@freemo You haven't been short tempered with me that I recall, but just to say sorry you've had all that and glad you're (from the sound of it) on the right track now
@freemo My favourite was when the European Space Agency rolled their own security questions on a new satellite data portal a while back. The questions were a mix of changeable answers ("When did you last water your plants?") and yes/no answers. The minimum field length was three characters.
@freemo Um… I mean I’ll read it, but work and kids to sort out in the morning, so I doubt I’ll have time to pick up the discussion then. All honesty this probably already went on longer than I wanted, I am genuinely interested in your point and I may reply later on, but I’ll be up front and say I may not. Completely understand if you don’t want to spend time explaining to me in those circumstances. 🙂
@freemo OK, sorry, I guess I’m just used to people (including me) just explaining their point to me, asked or not. That’s the internet for you! I’m interested, if you would like to explain your point to me then yes please, but I’m going to bed now so I’ll be leaving the discussion here anyway. But thank you. 🙂
@freemo As I say, apologies - I thought I understood your point. I’m still not sure I do, I’m sorry - taking the UK as an example again (my knowledge elsewhere is very limited, though entirely possible I’m also wrong about the UK), handguns are banned outside gun clubs, rifles, shotguns or certain air rifles (and cannons, slightly strangely) require either a firearms or shotgun certificate to own I believe, but once you’ve got that open and concealed carry are both legal (though you’ll get treated like a live rattlesnake if you carry a shotgun around the supermarket, I imagine). Knives that are classed as “offensive weapons” are banned in public places. If anything the knife has stricter treatment?
@freemo OK, then I think I’m misunderstanding what you were saying. The cartoon you posted seemed to be saying that gun violence was the only kind for which we blamed the weapon, for all other kinds we blamed the person behind it. I had read your words as giving the same message.
I was disagreeing with that and saying that while “blame” per se lies with the human in every case (obviously, it cannot be the “fault” of an inanimate object that something happened), we can and do address both the human causes and the weapon causes in all cases to try and reduce a given type of violence.
But like I say, I think I misunderstood your point, so my apologies.
@freemo But that was my point? Nobody's saying (well, I'm not) that gun violence is the only type that can be addressed through the legal system and all the others are just down to the perpetrator. For gun violence, knife violence, whatever, if there's a weapon involved you need both the weapon and the wielder. To address it you can/should always address both sides of that fact, surely?
And we do. I've never seen anyone say that you should address gun violence solely through gun laws, and I've never seen anyone say that you should treat knife violence solely as a problem with violent people.
@freemo We don't though? We (UK) also have laws about possession of knives that are primarily weapons (eg locking blades or "zombie" knives, and possession of offensive weapons
@freemo Dunno about communism with extra steps. Doesn't sound very communist. Isn't it the definition of a protection racket, pretty much? Though I guess with a protection racket you pick a larger number of people who haven't paid up. Still.
Just wow. Our treatment of refugees is so inhumane that Medecins Sans Frontieres (better known for providing medical care in refugee camps near war zones) has felt compelled to spend resources to set up shop in Essex. What a shameful indictment of the UK's inhumanity towards people in need.
@freemo@kilroy_was_here I don't think it's correct to say that living standards in 1975 were achieved by compromising workplace safety (and by extension that any loss since then is because more is being spent on safety). Safety standards at the time were what was believed to be acceptable, it's not that people were cutting corners to save money, and even if they had been workplace safety isn't generally as expensive as all that.
Any erosion of median living standards since the 70s is likely to be a result of massively widening inequality between the top and the bottom. For instance in the UK in 1979 the top 10% took home 21% of the total net income, in 2009/10 it was 31%. This rise was largely at the expense of the bottom 30%. (figures from https://www.poverty.ac.uk/editorial/more-unequal-country). The top 10% have a 50% pay rise over that period, the bottom 10% have a 75% cut. Similarly, from https://www.poverty.ac.uk/pse-research/going-backwards-1983-2012, the percentage of people lacking three or more "necessities" in the UK has more than doubled between 1983 and 2012.
Similarly in the US the share of aggregate income from 1970 to 2018 being taken home by the "upper tier" income group rose from 29 to 48%. The "middle tier" income group fell from 62 to 43%. Share of aggregate family wealth for the upper tier rose to a whopping 79% from 1983-2016, to just 4% for the lower tier (both stats https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/).
The rules got changed, a lot of regulations that served a very good purpose got done away with, and the richest in society got the benefit. It's nothing to do with spending money to make workplaces safer.
@freemo@kilroy_was_here I don't know, but I strongly suspect that increase in death risk is rather uneven. Teachers, probably about the same, coal miners, not so much. So most jobs you'd probably be fine. ;-)
@freemo That would be my hypothesis. Though I am frequently wrong. ;-)
My understanding is that the gains you speak of were largely won by organised labour. Deregulation of markets and weakening of trade unions since the 80s has demonstrably led to wider inequalities between workers and executives, which would suggest the gains in worker buying power should at the very least have slowed since then and possibly gone backwards.
@freemo (Just because my understanding was that in the US and UK at least, the deregulation of Reagan and Thatcher has led to that gain going backwards since then)