Just do yourself a favor and stick with using what already works. Don't upgrade to the new shiny thing unless you already know the reasons why you want to.
Among all the other technical issues, Wayland devs have an attitude issue. Users asked for fractional scaling for years and were faced with flat refusals and insulting quips from the wayland developers. The only reason they've added it now is because Valve asked them for it. Wayland devs think users are worms and corporations are gods.
The thing is, the old way is also clearly broken. For me, X11 has always been a slow, stuttery, screen-tearing mess across a range of hardware, while Wayland is much better at shipping complete frames on time during normal desktop use. So it's a choice between the broken old thing and the broken new thing.
Only if you narrowly define 'people' to mean the tiny minority of people who are thieves, and exclude the overwhelming majority of people who aren't thieves. Thieves are safer on the street but everybody else is safer with thieves off the street. You've got your priorities skewed.
This is a reasonable comment if you're talking about stabbings or murders but not shoplifting. Allowing people to steal from retail stores with impunity doesn't make anyone unsafe.
Realize that I'm not arguing for impunity, just that incarceration should be off the table.
Allowing people to commit any forceful or violent crime makes everyone feel less safe but also encourages the crime to escalate.
> just that incarceration should be off the table.
Nope. Nobody takes options off the table or the opposition adjusts. If we say we won't imprison people for X then X becomes a freebie. You see it in SF where shoplifting under $1k isn't pursued, in Vancouver where vandalism isn't pursued and you can pitch a tent up against someone's building, etc. Without involuntary incarceration you can't even force someone into detox or rehab.
We should try to have better options but we've got to stop the sabotage of our system. If you can't present a better alternative to incarceration (for everyone holistically) then you can't complain.
California is starting to clean up its DAs, a bit, British Columbia is cracking down. Eventually we'll have the use of our legal system again.
Right, pawn shops are held to a higher standard. They have a relationship with the local police and are made to keep records. Amazon is a better fence than your average pawn shop.
That's not necessarily a smoking gun; public libraries often give away old books they don't want to keep around anymore. About a quarter of the books in my personal library are ex-library books, but none were stolen.
Of course if it's some popular in-demand book, it was almost certainly stolen. Most of the free library books I've scored are 50 year old textbooks about obscure/obsolete topics.
> But surely Amazon is literally handling stolen goods? Is there a smoking gun email?
If Amazon were a mom and pop fence, the local cops could bust them in a sting. But Amazon is a huge megacorp, so even if the cops try to catch them in a sting nothing will stick because Amazon will claim their shear scale rendered them completely oblivious to everything and therefore not criminally culpable.
If you can identify your stolen goods at a local or huge chain pawn shop and your local police feel like helping you can absolutely be made whole by following a process.
If you can prove Amazon has or sold your stolen goods you can absolutely be made whole by following a process.
I don’t really think our system errs on the side of justice but I think the remedies available to victims in these two scenarios are about appropriate to the respective scenarios.
Removing each other from committees is a far cry from kicking each other out of Congress. That has only happened twice since the 19th century, and both times it came after a criminal conviction. Merely being an absolute idiot isn't enough to get a 2/3rds vote to kick out a congressmen because that would be mutually assured destruction; they all know they're all absolute idiots so they don't expel each other out for that.
Also,
> Both the House and the Senate make their own rules,
The rules for expelling congressmen are set in the US Constitution, they don't just make it up as they go. Unless you're talking about their ability to amend the US Constitution, but that's even less likely than kicking these guys out the normal way.
The best way to get them kicked out would be to have them convicted for bribery/corruption, then you might get a 2/3rds vote to expel them.
This comment makes no sense in the context of America. I guess you're from a country with some sort of Parliamentary system where governments are formed when a party is elected?
In America, parties aren't elected and don't form governments. Accordingly, an American political party cannot kick out a congressman, much less replace one. To remove a congressman requires a two third vote (from congress, not from a political party); this never happens in the modern era without a criminal conviction as the impetus. And nether congress or a political party can simply bring in a new congressman; you'd need another election for that.
That sounds a little like you think criminals aren't a necessary symptom of "living in a scarcity society" itself...? As long as it's easier to take something than it is to pay for something, there will be people who take, and there will be groups that organize around taking.
Pretending that crime is some kind of quirk that you can get rid of if only [fill in reasons here], and that the grey and black markets wouldn't exist if only we didn't have crime, implies a lack of understanding when it comes to socioeconomics.
Unless you know how to get us to a post-scarcity world of course, in which case: please make that happen. We're all tired.
I used to be able to go buy a stick of deodorant without waiting five minutes for somebody to come over with a key and get it for me.
That economics has a just-so story to explain why this is exactly what I should expect doesn't change the fact that I didn't used to have to do this, and now I do have to do this.
> As long as it's easier to take something than it is to pay for something, there will be people who take, and there will be groups that organize around taking.
One of the basic functions of the state is to make it difficult for people to steal things.
No isn't. It's to impose sanctions on those who steal things. They have zero involvement in making in harder to do so. Neither laws nor police make it more difficult to steal things, they merely raise the cost of doing so, and as long as that cost is less than the benefit derived from stealing things, thievery will be there to do its thing.
Arguably still no, that's the responsibility of the owners to help facilitate (through video surveilance, etc), mostly required by insurance. Government's role really is just the part that formalizes what the punishment is, should you get caught. Society is who decides how hard, or easy, it is to steal things.
Up to a point, if the money spend into making it difficult is clearly lacking in root problems that are causing people to become criminals in the first place then other forms of governments will quickly become attractive and the likelihood to create civil unrest.
Scarcity is not that much of an incentive to steal when all basic needs are fulfilled without much hassle, that's why many countries with their shit together don't have this problem; the US is not one of them.
Okay, yeah no. If you think everyone is so well off they don't benefit from stealing something as stupid as deodorant, you've been living an incredibly sheltered life and it's time to actually look into how much poverty there really is.
There are maybe a handful of countries with their shit together enough for this kind of thing to not happen anymore. The overwhelmingly vast majority of countries on the planet are not those.
So what? The mere existence of a few tell us that is really possible, and its not like the US or other countries go into great lengths to remedy such situation, instead they pretty much seem to be trying the opposite, just ask any elementary school teacher about how competitive their salary is or how much of their own personal money goes to buy school supplies, or how many criminals are under "medical bankruptcy" or drowning in banks overdraft fees or any other form of bankruptcy, or perhaps you can ask what are "private prisons" and what are their incentives.
That’s one perspective. Another is that the truly greedy thing is to construct a society such that some people can’t afford basic necessities, and that inflicts far more suffering than people stealing what they need to live.
You're constructing a strawman fantasy word where by people only do anti-social things because they need to live, thereby painting them as heoric, Robin Hood type figures.
Here on planet earth however, some people are just anti-social and understand nothing except force. No amount of education or counselling or whatever else will change that.
I actually believe they choose the easiest path. Stealing is sometimes that. Now if they could get reasonably paid work or other sources of income they probably would not do that much of it.
Yes, people steal shit from stores and do a bunch of work shipping stuff through FBA because they are anti-social \s
You think fencing happens because of anti-social behavior? Fencing _is_ work!
The simplest explanation for why people steal and resell stuff is money. You do a thing, and at the end you have money in your pocket that you didn't do before. Not complicated!
Take the act of stealing and project it onto the {anti, neutral, pro}-social dimension. It’s clearly not pro-social; I think it’s easy to argue that it’s not neutral either.
Maybe I misread the original point of the post, but I read it as "the anti-social component is the motivator".
Of course it's ... not good! Stealing is generally pretty bad, all things considered! But this idea that there are some deep psychological flaws that cause this behavior does not, I believe, represent a primary motivator for a significant portion of these acts.
The struggle to survive is the starting condition in nature. That society doesn’t completely eradicate it (but only makes great strides in that direction) is not an indictment of society.
I did not consider it like this before but it is so true. Society is not a given, and it is not a perfect fabric in which evil people tore holes. Instead it is woven by everyone that acts in it.
I actually wrote another comment in this thread about Singapore [1]. The subway there was particularly interesting to me. While the New York media has used subway deaths to drum up support for police, Singapore has entirely solved the root problem in a non-carceral way by investing in infrastructure.
Plenty of other countries have done the same, actually. The knee-jerk response of adding more cops actually makes society worse for all of us.
I would have thought Singapore had more policing in all respects versus US cities.
Also the subway stories are probably more about general fear of whatever criminals are apparently lurking down there. It can get kind of scary in the subway when it's deserted. especially Upper Manhattan where it's so deep down. Meanwhile when I travel in developed Asian cities, it's not scary at all. Just really really crowded.
> I would have thought Singapore had more policing in all respects versus US cities.
You only see police occasionally doing their patrols, so it can be argued there is less of a police presence than say NY. There is no need, there are cameras everywhere and its a small Island, you can't run anywhere.
With respect to the parent's comment on subway deaths:
> Singapore has entirely solved the root problem in a non-carceral way by investing in infrastructure.
There are barriers that only open when the train has arrived, so there quite literally cannot be deaths from people pushing others onto the tracks. I presume that is what he means by infrastructure.
I wouldn't call infrastructure the root problem when people are murdering others. My point was the murders are evidence that there's psychos down there. Hence people want more cops.
> You know Singapore unabashedly beats the shit out of thieves, right?
They don't...first offense you basically get off with a warning. Recent headlines was a case of Australian school girls shoplifting [1]. Although they're foreigners, same goes for locals.
This is simply not true. Solving hunger and poverty is EXTREMELY difficult. The US could use more social programs to help resolve it, but solving it outright is basically impossible.
Oh knock it off with this crap. The article is about organized retail theft. If you work for a criminal enterprise you should work a legal job and pay for things like everyone else.
"like everyone else". This would be a small fraction of people though. The whole of human enterprise is built on stolen loot: the forests razed without permissions and the lands dus and animals chased without anyone's consent. We are conditioned to behave as we own this planet, why is it unfair to consider that between people too this behavior wouldn't show?
What are these "basic necessities"? To me it seems like it's an ever-increasing list of things that were largely created in the modern era. A person from a few hundred years would hardly consider deodorant a basic necessity.
We consider them basic necessities, because we're used to them, but all these new inventions had to be made by somebody. The profit motive seems to be quite good at incentivizing people to do just that. If we discourage that then the basic necessities of tomorrow might not get invented.
Society doesn't conspire to cause poverty, nature already inflicted that upon us.
> Another is that the truly greedy thing is to construct a society such that some people can’t afford basic necessities, and that inflicts far more suffering than people stealing what they need to live.
Your argument would be more sound if the people stealing were stealing for themselves instead of selling them on a marketplace at slightly below retail with a 100% margin. Their theft hurts the jobs and customers (some shops have outright closed) and it also still has the end customer paying basically the same amount.
What makes you think people are stealing what they need to live? That can sometimes be true, but is often not true at all. Either way there's no way in which theft, often from people or companies that have no hand in inequality, does not make things worse for everyone else. It screws over other poor people who don't steal because everyone else will be paying for the insurance and restocking of stolen property...
If that were actually true someone could hold up a sign in front of CVS or whatever saying "please buy me a stick of deodorant", and I can guarantee you someone will.
They can go to a soup kitchen, or a church, or a food panty and ask for basic necessities.
Americans are very generous, especially conservative ones, who lead the world in charity and generosity. There is no excuse to steal when you can just ask.
Shoplifting is actually one of the least harmful forms of theft, in terms of dollars stolen. Wage theft costs orders of magnitude more. A few years ago, money stolen by police via civil forfeiture surpassed the amount stolen by burglars.
Yet the form of theft I hear the most about, by far, is shoplifting. Why do you think that is?
Why don't we use the terms "rent theft" or "loan theft" when people don't pay their rent or loan payments, since we use the term "wage theft" when companies don't pay their wages? In all of those cases, isn't it just not giving someone what you owe, rather than taking something away from someone?
Isn’t there a difference between “I think your conclusion is wrong, here’s another possible scenario where this could happen,” and “I think your conclusion is wrong, and here’s a legitimate scenario that I totally agree with that could explain why this happens”? They didn’t say it was right, just that there are other motivations for why people do these things.
But society first needs to be in a degraded state for most criminals to exist, as most only meet their basic needs through criminal means, such as food, shelter, health and education.
"Most" in the absolute terms, not in the relative (e.g. percentual) way you may be interpreting my comment. And anyway there is always going to be criminals, but its not remotely the same thing when your national average thief steals one thing per year vs one thing per day.
Society has been persistently degraded since time immemorial, because of the presence of organized crime. The only thing that's changed since Prohibition is the genetic makeup of the gangstas who are in charge.
#BlackLivesMatter came about because the police have been--somewhat unwillingly--waging open warfare against gangbangers for decades in the inner city. The gangbangers all have guns and the cops have heavy weaponry that sometimes protects them and oftentimes blows away a few low-ranked gangbangers who might've just completed initiation, or weren't even affiliated but just hanging out at a party.
So what #BLM and #DefundthePolice people are saying is, enough is enough with this open warfare, you're killing children and innocent people, the cops are too powerful.
But gangs offer societal structure: they offer belonging, they offer community, they offer encouragement and brotherhood. They offer economic opportunity. They offer lifelong careerism. That flavor of opportunity can't be had in a public school or a legitimate job.
So gangs aren't going away; gangs are part of the fabric of society because they're providing tangible benefits for many members and non-members alike.
But how will they disarm themselves? How will they offer truces to the cops and reconcile, swords into plowshares? If gangs don't go away then they need to be pacified or the open gang warfare will continue to get cops involved, and the gangs will continue to shoplift and fence and operate all sorts of low-level criminal enterprise with impunity. So what to fix?
If you want law enforcement to deal with petty crimes, you're going to have to contend with the externalities of cops operating anywhere. How many bystanders and innocent people reported by paranoid suburbanites are you willing to see injured or killed to protect that deodorant shelf?
And dozens of people have been spared serious injuries or mysterious "deaths in custody" as a result. Maybe you'd prefer some deodorant to that, but I don't.
Car culture has done this. The destruction of regular meeting places that get you to know and trust your neighbours. Now everyone you see is an untrusted stranger.
I think cars are only a symptom of the real issue, which is that the scale of modern society is just too big for our brains to comprehend or handle. I don't think getting rid of cars would necessarily help one cope with the fact that 99.9999% of people you see are untrusted strangers.
It's not the whole issue, but it's the biggest contributor imo. Even in small American suburbs people still don't know anyone because they never walk anywhere and have no local businesses / recreation spots. They all immediately get in the car and drive somewhere else, cut off from the rest of the world.
Among all the other technical issues, Wayland devs have an attitude issue. Users asked for fractional scaling for years and were faced with flat refusals and insulting quips from the wayland developers. The only reason they've added it now is because Valve asked them for it. Wayland devs think users are worms and corporations are gods.