information. But for God's sake, do NOT call them "Facebook for the Enterprise", "Enterprise Social Network", or anything like it. Do not mention enterprise, do not mention facebook, twitter, instagram, or any other idiotic time killer. Call it what you want - "Acme's place for Engineers to comment on feature update requests from PMs", "Worldwide Information Sharing Platform", just don't use the Facebook analogy.

Second, employees are asking for tools to better share information. Sharing your latest beer run or cake social pictures is not information. Sales people want to know if someone knows someone at corp A, where they just got a meeting for. Support people want to know if anyone has seen weird behavior x that isn't documented anywhere, and hasn't been tagged in a case yet. Others want to know if there are some good presentations on a topic so that they don't have to create them by hand, or just want to get in touch with someone in a particular position but who they have never met. An enterprise social network helps that.

Here's the third issue, and this is where most corporate social networks fall down. It has to be used by the execs, and the execs have to show to everyone how to use it right. If they start posting pictures of their latest executive retreat where everyone has a Margarita in hand, or they start to talk about what movie they saw over the weekend, shit will irretrievably go in the shitter. Lack of adoption of a corporate social network is always and every time the fault of the corporate leaders. Whether the execs, or just the people everyone wants to listen to.

What's the problem with knowing that someone got charged for assault in a case that is very understandable?

The right to be forgotten is a terrible solution to the problem of people not being able to judge others properly.

No, not personal data. PRIVATE data. Plus, Google is handling other companies' data that has been put by them onto the public internet. Why the fuck is Google responsible for what is in it? Are you going to blame trash collectors for what people throw out on the highway?

You don't understand statistics very well, do you? Or how actuarial tables work.

When men don't get into 2 as many accidents as women. Sorry, but a corporate accountant has analyzed your criteria, and found that your penis is correlated with a higher rate of accidents. Enjoy your rate.

Your mistake is to assume that we can survive without an ecosystem replete with a shit-load of species whose impact on us is largely unknown. We're about to find out if we can survive with a drastically changed one.

Yep, I'm aware of union shops and right to work states. Just wanted to be sure what you were talking about, because your initial description told a much, much wilder story.

Because free markets do not exist, and capitalism is not a silver bullet to the world's problems (it may, however, be a silver bullet for the problems of the 1% to get more money, which is why quite a few people like it).

That said, I can't figure out if this is sarcasm, or if someone is serious. The political discussion in this country is seriously fucked.

By instituting rules that apply to how speech is created, and completely disassociated from the content of that speech.

Some examples:
1) You can't run ads that mention political candidates or parties 2 weeks before an election.
2) You can't contribute more than x money to the campaign of a single person/party for a specific election.

Does it leave concern-troll ads open? Sure does. It's not meant to be remove all influence of money on political speech. It just attempts to curtail the impact that a single large donor can have on the entire political process (witness Christie's pilgrimage to Adlai Stevenson's "political forum").

Yes, it means that political speech is impacted. Congratulations, you found out that sometimes, there's a trade-off in a decision that you make, and a perfect solution doesn't exist. It also means that you're capable of weighing the pros and cons of a decision.

Because money is not speech.

Seriously, stop trying to undermine the entire concept of a democracy. Or, in your lingo, a republic (even if that means you think the US and China have the same form of electing leaders... oh, wait, that would explain a lot of things).

Do you have a citation for that? The only thing I know is that some states allow union-membership to be automatic once you're hired into a particular position at a particular company. That is very, very different from being required to have a union membership to get a particular anywhere in the state.

Furthermore, the big difference is the scale. It's a lot harder to get a large group of people to agree on a political course of action than it is to get one person to agree with themselves. The entire point of democracy is to remove money and power as a tool for selecting a leader, and to instead trust the wisdom of the masses to make an orderly transition at the top. The current campaign finances remove that approach.

That said, union-membership requirements can go die in a fire. I understand the concept of free-loading, but I also understand the concept of not wanting to support a useless organization.

That's technically not a Net Neutrality argument, which is why the argument existed in the first place. To some extent, Comcast was right: it wasn't funneling as much data to Level 3 as Level 3 was funneling to it. What Comcast left out was that this problem was 100% of its own making, and impossible for Level 3 address: Comcast only sells highly asymmetric pipes to highly asymmetric users. It is actually illegal for its users to try to create a situation where it will funnel as much data to Level 3 as Level 3 funnels to it. Which is why techies were incensed by the argument.

That's the issue. All techies know the huge holes that have to exist in NN for the Internet to work. No one disagrees with any of those. The problem is that the principle of NN is all we have to concisely explain to people why Comcast is being an utter monopoly-rent-seeking shithead in this discussion, and how Comcast's attitude will break the Internet. Anything more requires delving into the depth of QoS, CDNs, dark fiber, roll-out subsidies, last-mile topologies, and barriers-to-entry in the website market to make a coherent argument. No one in the public sphere is going to listen to that.

That's why NN keeps being brought up. It's the only sound bite that's remotely applicable, and unfortunately, sound bites is what wins political wars.

If you'd read, you'd notice the pine borer beetle. There's the melting of the arctic permafrost, the increased acidification of the ocean and it's impact on marine ecosystems and fisheries... and that's just the ones that are happening right now, and are costing billions right now. Feel free to wait for more change.

Absolutely. However, I'd like to continue living without having to fight for all my daily resources. I'd also like to have kids, so that we may reach the stars one day.

Yep, it's selfish. All acts are selfish in one way or another. It's how we progress. So, yes, environmental change that a lot of species can't adapt to is bad for them and bad for me.