Well, if the car gets shut down by going outside a proscribed area, then driving off to the Western coast region of Africa (virtually speaking) would no doubt trigger it, too.
Shit. I can’t get cellphones to work. I can’t get touchscreens to work. I already have enough issues with my other disabilities, I don’t want worse issues with my manual coordination issues too.
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Like someone parked the car indoors for an extended period? Which they are pretty much forced to do because the shitty terms on these loans don’t give you enough miles per year?
Victim shaming people get themselves into these loans is not right.
You need to have a car to live most places in the US. Car dealers take advantage of people who need cars. Fine print, last minute document swaps, and flat out lies permeate the industry, and obviously the people who can least afford it suffer the most.
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I guess it depends how the immobilizer works. I would think it would be wired into the fuel pump, since that would be simple (no annoying security or electronics in newer cars to worry about) and effective. Messing with the ignition system is just asking for trouble on a modern car.
That’s the new business model in a nutshell, I may steal this just so y’know.
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I was kind of disappointed by the article not really talking about the general purpose computing thing past the headline.
It’s something I care about, and while you can make connections on your own, the headline kind of promises a discussion of how the two things are related that never really comes.
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So, I reacted pretty viciously to your first post, which had more nuance that I gave it credit for.
But the kernel of the idea that inspired the reaction is that the poor are somehow poor because they are different. That if only they could change, they wouldn’t be poor. That’s inaccurate and insulting. That’s the part that’s provoking the vicious reaction.
The truth is that the poor are poor because we refuse to share the resources more equitably in society. This creates some differences. Those differences are not the cause, they are the symptom. If you want to fight poverty, your focus needs to be on the system that creates it, not the people who are suffering from it.
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My impression is that the American craving for instant gratification spans all economic classes. However, when you have limited means, this craving produces more dramatically negative results.
I don’t think there’s any causal relationship between craving instant gratification and economic status.
That said, I do think there’s a correlation between economic status and education level. And without strong critical reading skills, it’s difficult to parse the deceptive contracts presented when applying for these loans.
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I never claimed they are poor because they are different. You read into this on your own. They continue to be poor because inertia is a motherfucker. And when you put so much in front of them to push past, they will continue to be poor. Giving them a little more inertia by helping with things that we can help with – finding ways that make the learned helplessness a little less pervasive, by empowering them, by allowing them to have tasks that aren’t like every other task in their life (not caused by them, but by the situation around them) and allowing them to develop delayed gratification (it is a skill that has to be learned, and if you never have a chance to use it – or if using it is detrimental to your and you family – you’ll never acquire this skill).
I can only deal with what I can deal with. Bitching about the system seems to be going so well for the 99% movement. I work with a small population and I see changes with the people I do work with. Much more useful to me than saying that we can’t fight poverty without changing the situation. To me, bitching about rich assholes being rich assholes is like screaming that the sky is blue. It isn’t going to change anything, no matter how much my ass tingles from the miniorgasms I get for standing up to that big bad sky.
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I think the whole point of it was just to introduce the idea that there is only one type of computer, one that does anything you tell it to do, and that limiting its functions also mean limiting your ownership of that computer.
in light of this a question like, “Should a third party be allowed to disable your car remotely?” skips over the whole part where the tech you use is not under your direct control. So
I’m all for self driving cars, but not for a car with a backseat driver a million miles away.
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Look, it’s simple: If you don’t have a job, you can’t afford a car. Try taking the bus system that doesn’t exist or try walking the 20 miles to work. Actually, having a car would really extend your job opportunities. But you can deal with all that after you get a job. You don’t want to sit around all day watching endless, eternal commercials for cars on TV. Get off your ass and (don’t) get a car/job, dammit!
But then… Who gets to be poor?
If you look at a poor person in a developed country and compare them to a poor person in a developing country, we can clearly see that there is a big difference in the quality of life of these people on average.
So if people in the USA are going hungry on a budget that would keep them more than well fed in the poorest country in the world, we have to start suspecting that maybe holding on to money isn’t the thing that keeps people poor (Wait, hold that thought, let me continue 
Its not that simple, I know.)
Its clearly a complex system, but even within the US there can be a huge difference in what makes a person poor or not, property values are not the same in Albuquerque or San Francisco or New York. Your dollar isn’t worth a dollar everywhere, and deciding what a dollar can buy is only available to a select few.
I don’t think we disagree so far so I’ll go ahead and make my point already.
A person can clearly move out of poverty and thankfully, there are ways for people to do that, that does not render poverty merely an option for those unwilling to leave it behind. Its merely what is called class mobility.
And its slowing down.
Poor people have new cars? The economy couldn’t handle poor people not buying new cars.
This is why predatory lending happens, because the moment markets stop growing, they start taking a dive, its not a result of unforeseen unscrupulous behavior, its a result of an economy that’s trying to survive with a market where all the money is being concentrated in the hands of a few.
Just stopping consumption would give poor people more cash, but it cannot scale. The moment Iphones stop selling, is the moment the US economy is back in the toilet again.
I want to agree with this but there’s a bit of unpacking to be done on this statement:
On inertia:
If you are poor, you will most likely to continue being poor. Yes, I agree with this, wholeheartedly.
On putting obstacles in the way of poor people:
If anybody puts obstacles in the way of poor people, it can only be, the middle class or rich people. Who is it?
What are these obstacles? (I think this would help answer the first question)
What would happen if all poor people would suddenly push past these obstacles, would they be rich? Would poverty end?
In a world where commodities are scarce, and markets are put in place to control demand and supply. Can rich people continue to be rich if poverty is eliminated?
Then who gets to be poor?
I agree with the sentiment expressed through this tautology, I’m not trying to prove your point invalid, I have no use for that. I would hope that you would consider that the limits that you describe for yourself are your own. If I disagree with you, its not personal, its just that I have a different vantage point and actually see the bitching as better than letting things go on the same way
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A fascinating little discovery I had heard about: because being poor saps your decision-making capacity, being poor means you’re less able to focus on educational goals. So this tends to be another self-fulfilling prophecy: you are uneducated because you are poor, and you remain poor because by being poor, you can’t really make use of much of the education you get.
And also: poor people live around other poor people, which means less tax money to fund neighborhood schools, which often equates to lower-quality education from those schools.
Wasn’t there a study a few years ago that said there is almost zero class mobility across generations?
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It’s possible now.
Very well said. I have long believed that the main reason that people with a mortgage end up with more savings is simply the way that it forces you every month to save the difference between a rental payment and a mortage payment.
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I can wait for the self-driving, but man, what I’d give to move the back seat driving a million miles away right now.
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Numeracy is becoming more important than literacy.
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Picture: Apollo mission control.
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