Breaking and entering is to immigrating as pickpocketing is to taking my stuff.
Sometimes immigration is legal. Sometimes taking my stuff is legal.
There’s often overlap between legality and what people support or oppose, but not always.
“I oppose something that’s already against the rules” is a simpler/easier argument, rather than saying “I oppose the against the rules thing, and some of the stuff that isn’t against the rules currently”. I think that's why people make this argument of "only against illegal immigration". I agree it could be deceitful, taking the easier argument. It’s also not a tactic that works long term though if it just results in the immigration they were against being made legal. A stronger anti immigration stance, legal or illegal, would be a better starting point.
To be fair there may also be some people who a couple years ago really did only oppose illegal immigration but were then exposed to new information, and changed their mind to oppose some or all legal immigration as well.
a. Opposed to someone taking my money against my will and the law just because they want to, “for a better life”.
b. Not opposed to someone taking my money in exchange for goods or services I want.
a. Opposed to someone moving into my country against my will and the law just because they want to, “for a better life”.
b. Not opposed to someone moving into my country because I married them and want them here.
There’s a whole spectrum between a and b, but I think most people are against a.
Legal pickpocketing is taxes you’re opposed to, or wages being garnished.
In theory people who say they’re only against illegal immigration are saying they completely agree with all policies regarding legal immigration, now and maybe into the future. Likely not what these people actually believe because while possible it would be a silly position. They’re probably just saying it to try to find some common ground with very pro immigration people. Likely a fools errand.
An alternative chain of events might be one where OpenAI, Inc. only operated through income and donations, which would probably lead to them scaling more slowly. They could also take on loans.
Having thought about this whole thing more I believe that non-profits should not be a separate type of entity that gets special tax treatment. People have different ideas of what constitutes legitimate non-profit activity. It just opens things up for tax avoidance and scams.
The interested parties would be taxpayers. I think some groups are trying to look into it.
The issue is that they did R&D as a charity, donations to which are tax deductible, there may also be other benefits to being a charity during R&D but that’s a big one, then once the thing works, setup a for profit, sell ip at “fair value”, get some investment, then things are ready for business.
I read there’s no statute of limitations on a tax issue like this, so I guess it might be hanging over them indefinitely.
I’m not a big taxation and government fan, they’d probably just waste the money anyways. It does seem unfair OpenAI gets to use this loophole though, unless all companies can make their R&D investment tax deductible, and get any other benefits of this setup.
Aside from the disagreements between these parties, what about the precedent of running a non-profit, and then transferring all IP to a for profit when it’s convenient to do so?
I wonder if the government or taxpayers have a case to bring regarding that.
The anti piracy stance would be making it illegal for a surgeon/person to copy the procedure another surgeon invented without payment. Copying does not require additional labor from the inventor.
Obviously we would like the inventor of the procedure to be compensated, but is it worth depriving other people, or potentially them dying, to protect "intellectual property"?
Tesla was built on American R&D and manufacturing and is competitive in terms of cost and features. It’s probably easier to not innovate and go for almost guaranteed short term profit by relocating existing manufacturing processes though.
I don’t think there was no alternative. I think it was an easier, more short term, and more selfish (in relation to fellow countrymen and descendants), choice.
This kind of specialization can be bad for factory workers as well. Doing the same motion over and over can lead to repetitive stress injury.
I think it's true for any worker that performing the same activity over and over can lead to issues that wouldn't occur if work was more varied. That isn't necessarily in a companies interest though since for them it's easier to train people on one task, and they're easier to measure or replace.
The predictable and measurable thing for developers is thinking and cranking out features.
That’s an interesting point, I do often hear about being near a rail line as being a benefit for property values, but you don’t usually hear the same thing about being near an airport. Although this might partially be because a rail line is something people would use more often than an airport.
I don’t have much of a personal opinion on this. I just thought it was interesting. You’d think this train with a fixed route, tons of seating, traveling multiple times per day, would be cheaper than a plane, but somehow it isn’t.
The pollution and noise pollution is an interesting point, that could probably be improved somewhat for air travel while keeping the benefits, if electric planes could be developed. I was in India at one point and the noise of just being anywhere near roads was terrible day and night, it wasn’t even necessary people just love to honk there. There actually was a kind of luxury hotel city (Aerocity Delhi) near the airport there, I guess if they’re already used to that much noise being near an airport can be valuable.
There is some advantage for cars and planes in that you don’t need to develop the whole land between the two points you’re interested in traveling between as much as you do for rail, maybe that’s where the price difference is coming from.
I would have thought this as well. Looking at a trip from Fukuoka to Tokyo though. Shinkansen takes 5 hours and costs about $200. An economy flight is around $50 and takes less than 2 hours, although it’s possible there’s a lot more overhead to that time.
Geeks - Obsessed over fictional world(s). Nerds - Obsessed over the real world (or a specific part of it).
Comics Geek Math Nerd
There's a decent amount of overlap though.