“How long that will take I can’t tell you, but I don’t expect it to be very long, because as Watson begins replacing all those professionals in the job market, what do you think those experts are going to be doing? I know what I would be doing… making improvements in the open source versions of Watson to put the company that sacked me so the CEO could keep making a bonus out of business.”—valkyrie ice

“I work you fucking bastards. Isn’t that bad enough for whoever thought of this question to enact this farce, asking a wage slave to describe his work. 8 hours, for life to be expended in Hegelian freedom of choice, for the profit of a fucking wanker”—Anand ‘droog’ Kumar

“Cooperativity is fundamental … There is no dictator in cell regulation, no first among equals, no master regulator, no top-down system of governance.”—Michel Bauwens

“Where does this belief in ‘only works on the small scale’ come from? Is it based on the belief that people would, if not restrained by the personal effect of direct contact, cheat and hurt each other? If so, then it is only a corollary of the belief in man being innately evil.”—François Tremblay

“The CEO takes 11 of 12 cookies on the plate, then says to the Tea Partier, ‘look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie.’”—Patricia Welch

“I don’t believe in God. And, dammit, I live like I don’t. There’s nothing wrong with that.”—Hemant Mehta

“The most oppressive governments people face are corporate governments, and the most tyrannical forms are usually found at work-places and local areas, not at the Federal Government.”—C. Holte

“A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.”—Howard Scott, quoted by Angela Russell

From DTE Energy’s brochure (pdf) on net metering:

How many customers are eligible for net metering?

Net metering is limited to one percent of Detroit Edison’s peak load, or about 100,000 kW. The eligibility is further broken down like this:

* 0.5 percent for units of 20kW and less
* 0.25 percent for units generating between 20kW and 150 kW
* 0.25 percent for units generating more than 150kW

These limits would allow several thousand customers to participate.

The rather low ceiling makes it clear that net metering is something the company opposes. Those of us who would like to follow Freiburg‘s example should expect some serious head-butting, against tens of millions of dollars worth of astroturf.

Competition taken to its logical conclusion is global thermonuclear war. Competition stripped down to its bare essence is three men in a two-man lifeboat. A lot of tools employed in the humyn resources field will try to get you to believe in “cooperation within competition” or other absurdities intended to facilitate the cooptation of cooperation by competition, while what is needed in order to create the humane society is the supplanting of competition by cooperation.

“I have looked at the big four cell providers in the US, but all their websites are just as complicated one compared to the other… it’s as if they don’t want us to know how much exactly things will cost.”&mdashmichelito

“The real problem is the competitive nature of [the] economy across the world. IT and Engineering jobs have disappeared due to outsourcing.”—anonymous

“I think that the idea that economics is not always zero-sum (certainly true) has lead some people, in that sunny American way, to assume that economics is never zero-sum (false, in my estimation).”—Freddie

“Yeah, well, there comes a point where you gotta ask, even if it’s literally true, do you really want to choose to be on the side of someone who would do that kind of shit?”—David Brin

“Simply trying to be an upstanding, independent, individual is not the essence of capitalism any more than being a good person is the essence of Christianity.”—John Madziarczyk

Give a man [sic] a job, and he’ll work for a few weeks. Give a man a killer resume, and he’ll work a few weeks, every few months, over the next few years.

irridian.com appears to be a phishing domain. Their MO appears to be facebook impersonation.

Many tendencies of rightist thought go by monikers akin to ‘voluntarism,’ ‘volunteerism,’ or ‘voluntaryism.’ These power-words serve to drive home the point that everything that isn’t coerced is considered voluntary. The use of the word ‘voluntary’ and its various contrived inflections open the door to trite belittlements such as “nobody’s holding a gun to your head,” and “if you don’t like your job or income you can always go elsewhere.”

The voluntarist meme has now infected the self-described left-libertarian movement. To their credit they view it as a necessary but not sufficient condition for freedom.

Getting back to the snarky cliché about the worker always being able to go elsewhere:

* If a lifestyle that doesn’t involve work is feasible, then work can be thought of as voluntary.
* If a workplace you like is feasible, then a job you don’t like can be thought of as voluntary.
* If living dirt cheap is feasible, then working for a low income can be thought of as voluntary.

Feasibilism can be thought of as a sort of ‘thick voluntarism,’ paralleling thick libertarianism and thick individualism.

As is the trend in the ISP industry, the price of bandwidth is going up, so nickel and dime tactics become a more central feature of business models everywhere. In Virgin Mobile’s case it takes the form of a “speed cap.” I expect customers’ threats to go elsewhere are little more than face-saving bluff, and most will eat the de-facto price increase. Demand for bandwidth, it seems, is like a gas, in that it automagically fills whatever space of whatever shape. In that regard it is like autosprawl—no amount of road-building will bring the end of traffic jams.

The empirical question is, is this the result of exogenous market forces such as an unavoidable traffic jam, or a structural increase in the price of bandwidth, or is it a case of operators milking the business model more aggressively? Is it still the case that one’s ISP dollar goes significantly farther practically everywhere outside the United States? Is it still the case that the non-US market features much more competition in prepaid services, and much more willingness on the part of network operators to work with ‘unlocked’ mobile devices? Having never had much opportunity to travel, I have to take other people’s word on such matters.

Is there some Iron Law of Economics to the effect that prepaid services are more expensive or otherwise less of a value for the money than postpaid? If there’s any truth to the Time Value of Money, than logically, the opposite should be true! Since the market for postpaid services consists pretty much by definition of people with steady-eddie enough income and cash flow to commit to at least a two-year hitch (what my mom calls ‘established’ people), the prepaid market can justifiably be thought of as in some respects a captive audience. Does the difference in value between prepaid and postpaid offerings reflect anything beyond ‘because they can?’ Hopefully inquiring minds will somehow devise an empirical study of these market behaviors.

And on a tangentially related note, what’s this cock and bull story the Social Security Administration is telling our elders about the non-inflationary times in which we’re supposedly living?

Here’s the email from Virgin Mobile, just to give you the reader a taste of the tone:

Hey Lorraine,

Here at Virgin Mobile, our mission is to deliver an outstanding customer experience. Sometimes that means making difficult choices in order to provide the best possible service to the greatest number of customers.

To make sure we can keep offering our $40 Unlimited Broadband2Go Plan at such a great price, we’re putting a speed limit in place for anyone on that plan who uses over 5GB in a month.

How will it work?
Starting February 15, 2011, if you go over 5GB in a month on the $40 Unlimited Plan:

* Your data speeds will be limited for the remainder of the monthly plan cycle. During this time, you may experience slower page loads and file downloads and lags in streaming media.
* Your data speeds will return to normal as soon as you buy a new Broadband2Go Plan.
* This change will only affect plans bought on or after 2/15/2011.

How will it affect me?
Keep in mind, 5GB is A LOT of data. To give you an idea, it’s about 250 hours of web browsing or over 500,000(!) emails*. So this change shouldn’t affect you unless you’re a heavy downloader/streamer/etc.

How will I know if I’m getting close to 5GB?
We’ve updated the progress bar in your Connection Manager to show the amount of data you’ve used. If you go above 5GB in a month, the bar will turn yellow, letting you know your data speeds will be reduced until you buy a new plan.

By putting this speed limit in place, we’re making sure we can deliver the same quality service you’ve come to expect from Broadband2Go. We hope you understand.

Thanks for being a Broadband2Go customer.
Virgin Mobile

* Data usage per activity is based on an average. Actual usage varies depending on the types of websites, video, email and other internet applications accessed.

The McCarthy era saw the institutionalization of a lot of ‘civic religion,’ such as addition of ‘under God’ to the Pledge of Allegiance, and ‘In God We Trust’ to the currency, and the inevitably sectarian ‘National Day of Prayer.’

The present pattern of secular-bashing will perhaps dissipate if/when the public (both religious and not) comes to see gratuitous God-talk in political speeches for what it is; namely delineation of in-groups and out-groups.