This blog is going to be about four things I want to write
about. I have decided to combine the
four topics into one so it’s a decent length rather than writing four small
blogs.
Without further adieu…..
1. “Don’t like it, move!”
After one of my rants on Facebook about Municipal Broadband
(If a city/town wants to offer its own internet due to poor or no service from
a private ISP they should be able to!), I received this private message from
someone I don’t know that is going to remain nameless:
“Will you please put a
sock in it about municipal broadband?
You should not be asking your local government to provide internet for
you! If you move into an area where the
choices in internet are crappy, that’s all on you! Don’t like it? Move!”
See, I have a big issue with people telling others to “move”
if they don’t like a current situation and call for change in something. It’s basically saying, “The status quo is
fine where it is, it doesn’t need to change, if you don’t like it, fuck
off.”
There are many versions of “If you don’t like it,
move.” As I wrote above, it’s basically
telling someone that they just need to accept the way things are, even if the
“way things are” is totally wrong. I’m not
just talking about internet here, by the way.
A little over a year ago I wrote this blog: http://samsnonpcpage.blogspot.com/2015/06/subjects-that-are-now-politically.html. In one of the parts I basically asked “why
can’t members of the LGBT community just go to another business if one refuses
to serve them rather than suing said business?”
Fast forward to today.
I’m not going to re-write an over year old blog, but someone told me
this when I told him the above opinion on the subject:
“I get what you’re
saying, the issue is that when you decide to just go to another bakery or
whatever, you are letting discrimination win over what is right. By suing, or at the very least leaving a bad
yelp review or taking your story to the media, you are standing up for what is
right.”
Look at it this way.
What if Rosa Parks was told, “Don’t like being told you need to sit in
the back of the bus? Just take a taxi or
buy a car!” What if she actually did
that, instead of refusing to sit in the back of the bus and standing up for
what is right?
Sometimes, you need to stand up for what you believe in,
because if you “move,” you have officially given up on for what is actually right.
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2. Regulations.
Regulations are a hot topic among political shows. The way I look at it, is that regulations are
like “ground rules” that companies needs to adhere to.
The reason why regulations are needed is that without them,
companies all over would screw over both employees and customers in pursuit of
high profit margins or in quests to please their shareholders!
The problem is, we honestly have regulation in areas where
it’s not really needed, and no regulation for things that should have them.
I’ll give an example, and yes it’s cars. Let’s say I wanted to buy a Dodge Challenger
SRT Hellcat. The dealer local to me has
one exactly like I would order…. If I was willing to pay $30,000 over MSRP for
a “market value adjustment.”
Yeah, I could go to a well-respected dealer in Ohio and get
one for MSRP, but that would entail having to get plane tickets and a hotel
stay, not to mention paying shipping fees to deliver the car back to
Florida.
Now, there should be regulation in place that outlaws these
stupid markups. Maybe allow up to 10%
over MSRP but nothing more. It’s called
making sure the business doesn’t gouge the customer, the most important part of
said business.
Regulation doesn’t even have to come from government. Look at consumer electronics. Wonder why the price of current-model TVs are
the same whether you buy it at a brick and mortar store or online? It’s because manufacturers have what’s known
as a “unilateral pricing policy” or UPPs, and retailers (That includes online
retailers) that sell those manufacturers’ sets have to sell it at MSRP and
cannot jack up the price. They also have
to get permission from the manufacturers to lower the price if they intend to
run a sale on it. If the retailer breaks
the UPP rules, they might lose the license to sell the product.
FYI: UPPs exist so that online retailers can’t undercut
brick and mortar stores on price to the point where the B&M stores might
“throw in the towel” and stop selling TVs due to losing business to online
retailers. After all, when it comes to a
TV, you want to see its picture quality first-hand. It’s pretty hard to judge a TV’s picture
quality by looking at a stock photo on an online retailer.
It’s not just about products. Why are we - the USA - the only developed
country that does not mandate that businesses over a certain amount of employees
give a minimum amount of vacation days?
It’s been proven over and over that people work better when they are
given a chance to recharge their batteries, so to speak. Yet thanks to no regulation in this area,
there are places that give maybe a week’s worth of vacation time all year and that’s it. To make matters worse, many times when these
employees take their vacations, they are seen as not as valuable compared to
one that stays at work. The USA is
ranked at or near the top for work-sourced stress related illnesses. Again, it all comes down to the fact that
people work better when they are given proper time off!
There are some people who will read this blog and think,
“Why should the government tell me how to run my business?” I’ll say it again: So that businesses don’t
screw over their employees and customers, their two most important assets!
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State’s rights.
Republicans and conservatives always tout “State’s
Rights.” The way I see it, states should
not have unlimited rights or at least
the magnitude of “rights” they do now.
Just the fact that 21 states let private ISPs like AT&T
and Time Warner “ghost write” bills that block municipal broadband then signed
them into law is proof of that.
Better yet, here is a scene from the movie Tropic Thunder
that explains it best:
If you don’t want to watch the video, here is a meme:
That’s really it.
It’s not just states signing laws to stifle competition in the broadband
space. It’s a lot of fucked up, moronic,
imbecilic things they do. In other
words, they manage to go full retard!
Here is what I am talking about:
1. Look at how many states have signed “religious freedom”
laws that basically allow businesses to discriminate against the LGBT
community.
2. States that have repealed motorcycle helmet laws under
the guise of “personal freedom.” Sorry,
but this is just dumb.
3. States that force private business to allow people to
open carry not just handguns, but rifles into their establishments. RIFLES. Yep, in these states a person can legally
sling an AR-15 on their backs into say a restaurant and the owner cannot throw
him/her out.
4. States that compel public universities into letting
students conceal carry guns on campus. I
am waiting for the news story of a professor that got shot because he delivered
a flunking grade to a student that was packing.
5. States that block abortion if a fetal defect like down
syndrome is listed as the reason, while at the same time cutting any sort of assistance
that a woman might need to help with raising such a child.
6. States that refuse to make pay equal between both
genders, in the form a vetoing bills that would make it law to pay women
equally.
I’m going to give a hypothetical situation here. A republican friend of mine thinks that
seatbelt laws should be repealed at the federal level and left up to the
states.
Okay, let’s say that happens. I’ll name-drop one state. Alabama.
Now, I’m not going to completely hate on Alabama because my car was made
there. But let’s face it, Alabama is a
state where it’s socially unacceptable to be LGBT but it’s okay for your cousin
– 1st cousin – to be your girlfriend. Knowing that, you can bet your lunch money
that Alabama would probably be one of the first states to repeal their seatbelt
laws if it ever became up to the states.
So what would happen?
First, I would feel bad for all the first responders who have to respond
to all the fatal accidents that would not have been fatal if the people in the
car just wore their seatbelt. Next,
morgues would have to expand in size for all the dead bodies that would come
in, and more funeral homes would have to open for all the funerals that they
would have to commence.
That is why you don’t want to give a state unlimited “rights,”
because, as Robert Downey Jr’s character said, they go full retard…. And you
never want to go full retard.
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Privatization.
I’m pretty sure everyone knows what Privatization is, so I’m
not going to explain it. What I want to
touch on is that simply put, there are certain things that need to remain in control of the government.
The issue is that when you let a private industry get ahold
of something, it’s going to want to make a profit off of it. That, in itself is not a bad thing. But when bad things happen due to wanting to
make a profit, that is, well…. Bad.
The worst example is private prisons. The more inmates they have, the more money
they make. As such, corruption ensues
such as judges intentionally throwing people in their jails in exchange for
payoffs.
Last year, the private prison companies donated huge sums of
money to keep Cannabis illegal in the remaining 46 states. It’s not secret why they want to keep it
illegal: If people can consume cannabis freely without fear of getting arrested
and thrown in jail, the prisons will not make as much money and therefore their
profits will suffer.
Another example is water.
You know, the stuff we need to live.
Michigan felt it was going the public a favor by handing over control of
the drinking water to private industry. A
private industry that is also concerned about making profits. That worked out well for Flint, didn’t
it? New Jersey also wanted to turn over
its drinking water to private companies, but last I heard it was scrapped. Thank goodness!
A long time ago, someone told me that a county should try
turning its police force over to the private sector. Yeah, I can just imagine how that would turn out! If you think your local police force is
corrupt now, wait until one is privatized!
There is still discussion that the US Post Office should be
privatized. Yeah, some people want this
done for one reason only – to get rid of the union that is protecting the labor
force. Plus, if the Post Office was
privatized, you can bet that cost of postage would rise to ridiculous levels. You think the cost of a book of stamps is “too
high” now? Just imagine if it was
private….
The point is, not everything needs to be privatized. Some stuff, whether you like it or not, needs
to remain in government control.
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That’s it!
