merc

I think the real issue with driver development is that almost nobody ever has a reason to do it. It's a much more constrained way of programming compared to normal programs, and isn't necessary unless you need to talk to hardware or something. So, nobody has an excuse to learn it.

Yep. You wouldn't have adventurous magicians going out and casting spells against dragons. The variety of spells known by D&D type wizards wouldn't even be a thing. You'd have a guy who was a specialist in ritual-casting flame spells whose job consisted of continuously heating up cauldrons of metal ore so it could be smelted. If he was jumped on his commute home, he couldn't fight the attackers off with "fireball" or something. Maybe that was covered in school decades ago, but he's spent his entire career doing nothing but that one smelting spell Or, you'd have the "Gate" wizard whose entire job was to keep up a portal for their entire 8 hour shift, so that tourists could pass back and forth.

No, it abolished slavery with an exception carved out for punishment for crime.

The difference is important. Saying it was "made a punishment" suggests that before the amendment that option didn't exist. It did. The 13th amendment just clarified that that use was allowed to continue.

But, it's also worth noting that in the late 1700s and early 1800s imprisonment was uncommon, and a lot of crimes just carried the death penalty. In England, pickpocketing more than the modern equivalent of about $40 could result in a death penalty. Same with cutting down trees, or stealing from a rabbit warren. For less serious crimes there were the stocks, whipping, and fines. England had an option that wasn't available to the US: transportation. Australia was originally a penal colony, and the people sent there were forced to labour until their sentences were up.

Prisons (along with their work programs) were seen as a new, progressive idea that could potentially reform a prisoner, rather than just killing / punishing them.

I guess that's the IQ test you have to fail if you're going to listen to him.

Just because you're wrong about something doesn't mean the idea is unthinkable.

You can cancel your subscription, but that might not go so well.

Stateless people actually have a real issue. While it sucks having to pay taxes, not having any country willing to acknowledge you as their citizen is much worse.

For news, you could set up a trust and transfer ownership of each news station to the workers for a type of collective.

Yeah, because if we know one thing, it's that a group of people never has outlandish and crazy beliefs.

Financing shouldn’t really be a problem, after all governments can print money and run plenty of ministries and agencies.

Which are paid for by tax dollars. If you just print money endlessly you cause inflation, and eventually hyperinflation.

It doesn't seem to me like you've actually thought any of this through.

Weird. Where do you live?

If you don't step foot on Disneyland or Disneyworld it's pretty easy to avoid. Just find alternative sources for all their media instead of paying them.

However, it’s our late stage capitalism

It's not capitalism. It's rent-seeking, which is what came before capitalism. The "Free Market" that Adam Smith talked about wasn't a market free from regulations, it was a market free from economic rents, free from monopolies, etc. The big problems we're seeing now aren't because we have too much capitalism, it's because the capitalism we have is shifting more towards rent-seeking, monopolies, artificial scarcity, etc. It's basically feudalism. In a proper capitalist system you have competition. That's the "free market". If someone doesn't like the decisions a business is making, they'll switch to another one.

Companies can only get away with the kinds of things Disney tries when they don't have to worry about competition. In other words, it's no longer a capitalist system, it's a rent-seeking business. Disney is built around its intellectual property, and IP is nothing but rent-seeking. Nobody can compete with Disney and make a better Star Wars movie because Disney owns the rights to anything Star Wars related.

This headline sounds a lot funnier if you assume "it" means Signal, like I did.