For-profit prisons and hospitals.
Not only they are bad ideas, but the incentives are horrible.
I could see the point of prisons if there was “warranty”. If a person guess back to jail, the first sentence was useless and the prison should be financially punished. You’ll see then how quickly therapy and quality job trainings are implemented.
Nah, they’d just have hitmen ready to kill anyone who leaves the prison.
The exit leads to an airlock, except the open button turns on the incinerator.
Using “tipping” as an excuse not to pay workers living wage.
Displaying prices without tax.
P.S. This is illegal where I live, but some places would be better off if it were illegal there also.
Displaying the price you will pay at the counter is my personal benchmark for civilized society. No price tags? You’re a medieval backwater. Wrong price tags? Go see a shrink, USA. Correct price tags is the way to go.
It’s weird here too because states set sales taxes. I live in Oregon, and we don’t have a standard sales tax here. That means what you see is what you pay at the register for most things, and it’s so freaking nice.
About the only thing I regularly see is the bottle tax (0.10/can added at the register). That’s refundable too, at least theoretically, so it’s not that bad.
Would it change your assessment if they have dynamic price tags that you can only see with the aid of some network-connected augmented reality solution or an online catalog (that you access with a QR code you scan, geotagged software, or something along those lines)?
digital serfdom
Capitalism
Something (almost) no one has mentioned: factory farming of livestock. I’m not gonna say a person who engages in subsistence farming shouldn’t be able to keep a coop of chickens for eggs (as long as their chickens are well cared for), but large scale animal husbandry and livestock is devastating to the environment and genuinely cruel.
Kill it yourself and eat it? Fine by me. Circle of life, yadda yadda.
Send hundreds into an abattoir to be machine killed by robots or strangers and eat it? No. Own up to the process, or don’t partake.
Own up to the process, or don’t partake.
That’s actually why I went vegan: I couldn’t see myself ever killing an animal.
That’s great in theory, but there’s just too many people for that to be anywhere close to realistic. If we had about 20% of our current global population, then I’d agree with you, but even the worst pandemic in modern history couldn’t scratch 1%.
my parents grew up eating meat once a every few months, from animals they raised themselves. No big farm, just a house in a village. Is that not sustainable?
No it isnt because unless you eat/drink enough dairy or take B12 supplements, youre going to have a B12 deficiency if you do that. People forget that meat actually serves a nutritional purpose.
Well they did eat lots of cheese and dairy. Is that not okay?
You need cows to produce all of that just like you would meat. The way cow physiology works requires that calves be birthed periodically to maintain milk production at large scale. The dairy industry is to a large extent, a by product of the meat industry. Those new calves have to go somewhere. And you have to keep in mind that 70% of the world’s population is lactose intolerant as adults. They rely on nondairy meat products for the majority of the B12 they get. OR you switch people to vegan substitutes that have B12 added to them. Right now those are niche/luxury products which is problematic for developing nations. Like… imagine going from small scale cattle and poultry farming to relying on B12 bacterial fermenters and soy production at large scale. That might be doable if new processes for using certain strains of B12 producing pseudomonas bacterial cultures can be developed for fermented soy products like tempeh can spread there but again, those arent there yet. More R&D is needed.
Well shit, B12 supplements are cheap enough. Are there any other reasons it’s a bad idea?
Vegans and vegetarians (once a month meat consumption isnt really an omnivore diet) are more likely to be deficient in Zinc, Iron and are more susceptible to osteoporosis due to poor Calcium uptake. Because animal protein does help the body to absorb minerals like Iron, Zinc and the like (it isnt known for sure why and phytates in certain plant foods also hampers mineral uptake) vegetarians and vegans need to overcompensate for those minerals in their food. On the order of about 50% higher than the RDA for omnivores.
Now I am not saying it cant be healthy, it can and there certainly are problems with how the average westerner eats, but I have no confidence in this being done correctly on a mass scale given the data that has come out. eg. 50% of vegans are deficient in B12 as measured by blood test and thats among a population that is likely much more aware of B12 being problematic since it is only naturally found in significant quantities in animal products and almost every meat and dairy substitute on the market is fortified with B12. And that widespread deficiency STILL happens. Vegetarians are less susceptible to B12 deficiency but still generally rely on the dairy industry to obtain that B12 along with Calcium and Zinc. And because B12 is water soluble not fat soluble, it needs to be obtained daily or in higher doses, semidaily. And the effects of B12 deficiency can be delayed months (pernicious anemia) or years (permanent nerve damage with the anemia hidden by excess folate consumption)
People need education and better meat and dairy substitutes that arent as processed to make this work. Right now, most of them have too much salt and saturated fats to be an improvement.
Thank you for the write up!
Insider trading by Congress
Trading at all by Congress. They should be required to lock their money in a blind trust with heavy oversight. If a CEO has to publish their stock sales months in advance, congresspeople should too.
Cheaters
Edit:
“they are cheating!”
Got elected to be congressman
“LET’S DO THIIISS”
As a general rule, the amount of exploitation and fraud it takes to “become” a billionaire should probably be illegal.
Lying about what you do with peoples data and who you share it with.
Sentencing and punishment are affected by “caste”
Ultra bright headlights.
I see what you mean
How can you see anything anymore?
Zero hour contracts in the uk don’t actually have to have an actual contract so if your boss says that something is in your job description you can’t argue otherwise because there was never a contract that said what your job roles were to start with.
How is that even legal somewhere ?
Lobbying and lobbyist groups.
God the nerds in here are annoying.
“Ackchually banning lobbying would mean nobody could talk to politicians anymore blah blah…”
Everyone knows what you mean when you say that lobbying should be illegal.
Everyone knows what you mean when you say that lobbying should be illegal.
Could you explain?
Probably the part where they’re straight-up bribing politicians to rubber stamp the garbage that ALEC writes.
Lobbying as in “bribery with extra steps” where companies give money to politicians, ask them to do something, then say it’s ok because it’s “lobbying” and therefore not bribery, but people are coming in and pointing out how lobbying technically just means talking to politicians, but that’s not what RotatingParts meant.
Isn’t the problem that the “extra steps” are loopholes?
And legal loopholes are like a hydra. Close one and the lawyers will open up two more.
I imagine the line is hard to draw. But of course, the ones doing the drawing of that line are also on the receiving end of the good stuff, so there’s incentives to not close those loopholes…
Does that include unions?
Banning lobbying would mean no one would be able to talk to a politician/official about an issue. Not even writing your local officials, proposing a local ordinance to making bike lanes or spending money to fix-up/improve a local park. Because that’s lobbying. You’re asking a government to wield their official power and/or spend public money, for your (and potentially others’) benefit.
Even lobbying groups aren’t necessarily bad. The Sierra Club, EFF, ACLU. These are American, but I’m sure there are equivalents of these in other countries.
So banning lobbying doesn’t really work. Now if you’re talking financial contributions and gifts and nice dinners from those who lobby, yeah that probably needs to be more highly regulated or stopped altogether. Generally speaking, any kind of quid pro quo.
But just talking to a politician should not be made illegal. In democracies, talking to people, talking to politicians, and trying to convince them to align with your view is the name of the game.
Gonna overturn the 1st Amendment?
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I’m sure there are ways to dial in the abuse, but what legislator is gonna vote for that?
Governments, businesses, corporations and all of us just normalizing and accepting that the majority of everything we own or buy at affordable prices are all based on taking advantage of as many poor people as possible in our home countries and most of the time in third world developing nations where people are paid pennies for their work.
We complain about China, yet everyone buys everything from them. We look down on third world developing countries yet we base our economies on manufacturing a ton of stuff from them because they all hire people for as little as possible. In America, Canada and Europe, we have agricultural workers we ship in from poorer countries to harvest our crops because we don’t want to pay higher prices for labour to the people that live in our countries … we would rather pay poverty wages for imported labour that we don’t want to stay in our country.
Everything we do, buy and pay for is all based on exploitation … our entire economy the world over is based on it … yet it is perfectly legal … but if we are all so moral, enlightened and intelligent then it should be illegal.
Screwing over a large number of people to benefit a small number of people. Religion and corporations immediately come to mind.
Advertisements for prescription medication
I left the US to work overseas and when I came back the law changed and everyone was hooked on viagra, the “little purple pill” and everything else…it was VERY obvious what happened…after we sttled down we went to establish care woth a GP & I walked out of my initial appointment with 6 prescriptions.
ridiculous…
This one is pretty location specific but I agree that US law doesn’t make any sense. Like, physician and pharmacist spend 10 years at university to learn all the details about prescription medication and then have to get yearly retraining, so how do you even do ad’s for that
Two ways: first, you go to doctors offices and hospitals and give gifts to the person responsible for picking which version of this medicine to buy/prescribe.
Second, convince patients to ask for your version when they see their doctor by telling them on tv that it will make their life better or whatever
One side changes on EULAs.
Hardware that requires a proprietary service to work.
Looking at you, nvidia.
Selling life-saving drugs at large multiples of the cost to manufacture + distribute. The most obvious example being insulin.
Switching political party in the same term that you were elected to office.
CEOs making 100x the median worker at the same company.
Assault rifles and other automatic or military-grade weapons. They have no practical purpose in the hands of a citizen. Pistols, shotguns, and hunting rifles should be sufficient for hunting and self defense.
Generic finance bro bullshit. Frivolous use of bank credit for speculative investment. Predatory lending. Credit default swaps. It’s just a spectrum of Ponzi Schemes. Let’s reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.
Non-disclosure of expensive gifts to Supreme Court judges. Looking at you, Clarence.
Military recruiting at high schools.
Junk mail. You literally have to pay a company to stop sending it.
belonging to one particular political party or another doesn’t necessarily dictate which way a politician votes.
Automatic weapons for the most part are already illegal, assault rifle isn’t a term that actually means anything and neither does military grade. In fact only 3% of gun deaths in the states are from rifles. The real issue is the illegal gun market and the endless supply of hi-points and other pistols.
You’ve been lied to.
I thought the last few school shootings were from legslky owned rifles?
That’s what you hear about. You don’t hear about the other 40,000 gun deaths (almost half suicides) anymore than you hear about the 40,000 vehicular deaths.
Kis shoots up a school and kills 5? All over the media for a solid week. Asshole ripping down the interstate takes out a family of 5? Meh. Quick local news blurb.
OP’s point is that rifles, legal or not, aren’t what’s doing all the killing. It’s the pistols. Nobody will talk about it because there’s no way in hell for a pistol ban to pass. But words like “assault” and “military” get traction.
Remember Virginia Tech? Worst mass murder at the time? Kid did most of his killing with a .22 pistol.
They were. They were horrific tragedies. They are also the outlier of outliers. And any legislation targeting them is either a) going to have zero effect on crime, b) only going to harm law abiding citizens or C) both
isn’t it specifically going to rein in the outlier of outliers that school shootings are? I think people would be really happy with that, even if the average crime rate doesn’t go down
I doubt it If they cant get an ar they’ll just go get a black market pistol for $100. And besides, the way to curb school shootings isn’t through firearm restrictions. It’s through actual proper mental health programs and funding. Something that the US government refuses to fund because it’ll actually fix the problem instead of just being a feel good gesture.
The only shootings where mental illness plays a major factor are suicides. When it comes to gun violence, only 4-5% of perpetrators have a severe mental illness. When it comes to school mass shootings specifically [ source ]:
- 67% are white
- 100% are male (95% according to a different source)
- “Severe mental illness (e.g., psychosis) was absent in the majority of perpetrators; when present, psychotic symptoms are more associated with mass murders in academic settings involving means other than firearms”
And with regard to school shootings generally:
- 77% of the time, someone knew about their plans for the shooting ahead of time
- more than half of K-12 shooters have a history of psychological problems, but the bigger issue is that nearly three quarters of the time, they had been being bullied or harassed in school
- depending on the source, nearly half or more than half got the gun from home or a relative, often by stealing an unsecured or under-secured firearm
- 91% of shootings were with a handgun
If we could reduce bullying and do a better job at making students feel like they have value and matter, that would go a lot further toward reducing school shootings than anything involving mental illness (aside from, perhaps, efforts to reduce the stigma associated with it).
Substance abuse - drugs, particularly those that are illegal, and alcohol - as well as poverty and inequality is much more strongly linked to gun violence.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t continue improving our available mental health resources (the majority of deaths from guns are by suicide, after all), but we shouldn’t use mental illness as a scapegoat.
Huh well alright then. I thought mentally illness played a bigger part. Now I know. Thanks!
An “assault rifle” is specifically a selective-fire rifle with detachable magazines and intermediate cartridges. AR-15s, AK-47s, and M16s meet this definition. You are likely thinking of “assault weapon,” a term which is not well-defined.
And while it’s true that most mass shootings and gun deaths in general are perpetrated by handguns, assault rifles are responsible for the deadliest mass shootings.
Because it is so challenging to pass gun control legislation in the US, the least we can hope to do is forbid ownership of the deadliest types of guns.
I agree that this is not sufficient though. We need to have more stringent requirements for acquiring any firearm. 28 states don’t even require background checks for private sale of guns. Our laws fall way too short on gun trafficking.
The illegal gun market is just a symptom of the very legal gun market. The head of the ATF even said, “virtually every crime gun in the US starts off as a legal firearm.”
We need background checks, and I don’t think private unlicensed gun sales should be legal either.
Okay except most rifles, including AK47’s AR15’s and M16’s are semi automatic only so they aren’t selective fire. And if we ignore that requirement and go with the the other two requirements it means that .22lr hunting rifles with a box mag count as “assault rifles”
Pistols are still the deadliest type of guns no matter what metric you use.
The head of the ATF is also responsible for operation fast and furious. Not to mention that is a nothing statement when you think about it. Of course they start off as legal firearms. Gun traffickers are “legally” buying these weapons overseas end mass from firearm companies and warlords or they’re being stolen from legal gun owners.
Pistols are still the deadliest type of guns no matter what metric you use.
That’s a silly statement. Why do you think soldiers prefer to use assault rifles in combat? I said “deadliest” meaning the most capable of killing, not the most statistically likely gun to kill someone.
“Most capable of killing” doesn’t mean anything though. A bullet is a bullet is a bullet. What gun its fired out of doesn’t really matter when its against soft targets. 9mm 5.56 and 7.62 are all the same lethality.
Edit: Also comparing the use case of gangers and even school shooters with soldiers is foolish. The main benefits of a rifle (in war) are range, stability and higher cyclic rate. Virtually all rifles are semi automatic so cyclic rate doesn’t matter. And at the range pretty much all school shootings take place in, pistol vs rifle doesn’t matter. Stability is also largely irrelevant based on distance and the fact that unarmed civilians dont shoot back.
All this to say, 91% of school shootings are perpetrated with pistols. So this hyperfixation on “assault rifles” is silly. I say again, you’ve been lied to.
Ok I don’t really agree with all of your lines of reasoning but I’m curious what you think the solution to our gun problem is. We at least agree that we have a problem, right?
Oh certainly.
Legislation needs to focus pistols. Cracking down on the black market of highpoints.
The head of the ATF is also responsible for operation fast and furious.
That’s just whataboutism.
Honestly true. I just think he’s a moron so I discount much of what he says.
Also I looked up the statement about most guns being legal. Based on data from his own agency its 54%. While that is technically the majority, thats a coin flip. “Virtually all” in my books is 70% or higher.
What the fuck? You have to pay to stop getting junk mail? We in Australia just put a little sign on our letterbox saying ‘no junk mail’ and we stop getting it. That’s insane. Same thing with the insulin comment and some of the stuff other people said like forced arbitration. America is crazy.
You think thats bad, we have active shooter drills and safe rooms because nothing is done about our gun nut problem.
Yup I paid the fee to stop getting marketing junk mail. Then when I started an LLC, they started sending all of that mail again addressed to the LLC. You can’t fucking win.
Free paper is free paper. You can also mess with them by signing them up for each other and/or sending them stones (if there’s a return envelope; they’ll be charged for it).
Lol @ just filling return envelopes with worthless dead weight
Forced arbitration
Definitely in a B2C context. If businesses want to force arbitration between themselves then fine.
Even worse in a Business to Employee context.
