Comment Re:No mention of Android anywhere in the article? (Score 1) 340
Make people think
If you do that then the marketing won't work! Why, they might even start evaluating their needs rationally...
Make people think
If you do that then the marketing won't work! Why, they might even start evaluating their needs rationally...
You should never seek to make yourself helpless or at the mercy of people that know more than you do.
When you have a culture in which average people believe thinking and reasoning is a terrible burden to be avoided or offloaded at every opportunity, you naturally will observe the kind of dependency and vulnerability you point out here. It leads to people who don't want to be involved in decisions that drastically affect their own lives.
Somehow there arose this myth that you either know nothing at all, or must be a fully trained expert, that no intermediate level of knowledge, no amount of reference could ever be useful.
It amazes me that conservatives have given Obama such a free pass on all of this so far. Hopefully that changes now.
It amazes me how you or anyone else can see this happen time and time again and still believe that we have two distinct parties.
Jefferson knew what a two-party system would become and specifically warned against it. At some point they both realize they can play the voters in the middle, sort of like "good cop, bad cop". For maximum effect, switch roles once in a while. Then people support a given one for irrational, emotional, tribal, "my team" reasons and stop thinking critically. Take a hard look at the world of US politics and tell me this isn't exactly what's happening. Then make the next tiny leap and understand that someone definitely benefits from this, and it is not accidental.
... or maybe headbutting the wall a few times if the stubborn customer has insisted on actually paying for the car, thus depriving you of the finance company commission.
lol
My dad found out how to frustrate the dealership, pick out a car and plop down a credit card. Salesman is frustrated, clerk is baffled, accounting is pissed(all of a sudden that 3% fee seems to matter...) He'll pay it off when the bill comes I imagine and the only one paying finance fees are the dealer. That probably wasn't their goal
Heh I actually did this once. The credit card was only a form of payment - I had the money in the bank (otherwise, this would be immensely stupid).
The sales guy was noticably pissed off but he went through with it. He even acted professional and everything. Oh and this was after extensive haggling and (through willingness to go elsewhere) talking him down to some thin margins.
He was a likable guy and I have nothing against him. It was satisfying to see him sweat, all the same.
"Limited liability" means that the corporation's liabilities are separate from the owners' personal liabilities. If the corporation damages you, you sue the corporation, not the owners. If the owner damages you, you sue the owner, not the corporation.
Nobody escapes liabilities, but owners are only risking what assets they put into the company.
The major criticism is that creating a corporation is a way to gain personal enrichment without personal liability.
As for causality, for all we know, he owns a business with 20 employees that he treats well, and thinks other business owners should do the same.
Whether I own a controlling share in a Fortune 500 corporation or whether I have never run a business of any kind doesn't let you escape a basic fact of life: if you believe I am wrong, the only way to correct me is to explain to me why I am wrong and why your point of view is closer to reality than mine.
Sometimes on this site I encounter someone with the intellectual honesty and the emotional maturity to do so. When that happens, I admit I was mistaken, I change my mind, and you don't hear the old viewpoint from me again. I have no problem doing that because I don't entertain some silly fantasy about always being right and always knowing everything. When I encounter someone who clearly has more knowledge than I do, I listen and learn for my own edification. It's called humility and it must be consciously practiced if you wish to develop it and enjoy its virtues.
The only real losers here are those who are clearly wrong but are too prideful to admit it, so they bicker and quibble, usually try to make it personal, and pretend like they're fooling anyone. It's childish behavior that harms the signal-to-noise ratio of the site and makes adult conversation more difficult to enjoy. I say if you really like being right so much, then you have an obligation to correct your wrongs.
You're getting all excited and you appear a bit frustrated because you are choosing to bicker about which of us owns a business and which of us has a deeper grasp and other PERSONAL MATTERS rather than fulfill the criteria in the first paragraph of this post. There is a difference between stubborn and tenacious.
Please don't read judgement into that question. It is simply something I always wonder when I hear statements like yours.
It's a transparent attempt to change an abstract discussion about labor relations into a personal matter. This is the kind of tactic used by someone who dislikes the point that was made but acknowledges that he has no real counter-point. It is strongly indicative of a weak position on your part. That you are at least being polite about it does not change this.
There is a reason you're catching flak for it in several other comments. Rhywden explained it succinctly.
So then, do you have a solid reason why you disagree with what I said?
(On that note: I really don't get why some Americans are so much in favor of a free market when it concerns goods, but very much against it when it's labor.)
The idea sadly is like this: when government and corporations exercise market power, that's the free market. When workers or average customers exercise market power, it's hippy pinko communism.
The fact is, an employer and an employee inherently have competing interests. Negotiating is a perfectly valid way to resolve competing interests by seeking a middle ground acceptable to both.
Go find work elsewhere then.
Striking just shows at they can't. Otherwise they already would have.
The flip side is that without unions and the real threat of losses caused by strikes, the next employer in that line of work will merely do the exact same thing. Consider the way that the major cell networks all charge similar rates (including overcharging in many cases for texting) when they are ostensibly competing with each other for customers. If it's not actual collusion it's similar in effect because it's based on a "market rate" which is merely a look at what everyone else is doing.
Now maybe other employers should do the same thing, I'm not giving an opinion there (for those reactive types who can't plainly see that I didn't), just that such an effect is something to consider.
People think you're saying MRSA, and they tune out. I've seen it happening over and over now.
Actually listening to what other people are saying and trying to comprehend what they do and (and most importantly) don't mean just isn't a valued part of American culture.
When you were younger, did you ever work an entry-level customer service type of job? Then you know all about it. You see this behavior even in people who are actively seeking and truly do need your advice. I think it's a form of puerile impatience (that ends up costing more time ironically enough). It could also be an attempt to show a false superiority and independence, since it is most often seen in helpless people who are unable to perform even the most basic observation and problem-solving (think Freudian projection).
The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets. -- L. Zadeh