under one of the "abandoned" drug rules? I know they've done that with other drugs. Most countries just manufacture the drugs themselves, but we don't do that in America. Instead we grant a monopoly to a single company and, well, they charge 100,000 times as much since without it you die.

You're always going to have some stratification of society. There will always be the ultra-rich and the ultra-poor. The problem is that there used to be a much smoother transition area between these extremes.

I grew up in the Rust Belt, and for a few decades (late 40s through the late 70s mostly) there was ample opportunity for non-geniuses to make a good living doing basic factory work. If you got to the end of high school and weren't college material, you'd join a union and go work in one of the trades or on an assembly line making physical products. You'd get training through an apprenticeship and have income that increased throughout your life. You wouldn't be filthy rich, but you would at least have a little extra to consume goods and services now and then. You'd be able to raise a family and have a decent life without having to be overly intellectual.

Problem is, society starts unraveling when people who are worse off feel there's no future for them. After all the factories went to China, some workers retrained for service and corporate jobs. 20 years after that, they started offshoring all the basic corporate functions. People need more and more education for a comfortable life, and now knowledge work is being automated. Unless we want to give up the whole idea of work-earn-consume-repeat, we need to find something for millions of people to do that isn't Uber or Instacart or dog walking for less than minimum wage and no security.

Y That's a pretty big thing to ignore. Most of the politicians that are pro gun control know about as much about guns as a tree knows about heart surgery.

Small businesses will certainly be affected in a big way. Minimum wage jobs are not meant to be careers. Or if they are entry level then employees should be getting promoted if they are any good at their job.

The problem is that the only companies that will be affected are ones that will pass that cost on to the consumer. The real tax cheats like Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. own enough politicians that it won't happen.

I'd be fine with that. Unfortunately from what I've seen very little of the good is taught anymore. The founding fathers are being shown as nothing but horrible white racists. But somehow Lincoln doesn't get besmirched. By today's standards he would certainly be considered a racist. Judging history in a critical manner through today's perspective is just stupid.

If you tax and mandate $15/hour wages for jobs that make no sense to pay that, then those companies will hire less people and delegate those responsibilities to less people. I find it humorous when people point to Scandavian countries as successful examples of socialism. But some of them don't have any minimum wage.

Yeah and Republicans want to grind the poor under their boots and give everything to the rich and blah blah blah. It's really sad that we've gotten to the point we're at.

Well rounded? No. If it was well rounded then both parties would be pissed off about something. I also find it funny that you would find not teaching anything about religion to be well rounded. I'd prefer they taught more about all of the major religions in school. At least then I wouldn't have to hear about how evil Christians are, and what a bunch of heathens muslims are, etc.

This has happened under both parties. During election seasons they all talk about this and no one ever does a damn thing when they can.

Really? Most people I know have and are paying less in taxes.

And the liberal states keep relaxing laws and taxing their population to the point that they are moving to these poorer states. There has to be a middle ground.

Is that any dumber than continuing to let homeless junkies sleep, shit and shoot up in the streets? While taxing the working class to the point that they migrate to these poorer states? From what I've seen those states aren't very open to listening to deas that differ from their own either.

I don't know how we've gotten to this point, but it's truly scary. People have gotten to the point that anyone who isn't in lockstep with themselves are simply wrong, stupid,and should be treated as less than human. And if they dare to speak they must be shouted down if no physically assaulted.

Yeah, good luck with that. The savings accounts of both my parents are now frozen because one has dementia, the other has mobility issues and either has the appropriate digital ID. And I did try to get one for my dad only to realize their offices are barely open Monday-Friday when I'm at work. Fortunately their regular account is with another bank so I haven't been forced to deal with it but a physical encounter with my bank is currently an extreme inconvenience. Maybe it's cause and effect but practically everyone now uses online banking and it's extremely annoying to get shit done offline. I paid for my two biggest expenses - my apartment and my car - online, I don't see the trend turning.

and then the General. And give him a left leaning Congress to pass Medicare for All. No more bullshit half measures, insurance works best with a big pool of the insured, and there's no bigger pool than "everybody". And you still get choice, you get more choice since you can pick any doctor instead of the ones in network. Hell, it's not like you have any choice now, your job can change your insurance on a whim.

they're going after drugs that affect relatively or very few people, most people don't need much medical care until their mid 60s besides pre/post natal (which totals around $20-$30k out of pocket 2 or 3 times in your life). It's not hard to use arguments like "choice" to keep folks from regulating or eliminating private health insurance systems that promote this behavior under those circumstances. If they did it with one of the major Statin heart medicines maybe, but for this stuff it's perfectly doable.

Also the media is on their side because the media gets billions in advertiser dollars from pharmaceuticals and private health insurance (don't forget, they spend more on adverts than on research). Meaning you're unlikely to see anyone really call this stuff out all that much. Go re-watch the Democratic Primary debates and watch for how questions about Medicare for All are framed. They're constantly trying to get Bernie (and until she backtracked Warren) to blurt out a sound bite about raising your taxes that can be used in attack ads and run non-stop. .

To add to this, until you are simulating the n-body particle interact of every particle in the system, you cannot capture all the physics. Most of physics simulation is applying simplifying assumptions. Otherwise the problem is intractable. With the simplifications, comes limitations on the simulations application. Most of the time the corrections due to the missing physics are negligible. However in other cases the are extremely critical. More than likely, in this case, they are missing critical physics that a real device will have.

The free market has shown time and time again that it is corrupt.

politicians and voters

Generally, "politicians" and "free market" are mutually exclusive.

At that level there aren't going to be enough 'gifted' students to fill 1 classroom.

"Endless stream of updates"?

Care to inform me about the magical IoT device that gets updates after the mandated warrenty period? Hell, most of them don't get any at all. And yes, that includes things like TVs and even NAS systems.

Yeah, and it's a clickbait headline. If you want actual information, check out this ytmnd about scientology. It's funny how ytmnd is more accurate than clickbait slashdot these days.

Yes, the free market is corrupt. And so are all governments that seek to regulate it. And so is every independent regulatory organization.

Wherever there are humans, there is corruption. There is no organizational system which is safe from corruption. It can never be escaped, it can only be managed. The one and only force that can keep corruption under control is public accountability.

Wrong dumbass.

Which are all complete bullshit.

I suggest you read actual peer reviewed scientific journals dumbass.

For the same reason that it's idiotic to install a bank's (or any company's) app on your phone - it's just an excuse for that bank/company to install spyware in your phone or browser.

You may be their customer, but they want you to be their product too.

apart from all the other problems with such spyware (your bank doesn't need to know where you are or where you travel to/from, or who you communicate with, or what web sites you visit etc), that creates a conflict of interest WRT security - they have an incentive to undermine your security so that they can spy on you.

actually, phones are worse - but only because they're insecure, under the control of the manufacturer rather than the "owner" (except for a tiny handful who root their phone and install firmware that serves them rather than the manufacturer), and easily lost or stolen devices.

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BTW, one obvious solution that improves security is for banks to issue client certificates to customers for use with their API. If an incoming connection isn't encrypted with a cert issued by the bank, and the cert doesn't match the customer's account, then deny access. This is in addition to the usual login & password & 2F auth device (physical hw, not crappy SMS software on an insecure phone). The same could be done with a browser - it's not hard to install a client cert in a browser.

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Finally, on the user side, e-banking users should be taught not to use the same browser for their bank that they use for general browsing (e.g. if they normally use firefox, they should use chromium or something else for their bank)....and, preferably, that should be done in a separate login on their PC. and, even more preferably, e-banking should be done from linux or freebsd - if they normally run windows, they should boot to a Live CD/USB (or dual-boot partition) just to do their banking. BTW, not in a VM - keystroke-logging malware on a Windows host can still capture everything that's typed into a guest VM running linux.

That'll just make things worse. The fundamental problem here is that there aren't enough pharmaceutical companies making generic drugs (Mallinckrodt can only jack up the price this much if nobody else is making it). Scaring off companies making generic drugs will just exacerbate the situation. The end state if we go down that route is that these generic drugs won't be available at any price because nobody wants to take the risk of being whacked by some idiot who decides on his own that pharama company execs deserve to be whacked.

Normally, the cause of these problems is overregulation preventing competition from forming (e.g. cable ISPs getting government-granted monopolies, leading to high prices and poor service). But you can make a pretty good argument that the FDA needs to be as strict as it is with whom it approves for making and selling medications. In which case the solution is to lower the FDA's barrier to entry without lowering how strict they are. Reduce the cost of getting FDA approval, or provide financial assistance and incentives for someone wishing start a company which manufactures generic medications. If nobody in the U.S. wants to manufacture it, come up with a way where foreign companies can import generics into the U.S. and sell them here.

Once you introduce competition, you undercut any company's ability to pull of pricing shenanigans like this.

Your first paragraph is nonsense and utter ignorance. At least read the Wikipedia entry about CCPA.

Dude, these APIs are primarily read only anyways.

If convenience > assets, then you really don't have any assets of any consequence.

If you want to do it fairly, create equal chances, not equal outcomes. Giving everyone the same chance to do something is a good thing and will eventually lead to you having the best for every possible situation because the number of people competing for that position is higher.

Equal outcome eventually means that you're accepting the lowest common denominator.

A lot of the 3rd party data APIs are read only, anyways, and obscure full account numbers and customer details

Amazon customers have a choice of who to support via the Smile program. Someone's trying to turn it into a political slippery slope. Narconon is a 501c3 organization, and it's not Amazon's role to judge whether it passes someone else's critical judgement. If you don't agree with what they do, don't choose to donate to them, and feel free to try and convince others likewise. But to criticize Amazon for simply offering the choice is wrong.

They offer lots of choice to support other churches - Catholic, Lutheran, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. Should they be criticized for that, too?

I have assets. I also have better things to worry about.