Are we running out of domain names now? I assumed that first.middle.last.me or.com or whatever TLD will always be available to people who want to run a web site.
Is anyone else reminded of the Seinfeld episode where the whole apartment building had pictures up and Jerry didn't want his picture up? Or when Jerry didn't want to use a name tag? Real life is anonymity, you don't instantly know someone's name just because you walked up and talked to them. Did Voltare or The Artist (formerly known as Prince) have any problem hiding under their pseudonyms? I mean I can list great people who used pseudonyms all day long!
If I walk up and introduce myself as Ted, and strike up a conversation with you, you've now established a reputation with Ted. Not knowing that my name is actually Coolhand2120 is not going to change my reputation with you. Not knowing that I've said other things to other people as someone else is really none of your business anyway.
Needing to know what I've said to everyone is the product of a over inquisitive busy bodies. The fact the government wants to track what you're saying on the internet should give anyone paranoia. Do I have to register with my real name and government ID card before I talk in a town square now? The action (if it were to be purposed by government) in and of itself should be a violation of my right to free speech.
So is it my understanding that you credit god for causing Apple to start this program? What exactly is your logic?
The link I provided didn't say god was the invisible hand. It has nothing to do with god. The "invisible hand" is a term to describe "creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows".
I don't know why I always get ambushed by atheist trolls whenever I post any link to anything that even says "god", even when the link has nothing to do with god. In the essay it says the Invisible Hand is:
the configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding!
And it goes on to say "only god could create a pencil" because no man could create a pencil by himself because it is too complex a task, mining zinc, milling wood, logistics etc.. It's not an endorsement of god or theism or whatever you think it's about. Maybe if you took of the anti-religion/communist zealot hat for a while, quit acting like a sophomoric boob and read the essay you might actually learn something.
Most of the stuff is just pure junk. Old win95 boxes with bored out HDDs, motherboards for the old PIII "box" processors, CRTs that you can tell are broken just by looking (or smelling) them. Some of the stuff is really old. For example: an XT style 5.25" HDD and an old AS400 that was at least 10u. Makes me a little nostalgic.
Most of my clients are in southern California, and while there are recycling programs that will take the waste for free, it costs money to put onto pallets and ship the stuff. With Apple paying for the freight costs it becomes much more financially sound to pay to just have it put on pallets.
Most of the stuff is just pure junk. Old win95 boxes with bored out HDDs, motherboards for the old PIII "box" processors, CRTs that you can tell are broken just by looking (or smelling) them. Some of the stuff is really old. For example: an XT style 5.25" HDD and an old AS400 that was at least 10u. Makes me a little nostalgic.
I'm a huge Apple hatter. If I ever bought an Apple product I would burst into hypocritical flames. But this is a really good idea. I have a lot of clients that a have tons of old hardware that they can't get rid of because of the cost involved in doing so. Now Apple will cover that cost, and make a little money by stripping the precious metals off the techo-trash. This is a great example of the free market's Invisible Hand. Bravo Apple, well done.
Who the hell is this CronoCloud guy? What a moron! Everything he says is just... so stupid. I think sometimes I'm arguing with a 14 year old and I'd be better off spending my time sleeping. This guy has replied to almost everyone here, each reply is just so devoid of any logic or knowledge it makes me feel sorry for his parents. I guess that's what you get when you start with the idea that gamepads are better at FPSs than mouse+kb and then try to defend it. I'm still entertained, you should read the thread from the start, it's gotten pretty big, and you can see everyone smash ChronoCloud's weak inductive reasoning.
Hey ChronoCloud, are you reading this? MAMA SAID SPOCK YOU OUT.
Apparently you've never ridden a horse either. When riding a horse, you get these things called reigns, they are not analog controls, the best you can compare them to is a D-PAD and even then the 'forward/up' control is replaced by your kicking and hawing at the horse. You cannot 'move left just a little' on a horse, you move the reigns to the left, the horse move to the left, right, he moves right. Most of the time the horse doesn't even do what you wanted the horse to do so you have to correct again and again. The horse moves where the horse wants to move. The reigns are just a suggestion, if the horse so wished to ignore you it can, and they often do. There is no 'move a little'. I suppose next you'll channel the horse and tell me that "his feet move proportionally" or some such nonsense. The most "realistic" control for a horse is probably a d-pad.
And people themselves move proportionally you know.
People move proportionally in a certain direction, this direction is dictated much more accurately and quickly with a mouse. Even when moving slowly, we move our entire leg, we don't magically slide forward. That's why when you watch a console gamer you'll see slow acceleration (actual movement) of the moving person and totally unnatural panning (left or right) to get to the correct heading. In real life, people select their heading almost instantaneously and move in that direction, they do not slowly pan around at a uniform speed.
Skyrim is an RPG so bunny hopping head-shotting FPS players aren't the target market.
You are taking up a lot of my time because you continue to say so many demonstrably false statements. I'm not going to continue to argue with you because it's not very interesting to hear someone talk out of their ass all day long. Skyrim is an FPS, so FPS players are by definition the target market. Just because there are a ton of RPG elements in the game does not stop it from being a FPS. It's an RPG FPS. Now you can say Diablo isn't in the FPS market because it's not a FPS. TES is an FPS - it won't stop being an FPS just because you say so.
You didn't get your words switched, you're just ignorant and you think that everyone else around you is stupid enough to fall for your explanations. The problem is, we're not stupid, and you are wrong every time I've seen you post.
I had to keep clicking. Course I might not have had the latest patch to
There was no patch to fix this non-existent behavior. Either you never played the first Diablo on PC (likely), or you played on PC so briefly that you didn't even figure out the controls (more likely). Regardless, you're trying once again to weasel out of an argument you made earlier by making more false statements. Nobody buys it. Nobody says "PC version PSone port." because that's just an incoherent statement. You were mistaken, it's not against the law. People will respect you more if you admit you were mistaken than if you try and weasel out of an obviously false statement. Because it's so obvious, I can promise you, people will respect you less. Indeed, look at the replies to your weaseling.
Bunny hopping and leaping around while carrying a half dozen weapons? That's not very realistic is it...if you had that much equipment on in RL would you be jumping and turning like that...no, you would not. If games aspire to realism..then they shouldn't have been able to do that.
Nobody was "bunny hopping". Maybe to an uneducated eye you may try and rationalize movement that you don't understand with 'bunny hopping". What people in this video were doing is propelling themselves around with a tau cannon. To use the tau to propel yourself you need extremely fast and accurate movement. What you see as "bunny hopping" is actually the person doing a 180'/-45' and blasting the ground then doing a -180'/45' to look ahead again, so fast that the whole action only last 3 or 4 frames.
And what does the realism of the game have to do with the control surface? I picked videos to show how you have absolutely excellent control even when shit is moving so fast that your brain can barely keep up. You've changed the argument. And guess what, mouse movement is also more realistic . And I even pointed that out when I said:
"Console guys would always move on one axis at a time (x then y) , rarely daring to move both up and left at the same time, by comparison, mouse users always moved in the most natural way possible." I even posted a link to a "console UT3" video where you can see this 'unrealistic behavior'. In any game, realistic or otherwise, mouse control is better. Besides, the most realistic game ever, ARMA, is on PC only, and guess what sort of control you use to direct your soldier? Not a gamepad!
Yes, I've done it, works well, for the most part. You're not going to be using it to draw with, of course the real pros don't use mice for that either. But it's fine for the average pointing and clicking.
Once again, you change the argument to try and weasel out of your previous statements The question posed was not "which is the best surface for drawing" it was "what is the best surface for clicking on icons on the desktop".
You're not going to be using it to draw with, of course the real pros don't use mice for that either.
This has nothing to do with drawing tablets. Yes they are better at drawing, and I said joysticks are better for flying what's your point?
But here's the thing...could you do that in RL weighed down by that equipment? No.
Once again, you're trying to compare the game instead of comparing the control surface as was the subject. No matter what sort of game you play you're always gong to be better off using a MOUSE for a FPS game. PERIOD. Besides you were talking about TES which is not in any way a realistic game. You shoot fire from your hands and can carry 200lbs while you jump around fighting with swords.
When you learn to fire a real gun, what do they teach you? Fire at center of mass. I'm one of those that believes that the PC FPS focus on headshots and bunny hopping is unrealistic cartoony stuff in games that supposedly aspire to realism.
Sure, maybe in the Hollywood movies you've watched the "realistic" operators say "shoot at center mass". But in real life, that's not what happens. Snipers are told to shoot for the cerebellum, by aiming at the cross formed by your ears, chin and forehead. When shooting guns out to bullet wobble distances you might aim for center mass, or maybe if you're too flustered to bother aiming. If you don't know what 'bullet wobble' is that you really have no business telling me what 'realistic shooting' is. I own guns, I shoot, I know what I'm talking about.
In almost every game head shots count for 2x-10x more damage. In real life the head shot is the money shot. Nobody is going to say "aww darn, I got a head shot". How about yo
If you have a bad tooth you'd probably be better off seeing a dentist.
I'm not sure if you knew this, but dentists are doctors.
NHS dentists are far cheaper than private
Yes I'm guessing unless the private doctors pay you, free will be cheaper. And that's why they have to consult the government. There's a finite number of dentists to fix teeth and whole lot of teeth, so some people need to come before others, old people should go after young people, healthy people are more viable so they should come before sick people, unless the sickness is related to the visit, and even then only if there's a chance of survival.
In the US. You come in on Tuesday. There is no rationing of care. The same cannot be said of the NHS.
So you must agree that MRIs are important, and the more you have per capita the better. This goes for the availability of all equipment and personnel. If you don't have enough, that means rationing.
I went ahead and did the news search "USA health care horror" and it did result in some hits, but not a single one talked about a horror story in a US hospital, maybe I missed it and you can point that one out. Even after trying Obama can't seem to find any horror stories about the US health care system so I wouldn't spend too much time scouring. Almost without exception the articles talked about Obamacare and related issues. Unlike when you substitute NHS for USA, there are a lot of hard news articles detailing incompetence and abuse in the NHS. You also gave no answer to the question: why do so many well off people choose the US to get their health care and not another country if it's so crappy?
Comon joystick boy, just watch this, this and this video and tell me you can do that stuff with your joystick. Now watch a someone on a PS3 play UT3. I hope you have the intellectual honesty to admit the clear difference.
Here's a good test. Try using your joystick to control your computer. You can do it, it's not difficult to setup. Now try and click on the icons with your joystick. Now try again with your mouse. See the difference? Can you see why nobody uses a joystick to navigate the desktop? Now imagine all the icons are people's heads and you're in a FPS. Can you see how a mouse makes things a little easier? No? I didn't think you would. But I'll make an attempt to convince you anyway, having actually played PC vs. console for a while.
Shadowrun was a cross platform game, you could play X-box vs. PC. I bought the game specifically so I could fight console gamers, whom I felt has stole all the gaming licences from PC, it was personal for me. I come from the old school quake 1 clans, hook+rockets and later hook+rail guns, and even later hook+tau or tau+whatever. Lots of hooks and flying through the air anyway. The thing is, I already knew that the things that I regularly do with my mouse/keyboard would seem like magic to a console guy, so I knew it would be a turkey shoot to play Shadowrun.
I was not disappointed. You could tell the PC players from the console players right away just by looking at the way they move. Console guys would always move on one axis at a time (x then y) , rarely daring to move both up and left at the same time, by comparison, mouse users always moved in the most natural way possible. Console gamers would take forever to turn around, so I guess they made a '180' button because sometimes they would spontaneously spin around, but that never helped them, they always came out disoriented and were toast after I finished laughing and finally pushed the head shot button. Console gamers would just get their asses handed to them all day long. They would also always use a power up that gave you 'aim assist' basically, but caused a visible laser to emit from their weapon. Just having the laser power up made you a likely console user, it made it so you would see the guy coming, and it gave them an aim that was only slightly better than using a joystick. After a while, it just felt too much like I was cheating so I stopped playing.
And you can't blame "aim assist" because many console gamers turn it off.
Nobody blames aim assist. In fact, the more cannon fodder that keeps it turned on the better. Any (serious) person who used a mouse would never turn it on because it would totally ruin their game. You see, people who use a mouse shoot people like you in the head all day long, aim assist will 'snap' to the chest and ruin the head shot. You think you're a match for a mouse user, but you've never played against a mouse user. I have, I beat all console gamers without even trying. Your control surface for FPS is a total joke. The only thing you should be doing with joysticks is playing "bionic commando" or maybe an airplane game, but you'd probably be better off buying a real joystick (MS FFB2) to fly and I personally like the D-Pad more for games like bionic commando. Just ask yourself if you can tau jump do a 163'/37' turn, tau jump, do a 27'/47' turn and shoot a crossbow at a 4pxX4px head in 1920x1080. Because that shit is par for the course if you want to play mouse users. I only wish I could see the frustrated console gamers trying to play
It appears I may have replied to the parent of your post. But I'm not sure,/.'s freaky ass system is always doing something... freaky. It would be rather difficult to copy and paste all I wrote (formatting will disappear) so here's a link to my misplaced post: Re: Socialism Sucks
I don't have an insurance plan from my work, I'm an independent contractor so I sort of own my own business (which really sucks). Delta Dental or something like that is all I can get, unless I want to shell out $250/mo for real insurance, and I would just rather spend that money elsewhere.
Again, I think you don't recall Bastiat as well as you think you do...
A the end of my blathering there are two quotes from The Law. Bastiat addresses philanthropy specifically in the second quote, and indirectly in the first. In the first example here he talks about how just because we feel that government isn't the answer, doesn't mean that philanthropy shouldn't exist, just that these institutions should not be controlled by the government. And you must readily admit that private aid organizations are a lot more focused on where there money is being spent because they had to earn it, meaning they didn't take it at the point of a gun. Aid organization are held to a very high standard, and are regularly audited and required to show how many cents on the dollar go to actual aid (vs. administrative overhead).
Compare this to the government's philanthropy. In my own life I know a person who owns several $4000 computers, multiple big screen TVs, has 3 kids, no job, and lives life 100% off the government tit. He pays no taxes. He pays no rent (the government pays that). He actually is paid money, by the government, simply because he has kids. So $0 in tax and they still give him money. This person is perfectly healthy and capable of working, but chooses not to. I went to high school with the guy and this was actually his plan way back then. Have more kids => get more money. And do you think the kids have a good quality of life with a dad like that? Do you think maybe if the government didn't encourage him to have children he wouldn't? I mean, they cost a lot more when you pay for them. IMHO an aid organization would never have given him a dime, they would see his devious nature (because, remember, they have to earn their money) and kick him to the curb, saving more money for people who are truly in need. And to show this problem is endemic and not just my own observation understand that almost half of all american's pay no federal income tax.
How much more money would philanthropic people have to give were the government to not take so much? How much wasted money goes to line the pockets of corrupt politicians (and friends) in the name of philanthropy? How many people could have been saved? If this is true then this is a really big deal.
Aid organizations are also more focused on a specific task. AIDS in Africa, give here, cancer research, give here. There's even organizations based on your religion or political ideology ensuring that your money would never go to support a cause that you find repugnant. I could continue and list all of the corruption and nepotism inherent in the socialist style of philanthropy, but I'm sure you're already familiar with them. The recourse for poorly spent funds within the government usually results in nothing, at best, a legislator might be sacked. On the other hand when a private aid organization is found to be spending poorly they simply cease to exist, the natural course of things.
In the socialist system, who gets to define who should and should not have money? What happens when the government cannot afford to give health care to everyone? Does it start rationing? Who do you give to first? Who do you take from? And when this transfer of wealth occurs, don't you think the people whom you've robbed to pay for another person will be pleased with the situation? More likely they will want to take over the controls of the government and bend them to their own will, and what vengeance they would seek if they seized power.
The chaos increases and questions only become more di
How does the doctor get paid, in the absence of a government or a corporation subsidizing individual health care?
Ya, that's right, the cooperation most of the time pays the doctor, but the cooperation is the hospital, not even the insurer, and maybe the hospital has to charge more to offer this 'free' service, so be it. I don't think the government needs to get involved though, they can only cause problems.
Your use of quotes is incorrect. I said " he wouldn't have ACCESS to doctors". I know this is difficult, but stay with me: there's no indication in there that because someone's in set A (people with no access to doctors), set A is identical to set B (all people).
In my quote I was assuming the subject was "him" and not all people. What I should have said was "only NHS can provide [him] ACCESS to doctors" I understood what you said. My point still stands. Even without NHS he would have had access to doctors, but this is purely theoretical, and the AC even confirmed that because "no NHS" is purely theoretical, both arguments for and against are equally sound. From the AC:
Not quite - what I mean to imply was that if my life-sustaining neonatal incubation wasn't provided by the NHS, it wouldn't have been provided by any doctors due to lack of payment etc. Not entirely evidenced, of course - which puts it on equal par with your own contention,
And this is the how the discussion goes on Tuesday:
Doctor: You owe me $2500. Your insurance covers half. You owe me $1250.
Patient: Here's my credit card.
Ya, but the costs there need to have their decimal points moved to the left one. And that's even if you can't afford the $150/yr dental insurance which would take it down to an even more trivial amount. Also, every doctor I've ever been too will take payments.
patient won't be able to schedule an appointment with him until they clear their debt
Which of course is better than never going at all the way the NHS does it. In the view of the NHS if a procedure is to costly, you just can't have it no matter what you say about it, or how bad it will kill you if you don't have it. I can provide multiple citations, but I'm sure you've heard the horror stories.
Wait. No. Way. You didn't just promote a government run safety net that takes from some to pay for the needs others, did you? Bastiat is spinning in his grave.
I was pointing out that even without a NHS, there are still other ways to get free healthcare. And I don't think Bastiat would throw a sick baby into the wilderness. You can't think for me or Bastiat. Just because we don't think that the government should provide services to the poor, does not mean we don't think services should be provided to the poor. And to that end there are literally hundreds of reputable private charities that are way more efficient in how they spend their money than the government is. So who is the compassionate one now? I would rather give all my tax money to the poor than a single cent to bail out GM, or pay for the health care of someone who has a $4000 computer and a 50" LCD. Government doesn't really give a rats ass what it does with your money, maybe some might make it to the poor, but it's sure as hell going to line the pockets of every politician and politician's friend before it makes it there.
Since you clearly can't make coherent arguments on your own, I'll just respond to your valid points.
My arguments are perfectly coherent, you just choose to ignore them. If you're bored and have more time I'd love it if you went back and argued some of them, I do enjoy it.
I thought you were above insults? I actually directly referred to terminology used by Bastiat in his argumentation. How did you miss that? Maybe you're not as familiar with his arguments as you'd like to think?
I apologize if you were not lying, I didn't mean to insult, I just found the inconsistencies piling up. I listed why I was skeptical of what you were saying and think it was sound reasoning. I don't want to drive you away with insults.
Self-avowed socialist?
Now, you did just say "I just happen to agree with some of Proudhon's axioms" who is a major league socialist. I thought that you were a socialist was understood. I didn't think you would take that as a pejorative. I certainly didn't make anything up. I'm basing my conclusions on a) your support of the NHS and the general line of argument you offer and b) your support of a guy who's famous saying is "Property is Theft!". I mean, what else can I take from that? What axiom of Proudhon's do you agree with that isn't overtly socialist? I estimate that he is the polar opposite of Bastiat (and sort of crazy). If you're not a socialist, than I can see how you might view that as in insult, but you must reconcile your support for Proudhon if you're not. Like Bastiat, I'm not a big fan of his.
What you missed though was that Candide is all about the human condition
My guess is you just read the wikipeda description of Candide that describes it as about the "human condition", but I will suspend my disbelief for the sake of argument. That's pretty general, I can argue pretty strongly that most all fiction is about the human condition, some more directly than others. I could just as easily say "Star Wars" is about government, it certainly examines the human condition in a much more articulate way than Candide. Candide was just chaotic, evil things happening for no reason, Candide abandoning El Dorado because he just wants to. His friend having her ass eaten by starving men, that's just gross. Then Candide abandons hope. And the great theme of the novel was "abandon all hope, existence is folly".
Now, how you draw any conflict or even a comment from Candide about Bastiat's work is puzzling. Bastiat is writen as a technical a priori argument, as if argued to a jury, about government, sort of like Locke's 2nd treatises on government or Hobbes' Leviathan. Candide doesn't support any form of government, except maybe the made-up-cracy in the fictitious city El Dorado, but Voltaire doesn't go into any detail about what form of government that is anyway. And I'm not sure what sort of government you can base "abandon all hope" on.
I actually directly referred to terminology used by Bastiat in his argumentation.
What do you mean? Can you cite an example from the book? I linked to the entire text.
As for the rest..
China
That's sort of a cop out. I'm certain you're wrong about China even though you're trying to weasel out of it. But you claim this point "an incoherent argument". It's a link, pointing to a source, where the first sentence confirms what I said. I can provide 1000 more links that say the same thing. You change the argument to per capita and then say "oh you're wrong". No, you changed the argument to say something I never said. Furthermore I really don't think per capita is important at all, China has millions of mud farmers that don't have electricity so of course their per capita is going to be low, that doesn't somehow make them pollute less, and that's
You can't understand the usefulness of additional MRIs or the need to use them quickly? You know it's used to diagnose cancer, as well as numerous other diseases, which we in the U.S. survive at a much higher rates than anywhere else in the world. A lot of these diseases are time sensitive, so being put on a 4 month waiting list for an MRI can mean the difference between life and death. I know, I had cancer, the day I found my lump I was in an MRI.
I'm not sure what the cause of some of the statistics you point out are, but "government inaction" cannot be the reason, government cannot perform any medical procedures, they must coerce a doctor to do it. More likely government caused the poor statistics, almost half of our country uses "public health care" via medicaid/medicare/VA and the number one denier of procedures per capita is medicare.
Statistics are like a bikini, what they reveal is interesting, but what they hide is essential. It is a matter of fact that the best medical schools and university hospitals are in the U.S.. It is also a matter of fact that the U.S. spends magnitudes more in research and development than any other country. When a country wants a new doctor they send them to the U.S. to be educated. When a foreign head of state or a extravagantly rich person needs treatment they come to the U.S.. My question is: do you think they[super-rich] do that because of poor mental health coverage? Lower life expectancy? Inferior prenatal care? Or maybe it's because they are highly informed and were seeking the best care possible.
Since the government in the U.S. does not control or own any industry, it follows that all innovations for any industry come from private industry.
Only by a very narrow definition of industry and control. What do you call SEC and EPA regulations?
Useless. Just to give an example. One of my customers is a ceramics manufacture, the EPA requires that he have all sorts of licensees to do what he does, among those are two gems that I'll never forget. 1) Silica dust from ceramic manufacture (aka sand) is a nuisance dust and therefore the EPA needs $x.xx each year yet his factory is 2 blocks from the beach and sand regularly accumulates on the curbs around the neighborhood from the beach. What's the EPA doing to stop this "beach nuisance" and how does taking money from him help? and 2) the lead content in the glaze (there's lead in just about everything) has be to 1/1000th the amount of lead that is allowed in our drinking water. That's just personal experience, but look at what the EPA wants to do next. Regulate CO2. Hey you produce that! I wonder what great ideas the EPA has for that gas. But typically they just run amok doing things like this:
After 35 years of hemming and hawing over how to fix the largest estuary in the Western Hemisphere – the sprawl of canals, levees, and flood plains that join the Golden State's two river systems – the state has been told by a federal judge that business-as-usual is now illegal.
A new ruling to stop pumping up to 37 percent of the water that flows through the delta to protect endangered fish species has sent shock waves of concern into the three main sectors that have long competed for it: cities, farms, environment.
we may starve to death, but thanks to the EPA, the mud guppy will have a pristine habitat. That's right, the EPA sided with a tiny fish and threw 23 million people and 5 million acres of farm land to the wind. Why the fuck would they care? After all, they're the government!
Do you know what a strawman is? It's an argument that no is making, created for the sole sake of knocking it down. The quote is a strawman, because no one is making the argument you're making.
Yes, I know what a straw man is. And it's two words not one. The argument is made by government proponents all the time that the government can run certain industries better than the private sector, I included the word "magic" to try and drive home the point that the government has no additional capabilities beyond that possessed by individuals. But without explanation, people talk the "government is better" line. Therefore it is not a straw man argument.
Stuff about China
Yes, I did read the link, it says without equivocation that china is the #1 polluter that's why I gave you the link, it backs up what I said 100%. You talk about OZ is but the often cited study is talking about CO2, a gas without which all plant life on the planet would die, and not a pollutant in any way shape or form of the word pollutant ( you can breath it, it is not harmful to anything ). And you have the nerve to say it didn't support my arguments. Now, and after you finish reading this and tomorrow and the next day, China, will still be the #1 polluter and you cannot claim I was wrong when that was what I said no matter how much you want me to be wrong, I'll still be right. You can try and rationalize your assertion that OZ is polluting more than China, but you're going to look like a total fool doing it.
And why is that effective? Because of government laws. Find me something that shows you have guaranteed recourse outside of getting any government agency involved - recourse being made whole.
You sound to me like a 14 year old. Now you may not be 14, but that is how a 14 year old sounds, not a civilized adult. I will respond to you only in an effort to educate you, but really, there is no reason to be so childish.
The point that you keep missing - I still don't know if that's deliberate ignorance or not - is that the AC was referring to the fact that without the NHS, he wouldn't have ACCESS to doctors. Something that is very different from doctors not existing, but that has the same impact for him.
And the point that you keep missing is that he would have seen a doctor in the absence of NHS. NHS does not have a monopoly on doctors. NHS does not have a monopoly on "free" health care. Using your logic, if NHS didn't exist, everyone in the UK would suffer and die if they required a doctor because only the NHS can provide ACCESS to doctors. Using the same logic a tyrannical dictatorship is good because they provided ACCESS to the fire department that put the fire in your house out (fire departments exists in non-dictatorships also so the dictatorship deserves no special praise). NHS and doctors are not inseparable. For instance, in the U.S. we don't have NHS but people in need can ACCESS a doctor free of charge. As far as infants go, in the U.S. we have a safety net called medicaid for people who cannot afford insurance. There isn't a child in the U.S. that goes without medical care. My whole argument is this: NHS didn't save anyone's life, a doctor did. If NHS never existed, a doctor would still save his life And because this is totally hypothetical, I theorize they would have done a better job.
You seem to argue "only NHS can provide ACCESS to doctors", but you must admit that were the NHS to have never existed, something else would be there instead, and no matter what's there, the doctor is the important part, not the government. The government can only hamper and confuse this relationship as they have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Doctor: Your tooth is toast, you need a root canal.
Patient: When can I come in to get that?
Doctor: I don't know, I have to ask the government.
That may sound stupid, but that's NHS. Now in the U.S. the conversation goes like this:
Doctor: Your tooth is toast, you need a root canal.
Patient: When can I come in to get that?
Doctor: Tuesday.
So what exactly is the value added by the government? Ya, I know, you'll say straw man, but that shit happens every day so it's hardly a logical falicy. British are down right famous for their poor dental care, and that is a direct cause of the NHS. When the government takes responsibility for healthcare, they must also take the risk of failing at it, as they have in the case of the NHS. (isn't this article yet one more example of their failure?)
I can't speak for the UK but in OZ they will refuse medical treatment to foreigners who cannot produce a credit card. My close friend was stung by a deadly insect called a "stinging tree" on a trip to OZ, and they refused him treatment for a life threatening ailment until he could produce a credit card, he almost lost his leg. In the end his mother was able to provide a CC over the phone to the hospital. In the U.S. if you're a doctor and refuse treatment to someone who is in dire need, you're going to jail. You cannot be refused service at an emergency room in the U.S. unlike OZ.
Also, non-citizens of this country have the same access and quality of care as any citizen has. Quality so good that people flock from all over the world to come to U.S. hospitals. It may be more costly than what you get in the U.K. but you really get what you pay for.
I hope this now totally refutes the idea that NHS saved him. Here in the U.S. he would have been saved even if he was a non-citizen in spite of our lack of an NHS style system. He's not being saved by the system, but rather in spite of the system. A good doctor, believe it or not, wants to cure disease.
I cannot argue with fact, other than to say, we spend more money and get a better product. We have more MRI machines per patient, shorter wait times to see a GP or a specialist. Really a better quality of service all around. And the best part is if you don't like the health care system you're in you can switch. It is not a coincidence those with money go to the U.S. to get treatment. The U.S. creates more innovate drugs and procedures than any other country. More progress has been made in the U.S. to cure disease than any other health care system anytime in history. If requested I can provide citations for each statement. It even sounds like the most expensive too. On the other hand, a week doesn't pass without reading about some horror story out of the NHS, the same cannot be said for the U.S. system. And not only do the middle class have good teeth, with insurance as low as $150/yr everyone has good teeth, that is if they care to go to the dentist that is. (more doctors = more competition = better service and lower prices) And if you don't have enough money, you've just qualified for medicaid! Now your healthcare is free! I'm going to guess you're from the U.K. So it may be strange to you to find out that we have TV commercials made by dentists (and of course other doctors) vying for your business.
Oh, and a few years ago, most of the world listened to the ultracapitalists and removed lots of regulation from the financial industries.
What regulations were removed? There were no loosening of regulations. If there was show me the citation. There isn't a more regulated system than the ones in place for financial institutions. The reason for the collapse, if you care to go back and find out, is largely due to people defaulting on home loans to GSA's (government entities) that the government forced down private banks throats. Because they were GSAs they were not subject to the regulation of the FTC, but to congress, under the stewardship of Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. They first encouraged giving loans to minorities who otherwise would have been turned down (due to poor credit rating) and discouraged any sort of audit of Fannie or Freddie who eventually admitted to "cooking the books". But don't take my word for it, do a little reading.. Increasing regulation in an already over-regulated industry to combat government agencies that were not even subject to the regulation in the first place is just wrong. The reason this is 'so secret' is that the main stream media is overwhelmingly liberal and the idea that the GSAs can fuck something so bad doesn't fit their ideology so they report on it as sparingly as possible.
Since the government in the U.S. does not control or own any industry, it follows that all innovations for any industry come from private industry. I was being kind when I gave the government %1, but I would say the burden of proof is on you to prove the 1%, the 99% is self evident. The DOE does not make anything the EPA does not make anything. If you still need a citation, I'll need to know how you want me to quantify it. I assure you, no matter how you count it, innovation belongs to private industry.
Are you suggesting that the government has a "magic" power plant does not pollute that private industry is incapable of using?
Strawman.
No, this is not a straw man, this is in fact the core of the argument. I need to know why you think the government can do "it" better than private individuals. What does government posses that private individuals do not?
Rhetorical question, based on complete ignorance of the reason behind government.
I have read more volumes about government than I even care to list here. From Plato to Hobbes to Locke and just about everything in between. Literally dozens of books including ones that I disagree with like Bossuet, Blanc and Marx. That you declare my ignorance on the subject based on that statement speaks volumes about you.
in the world is also the world's worst polluter
Citation needed that that is China.
The strictest socialist government
Citation needed that that is China (on multiple levels).
China is the world's worst polluter nation with the highest overall annual emission of greenhouse gases (6,018 million tonne).
And it really does suck: Environment in the People's Republic of China. Did you know, that in China, they use what's called night soil? That is, they use human fecal material to feed their crops. Now, I'm not sure how you quantify "strict'. So here's a try Highest number of people annually executed, massive Religious intolerance the adoption of the Communist form of socialism, the strictest form of socialism, dictating the eradication of all other political thought. I can go on if you require more citations. Ever hear of Tibet?
while most free market companies promote their 'green initiatives' without force from the government.
Citation needed.
Here's about 25.7 million You can go though them. But I'm telling you now, it would be more difficult to find a company that doesn't have some sort of "green initiative"
Because they think it will help promote their public image which will result in more profit.
Citation needed.
All of the results from the link above were about companies trying to promote their public image through green initiatives. And they do speak for themselves.
Where did you get that I implied access to doctors? Or didn't? I made no inference in either direction. I stated that the lack of NHS does not mean that doctors cease to exist. And what's the straw man argument I presented? That doctors operate in spite of the NHS? I think that's a pretty widely held position among doctors in the NHS, not that I've taken a poll or anything, but it's hardly a straw man argument, mostly because it isn't even an argument! But if you need proof of this non-argument, look at the severe shortage of doctors in the UK as proof of a less than desirable environment for doctors.
Slashdot Mirror
Are we running out of domain names now? I assumed that first.middle.last.me or .com or whatever TLD will always be available to people who want to run a web site.
Is anyone else reminded of the Seinfeld episode where the whole apartment building had pictures up and Jerry didn't want his picture up? Or when Jerry didn't want to use a name tag? Real life is anonymity, you don't instantly know someone's name just because you walked up and talked to them. Did Voltare or The Artist (formerly known as Prince) have any problem hiding under their pseudonyms? I mean I can list great people who used pseudonyms all day long!
If I walk up and introduce myself as Ted, and strike up a conversation with you, you've now established a reputation with Ted. Not knowing that my name is actually Coolhand2120 is not going to change my reputation with you. Not knowing that I've said other things to other people as someone else is really none of your business anyway.
Needing to know what I've said to everyone is the product of a over inquisitive busy bodies. The fact the government wants to track what you're saying on the internet should give anyone paranoia. Do I have to register with my real name and government ID card before I talk in a town square now? The action (if it were to be purposed by government) in and of itself should be a violation of my right to free speech.
Frederick Bastiat (1801-1850) The Law
The link I provided didn't say god was the invisible hand. It has nothing to do with god. The "invisible hand" is a term to describe "creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows".
I don't know why I always get ambushed by atheist trolls whenever I post any link to anything that even says "god", even when the link has nothing to do with god. In the essay it says the Invisible Hand is:
And it goes on to say "only god could create a pencil" because no man could create a pencil by himself because it is too complex a task, mining zinc, milling wood, logistics etc.. It's not an endorsement of god or theism or whatever you think it's about. Maybe if you took of the anti-religion/communist zealot hat for a while, quit acting like a sophomoric boob and read the essay you might actually learn something.
Most of my clients are in southern California, and while there are recycling programs that will take the waste for free, it costs money to put onto pallets and ship the stuff. With Apple paying for the freight costs it becomes much more financially sound to pay to just have it put on pallets.
Most of the stuff is just pure junk. Old win95 boxes with bored out HDDs, motherboards for the old PIII "box" processors, CRTs that you can tell are broken just by looking (or smelling) them. Some of the stuff is really old. For example: an XT style 5.25" HDD and an old AS400 that was at least 10u. Makes me a little nostalgic.
I'm a huge Apple hatter. If I ever bought an Apple product I would burst into hypocritical flames. But this is a really good idea. I have a lot of clients that a have tons of old hardware that they can't get rid of because of the cost involved in doing so. Now Apple will cover that cost, and make a little money by stripping the precious metals off the techo-trash. This is a great example of the free market's Invisible Hand. Bravo Apple, well done.
Who the hell is this CronoCloud guy? What a moron! Everything he says is just... so stupid. I think sometimes I'm arguing with a 14 year old and I'd be better off spending my time sleeping. This guy has replied to almost everyone here, each reply is just so devoid of any logic or knowledge it makes me feel sorry for his parents. I guess that's what you get when you start with the idea that gamepads are better at FPSs than mouse+kb and then try to defend it. I'm still entertained, you should read the thread from the start, it's gotten pretty big, and you can see everyone smash ChronoCloud's weak inductive reasoning.
Hey ChronoCloud, are you reading this? MAMA SAID SPOCK YOU OUT.
Apparently you've never ridden a horse either. When riding a horse, you get these things called reigns, they are not analog controls, the best you can compare them to is a D-PAD and even then the 'forward/up' control is replaced by your kicking and hawing at the horse. You cannot 'move left just a little' on a horse, you move the reigns to the left, the horse move to the left, right, he moves right. Most of the time the horse doesn't even do what you wanted the horse to do so you have to correct again and again. The horse moves where the horse wants to move. The reigns are just a suggestion, if the horse so wished to ignore you it can, and they often do. There is no 'move a little'. I suppose next you'll channel the horse and tell me that "his feet move proportionally" or some such nonsense. The most "realistic" control for a horse is probably a d-pad.
People move proportionally in a certain direction, this direction is dictated much more accurately and quickly with a mouse. Even when moving slowly, we move our entire leg, we don't magically slide forward. That's why when you watch a console gamer you'll see slow acceleration (actual movement) of the moving person and totally unnatural panning (left or right) to get to the correct heading. In real life, people select their heading almost instantaneously and move in that direction, they do not slowly pan around at a uniform speed.
You are taking up a lot of my time because you continue to say so many demonstrably false statements. I'm not going to continue to argue with you because it's not very interesting to hear someone talk out of their ass all day long. Skyrim is an FPS, so FPS players are by definition the target market. Just because there are a ton of RPG elements in the game does not stop it from being a FPS. It's an RPG FPS. Now you can say Diablo isn't in the FPS market because it's not a FPS. TES is an FPS - it won't stop being an FPS just because you say so.
There was no patch to fix this non-existent behavior. Either you never played the first Diablo on PC (likely), or you played on PC so briefly that you didn't even figure out the controls (more likely). Regardless, you're trying once again to weasel out of an argument you made earlier by making more false statements. Nobody buys it. Nobody says "PC version PSone port." because that's just an incoherent statement. You were mistaken, it's not against the law. People will respect you more if you admit you were mistaken than if you try and weasel out of an obviously false statement. Because it's so obvious, I can promise you, people will respect you less. Indeed, look at the replies to your weaseling.
Your personal troll replied to my lashing:
So I had to beat him down again:
Thought you'd enjoy that.
Nobody was "bunny hopping". Maybe to an uneducated eye you may try and rationalize movement that you don't understand with 'bunny hopping". What people in this video were doing is propelling themselves around with a tau cannon. To use the tau to propel yourself you need extremely fast and accurate movement. What you see as "bunny hopping" is actually the person doing a 180'/-45' and blasting the ground then doing a -180'/45' to look ahead again, so fast that the whole action only last 3 or 4 frames.
And what does the realism of the game have to do with the control surface? I picked videos to show how you have absolutely excellent control even when shit is moving so fast that your brain can barely keep up. You've changed the argument. And guess what, mouse movement is also more realistic . And I even pointed that out when I said: "Console guys would always move on one axis at a time (x then y) , rarely daring to move both up and left at the same time, by comparison, mouse users always moved in the most natural way possible." I even posted a link to a "console UT3" video where you can see this 'unrealistic behavior'. In any game, realistic or otherwise, mouse control is better. Besides, the most realistic game ever, ARMA, is on PC only, and guess what sort of control you use to direct your soldier? Not a gamepad!
Once again, you change the argument to try and weasel out of your previous statements The question posed was not "which is the best surface for drawing" it was "what is the best surface for clicking on icons on the desktop".
This has nothing to do with drawing tablets. Yes they are better at drawing, and I said joysticks are better for flying what's your point?
Once again, you're trying to compare the game instead of comparing the control surface as was the subject. No matter what sort of game you play you're always gong to be better off using a MOUSE for a FPS game. PERIOD. Besides you were talking about TES which is not in any way a realistic game. You shoot fire from your hands and can carry 200lbs while you jump around fighting with swords.
Sure, maybe in the Hollywood movies you've watched the "realistic" operators say "shoot at center mass". But in real life, that's not what happens. Snipers are told to shoot for the cerebellum, by aiming at the cross formed by your ears, chin and forehead. When shooting guns out to bullet wobble distances you might aim for center mass, or maybe if you're too flustered to bother aiming. If you don't know what 'bullet wobble' is that you really have no business telling me what 'realistic shooting' is. I own guns, I shoot, I know what I'm talking about.
In almost every game head shots count for 2x-10x more damage. In real life the head shot is the money shot. Nobody is going to say "aww darn, I got a head shot". How about yo
I'm not sure if you knew this, but dentists are doctors.
Yes I'm guessing unless the private doctors pay you, free will be cheaper. And that's why they have to consult the government. There's a finite number of dentists to fix teeth and whole lot of teeth, so some people need to come before others, old people should go after young people, healthy people are more viable so they should come before sick people, unless the sickness is related to the visit, and even then only if there's a chance of survival.
In the US. You come in on Tuesday. There is no rationing of care. The same cannot be said of the NHS.
So you must agree that MRIs are important, and the more you have per capita the better. This goes for the availability of all equipment and personnel. If you don't have enough, that means rationing.
I went ahead and did the news search "USA health care horror" and it did result in some hits, but not a single one talked about a horror story in a US hospital, maybe I missed it and you can point that one out. Even after trying Obama can't seem to find any horror stories about the US health care system so I wouldn't spend too much time scouring. Almost without exception the articles talked about Obamacare and related issues. Unlike when you substitute NHS for USA, there are a lot of hard news articles detailing incompetence and abuse in the NHS. You also gave no answer to the question: why do so many well off people choose the US to get their health care and not another country if it's so crappy?
Here's a good test. Try using your joystick to control your computer. You can do it, it's not difficult to setup. Now try and click on the icons with your joystick. Now try again with your mouse. See the difference? Can you see why nobody uses a joystick to navigate the desktop? Now imagine all the icons are people's heads and you're in a FPS. Can you see how a mouse makes things a little easier? No? I didn't think you would. But I'll make an attempt to convince you anyway, having actually played PC vs. console for a while.
Shadowrun was a cross platform game, you could play X-box vs. PC. I bought the game specifically so I could fight console gamers, whom I felt has stole all the gaming licences from PC, it was personal for me. I come from the old school quake 1 clans, hook+rockets and later hook+rail guns, and even later hook+tau or tau+whatever. Lots of hooks and flying through the air anyway. The thing is, I already knew that the things that I regularly do with my mouse/keyboard would seem like magic to a console guy, so I knew it would be a turkey shoot to play Shadowrun.
I was not disappointed. You could tell the PC players from the console players right away just by looking at the way they move. Console guys would always move on one axis at a time (x then y) , rarely daring to move both up and left at the same time, by comparison, mouse users always moved in the most natural way possible. Console gamers would take forever to turn around, so I guess they made a '180' button because sometimes they would spontaneously spin around, but that never helped them, they always came out disoriented and were toast after I finished laughing and finally pushed the head shot button. Console gamers would just get their asses handed to them all day long. They would also always use a power up that gave you 'aim assist' basically, but caused a visible laser to emit from their weapon. Just having the laser power up made you a likely console user, it made it so you would see the guy coming, and it gave them an aim that was only slightly better than using a joystick. After a while, it just felt too much like I was cheating so I stopped playing.
Nobody blames aim assist. In fact, the more cannon fodder that keeps it turned on the better. Any (serious) person who used a mouse would never turn it on because it would totally ruin their game. You see, people who use a mouse shoot people like you in the head all day long, aim assist will 'snap' to the chest and ruin the head shot. You think you're a match for a mouse user, but you've never played against a mouse user. I have, I beat all console gamers without even trying. Your control surface for FPS is a total joke. The only thing you should be doing with joysticks is playing "bionic commando" or maybe an airplane game, but you'd probably be better off buying a real joystick (MS FFB2) to fly and I personally like the D-Pad more for games like bionic commando. Just ask yourself if you can tau jump do a 163'/37' turn, tau jump, do a 27'/47' turn and shoot a crossbow at a 4pxX4px head in 1920x1080. Because that shit is par for the course if you want to play mouse users. I only wish I could see the frustrated console gamers trying to play
Stick!? Face button!? What are these foreign things you speak of!? My TES uses a moue and keyboard. I hope there's no port drama.
It appears I may have replied to the parent of your post. But I'm not sure, /.'s freaky ass system is always doing something ... freaky. It would be rather difficult to copy and paste all I wrote (formatting will disappear) so here's a link to my misplaced post: Re: Socialism Sucks
A the end of my blathering there are two quotes from The Law. Bastiat addresses philanthropy specifically in the second quote, and indirectly in the first. In the first example here he talks about how just because we feel that government isn't the answer, doesn't mean that philanthropy shouldn't exist, just that these institutions should not be controlled by the government. And you must readily admit that private aid organizations are a lot more focused on where there money is being spent because they had to earn it, meaning they didn't take it at the point of a gun. Aid organization are held to a very high standard, and are regularly audited and required to show how many cents on the dollar go to actual aid (vs. administrative overhead).
Compare this to the government's philanthropy. In my own life I know a person who owns several $4000 computers, multiple big screen TVs, has 3 kids, no job, and lives life 100% off the government tit. He pays no taxes. He pays no rent (the government pays that). He actually is paid money, by the government, simply because he has kids. So $0 in tax and they still give him money. This person is perfectly healthy and capable of working, but chooses not to. I went to high school with the guy and this was actually his plan way back then. Have more kids => get more money. And do you think the kids have a good quality of life with a dad like that? Do you think maybe if the government didn't encourage him to have children he wouldn't? I mean, they cost a lot more when you pay for them. IMHO an aid organization would never have given him a dime, they would see his devious nature (because, remember, they have to earn their money) and kick him to the curb, saving more money for people who are truly in need. And to show this problem is endemic and not just my own observation understand that almost half of all american's pay no federal income tax.
How much more money would philanthropic people have to give were the government to not take so much? How much wasted money goes to line the pockets of corrupt politicians (and friends) in the name of philanthropy? How many people could have been saved? If this is true then this is a really big deal.
Aid organizations are also more focused on a specific task. AIDS in Africa, give here, cancer research, give here. There's even organizations based on your religion or political ideology ensuring that your money would never go to support a cause that you find repugnant. I could continue and list all of the corruption and nepotism inherent in the socialist style of philanthropy, but I'm sure you're already familiar with them. The recourse for poorly spent funds within the government usually results in nothing, at best, a legislator might be sacked. On the other hand when a private aid organization is found to be spending poorly they simply cease to exist, the natural course of things.
In the socialist system, who gets to define who should and should not have money? What happens when the government cannot afford to give health care to everyone? Does it start rationing? Who do you give to first? Who do you take from? And when this transfer of wealth occurs, don't you think the people whom you've robbed to pay for another person will be pleased with the situation? More likely they will want to take over the controls of the government and bend them to their own will, and what vengeance they would seek if they seized power.
The chaos increases and questions only become more di
Ya, that's right, the cooperation most of the time pays the doctor, but the cooperation is the hospital, not even the insurer, and maybe the hospital has to charge more to offer this 'free' service, so be it. I don't think the government needs to get involved though, they can only cause problems.
In my quote I was assuming the subject was "him" and not all people. What I should have said was "only NHS can provide [him] ACCESS to doctors" I understood what you said. My point still stands. Even without NHS he would have had access to doctors, but this is purely theoretical, and the AC even confirmed that because "no NHS" is purely theoretical, both arguments for and against are equally sound. From the AC:
Ya, but the costs there need to have their decimal points moved to the left one. And that's even if you can't afford the $150/yr dental insurance which would take it down to an even more trivial amount. Also, every doctor I've ever been too will take payments.
Which of course is better than never going at all the way the NHS does it. In the view of the NHS if a procedure is to costly, you just can't have it no matter what you say about it, or how bad it will kill you if you don't have it. I can provide multiple citations, but I'm sure you've heard the horror stories.
I was pointing out that even without a NHS, there are still other ways to get free healthcare. And I don't think Bastiat would throw a sick baby into the wilderness. You can't think for me or Bastiat. Just because we don't think that the government should provide services to the poor, does not mean we don't think services should be provided to the poor. And to that end there are literally hundreds of reputable private charities that are way more efficient in how they spend their money than the government is. So who is the compassionate one now? I would rather give all my tax money to the poor than a single cent to bail out GM, or pay for the health care of someone who has a $4000 computer and a 50" LCD. Government doesn't really give a rats ass what it does with your money, maybe some might make it to the poor, but it's sure as hell going to line the pockets of every politician and politician's friend before it makes it there.
My arguments are perfectly coherent, you just choose to ignore them. If you're bored and have more time I'd love it if you went back and argued some of them, I do enjoy it.
I apologize if you were not lying, I didn't mean to insult, I just found the inconsistencies piling up. I listed why I was skeptical of what you were saying and think it was sound reasoning. I don't want to drive you away with insults.
Now, you did just say "I just happen to agree with some of Proudhon's axioms" who is a major league socialist. I thought that you were a socialist was understood. I didn't think you would take that as a pejorative. I certainly didn't make anything up. I'm basing my conclusions on a) your support of the NHS and the general line of argument you offer and b) your support of a guy who's famous saying is "Property is Theft!". I mean, what else can I take from that? What axiom of Proudhon's do you agree with that isn't overtly socialist? I estimate that he is the polar opposite of Bastiat (and sort of crazy). If you're not a socialist, than I can see how you might view that as in insult, but you must reconcile your support for Proudhon if you're not. Like Bastiat, I'm not a big fan of his.
My guess is you just read the wikipeda description of Candide that describes it as about the "human condition", but I will suspend my disbelief for the sake of argument. That's pretty general, I can argue pretty strongly that most all fiction is about the human condition, some more directly than others. I could just as easily say "Star Wars" is about government, it certainly examines the human condition in a much more articulate way than Candide. Candide was just chaotic, evil things happening for no reason, Candide abandoning El Dorado because he just wants to. His friend having her ass eaten by starving men, that's just gross. Then Candide abandons hope. And the great theme of the novel was "abandon all hope, existence is folly".
Now, how you draw any conflict or even a comment from Candide about Bastiat's work is puzzling. Bastiat is writen as a technical a priori argument, as if argued to a jury, about government, sort of like Locke's 2nd treatises on government or Hobbes' Leviathan. Candide doesn't support any form of government, except maybe the made-up-cracy in the fictitious city El Dorado, but Voltaire doesn't go into any detail about what form of government that is anyway. And I'm not sure what sort of government you can base "abandon all hope" on.
What do you mean? Can you cite an example from the book? I linked to the entire text.
China
That's sort of a cop out. I'm certain you're wrong about China even though you're trying to weasel out of it. But you claim this point "an incoherent argument". It's a link, pointing to a source, where the first sentence confirms what I said. I can provide 1000 more links that say the same thing. You change the argument to per capita and then say "oh you're wrong". No, you changed the argument to say something I never said. Furthermore I really don't think per capita is important at all, China has millions of mud farmers that don't have electricity so of course their per capita is going to be low, that doesn't somehow make them pollute less, and that's
You can't understand the usefulness of additional MRIs or the need to use them quickly? You know it's used to diagnose cancer, as well as numerous other diseases, which we in the U.S. survive at a much higher rates than anywhere else in the world. A lot of these diseases are time sensitive, so being put on a 4 month waiting list for an MRI can mean the difference between life and death. I know, I had cancer, the day I found my lump I was in an MRI.
I'm not sure what the cause of some of the statistics you point out are, but "government inaction" cannot be the reason, government cannot perform any medical procedures, they must coerce a doctor to do it. More likely government caused the poor statistics, almost half of our country uses "public health care" via medicaid/medicare/VA and the number one denier of procedures per capita is medicare.
Statistics are like a bikini, what they reveal is interesting, but what they hide is essential. It is a matter of fact that the best medical schools and university hospitals are in the U.S.. It is also a matter of fact that the U.S. spends magnitudes more in research and development than any other country. When a country wants a new doctor they send them to the U.S. to be educated. When a foreign head of state or a extravagantly rich person needs treatment they come to the U.S.. My question is: do you think they[super-rich] do that because of poor mental health coverage? Lower life expectancy? Inferior prenatal care? Or maybe it's because they are highly informed and were seeking the best care possible.
Useless. Just to give an example. One of my customers is a ceramics manufacture, the EPA requires that he have all sorts of licensees to do what he does, among those are two gems that I'll never forget. 1) Silica dust from ceramic manufacture (aka sand) is a nuisance dust and therefore the EPA needs $x.xx each year yet his factory is 2 blocks from the beach and sand regularly accumulates on the curbs around the neighborhood from the beach. What's the EPA doing to stop this "beach nuisance" and how does taking money from him help? and 2) the lead content in the glaze (there's lead in just about everything) has be to 1/1000th the amount of lead that is allowed in our drinking water. That's just personal experience, but look at what the EPA wants to do next. Regulate CO2. Hey you produce that! I wonder what great ideas the EPA has for that gas. But typically they just run amok doing things like this:
we may starve to death, but thanks to the EPA, the mud guppy will have a pristine habitat. That's right, the EPA sided with a tiny fish and threw 23 million people and 5 million acres of farm land to the wind. Why the fuck would they care? After all, they're the government!
Yes, I know what a straw man is. And it's two words not one. The argument is made by government proponents all the time that the government can run certain industries better than the private sector, I included the word "magic" to try and drive home the point that the government has no additional capabilities beyond that possessed by individuals. But without explanation, people talk the "government is better" line. Therefore it is not a straw man argument.
Yes, I did read the link, it says without equivocation that china is the #1 polluter that's why I gave you the link, it backs up what I said 100%. You talk about OZ is but the often cited study is talking about CO2, a gas without which all plant life on the planet would die, and not a pollutant in any way shape or form of the word pollutant ( you can breath it, it is not harmful to anything ). And you have the nerve to say it didn't support my arguments. Now, and after you finish reading this and tomorrow and the next day, China, will still be the #1 polluter and you cannot claim I was wrong when that was what I said no matter how much you want me to be wrong, I'll still be right. You can try and rationalize your assertion that OZ is polluting more than China, but you're going to look like a total fool doing it.
This is the only reason we resort to law i
You sound to me like a 14 year old. Now you may not be 14, but that is how a 14 year old sounds, not a civilized adult. I will respond to you only in an effort to educate you, but really, there is no reason to be so childish.
And the point that you keep missing is that he would have seen a doctor in the absence of NHS. NHS does not have a monopoly on doctors. NHS does not have a monopoly on "free" health care. Using your logic, if NHS didn't exist, everyone in the UK would suffer and die if they required a doctor because only the NHS can provide ACCESS to doctors. Using the same logic a tyrannical dictatorship is good because they provided ACCESS to the fire department that put the fire in your house out (fire departments exists in non-dictatorships also so the dictatorship deserves no special praise). NHS and doctors are not inseparable. For instance, in the U.S. we don't have NHS but people in need can ACCESS a doctor free of charge. As far as infants go, in the U.S. we have a safety net called medicaid for people who cannot afford insurance. There isn't a child in the U.S. that goes without medical care. My whole argument is this: NHS didn't save anyone's life, a doctor did. If NHS never existed, a doctor would still save his life And because this is totally hypothetical, I theorize they would have done a better job.
You seem to argue "only NHS can provide ACCESS to doctors", but you must admit that were the NHS to have never existed, something else would be there instead, and no matter what's there, the doctor is the important part, not the government. The government can only hamper and confuse this relationship as they have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Doctor: Your tooth is toast, you need a root canal.
Patient: When can I come in to get that?
Doctor: I don't know, I have to ask the government.
That may sound stupid, but that's NHS. Now in the U.S. the conversation goes like this:
Doctor: Your tooth is toast, you need a root canal.
Patient: When can I come in to get that?
Doctor: Tuesday.
So what exactly is the value added by the government? Ya, I know, you'll say straw man, but that shit happens every day so it's hardly a logical falicy. British are down right famous for their poor dental care, and that is a direct cause of the NHS. When the government takes responsibility for healthcare, they must also take the risk of failing at it, as they have in the case of the NHS. (isn't this article yet one more example of their failure?)
I can't speak for the UK but in OZ they will refuse medical treatment to foreigners who cannot produce a credit card. My close friend was stung by a deadly insect called a "stinging tree" on a trip to OZ, and they refused him treatment for a life threatening ailment until he could produce a credit card, he almost lost his leg. In the end his mother was able to provide a CC over the phone to the hospital. In the U.S. if you're a doctor and refuse treatment to someone who is in dire need, you're going to jail. You cannot be refused service at an emergency room in the U.S. unlike OZ.
Also, non-citizens of this country have the same access and quality of care as any citizen has. Quality so good that people flock from all over the world to come to U.S. hospitals. It may be more costly than what you get in the U.K. but you really get what you pay for.
I hope this now totally refutes the idea that NHS saved him. Here in the U.S. he would have been saved even if he was a non-citizen in spite of our lack of an NHS style system. He's not being saved by the system, but rather in spite of the system. A good doctor, believe it or not, wants to cure disease.
What regulations were removed? There were no loosening of regulations. If there was show me the citation. There isn't a more regulated system than the ones in place for financial institutions. The reason for the collapse, if you care to go back and find out, is largely due to people defaulting on home loans to GSA's (government entities) that the government forced down private banks throats. Because they were GSAs they were not subject to the regulation of the FTC, but to congress, under the stewardship of Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. They first encouraged giving loans to minorities who otherwise would have been turned down (due to poor credit rating) and discouraged any sort of audit of Fannie or Freddie who eventually admitted to "cooking the books". But don't take my word for it, do a little reading.. Increasing regulation in an already over-regulated industry to combat government agencies that were not even subject to the regulation in the first place is just wrong. The reason this is 'so secret' is that the main stream media is overwhelmingly liberal and the idea that the GSAs can fuck something so bad doesn't fit their ideology so they report on it as sparingly as possible.
Since the government in the U.S. does not control or own any industry, it follows that all innovations for any industry come from private industry. I was being kind when I gave the government %1, but I would say the burden of proof is on you to prove the 1%, the 99% is self evident. The DOE does not make anything the EPA does not make anything. If you still need a citation, I'll need to know how you want me to quantify it. I assure you, no matter how you count it, innovation belongs to private industry.
No, this is not a straw man, this is in fact the core of the argument. I need to know why you think the government can do "it" better than private individuals. What does government posses that private individuals do not?
I have read more volumes about government than I even care to list here. From Plato to Hobbes to Locke and just about everything in between. Literally dozens of books including ones that I disagree with like Bossuet, Blanc and Marx. That you declare my ignorance on the subject based on that statement speaks volumes about you.
I guess you've never been to China.
And it really does suck: Environment in the People's Republic of China. Did you know, that in China, they use what's called night soil? That is, they use human fecal material to feed their crops. Now, I'm not sure how you quantify "strict'. So here's a try Highest number of people annually executed, massive Religious intolerance the adoption of the Communist form of socialism, the strictest form of socialism, dictating the eradication of all other political thought. I can go on if you require more citations. Ever hear of Tibet?
Here's about 25.7 million You can go though them. But I'm telling you now, it would be more difficult to find a company that doesn't have some sort of "green initiative"
All of the results from the link above were about companies trying to promote their public image through green initiatives. And they do speak for themselves.
Where did you get that I implied access to doctors? Or didn't? I made no inference in either direction. I stated that the lack of NHS does not mean that doctors cease to exist. And what's the straw man argument I presented? That doctors operate in spite of the NHS? I think that's a pretty widely held position among doctors in the NHS, not that I've taken a poll or anything, but it's hardly a straw man argument, mostly because it isn't even an argument! But if you need proof of this non-argument, look at the severe shortage of doctors in the UK as proof of a less than desirable environment for doctors.