Statistically the rich don't do any better than anyone who can afford a lawyer. The people who get screwed are the ones relying on court-appointed counsel. They do significantly worse.
Guessing this is conditional on getting brought to trial right? A prosecutor is going to bring a murder charge no matter who the suspect is, but that Senator's son's DUI? Or that four star general sharing classified information with his mistress? Might get pled for chump change or charges mgbt get dropped.
Most people who own a house or have savings or have family can scrape together enough money to engage a lawyer. How much that actually costs depends on the charge.
So many cases are pled out these days (98% at the federal level), I doubt more than a tiny percentage of defendants are spending anything like $100k.
It's possible that white collar crime is just hard to prosecute in general, but poor people have less opportunity to commit white collar crime. So what we really need to do is make white collar crime more accessible. /s?
It's really past time to get rid of the qualified immunity doctrine. It's yet another "law" made up by the supreme court from whole cloth.
Prosecutors should be fully liable for illegal actions they take even when they're performing official duties. This guy should be serving a sentence years long, not days.
> It's really past time to get rid of the qualified immunity doctrine. It's yet another "law" made up by the supreme court from whole cloth.
This is where every system that polices others plus themselves falls down. You can think of qualified immunity as professional courtesy between lawyers.
In Wisconsin the Republican legislature and Republican governor (the recently failed presidential candidate Walker) passed and signed a law limiting political corruption investigations, because they were annoyed at all the investigations and convictions of themselves.
That's a terrible example. Those John Doe investigations were a great example of prosecutorial abuse. If I had been Walker I would have had the state AG indict the prosecutors involved for corruption.
To be fair, most Teslas are being bought by enthusiasts. When they start selling the model 3 to people who just want a reliable car, there may in fact be some demand for the services typically offered by a dealership.
Iranian patrol boats always had anti-shipping missiles. They don't have many patrol boats, though, and they don't have many missiles. Beyond that, if you're going to use a missile there's no point in putting it on a boat if your target is in the Straight of Hormuz. You just launch it from land.
The concern is the Iranians (or whoever) would use speedboats packed with explosives and ram them into US ships. Speedboats and explosives are cheap, so this is a pretty easy attack to put together, and if it's a sneak attack you could get closer by having them pretend to be ordinary civilian traffic.
But the attack is pretty easy to counter, too - the Navy issued .50 cal machine guns with a mount that clips on the rails. The M-2 has a range of almost two kilometers and will turn a speedboat into kindling in just a few seconds.
Beyond that, people (particularly Dolan, who thinks everybody not him is an idiot) who point to that particular exercise have a fundamental misunderstanding of the way these things work. You can't get that many people and ships together doing whatever they want and not have casualties. The Navy did stop the exercise, and while they're not talking the most likely reason is the red team wasn't following the rules. The point of these kind of exercises isn't to develop new and innovative tactics - the point is to make sure everybody does what they're supposed to do.
>Apple has a moral and ethical onus to make the right choices be it related to the confederate flag, changing drug laws, or using emoji to fight bullying, and we respect that.
I can't decide if he really respects that or if he's still hoping to get his app approved. Companies should not be in the business of trying to enforce (clearly unenforceable) laws by removing features that do perfectly legal things.
> Companies should not be in the business of trying to enforce (clearly unenforceable) laws by removing features that do perfectly legal things.
Dragon-dick dildos are legal, but that hardly means Wal-Mart is under any obligation to stock them for sale if that's not something they want their brand associated with.
If Apple doesn't want their brand to be associated with racist apps, or pornography, or pony apps, or whatever they choose, why would it not be their right to do the same as Wal-Mart?
As consumers, we can choose where to shop based on what stores do and do not stock. If you don't like what Apple stocks, don't shop in its store, and don't buy their devices.
> As consumers, we can choose where to shop based on what stores do and do not stock. If you don't like what Apple stocks, don't shop in its store, and don't buy their devices.
You're right, but I hate this line of reasoning. At the end of the day, I like using an Apple product and I don't have a problem with 99% of the things they do. So simply telling someone to 'stop buying the product' when they disagree with a relatively minor issue, is silly, and it kills the discussion immediately.
It's like congress passes a law I don't like and you suggest to 'leave the country', instead of focusing on the fact it's a bad law that could be changed without having to do something so drastic as leave the country.
Debate like this can help, calling them out for things that aren't very sensible is okay and it doesn't have to immediately be met with the obvious 'under the law they can do what they want so your only recourse is to simply never use their product ever again, end of discussion'.
Let's also not forget when Apple changed its mind. For example, remember the iPhone 4? It introduced the LED flashlight for its camera, a feature none of the iPhones before had. Immediately flashlight apps were made, and rejected by Apple. Later it changed its mind and they're now a staple in every app store, and later even became an integral part of the OS requiring no app at all, without any changes to the hardware. And it didn't happen because people suddenly sold their iPhone 4 and people stopped buying iPhone 4s because they couldn't get the flashlight app, that'd never have happened. On big features, yeah, not on small stuff.
Because Dateline can't build a concern-trolling episode around "Are iPhones Youth-Corrupting Pornography Machines" when everything and your toaster has a web browser. Every criticism would equally apply to Android and your laptop. It's water off the brand's back.
But if Apple is literally taking money and distributing pornography, a news unit is shooting that story tomorrow.
Explain to simpletons like myself how pornography distribution is like measuring weight. I'd love to draw the connection but I'm afraid logic prevails.
Furthermore, if Dateline is an influencing force in Apple product decisions - remind me to smash my iPhone into a million proprietary pieces.
> Explain to simpletons like myself how pornography distribution is like measuring weight. I'd love to draw the connection but I'm afraid logic prevails.
Reread thread. This grew out of discussion about Apple forbidding apps with confederate flags etc. Inflammatory, controversial content.
Y'know, like pornography.
The weight thing is obviously much simpler: Apple doesn't want to be the punchline on a lolpiece on the 6 o'clock news about "Are people breaking their iPhones with controversial new 'scale' apps? Find out after news and weather with chuckles the rain stooge"
> Furthermore, if Dateline is an influencing force in Apple product decisions - remind me to smash my iPhone into a million proprietary pieces.
News Organizations are absolutely an influencing force in any major brand's decision making processes. All brands live in utter terror of being on the wrong side of a "won't somebody please think of the children??" shit-storm.
"Child installs eBay app to purchase dildos - news at 9."
I understand PR is an influencing factor in corporate decision making - but if Apple is choosing to cater to the Dateline crowd rather than satisfy their core audience, Tim might as well purchase dragon dildos for the entire staff.
Allowing or banning an App is PR worthy. Damned if I do or don't type thing. But a developer wasted time from his life that'll never be returned. Responsible adults who wish to use this functionality aren't able to. The proprietary nature of Apple's wall gardened is coming into question. That's the PR Apple should worry about, and this is a gross miscalculation.
The concern here is likely that some idiot will try to measure their own weight with it or some such nonsense, and then break their phone. I'm sure Apple still remembers "bendgate", and has no desire to get a bunch of bad press about how the screen's glass is fragile. Like bendgate, they'll probably be vindicated when actual experiments are run, but that is of little comfort.
Also, the parent was responding to why the same argument doesn't apply to Safari. I'm afraid what prevailed was ignoring context, not logic.
Completely aside from the merits of anti-drug laws, the number of perfectly legitimate applications for "weighing things" is vastly larger than the number of illegal ones.
But companies equally have a right to own the experience. Creating an app to harvest hardware identifiers and using that to track them is legal. But it tarnishes the experience of their product and is anti-consumer by every definition. Apple should have the ability not to allow that.
Just because something is legal does not make it morally or ethically "right".
I'm a bit torn on this. On the one hand, I hate how not having ultra strict UX guidelines turns Android app ecosystem into shit (with every major app maker providing their own crap experience). On the other hand, I firmly believe the right of a company to control the "experience" I get from using a tool I bought from them should end the second I walk out of their store.
If they are to tell me how I can and can not use my device (above what the law says), then it's not my device, and it's not a tool.
What you're missing is people with first access to new money are the ones who benefit the most in an inflationary environment. In a fractional reserve system that's the banks. Banks generally benefit from higher inflation up until the point where it's high enough to damage the economy.
It should come as no surprise that banks spend so much to influence public opinion and the political process.
That doesn't make very much sense to me. It's not as if the "new dollars" are worth $1.02, while the "old dollars" are worth $1.00. Some people talk about "Cantillon Effects" in the context of QE, but it's a pretty fringe idea. The first-order effect is: banks are owed an amount of money denominated in nominal terms, and inflation will decrease the value of those debts. And even if this theory was true, inflation has been historically low (and below central-bank targets) for quite a few years, so whoever is pushing for higher inflation isn't very good at it.
>That doesn't make very much sense to me. It's not as if the "new dollars" are worth $1.02, while the "old dollars" are worth $1.00.
It's very much like that, actually, except it's more like the new dollars are worth $1.00 and the old ones are now worth $0.98. The important factor is time. Suppose we live on an island and have a currency we'll call a "foo". There are 100 foos in circulation. Tax collection isn't what it should be, so the president of the island borrows ten foos from the central bank (which, like the fed, just updates the computer to create them) and uses them to pay the presidential guard.
When he spends those ten extra foos, the president is getting the current purchasing power of the foo. It will take some time for the value of each foo to adjust down to take into account there are now 110 foos instead of just 100. Two weeks from now everything priced in foos will have risen 10%, but since the economy didn't "know" about the extra foos the president was able to spend them at full value.
>The first-order effect is: banks are owed an amount of money denominated in nominal terms, and inflation will decrease the value of those debts.
That's true, but the bank isn't going to loan you money without taking inflation into account. That's why loan interest rates go up when inflation goes up.
Also, the bank is borrowing the money they're loaning to you, and after they make the loan they're going to sell it off to a GSE or market investors. So someone else is ultimately holding the bag if there's inflation.
>And even if this theory was true, inflation has been historically low (and below central-bank targets) for quite a few years, so whoever is pushing for higher inflation isn't very good at it.
Well, yes. The problem is two-fold. The first part is in a fractional reserve system the money supply depends on qualified candidates willing to borrow. In the midst of a recession there just aren't as many of them - people without jobs aren't buying houses, and businesses aren't expanding. So less new money is created.
The second part is loan defaults destroy money. If you get enough defaults you're going to get deflation.
It's not like the banks didn't get their money's worth, though, as the government used every trick in the book to add money to the economy. At one point in time the government was borrowing forty cents of every dollar it spent, and the Fed was injecting more directly though QE.
>If the holders of wealth that seed the economy figure out that it's better for them to hold on to their assets rather than invest them, then people lose jobs.
That's the theory, but I'm skeptical. If the economy is healthy they'll have investment opportunities that compensate adequately for risk and they'll still invest.
Conversely, in an inflationary environment people with savings may invest their money, but they may also buy fixed assets like gold or real estate. That doesn't help the economy very much.
>Deflation also penalizes debt holders.
And inflation hurts savers. I don't see a benefit to prioritizing the interests of debtors over savers.
> If the economy is healthy they'll have investment opportunities that compensate adequately for risk and they'll still invest.
A healthy economy will, in most cases, exhibit inflation. For most economies, it would take a concerted act by a central bank to force deflation in a normal, growing economy. People are making more, spending more. The government has to print more money to keep up, otherwise it will fall short of people's needs. Only in special circumstances does this not hold up.
> I don't see a benefit to prioritizing the interests of debtors over savers.
There's a huge benefit. We want to encourage economic activity over inactivity. Money in circulation is the very definition of economic activity. Money saved is the very definition of economic inactivity. Nobody borrows money unless they want to spend it, it makes no sense to borrow it just so you can keep it in the bank or under a mattress. Money borrowed is money invested.
>A healthy economy will, in most cases, exhibit inflation.
A healthy economy will exhibit monetary inflation as it grows. But there's no reason for it to exhibit price inflation.
>The government has to print more money to keep up, otherwise it will fall short of people's needs.
That's a circular argument. It's not like people in a deflationary environment don't have any money - they have less money, but that money is worth more.
>There's a huge benefit. We want to encourage economic activity over inactivity.
Sure. I'm just not convinced getting people to go into debt really does that. Oh, it does in the short run. But once your debts start to pile up not only do you have to pay for the things you've already purchased, but you have to pay interest. If, instead of borrowing money, you'd just bought things as you could afford them, you would end up spending more.
>Money borrowed is money invested.
No, money borrowed is money spent. Sometimes that's investment. Sometimes it's not. If I borrow money to buy a bed made in China, that's not helping the US economy very much.
The idea deflation is bad for an economy doesn't hold up to historical scrutiny. The US grew strongly in the 19th century (far more strongly than today), and during that time it experienced long periods of growth accompanied by low deflation. People still have to buy food, pay the rent, buy clothes, etc even when the currency is deflating.
>Money saved is the very definition of economic inactivity
When people save money, do you really think they put it under a mattress? No, they put it in a financial institution like a bank, who can then use it as capital to loan out further funds. By increasing the amount of saving you should naturally reduce interest rates. Saved money doesn't just drop out of the economy.
Even if someone did put money under their mattress, they are risking having inflation eat away as its value. Also, if they never spend their money, all they have done is increase the value of everyone else's money. Prices have to fall to the point that markets will clear.
