Fifty years of brain washing has people like you believing that you have no power, no voice, and no choices.

Quite the opposite mate.

History has only proved how little power the common really have. The real bane of the last 50 years was that in modern Neo-Conservativism they have managed to convince us that we have power, autonomy and most of all independence. What freedoms we do have are gifted to us.

The American revolution was a war of the rich versus the aristocrats. Most all wars in fact occur because of wealthy or aristocratic dueling factions. Two things are different today than were true back then, for one thing the rich and aristocratic are one in the same as the aristocrats and rich have all become the wealthy merchant class. The second thing is that the wealthy merchants don't feud and duel nearly as much as they used to which has the positive effect of 50 years of world peace not seen in any other time in humanity. The negative effect is that they have all banded together to consolidate their power against their only true enemy, the informed common man in an age of plentiful and cheap information, the only threat to their continued power.

The bottom line is that throughout all of human history there has always been the master and the slave. It is the way of things.

The dirty little secret though is that nobody can put a lien against your property for not paying your medical bills. Sure they can hire debt collectors to harass you, and possibly report you to the credit bureau, but they can't legally take your assets.

Most people start getting into trouble when they try to pay their medical bills at the expense of their mortgage or car payments. Then when you are forced to file bankruptcy the medical debts are realized. If you can service your other debts without any problems then you will never have any real problems with medical bills.

Tell me how governments are preventing the hire of apprentices? Companies are free to hire anybody they want to as long as they abide by labor laws so I am not sure what your complaint here is. Are you upset that the government enforces a minimum wage and that these apprentices would need to be paid a minimum wage? Surely if these apprentices brought any value to your organization at all then they would be equal in value to the cost of the guy making your burger at McDonalds or greeting you at Wal Mart. Any coder, no matter how inexperienced is a bargain at minimum wage.

Thanks for pointing that out, because roman_mir is Foe number 1 on my list. Doesn't surprise me though, for hundreds of years of Conservatism, it has always produced the exact opposite effect of what it claims to solve.

Not an organ, but a body part just the same. My wife was in an accident when she was in high school and already had a complete knee replacement as a result of injuries. It has been over 15 years since and her replacement is causing her loads of pain, and she suddenly developed an allergy to a medication that was helping her tremendously. She is looking at a second replacement next year and due to current medical science, it is only possible to ever have only two total knee replacements in ones lifetime. In 20 years she may not be able to walk anymore. I would do anything to give her back her natural knee so I don't have to see constant unending pain in her eyes anymore.

Possibly jumping into a bad situation on the other hand is everything. One of the worst mistakes of my life was leaving a job I was happy with for what I felt was a company that would have better career growth potential.

It was an epic mistake and the worst job I have ever had, bar none. It was the only time in my life where I seriously considered quitting without having another job lined up. I worked for a miserable psychopath. Sadistic selfish micro-managing boss doesn't even begin to describe him. I found myself waking up in the mornings to go to work and running straight for the bathroom to vomit from intense panic attacks just because I was so nervous about going into work that day.

Fortunately I found something else after only 3 months but I honestly don't regret the experience because I learned an extremely valuable lesson in what aspects make a good job, and what drawbacks are inconsequential or can simply be dealt with. There is no such thing as a perfect job or situation, and I realized how much I appreciate and love my current job despite its obvious drawbacks. I never would have appreciated this place without that experience. Unless you are 110% sure it is a good move, and you are sure that you no longer want to stay at your current job, then don't do it.

I take the bus, 5 minutes to the bus stop, 5 minute wait, 50 minute bus ride, 15 minute drive from parking lot to my home. Overall about 1hr 15 minutes. I live pretty far away from the city, but that affords me the kind of lifestyle that I want. I don't make that much but there are literally no jobs where I live so what little money I have buys me a LOT. I have an enormous home, close to fishing, camping, hiking and state parks, the schools are amazing because the inner city trash doesn't pollute them with ignorance and crime, and the taxes are orders of magnitude lower than what my friends pay to live within 10 minutes of downtown. I don't mind much the 50 minute bus ride because I either sleep or read, or listen to music, or just do whatever the hell I would normally do at home to unwind. All of this and the commuter bus fare is STILL far cheaper than the criminal parking garage rates and the gas+wear/tear on my car. I like Pittsburgh because I get the privacy and outdoor activities I enjoy, with the convenience of well paying CMU tech startups of downtown.

You are making a pretty big leap there because the law on derived works leaves it open for interpretation that any significant improvement on the original patent can be considered a seperate patent.

... he would have gotten a big promotion for increasing shareholder value!

When it comes to effective regulation it is a matter of quality over quantity. The United States has shit tons of meaningless, toothless regulations and others that actually serve to promote cartels and create barriers to entry. We still end up with the same problem and a nation that is about as close to Fascism as it ever was in our history.

So even without regulation we end up with the same problem. Money is power, power molds our government institutions and corrupts our democracies into a putrid facade of what it was intended to be.

Implying that TOS was inherently Marxist is completely wrong, especially considering how it was a network television show airing in the 60's during the height of the red scare. If anybody had any inclination that it glorified communism or marxism in any way it would have never gotten past the pilot.

TOS had a few throwaway references to how the nations of Earth had united and threw away their differences, formed a better society and the Federation. It wasn't until the movies came out in the 80's where references existed to their not existing money or currency, and that their society was based around work for personal growth and glory in light of eradication of all poverty. TNG, Deep Space Nince, et. al expanded upon this notion in the subsequent series.

You exist a government entity and have one purpose and one sole purpose alone and that is to serve the residents of your municipality. You are clearly not in the business of making money through profit seeking endeavors.

With that being said, you worked hard on this and it seems to be a huge success, so the municipality should benefit greatly from such an endeavor. You may have something that works great for you but honestly Sharepoint is really only good for internal apps and you certainly do not have a scalable solution that could be easily marketed to other counties. The best thing you can do is to find a private company to partner with that can take the work that you did and use that as the foundation for building a product, as well as marketing and selling that product.

By letting private interests handle the risks involved, you and your county can serve an advisory role and still work out a mutually beneficial arrangement where your county is well compensated, either through a percentage of gross revenue or a large lump sum.

How do you sell a product that you know nothing about? Closing a sale takes the concious effort on the part of the buyer, meaning that one has to be convincing to the buyer as well as informative (which of course is impossible if you know little about the product). All I was saying is that most people are not convincing liars so worrying about the product and believing in the product helps everybody come to a mutually beneficial deal much easier.

Wrong again. Motiviation to do good and profit are not mutually exclusive. Not all people are sociopathic. Even a sociopath can do unintentional good even if their motivations are purely profit driven. This is sort of what capitalism is about. Acceptance that greed will always be a part of the human condition, so if SOME of the time society is better when both parties satiate their desires in a mutually beneficial economic arrangement then we are further ahead as a society.

In reality though it is far more complicated and messy than that as the Libertarian Utopia doesn't account well and sometimes runs counter to other very human motivations. Surely all salesmen are in it for the money, this is a given, but this doesn't mean their behaviors will run counter to their sense of morality, ethics, and guilt.

The OP's employer is doing far more than just disrespecting their employees. One can make the case they are foolishly and carelessly wasting their employee's hours on a trivial task that many marketing firms charge peanuts for. Their employees work time is a captured asset assuming they are exempt salary so they would be foolish to waste their talents and skills on efforts that are beneath their abilities.

You make it seem like the employer is somehow abusing their employees, not really. If anything the employer is being terribly foolish.

As a full time software developer I put in my 40 hours and offsite production support for the agreed upon terms of my salary. My salary is not changing (at least not if they want me to stick around) so however they want to use me in that 40 hours is their business. If that week they would want me clean the office kitchen I would certainly do it in the short term but this would be a terribly wasteful decision on their part.

They already pay me a lot of money, so they can have me writing quality software or they can put me on cleaning duty despite the fact that they could probably hire about 3-4 full time janitors for what they pay me.

This same concept applies to astroturfing which has a relatively low cost to outsource to a marketing company. The decision to waste their employees expensive time on such frivolous tasks as astroturfing is a sign of gross mismanagement of resources.