Slashdot Mirror
Mysterious Website Actually Social Experiment
MaelstromX writes "For six months a website called eon8 (probably down) has carried a countdown to July 1, along with vague and mysterious codes. In addition, strange code-bearing posts associated with the site were made in various webforums, and the site carried a map of the world marked by spots of "deployment". All of this, along with some apparent recorded visits by US military and intelligence computers, led many people to believe this was an imminent terrorist operation or a massive virus to be unleashed on the web-surfing public. Turns out, it was just an experiment by a 23-year-old guy named Chris from Florida who wanted to see how people would react to an absence of information, and he was disappointed that people expected the worst -- even going to so far as to attempt to hack his webserver and make phone calls to anyone with any perceived tangential connection to the site or its host. A mirror of the site in its current state is available with an explanation added by the site owner after the countdown expired."
That's all I can say right now ... just wait.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Don't worry! Chris -- and his family and friends -- are being investigated by homeland security as you read this. :-(
This means that poorly designed web sites with unclear purposes will now be considered a terrorist threat and lead to indefinite detention of the designer(s).
Well, I guess that's at least one effect of the anti-terrorist hysteria that I could get behind; all other efforts to force better web design have failed after all.
Oh, just an experiment, he says. But how do we know? HOW DO WE KNOW?!?
Please, arrest him quickly and torture him so that we may learn the true horror of his plot.
The most I can tell you is I am a 23 year old web designer from Florida named Mike.
Where did the summary get the name Chris from?
I don't see why that should be a surprise or a disappointment. Is he trying to make a case that people should trust people more? Bollocks. In the absence of valid information during a decision making process it would be foolish not to assume the worst.
The owls are not what they seem
Am I the only one who simply ignored the whole thing? I saw the link posted on many forums and blogs, but it looked like some sort of prank or whatever, only in movies you'd see terrorist organizations publicly providing maps of their targets, or countdown timers...
python>>> q="'";s='q="%c";s=%c%s%c;print s%%(q,q,s,q)';print s%(q,q,s,q)
Which were apparently so subtle I hadn't heard about the site until yesterday, when I saw a link to it on YTMND.COM, and I'm online nearly 24/7. Sometimes you can be too subtle.
This sort of experiment was probably done slightly better by the xbox team with ilovebees.com just prior to the Halo 2 release.
People are simply afraid of what they don't know or don't understand. In the absence of information or explanation, it is often wise to assume the worst - indeed, doing so helped our ancestors survive, which is why such behavior is now instinctive.
A-Bomb
The problem is, he didn't "see how people would react to an absence of information". He provided some information, and did it in a way that would make most people think immediately of military operations (using obviously encrypted data, terms like "deployment", etc.)
And he's surprised that people "expected the worst"?
If he had been serious, he wouldn't have left any (immediately) human readable text on the website. Instead, he prejudiced his own experiement by providing just enough information to prompt certain thoughts. If he had labelled his map "Elvis Sightings" instead of "Deployment Map", he probably would have gotten an entirely different set of reacations.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
This was right up there with watching grass grow ...
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
probably for the same reason that they watch Lost. Replace Eon8 with Dharma Initiative, and the similarities are marked.
:)
It's mysterious, has dead ends and redirections, uses cryptic codenames and strings of alphanumeric characters that hints at something much larger and sinister behind it, complete with a countdown to boot.
Interesting too, is how people also came up with all sorts of wild theories and found connections that the creators didnt originally intend (like the 8th eon being the end of the world).
"The purpose of this project was to determine the reactions of the internet public to lack of information."
Yeah, that seems to describe Lost pretty well too
This comment is another social experiment to see how people react to a lack of information.
This was a clumsy experiment at best. He's sad people assumed evil and says all that was on the site was the phrase "we don't want you here".
That means the only info was negative. This is a commonly studied human phenomen called "framing" (or something similar). If you give a person very limited info, then they will use that tidbit of info will drastically influence their perception of the question at hand. If it has said something less ominous I'm sure it could have had a better reception. As it was, however, if you only give 1 factoid and the factoid is negative, and there's a countdown - how do you expect people to react?
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
people fear what they don't know. Also, what credentials does this guy have beyond being a web designer. i.e., what gives him the guts to carry out an 'experiment' like that and quantitatively derive results from it from an authoritative sociological standpoint? This is practically a myspace joke.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
I was expecting eternal happiness, I want my HTTP requests back :(.
Haiku for you!
For the past four months I have had to endure constant harassment from state, federal, and international agents of law. There is nothing left of my children except a small bag of bones, and my phone line and Internet connection have been cancelled. I do not have access to my lawyer, and for the past three days I have had to subsist on mustard and graham crackers. I am determined to fight this through, even if I have to do it from a public library. The best advice I can give is, don't give up. Fight for your rights. They can take away your freedom, they can take away your entire life, but they can never take away your will. There is always a way.
It doesn't seem fair pin "assuming the worst" on the viewers of this website. It seems to me that the information that was provided was, given the current context, quite suggestive of something negative. "Deployment"? Who uses that word? It is has a largely military connotation. A map with locations targeted? I don't think people assumed the worst as much as his website implied the worst. Yes, none of these things is direcctly indictivie of a negative act, but they are all highly associated with negative acts in the collective consciousness at this point in history. If it were a countdown to a "birth" of something people might have had a different reaction...
this is the first of heard of this foolishness
- My question is: Can Slashdot be Slashdotted? -
Im going to completely ignore the typical grammar nazi posts I could throw in...
We havent been innocent for a very long time. The Veitnam war was probrably the end of it, and even before that fear played a hell of a big role in our lives ( you know... the whole Cold War thing ). The only thing that has changed since post World War 2 innocence is a greater lack of conformity, the fear mongering was always there.
Movies are a classic example, horror movies and thrillers specifically. The themes change from generation to generation, but there was always an underlying current. Godzilla representing the fallout of the nucleur era, countless war movies following vietnam, slasher flicks of the 70s and 80s teaching us our normal fellow man may infact be a psychotic killer. But here is an example much closer to home for me( at my age ). Did you every go trick or treating? Was *the fear* ever put into you that you had to inspect all of your candy, because psychos were putting razorblades and poison in them? Ever hear of a single case of that actually happenning? I mean... an actual case of someone you know? No, it was simply media generated hype.
Yeah, there are sickos in the world, always have been. Thing is, in our 24/7 media coverage generation we get overloaded with stories of pure evil. I have to imagine an immegrant from a war oppressed region of Africa has to look at America's modern day fears and laugh. When our biggest fears are whatever media/goverment generated terror scheme which never actually seem to happen. After that, our fears seem to revolve around meaningless shit like Grand Theft Auto and its murder simulations. To someone who came from a soceity where death was a daily occurance, our fears much seem pretty damned trivial.
Notice though, the government isnt doing much to curb those fears? Thats simple, a scared population is an easy to control population. Something the current regime seems to have learned exceedingly well.
I reference the wrong term. The right term is "anchoring".
Anchoring or focalism is a term used in psychology to describe the common human tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.
During normal decision making, individuals anchor, or overly rely, on specific information or a specific value and then adjust to that value to account for other elements of the circumstance. Usually once the anchor is set, there is a bias toward that value.
This article (and more info) found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring
Framing, by contrast, is described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(economics)
In any case, experiments that support "common wisdom" (in this case "fear of the unknown") based on bad logic or poor experiment design are just a pet peeve of mine. This is a perfect example of how not to actually perform an experiment.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
And I can see how you must be such a huge coward, that you would be well served by never leaving your home again. People who live in fear of anything and everything are not healthy.
Excuse me while I hide from: Terrorists, SARS, the bird flu, west nile virus, mad cows disease, video game violence corrupting the youth, school shootings, anthrax, and gays some how destroying traditional marriage. Oh yeah, and now anonymous website postings that may or may not be threats.
Btw, I could have told you for free that the unknown always leads people to fear the worst. After you grow up a bit more you'll realize that for yourself.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Put a countdown on a webpage with half-ass myserious writing with nothing explicitly bad whatsoever, and people are willing to take vigilante action to shut it down?
Right now it is funny because it was designed in a bad spy movie kind of way. But if you did the same thing, with mysterious Arabic writing and music, a world map with locations, and a countdown, I am certain the results would be as bad (or most likely even worse), and the discussion certainly would not be as light-hearted. It turned out not that bad because it was such an obviously contrived thing that people thought it could be an ad for a movie or video game.
People, nowadays, have such a paranoid lynch mob mentality, it is getting scary. If it isn't terrorists, it is myspace predators, or crystal meth rampages, or school shooters, or bird flu, or whatever other astronomicly unlikely boogyman. Even people on Slashdot, who love to joke "someone think of the children!!!" are starting to become more and more paranoid within the bounds of their political beliefs (people on the right tend to be paranoid about terrorists and foriegners, where as people on the left tend to be paranoid about sexual preditors and school violence... people tend to discount the other guys paranoid fears, while maintaining that theirs are, of course, rational!).
Is the government promoting the hysteria in order to gain more power? Or is the government just reacting to the popular hysteria of the people? I don't know, but I wouldn't be suprised if we started hunting witches again (real old-school Communists are just to damn irrelevant for some good ol' fashion Red hunting... but the power of Satan is eternal!). Is there some ergot growing in our wheat supply nowadays that is causing people to lose their minds? Is it all that floride in the water? Cosmic rays? What the hell is going on?
The one that Slashdotters might remember is the Transmeta website.
The of course there is Ginger, which was the Segway, which is just an expensive scooter.
When I lived in Charlottesville, VA there was a several month campaign of "the connosiers are coming". When they came, it was a "club" where you paid a flat fee and got discounts at local restaurants.
The pattern with this kind of thing is that it's always anti-climactic. The same thing goes for song count-downs on the radio. Oh. Stairway to Heaven wins again. Even when that doesn't happen, whatever song does win is always a letdown. I think it's just human nature. It always seemed to me that David Letterman's 3 or 4 was funnier than the number 1 on his top ten. Was that on purpose, or is number 1 always a let down? I guess the way to test that would be to have Letterman tape several versions of his top 10, show them to different audiences and ask them if they thought number 1 really belonged. The problem with that is that "delivery" is an important part of comedy, and I suppose that "deliver" is an important part of other information too. In other words, "metadata" is "data" or as an earlier generation used to say, "the medium is the message". In this case, the guy just transmitted nothing but metadata, and I think the results were not too surprising. In the absence of data, people attach the metadata to the context, in this case, our current climate of paranoia and fear provided the context.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Here is a site which tests your subconsciousness with regard to hypnotics!
http://r33b.net/
All Glory to the Hypnotoad!
Libertas in infinitum
All Canadians (minus a few militant Quebecers I suppose) were counting down the days to July 1 anyway since it's our nation's birthday! ...insensitive clods!
Sure, the first four Google results on "deployment" are military sites, but the fourth is Microsoft talking software deployment. http://www.google.com/search?q=deployment
Why must you assume the worst? Sounds to me like bad marketing hype. Did you think Ginger (the Segway) was a new thermonuclear weapon? This guy could have been pushing a PC game or a new type of potato chip.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Grass is boring. Corn on the other hand...
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Actually its more like your girlfriend calling you, yelling 'Help m-' and then hearing the phone being crushed before the line is cut. Then calling her home phone, her workplace and her friends to learn no one knows where she is or whats shes doing.
Something like that practically happened to me. My girlfriend had been living in Paris for a few weeks and on the day she was leaving Paris for another town, I get this phone call. It wakes me up at 4:00AM. It's international, her cellphone, and all I can hear is what sounds like a lot of scuffling and some muffled cries and then the phone goes dead. This was shortly after that girl got kidnapped and killed while on the phone with her boyfriend.
I tried calling her back on her phone with no luck. No answer. I tried her old apartment.. disconnected. I kept calling. No luck.
I started going through ideas in my head - what could I do? Call the Paris Police? And tell them what?
I kept trying to call her cellphone.
After about 30 minutes, she answers with a perky, "Hello?"
Turns out her phone was in her purse and the send button got pushed while she was running for the train and she didn't know about it. The cries were a child in the same cabin she was in. That's the story she told me, anyway.
But, it's a big feeling of helplessness to think someone you care about is in trouble and there's really nothing you can do.
Goodbye mod points...
This point is missed in the modern tech savvy libertarian geek. They want a system that benefits their immediate greed, their future and everyone else be damned. I really can't think of any other reason than greed that anyone would support such an untenable and intangible ideal.
Civilization is doomed to be imperfect, and unfair. Social security tries to evens this out a bit. I have a feeling that most people who are against it have never been down and out, or poor, or rendered incapable of work. I have a feeling that they really don't care that 90% of America is two paychecks away from the streets, meaning if they loose their job for two measly weeks their in a world of hurt and debt, of no fault of their own. Sure they could have invested, but this precludes the idea that they had excess capital to begin with. Its hard to invest money when your living paycheck to paycheck, and fighting off the debt of raising a family or paying off a mortgage on a wage that is grossly inadequate for any standard of living.
Adventures in capitalism is only for the rich. And a hugely vast majority of us aren't wealthy by any means, of no fault of our own. Not all of Americans have good paying tech jobs, but it seems that some people can't escape from their own position to see how other people live, and are far too egotistical to see that helping others is our responsibility, especially since we have the means to do so.
This is going to get modded to oblivion, isn't it? The anti-slashbot POV.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Keep watching this number: 58
When it reaches 0, you're in for a big surprise. Just keep watching....
This is going to get modded to oblivion, isn't it? The anti-slashbot POV.
2 006/02/08/185448.html
Get over yourself. There's a strong libertarian streak, but there's also plenty of "america sucks, capitalism is evil" types running around.
Two points.
1. My original point was simply this: I don't think you have a right to force someone else to invest in a safety net. Period. I'm well aware that a social security net would benefit both, but if you notice the sig I was replying to stated something to the effect of "if you don't want a net you can splatter on the ground, but I want my social security". Since social security is an everybody-in or everybody-out proposition, the sig in question is just assinine. THAT was my point.
2. You write: I have a feeling that most people who are against it have never been down and out, or poor, or rendered incapable of work.
You're wrong, in my case anyway. I have been poor. I'd say 5 kids in a double-wide trailer with barely enough money to keep food on the table day in and day out is poor by American standards. Social security did squat. My mother-in-law recently had to quit her job to continue her 18-year battle with breast cancer. She gets social security. It's such a pathetic amount it's an insult. It does squat for her.
Studies have shown that increasing the value of food stamps x% can increase poverty by 3 or 4 times as much (in %).
And finally studies also show that the vast majority of Americans who are poor manage to work themselves out of it. I'm not quoting all my "studies show", and I apologize for that, but I'll at least link you on this one: http://townhall.com/opinion/columns/thomassowell/
So what's my point? Social security is ineffective and largely unnecessary. It's more impotant to have a vital economy that creates jobs than to have a handout that can't even pay the rent.
People extend as much effort as they think they have to - no more. The more paternalistic (or nannyish, take your pick) the gov't becomes, the more people will 'need' that support.
I say let's operate on a minimalist approach to gov't welfare. Private organizastions tend to do a much better job of it anyway. The gov't should be the last resort - not a full-service stop for people who are either genuinely in-need or just lazy or somewhere in between.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
We shot at him 41 times and hit him 19 times at a range of about fifteen feet, with Diallou doing nothing but crumple to the ground under the hail of gunfire. 19 out of 41.
It's that combination of persistance, psychotic violence, and incomprehensible incompetance that really seems to define America.
And the fun keeps on going now that the Wikipedia article for Eon8 has been nominated TWICE for deletion resulting in much flamage and sock puppetry by the SomethingAwful and YTMND crowd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_fo r_deletion/Eon8_(2nd_nomination) o r_deletion/Eon8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_f
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
"I say let's operate on a minimalist approach to gov't welfare. Private organizastions tend to do a much better job of it anyway."
Didn't we have that at one time? Social security is a relatively new invention as are medicare, medicaid, etc. Apparently minimal govt thing wasn't working so well and private enterprise wasn't providing enough so we invented social security.
We don't like in a vacuum you know. There is a rich history of mankind without social benefits. Not only that but today, right now, there are governments which provide little or no retirement benefits. Why don't we look to see if people are better off in those countries then they are in the US or other countries which provide even more social benefits.
That's the beauty of internet and modern communications. You can actually look things like this up rather then accept on faith that private enterprise would take care of people or that people who live in countries with no social benefits are richer, happiers, live longer, are better educated, and all around better off.
No need for faith or zealotry. Just look it up!
evil is as evil does
OK, I fell for that one.
THe old trick where someone makes a statement (X) and I reply with "Not X" and then get hit with "what, you don't believe Y? you must be retared"!!
You're a clever one alright.
You said that conglomerists, monopolists, etc. controlled the market. I said they did not. Now you are claiming that they bias investment risk in their favor. That's the sme thing to you is it? "Contol" and "bias risk"? And I'm naive?
Stop whining about the little people trying to get back some control of their lives
I'm "whining" about little people who try to get control of my life, you dolt. You may have this weird pyschological disorder that makes you think a bunch of obese felines are pulling the strings in your life - but I should not have to be legislated into playing a role in your own demented fantasies.
"The market" is not something that can be controlled. Look at how many "fat cats" lose ther shirt from one year to the next (I'd direct you to sources, but the site hosting the article I want appears to be down). And look how many regular Americans make it from rags to riches (e.g. prety much every single tech company founder). Yes - in this chaos the CEO of a 500 billion dollar compan has exponentially times more power than you do. And if you try to go head to head wih his company you'll end up with your ass in a sling - at best. But the idea that the "fat cats" are somehow united in the cause of oppresion is absurd. They're all doing the best they can for themselves and you are essentially jaded. That's it.
You want to cut your nose off to spite your face. What you don't understand is that your high standard of living is the DIRECT result of "fat cats". The drive, the passion, and yes sometimes the greed of these empire builders is what has made America thrive.
It comes to this: any effort to "make things right" for the little man benefits a congolmeration of people who've had a run of bad luck, people who are too stupid to make it big, and people who are too lazy to make it big. This is achieved at the expense of the ones who - for the most part - know how to create wealth for themselves and others. Everybody gets a more equitable slice of the pie but the pie gets smaller. Capitalism leaves things alone. The pie gets A LOT bigger. Enough safety nets are put in place to provide an absolute minimum for those who need the help.
The fat cats have taken control of everybody's lives in order to eliminate risk to them, and that is the abdication of personal responsibility that you ought to be decrying. Picking on the little people for getting back a small bit of control is pathetic.
You're just raving at this point. I really wish you could hear yourself. You ARE the crazy-eyed guy on the subway grabbing people's lapels and telling them the end is near. Your argument is nothing but ad hominem. Please, tell me what the hell the word "fat cat" means to you. It's like these people aren't human to you. THey are are alien overlords. And also tell them what on earth you mean by "they have taken control of everybody's lives". Look at Africa man. The warlords, the starvation, the chaos. That's what life looks like with out the fat cats. Look at feudalism or theocracies. That's where we came from. What are these mysterious freedoms that have gone by the way side and when in history did we have them?
I'll take you as more than a deranged lunatic when you can answer those two questoins.
1. What is a "fat cat"?
2. How, precisely, did they gain "control over our lives"
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Apparently minimal govt thing wasn't working so well and private enterprise wasn't providing enough so we invented social security.
Yes, it was a time called the Great Depression. The name should indicate it was an emergency, and Social Security was an emergency soluion. Where's the emergency now?
Why don't we look to see if people are better off in those countries then they are in the US or other countries which provide even more social benefits.
Because it makes far more sense to look at how American private organizations work. Other nations have other cultures, other infrastructure, other politics, and other economies. So whatdo you think we could really learn from such a comparison?
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
The argument that you shouldn't force others to spend on gov't programs is not really useful.
But that's not my argument. There's a difference between gov't programs and re-distributing wealh. Gov't programs are like nat'l defense and publich libraries. Social security is about taking money from some people and giving it to others. The useful value of money, from a societal standpoint, is that it encourages people to be productive, etc. This erodes the utility of money to society at large. The incentive to work hard and be productive is diminished, the incentive to be a parasite is increased every time we richen wealth re-distribution benefits. It's bad for America.
I've never heard anyone from western Europe or Canada, or even Australia say, "I wish we had America's level of social security." The fact is that we have terrible coverage of medical and financial hardships. If we wanted to talk about the usefulness of social securty, the question we should be asking is "How come ours isn't as good as Britain or Canada's?"
Hahahaha. This is a matter of experience. I think I know a prety good amount about the UKs system because my mother is British and her family still lives there (Ipswich and London). Right now her grandfater is going through what should have been a routine sugery. Thanks to UKs state medicine it's turned into a nightmare. I can't tel you how many times my mother (she's over there right now) has told me "if only the lived in America!"
The reason America has bad health care has nothing to do with gov't programs. I know what I'm talking about here because my job is an analyst in the insurance industry. First of all, you have to point out that from the standpoint of sophistication America has the absolute best medical care in the world bar none. If you need cutting-edge medical care, you come to the US (yes, yes - IF you can afford it). Also - everyone in America has free access to this care on an emergency basis. E.g. emergency rooms can't turn you away (or refuse to roll out the expensive stuff) if you show up with a bullet in you or something like that.
Where American medical care falls down is accessibility of non-emergency care. And the main problem here is the rising cost of health care. But what most people dn't realize s that the cost of health care is rising just above inflation on a per-unit/service basis. The reason insurance premiums are going up by double-digit inflation has one cause: utilization.
1. Starting in the 80s health insurance changed from insurance to subsidization. Insurance is when you pay x dollars and then if something catastrophic happens you get 1000x dollars (or whatever). Insurance does NOT mean you pay $150 a month (or whatever) and then get to have MD visits for $25, or tier 3 drugs for $30 a month. But in the 80s that's whay the designed into insurance - copays and other routine utilization subsidies. Well guess what happened. At $10 a visit (instead of say 100) people went to the MDs more than 10 times as much. Combine this with marketing from big pharma and EVERYBODY is on ritalin, prozac, etc - at subsidized prices. If you pay $150 a month for insurance and get $200 a month in benefits from routine care guess what - the price goes up.
The final problem is our elderly population. They use health care like you wouldn't believe I'm talking like 12 visits to primary care physician every year on average! They need more care than young folks, they have more time on their hands, and they're living longer and longer.
This is why Europe's state health care system is a bad, bad bad idea. It takes all the problems American health care has, hides them under high taxes and low payments (the low payments make the problem WORSE) and the result? Rationing at best, total failure at worst. Give it time. Decades, maybe. The system is designed to fail.
In America, on other hand, we're trying to use the laws of capitalism to make the system get better. When is medicine ca
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Anyone who claims to not even understand who the fat cats are is pretty starnge, not for believing that, but for thinking others will believe that he believes that.
No, I'm serious. Is Bill Gates a fat cat? Warren Buffet? Steve Jobs? How about my grandfather. He owned his own business and it was worh over a million. Now my uncle owns it, and it's probably 2 or 3 times as valuable. Are they fat cats? What about my boss? He and his two buddies started a company that now makes revenues of about 1.5 million annually. Are they fat cats? It is owners or CEOs or board members? Are self-made men and women excluded? How about inventors who get rich? What about lottery winners? How about those who inherit wealth?
I know exactly what the idea of a fat cat is. But that's just an idea. I want to know how you would map that idea onto reality. Calling me strange for wanting you to be specific in your rhetoric isn't going to make your arguments sound any less childish.
Anyone who claims that the fat cats don't have a lot more control over society than the thin ones is incredibly naive.
You're typing, so you must be literate, but this comment makes me wonder. Go read my post and tell me where I said rich people don't have more power than poor people in the markets. I believe the term I used was that they had "exponentially" more power. Maybe that word was to big for you?
Anyway - I eagerly await the transformation of your hot-air rhetoric into an actual argument. In the mean time I'd urge you - as a peon - to work on not being a peon instead of becoming a powerful peon. While all these self-declared victims are whining about how poor and mistreated they are, I'm just going to go make shit happen. You could do, if you were more intersted in working for youself instead of trying to get handouts.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
"Yes, it was a time called the Great Depression. The name should indicate it was an emergency, and Social Security was an emergency soluion. Where's the emergency now?"
Why did the great depression occur if private enterprise was so great? Maybe the great depression occured BECAUSE there was a weak govt and private enterpise ruled the day. Every think of that?
"Other nations have other cultures, other infrastructure, other politics, and other economies. So whatdo you think we could really learn from such a comparison?"
Political theories should be robust enough to compensate for cultural differences. Any political theory that says "this will only work in america" is useless and should be disregarded. Those are people, they are not animals, they are not aliens. They have the same types of motivations as all other humans do.
Nice dodge though. At least we narrowed your argument about the supremecy of the private enterprise to just the US.
evil is as evil does
Once again you make outrageous statements based on some sort of religious conviction.
Uh, what would be my prior statement? This is my first comment in this thread.
What do you mean doesn't work? If the majority of recepients didn't like it they would not fight so hard for it and they would fight to change it. Maybe in your world recepients of social security don't interact with society and are not happy with SS but in my world that's just not true.
Oh, they're happy alright. They just shouldn't be. In my opinion the purpose of socialism is to act as a safety net for those who are either unlucky for a time, or are disabled in some fashion. Therefore, the ultimate goal of any socialist program should be to try to get people off the program entirely. The best way to do that is to integrate recipients into society with payers - thus allowing them to network for jobs, develop skills, and hopefully appreciate the fact that there is a better way.
Everybody I know who is on social security feels like they deserve every bit of what they got because they paid into it while they were young. They supported their elders and now it's your turn to support them.
Now, this is by far the worst possible use for social security - as a retirement plan. If you want to save up for retirement, just do it - you'll save far more privately than with social security. Also - current recipients did NOT support their elders to the degree that they want to be supported - just look at a chart of life expectancies vs time - their elders died much younger than they will. The first generation of recipients didn't support anybody - the last generation of payers won't get supported at all. Yup, it is grossly unfair - but reality nonetheless - all we're doing right now is debating whether the last generation of recipients has already passed, is about to pass, or will pass 10-20 years from now before the system collapses.
The problem with anything is abuse.
Agreed - and social programs that have no plan on getting people off of them are inherently abused. Again, I didn't call for a ban on social programs, just a reworking. Social programs should always seek to help enable their recipients to become independant, to whatever degree that this is possible. For some this may never happen, but integration with society should still be pursued. Nobody will resent somebody who is severely mentally handicapped for not paying in more than they take out. Those who are able-bodied/minded, on the other hand, should be encouraged to work.