webgiant.bsky.social
Very tall, very old, he/him. Brushing off the cobwebs to try to keep going.
1,815 posts
185 followers
42 following
Prolific Poster
Conversation Starter
comment in response to
post
I still have a working VCR and some VHS cassettes. Some of them are blanks.
Amazon has some unopened unboxed "new" VHS VCRs for sale, about $100-$200 each.
The last new VCR was manufactured in 2016, meaning they're not that old yet.
comment in response to
post
The Republican Party rewards sociopaths and punishes people with a conscience.
Republicans who aren't sociopaths and aren't in positions of power tend to be less vocal, which is why you can hear the sociopaths more often.
comment in response to
post
"Reform the Police" always seemed the better policy than "Defund the Police," since defunding seems to have led to an exodus of competent officers, and more officers in it for the power they gain over others.
If you don't pay enough, the people you hire will find other ways of making the job pay.
comment in response to
post
My folks believe this. They raised me to understand that laws which just force individual religious laws on everyone (beyond shared values like "no murder") are just an attempt to avoid personal responsibility.
If you need a government to make you be good, you're not a good person.
comment in response to
post
Government is slow to react by design, even though this frequently means that a law enforcement bill doesn't anticipate criminals switching methods to avoid prosecution.
Swift Government Action is what Trump is doing right now, and shows why swift government action is a bad idea too.
comment in response to
post
The IRCA did go after the subcontractors too. The point was that subcontractors can skirt the law, get caught, provide a scapegoat, dissolve, and reform later doing the same thing.
What needed to be done was holding corporations accountable for subcontractor actions. The IRCA failed to do this.
comment in response to
post
The USA was founded without free and fair elections. The USA was founded without a Right To Vote in the US Constitution. It's still not there.
There are carveouts where the vote cannot be denied: sex, race, direct poll taxes.
A state avoiding these carveouts, can deny the vote. Legally.
comment in response to
post
I doubt we will live to see that tipping point.
I've noticed that in the past, Americans were much more willing to accept that they would not see the benefits of their activism in their own lifetimes.
Nowadays it feels like both far right and left want a dictator who will change things right now.
comment in response to
post
The people who have no power subsidize the lifestyles of the people who do have power. The voters do not want changes to this system that keeps themselves afloat.
Changing it will require government to replace illegal labor subsidies with cash subsidies. Otherwise voters will reject the changes.
comment in response to
post
While I agree it's a terrible way to run a country, it's been sustainable for the life of the USA.
Attempts to change it failed, because most Americans do not want to pay the much higher prices of American well paid labor.
Most voters simply do not want changes to this system. So it survives.
comment in response to
post
The USA was founded with a requirement for poverty wages.
From slavery "immigration" onwards, paying immigrants poverty wages has been a staple of the American economy.
It's baked into our current system. Changing it will require systemic structural change. No easy painless fix.
comment in response to
post
The problem now is that fixing wages will cause major economic pain.
Without government assistance, which will not come under the Trump Administration, itself heavily dependent on illegal labor in their private businesses, we could see American deaths from starvation and exposure.
comment in response to
post
The IRCA of 1986 moved a date of illegal entry into the US to create the amnesty. This date could have been moved again, creating even more legal immigrants.
Employers didn't want more legal immigrants, so the date was never moved, keeping the system of cheap illegal labor in place.
comment in response to
post
If caught, corporations were shocked, shocked, to find out their subcontractor had hired illegal immigrant workers.
As they hadn't hired the employees directly, the corporation was both legally not guilty and free to find another subcontractor hiring illegal immigrants.
comment in response to
post
Employers switched from directly hiring illegal immigrants to hiring them through subcontractors, legally making the employee immigration status not their problem anymore.
It's easy to hit a big corporation. It's much harder to crack down on a million tiny subcontractors.
comment in response to
post
"While IRCA did not encourage illegal immigration, it failed to curb it."
Employers switched from hiring illegal immigrants directly, to hiring them through subcontractors, which meant they weren't the employers' employees, dodging the sanctions.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigra...
comment in response to
post
There's the not insignificant point that most to all Americans do not want to do the jobs performed by migrant and illegal workers.
No matter how well paid, Americans do not want to pick crops. As history bears out. www.npr.org/sections/the...
comment in response to
post
Most Americans indirectly welcome illegal immigrants, because illegal immigrant workers keep American prices down through lowering labor costs.
Fixing this will require tons of economic pain, as increasing labor costs will happen before most Americans will be able to afford American labor prices.