Carrolade
@Carrolade@lemmy.world
- Comment on Does the USA simply have no food safety standard at all? 2 days ago:
Some plastics are more stable than others. That said, we are admittedly far too lackadaisical with them in general.
To answer your direct question, we do have an FDA that does a passable job with some things, salmonella outbreaks, emergency vaccine development, stuff like that. There is probably some regulatory capture at play, though, where business interests get their people appointed into oversight roles. When a full half of our government is so vocally and rabidly pro-business, this is difficult to prevent in the long run.
- Comment on Charities of Employees from "non-profit" I was going to donate too 1 week ago:
I never said it was fair, don’t get me wrong. How it got this way vs whether that’s a good idea or not are two totally separate topics.
I’m not sure that most boards of directors are full of CEOs either. It is full of rich people though.
- Comment on Charities of Employees from "non-profit" I was going to donate too 1 week ago:
The CEO does not set his own compensation. He is hired by the owners of whatever company to operate it for them. They ultimately determine the compensation.
I agree there’s no struggle to find top candidates, that’s for sure. That’s partly because the compensation tends to be very good. The trades, which do not compensate as well as a chief executive, are struggling more. If plumbers frequently pulled CEO pay, we would not have a shortage.
- Comment on Charities of Employees from "non-profit" I was going to donate too 1 week ago:
It’s not an absolute, it’s just an incentive. Talent is also an intangible, it cannot really be measured. Nor does high pay in some way guarantee you will get a talented or qualified person for your position, it just gives you better odds. It’s bait, basically, but you cannot guarantee your bait will work to attract what you want.
I’m not sure of any evidence, I’m not an economist. I’m discussing the theory of how capitalist systems are intended to function. How well they succeed at this is very messy and muddled at best.
Lastly, I actually disagree that our hypothetical construction person makes less because they are less talented. It’s that their skill is in lower demand. They could be extremely talented, but there are simply more of them available, so less needs to be offered to attract them.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
She seems to be playing politics. Kissing his ass may be extremely distasteful and embarrassing, but it’s also a prudent move when his foreign policy is based so heavily on his own personal feelings towards another country’s leader. It’s the hand she’s dealt, so I don’t blame her for playing it this way.
It’s a big if, but if she actually is seeking American support against encroaching Russian influence for the sake of her citizens, then I respect the decision and would offer her a bottle of mouthwash to maybe get the taste of Trump’s ass out of her mouth. I cannot imagine that tasted good.
- Comment on Charities of Employees from "non-profit" I was going to donate too 1 week ago:
Hypothetically, if you were looking at two civil engineering jobs, and one paid 100k/yr, and another paid 200k/yr, which would you pick?
Would it matter much if any of the construction guys doing the actually construction of your projects made 50k/yr? Are they less talented than you for that?
It’s not so much about “talentless hacks” vs “a decent job” as trying to entice the best person you can afford.
- Comment on Should South Korea launch a preemptive attack on North Korea? 1 week ago:
War is very seldom inevitable. We tend not to focus much attention on wars that never started, because that does not make for very engaging history content. It happens far more frequently than a war actually starting though.
- Comment on Charities of Employees from "non-profit" I was going to donate too 1 week ago:
No, a company definitely doesn’t have to pay their CEOs generously, and not all do. The median pay for a CEO is actually about 250k/yr.
www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes111011.htm
Though if we just look at CEOs from S&P 500 companies, that jumps up to 16 million. There’s going to be a lot of factors involved, from the size of the company to the cost of living in the area. A CEO in San Francisco is probably going to make a lot more than one in Milwaukee.
It’s less propaganda and more just understanding how the capitalist system is intended to function. It applies to other jobs as well, a software engineer can make quite a wide range of pay, depending on who they work for. Then they can also get increased pay for advancing up the ranks of their organization, as promotions often involve raises.
- Comment on NYPD Releases Maskless Photos of UnitedHealthcare CEO’s Killer 2 weeks ago:
Do you cross reference against other sources, to see if something is being omitted or lied about?
- Comment on Charities of Employees from "non-profit" I was going to donate too 2 weeks ago:
This is more of a system issue than bad behavior of an individual charity.
Charities can underpay a little bit, because working for a charity has its own appeal. But if you want a talented, experienced person to run your org, you have to consider what they could make if they worked for someone else. San Diego is not a cheap city, and has its fair share of CEO positions.
If you really want to stretch your dollar though, local food banks are probably a better bet.
- Comment on NYPD Releases Maskless Photos of UnitedHealthcare CEO’s Killer 2 weeks ago:
What if they simply omit key pieces of information? Lies of omission, instead of a statement of falsehood.
As a way of example, if there were a hypothetical murder case where camera footage was shown in court that demonstrated the accused was not the murderer. Say one outlet reported on the existence of the video, while another simply … didn’t mention it.
Would both outlets be equally worthwhile?
- Comment on Why are Republicans struggling in Swing State Elections? 2 weeks ago:
They don’t really think it that far through. Policy proposals aren’t considered, it’s more about vibe.
- Comment on Why are Republicans struggling in Swing State Elections? 2 weeks ago:
After the election, AOC reached out to her constituents to ask why some of them would vote for both Trump and her.
There’s a variety of answers, but the general sentiment is people want some way to “shake up Washington” without a real understanding of how exactly that would work or what would happen.
- Comment on Should Germany aquire nuclear weapons? 2 weeks ago:
Obama made this a goal of his second term, and while he achieved some success, the relationship between the west and the other major nuclear powers has significantly worsened since then.
It’s an admirable goal, but I’m not sure it’s going to be feasible any time in the near future.
- Comment on What gives you hope to keep going? 3 weeks ago:
Study of history.
People have been prophesying the end times for millennia now, for this reason or that reason. I think that ultimately they just don’t like the basic fact that change of some sort or another is inevitable in the world, it will not remain static and no system or institution will last forever. This does not result in any concrete end, however.
To quote Morpheus, “I remember that I am here not because of the path that lies before me, but because of the path that lies behind me.”
There’s also a fair bit of profit-driven exaggeration in just how bad things really are in certain arenas. Bad news makes good clickbait, good/neutral news less so. So the ratio of bad to good news we receive is not actually representative of the full picture of what is happening in the world.
- Comment on BACK IT UP 3 weeks ago:
Don’t forget the FDA’s aggressive suppression of exercise.
- Comment on USA President term limits 5 weeks ago:
Assuming he abides by constitutional law, this will be his final term.
- Comment on Why do I fart all the time when I'm trying to sleep?! 5 weeks ago:
That last line was the funniest thing I’ve read in the past few days, so thank you for that.
- Comment on What are the next steps for Americans to help prevent the worsening of genocide in Palestine? 1 month ago:
On the arms shipments, we may try lawsuits via the Leahy Law if the ethnic cleansing ramps up. The way the law is written, it actually looks at arms shipments all the way down to the granular level of individual military units. It does not say arms cannot be exported to countries engaging in war crimes, it specifically says individual military units that commit war crimes cannot receive arms. If they choose to engage in a broader campaign of organized displacement out of Gaza or starvation in places where combat has largely died down, a larger number of military units could potentially become implicated, which could maybe make a lawsuit more feasible. We’ll have to see.
Regarding AIPAC, since Citizen’s United determined that monetary donations are a form of speech, this requires either an amendment or recapture of the Supreme Court. Otherwise Americans are allowed to lobby the government for whatever they wish, even if they are doing so at the behest of a foreign government. They have to disclose that, but so long as they do, they are simply exercising their Constitutional rights as perceived by the current Supreme Court. This isn’t going away any time soon, the current law is very clear and pretty much ironclad, rooted in the Constitution itself via the Bill of Rights.
- Comment on Are there opposing institutions to things like the Heritage Foundation? Are there liberal policy think-tanks? 1 month ago:
Some good answers already. To add, in the media sphere Pod Save America and their related branches is a liberal progressive media organization that tries to run counter to the conservative media ecosystem, trying to ride the line between policy wonkery and approachability.
- Comment on Trump’s Strange Bedfellows: Arab Americans and Right-Leaning Jews 1 month ago:
“Nothing is worse than what is happening right now,” she said.
Foolish. Currently a small number of aid trucks are admitted each day. The proposed General’s Plan is to cut this down to zero. That would be worse. There is a difference between barely anything to eat and genuinely nothing to eat without resorting to cannibalism.
- Comment on Is this what every election is like? 1 month ago:
I kind of understand Bush vs Kerry. Bush had a vision. It was a crazy neocon vision, but it was a vision and he used it to communicate effectively enough that we still occasionally meme about bombing people into freedom.
Obama had a clear vision, and communicated it well. Hope, prosperity for the middle class, international leadership. Biden had a vision, a less divisive America where we came together and worked on overdue problems. Hilary didn’t really, nor did Kerry or Gore. They were more policy administrator types who focused on specific policies and administration, and the idea of incremental improvement just didn’t resonate with people.
Trump, for all his failings, does have a vision he is capable of communicating to the American people. Harris did too, better than Hilary anyway, but it didn’t really come online until fairly late into the campaign and stayed a little too nebulous. I do think she was hurt in this regard by getting such a short campaign with no real prep time, she was evolving in the right direction.
I think we need a Bernie or AOC, someone with a powerful vision and ability to clearly communicate it, to the point of literally cudgeling people over the head with it. And we need to vote them in during the primary, over any competent administrator types, despite the fact that we are fully aware of how effective and necessary those policy administrators can be. Our valuing of them is a place where we’re out of touch with the broader American electorate though.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
I think you were really lucky, a pocket knife is a lot riskier than a can of mace or taser or something. Easy to take away. But if it’s what you got, then it’s what you got. Also should’ve aimed a little lower.
- Comment on Is this what every election is like? 1 month ago:
Yes, he took all our guns, too. Look, there’s none to be found anywhere.
- Comment on Is this what every election is like? 1 month ago:
No, they’ve been getting progressively crazier since 2016.
2000 was fairly divisive, it went to the Supreme Court after all. But it wasn’t even a fraction this dramatic, people mostly shrugged and figured GWB would be like his father, which was unfortunate, but sane at any rate. Nobody was really predicting 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.
2004 was pretty dull. John Kerry challenged GWB but felt sort of like an empty suit.
2008 was nice, Obama was a strong and exciting candidate vs the very known quantity of McCain, who was a moderate repub known for bipartisanship. Sarah Palin provided for hours of entertaining impersonations by people like Tina Fey, but since she was the VP candidate nobody really cared.
2012 was dull. Romney was a strong candidate, another moderate repub. But Obama was fine, he hadn’t broken the country or anything. Brought us out of a recession, even if people were upset about bank bailouts and stuff. Lot of people got health insurance.
Then it starts getting spicy.
- Comment on Serious statement: I don't understand the argument that not voting for Harris was the morally correct thing to do, because of Gaza. Why does anyone believe this? 1 month ago:
Honestly for a portion of the ones here online, I don’t think they actually care that much about Gaza except as a convenient tool to attack Americans. It’s academic to them. I don’t expect it’ll stop once Trump is in, they’ll just switch to criticizing Americans overall. They’re mostly leftist agitators, and I honestly think they hate moderate progressives the most, since we’re trying to improve capitalism which makes it harder to undermine and destroy.
For people that actually do care, it’s a personal, emotional argument about not being able to feel good about it, which I understand. It’s a sort of trolley problem. If they don’t vote, they kinda just walk away and the trolley runs over a bunch of people, but they don’t have to watch and bear a sense of personal responsibility at that emotional level for being a part of it. It doesn’t actually benefit Gaza, but there’s only so much they could really do anyway.
- Comment on Whould everyone doing nothing be a viable option? 1 month ago:
Yes, that’s called a general strike. Fairly common tactic for independence movements and workers rights movements, you still see them in South America sometimes. They’re not easy to organize, you need a lot of pissed off people.
- Comment on The 1900s 2 months ago:
I mean, tbf that was admittedly last millennium.
- Comment on Why is selling fake medicine legal in the USA? 2 months ago:
The internet creates a bit of a whack-a-mole problem with this one. Reminds me of certain bracelets and other consumer products sold as emitting some sort of “negative ion energy” for health benefits. Testing found they had Thorium, and were significantly radioactive.
If I recall correctly the Dept of Energy got involved with that one. Since the products came from overseas, though, there’s only so much that can be done.
Yeah, here we go: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34769689/
- Comment on Patient gamer philosophy 2 months ago:
Personally I am very willing to pay full price and even occasionally buy pointless extras I don’t care about if it helps reward their passion for a project I see as a valuable contribution. I’ll even pre-order or provide them some free advertising in some cases. Especially if its the sort of dev where it seems like their long-term survival might be in question.
I feel like you can usually tell when the dev needs money or doesn’t.