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Presidential Answers, Round One
1) War on Drugs
by Tim Doran
The War on Drugs has been a consistently neglected topic in discussions surrounding this federal election. My question is, do you believe the War on Drugs has been an unqualified success, and if not, what would you change about it if elected president?
Browne:
The question I most wanted to ask Al Gore and George Bush in the debates was, "Would you be a better person today if, for your youthful indiscretions, you had spent 10 years in prison? If not, why do presume to sentence young people to punitive sentences for doing nothing more than "experimenting" with drugs as you did?"
The War on Drugs has been every bit as successful as the War on Poverty, the War on Prostitution, and the War on Gambling - meaning it's been an absolute failure. As with other wars, the War on Drugs has bred enormous crime, corruption, and expense. I want to end the nightmare of Prohibition - with its black market, criminal gangs, drive-by shootings, bootleg drugs, and corrupt law enforcement.
I'm so committed to ending this insane war on our civil liberties, that I've promised that the very first thing I will do as President, from the Inauguration stand, is sign an unconditional pardon for all non-violent drug offenders currently serving their sentence in federal prison.
McReynolds:
The war on drugs is not only a failure, it is the wrong war. Heroin is a sad addiction but one we need to accept and allow addicts to get heroin through doctors. Marijuana, the most widely used illegal drug, is not addictive, no one has died from an overdose, it is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, and it should be legalized. Unlike Bill Clinton, I did inhale and from time to time still do.
I'm not sure of what to do about cocaine but one thing I know you don't do is send American helicopters into Colombia, and you don't spray crops in Bolivia, Peru, etc. The problem isn't there - it is here, in education and treatment. End the drug war.
2) Minority Religions...
by Electric Angst
What will you do to protect the rights of atheists and those who hold minority faiths, such as Wicca, Santaria, Shinto, et al?
McReynolds:
As an atheist I have an interest in this topic. (Perhaps I'm a Buddhist atheist, which is not actually a contradiction, as "orthodox Buddhists" out there will understand). All faiths, from Wicca to Shinto should be protected on the same basis as Judaism, Christianity, etc. All I could do is make clear the Bill of Rights covers this, and pledge to defend the Bill of Rights, which remains a radical document which probably could not be passed into law today. Thank God we have it. I believe in it.
Browne:
Minority faiths should vote Libertarian because we're the only party that will take away the power of government to inflict one person's values on another. This not only will make those who practice minority faiths safe from those of differing values, it will also make groups like Christians feel safe from other faiths - so each will no longer feel the need to fight the other.
Specifically, I intend to do more than talk a good game - as so many politicians have. I intend to get the federal government out of everything not authorized in the Constitution, so that all anti-religious, or religious for that matter, will be eliminated automatically.
By preaching "family values," conservative politicians like Pat Buchanan and George Bush keep you on the hook - even though they are doing nothing to actually promote such values or free you from government oppression.
I want to completely repeal the Income Tax. This would better enable individuals to live by their values, and would empower parents to choose schooling for their children that supports their values.
I am the only politician in this race who refuses to pretend I know what's best for you. I don't want to be your leader, deciding everything about your life, especially who and how you worship. That's a decision for each of the 270 million "leaders" that live in our nation.
3) Why give a tax cut?
by funkman
With the surplus, everyone has been saying "Let's have a tax cut, Let's have a tax cut." In the meantime, Alan Greenspan and friends are trying to keep inflation and the speed of the growing economy in check so it doesn't burst. Which they are doing by raising interest rates periodically. (6 times this year)
A tax cut flies in the face of what Greenspan is trying to do. A tax cut will inject more money into the economy and do what Greenspan is preventing.
Why is a tax cut so big? Wouldn't the money be better spent on the deficit so when worse times roll along, a tax cut can be easily given by not paying as much on the debt?
Browne:
What deficit? Al Gore and George Bush are both claiming we don't have a deficit? Gore says that we have no deficit because Bill Clinton managed the economy so well. Bush says we have no deficit because we had Republicans in Congress.
But the deficit does exist, and the way we know is that the national debt is still increasing. We're robbing Peter to pay Paul, or more precisely the politicians are robbing your future to pay for all their wonderful programs today. The Social Security program is currently bringing in more money than it spends, and that money is being used to pay for the current operating expenses of government.
We're really the ones paying the bill. It's not the Russians, or the Martians who will end up paying the bill -- it's you and me. That money the politicians are spending is ours.
If there were a surplus, that's money were being overtaxed. If, on the other hand, there's a deficit, that's money that's a debt our children will have to pay. Deficit spending also means higher interest rates for home, auto, consumer, and college loans. You're paying one way or the other.
There is a solution, and only I am proposing it -- not Bush, Gore, or Nader. End the Income Tax and the IRS, and replace them with nothing. Our country became the greatest, free nation in the world without an Income Tax. But the Income Tax funds all the unconstitutional programs that exist today. If we ended the Income Tax we could finance all the constitutional functions of government such as, defense, the courts and a couple other permitted functions.
But more importantly, you would be free -- free to save, invest, or spend as you see fit.
McReynolds:
I'm not for a tax cut. I'm for higher taxes, lower for the poor (in fact a "negative income tax" for those at the poverty level, which means they would get cash back) and much higher for the wealthy. I'm for an estate tax on the very rich which would confiscate the bulk of their money at the time of death - not because they were bad people, but because vast concentrations of economic power distort the fabric of democracy.
There are many projects - from expanding Amtrak to health care - which need funding. Some of that can come from the Socialist Party's proposed 50% across the board cut in military spending.
4) electoral reform
by carleton
Some people, especially those that favor '3-rd' party candidates, have called for the ending of the electoral college system to be replaced by a simple purely popular vote, or at least allowing for splitting the electoral votes by each state. The best recent example was the Bush-Clinton election. Clinton received 43% of the popular vote (but a sufficient majority of the electoral vote), whereas Perot got at least 10% of the popular vote but zero electoral votes. If memory serves, Vermont is the only state which does currently allow for its votes to be split; if someone wins 60% of the Vermont popular vote, they get 2 votes and the 40% candidate gets 1. This in contrast to California, where someone can get 51% of the popular vote, and therefore gets 53 (or whatever it is nowadays) electoral votes. What is your position on this issue?
Browne:
(no answer)
McReynolds:
First, abolish the electoral college. It discourages voting (if
you live
in Texas and are a Democrat why vote? If you live in New York and are
a
Republican, why vote?). Second, have an instant run off system for
the
President, which is how the Mayor of London was elected. It is very
simple
and "empowers" smaller parties. You would cast your ballot with, as
one
example, your top five choices. Let's suppose it was:
McReynolds #1
Nader #2
Gore #3
Bush #4
Hagelin #5
If Al Gore got enough #1 votes on the first count, he is the winner -
end of
story.
But if on the first count no one gets a majority you take the lowest
candidate (let's say it was me) and find out who my #2 choice was, so
that is
added to Nader's total.
It is possible - not likely but possible - that Nader might be #2 on
enough
ballots that he would have a majority. But probably he wouldn't and
you'd go
on down the list, transferring Nader's "second choice" to the next
candidate,
etc.
This means that if you voted for a Socialist Party candidate you weren't helping elect Bush. Also means if you voted for the Libertarian candidate you wouldn't be helping elect Gore.
5)How Do You Feel About Intellectual Property?
by Phil Gregory
In this age of the Internet, intellectual property has become a very important concept to many people. Many companies make their living on the artificial scarcity provided by intellectual property laws, selling information that they have either created or aggregated. Some others, mostly in the Free Software world, make their living seemingly in spite of these laws, selling their services based on information that is freely given.
Do you feel that our current system of intellectual property is a good one? Which parts of it (e.g. trademarks, patents, copyrights) do you feel are well suited to the world of the Internet and which do you think need to be changed (and, if changes are needed, what changes are needed)?
McReynolds:
I'm not going to dodge - I'll admit I have not studied this enough to know where I stand. I certainly am against the monstrous profits going to studio chiefs, but I also want to make damn sure that poor writers are ripped off. Have to pass on this one./i>
McReynolds:
Browne:
I believe the marketplace will develop ways of protecting intellectual property if the government stays out of it. Witness the way software companies send you trial programs that automatically go dead after 30 days. Similar innovations will be found to protect other kinds of intellectual property. No, they won't be perfect, but they will work a lot better than laws written by politicians and enforced by bureaucrats.
6) Encryption....
by SquadBoy
Many tech people think that strong encryption is one of the best ways we have to protect freedom both now and for future generations. For example to preserve information that future not so friendly governments may think we don't need to have and to make sure that things we want to have remain private remain private. Given this what would you do to help preserve our right to privacy through the use of strong encryption? Also in a related question what are your thoughts and what do you plan to do about the fact that we can not export many forms of strong encryption?
Browne:
No one should prevent you from encrypting anything you want, and the government should have no access to your encrypted messages, unless you want it to.
I favor a total absence of export controls. They are not used for national security. They are used to favor those with access to political power and to harm the competitors of those with access to political power.
McReynolds:
While I doubt any form of encryption can defy decoding I think people have a right to use it, the government is wrong to try to block its use or prevent its transfer to other countries.
7) Rising Political Protests
by sterno
In the last year or so we have seen a tremendous escalation in the quantity and size of political protests against globalization and the rising power of corporate multi-nationals. Do you believe that these people have reason to be concerned? If you do believe that they have reason for concern, what steps would you take as president to deal with their concerns?
McReynolds:
Obviously they have reason to be concerned! At two levels. First, workers in this country see their jobs floating to other countries were trade unions and environmental protections are weak, wages are low, and thus profits are higher. To have a level playing field we should support the international organization of working people, so that workers in Korea or Thailand can fight for protection, increase their wages, and force the capitalist investors to settle for a lower profit. The struggle is to increase labor's share of the pie. As a socialist I am very strongly for that.
The problem is, however, much deeper. Captialist modes of production, unless controlled by strong state intervention (or unless placed under social ownership within a democratic society) exploit the resources of the world without any concern except for profit. Biggest and best example - the Tobacco Corporations, who have known for decades they were selling death, but found it profitable. The forests of Brazil are being destroyed because it is profitable. Cars instead of railroads are produced because it is profitable. The environment is threatened by industrialization and technology - but very much more so when those processes are carried out by profit-driven global corporations which are more powerful than almost any nation state.
Browne:
The greatest guarantor of peace isn't a strong military or an international organization. It is free trade among countries. When people can buy and sell freely with people in another country, they have a good reason to discourage their leaders from going to war with that country. This interdependence is a far more reliable guarantor of peace than foreign aid, arms sales, and treaties.
Winston Churchill put it very well back in 1903: . . the fact that this great trade exists between nations binds them together in spite of themselves, and has in the last thirty years done more to preserve the peace of the world than all the Ambassadors, Prime Ministers, and Foreign Secretaries and Colonial Secretaries put together. When a government excludes other countries from sources of raw materials or from markets for their wares, it undermines the economic motives for maintaining peace.
Lost Jobs?
Free trade doesn't cost jobs, it improves them. Money spent on foreign products doesn't disappear from the American economy. It's true that an American company loses a sale when an American buys a Japanese car. And if it loses enough sales to foreign competitors, it will stop hiring for a while--or even lay people off (just as it would if it lost sales to an American competitor). But the total number of American jobs doesn't decline, because the money spent abroad will come back here in one form or another.
When an American buys a foreign car (or any other foreign product), the foreign seller receives dollars. He (or some other foreigner to whom he trades the dollars) will use the money to buy an American product. Or he'll buy an American investment--which also puts the money into circulation in America. Or he'll leave it in a bank--which will lend it to someone who will spend it in America. One way or another, the money creates jobs somewhere in the American economy. When a foreign industry outsells an American industry, the lost American jobs are highly visible. But the new American jobs aren't so easy to see, because they're spread out over many different industries. So politicians can score points railing against foreign competitors--even though their arguments have no basis in reality.
Trade Aggression?
Politicians describe foreign trade as though it were a war between countries--with winners and losers. Here, for example, is a statement by one of the 1996 presidential candidates: The Japanese in the last 25 years have bought 400,000 American cars and sold us 40 million. Now if that is not trade aggression, I don't know what is. You've got to wake up and start defending the national interest of the United States and of American workers, American businesses, and American auto workers.
But every one of those 40 million Japanese cars was bought by an American who wanted it. Providing what someone wants isn't aggression. Barring Japanese companies from selling cars in America is forcibly preventing Americans from getting what they want--which is aggression. And if someone thinks Japanese sales here are aggression, what are American sales in Japan? Here are a few areas in which U.S. companies "aggressed" rather aggressively in 1994: Was this trade aggression? Should American companies be forcibly prevented from selling products they can make better than foreign companies?
Most politicians miss the whole point of international trade. It isn't a game or a battle or a war. Each transaction benefits both sides. To quote Winston Churchill again: . . both the selling and the buying of these things were profitable to us; that what we sold, we sold at a good profit, for a natural and sufficient return; that what we bought, we bought because we thought it worth our while to buy, and thought we could turn it to advantage. And in this way commerce is utterly different from war, so that the ideas and the phraseology of the one should never be applied to the other; for in war both sides lose whoever wins the victory, but the transactions of trade, like the quality of mercy, are twice blessed, and confer a benefit on both parties.
Punishing the Innocent
But what about American companies that are shut out by foreign governments? Just as the sale of foreign goods in this country blesses both buyers and sellers, a foreign government that prevents its citizens from buying American goods injures both the would-be buyer and seller. But our government's response to such wasteful policies is to double the harm by imitating them. If the Japanese government interferes with American car companies, our government wants to forcibly reduce the number of Japanese cars sold here. But why should American car-buyers be punished for the sins of the Japanese government? The politicians don't address that point because they don't care about the American buyer. But if pressed for an answer, they'd probably say it's the only way to pressure the Japanese government to open its trade doors. Hurting innocent people in order to make someone else bend to one's will is the tactic of a terrorist. Governments have been using this tactic for centur ies--which it why there still are so many trade barriers.
Again, Winston Churchill in 1903 had something to say to those today who believe we can open foreign markets by closing our own: There's a feeling that England has only to retaliate and foreign tariff walls will immediately collapse. But all the great nations of the world are Protectionist; they have been for 100 years past, and perhaps for many years before that, endeavoring by every dodge of reciprocity or negotiation to force each other to reduce their tariffs in each other's respective interests. Where have they come to? Have they reached Free Trade? On the contrary, their tariffs have risen higher and higher, and at this moment Free-trade England, which does nothing, Free-trade England, with masterly inactivity, occupies in regard to the nations of the world so far as tariffs are concerned, a position of advantage to which few of the Protectionist countries have attained and which none of them has surpassed.
With virtually no tariffs of its own, England had become the world's leading exporter--while governments that used trade barriers to jockey for advantage did more harm than good to their own exporters. Too bad England eventually fell off the Free Trade wagon.
8) Asteroid Defenses
by Ethelred Unraed
Would you renew funding of programs to research and develop global defense systems against asteroids or other such threats from space?
Browne:
In 1983 Ronald Reagan made the most sensible military suggestion of the past 50 years -- that America should have protection against a missile attack. Unfortunately, he assigned the job to the Department of Defense, and now -- 17 years later -- we are no closer to being protected than we were then. The only thing the government should do is post a reward -- $25, or even $50 billion -- to be given to the first private company that can demonstrate a working, functioning, fool-proof missile defense system. Not a prototype, not a plan -- but the actual system.
Perhaps a properly functioning system could deal with "global threats from space" though that wouldn't be our first or primary objectives.
McReynolds:
An interesting idea. If this can be totally separate from the crackpot idea of a Star Wars program, and made an international program under the United Nations I would favor it.
9) The Future of the Country, and of Humanity
by 11223
I'm very concerned with the future of the country, and about what our national mission seems to be. Looking back through American history, every period seems to have a defining popular mission - like the "manifest destiny" movement in the 19th century, the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. During these times, there would be one struggle or idea that captivated the attention of the nation, sort of providing a national mission.
I'm a little confused as I look around today. What is our mission? To me, it seems to be "to watch TV and use the Internet." What would you say the defining national mission of today is? What should it be? Furthermore, how would you show this in your activities as a lawmaker? (For instance, if our national mission is the pursuit of science, then would you increase funding for scientific pursuits in the budget?)
McReynolds:
This nation doesn't have to have a "mission". The United States is an exceptional country in many ways, and certainly unique. But one problem we have is this damn "need" for a mission. Finland doesn't have a "mission". China doesn't have a "mission". Costa Rica doesn't have a "mission". Beware of missionaries! Build a good and decent country, compassionate, democratic, heading toward socialism, and make time to sniff the roses on the way. We don't need a "mission".
Browne:
This question concerns me. I have no national mission in mind and no broad plan to herd you into, as if this was the Fatherland. You're an American. That means you have a rich history handed down to you from men who risked, and in some cases lost, their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor in the pursuit of liberty.
Not only would I not increase scientific funding in the budget, I'd end it altogether because the truth is government doesn't work. It doesn't keep our streets safe, educate our children or provide a secure retirement. It doesn't aid progress, it hinders it. Government is politics, not progress. Government is bureaucracy, inefficiency, and brute force. It is the least desirable, least effective and least likely to succeed means of getting anything accomplished.
What is my vision for you? I want you to be free -- you and every other American. You should be free to live your life as you see fit, not as Al Gore, George Bush or Ralph Nader see fit. I want you to be able to spend, to save, or to invest all the money you earn. I want you to be responsible for your life. And if you choose to watch TV and use the Internet all day, that's ok with me, so long as the rest of us aren't required to subsidize your lifestyle choice.
The money would come from the Constitutional excises and tariffs that Congress can levy in order to pay for govt and national defense. I'll admit that the idea is a bit strange, not paying taxes and all, but it could work and did work up until the early 20th century.
go to www.lp.org - www.self-gov.org - www.harrybrowne.org for info on libertarian thought, yes - hes a would-be politician - but we're actually not terribly fond of typical poliicians and our modern government at large - I'm a libertarian and I think more should be - btw, we're the LARGEST third party out there - with the only real chance of qualifing for federal campaing funding, once that happens then we realisticly can stand a chance during the next election - right now we're supporting ourselves entire by donations. Harry Browne's webpage has some info comparing us to other third parties - we're more then twice as large as Nadar's Green Party (Socialists with a fluffy name, btw) and yet they get more media attention then us...we have libertarians in congress and all over the us, theres hundreds of us holding public office - literally no other third party can claim that yet our name is rarely heard in the media...perhaps because we represent a real threat and change?
I too am a Libertarian. However, this statement is incorrect. Libertarians do not and should not accept taxpayer money to fund campaigns. In fact, this year Harry qualified for over $1 million in federal matching funds, but TURNED IT DOWN.
It would be hypocritical to speak about binding federal government to its constitutional limits while simultaneously taking political welfare money from the hands of the taxpayers.
>Before I say anything, I should note that I'm a scientist on the public dole, so I'm biased.
So am I.
>That being said, even though I have some libertarian tendencies I think that Browne's plan to end all government scientific funding is foolish. The reason: basic research is one of the best investments you can make. It is almost guaranteed to pay off.
All the more reason that private individuals can (and do) invest in an umbrella corporation. It pools the resources and spreads the risk.
>Some corporate funding of research has worked well in the past (Bell Labs?), but it just doesn't seem to be feasable today.
Yeah, there would be no way that a private company could even attempt to map the human genome.
>Investing in basic scientific research is just too long term for most corporations.
Those that don't, die. Those that do, have a chance at prosperity. Capitalism is messy. Change is constant.
>Never mind "five year plans" or even retirement times for top executives, you may not be able to fund enough projects to have any statistical confidence that any but the most applied of research programs may pay off for you. And the payoffs may be something unexpected, which you will have trouble reaping the benefits of anyway.
Like the transistor, the IC, the sticky note? If it is useful, benefits will be reaped. If not by you, then by someone else. You can then go to work for them to do more research.
Harry Browne is the Anti-Nader! (or is it Nader that is the Anti-Browne?)
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
If by right, you mean right wing....
You want to end AIDS education because it somehow encourages homosexuality? Have you thought about what this means? Will it be illegal to setup www.aidsinfo.com?
You want to ban flag burning as a legal activity? What follows that? It's dangerous precendent.
You don't want any homosexuals defending your country, even if they're completely capable? You truly believe that a homosexual has no control nor any ability to work with non-homosexuals in an effective manner to accomplish a task?
You want quotas ended by a guy who makes it clear that his reason for ending them is to legalize discrimination?
You want a nationalistic leader who doesn't recognize the importance of foreign policy?
If this is what you believe, fine. It scares me, but it's your right to believe it. If you don't believe all that, please do more research into your candidate's views so you don't accidentally say something you don't mean.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Teaching schoolchildren to "fear" Socialism in the public schools is like teaching politicians to "fear" campaign finance reform by giving their campaigns millions of dollars in the hopes that they'll implement it.
--
That's the bottom line. You can like it, or not. Approve of it- or not. Encourage it, or fight it. But across the board, what 'free trade' means is "if you can come up with slave labor and kill people off in your factories to undersell us union-beset industrialised nations, we'll happily punish our own companies by giving all our business to you!"
There are some interesting variations, such as "if you can grab a copy of W2K and replicate 100,000,000 copies of it in Taiwan, we can treat you as a supplier of that product, look the other way and start buying from you rather than the official Microsoft sources". Free trade is not an automatic homerun for business- there are some nasty boobytraps in it. Primarily, however, it isn't about gray or black market- primarily it's about 'he who wields the biggest whip wins the bid', an excuse to massively reward the most ruthless industries that exist on the planet and punish anyone forced to behave more reasonably.
Of course, the libertarian perspective can be 'spun' to make it seem like Libertarians all _want_ to remove any controls and allow the entire world to turn into a big sweatshop ruled by the most ruthless and powerful people and organisations. Not all libertarians feel that way. Some do. Which is to say, some people _like_ whips and the subjugation of the weak and powerless, and vehemently dislike the idea of protecting anyone just because they are weak or powerless.
Oh... "which will be reflected in employee salaries"... *chuckle* no comment. *chuckle*
Present-day capitalism: the government tells you what to do, takes all your money and gives it to giant multinational corporations which fire you and hire 6 ill-paid malaria-ridden sweatshop workers in a country whose name you can't pronounce.
Libertarianism: the government gives up and goes home, at which point the giant multinational corporation buys your town/state/country and tells you what to do while (see above)
I mean, come on... let's be practical...
One particular aspect of the Progressive platform struck me very forcibly- the idea that wealth needs to correspond to work, not position or power. Basically, if I work 18 hours a day, the deck should be stacked in my favor so that I can take home wealth. If I don't work at all but I 'own people' and my employees do all the work, currently I'd get even more wealth, and the Progressive opinion is that is inequitable.
The thing is, intellectual property's based on the idea that my ideas or creations exist out there in some nebulous intellectual space and go on 'working' WITHOUT me. As if it made sense that I could record a super hit song, and (in theory- ha!) sit back and never lift a finger again, with my income guaranteed for the rest of my life by the fact that I'd done terrific work- once.
Even though the industry I'm associated with is completely committed to this twisted fantasy, I personally find it inequitable- to the point that it has profoundly affected my expectations and the way I see my work.
At this point, I see no use for intellectual property at all. I'm letting my expectations on my music change dramatically- it is not and will never be allowed to be the 'engine' for generating wealth for me. Instead, the _process_ of recording such music is the engine- I have a somewhat unusual and eclectic musical style and can work on commission, I have equipment and software resources (some of the software I wrote myself because there was nothing out there to do what I needed!) that can be used for this type of work, and most significantly the expectations for pay for this type of professional work are very decent.
The actual music gets to be a lot freer in its expectations- I can basically guarantee a certain level of technical quality and the artistic judgements don't need to make any compromises to popular taste because the idea of THE MUSIC going out and earning money is doomed. Instead the music goes out and gets attention and mindshare, which can then be used to attract business. The role of intellectual property earning money through scarcity in a digital information economy is completely doomed...
The one area that may or may not still warrant protection is simply authentication- if 50 guys all claim to have recorded my album, that could be a problem. Yet even here, this is not a completely persuasive argument- it simply turns into a 'caveat emptor' situation, because the sort of person who _would_ attempt to pass themselves off as a more skilled worker is not the sort of person who can actually do the work- 'stealing' credit for IP is a con and cannot be backed up by action. You'd turn to the person and say "Great! I'm sold. Now let's go to work, record me something new!" and they'd absolutely fail- and of course if the IP is valueless and ubitiquous, neither they nor I can actually sell it no matter who claims they invented it- they can only use it as leverage to win bids for other work, and there I'd have a really serious advantage. So even _authentication_ might be dispensed with- at the cost of completely rethinking what a musician's "job" is. You'd have to entirely give up on the idea of IP and fall back on a level that's much harder to fake or cheat- the ability to perform a task in the real world. Only that act would correspond to wealth- and the musician would need to do it as a consistent job, continuing to produce new material (perhaps on commission or patronage, or work for hire) in order to have consistent income. You'd have to work- you'd have to want to work. Now, I'm wondering (if you can be distracted from throwing rocks at the Eugene anarchists ;) )- how much of this sounds like your anarchist radical viewpoint on intellectual property?
Okay, so Mr. Browne wants to abolish the IRS and the Income Tax (yay!). But then he wants to offer $25 or $50b to whomever comes up with the first working missile defense system.
If not for the income tax, where will the money come from? National Sales Tax? Propery taxes? What? Are there other "necessary" projects that would be funded this way? If so, how will those get money?
If you vote for either of these guys, you are just plain nuts.
The president cannot enact tax legislation--only the legislature can do that.
Eliminate income tax. You have to be kidding me. You really do. I mean, I was dubious about Bush's plan, but that is just insane. Do you have any concept of what would happen? How many seniors (that's your grandma and grandpa) would be on the street, dying because they don't have ANY money now to try and buy drugs. Who care about Drug Plans if you don't have ANY money? What about underprivileged groups and populations? I guess it is their fault they are poor? Oh no, I get it--it's because they pay sooo much in income tax!
I hate my tax rate. It is very high. But in an country that has built so much infrastructure (or cruft, whatever), you can't just eliminate it.
If you think you can, I am shocked at your naivety. The fact that these canidates are popular with this crowd only further proves my theories on geek crowds: they are different just because they want to be different.
Flame away, I really don't care. These canidates are so shocking in their plans that I am stunned that so many of you are behind them. I hate the leading canidates and only half agree with my favorite. But these people are just bad for this country.
(And I thought I had Libertarian leanings. Thank you, Slashdot, for curing me of that illusion.)"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
To be honest with you, these are the first candidates that I've been able to understand on issues that are important to me. Gore and Bush are well trained double-speakers that will spew what they think the American people want to hear. At least Brown and McReynolds are giving you their opinions rather than the opinions of their political correctness cadre of panelists and specialists tell them they should say to get the vote. I for one applaud them for being able to take the time to respond to a small group such as ours (lets be honest, we're small) with issues that we present to them. I'm curious to see whether the " Majority Candidates" take the time to respond. /dev/null
As always, please redirect all flames to
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
Seriously, Libertarians believe that there should be no government-funded police, and of course, no gun regulations. Therefore, you're either rich enough to hire your own private army for protection from crime, or you're hired in some rich guy's private army, because the only other alternative is funding your own arms race vs. some rich guy's army, who will pretty much be using his private army to kill you and steal all of your belongings, because, frankly, who's going to stop them?
Then all the rich guys' private army's will fight eachother until only one rich guy remains.
So, eventually, I think we'll all be working as security guards for Bill Gates. (who will win, of course, because he has the most money)
The sales tax revenue generated by all the gun sales will fund the missile/asteroid defense.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If Crack were legal, the CIA would not be in the business of selling it. It would be about as profitable as aspirin.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
BULLSHIT!
You cannot get rich by working hard.
You can only get rich by being born rich, or being extremely lucky. A much higher percentage of "rich" people had it fall into their laps, than people who worked hard.
I worked my ass off at my job for 8 years. I know other people who were not as fortunate as I, working for companies that just happened to be not as successful. My company was VERY successful, and now I'm rich, because of stock options. But it had almost nothing to do with how hard I worked. I could have coasted along (like many of my colleagues) doing just what was required to not get fired - and they're just as rich as I am. I don't necessarily feel good about the money I have, but damn, it's great not being poor anymore. I probably could even retire now, and maybe, I don't work as hard as I used to before we got bought, maybe I spend a little more of my own time on my hobbies or family, but I could have done that before. But I have friends working at other companies, still putting in 12-16 hour days, and not getting anywhere financially. When you're paying your bills, you can't necessarily afford $10,000 for playing in the market.
Working hard in this country gets you nothing but tired.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
personally, I think that the best solution to the whole "flag burning" problem, would be if the President burned a flag as part of the official 4th of July celebration. To celebrate the fact that we are free, free even to burn the flag, and the fact that the flag is a symbol of that freedom, and that that freedom is not destroyed along with that symbol.
First off, people would stop burning the flag as a sign of desecration or protest. Second, I think Americans would start to think a bit more deeply about the freedoms they have, and understand how to think the way the writers of the constitution were thinking when they came up with this whole idea.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
That's because Socialism is a nice specification with no workable implementation.
Socialism within a democracy? A democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. And even in a totalitarian regime, Socialism just becomes essentially a monarchy, where the prime minister and his cronies dictate policy - within the ideological framework, except in cases where the ideological framework can be perverted, or where the absolute power of the government can provide the necessary secrecy to function with impunity.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Or maybe it's a typo, and he meant "thank god", not "thank God".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I think the basic point of his statement is that people live better with less government interference. The Tao Te Ching describes the ideas pretty well.
--
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
Browne doesn't beleve in passing (or promoting) laws that violate the constution. So he may hate the electoral system, but were he elected he would not be able to alter it. It isn't a presendital power. So I'm guessing he doesn't want to waste time talking about what he won't change when there are so many things he will (given the chance).
He talks about it on his web site somewhere. I don't agree with his answer, but I agree with his positions more then the other candiates, so (baring the unexpected) I'll be voting for him.
Why? Once reduced to it's constutional limits the federal goverment won't really need much money at all. It won't provide much in the way of services, but that's OK, we mostly don't use them now. Those that we do will be provided by someone else, probbably cheeper too.
The state goverments are more of a problem. The provide a lot more useful services. That means it would be much harder to live through a transition from public provided services to private provided services at the local level.
He talks about it on his web pages. The short answer is private charity, which manges to do more for the poor now then the goverment does, and could do even more if people who cared actually had spare money to donate, and who would have to do even less for the working poor as theur pay checks wopuld go twice as far.
Good. Go visit his web pages. See if you still agree after you read in depth. Visit the Libertarian Party as well for more background.
You won't agree with 100% of his choices. I don't. But it is wonderful to find someonw where you agree with more then 20% of the choices!
The monopoly was actually created by the goverment. The Bell compony conviced the goverment that a single phone compony was a must, having one phone compony hooking up doctors, and another for lawyers, and another set in the next town over was loony. Of corse they downplayed that the diffrent phone componies were in the act of hooking together (so had allready).
We got a usable phone system out of it. Faster I think then otherwise possiable. But we got a goverment mandiated monopoly out of it.
Or to say it Browne's way "frist the goverment broke our legs by creating a phone monopoly, then to prove how we couldn't live with out them they gave us cruches later by breaking up the Bell System -- arn't they a great bunch of guys?"
Are they? Monopolies tend not to make more monoplies (but who granted the cable compony monoplies?). Monopolies don't imprison people for doing things they don't like (but goverments will send you to jail for smoking the wrong kind of plant, or impound your car because you decided to pay by cash rather then check).
I don't like monoplies. I fear goverments.
Not allways. The goverment may have haul'ed Microsoft to court and declared them guilty, but their market share appears to be eroding on it's own. IBM was never declared a monopoly by the goverment, but it imploded on it's own (well with help from Microsoft).
In both cases there may have been help from public perception brough on by goverment's investigation, but the goverment didn't directly do anything.
I thought the other phone componies were forced to connect to the Bell System, or prevented from starting service in new towns (with the exception of GTE for some reason). But my recall on this is somewhat murky. Does anyone out there know? I poked around on the history channel's pages, but no dice.
That was up in B'more - almost local to me. I think EEtimes had the original article. Comcast couldn't put her in jail. They had to ask the goverment to do it for them. And I don't think the goverment would have (if she had any reciepts). It was still a very unplesent situation, and Comcast acted poorly. But monopolies can't put you in jail. Only the goverment can. They will sometimes use it at the behest of monopolies, sometimes for large campaign contributors, sometimes for totally innane reasons, sometimes for good reasons.
That isn't the definition of monopoly, controling more then some percentage of the market is a monopoly. They probbably had one in mainfram class machines, depending on what percentage you argue for, and what counts as a mainframe. Amdahl, Burougs, and others notwithstanding IBM pretty much owned the mainframe world (literally -- you only leased their machines...).
Oh, I didn't mean to imply that Browne as Prisident would try to mandate state policy. He is pretty dead set against it. But the Libertarian Party has candiates for 1500 to 2000 state and local positions as well. In fact they have 343 in office now. I was making a statment about them.
While I'd love to see passenger trains become common again (I _hate_ flying) it shouldn't replace highways.
Each mode of transport has it's pros and cons.
Trains are relaxing and fairly inexpensive. Unfortunately they're slow compared to airplanes (except when competing against shuttles like Boston - NYC), the routes are inflexible compared to cars, and they require a fairly hefty investment in laying tracks. Remember, trains are still used for a LOT of cargo, so a significant increase in passenger traffic would result in delays or the need for additional track I suspect.
Cars are very flexible, but I think we're all well aware of the problems of traffic and the cost and social problems that have resulted from organizing most personal transportation around cars. (like having to put in the Big Dig, or that ugly bridge up by North Station) Still, there are many places in this country where cars are essential - primarily rural areas.
Airplanes are fast as hell, except in heavy traffic areas like NYC, but are essential for long distance travel. I don't want to spend half of my annual vacation just getting to where I'm going, which would be the problem if I had to rely on trains or cars.
(Zeppelins would be nice, but they haven't overcome a rather significant image problem, and if they were going to be cheap, they'd not only be huge, but probably need hydrogen for lift. Not as fast as planes, but better than trains IIRC)
In cities of course, depending on the layout of the city, cars become a big liability. Public transit (buses, streetcars, monorails, subways, els) and hired transit (taxis, rental cars, private buses, pedicabs, etc.) are very important, but these cost a lot, and for best results you'd want a mix of systems. Boston does well, having a system of subways, commuter trains, streetcars and buses. Seattle, where I currently live, is only buses, though we're getting a subway (which is being poorly managed) and a lot of people want a monorail. Sadly, no one wants to connect either to the Eastside, where a LOT of suburbs are, so I doubt we'll see any great improvement.
So let's not get stuck in the ideology of favoring rail over everything else either. There are plenty of places for everything... until teleporters come along, at any rate.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
How many would choose to fund Fermilab? What private concern would or could find the money to support Jet Propulsion Laboratory? Don't forget, the government funded the manned lunar landing to which we should thank for our own microcomputer industry.
The list goes on and on and on. First, and foremost it includes the very infrastructure that supports Slashdot and everything else that matters to geeks. Without government funding there would be no Internet.
Pshaw! No matter what your political persuasion, naive extremism is rubbish. This includes libertarianism.
There's actually been a case on this very point in the supreme court recently. Someone was distributing films of children which, in their framing and general presentation were clearly intended as child pornography, but which contained no evidence of kidnapping or abuse, as they'd been filmed by a secret camera in a public place. The court found they counted as pornography (fair enough), and were therefore obscene (true), and found the defendant (who was not the producer) guilty.
My personal take on this is that, as you say, kidnapping and abuse are the problem, not pictures intended to excite perverts. Not that the pictures are not repugnant, of course, but if no actual harm is done in making them, there is a case for their not being illegal. Its a bit like gun control: should things closely correlated with harmful acts be made illegal in order to reduce the incidence of the harmful act itself ?
Yes, but its not exactly constitutional literalism, is it ? "We support government by the constitution, except the bits we don't like much. Oh, and by the way, states should have the right to ceceded".
I love the way libertarians go on about how simple everything really is, with this amazing faith in the founders of the US, and "natural justice", but when pushed will cheerfully agree (implicitly) that their positions are really just as tendentious as everyone else's.
There's a reason Gore and Bush don't do the same thing, which is that they have a chance of winning. By virtue of being ahead in the polls, Gore and Bush have a lot to lose and little to gain by taking risks. Third party candidates have nowhere to go but up in the polls; taking the chance of answering controversial questions directly and honestly helps them.
The moral of the story: we need to broaden future debates to include more candidates, in order to get more information out and raise the standard of debate.
Browne and McReynolds both strike me as more intelligent and intellectually involved than The Two Nitwits. I'd love to see both of these guys -- and Nader -- in the TV debates.
(As for me, I'm voting for Browne.)
I play Nerd-Folk!
On the question of intellectual property Harry Browne just recites the libertarian mantra that free markets can handle it. I believe a truly freedom oriented society could live very well without copyright and patent laws. But it would still need trademark laws.
According to libertarian principles people are free to do anything they want as long as it does not involve force or fraud. Trademark law is extremely important in facilitating a society with a lower rate of fraud. Remember that I am only talking about the original sense of trademark where you cannot sell or advertise a product that is likely to be confused with my trademark. Later perversions of trademark law not included. If you make someone buy your product or service believing it is my product or service this is fraud.
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Bell had several (government sanctioned) patents, central among them was the patent on loading coils that reduce the high frequency rolloff on long lines. These patents protected it from competition long enough to become an extremely powerful monopoly.
Later it got further government protection with the excuse being "universal service". The benefits it got from its government protected monopoly far exceeded the costs of having to supply telephone service to remote and unprofitable clients.
The government only stepped in to break the monopoly it has created after decades of uninterrupted operation at unreasonable prices.
----
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
From pornography.
No, hold on a sec. I'm serious.
Be realistic here. Yes we're talking a hypothetical situation of a libertarian-controlled federal government, but we're still responsible to make it "hard" poly-sci-fi. Just one element of fantasy - the rest has to be plausible.
Not everyone in this country is a libertarian. If we elect Browne (fantasy element), there are going to be conservatives and moralists who are going to howl bloody murder that things like child porn and drugs are no longer prosecuted (logical repercussion). How do you shut them up?
One answer is to tax the hell out of it: huge tax margins that make people think twice before abusing the stuff. Sure it's a regressive tax, but it's also a vice - in no way are cigarettes, pot, booze, or Natalie Portman naked and petrified necessary for existance. They're luxuries.
And (I have to get this off my chest) never forget that socialism, libertarianism, conservatism, liberalism, and any other 'ism' are ideals and that in practice, government is going to be a compromise between them. You're never going to have a purely libertarian government, despite what the Libertarian Party promotes. It seems that a lot of people forget this. Until Libertarians, Socialists, and other third party men-on-a-mission admit this to themselves and the voters, they don't have a chance in hell of getting elected.
I can see the fnords!
People do have the time to make decisions for themselves. Unfortunately, we don't have the time to fight against the decisions made for us.
Surfing the net and other cliches...
Surfing the net and other cliches...
(Who Meta-Meta-Moderates the Meta-Moderators?)
If not for the income tax, where will the money come from?
Eliminating the income tax would cut the federal income immediately to around a trillion dollars a year.
That's before the massive increase in income from excise taxes etc. that would follow in the wake of the massive growth of the economy that would occur as 270 million people suddenly had double their old effective income.
A trillion dollars a year is plenty to fund the Constitutionally-permissible functions of government, such as defense.
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Anyways, I used to live in Seattle too, and though I don't know the particular local politics today, I suspect the primary reason for resistance from east siders would be the "not in my backyard" syndrome. No one wants to have their houses taken by the government or their immediate neighborhood trafficed, etc. It may be best for the larger neighorhood, but no one wants to bear the cost themselves. While almost no one wants it in their backyard, it's fair to say that more affluent neighborhoods tend to be more sensitive to any percieved threat against their real estate and, of course, they've got more political and legal clout which they can fight it with. It's silly and destructive, I know, but that's a distinctly seperate reason.
I wouldn't want to vote for any of them over Bush, or even Gore (though I wouldn't vote for him either). If you were to include McCain and Ventura, I'd still vote for Bush, but McCain would be my second choice. The point is that not everyone is just settling for the candidates because they think they'd be "wasting" their vote or what have you. Bush isn't perfect by any means, but the alternatives are even less desirable. It's not inherently evil to not get everything you want--in a democracy/republic it's simply impossible to give everyone everything they want.
I don't think anyone will disagree that the future will be as free or freer than the present, as the world gets rich and war fades away. The drug war will end, in time, and be looked back on with mortal embarrassment, as we now look back on, say, segregation. Diversity will continue to bedevil states until they let people be free. Taxes and militaries will decline.
Well, combine private property and freedom, and you have capitalism. It is a very, very stable system; it took decades for socialists in this country to effect the changes they did, and that with the full compliance of every politician, and almost every intellectual of any note in the society, including almost all the economists.
In the future, things will be different.
Even now, almost any reputable economist will tell you: capitalism/freedom is good. Public ownership of almost everything is bad. They don't put in such simple terms, but there it is.
In the future, this concensus will become more and more obvious, spreading out from economists into the social sciences, and to the people, and then, finally, to the politicians.
Using the Internet as a model of free enterprise is a joke. The "market" was busy building AOL and CompuServe while government funding was deploying the Internet. No company would have ever dumped the funding necessary to deploy the Internet without doing something to assure their future control over it. Even now most companies are doing their damnest to replace open protocols with closed. TCP/IP, HTTP, SMTP, along with the orginal web browsers and servers all came out of government funded institutions. It would do you well to remember that companies do not invent things to help people. Companies don't give a rat's ass about helping people. They exist to make money. Period. If they can make money helping people, they will. If they can make more money screwing people, they will do that instead.
Don't get me wrong, I voted for Browne in '96. And while I still consider myself a libertaian on social issues such as religion, war on some-drugs, etc, I have come to believe that their economic policy would turn this country into a shithole. The already disturbing amount of power that corporations would wield would increase dramatically. Pollution would increase. Poverty would increase (almost certainly increasing crime at the same time.) This would not be a pretty place to live.
The only part of this theory that doesn't fit is the almost total lack of donations the Libertarians get from large corporations. You would think their pro-business stance would get them millions in corporate donations, but that isn't happening. You can argue it's because they are a small party, but the money that corporations have available could create a viable third pary out of thin air. My main theory is that more large corporations believe that they are much better off with government regulation than without. Let's face it, the government spends trillions of dollars, large amounts of which are used to buy things from corporations. How many defense contractors would even exist if the budget was cut drastically? How many billions would the telecommunications giants lose if the goverment actually got smaller? In many industries, government regulation greatly increases the barrier to entry, decreasing competition and increasing corporate profits. All the rules and regulations also make the marketplace more stable. Changes get slowed down, which helps multi-nationals keep pace. Companies don't want no regulations. They want regulations which benefit them and hurt their competetors. For that matter, companies don't like competetion. Oh sure, they claim they do, but that's only when they are not the dominant player in a market. Once a company is dominant, it wants to be a monopoly since that allows for the highest profits.
But my original question is still unanswered. If Atheism is the belief in no god then "a god of reason" or "a god that is reason" is still a "god" and seems to violate the principles of Atheism. Even if he was speaking metaphorically, i still find it an interesting and paradoxical statement.
Think of it as an analogy like in the SAT:
Christian::God
Athiest::Reason
capiche?
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Capitalism:
Take from the worker, give to the owner (money gathers money, since you can hire people, build industries, etc)
Socialism:
Take from the successfull workers and give to the not-so-sucessfull ones (regardless of if the reason is lazieness or unability).
All economic and political system thusfar have killed a lot of people. People kill people.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Well, the only thing that can end (or reduce) government is government. That's one of the real work from the inside issues. A government should regulate trade between the states and nations, defend our asses, then get the hell out of our lives. In order for this to happen, politicians have to decide on it.
That is, unless we want to take up guns and revolt. I'm a pretty bad shot, so that's out. naught.out
-- build a man a fire and he'll be warm all day. set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Last year, nominations were opened up, and a total of 216 names were submitted (including some that have since withdrawn, such as McCain and Bradley).
According to this page http://fecweb1.fec.gov/pages/2000geballot.htm there are 16 candidates who are on the ballot in at least one state. 7 of these are on the ballot in enough states to make it mathematically possible for them to win the election. Without Gush and Bore, you still have a 5-way race.
Browne
Buchannon
Hagelin
Nader
Phillips
Back to my original question, which of these 5 would you vote for, if they were the only ones running, and you had to vote.
Reality has a liberal bias
According to this page, there are 16 candidates for President who will appear on the ballot in at least one state. They are:
Cathy Gordon Brown (TN Only)
Harry Browne (All except AZ & PR)
Patrick J. Buchanan (All except DC, MI & PR)
George Dubya Bush (All 52)
Earl Dodge (CO Only)
Al Gore (All 52)
John Hagelin (38 States)
James Harris (14 States)
Denny Lane (VT Only)
David McReynolds (CO, FL, IA, NJ, RI, VT, WA)
Monica Moorehead (FL, RI, WA, WI)
Ralph Nader (44 States)
Howard Phillips (41 States)
L. Neil Smith (AZ Only)
Randall Venson (TN Only)
Louie G. Youngkeit (UT Only)
So of these 16 candidates, 7 have a mathematical chance of winning. Why not have a debate between the 5 who are not Gush and Bore? That would be an interesting debate... probably a source of some ideas that we would never hear from the Republicrats. Has anyone made an effort to get these 5 people (Browne, Buchanan, Hagelin, Nader and Phillips) all together in one place? Make it a choice between them!
Reality has a liberal bias
What if, instead of asking "Who are you going to vote for?" one poll was done that simply asked:
"Of the 216 candidates for President, who would you prefer the winner to be?"
I bet the numbers for Nader would be alot higher. Maybe even higher than for Gore.
If people started to realize that it was Gore who was taking the votes away from Nader, and not the other way around, things might be very different.
(Same might apply for Browne or Buchannon vs Bush)
Reality has a liberal bias
McReynolds I'm not for a tax cut. I'm for higher taxes, lower for the poor (in fact a "negative income tax" for those at the poverty level, which means they would get cash back) and much higher for the wealthy
Looking at this statement, he supports giving additional money to people who are at the poverty level. Let's say I make $10,000/year. Under his plan, I would get perhaps $5,000/year from a "negative tax" to bring me up to some pre-set standard.
Now, let's say that I get a raise. I am now making $15,000/year. Now I am no longer at the poverty line, so I do not get nearly as much of a "negative tax" as before. Let's say that I only get $1,000 now.
Before I was making $15,000/year after taxes. I worked my ass off to get a raise and now I make $16,000/year. That is a marginal tax of 80%! I would have been much happier to not work as hard and stay at $15,000 than to work myself to the bone for a measly $1,000.
Don't be fooled by Socialist economics. They will do nothing but keep the poor poor.
But what about the rich, they say. McReynolds is for much higher taxes for the rich and almost complete estate tax at death. The argument goes that then we will have sooo much money to give back to the poor.
I call BS
If I have a couple million dollars in the bank, I can afford lawyers and accountants. In fact, I can afford lawyers and accountants in multiple countries. See where I am going with this? If the US starts to tax people's assets at death, the rich will simply displace the assets into non-taxables. Whether that be fixed capital (buildings, land, machines) or foreign assets, if you are rich, you can afford to move your money around. In fact, if you spend a couple of months of the year outside of the US, you don't pay taxes. You could live on Euros or Loonies paid to you through a bank account in Switzerland for which you have a VISA check card.
Do you think the poor or middle-income families in America can do this? Not a chance. They are stuck here with their mid-level mediocrity enforced by the income tax/gift tax/estate tax and everything else that McReynolds wants to institute in his Socialist utopia.
The Bell System.
Plain Old Telephone Service was developed at Bell Labs, funded entirely by American Telephone and Telegraph, nary a dime of Uncle Sam's money. (The things they did develop for the government were add-ons, like encryption and wiretap devices and such.) The ubiquitous telephone, the sine qua non of business the world over, was developed by a company who then was broken up by the American government not once but twice.... IMHO the latest time, happening even as we speak, the result of the sheer weight of government regulation, forcing old "T" to break itself up along regulatory lines.
Actually, I just thought of another one... the commodity PC. It can be argued that there were various levels of involvement and interference, but the bottom line is that once the court system told the Patent Orifice to STICK IT and let the cloners reverse engineer, the market went ballistic, thus enabling Linus....
Oh, jeeze. UNIX, for Seldon's sake.
And one more, for good measure. The Internet. Yeah, it was *invented* by DARPA... but it wasn't until they killed funding for NSFNet and the various commercial network companies came to the fore that the Web made like unto a mushroom cloud....
So, there, Mr. AC, the telephone, the PC, Unix, and the Internet as we know it. All those things that are absolutely necessary for business today were either done sans government, or enabled by government getting the hell out the way.
That's why I'm voting Libertarian.
--
"See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too." -- Linus Torvalds
Oh come on, what's more insane, voting for some politician you don't want in office because you think he'll win, or voting for the guy who you actually want running the country?
I don't know when people started feeling that voting was about picking the winner, it's not a horse race and there's no prize at the end for voting for the wrong guy. Really, I can't imagine any more wasted vote than for Gore or Bush, regardless of who wins.
I'll concede part of the point about AT&T being a government mandated monopoly. That was more through government inaction than government action. AT&T said "We can be a monopoly, can't we?" and the government shrugged and sure, "Sure, do whatever."
As for monopolies not being able to put you in jail, I would say they can (almost). On April 26th, there was a Slashdot article called "Get a Cable Modem...Go to Jail" (link is dead, can't find another) about a woman who signed up for Comcast@home but not Comcast cable TV. She was facing jail time for "stealing" cable despite the fact that she called both Comcasts repeatedly saying that she was not supposed to be getting cable TV. An awesome read if anyone can track down a working link.
I could argue with you that IBM was never a monopoly. My evidence would be that the public did in fact vote them out of office using their checkbooks.
-B
Yes, the phone system came about, for the most part, without government involvement. Unforntunately, it created a monopoly that lasted decades before the government stepped in and broke it up. Monopolies are even worse than the government. There are no checks and balances and you can't vote them out of office. A free market is supposed to be the checks and balances and your checkbook is supposed to be your vote, but by the time a monopoly is in place that system has already broken down.
-B
I'm not for a tax cut. I'm for higher taxes, lower for the poor (in fact a "negative income tax" for those at the poverty level, which means they would get cash back) and much higher for the wealthy
Heh, yeah, the "higher taxes" thing worked oh-so-well for Mondale in '84. You think they'd learn....
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Rebublican: These things are immoral, you shouldn't do them.
Democrat: You don't need to do that, let me do that for you.
Socialist: If you make money doing that, I'll take it from you.
Liberatarian: You can do that, but I won't help you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This subject has actually come up in Slashdot many times before. It's a standard problem with capitalism, in that people can't discern intangibles.
The other problem is that people are busy. Imagine if you wanted a yacht, then, and had a very good reason for it. Maybe your dying crazy uncle knew of a cure for cancer and you just needed a yacht to get there. Whatever. I don't care. Let's just say that you *could convince people if you had the time*.
If you had the time, you could probably raise money from everyone to buy that yacht. I don't see why not - except for the fact that people don't have time to listen to half a million people like you. In order for a system of 250 million people and growing to work, we need to actually have delegation of authority, and some organization which takes that 'listening to everyone' load off of people's backs so they can go and live their lives.
This is the main argument I have with individualistic-government ideas - society today simply does not have the time to handle their own lives, plus all of the responsibilities that 'individualistic governments' want to give them. I barely have time to investigate candidates!
Government-funded science is useful because it creates a beauracracy whose job is to determine what's valuable to society and what isn't. Letting corporations decide this is idiotic - corporations exist to make money, and some things may have phenomenally huge benefits with huge costs but are not cost-effective - that is, space travel. The beauracracy, therefore, has some semblance of giving funding to programs which deserve it.
On the arts side, I am actually rather frightened to hear people suggesting that arts do not have value to them. This is distinctly an artifact of America as a relatively new country, and one area we desparately need to learn from Europe. I shudder to think what would have happened to Leonardo da Vinci under your society.
But this is essentially what the benefit of hard science is - spinoffs. In this case, Apollo was pure 'engineering' - also known as 'proof-of-concept.' Research for science's sake usually has unexpected benefits in many unrelated areas. That said, you do raise a good point - it's just that Apollo is not a good example of what you're trying to say. Apollo was a good spending of money in the same way that Hubble was a good spending of money.
Keep in mind that 'humanity' != 'average person.' I can't stress this enough - partly because I am a pure scientist (practical benefits are for engineers) but mostly because it's true. Pure science is akin to the arts - it doesn't have a direct effect on the average person, true, but it helps society and culture by boosting morale and people's self-image and opinions on the society.
For instance, let me ask this question: we spend millions attempting to work out the age of the universe. Suppose we figure it out, and we're absolutely sure it's right. What does that do for the average person? Some people would say 'nothing' - well, that's partly true. Nothing tangible. But to many, it would give a sense of closure and a sense of their place in the world. It's a good aesthetic benefit.
It's hard to explain to people in America that the intangible things in society are more important than the tangible. This in contrast to Europe, where they name parks and roads after artists and scientists, whereas in America, we name roads after politicians who wanted the road built to boost the stock of a construction company who works on it. Not to say that Europe doesn't have its problems - but when it comes to art, culture, and society, they could run rings around us.
How exactly did George W. Bush earn his wealth?
Perhaps if people in the US really did hate the [unearned] rich like those sensible people in Europe do, we wouldn't be faced with the prospect of another Bush presidency.
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E_NOSIG
I'd rather see someone have a poll to list the candidates in order from 1-5 (or 1-7 if you want to include the Rep/Dem candidates). Might be interesting to see, not only who most would vote for, but who their 'next up' choice is.
It would also allow you to theoretically take one of the candidates out of the election and see how the other fare. Of course I was really hoping for either McCain or Bradley to be nominated, but hey <shrug>. Thats why there are third party candidates. <grin>
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Thought you were going to ask them 10.....
"As an atheist I have an interest in this topic."
:)
"Thank God we have it."
I love it when atheists say "Thank God"
It's easy. Just have the CIA sell some more crack. And have corporate-sponsored courtrooms.
"Guilty - the choice of a new generation"
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather have research done with tax dollars than private investments.
First, ownership of ideas. If my government makes the discovery it's mine too. While I might have limited access to it's benefits, I can almost guarantee they would come to me at a cheaper price than from the free market. One area I think this argument holds is for drug companies. With the social security argument ongoing, I've noticed that a large percentage of the costs come from prescription drugs. By the time I'm old (25 now) every single drug on the market should be available cheaply from the government, not the drug companies. There's a certain look a corporation gets in its eye when it has something you need to live. And it makes a sound, chi-ching.
Second, motivation. This is always a rallying cry for privatization of services. "People will work harder when they have a carrot." But what we're talking about here is pure research. Given some of the technologies that will be developed over the next 50 years, and the profound effects they might have on our living environment, I would rather the people discovering them not be on a deadline. Rushed to pass research so they can bring whatever to market, and get the patent to eliminate competition.
There were also a couple of contradiction in Browne's platform (no big gov't, just big gov't projects), and his answer "umm, yeah those 30 day deals should solve software/entertainment copyright issues." And considering what would have to be a very business friendly vs. citizen friendly platform, I don't like what that would mean in this industry.
I'm sure you are closer to these actualities than I am, but there's my pennies for the day.
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+&x
There were commercial networks before commercial traffic was allowed/popular on the internet. You could use compuserve, or delphi, or prodigy, or applelink, or (etc etc etc).
To say that government had nothing to do with the internet as we know it completely ignores the fact that it was the government-researched network which created the standards base. Without that base, you just have a bunch of balkanized, incompatable private networks. The most important feature of the internet is that it is an internetwork of *compatable* third-party networks.
Read the whole comment. He was joking you goof.
I guess the "Sincerely,
John Rocker - Atlanta Braves" went over my head. I automatically filter sports related news out of my consciousness unless it is some weird sport like curling or archery. I'm guessing it has something to do with the subway series going on in NYC?
My apologies, Icebox -- you were too subtle for me.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So let's not get stuck in the ideology of favoring rail over everything else either. There are plenty of places for everything... until teleporters come along, at any rate. I used to work for an environmental organization. I noticed that a lot of people who could take the train drove their cars, so I suggested that we charge a nominal amount for parking (which was subsidized by our rent) and use the revenues to buy people transit passes (which were not subsidized). Boy, did that ever go over like a lead baloon. The point is that even environmentalists know it's really nice to have a car -- in fact I own two of them (chosen for high gas mileage, I might add). Maybe my point also that many environmentalists are hypocrites -- plenty of them drive SUVs. In any case I don't think most transit advocates think we should stop building or maintaining roads. It's more often the case that people of a certain political stripe get this idea that mass transit is this horrible, socialist plot to take away our God given right to sit in traffic jams. I'm with you -- intermodal is the way to go -- cars, buses, commuter trains, bike routes, pedestrian routes too. Taking 50% of the commuters off the roads benefits people as much as doubling the capacity of the roads and parking areas. Personally, I like the zeppelin idea too. As air disasters go, the Hindenburg was relatively benign. Sadly, no one wants to connect either to the Eastside, where a LOT of suburbs are, so I doubt we'll see any great improvement. Which points out the reason people of a certain stripe don't like mass transit -- it not only can whisk you downtown, but it can whisk the great unwashed uptown.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Well, we subsidize the roads don't we? The state highway department, last time I checked, had a monoploy on road construction.
We subsidize airports, don't we? The local port authority has a monopoly on major airports.
The government wouldn't have to build roads if there were a market for them.
I'm totally serious. There is no market for roads, and there is no market for rail travel. They are public good, their benefits (like street lights or national defense but to a lesser degree) are not excludable.
The fact that there is no market for them doesn't mean people don't want or need them, it just means you can't succeed by expecting private enterprise to take up the slack.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Some people economists claim that there would be a market for private highways if the government opened things up, since most highways are also excludable (see toll roads if you need proof of this).
Those people would be wrong. All toll roads I know of are publicly constructed, maintained and subsidized. It would be feasible to create entirely private highway systems in areas with practically no development, but then those are not the areas that require additional highway development. Furthermore and more to the point the existence of toll roads only proves there is an economically exclusive element in road usage -- obviously so or nobody would pay the toll. It does not show that the benefits of toll road use are entirely or even predominantly exclusive.
If I choose to take public transportation to work, there are private benefits to me (I get into), and public benefits to other commuters (who enjoy reduced congestion), and to city residents (who enjoy reduced pollution and traffic). Individually, the public benefit from my using the subway is small, but in aggregate it is enormous. For example I believe about half the commuters goin into the city of Boston take the subway; it follows that there would have to be a two fold increase in highway, street and parking capacity. Clearly there is an enormouse benefit from the existence of a public transportation system in the city of Boston.
Economic excludability is not an either/or proposition. Many private goods have public benefit and most public goods have private dimensions. The question is not whether a good falls entirely in the public or private sector, but whether the public good is sufficiently great to warrant public support; and whether the marginal dollar spent yields a sufficient good to warrant its spending.
By exact mechanism of support and production does not have to be through government agency. For example, the 19th century railroad barons made their great fortunes not mainly on the profitability of their operations but on a huge(but off budget) government subsidy. Recognizing the public value of having fast reliable travel between the coasts, the government incented private companies by offering vast rights of way around the new track laid. They were granted by the government a fraction of the public good that would be generated by their private investment -- land that would become valuable.
Another example would be vouchers for private schools. Clearly private schools have a public benefit as well as private one.
OS industry may be a natural monopoly, because the larger the market share, the more software runs on it, and the more software that runs on it, the more its market share will increase),
The OS industry is almost certainly not a natural monopoly, and is definitely not one of those monopolies which must be granted by government (e.g. monopolies which could not without legally guaranteed monopoly profit incentives attract sufficient investment).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm guessing that he is advocating public transportation by train. If so, he won't be getting my vote.
We're building the most expensive mile of road in human history up here in Boston because we're an old city that's maxed out on cars. About half of the people who commute in Boston take public transit. Public transit may not be the most luxurious way to travel, but if we eliminated transit this very expensive project would be utterly overwhelmed. I'd shudder to think what New York would be like with out the subway.
As far as Amtrak is concerned, we've already maxed out air travel capacity. That's why there are so many delays at Newark -- the airlines are scheduling half again as many flights there as the airport can handle. Almost every other major airport has the same problem but to a lesser degree. And don't forget the feeder systems -- the airport car routes that are routinely congested.
On the other hand, I can take the new Accela train from Boston to Manhattan in three hours -- less time than flying when you factor in the delays due to an overloaded air system (not to mention the delay in getting from Queens downtown). I get of at Penn station and walk a hundred yards to the subway which whisks me anywhere I want to go in minutes. Plus, on the train I get half again the leg room and seat width, and an outlet to plug my laptop into. I get tons of work done because it is comfortable enough to work on the train.
Build roads or transit? It makes sense to put your money where the greatest marginal increase in commuter capacity will be achieved. You can't double the road capacity in a place like Boston (or LA for that matter), but you could increase the amount of trains and busses relatively cheaply, making public transit faster and more convenient.
That's how the private sector optimizes its profits -- by putting money where the greatest marginal benefit exists. It makes no sense to bash this rational strategy because of an ideological bias for roads over transit, and then conclude that government is "inefficient".
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
AT&T was handed a monopoly over all new telephone systems by the Communications Act of 1928 (or something like that). You have a nice theory, but it's contradicted by the facts. -russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
You're funny. You claim that corporations have too much power (they do) because they seek out government regulations (they do), and then you say that a libertarian society would change this. Well yeah!! Of course it would! Corporations would have to compete instead of being handed a business through regulation. A libertarian society would result in less corporate power, not more.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Is it just me, or did the Socialist candidate state he FAVORED ripping off poor writers? What kind of an attitude is that for a socialist? You're supposed to rip off the rich to feed the poor starving writers, not vice versa...
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Geek grrl in training
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A recent poll tells why the people of New Hampshire are supporting George Bush. 40% like my foreign policy, 40% support my economic policy, and 20% believe I make a good premium beer. - George Bush campaigning in 1988
To truly understand recursion, you must first truly understand recursion.
Compared to Facism, America is a democracy.
To a layman, America is a democracy (dictionary.com offers the layman's definition: Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.)
But to a political scientist, there is of course a difference between a republic and a democracy.
As for your link, that's interesting in theory, but hardly bears any resemblence to reality. When was the last Supreme Court ruling that openly endorsed superceding the Constitution because the country is in a state of emergency?
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I'm sure everyone had heard of him, and knew who he was and what he had done. But my point was that he lived in an age without TV or radio, probably no one had heard him speak or seen him or even knew what he looked like. The only knowledge people had was probably based on reputation and word of mouth (and we know how accurate that is...). Radio was a major step in the right direction, as was TV, and the Internet is the next step that makes the process even better.
And let's not forget, he did win the war....
...with the help of the French, who were fairly powerful and hated the British anyway. I agree that his best skill was holding things together, none of the historians I've heard talk have anything gushing to say about his military ability though. In the French and Indian War, he was an officer sent on a few missions that he failied miserably. I wish I remembered more of the specifics to be able to say just which ones.
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It is true that we are not at war, but as history will prove, you *always* have to be prepared for the slightest chance of conflict and maintain a realistic image of strong national defense.
Thanks for doing your part to maintain the self-fulfilling prophecy. I hope you keep a bat or a gun under your bed at night, you never know who could be out to get you.
Meanwhile, next time you and your counterparts from other countries decide to go duke it out because your leaders think it's a good idea, I'll have changed my address to perhaps British Columbia, though Alberta seems nice enough.
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Isn't this amazing?
/. for managing to arrange this interview, and kudos to the candidates for participating.
When George Washington was elected president, I bet that more than half the population had never so much as seen a picture of him. Who can guess how many knew anything significant about his ideas, aspirations, or plans for the presidency? He happened to be the General of the Continental forces during the revolutionary war, but from what I've read, he wasn't even very good at that.
Fast forward to now. Anyone who has a computer (and between home, school, the library, and work, who doesn't) can post a question that the presidential candidates will read and respond to, and if it's good enough (judged not by the media, not by campaign spokespeople, not by some faceless beaurocrat, but by your peers). You could be a 12 year old student or a senior citizen, of any race--a handle doesn't discriminate.
It's amazing how the Internet is bringing democracy to a level the world has never seen. Kudos to
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A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
Of course corporations would actually house and feed you if they could force you to work down in the mines breathing coal dust (which they did for a long time) but even then they would routinely kill or maim those who tried to break free out of their bondage.
The only reason corporations don't revert to that mode of working is because the government agreed to do it for them.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
I can't stand it when delusional fucks like you keep spreading lies about how a bunch of scrap aluminum you are going to gather in the ditches can fetch you $25.00. I did not have a car and all I had was a bike I bought for $10.00 from a kid how do propose I get a truckload of aluminum to the recycling plant (way out of town) so I can pay my bill.
While I am at it. How do you propose to collect more taxes from the poor. Only an idiot would propose that you go the people with the least money in your country and get enough money out of them to run the country while letting the rich go. Even if you confiscated a 100% of all the income from the poor you could not raise enough money to run the country for a day. How do you punish the homeless people when they refuse to hand over that dollar that they made when loaded up their nonexistent trucks with the scrap aluminum and took ti across town to the recycling center. Send them to jail? Whooo that's smart give them shelter and food cos they did not give you dollar.
Every night I would get calls from collectors and I would tell them the same thing. Sorry I can't pay you I have no more money. You can't collect blood from a stone and I got no more left. For years I scraped by like that living on the handouts from people around me. People who helped me out and fed me when I most needed it. I now glady help others in need because I know what it feels like to starve (literally).
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
You had nothing right? You were able to convince people to prepay you for hauling recyclables in 1989 right?
People were so eager to part with their money and so eager to recycle and so busy that they would give someone who had nothing enough money to rent a truck to haul their recylables right? Now these idiots were stupid enough to pay you knowing that a poor person like you might just take the money and never see them again right?
OK then having found enough environmentally friendly yet lazy and stupid people to pay for a rental truck for a day. You hauled all that garbage to the recyling place right?
So your profit margins must have been massive if you did this and it payed for your living, food, rent, etc AND you had enough money left over to buy your own truck right? In fact you made so much money that not only did you buy a new truck but you also paid your way through engineering school.
SO let me ask you something. When did the drugs kick in and on what planet were you. This is the best fairy tale I have ever heard in my life. If you are going to make up shit at least try to make it belivable willya.
Oh yea I kiss your mother with that mouth.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
I'm suprised McReynolds replied here to Slashdot. If he's paid any attention he's got to know that it has a very large Anarcho-Libertarian user base
Of course. There's no point in preaching to the choir, is it? If he wants supporters, he needs to appeal to different areas. Maybe someone who read the interview is even now reading a bit of George Orwell or Karl Marx, or a biography of Ché Guevera to see what all this Socialism shit is all about. Probably not though.
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OK...
:) Of course, I doubt McReynolds is that radical, but then you have to define "substantial". The graph can almost be as gradual as you like, depending on the relative wealth of rich and poor.
geezer == generic British term for a bloke, guy, etc.
Perhaps I should clarify for the mathematically impared...My numbers were illustrative, not fixed.
They seemed fairly fixed to me. $15,000? Yeah, they could have been illustrative numbers, but you happened to pick numbers that gave an 80% marginal tax rate.
Of course, the income tax would be a sliding scale. You will notice that my numbers do not indicate a cut-off point
OK, fair one. I read your post a bit quickly and didn't realise it wasn't actually a cut-off you were talking about.
So long as c > a, there will exist some point at which the poor are paying a substantially higher marginal tax rate than the rich. Thus, they have a substantially lower return on their additional work
Not if you're applying the inverse of whatever function you're using to calculate negative income tax to calculate tax to be paid when income > c, eg exponential function
But this is implementation-specific. I happen to agree with the sentiment; the strong support the weak rather than the law of the jungle. At some point it comes down to philosophical preferences.
Of course, lots of socialists believe that money is a rather crude form of rationing.
No, socialist utopia is a reference to Sir Thomas More's seminal work outlining modern socialist theory
Modern? Didn't More live c. 15th century?
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Mmmm... moderator crack... *drool*
No, seriously, who the hell moderated this up? There are various arguments you can make against Socialism, but this geezer has picked numbers out of the air. If anyone ever decided to implement a 'negative income tax' for the poor, it would be a sliding scale, not a cut-off point at some poverty level made up by HerbieTMac. By making up arguments like this, you just make yourself look stupid.
And 'Socialist utopia'? Is that meant to be an insult? Presumably you think a utopia would be capitalist, yes? Does anyone think in 200 years time we will still be living in a capitalist society (serious question)?
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McReynolds : I also want to make damn sure that poor writers are ripped off.
Damn! Sign me up!!!!
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Give me a break, the title 'Socialist' can mean very different things. Of course the Nazis were the 'National Socialist' party, so they must all be like that, right?
There are a good many stable democracies in the world that are currently run by center-left parties, calling themselves 'socialist'.
Unfortunately, linguistically the economic policies get mixed up with the social and political policies which don't necessarily have to go together. If I was naming this stuff I'd call it:
Economics
- Capitalism: an economic policy espousing competative production and private ownership.
- Communism: an economic policy favoring centralized production and collective ownership.
Social policy
- Social Darwinism (better word?): a social policy believing that people are responsible for their own welfare with no governmental assistance.
- Socialism: a social policy which espouses that a government has some responsibility for the welfare of its people.
Politics
- Democracy: a political policy where people vote for the laws which govern them either directly or indirectly through their representatives.
- Authoritarianism: a political policy in which those in power make all political decisions.
That way you could make the following kinds of statements:
- The USSR was a communist, socialist, authoritarian state.
- China today is a mixed capitalist/communist economy, with a socialist social policy and a mostly authoritarian political structure.
- Germany has a capitalist economy a moderately socialist social policy and a democratic political structure.
Unfortunately, today all three of the above are called socialist, even though Germany virtually nothing in common with the USSR.
-Bruce
Essentially, the effect of the Electorial College is to concentrate voting power (e.g. a voter in Michigan this year has considerably more than 1/#ofvoters influence over this year's Presidential election; a voter in Massachusettes has none whatsoever because that state's electorial vote is as preordained as tomorrow's sunrise).
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
You know, I found it refreshing to hear what these two individuals had to say about the questions they were posed. You could tell it was honest opinion when MyReynolds opined on "inhaling" once-in-a-while, even now.
At first, this statement shocked me ("WHAAT! A candidate admitting to casual marijuana use? The nerve!") - but as I thought about it, I liked his honesty. This is one trait you have to admire, even if you don't agree with anything else the man says: He was being honest.
This in itself is something we rarely see in normal, everyday individuals, let alone politicians...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The income tax was first collected in 1863 to pay for the Civil War. It was stopped in 1872, but declared constitutional in 1881. A new income tax was passed in 1894, but declared unconstitutional. This led to the 16th amendment in February 1913, and a new income tax in October of that same year.
As the mystic said to the hot dog vendor, "Make me one with everything"
>>If I have a couple million dollars in the bank, >>I can afford lawyers and accountants. In fact, >>I can afford lawyers and accountants in >>multiple countries. See where I am going with >>this? If the US starts to tax people's assets >>at death, the rich will simply displace the >>assets into non-taxables.
/.'esque kind of way...what would you rather see...Bill Gates paying estate taxes or the rest of the public paying them?
Personal disclosure: I make a living by helping rich people lower their estate taxes.
Here is my little exposé on how the rich avoid paying the full estate tax. The rich already displace their assets and as a result, pay less in estate taxes. The estate tax is largely an "avoidable tax." With proper estate planning, you can avoid getting taxed up the wazoo after you pass away. If you were rich, what would you rather do...spend a few grand in legal and professional fees to preserve most of your estate or pay the full estate tax? This can be done with various types of trusts and charitable donations.
Another *very* popular form of estate planning is the family limited partnership, or FLP. The IRS and the tax courts have "blessed" the use of FLPs for many years. An FLP is a legal entity, in the same sense that a corporation or limited liability company is. To reduce your estate/gift tax liability, you transfer the legal ownership of your assets (stock portfolio, real estate, etc.) to the FLP. In exchange for your capital contribution, you receive a limited partnership interest. You can almost think of it as a private mutual fund...but unlike a mutual fund, the number of ownership units are finite. Instead of gifting your assets outright to your family members, or dying with full, direct ownership of your assets, you are now gifting/dying with interests in a privately-held partnership. Let me emphasize this...with an FLP, you do not own the underlying assets...you own an ownership interest in the FLP...it's just like owning stock.
At this point, you may be thinking..."hey, this FLP is just a shell." However, all FLPs that are used in estate/gift tax planning have serious restrictions placed upon them. The FLP agreement places restrictions upon the owners of interests in FLPs. Specifically, a minority interest (non-controlling) owner has no ability whatsoever to control the underlying assets...they cannot determine how the assets are to be invested and they may not receive a return of or withdraw their capital. The only thing they usually receive is a cash distribution from any income that the FLP may generate. In addition, it is very difficult to sell your interest. Usually, the FLP agreement states that you can only sell your interest with the sole consent of the general (managing) partner, or you may only sell your interest to other family members, who may not want to buy your share.
For all of the above purposes, an ownership position in an FLP is worth less to an investor than owning the assets directly. With an FLP, you have lack of control of the underlying assets and sometimes lack of marketability. It is my job to determine the value of FLPs. Not surprisingly, the value of the total FLP itself is worth less than the value of its individual underlying assets. Look at it this way...what has more value to you...100 shares of Andover.net that you own directly, or a noncontrolling interest in a partnership that owns 100 shares of Andover.net. Common sense would dictate that you would demand a discount from the net asset value of the partnership interest due to lack of control concerns. In the public marketplace, the exact same thing happens with closed-end investment funds...If you look at the prices of closed-end funds in Baron's, you will see the net asset value per share column and the market price column. The net asset value is the total value of the underlying assets and the market price is what people actually pay for a share of the closed-end fund. In every case, the market price is less than the net asset value.
So, in the case of an FLP, the gift/estate tax liability is lowered because you're starting with a lower value to base the tax on. IE, Instead of being taxed on $100, you're being taxed on, say, $60 - $75. And it's not really a dirty, underhanded trick...if I had a large estate, I'd want to protect some of it, too.
Also, I would like to note that the estate tax is only payable by people with assets greater than ~$1e6. However, it affects us all...the estate tax is one of the fastest growing revenue streams in the US today. The government is receiving that money and is getting used to *spending* it. If the estate tax was eliminated (almost happened if Clinton didn't veto it), that tax burden would get pushed down to the middle and lower economic classes. Let me put it to you in a
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Don't you know that all us Open-Source people are just communists? So naturally we'd be predisposed to the socialist McReynolds, not against him.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Browne does have a good argument on several issues, and really seems like a nice trustworthy guy on CSPAN, but his laissez-faire attitude towards the environment and free trade rub me the wrong way. There are just *some* things that can't be individualized to be prey for the tragedy of the commons. I believe the environment, and the plight of humans in general are two of those things. Amongst the myriad things you can do with your freedom, I don't think screwing over the shared environment or whole nations of people should be one of them.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
How about a one-time special-purpose assessment to be voted on by referrendum?
Or, since the miltary is a legitimate constitutional power, from all the other taxes the government collects?
How about this: because the income tax cannot immediately go away because of outstanding obligations, including paying off teh debt, and because it will take a constitutional amendment to do it, that the income tax pay for it.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
we have been brainwashed to "fear" Socialism?
Although I disagree with the terms you put it in, here is my answer:
Americans have been trained to be suspicious of authority in all of its forms. We glorify the rebel and demonize the tyrant. Because socialism requires the government to invade our lives and tell us what we "deserve" and how we will live, we have a natural reaction against it as an authoritarian scheme that should not be trusted. Americans have also always valued merit, personal talent and individual hard work; they balk at teh idea of politics deciding allocations and deciding what a "fair share is." Most Americans think that a person's fair share is whatever they earn for themselves. That's why, in this country, people generally envy the rich instead of hate them; because they know that, by and large, the rich earned their way up. In Europe, they hate the rich because most of them inherited their wealth. Unearned wealth is bad on many levels. This is what's wrong with Bush's inheritance tax plan -- if anything, it should be raised. If people are worried about losing the family business, they can just make a c-class corporation out of it and not worry. It's only sole proprietorships (and perhaps s-corps) which are "personmal property" to be inherited.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Economics
Social policy
Collectivism/Socialism: a social policy which espouses that everyone is their brother's keeper, and either forces each person to help other people (in prescribed manners), or punishes people for not helping (in prescribed manners).
Politics
That way you could make the following kinds of statements:
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Perhaps if we prevented wealth from being unearned... rather than hating the rich...
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
God: Lots of things are bad and you shouldn't do them. You have to do these 10(or 613 if you're Jewish) things that I think are good.
LOL!
* Satan: Lots of things are bad and you should do as many of them as possible! And whatever else you want. But especially the bad stuff! Extra points for murder and blaspheny!
grin!
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
High inheritance taxes destroy any incentive to produce more wealth than you can consume.
No, they don't.
To take a simplified model, say you're a farmer in ancient times when about the only product available to farmers was food (and again, for simplicity, we'll assume that it really is the only product available). Now say that during the course of your life, you produce double the amount of food needed to sustain yourself. If you keep the food, it'll rot. If you sell it, what's the point? There's nothing you want to buy, because you're already well fed, and you can't pass it along to your kids.
Food isn't inheritable, in most cases. It rots nearly immediately; especially back when your example takes place.
Substitute "money" for food, and you've basically got modern society.
I don't see how that follows. Money doesn't perish (unless the nation does, or due to debasement).
Another simpler argument is that this is essentially a tax on people who die unexpectedly.
They're still dead. And if it is given to someone else, then they have unearned wealth. Now, insurance for familes to survide the breadwinner is one thing. Inheriting $80million is another.
Check out Europe's heriditary aristoracy: the rich. Most rich people in Europe inherit their wealth rather than earn it. In the USA, most rich people earn it. Look at the difference in freedom and productivity.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
The US was able to survive without income tax because they owned an extrememly large piece of real estate: all the land west of civilization.
I don't see how that's true. They were selling the stuff for $1/acre and still own 31% of it.
The government was able to survive without income tax because its powers were limited, and it did a lot less.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
corporate feudalism ... Personally, though I like some of his ideas, etc.
Actually, his plan to increase inheritance taxes is a good one, and pro-capitalist at that. Unearned wealth is massively non-capitalist, and tends to create a priviledged and self-sustaining aristocracy, as seen in Europe. The Libertarians would do well to adopt that plank of the Socialist party platform: unearned wealth bad!
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
You left out the "threat of force" part and that is crucial. Under capitalism workers trade the products of thier labor away in return for a wage, no force involved.
Bull. Physical force isn't the only force. Being told you have to work to be able to have shelter and food is economic force. You are not free to "opt-out" of the economic system in the US; you have to participate to live. You are FORCED to be involved.
It doesn't matter whether the choice is between "turn over your work products or get shot" or "turn over your work products or starve"; and in some ways, the former is nicer because your death is quicker and less painful.
At least in a socialist society, everyone benefits from everyone else's work In a capitalist society, only a few already wealthy people really benefit from that work.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
I'm suprised McReynolds replied here to Slashdot. If he's paid any attention he's got to know that it has a very large Anarcho-Libertarian user base. (Including the fringe who seem to want to eliminate government and turn the world into something that resembles corporate feudalism "for the good of capitalism")
His Socialist views surely are going to get little more than attacked and razzed by the majority on this site. Personally, though I like some of his ideas, and do believe that some decently intelligent people running the gov't with the best interests of the public (and not just themselves like today's politicnas) in mind can do some things better than any money/greed driven could ever do. Mind you, not ALL things better, just some of them.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
McReynolds made alot of good points, but I guess what I would like to know is why as school children, etc., we have been brainwashed to "fear" Socialism?
Cold war/anti-communism (and socialism by extention) mentality that they tried to entrench in us. See, they're the enemy, they do things differently, and their way is wrong, which is why we're fighting them. Or something like that.
And I think there's also a lot of that protestant work ethic in this country, where you are defined by your work and how hard to work at it, and you get your rewards in life based on that work - so financial success means you're a hard worker, and lack of success means you're lazy and a leech. (See just about any anti-welfare tirade for more evidence of this) Of course, bad luck and bad situation don't come into play in it...
I'll be honest, I think a lot of it is selfishness; the "I earned it, it's all mine" attitude. That having some of your money taken away for some "service" that is hard to quantify seems to be unfair. And the richer you are, the more you pay for these "services" that people would rather pay "on their own" instead of to the government - of course, never mind the people who can't pay for it on their own for whatever reason.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
According to issues2000 there are eight candidates.
The only selfishness I see comes from the socialists who believe they are entitled to forcibly take the products of other people's labor because they "need" it more. Capitalists want to make money by providing products and services that other people want. Socialists want to take money that others have made under threat of violence. This is where the previously mentioned 100 million dead victims of socialist governments come in.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I personal wished the question about the election process would include the simple question, "Why is it so damn hard to vote?"
I used to laugh at people who vote for a third party, but I changed my mind.
Browne definitely sounds like a man of great vision. There are, however, some weak points:
- I agree with everything he said up to the "No income tax" part. I think that is quite irresponsible.
- Then he failed to give any answer to the question about the current electoral system.
- Browne also fails to explain "Free Market's" naughty effect - monopolistic behavior such as that of Microsoft.
- The point that Free Trade is better than defense is very brilliant. Look at Russia. And the notion that Free Trade doesn't cost jobs is also correct in any modern economists point of view.
- Browne fails to explain how a lot of people will survive in his vision. If wellfare system is taken off immediately, the country will no doubt be in chaos and violence. Simply put, some people will go out and rob if they don't have food in thier hands. This is more costly than wellfare.
Overall, thought. I feel that at least we are not fed with bullocks. We got honest answers to problems without any moral references. That's what I like.
>It's good for the environment. It's good for
>lower-class people (think of the cost of a
>car...not just buying it, but the insurance, gas,
>etc)
Well, I dunno 'bout the parent, but I'm all for public transit. I use a combo of BART and MUNI every day; to get to work during the week, and to go out on the weekends. But the system's not perfect. Wanna take public transit north of Market? Well, there's the F-line and the cable cars, but they are so infested by tourists that you're pretty much SOL. Everyone from Richmond, the Marina, and North Beach pretty much *HAS* to drive in.
But the original poster was criticising Amtrack. And I agree 100%. They suck. I WAS actually considering taking a train to Florida to see my family this xmas. *BIG* mistake!
To get to Florida from SF via Amtrack, I'd have to take a shuttle bus to some town called emeryville I think. From there, I'd have taken a train to Los Angeles, then to Chicago(!!!); from Chicago to F-ing Penn Station in *NEW YORK*; and then FINALLY, a train down the east coast to Florida.
It would have been a hellish five day trip each way, and would've wound up costing me MORE than my plane ticket that'll have me home in nine hours with only one layover in Atlanta.
I'm sorry, but any organisation so boneheaded as to route you through LA, Chigago, and New York over five days to get from SF to Palm Beach, and have the audacity to charge MORE tor that hell DESERVES to be put out of business.
Amtrack deserves not your endorcement, support, or custom; nor that of anyone ELSE, for that matter!
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
(For the moment let's ignore whether the connection you make is valid.)
The US was able to survive without income tax because they owned an extrememly large piece of real estate: all the land west of civilization. You'll notice that once the land dried up, that's when they implemented income tax.
But the US STILL claims ownership or "stewardship" of much (about half?) of the land west of the Mississippi, and non-trivial amounts east of there. And it's constantly grabbing more.
Suppose the portion of that land that properly belongs to someone else were returned (for instance: indian lands to the descendants of tribes improperly "terminated", i.e. declared extinct), and the rest sold off.
Even taking into account a resulting drop in land prices that could easily pay off the national debt, with a pretty penny left over.
If you're concerned about the "delicate ecology" of some piece of the land being ruined by its new owners, get together with others who believe the same way and BUY it!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Some corporate funding of research has worked well in the past (Bell Labs?), but it just doesn't seem to be feasable today.
How about Xerox PARC? B-)
Bell Labs was an artifact of government regulation.
The Bell Telephone system was granted a set of monopolies and their rates regulated. But part of the "costs" that went into computing the rates, when they were adjusted, was money spent on research on improving telephony.
So they set up Bell Labs. And hired a BUNCH of new PHDs. And gave them lots of equipment. They had a free hand, provided they published (in the publicly-available house journal) an article now and then that had something to do with improving SOMETHING related to telephony.
And no matter how much they spent, Bell got to up the rates to make it all back plus a profit. (6%, I think it was.)
So Bell Labs' mission was really to spend as much money as they could. Because the more the spent, the more the AT&T made. B-) They worked on metalurgy, and voice recognition, and speech synthesis, and graph theory, and cyphers, and semiconductors, and assistance for the deaf, and remote-controlled servos, and... (I could keep this up for days.)
But it DIDN'T WORK!
You see, anything they invented belonged to AT&T. They could patent it and licence the patents for a fee. (In fact, they HAD to license it, and HAD to release it if it had applications outside telephony. Think UNIX...)
And the licensing fees made Bell Labs ENORMOUSLY profitable! They never WERE able to spend more than they made.
So Bell Labs was an unintentional case study showing that well-funded basic-plus-applied research can turn a profit (big time!) Despite the fact that with basic research you have no idea, in advance, what will turn up and where the resulting profit will be made. You just know that if you do enough of it SOMETHING will turn up and you'll make out like a bandit.
Xerox PARC, on the other hand, was a case study in management error. This was Xerox's version of Bell Labs, dedicated to research into things related to office workflow.
Early in their existence they designed a computerized control panel for Xerox copiers. What it replaced was a mass of hardwired discrete components (relays, semiconductors, switches, etc.) It saved a bundle.
So they got credited with saving Xerox a bundle. And they KEPT ON being credited with saving Xerox a bundle, as all future production used their bright idea, indefinitely. So they could spend a lot of money and still look, on the books, like they were making money for the company, even if management NEVER USED any of their new bright ideas.
And that's about what happened. They came up with a lot of great stuff. And people in Silicon Valley cloned it, or bought rights for peanuts, while Xerox didn't pursue it themselves. (Think Ethernet - once known as "The Xerox Line". Think Graphical User Interfaces ala Mac & Windows.)
So again basic research was enormously profitable. And it could have been even more profitable for the company that funded it - IF management had had a clue. (Fortunately for the rest of us, Xerox's other product lines were profitable enough to keep the money flowing...)
Or at least that's the way I heard it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That depends on your definition of Christian, doesn't it?
As I see it, "Christians" are adherents to ANY of a set of belief systems that can trace their origin to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. They generally think there was something special about him. But beyond that there's a LOT of variation.
That includes the early church - the Roman immortality cult.
It includes "The Church" of the middle ages - and its current incarnation: the Roman Catholic church.
It includes the Russian Orthodox and the Episcopalians.
It includes the classic protestant sects.
It includes the Unitarians. (Or it did until a few years ago, when they got together and voted, deciding that they WEREN'T Christians any more. B-) )
It includes the Satanists. (They believe in the same holy and unholy teams. They're just rooting for the other side. They apparently got their origin from some of "The Church"'s own propaganda.)
It includes snake handlers.
It includes Holy Rollers.
It includes Pentecostals.
It includes Mormons. (Their theology is a similar sort of expansion on classic Christian teaching as Christianity was an expansion on the Jewish sects that preceeded it.)
And it includes all sorts of apocolyptic sects. Members of that class include the several kinds of Seventh Day Adventists, one of which was (still is?) the Branch Davidians.
Now different sorts of Christians often decide that their particluar form of Christanity, or some set of religions similar to it, are the True Religion, and those OTHER things are NOT. (Sometimes they can be quite insistent about it. Especially if they think that God is going to be mad if those OTHER people keep doing whatever it is they're doing.)
But just because some religion is VERY different from yours, and shares very few (if any) beliefs, doesn't mean it didn't grow from the same roots.
And if it grew from those roots, it can also claim the tag "Christian".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Perhaps having a Republican for president might encourage more people to move more left in their views, especially if drastic changes are made while Bush is in government. This might end up helping Nader in the next election, especially if Bush manages to somehow upset current legislation on the abortion pill, birth control, welfare, et al. People might decide that they need a more radical change and vote Nader in 2004.
For those of you thinking about the preferential voting system proposed by McReynolds, you should first look outside the U.S. to other countries that have implemented such systems.
In Australia, preferential voting is used, and we still have what is called "two-party preferred" effects - there are only really two parties that matter, and it is difficult for minority parties to have a voice in government.
There has been an argument that the voting system should revert to "first past the post" (i.e. primary vote only, no preferences), or perhaps use a system such as the Hare-Clarke proportional voting system, although such systems also have their own problems.
I thought Libertarians favored free trade. Why is eliminating income taxes better than eliminating tariffs and excises?
Excise taxes are levied on goods at the manufacturer prior to reaching the point of sale. They are built into the cost of goods, and so are self-limiting. If the cost of certain goods rises too high, people quit buying them, and taxes are kept in check.
There is no such mechanism to limit the income tax. If politicians decide they want more of your money, they take it.
So, as far as trimming down our federal bureaucracy, getting rid of the income tax is a good start. We got by without one until 1913, which is about when the waves of social welfare programs started and all the acronymic bureaus and agencies came into existence.
--
There were also almost a hundred decentralized, competing global networks prior to the Internet's rise. TCP/IP took off because it was built into BSD, which a lot of universities used.
Market 'network effects' actually favor open standards and 100% compatibility.
--
If not for the income tax, where will the money come from? National Sales Tax? Propery taxes? What? Are there other "necessary" projects that would be funded this way? If so, how will those get money?
The same place it came from in the first 120 years of the country's existence, before we had an income tax.
The federal budget is $1.9 trillion. I have no idea how many zeros that is. Of that, about half comes from income taxes, and the other half is from tariffs and excise taxes.
--
He's in politics because he and his followers simply can't grasp that government is the shadow of business. There's much ado about nothing with complaints like Social Security which has lowered the poverty level of seniors from 50 to 10%, or income tax - tempting but that does include dismantling most of the federal government. College loans/grants that I'm sure most Slashdotters are partaking in. I just love college kids who preach Browneisms after submitting a FAFSA or have grandparents collecting S.S.
The lesson he failed to learn is that we should set up a democratic state that protects people from business, not the other way around. A mature government has the responisbility to take care of those who can't take care of themselves. Not engage into this wild-west mentality of "lets let market dictate our everyday rights and choices."
Considering we're living in the age of he multinationals, boycotts have no power and Browne will simply cut out the messy government part of our society and let business do all the talking. Soon enough federal child-labor laws, minimum wage, etc will be abolished because "Hey I can't find it in the constitution, I looked twice!" Great plan to push us straight into the third world.
Instead of embracing Canadian or European governments and politics which are rated highly on quality of life issues not just GDP we have a plan from a man who's ready to sell us out to an ever-scarier criminal capitalist machine.
The best thing Browne has going for him are his views on drugs and guns. Those alone get one issue righties and lefties to the polls. Good work Browne you've earned your 1%.
I don't see Nader advocating the governments ownership of means of production, which is what socialism means. Feel free to call me a commie too, lots of 50s propaganda is now public domain.
Caring and help social causes isn't the same as Socialism. Nader advocates capitalism, but not criminal capitalism.
Oh come on.
Ever hear of TCP/IP or any open standands? I have a feeling that card of yours has the words "Lobotomized on 10/5/95" at the bottom.
Canada, Sweden, and most other progressive states aren't falling into a financial blackhole, perhaps you'd like to back that up with facts?
Your use of "comrade" just shows your extreme bias and name-calling is simply immature.
Actually according to the Swedish themselves they're doing quite well:
s p
With demand growing so strongly, employment is now rising faster than at any other time in the past 40 years. The rapid increase in employment is expected to bring the unemployment rate down below the Governments 4-percent target during the fourth quarter of this year.
http://www.konj.se/Eng/prog_analys/konj_laget.a
Private insurance has never nor never will provide each and every citizen with healthcare.
European healthcare varies in different countries but its sure beats nothing, and being a slashdot tech savvy user you probably haven't gone very long without it. Not to mention the ridiculous debts that have been put on people after life-saving surgery and pharacutical costs that are out of control. Even though we subsidize a lot of pharmacutical companies citizens do not get a price break. Nor are our HMO's a smashing successes and we're paying quite heavily for them.
Oh course it doesnt 'always works.' Nothing 'always works.'
As to the name calling, sorry but you are immature. Criminal capitalism is when business gets away with healthcare fraud, breaking environmental laws, gross negligence, etc. I was NOT saying capitalism = criminal. The free run Browne and company would give big business would be disasterous.
Capitalism produces revenue, democracy produces justice, there's a compromise in there to eveyrone's benefit and that's exactly what your man doesn't get.
Just brilliant Mr. Browne. Only one question: Then why the heck are you in politics?
If you look into the Libertarian Party, you'll see that its history is full of people who run for an office, get elected, and then either shut down that office, or greatly reduce its size and tax intake. The other classic thing is to find one Libertarian on a city council, dissenting on every tax increase.
Mr. Browne doesn't even take the gov't funds he's "entitled" to in order to fund his campaign. He's very clear that he is in politics to restore the Constitution of the United States of America, which provides for a small Federal government with very limited powers. It does not grant the Federal gov't the power to create agencies like the IRS, the ATF, the DEA, and the INS. He just said on this very Slashdot page that the first thing he will do as President would be to free political prisoners. I mean, the man is fighting for freedom. Before you snicker at that, please take some time to answer these questions for yourself (use the Internet ... it will be a wild, and educational ride):
I have to pause here to say RIP, my friend, Peter McWilliams. Read Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do (free online, or also available at your bookstore), and think about the fact that its author died because the gov't stood between him and his doctor.
This shit is enlightening, and painful, and shocking. It demands action. It's hard to open your eyes (red pill or blue pill, etc), but you have to sometime. If you're a White American, you are standing idly by while the gov't harasses, imprisons, and kills Black and Hispanic Americans for political points every day. They are doing this. It is a fact. People are dying. Families are being destroyed wholesale. Try and get used to it and then decide what you are going to do about it, if anything.
This is the perfect election to vote Libertarian. George W. Bush and Al Gore are such interchangeable bozos, it just doesn't make a difference if you "waste your vote" and we get one instead of the other. What counts is to send a message of protest, to show that there can be political change in the US, so that the 2004 election campaigns will be about real issues. Harry Browne is the candidate for President for America's third largest political party, and he said right here on Slashdot that he had a question that he'd really like to ask Al Gore and George Bush. He has not had the opportunity. A substantial Libertarian vote this November might lead to Mr. Browne or his successor being involved in the 2004 Presidential debates. By then, the media may have adjusted for all of its current infotainment leanings and we may have more actual journalism (why did David Letterman ask G.W. Bush the toughest questions he's faced so far?). You can make your vote actually count this November by voting Libertarian.
> Any state which profitted as people killed
... this is missionaries with lots of money and guns. We are feared and derided the world over because of the Drug War. There are people dying of terminal illnesses the world over who can't get pain relief because opium and cannabis are internationally outlawed (thanks to us), and that was all they had. There are places where people can't afford an aspirin, but they could have grown their own cannabis, or it grew wild, except that the US gov't sprayed their town with pesticides that kill cannabis. The newest thing to come out of the DEA is a fungus that kills the hemp plant. I guess it will be good for Pfizer.
... they were also going to eradicate that.
> themselves with cocaine or heroine would not be
> looked at favorably by the rest of the world.
As opposed to how we're looked at now? We are the laughing stock of the world when it comes to "illicit" drugs. Former Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey has traveled all around the world telling lies, buying complicity from other gov'ts, and threatening the Netherlands. This is true missionary stuff
The only reason people die from cocaine or heroin in the first place is that it's hard to get proper doses from a guy on the street, so it's easy to OD. Pharmaceutical companies are forbidden (by the gov't) from manufacturing safe, labeled, quality controlled doses of these drugs, so people die. Doctors are forbidden (by the gov't) to prescribe heroin for a heroin addict, even though the addict needs heroin as much as a diabetic needs insulin. A small, but regular, dose is all the person needs to live a normal life. If they miss a few days, then they need a big dose, which gets them high and stops them from functioning at work, etc., so they lose their jobs and houses and families and end up in the street. The number of heroin and cocaine users is completely insignificant, though, which is why cannabis is still illegal. You need to round out the numbers so you can spend $50,000,000,000 per year on cops.
Whatever ways there are to create revenue for the gov't besides income tax, there are surely better ways for the gov't to spend $50,000,000,000 per year than hiring cops to harrass doctors, patients, drug addicts, drug users (only a small percentage of cocaine and heroin users are addicts, unlike caffeine or nicotine), and everybody else who gets in their way.
> Ayn Rand advocated a voluntary contribution
> system (which, of course, is unworkable for
> items of public good
People are happy to pay when you give them something in return. People are happy to give to charities when they a) have a little extra to give, b) know there is a true need, and c) have confidence that the people they are giving money to will actually use it to help someone. If you map charitable giving on a graph against tax rates, you will see that they are exactly opposite. After income tax and the New Deal, people started giving much of their income to the gov't, and stopped giving money to charities and churches. I mean, wasn't that the idea? The gov't was going to take that money and eradicate poverty and human suffering. Also, intoxication
However, when the gov't takes half of someone's money, they are not going to have a sympathetic ear when you come around for some money for a real purpose. This distortion -- the fact that you think people won't give money to charity unless they're forced, as they are now -- is another tragedy of this kind of size of gov't. I already "gave at the office", right? Unfortunately, my money is being used to hunt down pot smokers and ruin their lives, or to kill peasants in the coco fields in Columbia, or to shoot migrant farm workers who cross the US-Mexican border. These people have been following the harvest for centuries, but it's only since the Federal gov't started taking income tax that they could afford to put people on the border so they could shoot all the brown-skinned people they see. These people are picking avacadoes for a ridiculously small amount of money so our food prices stay cheap. I'm not saying that's right, either, but is shooting them right?
Fact is, charitable organizations that are actually on the street, doing the real work, would almost kill for just a tiny fraction of what the Federal gov't wastes by its very existence. Actual man-years that just go down the toilet all the time. That 20 year-old college kid that just got busted for LSD and put in jail for 15 years could have been the next John Lennon, or the next Einstein, but we'll never know. North and South America could be completely at peace, but the US gov't just can't stop shooting people who live to the south of us. They are always willing to send the military thousands of miles to kill brown-skinned people. Why aren't those soldiers at home with their families? Because the military surely doesn't want a smaller cut of the income tax pie next year than they had this year, and they killed X number of brown-skinned people last year, so they need to kill X+5% if they want a 5% budget increase this year.
This unchecked, drunk-on-its-own-power Federal gov't has been a very bad ambassador for the US. In the history of the world, there has never been a bigger, more powerful, answer-to-nobody organization than what we've created by just blindly giving over so much money to the few people who really run the gov't. The only thing to rival our gov't's power are the drug cartels that have become so rich by taking advantage of the world's biggest unregulated recreational drug market: the United States. When you can sell $1 worth of cocaine for $1000, you are not looking for things to change anytime soon. Pfizer wishes it had it so good, but then again, Pfizer doesn't want to Valium(tm) to have to compete with cannabis(no tm), either.
The US was able to survive without income tax because they owned an extrememly large piece of real estate: all the land west of civilization. You'll notice that once the land dried up, that's when they implemented income tax.
The Federal gov't still owns something like 47% of the western states.
What's the user fee for things in the public good, such as missile defence?
We don't have a missile defense. That's one of the big Libertarian points. The gov't spends its defense bugdet on offense. The military is killing brown-skinned people the world over instead of defending America. In fact, it is also pissing off a lot of brown-skinned people that it hasn't killed, who now want to kill Americans, therefore making us even less than neutrally safe.
Actual, real, defense against foreign threats would be one of the few things that a Libertarian Federal gov't would spend money on. It doesn't make sense for the states to do that individually.
> Without income tax ...
... I fear it shall not come to pass in my lifetime". He obviously had hoped at one time that it would come to pass in his lifetime. Here we are 200 years later, with the ability to send a letter across the world in the blink of an eye for almost-free, and the United States gov't is one of the leaders in the mission to censor the Internet. This is astounding and sad.
> the United States as a world power will
> just be a memory looming in the back of our minds.
The US is a "world power" because a) the US is the best hunk of land in the world, bar none (look at a map that includes glaciers and farmable land and you'll see what I mean), and b) it has traditionally been very free, and that attracts smart and/or hard-working people like flowers attract bees. Einstein left Europe and came to America to avoid Hitler, y'know?
So, all these smart and/or hard-working people, living in the Land of Milk and Honey as they do, did amazing things like create the personal computer, which in turn made everybody around them that much smarter and hard-working. Now, we hit the start of the 21st century and as all these smart and/or hard-working people take stock of where we are as a society, we are beginning to notice that a small group of politicians have been forcibly taking a huge chunk of the dividends of all this smartness and hard work and have been using that money to censor and imprison the politically unpopular domestically and abroad, to fight and export a senseless war on non-patentable drugs, and to basically kill and make enemies of a lot of mostly brown-skinned people all around the world. What's more, they spent the projected income tax take from our children and grandchildren, too.
What should be done about this? Should we all just go back to our hard work and hope that somehow, in some way, this small group of (mostly old, mostly rich, mostly white) people will eventually be able to find it in themselves to properly spend half the nation's money? Or do we tell them all to get real jobs? Do we say to George W. Bush, "you are not smart or hard-working, and we're not going to let you pretend to be"? He made his fortune selling a baseball stadium that was built by taxpayers to private investors. He is your Lord and Master by birthright, and he may soon be your King.
We have more prisoners than any other country in the world. We kill more foreigners than any other country in the world. Think about those two things. Is that the America you learned about in school? Thomas Jefferson once said "this freedom of writing and speaking one's mind
Our grandfathers made a deal with the gov't: we will give you half of our money if you will eradicate poverty, suffering, moral bankrupcy, and intoxication. Did the experiment work? Now is the time for us to really ask that question, at the beginning of this new century. Personally, I don't think it has. I don't think the gov't of the United States is a very good representative of its people at all. We paid a King's ransom over the last 90 years, and all it bought us was Kings. It's time to go back to the Constitution and leave power with the people, where it rightly rests, where it belongs. It does not belong with a succession of George Bush's and Al Gore's, smiling and waving their hands like crown princes while their politician fathers look on.
There is nothing in the Libertarian Party platform that says child pornography will be tolerated. The true crime of child pornography is not the lustful satisfaction of the pedophile, but the kidnapping and abuse of children.
Having said that, though, drawing a picture of a naked child (even without a live model) can get you jail time in many countries, and the US is heading there, too. In a libertarian society, you could think and draw and say what you want, but you could not force children into fake sex acts, whether you sell pictures or movies of it or not.
It'd be nice if it was so simple, but how do you explain taxpayers building the Ballpark at Arlington and Prince George W. Bush selling it to private investors and keeping the money? This is how he made his fortune, this is how he achieved enough "business success" to claim he is ready to take his place as our next King.
Of course, he still has to convince us that he's a better man for the job than Prince Al Gore.
Either you have freedom of religion, or you don't. Freedom to choose between government-approved or majority-approved religions is not freedom. Why is it any of your business whether 1 person, or 100 people, or 100,000 people in the world satisfy their religious desires with Wicca? Why do you care? How do you propose to stop them? Why does it impress you that Dubya denounces a small and politically powerless group of people?
Einstein was an atheist, but he believed that humans have a common religious feeling, as if there were a "religion gland". He "saw god" through his work studying the universe itself. Other people see god in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the music of John Coltrane, or the rituals that are passed on to them by their parents. But where people see god and what they choose to do about it is their business, as long as they don't harm the person or property of another person.
Or, we could just send in the FBI or ATF with tanks and grenade launchers. How those people sleep with themselves at night is beyond me. It seems like you blame Koresh for Waco, though. Bizarre. Why was the ATF even there in the first place? They said Koresh was a Drug Lord with a meth lab and a stockpile of automatic weapons. Once it came out that there was no lab and no drugs, Koresh was recast as a Cult Leader. As long as he's a Menace to Society, I guess it's OK to roll up a tank and kill him.
> It's nothing more than a cult based around a
> liberal interpretation of witchcraft.
What do you call raising the dead, healing the sick with a touch, being conceived without intercourse, and having armies of winged helpers at your beck and call? Or parting the Red Sea, flaming hailstorms, and solor eclipses on command? That is some magical shit. You can piss on Christianity or Judaism with the same line you used on Wicca.
Oh, jeeze. UNIX, for Seldon's sake. and the other comment: Unix and C
C wouldn't have meant much without unix, I mean it could have, but I doubt it would have. Unix would never have meant much without it's openness. Leading to its popularity in academic communities and hence fostering BSD, Linux, and a bunch of the comercial unixes. The areas which Unix covers so well are largely a result of collaboration of people who were allowed in by the openness.
Unix would never have been open if the government hadn't /FORCED/ it to be so. The line was: okay, your a monopoly, but you can't start using that to extend your monopoly into the realm of computers, so you must make a license available to other people for anything you develop. And /thats/ how Unix got to be what it is. Notice too that the license used to be cheep, and the price of it just keept going up; still does really.
-Daniel
The question is, what is the exact mission of the Airborne Laser project? If it is indeed engineered (read: planned) to be used around the clock -- meaning that many aircraft are in the air at all times, then that is a step in the right direction.
I seem to remember reading that there will always be at least a couple planes in the sky at once. ICBMs are not quick, and the airborne laser is capable of shooting down a missle that is hundreds of miles away. In the worst case, I would expect that with few aircraft deployed, they will at least circle around or near the most "dangerous" regions of the globe.
Like many others have said since the 50's, "no country in their right mind would yadda yadda yadda". The flaw in this is that the statement is TRUE. No one in their right mind would launch a nuke against us, for fear of retaliation. But terrorists do not strike many, including myself, as being very rational or "in their right mind", rather they are cowards with weapons. I am for a real defense, and I simply do not see what we have as a defense, it is the threat of retaliatory offense, nothing more....
I'm afraid I don't completely understand... you first said that the "deterrence is defense" statement was true, then later said that you would like to see something better.
All I can offer is that in light of the fact that it *does* work, why not just let it? Besides, though it may be our *major* defense, it is not our only one. For example, the airborne laser blows up enemy missles over their own country. They don't even get outside of the borders. I would call that a pretty decent defense, even if the deterrent didn't work.
I like your idea of the space-borne system, but it's not even near affordable right now, let alone with a 50% military spending cut.
Thanks for doing your part to maintain the self-fulfilling prophecy. I hope you keep a bat or a gun under your bed at night, you never know who could be out to get you.
Ah, so I see that you've never had the pleasure of being depolyed to a hostile country where more than 60% of the population loathes Americans simply because of what we stand for. I have.
Most Americans find it hard or impossible to believe that there are military oganizations and terrorist groups that despise the idea of relative freedom and individual thought.
You seem to believe that if we were to just let down our guard, that certain eastern and middle-eastern leaders wouldn't take such an inviting opportunity to do what they might to further their political agendas. Do the phrases "US embassy bombings," "US Navy ship explosion," and "Yemen terrorists" have even the *slightest* bit of meaning to you? We're at an age now were the threat comes not from a single, organized, and internationally recognized country, but from almost a hundred different and somewhat-interlinked terrorist groups.
China (and others) are going to have a good laugh when we fall because blind citizens like yourself fail to support the military and our defense crumbles into dust.
No I do not keep a bat or gun under my bed, because unlike you, I have faith in our defense and it's ability to protect us. Even you, though you hardly deserve it. I do not believe in having guns in my household.
Meanwhile, next time you and your counterparts from other countries decide to go duke it out because your leaders think it's a good idea, I'll have changed my address to perhaps British
Columbia, though Alberta seems nice enough.
Hey, that's fine with me. You want to leave a country that you don't believe in, go right ahead, that is your right. You are only using up our precious resources anyway. Although with the kind of attitude you possess, I highly doubt Canada would want you either.
Stupid fingers, there is no telling what they will tipe next.
I'm assuming that was intentional... either way, it made me lol.
And I do agree with the rest of the points you made. I think what you're trying to get at, though, is that deterrents alone aren't enough. And I'm trying to say that deterrents will *have* to work and they aren't all we have anyway.
The heart of the matter is the defense of the people who live in this country. If China wants to bomb the shit out of New York, they shouldn't be able to. And I believe that with today's defenses, they cannot. The deterrents are there to prove that we *can* hurt someone *if* they hurt us. The defenses are there to make sure that we don't get hurt. The Airborne Laser project I mentioned is one example of that. It acts as a defense, because no globally-reaching missle can make the trek to our continent without getting shot down, and it acts as a deterrent because we have the ability to shoot down said missle before it even leaves their territory, dropping the payload on the ones who launched it.
The Airborne Laser is not going to stop every possible threat to our safety, but it is, like you wanted, a step in the right direction.
I am a geek in the military (education benefits), and I have to say that I take exception to two things said by these candidates.
McReynolds suggested he would give no tax cut, but more fairly distribute taxes (and tax breaks) amoung the different earning classes. I admire this. But he also proposes cutting military spending by HALF.
This is the worst idea I've seen yet. It is true that we are not at war, but as history will prove, you *always* have to be prepared for the slightest chance of conflict and maintain a realistic image of strong national defense. As it is right now, the US military is not even receiving close to what it needs to support our missions and excersises. Training, in particular, is in desparate peril. The Air Force (for example), is below 2/3 the size of what it was in the mid-80's and due to Operations Tempo, we are deploying twice far more, and in general, doing twice as much. All services right now are suffering large, looming retention problems and cutting member's benefits to make up for cut spending will be a direct blow to what they are trying to accomplish.
Later on, Browne noted that the nation has no global missle defense system in place. That is true, only to a very minor extent. First of all, we do have many monitoring stations and satellites to watch what other countries military forces are doing, missle-wise. If we get attacked, we may not be able to prevent it, but we know who did it and can decide what to do about it. In other words, no country in their right mind *knows* that they can get away with sending a missle towards us and expect no Americal missles to come back at them.
Second, the Air Force does have such a program underway. It's called the Airborne Laser program. Basically, it's a very high-powered laser system built into a 747 that's capable of detecting and shooting down enemy missles right over the country of origin. The prototype is still being built, but plans are for several of the planes to be in the air by late 2004. So far, everything is ahead of schedule and no roadblocks, apart from the work yet to be done, have presented themselves.
(A link to the official Airborne Laser page.)
If anyone would like to debate me on these two issues, I will more than gladly prove you wrong.
You're already paying excise taxes, it's the income tax that would be no longer needed.
Income tax came into being on Februaury 3, 1913 with the ratification of the 16th Ammendment. Prior to that, taxes were levied based upon property owned. This included personal items in addition to real estate.
The only reason we have such a high tax burden today is due to social programs and the huge cost associated with a huge federal government. I will conceed that it will not be an absolute drop in the total amount you pay in federal tax because the states will have levy taxes to make up for lost federal funding and to institue program the federal government cut. But in the end, there will still be more money to go around and we have the added benefit of more direct control of our money as it stays in the state.
"Draw them in with the prospect of gain, take them by confusion." Sun Tzu
> Whilst freedom of religion is an important part
> of a free society, let's not get so hung up on
> it that every crazed lunatic with a set of
> "beliefs" can pretend that they're a religious
> guru.
Yea like that damne dheritic Jesus guy from Nazareth! Where does he get off preaching that heresy anyway?
Ok seriously though...I think the best attitude I heard was when I mentioned a friend who was part of what I thought my abe a cult.... "Just because the people who run it may be bad, doesn't make the believers wrong"
If someone believes in something - truely believes in it - then it is a religion for them. Neither you nor anyone else has ANY right to try to stop them from believeing in it or practicing their rituals - whether they be dancing around a fire in the woods or eating stale bread given to them by some weird guy with a stiff collar.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I'm so committed to ending this insane war on our civil liberties, that I've promised that hte very first thing I will do as President, from the Inauguration stand, is sign an unconditional pardon for all non-violent drug offenders currently serving their sentence in federal prison.
(I think he fails to notice that most of the people he's trying to get to vote for him are sitting at home eating cheetos rather than out voting).
Heroin is a sad addiction but one we need to accept and allow addicts to get heroin through doctors.
Am I the only person here who thinks that this is a ridiculously passive attitude?
it will also make groups like Christians feel safe from other faiths - so each will no longer feel the need to fight the other
Amazing -- thousands of years of religious conflict, all solved by voting for Browne!
I also want to make damn sure that poor writers are ripped off.
I'll take that as a typo. :o)
Anyway, it seems to me that both of these guys have exactly the same rhetoric, and the same plan on how they're going to get elected: "Vote for me, and I'll let you do whatever you want!" Unfortunately, I don't think that sort of attitude is particularly healthy for this country. I hope the other candidates have something halfway intelligent to say.
(and please don't mod me down just because you're Libertarian and don't like what I say. Thanks!) :o)
Got Rhinos?
Got Rhinos?
I believe he asked why people were brainwashed, not for an example of said brainwashing.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Now, make this a bit more general. Substitute "money" for food, and you've basically got modern society. If people can't pass it on to their kids, they've got no reason to try to make any more money than they plan to spend.
Another simpler argument is that this is essentially a tax on people who die unexpectedly. Anyone who knows they're going to die can simply give their money away. Sure, any money given away within 3 years of death is counted in the estate, but if you're around 65, you've probably got a few more years left in you, and you can count on your heirs to financially support you in the event that you accidentally gave away too much. I see no reason to punish those who die in tragic accidents while rewarding those who die old, generally living a long life is considered quite a reward in itself.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
...the single most frightening story I've ever read on slashdot.
These are two of the most historically ignorant people I have ever seen quoted in print.
I no longer feel guilty about voting for Gore or Bush. Either choice is a genius compared to these loons.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
I'm voting for Nader. I'm not just saying I would vote for Nader, I actually am.
It's pretty simple. California looks to be basically a lock for Gore. And also, due to time zones, California is among the last states to be counted. By the time Cali rolls around, the election should be pretty much decided unless it's really close all the way down to the wire.
As far as Bush accidentally winning because I voted for Nader, it's just one vote. In terms of actually electing the President,it's a drop in the bucket. And even if Bush wins, it won't be the end of the world. I'm not so naive as to think that Bush's election would suddenly trigger World War Three and another Great Depression.
And to those hardline Demos who say "it's the Supreme Court, stupid" (a favorite phrase use to discourae liberals from voting third-party), I say: there's a lot of ifs and mights in there. Some justices have said that they might want to retire from the bench soon, but that's not exactly a pledge--if it looks like doing so might skew the court too far against their views, they may not do it (believe it or not, these guys are politically savvy). There's no guarantee that the court will have to look at a decent challenge to current abortion law (the case has to have some merit before they accept it, not just controversy). And anyway, America has survived bad Supreme Courts before.
Finally, while my vote counts for little in terms of electing the President, it will go a lot farther towards possibly getting federal matching funds for the Green Party next election. That, or even getting close to it, would be a big wake-up call to the big two parties. Remember how the Republicans and Democrats suddenly started talking about reducing the deficit--one of Perot's big issues--as soon as it looked like he was getting enough votes to possibly cause an upset?
As for the other guys:
McReynolds - This guy would be my second choice. I agree with a lot of his points, but not all. That "reverse income tax" for the poor sounds good in theory but it just won't fly. I don't think untempered Socialism really works.
Browne - No. I have a lot of respect for the guy, if that counts for anything, and I pretty much agree with him on civil liberties. But I have too many problems with the libertarian philosophy in general. I can't get behind unchecked corporate power, or the "social-darwinist" approach to social programs.
Buchanan - Fascist anti-semitic sociopath. Next...
Hagelin - Before he was the Reform Party II's nominee, he was the Natural Law Party's--a party based on the idea that the world's ills can be solved through Transcendental Meditation. He's called a "physicist"...but he got that position at an unaccredited university run by his guru. New Age crystal-gazing is not physics...or politics, for that matter.
Peace and Freedom Party - Hell, I don't even know the name of their candidate. This party hasn't had any new ideas since the '70s. They're everything the Greens are stereotyped as...only for real! One of the issues in their platform is the complete elimination of currency. No joke. While they're on the left, I still wouldn't vote for them.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
It didn't start with Carter. The Dixiecrats were Republicans-in-Democrat-clothing long before then. It basically came down to: in the South, you couldn't get elected if you were a Republican. There was too much of a stigma attached, going back to the fact that Lincoln was a Republican (never mind the fact that the parties had swapped places with the Dems going left and the Repubs right). But issues-wise, the South had more of a tendency towards the right. So there were a bunch of candidates from the South who were technically Deomcrats but were actually on the right.
The Republicans have a similar sort of leftists-who-call-themselves-Republicans (I forget what they're usually called), but they've traditionally had much less power or authority than the Democrat equivalent.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
You know, major candidates don't like to answer people's questions today. They only like to run ads on television.
A Green Party activist, I'm voting for Ralph Nader.
Of course, Ralph Nader would rather hold rallies with his celebrity friends than answer questions. I don't see his replies up here, and he hasn't exactly been willing to take any questions from non-partisan sources. He continues to complain about being excluded from the debates, yet has repeatedly refused online, multi-candidate interviews such as this one, Web, White and Blue, and many others. (Even the major parties are participating in these forums.)
It's time that the liberal and progressive in our society looked beyond the hype, and began to realize that Nader doesn't have our best interests at heart.
--
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
"Corporations don't aid progress, they hinder it. Corporations are profits, not progress. Large corporations are bureaucracy, inefficiency, and market forces. They are the least desirable, least beneficial, and least likely to succeed means of getting anything meaningful accomplished."
Yawn. When discourse comes down to an exercise in political posturing, every argument turns into '[insert favorite bogey-man here].'
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share and enjoy
Christianity is about as deviant and unethical as I can imagine; if Christians are to be taken seriously, then I see no reason why not to take Wiccans seriously.
(If it offends you that I might say such a thing about Christianity, then just substitute Islam or some other religion you don't like for it.)
--
share and enjoy
Ah, what the hell, I'm bored enough to respond to anonymous cowards.
I looked at the sig a while ago, and decided that 'democracy' is not quite the right word, but that it sounded better than 'society in which the press is owned by the government.' Whatever, I don't make it a point to be particularly insightful in .signatures.
Sorry if my argument confused you. I guess I'll spell it out literally.
If you take the Harry Browne quote from the interview, and you replace the word "Government" with the word "Corporations," then what you're left with is a rather banal piece of political tripe. Why is this? Well, it's because the original statement was just as boring and non-novel as the edited version. It seems to me that statements of this sort are popular nowadays, yet fulfill no real use in political discourse. Standing up and saying that everything is the fault of (Government|Corporations|Communism|Capitalism|secu lar humanism) is a sign that you are willing to over-simplify everything in order to be able to broadcast a 'political message.'
I'll try to stay away from implying my arguments in the future.
--
share and enjoy
> The fact of the matter is that if you cannot
> rise above poverty in the United States it is
> because there is something fundamentally wrong
> with you. It is absolutely not for any other
> reason.
Yes, but first, this is the case in most of the Western world and this is something that many Americans seem to forget, and second, it is more likely that there's "something wrong" with someone if he grew up in the kind of environments we were talking about than if he grew up in a peaceful and prosperous environment. You're telling me that you succeeding in extracting yourself from a terrible environment. Congratulations, good for you. But let me point out that, with the qualities you had to show to achieve this, well, you probably would be in an even much better situation if you had grown up in a better place and in better conditions, growing in peace of mind, with parents able to send you to an Ivy League College, or to Stanford,etc... So, even if it is possible to rise, the inequalities are still greatly reproduced generations after generations.
Last, what is possible these days in this period of strong economic growth is not possible in days of depressions, which did happen, do happen, and will happen. When these times show up, you'd better not be the poor guy trying to rise, 'cause you simply won't find any opportunity. But the rich will hame much less to worry about.
Hey, Mr President, you wanna smoke a blunt?
Mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
Question 7 was:
In the last year or so we have seen a tremendous escalation in the quantity and size of political protests against globalization and the rising power of corporate multi-nationals [bla-bla]
The question seemed pretty clear. At least to me. It was indirectly referring to the WTO manifestation at seattle. You know, this kind of stuff.
The answer of Browne is amusingly off topic. Talking about free-trade, etc, etc... Or, when talking about Lost Jobs, he only talks about money spent on foreign products, not products made in coutry with lower wages.
And this anwser is also very very long. Much longer than others. I suspect it have just been copy/pasted from somewhere. Any pointer?
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
The aeroplane pops immediately to mind. The liquid fueled rocket, while eventually developed with government funds was invented entirely without such. We've just passed the 100th anniversary of the invention of the automobile by Benz and Daimler, but I'll throw it in anyway. Just one word,Plastics. The theory of Relativity was devised entirely supported by the salary of a patent clerk. . . 3rd class, as was the solution to the photoelectric effect, which resulted in quantum theory. The chain saw, think about it, it has truely changed to world, literally. The Jarvic 7. Radio ferchristssakes ( 2001 is its anniversary), which brings us to the vacuum tube, video tape, Sound synced motion pictures, which brings us to the point that damn near everything out of Bell Labs for the first 50 years of its existence had little or no government backing at the point of its invention and that includes UNIX, C and radio astronomy.
I could go on, and on, and on. The government has injected funds into much of the above AFTER its invention, but had not a damn thing to do with the invention itself.
I'd like to add the digital computer, but that was invented much longer ago than 100 years, by a single individual, with no resources other than his own.
Government funding has brought us modern high energy particle physics, which would be impossible without the large amounts of money that governments provide. Radar and Sonar came from strictly military projects, as did atomic power. The space program has injected a fair amount of money into research projects that would have been delayed a decade or two had they not had the goverment funding, but Teflon, fireproof cloth, the transistor and the IC all were in development before the government put any money into them and most of the medical research done by the space program has been eclipsed by sports medicine research.
The private sector has done, and continues to do, just fine by way of inventing things.
Yes and no. You have a point, but it's a more complicated history than that, and the anti-trust suit that broke up the AT&T monopoly was the second, the first lasting several years.
AT&T came by their monopoly by the sames meanst MS has come by theirs, brute force in the private sector. By the time of 1921 when AT&T was granted a "natural monopoly" over long distance service they had already achieved one de facto.
Contrary to popular onpinion AT&T NEVER had 100% of the market, in fact, over all, they had 80 something percent at their peak.
From exactly the same sources that allowed the government to operate for over 100 years.
The Federal income tax was first deployed within the lifetime of people who will be voting in this election, and within the lifetime of people holding office in the Senate.
The income tax as we know it was invented by Napoleon to wage war, and all income tax has been, essentialy, a military funding measure.
In America the Federal income tax did'nt come into being until 1913, just in time for WWI, and corporate income tax generated far more revenues than the personal until after WWII.
Of government not bent on waging war has little, or no, need of a personal income tax at all.
I honestly think that is not a fair representation of socialism at all. Yes economically Communism and Socialism are the similar, but there is a huge difference in them inherently. Communism, with its belief in revolution, spreads a thought that killing for this higher economic good is a good thing. Hence people such as Pol Pot and Stalin have no problem wasting half of their population. Socialism plays within the current political system. They want to be elected, and killing your constituents is not a good way to get reelected, and hence they are still accountable to the people. Socialistic policies have done well in many countries such as the Sweden, Norway, and to a lesser extent Canada. They arent perfect, and in some cases they may need to be replaced, but the politicians are still held accountable. That is the problem with communism, the lack of accountability inherent in a totalitarian state. So get your facts straight. Saying Communism equals Socialism is about as responsible as saying Facism equals the Republican party.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
There are many projects - from expanding Amtrak
I'm guessing that he is advocating public transportation by train. If so, he won't be getting my vote.
Sincerely,
John Rocker - Atlanta Braves
Icebox
I sort of wonder about this: A lot of people complain that the poor get hit harder by taxes than the rich. What do you think eliminating income tax would do? Essentially, what you have is a tax on the money you spend (sales tax, tarriffs, payment for government services, etc all end up inflating the amount of money you pay.) However, those at the poverty line tend to spend a larger percentage of their income than the rich. Suddenly, you have the same effect as the graduated income tax, but those who make the least money pay the largest percentage. And you think this is a good idea?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Don't expect 4 years of deregulation to fix 100 hundred years of government interference (thats about 25 for cable and 75 for phone)
We (the United States) actually fielded a missle defence system (as opposed to anti-aircraft) in the early 1970's. It was the Safeguard program, descended from the Sentinel program that was a follow-on to the Nike-X.
Sentinel was meant to be a "shield" over the whole country; Safeguard was much smaller in scope and was meant basically only to preserve our own missles from first-strike attacks. Only one Safeguard installation ever came on-line, and it was closed after less than one year.
Safeguard consisted of two missles and two RADAR systems. The first radar called the Perimeter Acquisition Radar (PAR) was used for long-distance detection of incoming re-entry vehicles (RVs). Today this radar I *think* is still used for tracking orbiting objects. If an RV was detected, the first missle would be launched. This missle, called the Spartan, was based on the Nike Zeus missle, but had more power, and was used for exo-atmospheric interception. The Spartan used a nuclear warhead and depended on the X-rays generated by the warhead to disable incoming bombs.
In the event of the Spartans failing in their mission, another radar and missle system came into play. The Missle Site Radar (MSR) provided pinpoint guidance to a new kind of missle, the Sprint. Sprint missles were the highest accelerating missle ever fielded by the United States, leaving their silos already supersonic and accelerating towards the target at 100 G's. The Sprint had a range of about 25 miles, and was intended as a last-ditch interceptor. It too was nuclear-equipped, but could use blast as well as radiation to disable incoming RV's.
The sprint went from zero to Mach 10 in a mere five seconds. The missle was only about fifteen feet tall and had an ablative nose cone to dissapate the heat generated by its extreme velocities. It was steered by injecting cool gas into the exhaust stream of the rockets; it would turn in the direction that the gas was fired from.
Contamination:
As you know, the materials used in modern nuclear weapons is actually quite small. The smallest weapon fielded by the US was the Davey Crocket, and it only weighed about 50 pounds. Of that, only thirteen or so was the nuclear fuel.
I'd be more worried about irradiated soil (fallout) than anything directly from the bomb. A good reference for American nuclear tests (atmospheric and surface bursts, anyway) can be found at this page.
References: http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/safeguard. htm
http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/vigilant/chap 4.html
http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/mpainf/missiles/HNik eX.html
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/nike_x.htm
Jeff
The libertarian party has a much better web page than the Socialist party.
last time politics was a discussion on slashdot someone from slashdot said that no one ever submits stuff for the green party except party pages. well i submitted this twice and it was rejected both times. so here it is.
Then how does one define "religion?"
There are those who consider practicing celibacy and chanting to be 'deviant' behaviour.
Why is a guy who can call lightning bolts and thunder down and owns a hammer that returns to him when thrown considered a myth, yet a fellow who pisses off the local government, gets nailed to a tree for his troubles and then comes back three days later to party considered devine truth?
Both stories run counter to human experience. Myths and traditions, when used for teaching, can bind a community together and help the new generations come of age with a shared sense of values, but when these parables are put forth as divinely inspired TRUTH instead of being used as hypothetical examples to explain a moral dilemma, they become dangerous in the hands of an ambitious zealot. How many wars have started because one group has thought "We are the posessors of ABSOLUTE TRUTH. Any who do not believe as we do are foul blasphemers and must DIE!"
Religion in general, and Christianity in particular has been responsible for more and bloodier wars than anything else in Human history. Religion is a tool used by the powerful to keep the populace in control. ("Do what I say GOD told me to do or his anger will be great!")
The only good thing to come out of religion has been the music.
Religion is a powerful force even today, and we don't want people abusing its potential to change people's lives. We don't need a new wave of Waco incidents hitting our country.
Need I remind you that the Branch Davidians were a Christian cult?
You know, if the U.S. were a civilized nation with good people, that wouldn't be an issue because family would take care of their elderly members when they get older. This crap of sending them off to some old folk's home is bad. People are too lazy to care for their own parents and such, even though their parents gave at least 18 years of their lives to raise them. I know that not everyone can afford it, but Social Security payments and Medicaid are a very little help. It would be better if you could invest in stocks, bonds, or just let the money sit in the bank to collect interest.
Now, as far as Browne's perspective, I don't believe he would want to do all this suddenly. The goal is to end income tax, shrink the federal government down to the size the constitution called for, and basically let everyone be in control of their own lives. He wouldn't just suddenly end all the social programs, he would have to have congress backing him to get anything done in the first place. This whole thing would take time to do.
What about underprivileged groups and populations? I guess it is their fault they are poor?
It is their fault if they stay poor. The U.S. provides so much, without government help I mean, that you can go from being poor to middle class easily. And what about the middle and upper classes? A lot of them only appear to be wealthy. They are so far in debt that they end up going bankrupt. In many ways, we end up footing the bill for these people as well.
I hate my tax rate. It is very high. But in an country that has built so much infrastructure (or cruft, whatever), you can't just eliminate it.
You can eliminate the high tax rate if you eliminate the beaurocracy as well. It is not as simple as that, but it is possible.
I hate the leading canidates and only half agree with my favorite. But these people are just bad for this country.
There's noone running for president that is worth anything in my opinion, with the possible exception of Browne, because he wants to get rid of all the excess. The federal government got to the point that it is today over a long period of time. Things progressively got worse and worse until you are where we are today. The only thing is that now, we need someone to clean out the garbage a bit so we can have some of our freedoms back that were taken from us. They are very shocking plans indeed, but in the case of Browne, I think his plan is the one our country needs. I know he won't win this election, and I know that even if he was president he couldn't enact all this stuff, but I have to vote in my best conscience for me, so that I can say I am not responsible for putting Gore or Bush into office.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
I strongly support government funding of research and development (although I prefer it to happen in places like Universities than at defense contractor corporations). However, it is not clear to me at this point how much existing R&D is actually funded by government. What about drug companies? They claim they spend millions to develop new drugs-- and luckily for them the patent system (which I oppose) protects their monopoly on those things and allows them incredible opportunity for profit. How do you counter such an example of the positive ability of corporations being able to rely on intellectual property laws to further the advance of science?
I do not have a signature
> From pornography.
Granted, I got $4000 when I sold my porno collection, but I doubt that even the libertarians have $50bn worth of old Playboys.
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Sometimes, to change the system, you have to be a part of the system.
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For those who still insist on making a big deal out of it, perhaps instead of truly being an athiest, he's actually an agnostic. He's not sure, but perhaps there's a "God" up there to thank... Or maybe he was Christian, became disenchanted, and old habits die hard?
It's really amazing... people have the chance to pick who is going to run their country, but they get razzle-dazzled by the smallest, insignificant mistakes and irregularities. They're human - try seeing them that way.
Mr. Ska
Yeah, they should be proud that they beat the mad rush of candidates flooding Roblimo's inbox with their responses.
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You are a fucking moron.
Of course, Stalin and Pol Pot's regimes weren't really socialist, they were totalitarian.
Totalitarianism: The government tells you what to do.
Socialism: The goverment tells you what to do, and takes all your money to "redistribute".
For an example of a real socialist government, try the post-war Labour government in Britain. They introduced the National Health Service, which ensures proper medical care to the millions of people that could not afford it, and has saved an enourmous number of lives.
I hardly think that a system which requires people to wait upwards of 10 months to see a doctor is something to be proud of. NHS is a failure, and even the Britons know it. People complain about healthcare in the US, but at least you can handle your own medical needs without the government's approval.
As another poster has already noted - your reply doesn't answer the question of why America brainwashes its schoolchildren against socialism,
Why does america "brainwash" it's students against getting AIDS? Because it's a horrible thing. Socialism is no better: a painful and slow economic death which will slowly spread to those around you. Tell me that people in socialist countries like China and France are better off now than they were before. Tell me that death camps are a positive benefit of a "people's revolution". Tell me that 19% unemployment is normal. Tell me that socialism is more than a sick joke.
No one will believe you.
-- Floyd
-- Floyd
Instead, a global initiative protecting all nations from nuclear attack could convince many to massively reduce their now innocuous nuclear arsenals.
The alternative is that someone, someday will start a nuclear war.
----- How does "All I can say is: yup, they're politicians." get a score of 2? Some of these moderators are crazy poofters.
I thought Al Gore took the initiative in creating the internet?
:-)
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The New World Order is upon us, and it's about damned time.
Here in New York State, we have Hillary Clinton running for Senate against Rick Lazio, a Republican. There also a number of minor candidates, such as Mark Dunau, our Green Party candidate (native new yorker, organic farmer) as well as libertarian, independent and right-to-life candidates.
The League of Women Voters produced a nice brochure which, on one side, had procedural information about how to vote -- even the complicated stuff like how to get an absentee ballot. On the other side they have answers that Senate candidates have for three questions.
Turns out, the major parties hate the LWV, so they refused to answer the questions. You see, the LWV believes in democracy, the LWV wants people to vote, while the major candidates want you to stay home. The LWV made the critical mistake of allowing John Anderson in the 1980 presidental debates. As a result, the major parties formed the bipartisian Comission on Presidental Debates, which refused to let Ralph Nader or Pat Buchanan participate. To make their pamphlet, the LWV had to copy answers to the question off the major candidate's web sites.
Starting with Carter, the Democratic party has been infiltrated by Republicans. The real role of Gore is to hide the fact that the Democratic party no longer exists. A vote for a major candidate is a vote of confidence in a political system that is deteroriating rapidly.
A Green Party activist, I'm voting for Ralph Nader. Still, I think Reynolds and Harry Browne have a lot of good things to say and would be a great choice of you believe in him. Remember that, even if you like Gore or Bush, you can do a lot more than voting. Call up your local campaign, put a sign in your lawn, volunteer to sit at a table and pass out literature. There is a lot to do every election season, and every campaign welcomes volunteers. It makes a difference, and it's one of the most fun things you can do.
my platform is serious missile defense:
let's build a death star!
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
"...(Government) doesn't aid progress, it hinders it. Government is politics, not progress. Government is bureaucracy, inefficiency, and brute force. It is the least desirable, least effective and least likely to succeed means of getting anything accomplished."
Just brilliant Mr. Browne. Only one question: Then why the heck are you in politics?
My Second Vote Was For Gore
great comedy company.
McReynolds made alot of good points, but I guess what I would like to know is why as school children, etc., we have been brainwashed to "fear" Socialism?
I disagree with your premise. School children have no more been 'brainwashed to "fear" Socialism' than they have been brainwashed to fear being beaten with a stick. Dislike of socialism seems obvious to me. If anything, school children and students in Universities are brainwashed to "fear" capitalism.
To me, capitalism is as obvious a force for societal improvement as "survival of the fittest" has been for genetic improvement. I'm not saying that capitalism should be completely allowed to run free, but Socialists stick their fingers in the pot a bit too often for my tastes.
There are plenty enough experiments in this world where socialism is more dominant than here in the US, and they're mostly utter failures. I think that the US's demonstrated successful use of capitalism should be explored further.
Since George Bush will be taking Texas anyway, I'm giving my vote to Harry Browne.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Before I say anything, I should note that I'm a scientist on the public dole, so I'm biased.
That being said, even though I have some libertarian tendencies I think that Browne's plan to end all government scientific funding is foolish. The reason: basic research is one of the best investments you can make. It is almost guaranteed to pay off. The problem is, you will invest in 1,000 research programs, and only have one program pay off. That one program will pay off to more than make up the investment for the other thousand-- and you will not be able to predict which one it was back at the beginning of the research program.
Some corporate funding of research has worked well in the past (Bell Labs?), but it just doesn't seem to be feasable today. Investing in basic scientific research is just too long term for most corporations. Never mind "five year plans" or even retirement times for top executives, you may not be able to fund enough projects to have any statistical confidence that any but the most applied of research programs may pay off for you. And the payoffs may be something unexpected, which you will have trouble reaping the benefits of anyway.
Scientific research is one of those things where everybody benefits (even if they don't realize it), and it is in everyone's interest to pool their resources to fund. But how to manage that? Well, isn't that what government is? My libertarian tendencies show themselves when I think that most people talk about government in the wrong way nowadays. The "we are your children" incident from one of the Clinton debates, which wasn't disupted by any of the candidates present, was a bad sign. To many of us see government as our parents, our protectors, those people who have control over us. They are our benign keepers. Yeah, they listen to us, and via voting we get to have some input into what we want done, but in the end many people in the USA see government as a particularly nice Big Brother.
Really, it should just be our way of acting collectively. The government should *be* us. It should be the way that we, as a society, perform the things that can only be done on a whole-societal level. My differences with libertarians come in as to what some of those things are. Scientific research is definitely one. Support of the arts is another-- rich individuals, and governments, are traditionally patrons of the arts. The arts have (mostly intangible) cultural value, but (with some very obvious exceptions) not much commercial value. Do we really want to let this part of our humanity go? Or is it worth some very small fraciton of our collective resources to support this endeavor? (When I say very small fraction, just compare arts funding in any government to defense, infrastructure, and sundry entitlements.)
-Rob
And no amount of extremism is going to encourage anyone to believe that the Thatcher regime of the eighties is comparable to Stalin's. That the Mitterand regime of the same period was comparable to Pol Pot's. Or that the Kohl government had anything in common with Mao's. Any more than anyone is going to suggest that the Theodore Roosevelt administration was, in some way, comparable with the regime running Germany in the 30s.
Oh twaddle. It's clear you've swallowed (or produced) the anti-anything-left-of-ghengis-kahn propaganda lock stock and barrel. Is the NHS a disaster? Nope. No, people are not waiting "10 months" to see a doctor, or certainly weren't two years ago when I lived there. I had a minor cold and managed to register with a doctor the same day, and see the doctor the next. That was three years ago. I've since come to the US and have to reregister with my doctor and attend meetings to discuss compulsory changes to my healthcare every six months.And healthcare in the US is far from being a panacea. 50 million Americans, 20% of the US population, have no form of health insurance coverage. The system is also an inefficient shambles. While the UK ranks 14th in WHO rankings for effectiveness, the US trails in at the number 37 spot.
People complain in the UK about healthcare because they can. Healthcare in Britain is democratically accountable. You complain about a problem with the NHS to your MP, and your MP will be able to do something about it. Healthcare in the US is not accountable to anyone but shareholders, and no amount of protest to government is going to fix it. So people don't.
Some things are best dealt with by encouraging people to chase profits. Some however are best dealt with by throwing profit out of the window and encouraging democratic accountability. Anyone who rejects one outright as being wrong because it has a name that might, if you bend the truth a little, and make things up, be associated with Pol Pot is an extremist, and if they seriously believe that Harold Wilson has anything in common with Stalin, they need to get a grip.
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Largely, I'm guessing, because despite the obsessions with writing off each other's ideologies as extremes, both fundamentally are about freedom. Libertarians for freedom through as little state intervention as possible (do I even need to say more?), socialists for using the state to promote freedom and prevent people from being restricted by other shackles such as by the behaviour of shareholder controlled corporations and the real restrictions imposed by poverty.
It's a shame that these two are not the two big parties running, with cynical people complaining they wont vote for either "because they're pretty much saying the same things", but instead we have two parties who lean more on the side of interference and allowing interference. The republicrats seem to be more obsessed with people's private lives, from sexuality issues to the information they see and say. Yet one feels it can beat the other as being "more pro-liberty" because it promotes fractionally lower taxes, or because the other would impose religion on people's lives and ability to make choices.
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Excise -
1 : an internal tax levied on the manufacture, sale, or consumption of a commodity
2 : any of various taxes on privileges often assessed in the form of a license or fee
The first question you should ask yourself before you vote is: Does the government work for me, or do I work for the government?
As a citizen of a Free nation, you should feel that the government is working to protect your interests.
Remember that the Government is a body that our nation (the people who compose our mega-conglomerate modern tribe) has composed to keep itself from being harmed by outside influences (read: invasions). We often forget that as individual, thinking, feeling, intelligent human adults we are responsible for our own actions. Should I emphasize that? "our own actions" Which we freely choose.
You are free! Start acting like it and demanding to be treated as such!
The issues that are so commonly raised by our fine country's politicians are specifically geared at distracting you from any real progressive thought. The issues all involve forcing someone to do something so that others won't be offended. Consider that the words "polite" and "politics" have the same root, what the hell does politeness have to do with my business dealings, my creative endeavours, my private home life, or who I choose to marry?
It has to do with social acceptance.
Let me ask you a question: what words do we use to describe something that has greatly improved our lives on a grand scale, or advanced us in some field vastly beyond our previous understandings? Words like revolutionary, unprecedented, unbelievable, discovery, innovation all come to mind.. all of which present the concept that something new, different, previously unaccepted (or unacceptable) has occured and has "revolutionized" our way of life.
No revolutionary idea has ever been socially accepted.
Do you want to live in a society that decays from its own stagnation? I can't believe that a single person reading this would be willing to accept the responsibility of giving-up in such a fashion, if they understood that that is what they're doing. Modern society in our country (and abroad in many places) is a drug, it is geared at giving you the exact thing you want to hear and doing as little to damage that hope as possible while it whittles away at your freedoms.
How much regulation is necessary in your own home? Do you spend your day thinking of new ways to structure and organize a formal method of interacting with your significant other (if applicable), or would you consider that to be a bit wasteful? How many house rules do you have for guests? For your children? Which do you see the people of the US being treated as by our "benevolent overseers"?
Politics are for politicians, and everyone knows they make their money with lies. Cut out the middle man and start thinking for yourself, why is it that you willfully view a "toned-down" version of a movie on television - aren't you big enough to stand up to a little difference of thought and not be offended?
Any society that would consider a mere word to be obscene obviously has a major problem. When you see the word F+U+C+K do you become righteously indignant?
I'm open to flames, but I won't listen to anything that's not at least a bit thought-out.