I love you Angle-Westerns, you're all so obtuse!

(That made your whining sound particularly dumb.)

Your metaphor would make a lot more sense if kids were designing Lego sets that Lego then sold and vastly under compensated the creators of those sets (while doing a piss poor job of keeping those kids from being contacted directly by adults)

"can't tell the difference between a game and reality"

Uh, while I would argue that you should probably care because that person should be focusing on an investor meeting, it tickles me that you're suggesting somebody playing a videogame during a meeting supports the assertion that "they can't tell the difference between a game and reality".

That would probably amount to a whole lot of people who can't tell the difference between a game and reality (which I don't agree with) rather than a whole lot of people are not focusing on what they should be focusing on (which I do agree with.)

Everyone wants roads near their house. If you don't have a road going to your house then your house is worthless. Once the government has a right of way for a road, expanding the road might be expensive, but it doesn't get the whole community involved in a series of lawsuits.

The only people that want to live near the train tracks, on the other hand, are the people out in the middle of the California desert that would love to have a way to easily get to the parts of California that aren't a wasteland. In the nice parts of California, every home owner within visual distance of the proposed route has hired a lawyer and vowed to fight the tracks to the death.

This means that California has built a tiny bit of tracks out in the middle of nowhere (near Bakersfield but not in Bakersfield). It also means that every single foot from this point on is likely to get even more astronomically expensive. The homeowners involved know that houses that are far enough away from the tracks so that their home value doesn't plummet are going to get a windfall as their prime real estate will become even more valuable with decent public transit. The rail system is going to be a serious amenity eventually. The homeowners near the tracks, on the other hand, are going to see a serious drop to their net worth. Everyone in California wants more light rail, but only if it doesn't go through their neighborhood.

It could easily be that California real estate is simply too expensive in this day and age for something like this to be built.

"Having worked in public school education"

Lol. Means shit all for caring about better education.

"as it helps teachers and their healthcare/pension benefits"

Yes, you dipshit, it must be crazy of me to think that paying teachers well leads to better teachers.

Why would teachers want longer school days? School day lengths are fine. Longer school years? Is school a job? The length of the school year is for kids. There's a reason why schools have breaks, its for students. Additional money for after school activities? I mean, at this point I conclude you're a moron (actually I knew you were already moron) - that's a major ask of every teacher strike I've ever seen. (I dunno, maybe you've been surrounded by fellow idiots? Maybe this is what drives your pessimistic view on the profession .. )

Dollars to donuts, your "Having worked in public education" claim is as IT or computer something something, which doesn't make you an expert on public education. More of a useful idiot, every time I read your words.

Or just schools, period.

"Data Centers don't seem to bring jobs."

Seems is not a great word in an argument one wishes to make.

imagine thinking that

I diddled some children, so you're fired.

Fortunately, and overwhelmingly provably, the physical and legal world doesn't work in the way you wish it did.

Protip: as soon as you're talking about "never" or "always" or "happened before" or "still happens" .. basically anything in terms of any absolutes, you're not operating in the real world.

People survived car crashes before seatbelts were mandated. People still die in car crashes even when using seatbelts. You'd be a moron to argue seatbelts are useless or car manufactures should not be legally required to put them in cars.

The things that influence law and society is the actual data (how it changes over time) and nuance, and that's what the law deals in. Things you seem quite resistant to engage in.

Multiple people can share responsibility, as their actions combine together. A person who drives somebody to a bank for the known purpose of robbing the bank is determined to share *some* responsibility for the robbery of the bank. Just because they're not the person who took the money out of the bank vault does not mean the law does not consider them partly responsible.

I know I know, life is so much easier if you just try and make everything stupidly simple.

On balance, it would appear to be the case.

I respect many of those comedians for their satire, but not getting news from newspapers is a recipie for idiocracy.

"but labor is so insane"

I gather this is your fault

Let's hope Oracle never buys them out. They'll assert ownership over dBase, defeature it, try to sue anyone who targets it and replace it in the storyline.