The people who's votes are being played for, by this move, are in a demographic that is largely unconcerned with the value of your house (or, by extension, the current state of the real estate market).

The right to work is mis-envisioned. Most people who think they have a right to work don't realize that it translates to a requirement to employ liabilities and lose one's business. The bigger issue, though, is that most people see the having of a job as the only means by which they can subsist, and so they consider it an extension of the right to life.

We are entering an era of such technological ascendency that very few people must actually work in order to provide for the subsistence of the entire population. Capitalistic values do not work well in such an economic landscape. The fact that civilized governments pay landowners to NOT grow food, in an effort to protect a market, while children go to bed hungry within their own borders, demonstrates the absurdities of this disparity.

Of course...people who can't find jobs are not content to just die. They absolutely will turn to crime instead, where they will either:

a) take your wealth from you by stealing it, to your detriment, or
b) receive free food and clothing, paid by your tax dollars, in jail.

We will be providing for their subsistence one way or the other. It would be better, however, if humans could maintain a more enlightened means of solving the distribution problem.

Aristotle pointed out that one's capacity for virtue is limited by one's intelligence.

To put it simply: if you truly want to do the right thing, but you are so uneducated that you can't figure out what the right thing is, you wind up not doing the right thing. The thing you actually do is one of the wrong things, and so it is probably harmful to someone.

Even if the soul of such a person is as pure as untrodden snow, the actual outcomes of their actual actions are equivalent to those of a morally inferior person.

When a person is in a position that his actions could harm others (such as, say, an airplane pilot who’s actions could crash the plane), that person is morally obligated to attain and maintain a high level of competence. However, since we all live as part of an interconnected society, we are *all* in this position. Any action we take could harm others if not thought through, so lifelong self-education is a moral imperative for all of us.

Everyone has genetic limits to intelligence, and limits on opportunities for education, which are forgivable. When you hit those limits and need to make decisions that are beyond them, the morally correct thing to do is seek guidance from someone who is more appropriately educated.

If you do neither; if you insist on remaining ignorant and on directing your life based on this ignorance, then you harm everyone around you. You are therefore guilty of negligence, and therefore you are a bad person.

That is a common line of thinking among those who haven't thought things through.

1) When you make a highly-desired commodity illegal, you create organized crime. Mafia bosses who have no qualms about sending your children home minus a few digits just to make a point wind up receiving tremendous economic power from people who want the item. This level of crime is far worse, and far harder for the police to protect against, than random muggings by petty junkies.

2) You assume that once it becomes legal, demand will increase significantly. This is very fallacious. Most people who desire to use drugs already do so, whether it is legal or not. The only people who refrain from using drugs due to their legal status are precisely the sort of people who are responsible enough to keep their use under control. Furthermore, the current (illegal) users who are the type that would lose control and start mugging people to fuel the habit are already doing so. So, even if usage increases, crime does not increase.

3) Once legal, it can be taxed to fund addiction clinics and other support services that users can now turn to without fear of legal punishment. So, that naturally helps to control the problem and further reduce crime.

Incidentally, I think you need to read your philosophy coursebook a little more closely. An "atheist" is someone who does not believe in the existence of any gods. That is *it*. Rejection of belief in gods does not, in and of itself, require acceptance of the postulate "you should just be rational."

While it is true that many atheists would probably agree with the statement "you should just be rational," most will have very different ideas about what constitutes "rationality" in any given circumstance and some may object entirely. And in any case, accepting even this statement doesn't reject the possibility of making and honoring laws. Doing so could be considered a very rational behavior (the argument is left to the student).

Being an atheist also does not, in and itself, require rejection of a religion. Many sects of Buddhism, for example, deny the existence of any gods and as such are atheist. New-age weirdos can deny the existence of god as well and still believe in auras and energies and what-not. Again...many atheists might also reject these belief systems, but it is not a requirement of the word.

Some might try to argue that there is a chain of reasoning at work...something like rejection of god means rejection of religion which means rejection of religious codes of morality which means rejections of any code of morality which means acceptance of the only possibility left which is "you should act rationally," but such a chain of reasoning is philosophically sloppy with incorrect assumptions each step of the way. Though being an atheist doesn't automatically make someone a rigorous philosopher, so plenty of atheists might think this way.

I am also curious about how it has been "mathematically proven that there never are any rational course[s] of action." Mathematics generally deals with the modeling of quantifiable relationships, whereas "rationality" is more in the domain of psychology, sociology, economics, and perhaps philosophy. Does the proof look like this?:

Let x = .33333... (repeating infinitely)
let y = 1/3

therefore: x = y
therefore 3x = 3y
therefore (3)(.3333...) = (3)(1/3)
therefore (.9999...) = (3/3)
therefore (.9999...) = 1
therefore there is never a rational course of action.

Seems pretty unlikely to me.

He isn't stating facts so much as attempting to create them. From that perspective, everything he says makes perfect sense.

Since you could, in theory, take politically-impactful action, every person with a political agenda has a direct incentive to influence your opinions. Writing a piece that tells you what your emotional response should be is a common way of doing that.

There is nothing wrong with complaining about this, of course, but don't expect it to change. Better to maintain eternal vigilance in your guardianship of your ability to form independent conclusions, especially when confronted with such biased information sources.

Most developers I have known believe that their productivity is so much higher than their peers that they can justify slacking off. I asked in private, after establishing trust, because I found it interesting. Each member of the team considered himself superior to the other members of the team. Clearly, they couldn't all have been right.

Technicians, it seems, are inherently arrogant. Though I suspect this is true of all people, not just technicians.

But whenever I hear "I am so good I don't have to work as hard" I just assume the person is using their enormous ego to justify their sloth.

Be that as it may...it is still bullshit that people should be expected to work the equivalent of two jobs in order to pull a barely-middle-class salary. However, the labor market seems full of young-uns who are willing to accept these terms. In the long run they are harming themselves and everyone in their industry...but....they are also going home with a paycheck.

This problem is not specific to the tech industry, and it isn't caused by any particular government policy. While it is true that the high allowance of H1B visas are adding fuel to the fire, tightening the restrictions won't put the fire out.

The older, more experienced workers who can't find jobs are absolutely worth the salary that they are requesting. However, there aren't very many businesses that actually need that level of experience and quality. The market for their products will bear a lower level of quality, and in fact the customers wouldn't be willing to buy if the price tag was higher even if the quality level more than made up for it. So the businesses don't need and can't justify the cost of top-tier talent.

Also, as everyone is aware, the total number of tech businesses only shrinks over time. This is a natural progression of the free market; the winners buy up the losers and centralize efforts, meaning that a smaller number of engineers is making products that serve a bigger market.

To put it simply: you only need one team of engineers to make the iPhone in order for everyone who could afford one to be able to have one. You also only need one team of developers to make a solid office suite in order for the whole world to be able to use it.

Yes, there is still some competition in the market. We will probably never reach a state of true global monopoly. However, there is a whole lot less competition than there used to be, and that shrinkage (though asymptotic) will continue. That is, in fact, how a free market is expected to work. The winners eliminate the competition and then establish monopolies or cartels, and the need for skilled labor plummets. So we can safely predict a supply of top-tier talent that is much greater than the demand.

In theory you can respond to this problem with government and/or union intervention. In practice the end result is never as good as the theory should be.

If we invent a new wildly disruptive technology we may create some young markets with lots of demand for laborers, but in these mature markets (like software development and computer engineering) it is better to recognize the reality and make plans accordingly. If you are young and looking to enter tech, either:

1) expect to move up to management, and build your skillset and all your career decisions around this expectation. Also, actively push this agenda on your employers.

-or-

2) Find a job with long-term prospects at a company with a reputation for retaining talent, and keep your costs of living nice and low as you invest as much as you can.

I'm sorry if both options are unappealing. I didn't create the world, I am just observing it.

Government officials should be held accountable to the laws they create and enforce. This is *ESPECIALLY* true when the law is a bad law that blocks people from doing things that are completely reasonable. That helps ensure that "they" feel the same pain as "us," which in turn furthers the cause of getting the bad laws corrected.

One law for them and another for us is a basic ingredient of tyranny.