jeanjogr

I guess the main difference is that in the US (as far as I understand) there is no official workers representation outside of unions, thus some characteristics of workers' representatives are done by the union in the US (you get represented even if you did not vote for them).

Much like the role of the party and State organs in one-party state vs many parties democracies. In the former the roles are much more muddied between the two.

Is that not the case in the US as well?

I have never been able to quite grasp what it means to "unionize" in the US.

Here in my country, unions work like political parties (which I understand is not exactly enticing right now):

- you are free to join or not

- there are elected workers' representatives whether there are unions are not

- unions serve to organize workers for action and representatives elections, support candidates, and provide additional services as well

In this context, there is no one big vote to unionize or not, and no "union jobs". How does it work in the US?

You seem to argue that politics is whatever issues where you support change and "not politics" is whatever issues where you support the status quo.

It is quite hard to not see your examples as political _but_ you don't want any of the changes currently being advocated by leftist activists.

> Selling customer data to advertisers is economic, not political

If selling customer data was forbidden, then it would not be a natural outcome of well-understood deterministic processes of economic self-interest. It seems the "natural outcome" is wholly dependent on current laws.

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human being to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries.

- Industrial Society and its future, by Dr. Theodore John Kaczynski

If you only need that, all the extra stuff is useless.

There's (somehow) a widely held belief that there is no barriers to entry, on any market, ever. Things from anticompetitive behaviour of incumbents to needing enormous upfront capital invesment simply do not exist. This has to implications:

- Nothing should be done, whether regulation or consumer action, because everything can and will be fixed by the entry of a new company.

- We are living in the best of worlds. Otherwise, a new company would have sprung to fill the gap and then we would be living in the best of worlds again.

I am yet to convince people holding this belief that it may not be the case.

Shoes last longer if they are not worn everyday.

Anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity is on-topic here

The usual caveat about Paris applies: the city of Paris is but a tiny core of the larger Paris metropolitan area (Paris: 2.1M people, Paris metro: c. 10M). Paris is about one fifth of its metro area, a city like NYC is about half.

A closer analogue to being able to distinguish accents from Montparnasse, Montmartre and La Villette would be to able to distinguish accents from different places in Manhattan.

I think even today there are substantial accent differences within the Paris metropolitan area (think Versailles vs le Marais vs Aulnay), but within Paris proper not so much.

You missed the point. All the examples obviously all have at least one line of code, otherwise there would be no program to display "Hello, World!" at all. The goal is to have a program that is _counted as 0 line by the software "sloc"_ even though it is not 0 line.

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