Ah yes, George Carlin. One day you'll learn the difference between median and mean. Mean ("sum over count" average), median ("middle" average), and mode ("the most" average) are all different types of averages. He was using the median in his joke, which, yes, is an average. You can only criticize Carlin for being not specific enough, not for being wrong.
Everyone is a lifelong learner, Storksdieck said, but once people leave school, that learning becomes a voluntary matter that's largely driven by individual taste.
Some people aren't learning.... They simply take whatever their political party happens to push and parrot it. Take intelligent design or global warming for instance.
Except in the case of global warming, where the scientific climatologist community has a consensus as strong as evolutionary theory is to the scientific biological community.
Considering that the anti-global-warming campaign is a purely political and corporate-interest maneuver, looks like you're going to have to eat your own words.
Photovoltaics are an inefficient source of power, have a short lifecycles, etc. Most places use solar-assisted water heating instead because per square foot it's more efficient at reducing the electrical load.
Wind power is available to Florida, as well, as they have lots of wind. If it gets too windy when storms come in, they can turn the blades.
And no, Florida has not done more to reduce their emissions, even to the fossil fuel portions that remain. The stats didn't show that. And no, you don't need to look at the same types of production.
Florida had a major power outage over its use of nuclear. Beaverton, OR had a substation explode and power was on sooner than a simple malfunction in the grid outside the nuclear plant. Oregon decommissioned the Trojan nuclear plant after it was shut down due to an equipment failure that forced it to shut down. The power company had ratepayers subsidize both the purchase and destruction of the plant (there's a line item on my power bill just for that). The company said it wasn't economical to reopen it.
And yet, some people still want nuclear. You don't factor in Florida's nuclear power, either. It's cleaner, right?
First, the updated median income figures were actually quite accurate according to HUD data. Interestingly the HUD data combines three different sources to figure out how to update their statistics. Some different census data:
confirms that even based off 2005 data using whatever refresher to update to 2008 they use there, Oregon and Florida aren't all that much different. Ohio looks to be doing better likely due to their own Democratic administration.
The main point is that all the numbers vary so much that your argument that they are meaningful to compare (particularly since Oregon has a large rural population that brings down the state total) doesn't make any sense. Go to Portland and the incomes go up drastically (HUD website shows that as well, but they don't have permalinks to their data).
Second, I know you are saying we should leave hydro power out. I'm saying we should leave it in. Why should we leave it out? It's a renewable energy, and if Florida doesn't have renewable energy, then why would one live there knowing they are polluting by running computers?
Third, you say, "they are polluting on average as bad as Florida per megawatthour produced but do so using power stations that don't emit pollution into the air. Tell me, how it this not worse?"
Uhh, What numbers are you reading? Are you reading the Ohio numbers for Oregon? I see 293 vs 1247. It looks like you just multiplied a per megawatthour number with a correction factor for the megawatthours total difference to get the rest of the totals to match with Florida. You shouldn't multiply a per megawatthour number to get it to align for comparison -- it's already a normalized number for comparison! WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING?
Now you're saying I don't know how to look at statistics as a rebuke for another point, but you clearly misread the energy statistics that were the basis for that complaint. Hah! Maybe your mommy should look over your numbers instead of my mommy.
Their coal plant still emits greenhouse gases and eventually will have to be retrofitted anyways. There's no net savings.
Under the above scenario, the coal company made the same overall reduction in emissions and saved $4,000,000 in the process. They didn't save four million in the process. That carbon emission still has to be eliminated to be completely renewable, but it sounds like you don't care about making every use renewable in the long run. They just delayed their repairs so they could socialize the cost of innovation -- they might want to not innovate themselves and have somebody else to do it first to lower the cost. Whatever their reason, we shouldn't allow them to displace their guilt by raising the cost of cheaper renewables, which negatively affects the poor's ability to be credit-renewable themselves. You still haven't addressed any part of the other half of the carbon credit equation.
Why should that coal plant be able to pollute as it does without any incentive to improve beyond the cost of cheaper offsets? Any answer you give here will be just another right-wing excuse that the market is clearly enough of an incentive without integrating the externality of the type of carbon used up.
Your repetition of lame right wing talking points, that's what. Say a coal plant would have to spend $5,000,000 to make a 20% reduction in emissions. But what if they could make an equal reduction in total emissions by buying $1,000,000 worth of Prius's? That's what carbon credits are for: reducing total emissions by allowing polluting companies to improve their infrastructure over time, and getting us moving on the path to a greener economy. Wanted to add the obvious: say they bought a million dollars in prii. Their coal plant still emits greenhouse gases and eventually will have to be retrofitted anyways. There's no net savings. In fact, if they were incentivized to actually hit the coal plant by modernizing their fucking emissions system through innovative techniques that they could sell to other coal plants, they're likely to make a shitload of money and actually make a real dent in the problem.
All those prii, though? They are "offsetting" that coal, so anybody driving one is contributing in _real_ carbon figures the amount of a non-hybrid. They have to "sell out" to provide a _disincentive_ to the coal plant. See why that won't fucking work, idiot?
If not, then don't reply because you're clearly a dumbshit.
Your repetition of lame right wing talking points, that's what. Say a coal plant would have to spend $5,000,000 to make a 20% reduction in emissions. But what if they could make an equal reduction in total emissions by buying $1,000,000 worth of Prius's? That's what carbon credits are for: reducing total emissions by allowing polluting companies to improve their infrastructure over time, and getting us moving on the path to a greener economy. Wow, you're a complete right-wing tool. The corporate "left" (Right-wing Democrats) love carbon credits because they don't actually hold anybody accountable and the rich can buy up the cheapest-to-offset offsets up while the poor are stuck forgoing all difficult-to-turn-renewable uses of carbon.
It's regulation the rich can get on board with.
Did you not understand the critique in the original post? I went into much more detail in my blog:
In that post, I even talk about how to fix carbon credits to be more fair and thus something I could get behind that won't fuck over the poor, but until then, carbon credits are a corporate ruse, and you bough them, hook, line, and sinker.
Try the NAVTEQ Map Reporter website. (My company powers it.)
They too-loosly-sampled the addresses for address ranging. It would merely require adding an extra data point, and all the rest of the data around you will be fixed as well.
I wrote an address range interpolator for my company, which powered older versions of google maps and powers most internet sites not based on mapquest, microsoft, or google, most mobile maps, and most in-car nav systems not made by garmin or tomtom.
Hence, I know exactly how they code the address ranges for later display. Just tell them and they can fix it in a heartbeat.
Oregon beats both Ohio and Florida in median income for every category except Ohio barely eeks out a win in the family of four median income. (The new growth in Oregon is in single and couples without children or with one child and in Hispanics with two or more kids -- you can see that would drag down the family of four count.)
Air quality indexes show Oregon beating the shit out of Ohio and beating Florida in ozone and a wash in particulates.
I'm not sure where you got your numbers ridiculing Oregon.
Plus, what's this about alternative fuels? Alternative generation mechanisms is important. Hydro is an alternative generation mechanism that requires no fuel.
Wind energy requires no fuel either. Ohio has 7 megawatts and Florida doesn't even make the list. Oregon has 885 megawatts of wind generation and it's not a very big wind state.
From looking at the electricity profiles, Oregon creams Florida and Ohio in every measure across the board.
So, in all those things you've criticized Oregon for, it turns out it's all a pack of delusions.
In 2002, Oregon, under Republican control of its legislature, was dead last in children going hungry. Since then, under Democratic leadership, it's now up to 30th instead of 50th due to a concerted effort to open up accessibility to food stamps. Corporations could have stepped in at any point and helped out, but it took the government to do that.
1) liberty == freedom, but to you it doesn't. Strange
Liberty means specifically freedom from certain oppressions and political influences. We are talking about politics and the use of the terms in the context of the use in the constitution. It means freedom from coercion of government. In modern times, they seem to express this as negetive liberty which is described as an individual is protected from tyranny and the arbitrary exercise of authority.
That is not what you want to do. And if you look at Jefferson's or about any other account of the day, you will find that as accurate. Are you basing your political ideal on a rebranded definition that you found in a dictionary or something?
Heh, I guess I should follow your definition of truthiness, not the dictionary.
2) You don't care about the poor. You said so yourself.
Who fucking cares? I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. Even though I already explained the thought here, you seem to be focused on this one thing. Let me do it again, The poor had nothing to do with what I was saying. The scale between rich and poor is arbitrary anyways. You can have everyone making at least $100,000 a year in todays current economic environment and they would be poor by the definition. Poor seems to be some magical rallying cry to you that offers a way to demonize people you don't agree with. That is not helping anyone as you incorrectly think you are doing.
Besides, why all the focus on me not caring about the poor? You said you don't care enough about they yourself. You claimed to pull a 6 digit income but can't donate to charities, you can't donate more in taxes, you can't start a charity or do a good deed yourself.
I have a policy of donating only to political organizations so that people like you are forced to pay as well;) Private donations simply aren't enough, and every dollar I donate to a political organization causes a 1000:1 effective tax change. I'm being about a thousand times more effective than you. Furthermore, I run candidates on third party tickets to force the other parties to concede votes where they normally are pro-corporate. We spent about a thousand dollars and ultimately got a vote against CAFTA, for example. That's real change for almost nothing.
No, you stated that you needed everyone else's money. You even mad the statement that you need the venture capitol funding that resulted in you getting the 6 figure income to help the poor because your too greedy to make a difference yourself. Those are your words that you offered for no apparent reason. You are the problem, not the solution.
I do need everybody else's money. My money is a one-time thing if I waste it on donating it to a non-profit org. that's apparently used for business networking by your friends. But political donations are the donation that keeps on giving.
3) How they are poor and whether or not specific individuals contribute doesn't change the validity of any of the arguments. Take those same people who are great con artist beggars, stop them from begging so that begging becomes pointless, and they'll likely get a legitimate job in sales to make extra money.
It changes everything. It they are poor because your political oppresion is forcing their job to move to other countries to remain competitive, you would be th reason they are poor. If your not willing to do something yourself, but demand that we take everyone else's money to fix the problem, you are not only a hypocrite, but you are failing to take action that you damn well could to further your cause.
And the worse part about this is that you are to stupid to see that you are the problem not the answer. You can't even keep a context straight which is probably why you believe the way you do. I never said all beggars are scam
Yes, that's exactly right, although I still like reading Nietzsche for entertainment purposes, but he was writing before the rise of European fascism caused the analytic philosophers to jump ship to England and the US -- skipping France altogether.;)
The two women in my life, my wife (has a politics degree and introduced me to Rawls/Nozikc, etc.) and my sister (has a degree in philosophy (continental) and introduced me to continental philosophy) and I (computer science -- interested in the AI perspective like Dennett and the Santa Fe Institute and the analytic philosophic tradition from Wittgenstein, Frege, Carnap, Ayer, Popper, Reichenbach, Russell, etc.) have frequent discussions on politics. All generally left of center, but different nonetheless.
Speaking of that, ever since the Sokal affair, I haven't talked much with my sister;).
However, I'm only using the word "right" in the discussion because that's the language the libertarians are familiar with. They don't understand any other.
I'm quite familiar with philosophers that don't work in terms of "rights". Baby steps, baby steps.
I don't actually consider most people who call themselves philosophers as philosophers these days, however. To me, THEY are the tired windbags who can't keep distinctions separate and thoughts straight in their heads, specifically the postmodernists.
Dennett, Pinker, Dawkins, and others like them are the real public intellectuals of our era. If you want to complain about somebody who acts like Chomsky, maybe a Hitchens would have been a more accurate reference.
Though, some political philosophers were on the right track -- Rawls, for instance, so I don't count them all out.
If you don't have an understanding of ethology from a biological perspective, you're not going to be able to understand human nature at all.
1) liberty == freedom, but to you it doesn't. Strange
2) You don't care about the poor. You said so yourself.
3) How they are poor and whether or not specific individuals contribute doesn't change the validity of any of the arguments. Take those same people who are great con artist beggars, stop them from begging so that begging becomes pointless, and they'll likely get a legitimate job in sales to make extra money.
4) I was referring to San Francisco, where they have tourist pressure to give them money. In Portland, Oregon, where I am now, we rarely see homeless people -- the legitimately homeless get free housing and the vagrants get free bus tickets out of town. Every now and then I still see a hitch-hiking student begging on a corner, but they're never in rags. The policy's been a success. They just implemented it in the last couple years, and before then I worked with business groups that had problems with vagrants. The change has been pretty solid. My wife worked for the county psychiatric crisis center for a few years as a crisis assistant -- we know the mentally ill and homeless issues pretty well first-hand.
Here in Portland, people move here to have a "high tax, high benefits" system. We have excellent public transit (no fare downtown, includes aerial tram, system funded via an employer-paid tax) and the best library system in the country for a city its size (as well as the world's biggest book store). Free wifi at the airport. (I rarely see that when traveling!) We have both the smallest park and the largest forested city park in the country. Every other city is in a recession, and Portland is still experiencing housing stability. A house a block away is being flipped -- went to the open house today. They are asking 80k over what they paid and they expect it to close in a week.
Places like Bush-run Florida are crashing like crazy, but up here in Portland, we're sitting pretty. We also have the highest percentage of bike commuters of any city in the country (4% and rising) and the city has created special bike boulevards and bike boxes to protect bikers from cars. It's turning into what San Francisco was and is no longer. Oregon created bottle and can recycling. We created the urban growth boundary system and extensive land use regulations. Portland passed an income tax when the Republican rest of the state was trying to defund schools at the state capital. Fortunately, Democrats swept into office because of that and the rest of the state got funded schools only a short while later. Republicans created the recycling laws, cleaned up the Willamette River, instituted land use regulations (Governor Tom McCall). Now the Democrats and Greens are the ones fighting to keep those regulations in place -- and winning! The Republicans changed tacts and squandered their leadership here. Now they are a minority.
Choose not to live here, and I won't move to where you are. You don't see the poor, but the numbers show that the poor are more numerous per capita in red states than in blue states.
You're so inconsistent -- you laud how regressive your area is in telling people to just get a job, and then you say, but if the government got out of the way, corporations would step up and handle the problem. They don't:
Plus, maybe you think the poor can just move? Really? Children can't just "move".
Rural and Red areas consistently show higher child poverty levels. Oregon still has some pockets of Red and thus child poverty, but it's gotten a lot better than the purely red states like Texas.
Where do you live that is such a cool "no poverty, nor taxes here" zone? Or are you not going to say where you live so I can show how wrong you are?
I was with you until I read a paragraph you wrote then reread your post after considering this. It is a fundemental difference in some things that I need to take issue with.
But seriously, though, what's fundamentally wrong with progressive taxation? You had to give a little back to the society that enabled you to aggregate its wealth? You would overthrow the government for trying to redistribute wealth in rather light moderation? Listen Russ, the rich are rich enough everywhere the rich are. They don't need another jacuzzi, and it's not a "human rights" issue that we'll force you to share. It's an issue of human decency. If you really don't want to share, leave the U.S. and go to a Banana Republic or an island nation you can buy where human decency is not a concern.
First, I personally don't have a problem with a progressive tax system until it becomes an entitlement and is used to remove the responsibility of a portion to pay taxes at all.
The entire point of progressive taxation is to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Your point here amounts to saying, "I don't mind transfering from the rich to the poor as long as the formula used has a certain arbitrary mathematical property of being straight linear without an offset coefficient below which the transfer will actually happen without having to use social programs as the circuitous route with which we do the wealth distribution. I would think somebody who doesn't like big government programs would rather just cut them a check they can use rather than force them to sign up for some titular entitlement program that you in fact don't like anyways.
It sounds like you're ok with transfering money to government as long as it never helps the poor, and instead only helps the people who are paying. Why not just come out and say that? It's probably because you've heard an attack on entitlement programs and don't really understand that the people who masterminded these attacks that you're just supposed to "go along with like a sheep" are doing it because they don't want to ever help the poor by force.
You haven't come out and said that you don't believe in indirect entitlement programs (e.g. welfare, universal health care, national minimum income), so I have to ask, do you?
But, you're ok taking money by force. You haven't explained, yet, why you're ok taking money by force unless it helps the poor if you say you don't want to help the poor. If you do want to help the poor, then you haven't explained why you've made the pretty arbitrary decision that direct transfer of money is not the way to help the poor.
I don't need to hear what you think, I need to hear why you think it!
In anticipation of your answering that you do want to help the poor, and just don't like to give them money directly, people are poor because they don't have money -- you can eliminate the poor that way. Yes, they'll still have the fundamental problems that made them poor or unable to make an income at that particular time, but once you've solved the poor problem, you can then go to work on the _ultimate_ causes of the poor. Be it drug addiction, mental illness, physical handicap, or merely old age, you can then work with them on their core issues in a safe environment -- not where they fear their very existence may be in jeopardy and they may die of starvation!
And I especially object to our way of giving earned income credits resulting in refunds in excess of the amounts of taxes paid in. It could go a lot further providing child care, educational opportunities or whatever else that could increase that person's income to a more livable state then giving them a paltry 1-2 grand a year because they have a few kids. This being said, it isn't the progressive tax, it is the abuse of it without a meaningful gain that I object to.
Here, you imply but don't actually state that you do want to help the poor, in some instances. But you haven't come out and sai
My statement refers only to the federal government, which has no place instituting a success tax. There is no need for the income tax federally, and it should be done away with. Your statement didn't refer to the federal government. Your rhetorical question about the use of force was just as valid for states is it is for the feds.
I sympathize with moving the income tax from the feds to the states because the feds should not be the place where most implementation should occur. The feds should give money right back to the states for implementation and local control. But there's no fundamental reason they can't be the main tax collector for all the states.
However, there's a practical reason why we should remove the income tax from the feds and move it to the states:
It's true that the feds, through Supreme Court decisions, have gained the presumptive power that they are allowed to go beyond the tenth amendment by using its tax collected money to influence states to do what it wants through earmarks and conditions on receiving federal funds. That's reason enough to oppose federal tax collection unless we are able to reverse that decision, which won't happen until and unless the Supreme Court loses its neoconservative elements.
If you had a rational reason like that, and could articulate it intelligently, maybe people would take you seriously, but the way you acted here just made the responder presume you're a small-minded, reactionary idiot that is forced to backpedal when somebody replies with perfectly valid critiques of their sweeping, general statements.
The ironic thing is that the critique the AC gave wasn't all that coherent and strong (as it was mostly a rant, but your rant met a rant, so that's not all that unexpected), and I think you could have defeated it, but instead, you backpedaled.
Say "High" to Rush for us. I'm sorry, do you mean the band or the talk show personality, and what does this have to do with anything? I'm just pointing out that Gore's policy proposals are flawed and don't actually solve the problems, however, they do create markets where there were not any (which is his ultimate goal). I don't think Rush would agree with that, either the Band or the Man.
Oh, great, Russ Nelson, self-claimed "angry economist" replies to me with doublethink: "control creates uncontrol". That's a gem.
Listen, Russ, I'm a capitalist _and_ a socialist. I strongly believe in market economies. I also believe in a welfare state and decentralized planning in economies. Those are controls on a capitalist economy that are really what have enabled the poor in western countries to not be so poor as most centrally-managed economies. Stick your head in the sand all you want and try to disagree, but at least don't spout contradictory assertions like you did here. I'm a strong supporter of national single-payer health care implemented at the local level, managed by doctors, medical service delivered in private practice (I used to work for a 20-doctor medical group), as well as a national minimum income for the destitute and the culturally artistic who can contribute to our creative commons. That won't destroy our economy. That's just being nice. I make a six figure salary and want to make sure people who aren't as gifted as I am have the benefits of modern society as well, since everybody's taxes help support the road network that spatial software (which I write) operates on. Maybe you don't -- perhaps that also separates us. I also ride my bike to work when it makes sense (which turns out to be most of the time). If I got a minimum income, one thing's for sure, all my software would be open source (not just what I can afford to open up). All the private businesses that want to make more than the minimum income would be able to use all that infrastructure for free -- I think that would be a very cooperative arrangement.
At no point, though, would I take anybody's right to do business in a private capacity, or even to do pretty much whatever they wanted. Sometimes, though, we recognize that certain behaviors are not only unethical, but inherently bad enough that we should protect consumers.
You're probably going to ridicule income taxes as immoral at some point, as they fuel a national minimum income. But seriously, though, what's fundamentally wrong with progressive taxation? You had to give a little back to the society that enabled you to aggregate its wealth? You would overthrow the government for trying to redistribute wealth in rather light moderation? Listen Russ, the rich are rich enough everywhere the rich are. They don't need another jacuzzi, and it's not a "human rights" issue that we'll force you to share. It's an issue of human decency. If you really don't want to share, leave the U.S. and go to a Banana Republic or an island nation you can buy where human decency is not a concern.
But back to uncontrolled capitalism -- even you must acknowledge that there must be limits to capitalism -- no murders, for example. Should we buy and sell murdering? Taking your rights away when you murder somebody is totally cool in your book, yes? "free market" capitalism is just a meaningless word, Russ. What's "free" is what's at issue for most capitalists (you and me included). Or do you/really/ want "uncontrolled greed" running everything? Do you? Are you actually Gordon Gecko?
And I know you're probably going to say that the distinction between murder and income taxation is that murder is infringing on the rights of the person murdered. That's a great distinction, but it's arbitrary, Russ. It also doesn't work. If the poor aren't allowed to participate in the economy and buy your shit, then who's left to benefit? Who's able to buy from you? If only ten people control all the wealth, they only end up trading with themselves, and the rest are left behind. The question, then is, who should be left behind? Fundamentally, a totally "free" market, even with the libertarian distinctions on freedom and constraint, implies that the poor should be left behind. I think that's a moral issue that conflicts with your arbitrary definition of "rights". The right to be sheltered and fed could very well be a "right" that when integrated
Nader is not running for the Green Party nomination. Cynthia is and is winning most of the other primaries, so it's likely that Cynthia will win by count in the end. California had a similar amount for Nader in '04 and he still lost. Most of the rest of the Greens outside of California aren't rich former-hippies, so they tend to not support Nader-types.
Which essentially means he wants to create a trading scheme on top of carbon, and the only way they can have value is that somebody would trade their right to call a generation mechanism carbon-free, so that carbon-consumption is something they are ok with -- they are ok selling it out.
So, you see, Gore isn't an environmentalist. He's a capitalist that wants to make money off of guilt -- guilt is the only way in which carbon credits have any meaning without real limits on carbon output (which don't exist). Moreover, carbon credits are fundamentally unfair. The rich get to buy their way out of carbon guilt!
Gore's a politician -- a salesman. He's sold the public, with his movie, carbon credits. After all of his speeches, he tells people they can all be carbon neutral if they just buy his promoted carbon credits!
I'm sorry, but the Greens were right to criticize him. He's just at the same old political lying.
The range of bills the Republicans and Democrats will vote on is a mere fraction of bills third parties would offer for a vote.
The Democrats and Republican work in the committees that get bills onto the floor. So we only see their minor differences.
It really only looks like they are widely disagreeing, but it's all a show. They all support uncontrolled capitalism, the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, and corporate control.
Do you not see the fallacy you're making? It's pure selection bias.
Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc
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So your rule is allowed caveats but caveats on the traditional one makes it worse? It's not a caveat -- it's simply a function of the rule, for if the rule isn't satisfied completely there's a violation.
I think it's fair to say that it's not possible to deterministically solve ethics in a single sentence. That doesn't make sanity checks like the Golden Rule worthless. Nobody said it solves it in a single sentence. Merely that if we're going to use guidelines, the conversed variation is much more accurate.
Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc
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Well, in a completely ethical society, people who are ten would still have freedoms to consent to things regarding their own body, for without the social stigma associated with underage sexual relations, the psychological problems wouldn't exist. That being said, I find it hard to believe a ten year old girl would consent to having sex with any man, since most of them think of old men as gross. So I find it quite contrived. If some random ten year old girl asked for a sexual favor from me, that would be violating the rule itself, too, since I don't want them to do that to me. When an act involves two people like that, the act has to meet the rule for both of them to be ethical.
I brought this up only because a 10 year old's mind isn't developed in a way to give a true consent. They have little to no concept of sexuality or anything involved with it. Besides the fact that they haven't yet formed the independent thought processes as for the consent to be actual consent and not just following the directions of an adult which to this point, their existance has depended on. It would be unethical to take advantage of a ten year old's mental state to get consent for sex with or without societal stigmas attached to it or not. And more specifically, the social stigmas are because of this ethics situation specifically.
The stigma is because people assume that a ten year old doesn't want sex, so when somebody has sex with one, chances are there was something unethical. It's a heuristic.
Can you bring up any case where a ten year old has consented to sex like this?
You're talking around the fact that the stigma is just an error of reasoning for a shorthand for identifying unethical behavior. It doesn't mean it's accurate in _all_ cases and should thus be made illegal.
Only religious and illogical people attack a behavior through outlawing ancillary behaviors that they consider related behaviors.
Your next contrived example doesn't make much sense, either. Should I question somebody's desires because I think how they were developed happened in immorality? I'm not so sure as you. That's who they are, and if they desire it, who am I to judge their desires? Would it be exploiting them? If I were trying to change her mind to change her consent based on those injustices, is that really doing what they would want? That seems more like manipulating what they want is what you don't like. Maybe they don't want manipulation -- that would violate the rule. Perhaps they enjoy both manipulation and the later consensual sex? If they do enjoy those, then I don't see any problem with it.
If you knew about the development and immorality in the process of getting consent, yes, you should question it.
This is an assertion that you haven't supported.
And no, you can't determine what they want when they are tricked into wanting something specific because of other actions.
They want it. That's a premise. You're saying they don't really want it. That's just delusional and leads me to question your grasp of basic logic.
Penalize the trickery, not the ethical behavior.
And if you are aware of those actions, it is unethical.
That's completely arbitrary. Just because I'm aware of how something developed doesn't make me responsible for it, nor does it make me guilty for their own decisions. I'm not aware of any moral system outside of Christianity that tries to transfer guilt like this and (think they can) get away with it.
Just as it would be unethical for a lawyer to have sex with every widows because he knows how to exploit their loss in the process of settling the decease's estate or affairs.
So, a widow has to abstain from sex after their husband dies because otherwise it might look like they are being exploited? You're fucking nuts!
You again confuse non-consensual manipul
Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc
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If your needs and wants infringe on my needs and wants, then it's not under the rule, obviously. Discussion, mutual understanding, and fair-dealing are not thrown out by the modified rule, but are additional fallback behaviors in case the rule is unable to inform due to a contradiction in desires.
Your excuse that the rule doesn't mean "if I were them" merely makes the golden rule worse. Now I'm whipped just because that person likes to be whipped by me? That just doesn't make any sense. There's truly no consideration for what I would want, in that case. None, whatsoever. At least in the "if I were them", then at least they are considering what I want!
Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc
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Well, in a completely ethical society, people who are ten would still have freedoms to consent to things regarding their own body, for without the social stigma associated with underage sexual relations, the psychological problems wouldn't exist. That being said, I find it hard to believe a ten year old girl would consent to having sex with any man, since most of them think of old men as gross. So I find it quite contrived. If some random ten year old girl asked for a sexual favor from me, that would be violating the rule itself, too, since I don't want them to do that to me. When an act involves two people like that, the act has to meet the rule for both of them to be ethical.
Your next contrived example doesn't make much sense, either. Should I question somebody's desires because I think how they were developed happened in immorality? I'm not so sure as you. That's who they are, and if they desire it, who am I to judge their desires? Would it be exploiting them? If I were trying to change her mind to change her consent based on those injustices, is that really doing what they would want? That seems more like manipulating what they want is what you don't like. Maybe they don't want manipulation -- that would violate the rule. Perhaps they enjoy both manipulation and the later consensual sex? If they do enjoy those, then I don't see any problem with it.
The next example, again contrived, implies a relationship between consensual sex again and holding a gun to her sister's head, which isn't actually consent, either. Doing an unconsensual act to get later consent isn't ethical under the proposed rule, either.
For your information, "she wanted it" IS a valid defense for rape, unless it's "statutory", which I think is a load of morality legislation, and not ethical in itself. Rape is by definition unwanted sexual contact. Some people would extend that to mean "unwanted by society". I wouldn't.
It seems you are on the wrong side of the questions you have posed.
Re:MOD PARENT UP -- golden rule vulnerability patc
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Your contrived example doesn't really make sense, at least to me. Do you mean to say it would be wrong if both of us had consensual sex, even if the reason for her consent are somehow "ethically" wrong? Seems like a judgment call on somebody's part, other than the two of us.
Maybe you can enlighten me with some better examples.:)
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Some people aren't learning.... They simply take whatever their political party happens to push and parrot it. Take intelligent design or global warming for instance.
Except in the case of global warming, where the scientific climatologist community has a consensus as strong as evolutionary theory is to the scientific biological community.Considering that the anti-global-warming campaign is a purely political and corporate-interest maneuver, looks like you're going to have to eat your own words.
That's too bad, because you almost had a point.
Photovoltaics are an inefficient source of power, have a short lifecycles, etc. Most places use solar-assisted water heating instead because per square foot it's more efficient at reducing the electrical load.
Wind power is available to Florida, as well, as they have lots of wind. If it gets too windy when storms come in, they can turn the blades.
And no, Florida has not done more to reduce their emissions, even to the fossil fuel portions that remain. The stats didn't show that. And no, you don't need to look at the same types of production.
Florida had a major power outage over its use of nuclear. Beaverton, OR had a substation explode and power was on sooner than a simple malfunction in the grid outside the nuclear plant. Oregon decommissioned the Trojan nuclear plant after it was shut down due to an equipment failure that forced it to shut down. The power company had ratepayers subsidize both the purchase and destruction of the plant (there's a line item on my power bill just for that). The company said it wasn't economical to reopen it.
And yet, some people still want nuclear. You don't factor in Florida's nuclear power, either. It's cleaner, right?
First, the updated median income figures were actually quite accurate according to HUD data. Interestingly the HUD data combines three different sources to figure out how to update their statistics. Some different census data:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ocs/liheap/guidance/information_memoranda/im07-02.html
confirms that even based off 2005 data using whatever refresher to update to 2008 they use there, Oregon and Florida aren't all that much different. Ohio looks to be doing better likely due to their own Democratic administration.
The main point is that all the numbers vary so much that your argument that they are meaningful to compare (particularly since Oregon has a large rural population that brings down the state total) doesn't make any sense. Go to Portland and the incomes go up drastically (HUD website shows that as well, but they don't have permalinks to their data).
Second, I know you are saying we should leave hydro power out. I'm saying we should leave it in. Why should we leave it out? It's a renewable energy, and if Florida doesn't have renewable energy, then why would one live there knowing they are polluting by running computers?
Third, you say, "they are polluting on average as bad as Florida per megawatthour produced but do so using power stations that don't emit pollution into the air. Tell me, how it this not worse?"
Uhh, What numbers are you reading? Are you reading the Ohio numbers for Oregon? I see 293 vs 1247. It looks like you just multiplied a per megawatthour number with a correction factor for the megawatthours total difference to get the rest of the totals to match with Florida. You shouldn't multiply a per megawatthour number to get it to align for comparison -- it's already a normalized number for comparison! WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING?
Now you're saying I don't know how to look at statistics as a rebuke for another point, but you clearly misread the energy statistics that were the basis for that complaint. Hah! Maybe your mommy should look over your numbers instead of my mommy.
Under the above scenario, the coal company made the same overall reduction in emissions and saved $4,000,000 in the process. They didn't save four million in the process. That carbon emission still has to be eliminated to be completely renewable, but it sounds like you don't care about making every use renewable in the long run. They just delayed their repairs so they could socialize the cost of innovation -- they might want to not innovate themselves and have somebody else to do it first to lower the cost. Whatever their reason, we shouldn't allow them to displace their guilt by raising the cost of cheaper renewables, which negatively affects the poor's ability to be credit-renewable themselves. You still haven't addressed any part of the other half of the carbon credit equation.
Why should that coal plant be able to pollute as it does without any incentive to improve beyond the cost of cheaper offsets? Any answer you give here will be just another right-wing excuse that the market is clearly enough of an incentive without integrating the externality of the type of carbon used up.
I see you didn't read my article on the subject.
Your repetition of lame right wing talking points, that's what. Say a coal plant would have to spend $5,000,000 to make a 20% reduction in emissions. But what if they could make an equal reduction in total emissions by buying $1,000,000 worth of Prius's? That's what carbon credits are for: reducing total emissions by allowing polluting companies to improve their infrastructure over time, and getting us moving on the path to a greener economy. Wanted to add the obvious: say they bought a million dollars in prii. Their coal plant still emits greenhouse gases and eventually will have to be retrofitted anyways. There's no net savings. In fact, if they were incentivized to actually hit the coal plant by modernizing their fucking emissions system through innovative techniques that they could sell to other coal plants, they're likely to make a shitload of money and actually make a real dent in the problem.
All those prii, though? They are "offsetting" that coal, so anybody driving one is contributing in _real_ carbon figures the amount of a non-hybrid. They have to "sell out" to provide a _disincentive_ to the coal plant. See why that won't fucking work, idiot?
If not, then don't reply because you're clearly a dumbshit.
Your repetition of lame right wing talking points, that's what. Say a coal plant would have to spend $5,000,000 to make a 20% reduction in emissions. But what if they could make an equal reduction in total emissions by buying $1,000,000 worth of Prius's? That's what carbon credits are for: reducing total emissions by allowing polluting companies to improve their infrastructure over time, and getting us moving on the path to a greener economy. Wow, you're a complete right-wing tool. The corporate "left" (Right-wing Democrats) love carbon credits because they don't actually hold anybody accountable and the rich can buy up the cheapest-to-offset offsets up while the poor are stuck forgoing all difficult-to-turn-renewable uses of carbon.
It's regulation the rich can get on board with.
Did you not understand the critique in the original post? I went into much more detail in my blog:
http://swoolley.org/blog.cgi/carbon%20offsetting%20is%20a%20ruse
In that post, I even talk about how to fix carbon credits to be more fair and thus something I could get behind that won't fuck over the poor, but until then, carbon credits are a corporate ruse, and you bough them, hook, line, and sinker.
Pat yourself on the back, brainwashed idiot.
Try the NAVTEQ Map Reporter website. (My company powers it.)
They too-loosly-sampled the addresses for address ranging. It would merely require adding an extra data point, and all the rest of the data around you will be fixed as well.
I wrote an address range interpolator for my company, which powered older versions of google maps and powers most internet sites not based on mapquest, microsoft, or google, most mobile maps, and most in-car nav systems not made by garmin or tomtom.
Hence, I know exactly how they code the address ranges for later display. Just tell them and they can fix it in a heartbeat.
Hope that helps.
I just looked up the 2008 median income tables published by the government:
http://www.usdoj.gov/ust/eo/bapcpa/20080201/bci_data/median_income_table.htm
Oregon beats both Ohio and Florida in median income for every category except Ohio barely eeks out a win in the family of four median income. (The new growth in Oregon is in single and couples without children or with one child and in Hispanics with two or more kids -- you can see that would drag down the family of four count.)
http://lungaction.org/reports/stateoftheair2007.html
Air quality indexes show Oregon beating the shit out of Ohio and beating Florida in ozone and a wash in particulates.
I'm not sure where you got your numbers ridiculing Oregon.
Plus, what's this about alternative fuels? Alternative generation mechanisms is important. Hydro is an alternative generation mechanism that requires no fuel.
Wind energy requires no fuel either. Ohio has 7 megawatts and Florida doesn't even make the list. Oregon has 885 megawatts of wind generation and it's not a very big wind state.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/oregon.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/florida.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/ohio.html
From looking at the electricity profiles, Oregon creams Florida and Ohio in every measure across the board.
So, in all those things you've criticized Oregon for, it turns out it's all a pack of delusions.
In 2002, Oregon, under Republican control of its legislature, was dead last in children going hungry. Since then, under Democratic leadership, it's now up to 30th instead of 50th due to a concerted effort to open up accessibility to food stamps. Corporations could have stepped in at any point and helped out, but it took the government to do that.
How are you going to respond to that?
Liberty means specifically freedom from certain oppressions and political influences. We are talking about politics and the use of the terms in the context of the use in the constitution. It means freedom from coercion of government. In modern times, they seem to express this as negetive liberty which is described as an individual is protected from tyranny and the arbitrary exercise of authority.
That is not what you want to do. And if you look at Jefferson's or about any other account of the day, you will find that as accurate. Are you basing your political ideal on a rebranded definition that you found in a dictionary or something?
Heh, I guess I should follow your definition of truthiness, not the dictionary.
Who fucking cares? I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. Even though I already explained the thought here, you seem to be focused on this one thing. Let me do it again, The poor had nothing to do with what I was saying. The scale between rich and poor is arbitrary anyways. You can have everyone making at least $100,000 a year in todays current economic environment and they would be poor by the definition. Poor seems to be some magical rallying cry to you that offers a way to demonize people you don't agree with. That is not helping anyone as you incorrectly think you are doing.
Besides, why all the focus on me not caring about the poor? You said you don't care enough about they yourself. You claimed to pull a 6 digit income but can't donate to charities, you can't donate more in taxes, you can't start a charity or do a good deed yourself.
I have a policy of donating only to political organizations so that people like you are forced to pay as well ;) Private donations simply aren't enough, and every dollar I donate to a political organization causes a 1000:1 effective tax change. I'm being about a thousand times more effective than you. Furthermore, I run candidates on third party tickets to force the other parties to concede votes where they normally are pro-corporate. We spent about a thousand dollars and ultimately got a vote against CAFTA, for example. That's real change for almost nothing.
No, you stated that you needed everyone else's money. You even mad the statement that you need the venture capitol funding that resulted in you getting the 6 figure income to help the poor because your too greedy to make a difference yourself. Those are your words that you offered for no apparent reason. You are the problem, not the solution.
I do need everybody else's money. My money is a one-time thing if I waste it on donating it to a non-profit org. that's apparently used for business networking by your friends. But political donations are the donation that keeps on giving.
It changes everything. It they are poor because your political oppresion is forcing their job to move to other countries to remain competitive, you would be th reason they are poor. If your not willing to do something yourself, but demand that we take everyone else's money to fix the problem, you are not only a hypocrite, but you are failing to take action that you damn well could to further your cause.
And the worse part about this is that you are to stupid to see that you are the problem not the answer. You can't even keep a context straight which is probably why you believe the way you do. I never said all beggars are scam
Yes, that's exactly right, although I still like reading Nietzsche for entertainment purposes, but he was writing before the rise of European fascism caused the analytic philosophers to jump ship to England and the US -- skipping France altogether. ;)
;).
The two women in my life, my wife (has a politics degree and introduced me to Rawls/Nozikc, etc.) and my sister (has a degree in philosophy (continental) and introduced me to continental philosophy) and I (computer science -- interested in the AI perspective like Dennett and the Santa Fe Institute and the analytic philosophic tradition from Wittgenstein, Frege, Carnap, Ayer, Popper, Reichenbach, Russell, etc.) have frequent discussions on politics. All generally left of center, but different nonetheless.
Speaking of that, ever since the Sokal affair, I haven't talked much with my sister
Hi, thank you for the feedback.
However, I'm only using the word "right" in the discussion because that's the language the libertarians are familiar with. They don't understand any other.
I'm quite familiar with philosophers that don't work in terms of "rights". Baby steps, baby steps.
I don't actually consider most people who call themselves philosophers as philosophers these days, however. To me, THEY are the tired windbags who can't keep distinctions separate and thoughts straight in their heads, specifically the postmodernists.
Dennett, Pinker, Dawkins, and others like them are the real public intellectuals of our era. If you want to complain about somebody who acts like Chomsky, maybe a Hitchens would have been a more accurate reference.
Though, some political philosophers were on the right track -- Rawls, for instance, so I don't count them all out.
If you don't have an understanding of ethology from a biological perspective, you're not going to be able to understand human nature at all.
1) liberty == freedom, but to you it doesn't. Strange
2) You don't care about the poor. You said so yourself.
3) How they are poor and whether or not specific individuals contribute doesn't change the validity of any of the arguments. Take those same people who are great con artist beggars, stop them from begging so that begging becomes pointless, and they'll likely get a legitimate job in sales to make extra money.
4) I was referring to San Francisco, where they have tourist pressure to give them money. In Portland, Oregon, where I am now, we rarely see homeless people -- the legitimately homeless get free housing and the vagrants get free bus tickets out of town. Every now and then I still see a hitch-hiking student begging on a corner, but they're never in rags. The policy's been a success. They just implemented it in the last couple years, and before then I worked with business groups that had problems with vagrants. The change has been pretty solid. My wife worked for the county psychiatric crisis center for a few years as a crisis assistant -- we know the mentally ill and homeless issues pretty well first-hand.
Here in Portland, people move here to have a "high tax, high benefits" system. We have excellent public transit (no fare downtown, includes aerial tram, system funded via an employer-paid tax) and the best library system in the country for a city its size (as well as the world's biggest book store). Free wifi at the airport. (I rarely see that when traveling!) We have both the smallest park and the largest forested city park in the country. Every other city is in a recession, and Portland is still experiencing housing stability. A house a block away is being flipped -- went to the open house today. They are asking 80k over what they paid and they expect it to close in a week.
Places like Bush-run Florida are crashing like crazy, but up here in Portland, we're sitting pretty. We also have the highest percentage of bike commuters of any city in the country (4% and rising) and the city has created special bike boulevards and bike boxes to protect bikers from cars. It's turning into what San Francisco was and is no longer. Oregon created bottle and can recycling. We created the urban growth boundary system and extensive land use regulations. Portland passed an income tax when the Republican rest of the state was trying to defund schools at the state capital. Fortunately, Democrats swept into office because of that and the rest of the state got funded schools only a short while later. Republicans created the recycling laws, cleaned up the Willamette River, instituted land use regulations (Governor Tom McCall). Now the Democrats and Greens are the ones fighting to keep those regulations in place -- and winning! The Republicans changed tacts and squandered their leadership here. Now they are a minority.
Choose not to live here, and I won't move to where you are. You don't see the poor, but the numbers show that the poor are more numerous per capita in red states than in blue states.
You're so inconsistent -- you laud how regressive your area is in telling people to just get a job, and then you say, but if the government got out of the way, corporations would step up and handle the problem. They don't:
http://www.everychildmatters.org/homelandinsecurity/table-01a.html
Plus, maybe you think the poor can just move? Really? Children can't just "move".
Rural and Red areas consistently show higher child poverty levels. Oregon still has some pockets of Red and thus child poverty, but it's gotten a lot better than the purely red states like Texas.
Where do you live that is such a cool "no poverty, nor taxes here" zone? Or are you not going to say where you live so I can show how wrong you are?
I was with you until I read a paragraph you wrote then reread your post after considering this. It is a fundemental difference in some things that I need to take issue with.
First, I personally don't have a problem with a progressive tax system until it becomes an entitlement and is used to remove the responsibility of a portion to pay taxes at all.
The entire point of progressive taxation is to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Your point here amounts to saying, "I don't mind transfering from the rich to the poor as long as the formula used has a certain arbitrary mathematical property of being straight linear without an offset coefficient below which the transfer will actually happen without having to use social programs as the circuitous route with which we do the wealth distribution. I would think somebody who doesn't like big government programs would rather just cut them a check they can use rather than force them to sign up for some titular entitlement program that you in fact don't like anyways.
It sounds like you're ok with transfering money to government as long as it never helps the poor, and instead only helps the people who are paying. Why not just come out and say that? It's probably because you've heard an attack on entitlement programs and don't really understand that the people who masterminded these attacks that you're just supposed to "go along with like a sheep" are doing it because they don't want to ever help the poor by force.
You haven't come out and said that you don't believe in indirect entitlement programs (e.g. welfare, universal health care, national minimum income), so I have to ask, do you?
But, you're ok taking money by force. You haven't explained, yet, why you're ok taking money by force unless it helps the poor if you say you don't want to help the poor. If you do want to help the poor, then you haven't explained why you've made the pretty arbitrary decision that direct transfer of money is not the way to help the poor.
I don't need to hear what you think, I need to hear why you think it!
In anticipation of your answering that you do want to help the poor, and just don't like to give them money directly, people are poor because they don't have money -- you can eliminate the poor that way. Yes, they'll still have the fundamental problems that made them poor or unable to make an income at that particular time, but once you've solved the poor problem, you can then go to work on the _ultimate_ causes of the poor. Be it drug addiction, mental illness, physical handicap, or merely old age, you can then work with them on their core issues in a safe environment -- not where they fear their very existence may be in jeopardy and they may die of starvation!
And I especially object to our way of giving earned income credits resulting in refunds in excess of the amounts of taxes paid in. It could go a lot further providing child care, educational opportunities or whatever else that could increase that person's income to a more livable state then giving them a paltry 1-2 grand a year because they have a few kids. This being said, it isn't the progressive tax, it is the abuse of it without a meaningful gain that I object to.
Here, you imply but don't actually state that you do want to help the poor, in some instances. But you haven't come out and sai
I sympathize with moving the income tax from the feds to the states because the feds should not be the place where most implementation should occur. The feds should give money right back to the states for implementation and local control. But there's no fundamental reason they can't be the main tax collector for all the states.
However, there's a practical reason why we should remove the income tax from the feds and move it to the states:
It's true that the feds, through Supreme Court decisions, have gained the presumptive power that they are allowed to go beyond the tenth amendment by using its tax collected money to influence states to do what it wants through earmarks and conditions on receiving federal funds. That's reason enough to oppose federal tax collection unless we are able to reverse that decision, which won't happen until and unless the Supreme Court loses its neoconservative elements.
If you had a rational reason like that, and could articulate it intelligently, maybe people would take you seriously, but the way you acted here just made the responder presume you're a small-minded, reactionary idiot that is forced to backpedal when somebody replies with perfectly valid critiques of their sweeping, general statements.
The ironic thing is that the critique the AC gave wasn't all that coherent and strong (as it was mostly a rant, but your rant met a rant, so that's not all that unexpected), and I think you could have defeated it, but instead, you backpedaled.
Oh, great, Russ Nelson, self-claimed "angry economist" replies to me with doublethink: "control creates uncontrol". That's a gem.
/really/ want "uncontrolled greed" running everything? Do you? Are you actually Gordon Gecko?
Listen, Russ, I'm a capitalist _and_ a socialist. I strongly believe in market economies. I also believe in a welfare state and decentralized planning in economies. Those are controls on a capitalist economy that are really what have enabled the poor in western countries to not be so poor as most centrally-managed economies. Stick your head in the sand all you want and try to disagree, but at least don't spout contradictory assertions like you did here. I'm a strong supporter of national single-payer health care implemented at the local level, managed by doctors, medical service delivered in private practice (I used to work for a 20-doctor medical group), as well as a national minimum income for the destitute and the culturally artistic who can contribute to our creative commons. That won't destroy our economy. That's just being nice. I make a six figure salary and want to make sure people who aren't as gifted as I am have the benefits of modern society as well, since everybody's taxes help support the road network that spatial software (which I write) operates on. Maybe you don't -- perhaps that also separates us. I also ride my bike to work when it makes sense (which turns out to be most of the time). If I got a minimum income, one thing's for sure, all my software would be open source (not just what I can afford to open up). All the private businesses that want to make more than the minimum income would be able to use all that infrastructure for free -- I think that would be a very cooperative arrangement.
At no point, though, would I take anybody's right to do business in a private capacity, or even to do pretty much whatever they wanted. Sometimes, though, we recognize that certain behaviors are not only unethical, but inherently bad enough that we should protect consumers.
You're probably going to ridicule income taxes as immoral at some point, as they fuel a national minimum income. But seriously, though, what's fundamentally wrong with progressive taxation? You had to give a little back to the society that enabled you to aggregate its wealth? You would overthrow the government for trying to redistribute wealth in rather light moderation? Listen Russ, the rich are rich enough everywhere the rich are. They don't need another jacuzzi, and it's not a "human rights" issue that we'll force you to share. It's an issue of human decency. If you really don't want to share, leave the U.S. and go to a Banana Republic or an island nation you can buy where human decency is not a concern.
But back to uncontrolled capitalism -- even you must acknowledge that there must be limits to capitalism -- no murders, for example. Should we buy and sell murdering? Taking your rights away when you murder somebody is totally cool in your book, yes? "free market" capitalism is just a meaningless word, Russ. What's "free" is what's at issue for most capitalists (you and me included). Or do you
And I know you're probably going to say that the distinction between murder and income taxation is that murder is infringing on the rights of the person murdered. That's a great distinction, but it's arbitrary, Russ. It also doesn't work. If the poor aren't allowed to participate in the economy and buy your shit, then who's left to benefit? Who's able to buy from you? If only ten people control all the wealth, they only end up trading with themselves, and the rest are left behind. The question, then is, who should be left behind? Fundamentally, a totally "free" market, even with the libertarian distinctions on freedom and constraint, implies that the poor should be left behind. I think that's a moral issue that conflicts with your arbitrary definition of "rights". The right to be sheltered and fed could very well be a "right" that when integrated
Nader is not running for the Green Party nomination. Cynthia is and is winning most of the other primaries, so it's likely that Cynthia will win by count in the end. California had a similar amount for Nader in '04 and he still lost. Most of the rest of the Greens outside of California aren't rich former-hippies, so they tend to not support Nader-types.
Which essentially means he wants to create a trading scheme on top of carbon, and the only way they can have value is that somebody would trade their right to call a generation mechanism carbon-free, so that carbon-consumption is something they are ok with -- they are ok selling it out.
So, you see, Gore isn't an environmentalist. He's a capitalist that wants to make money off of guilt -- guilt is the only way in which carbon credits have any meaning without real limits on carbon output (which don't exist). Moreover, carbon credits are fundamentally unfair. The rich get to buy their way out of carbon guilt!
Gore's a politician -- a salesman. He's sold the public, with his movie, carbon credits. After all of his speeches, he tells people they can all be carbon neutral if they just buy his promoted carbon credits!
I'm sorry, but the Greens were right to criticize him. He's just at the same old political lying.
The range of bills the Republicans and Democrats will vote on is a mere fraction of bills third parties would offer for a vote.
The Democrats and Republican work in the committees that get bills onto the floor. So we only see their minor differences.
It really only looks like they are widely disagreeing, but it's all a show. They all support uncontrolled capitalism, the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, and corporate control.
Do you not see the fallacy you're making? It's pure selection bias.
I brought this up only because a 10 year old's mind isn't developed in a way to give a true consent. They have little to no concept of sexuality or anything involved with it. Besides the fact that they haven't yet formed the independent thought processes as for the consent to be actual consent and not just following the directions of an adult which to this point, their existance has depended on. It would be unethical to take advantage of a ten year old's mental state to get consent for sex with or without societal stigmas attached to it or not. And more specifically, the social stigmas are because of this ethics situation specifically.
The stigma is because people assume that a ten year old doesn't want sex, so when somebody has sex with one, chances are there was something unethical. It's a heuristic.
Can you bring up any case where a ten year old has consented to sex like this?
You're talking around the fact that the stigma is just an error of reasoning for a shorthand for identifying unethical behavior. It doesn't mean it's accurate in _all_ cases and should thus be made illegal.
Only religious and illogical people attack a behavior through outlawing ancillary behaviors that they consider related behaviors.
If you knew about the development and immorality in the process of getting consent, yes, you should question it.
This is an assertion that you haven't supported.
And no, you can't determine what they want when they are tricked into wanting something specific because of other actions.
They want it. That's a premise. You're saying they don't really want it. That's just delusional and leads me to question your grasp of basic logic.
Penalize the trickery, not the ethical behavior.
And if you are aware of those actions, it is unethical.
That's completely arbitrary. Just because I'm aware of how something developed doesn't make me responsible for it, nor does it make me guilty for their own decisions. I'm not aware of any moral system outside of Christianity that tries to transfer guilt like this and (think they can) get away with it.
Just as it would be unethical for a lawyer to have sex with every widows because he knows how to exploit their loss in the process of settling the decease's estate or affairs.
So, a widow has to abstain from sex after their husband dies because otherwise it might look like they are being exploited? You're fucking nuts!
You again confuse non-consensual manipul
If your needs and wants infringe on my needs and wants, then it's not under the rule, obviously. Discussion, mutual understanding, and fair-dealing are not thrown out by the modified rule, but are additional fallback behaviors in case the rule is unable to inform due to a contradiction in desires.
Your excuse that the rule doesn't mean "if I were them" merely makes the golden rule worse. Now I'm whipped just because that person likes to be whipped by me? That just doesn't make any sense. There's truly no consideration for what I would want, in that case. None, whatsoever. At least in the "if I were them", then at least they are considering what I want!
Well, in a completely ethical society, people who are ten would still have freedoms to consent to things regarding their own body, for without the social stigma associated with underage sexual relations, the psychological problems wouldn't exist. That being said, I find it hard to believe a ten year old girl would consent to having sex with any man, since most of them think of old men as gross. So I find it quite contrived. If some random ten year old girl asked for a sexual favor from me, that would be violating the rule itself, too, since I don't want them to do that to me. When an act involves two people like that, the act has to meet the rule for both of them to be ethical.
Your next contrived example doesn't make much sense, either. Should I question somebody's desires because I think how they were developed happened in immorality? I'm not so sure as you. That's who they are, and if they desire it, who am I to judge their desires? Would it be exploiting them? If I were trying to change her mind to change her consent based on those injustices, is that really doing what they would want? That seems more like manipulating what they want is what you don't like. Maybe they don't want manipulation -- that would violate the rule. Perhaps they enjoy both manipulation and the later consensual sex? If they do enjoy those, then I don't see any problem with it.
The next example, again contrived, implies a relationship between consensual sex again and holding a gun to her sister's head, which isn't actually consent, either. Doing an unconsensual act to get later consent isn't ethical under the proposed rule, either.
For your information, "she wanted it" IS a valid defense for rape, unless it's "statutory", which I think is a load of morality legislation, and not ethical in itself. Rape is by definition unwanted sexual contact. Some people would extend that to mean "unwanted by society". I wouldn't.
It seems you are on the wrong side of the questions you have posed.
Your contrived example doesn't really make sense, at least to me. Do you mean to say it would be wrong if both of us had consensual sex, even if the reason for her consent are somehow "ethically" wrong? Seems like a judgment call on somebody's part, other than the two of us.
:)
Maybe you can enlighten me with some better examples.
Seth