"... does cracking the whip more often actually increase productivity?"

Maybe it does, if you're supervising low skilled workers with no discipline in an environment where it will be difficult for them to find a comparable job. Otherwise, no. Cracking the whip creates a miserable environment that productive employees don't wish to work in. So they will probably wind up working for competitors, who may be implementing workplace practices that involve strange concepts such as trust, loyalty, stewardship and so forth, leaving the whip crackers with only undesirables.

Consistency. When you learn to do something in FreeBSD, chances are that what you learned will remain relevant for a long time. Some Linux distros seem to impose change for it's own sake.
I like the simplicity of many OS related configurations being done through only a few (plain text) files such as rc.conf and sysctl.conf.
There is a clear separation of the base of the FreeBSD operating system from the end user applications, which is reflected in the file system layout. For example OS related configuration files (in plain text) are in /etc, while end user software configuration is reliably in /usr/local/etc. This makes it very easy to administer software updates. If things do get broken, (as they do with all OSes), it's easy to locate what went where.
The documentation, such as the FreeBSD Handbook, is very good, complete and comprehensible to me, whereas help for Linux related problems is becoming more fragmented. "If Slackware, do this, if Debian do that, for Arch, do something else".
I tend to like to do these things from the bottom up. When I was in Linux, I built Linux from Scratch several times. Every application that was installed from source had a unique and complex build command described in the LFS book. With FreeBSD, the command is pretty much the same for all the software in the ports tree to build it from source, e.g. "cd /usr/ports/www/firefox" then "make install", or "cd /usr/ports/shells/bash" then "make install". There are tools like portmaster to make it even simpler than that.
PC-BSD and GhostBSD are pretty good. DesktopBSD is now obsolete I think. But I prefer to work from the bottom up, so one good resource to approach it this way is https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcooltrainer.org%2Fa-free...

A lot of people say FreeBSD is best on the server, while Linux is best on the desktop. But I was a long time Linux user and started playing around with FreeBSD a few years ago. It turns out, that IF your hardware is compatible with it, and IF you know what you're doing, then FreeBSD is also best on the desktop.

I read through some of the privacy documentation. Buried in the mass is basically, MS reserves the right to share your information with whomever they deem necessary. But they want to assure you they won't be abusing that right. And they want you to feel rest assured that opting to give up your privacy will give you a more pleasant experience using your computer.

Nice guys finish last. Woz is only worth about $100 million. That's chicken feed (relatively speaking). You don't want your kid to be a loser like that do you? No, encourage your children to "do what it takes" to get to the absolute top. You don't get there by being nice.

It's not alarming if you have passive income and investments and savings. But if you depend on your paycheck, you should be very alarmed. For those in the paycheck to paycheck world, a threat to your livelihood may as well be a threat to your life. Defend yourself accordingly. The wealthy are going to be shocked when the masses come for them. They don't even know what's going on.

I'm not sure I'm qualified to comment on this. I'm a Professional Engineer in Water Resources in Las Vegas. But, I'm not a Hollywood actor, or famous or anything. Maybe we should just defer to our leaders, like Mr. Shatner, to determine what course of action we should take.

The "distorted" view I have of what constitutes a "good economy" is one in which there is widespread prosperity. An "improving economy", to me, doesn't merely mean that the GDP is growing, but rather that people's lives and well-being is improving. The Asian economies that you site as "doing well" are still conducted in places where large numbers of people think of indoor plumbing as a luxury. Is that honestly what you think we should aspire to?

This is exactly what's wrong with America. The majority is convinced convinced that our economy is broken because people aren't working hard enough. I'm convinced of the exact opposite. The reason the economy isn't working right is because people are working too hard in exchange for too little. Furthermore, we could be more productive, and more prosperous, by working more cooperatively and less competitively.

That's a hollow threat when the private sector is less than 8% unionized. Someone commented that decades ago, we were told that in future (that's now) the work week would be shorter and living standards higher. Yes, we said that in the 60's and 70's. So why didn't that happen? If we had kept the 35% unionization rate we had back then, it would have. Instead, we busted unions, outsourced labor, and allowed the billionaire class to accumulate nearly all the benefits of increased per worker productivity that arises out of new technology to themselves. I hope the drivers are smart enough to vote for this. I was in the Teamsters myself once. It made a huge difference.

"But we are just a sort of machine that has developed a soul."
Fair enough. That statement should read. Human bodies have developed what we call "souls". The only sensible definition of the term would have it be indistinguishable from "mind", "spirit", etc. "Religious types" are usually those who insist that the soul can exist independently of the body. I'm not one of those. I could be defined as "christian" only in the sense I stated in the latter paragraph. Most people who call themselves "christian" would consider me agnostic. No citation is required. A "soul" is what you ARE. Not something that you HAVE.
 

Souls definitely exist. You don't HAVE a soul. You ARE a soul. What you have is a body. Can the soul exist independently of a body? I don't see how. But who knows?
I'm of the opinion that there is no soul currently in machines that mankind has created. But we are just a sort of machine that has developed a soul. Eventually, I think artificial intelligence will also develop a soul as it rises to consciousness.
As for converting them to Christianity, well if by "christianity" you mean the belief that declaring your belief in a 2000 year old Jewish zombie makes you immortal, because death is a punishment that you deserve because your ancestor ate a forbidden fruit on the advice of a talking snake, then I'm against it.
But if by "christianity" you mean encouraging the AI to follow the example of a guy who was so in favor of cutting other people some slack, that he implored his deity to forgive the people who were crucifying him, then I'm all for it.

Vaccinations don't provide a 100% guarantee of not getting an illness. They reduce the probability. If you don't get your kid vaccinated and my kid ,despite vaccination, catches measles from your kid, then you'll hear from my lawyer regarding whatever out-of-pocket medical expenses we have to pay. Oh and my kid says there may be "pain and suffering" remuneration involved.

My neighbor's trees have termites. He has an ideological opposition to exterminators or chemicals or something. As long we don't eradicate the termites in the whole neighborhood, nearby neighbors will have to pay an exterminator every 6 months or so. Eradicating the termites from the trees generally throughout the entire neighborhood would be far more efficient and less costly. The exterminator is warning that the pesticides we used to use are becoming less effective since the termites are evolving an immunity. I'm getting pretty tired of paying for his god-given right not to exterminate.

Does "The Big Book of Knowledge" allude to the "round earth" theory? Because here in Texas that might cause some controversy. We don't want Texas children influenced by the anti-Christian and anti-American world view that's being propagated by liberals.