In many places, financial institutions like banks do not serve the poor. Like, in the US if you are a poor minority living in an area heavy in poor minorities, it is quite likely that banks will essentially refuse to serve you. Redlining was an example of this kind of thing. There are other, related things - low balance fees, minimum transaction sizes, the need for proof of income or a guarantor who can provide such. This is why cheque cashing places still exist in 2016 in the US - for many people, they literally will be refused service if they try to open an account so they can deposit their paycheque. Blaming this on 'poor financial literacy' is backwards - all the financial literacy in the world won't help you when banks systematically discriminate against you.

>"all the financial literacy in the world won't help you when banks systematically discriminate against you"

What the non profit did was show people how to use banking services, how to save, etc. and lo, people did. So what you say could be true some where but, it's disproven here where the non profit introduced people to the banks.

You have not given any details, so I cannot evaluate what this nonprofit was actually doing - that is, there are two questions:

1) How much were they doing? That is, where on the scale were they from (a) just literally letting people know that saving was a thing and banks existed through to (b) actually going in with people to open accounts, making personal introductions, acting as guarantors etc?

2) Who were they helping? That is, where on the scale of 'relevance to systemic discrimination that I discussed' were their clients from (c) mostly educated white college graduates with good credit history and family money (though perhaps not much personal money) living in 'good' areas through to (d) mostly poor black lower class minimum wage workers with bad credit history living in 'bad' areas?

It is a relevent counterpoint if the nonprofit is mostly doing (a) and mostly helping (d) - otherwise, it is entirely irrelevant.

That is, because doing (b) firstly does not scale, so it only fixes the problem for a few people, and secondly agrees with what I said, about how you need these things in order to bank if you fit into category (d). And because serving (c) is entirely irrelevant to the point about systemic discrimination, as (c) are people that do not face this.

So, please either show that the nonprofit was mostly doing (a) and mostly helping (d), or retract your point, as it is wrong.

In some places, non-negotiable offers are pretty standard. Eg programming jobs in New Zealand - many hiring managers would rather kill themselves then pay more than whatever they have already decided to pay a programmer. Or negotiation will happen, but then the number on the contract will mysteriously not change, and if you complain about it you will be told that it can't be fixed now, just sign it and accept the offer and they will totally correct the number, just not right now. And once you have signed, well, verbal contracts always defer to written contracts in NZ, so it never gets fixed. There are some amazing things about NZ, but the job market as a programmer is not one of them.

If one takes Vim, Emacs, or Light Table as 'similar', then that would imply free...

This is the opposite of the common carrier model. In the common carrier model, there are many companies that you can choose from as a consumer from the get go, because the network is unbundled from a single company.

You're missing the point: the last mile network is shared across all of those companies. Ergo, the company that actually owns the last mile network has no competition on that last mile network and no incentive to upgrade that network.

Firstly, the last mile company still has QoS agreements with the companies that buy from it, and they can plausibly choose to simply go elsewhere if the last mile company does not give them good enough QoS terms; whether that means building their own network, or simply pulling out of that area. Basically, a small group of companies can more plausibly apply joint pressure to a single company than many millions of people can, purely because of coordination costs.

Secondly, part of the common carrier model is that if the government is not convinced that the common carrier is acting in the public's best interest - for example, if they are delaying needed upgrades - then the government can simply confiscate the common carrier's assets, and sell them to a company that will actually meet its QoS and upgrade obligations, or spin the whole thing off as a SoE.

Sure they do: consumers will pick the best last-mile providers, because in this model, consumers actually have the power to choose.

Ideally that last mile network would be point-to-point FTTP though, eliminating this entire issue.

Sometimes you get sick, and you just don't want to eat (even Krispy Kremes), but you know that you have to eat to get better, so you force yourself to eat. This applies analogously with work: sometimes you are burnt out, sometimes you are bone tired, sometimes you fucked something up earlier and now have to do a messy triage, sometimes the most essential thing you could be doing with your expertise is boring scut work that no one else in your company can do... nevertheless, unless you are in a situation where you can just say "Fuck it, I'm going on holiday! See you losers when all of this is sorted out!", you may have to force yourself to work, both to get through the doldrums and also to keep being able to afford to eat.

The fact that, if sweatshops are allowed, sweatshops will be the best option people can find, does not entail that if sweatshops are not allowed, the best option people will be able to find will be worse than sweatshops. This is because markets are not magic, and the conditions of employment don't come 'ex nihilo', but are rather a function of (amongst other things) what employers are able to offer; so, changing what employers are able to offer changes what alternatives are available.

'Able' here is a complex thing; to look at just two countervailing parts, how little can employers get away with paying, but also how much can they afford to pay?

If the sweatshops do more than break even, then the employers can afford to pay more and have better conditions for their employees - but they won't if sweatshops as they are now are legal, common, and accepted. Most sweatshops do a lot better than breaking even, so if we got rid of them, a better alternative would be able to exist. (If you believe in General Equilibria, a better alternative would be forced to exist).

You are equivocating over the word 'responsible'. His actions were the proximate cause of his death (a meaning for the word 'responsibility' which does not imply moral judgement), but others are culpable for his death (another meaning for the word 'responsibility' which does not imply proximate cause, but does imply moral judgement). So, it is perfectly meaningful to say that people who commit suicide are primarily responsible for their own deaths in the first sense, but primarily not responsible for their deaths in the second sense.

Two points:

1) The general (non-Marxist) idea is not that 'the market price is unfair, so we should set different prices ourselves', but rather that the market isn't magic, and does not appear ex nihilo, but is impacted by many things. Some of those things (such as law about hiring, firing, welfare, safety, and so on) can materially affect the negotiation in a way that is patently not fair. For example, if unions had the kinds of powers some ascribe to them (ability to set wages however high they wanted with all staff being unfirable no matter what they did, with employers being powerless slaves) that would be obviously unfair. The power dynamic in many countries (including the US) is roughly that slanted at the moment, but in favour of employers rather than employees - in the US, for example, this is the effect of things like no cause firing, binding arbitration agreements, 'temp' positions and 'internships' being allowed to be offered in place of actual jobs, no real socialised healthcare, limited unemployment insurance in most states, low minimum wages, no 'union shops' in most states, anti union laws, limited occupational health and safetly laws in many states, and so on. So, to make things 'fair', these things have to be fixed - then the market will be 'fair'.

2) The general (Marxist) idea is not that 'the market price is unfair, so we should set different prices ourselves', but rather that capitalist-worker relationships are always unfair and exploitative due to the worker always having to sell their labour for wages, rather than capital, where the capitalist simply gains more money through the actions of capital - neatly setting up a coercive power structure. The (tl;dr version of the) Marxist response is not that this means that we have to set 'better' or 'fairer' levels for wages, but that we have to destroy capitalism and abolish wage slavery.

>>> can materially affect the negotiation in a way that is patently not fair.

Here you have to define what "fair" means. One of the definitions would be using extra-market coercion to influence the price - see unions example - is not fair, since it uses forceful coercion to benefit one side. However, unions often claim they need the coercion to reach "fair" prices since otherwise it is "unfair". So what is "fair" here? How you find out if voluntary agreement of two people is "fair" or not?

>>>> we have to destroy capitalism and abolish wage slavery.

Since the only other alternative that we've seen so far is non-wage slavery (at least until we find enough people that agree to work for free that we can create non-scarcity economy) this makes this definition of "fair" rather unappealing. The problem here is that voluntary structures tend to become markets, and calling non-voluntary arrangements "fair" has to rely on notion of fairness of those who apply coercion to support the non-voluntary nature, which very soon devolves into very peculiar understanding of "fairness".

Regarding point (2), you are completely wrong. You are saying that because lots of people harassed Adria, therefore she was a jerk and deserved it. That is trivially disproved by noting that ethics as such exists, and is not simply whatever a group of people does. The reason this is happening is because people like you are shitheads who are doing bad things or enabling other shitheads to do bad things.

You seem not to understand words, logic, or evidence.

edit: That is, what you are saying does not accurately characterise what happened at all, and is also not really a point that follows from your previous post. Like, at least have premises, the application of logical laws, and then a conclusion.

Did she not single out two male developers at a conference for something that they said without speaking to them whatsoever? Take their picture and put it on twitter in an inflammatory way? And then get fired by SendGrid for the resulting situation?

Don't be a dick.