And the installer was installing cameras that follow everyone down the road. So you say that following one person down the road is "always suspicious", do you agree that following EVERYONE down the road is "always suspicious"?

If the reporter had gotten there first and installed cameras all along the road to follow the Flock installer, would you say that is less suspicious?

In a real sense, the back end recognition that Flock does is exactly stalking on a massive scale.

It's not a matter of not being seen or even not being photographed every now and then. That level of privacy is not available in public.

But even in public, until Flock and it's ilk came along, we had the privacy of being just a face in the crowd. The people who saw you on main street were different from the people that saw you on 2nd street, were different from the people who saw you leaving your home. There was no database and no recognition software to stitch all of the sightings together to form a coherent record of your movements.

It's that tracking and recording that people object to.

Not always, it depends on the situation. If you don't have stock in the company, if your boss doesn't respect you, if other companies in the region/industry are the same, then these factors weigh towards a union.

Again, it depends on the situation. If someone else is already forming a union, lending your support to it is lightweight.

Indeed, he may have better luck waiting a couple years and donating to the campaign of president Warren.

They're after low wages. You have to think about the labor market as a whole not just your slice of it. When you get to the c level that's what you're doing. You're hanging out with your other multi multi-millionaire or billionaire golf buddies talking about how you're going to lower wages in your industry so they can lower wages in their industry so that everybody's wages can be lower.

This is important because even if it costs you slightly more overall you get a lot more power out of it. And it's not about money at that level. It's about power. It's about the ability to tell you what to do and you have to do it or they take away your access to food and shelter and healthcare.

That's the difference between you and them. They think in a completely different way about everything.

There are two rational responses to an abusive employer:

1) Leave.
2) Join a union.

Which one is best depends on the circumstances.

They're all motivated reasoning, you shouldn't take them too seriously.

That is, they start with the conclusion they want, then say whatever they think will confuse/convince you the most.

You can't patent an idea, you can only patent an implementation of an idea.

In America, that is fine.

That one is easy, it became a big enough issue that they thought it would give them cheap votes.

ok, even 30 years ago I never heard a local (or any) news station brag about harassment.

Actual journalists didn't stop doing journalism by choice. They were fired and it's difficult for them to get by without an income.

There are some people left trying to do journalism. Mostly keeping their heads down and hoping that psychopath like Elon Musk don't rip them off while waiting for the public to come back to their senses...

I guess what I'm saying is I'm not blaming the journalists. The propagandists can go fuck themselves. Anyone working for Fox News knows what they are. I dabbled a little in journalism in high school and college and I respect actual journalists. It's a tough and miserable and largely thankless job.

Most of that money was spent bribing politicians because what they're doing is illegal. They also were paying the drivers a reasonable amount of money in order to tell the public that it was okay that all of the traditional protections for workers had been gutted.

So yes Uber did have a short-term amount of money they had to put out in order to do something profoundly illegal and antisocial and something that your great-grandparents died to prevent...

But they weren't losing money because of a lack of profitability or even how much they were paying the drivers. They could have of course competed honestly with the taxi cab system but they were massively underpricing taxi cabs.

So like I said yes paying the driver's okay will cause fares to go up slightly. This means that people who take Ubers for casual use like say I don't feel like driving to the grocery store or kids putzing around in them will no longer be able to afford them. That will more than be made up for by the people who have to take a taxi cab for a variety of reasons. For example every year I go see my eye doctor and I don't have a choice I have to take a cab because everyone I know works during the day so I don't have anyone to drive me in the middle of the week and when they dilate my eyes I'm basically blind. So yes they can double the price of my trip and I will pay it.

But here's the dirty Little secret they already doubled the price of that trip. Because they have a shitload of data and they know I have to pay it

You need to accept that you're wrong. That we can have a decent civilization that pays people a living wage and you won't have to give up your lifestyle for it. That we don't have to torture people just to make you happy.

On the other hand you might not want to accept that because you might be one of those deeply unhappy people who desperately need somebody else to be even more unhappy. I meet a lot of guys like that and they are always anti labor and right wing

People still need cabs. Also Uber is a highly profitable company.

On the other hand if the only way we can have a transportation system is borderline slave labor then you might have a point. But they're not going to curl up and die what's actually going to happen is that the need for cabs is still there the prices are going to shoot up and people are going to have to pay it. Yeah you might have fewer people using them for convenience but when you need to get to the airport you need to get to the airport.

If however our economic system is so dysfunctional that we have to have 15 to 20% in abject poverty for it to be functional then that's not sustainable and there's going to be Mass violence very soon.

And always remember, no matter how good a shot you are or how good a shot you think you are you're always going to run out of bullets before the world runs out of desperate people with nothing to lose.