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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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School inequality

vendredi 24 novembre 2017 à 01:00

State schools in the UK propagate class inequality by giving the children of working class parents a markedly worse education.

A similar thing happens in the US, though it works using zoning: wealthier parents congregate in suburbs where the smallest lot size excludes anyone less wealthy, so their real estate taxes can fund a better school. The urban poor get lousy schools that can't afford anything.

To stop stunting the growth of children from poor families, we need to fund their schools as well as wealthy children's families. We need to spend a lot more money per child than we do now.

We need to get the money by taxing the rich and the corporations.

License to practice

vendredi 24 novembre 2017 à 01:00

Many US states require licenses to practice professions such as "cosmetician" for which there is no evident rationale for requiring one.

There are a few cases in which licenses are required specifically to reduce competition, and it may be a valid goal. For instance, before taxi medallions were created, it is said, too many people tried to drive taxis and most of them lost money. The problem was serious because buying a taxi was a big investment, making it hard to enter the taxi field.

However, in other professions which don't require buying something so expensive as a new car, this reason would not be valid.

Medical misinformation

vendredi 24 novembre 2017 à 01:00

The Medical Misinformation Mess: most medical research studies are low quality and neither patients nor practitioners know how to identify and disregard them.

This leads to wasted expense, continuing sickness, and sometimes death.

GPS-spoofing for Uber

vendredi 24 novembre 2017 à 01:00

Some Uber drivers are using a GPS-spoofing app to fool the Uber app and increase their fares.

This seems to be a response to a change Uber made to reduce drivers' pay.

Foreign pharmacies

vendredi 24 novembre 2017 à 01:00

US thugs raided stores that help people fill out orders for prescriptions from foreign pharmacies. They are enforcing a law that was purchased by the Pharma companies to make drugs very expensive for Americans.