Counterpoint: You go to the store to buy the saw you think you'll need, come home, cut the first piece -- boom, same realization. Same time-sink to go back to the store. I don't think that's a concern unique to tool libs.
need one weird tool
Well, yeah. We're talking more expensive things that you only need for one project, or maybe a couple of times. Not the screwdriver set that you use for everything from box-cutting to adjusting the screws on your cabinet doors when they seem wonky.
No, conflating them doesn't make any sense. You bring home the tool from the tool library, and you bring it back when you're done. It's one extra trip vs. going to the hardware store to buy the tool. The concerns about mismeasurements and extra trips don't apply.
You'd have a point if the thread were about maker spaces, I'll give you that. As it stands, though, I'd say your concerns are misdirected.
Ah, but is it? A quick search shows wood chippers ranging from $400 to $2400. If they're renting out the $400 model, yeah, you come out ahead by buying even if you're only chipping things on two weekends (and you could resell on craigslist or something).
But if they're renting out a $2000 model, I'm not sure how fair it is to compare to the $400 model (I'm not a wood chipper expert).
Wood chippers might be a bad example. I'd think if you need one, you need one multiple times -- chipping branches every fall at a cabin, things like that.
But overall, yeah, you make a good point that the rental prices can change the tipping point in rent vs. buy.
No, it's incredibly misleading. When you said that, I expected to find something like 80% of prisoners are there because of drugs. Instead, I find that it's less than half.
Okay? I don't understand what point you might be trying to make with this statement, even if it were true.
But the actual figure is 45% for drug offenses. That is the single biggest category, but I find it disingenuous to characterize "less than half" as "overwhelming majority".
Trying to offset the cost of a societal need by charging fees to prisons (sic) doesn’t even make any sense.
Sure it does. It costs $$$ to build jails and prisons and more $$$ to run them. Why should I, the victim, have to pay twice? (once for my car, which the thief stole, and again in my taxes to fund the legal system once the thief is caught)
I can very much entertain an argument like that (counter-argument, pay prisoners minimum wage for whatever work they do and charge the $20/day from that).
But that's not what's going on here.
This is about a collection agency figuring out how to profit from a captive audience. It deserves the same regard from us as prison phone operators do.
It's really just another form of predatory bullshit.
The prisons themselves say they aren’t a significant revenue stream
This is crucial here, IMO. We could put whatever we want on the bills -- hell, we could charge a million dollar fee for each sentence! That would fix the funding problems -- but the simple truth is that most of the prisoners don't have the money.
I suggest using the Block User button when you see something that sparks this type of reaction. I make liberal use of it myself, and I have a much better time on Lemmy as a result.
elephantium @ elephantium @lemmy.world Posts 2Comments 537Joined 2 yr. ago
Some problems lend themselves to "guess-and-check" approaches. This calculator is great at guessing, and it's usually "close enough".
The other calculator can check efficiently, but it can't solve the original problem.
Essentially this is the entire motivation for numerical methods.