The main argument of all government haters right now is I want the government out of my life because I get no benefits and pay huge amount of taxes.
First of all this, of course, ignores the fact that they use the roads, they live in safe conditions, etc etc etc that the government in its form has provided.
But, they always leave out the 2nd part which is they want government there when they are in need of something. I am not talking about the level of the individual so much as at the level of the organisation... the first thing a big org. wants when threatened is government help! (see RIAA, MPAA, the railroads in the early 1900s, etc.).
We live in the age of hypocrisy. It's so pervasive we don't even notice it any more.
I've already seen rants about the "free market" on other sites.
Here is something that people need to know: Adam Smith 1) didn't figure huge corporations into his thinking because he thought they could never be a force in the marketplace and 2) didn't believe that monopolies were a good thing so would probably not be hostile to breaking them up for the good of the market.
People that spout about the free market solving ALL problems are believers in faith-based economics...
Sorry, no.. it is only going to have "boy who cried wolf" effect if idiots like you keep talking about over-hype when there was clearly a potential for mass catastrophe.
To put it another way, STFU and be happy we have a way to tell that a storm is coming that has the potential to cause us massive harm.
With so many calls for constitutional amendments for irrelevant things I still can't understand why there is no movement for an amendment to end this abomination called corporate personhood.
You are missing the recent case in Rochester where a woman was arrested on her own front lawn for videotaping an arrest going on just off of her property. IIRC the D.A. decided to not bring the case to trial, but the police continued to harass the woman and a demonstration held against the arrest. There was also a news conference with one of those great police organisations going off about how the video recording makes them "less safe."
What bollocks... if the tables were turned you know the police would scream that there was no expectation of privacy on a public street... and the woman was standing on her very own lawn.
If they didn't want to distribute something that was in normal packaging of the product they should have negotiated a special run of the game, not broken every shrink wrap. It happens all the time (like certain games offering special unlocks when buying at certain outlets).
Steve Jobs lost me as a supporter when he started following the Microsoft playbook. Although he is much more important to the computer world than Bill Gates ever will be (Steve Jobs actually had some original ideas) he's still one of the most overhyped individuals over the past 30 years.
I wish him well as a person, but I can't say I support any of the directions he's taken technology since he's made to move to close everything off.
Thank you for your comment, however your comment assumes that school administrators and parents can act with basic common sense and logic. That assumption is not possible in the United States in 2011.
This needs to be brought up every time one of these jokers complains about welfare.
Does anyone know a study that compares how the poor and rich benefit from ALL government services. I am not talking about just welfare, but from roads, infrastructure, police protection, etc? Someone needs to do that study. My instinct says that the rich and corporations benefit a lot more in terms of dollars than anyone that is on the dole.
This is just another tax dodge by someone with too much money. We are heading towards a Phillip K. Dick type world filled with corporate anarchy and the pace is accelerating by the day.
Ahem.. new CN programs like Adventure Time and Regular Show are light years away from Sponge Bob. AT and RS work with little kids but watch them sometime and you'll see a whole lot of elements in there that are directed directly at 25-40 year olds... lots of references to old video games, inside jokes for the parents, etc. They are have more in common with the old Warner Brothers shorts meant for all ages than anything from the 1980s and clearly have jokes that the little ones won't get. There is a lot of great programming on Cartoon Network, but that is one of the exceptions on Cable right now. TNT and AMC are a couple of others and most of the other networks are no longer even trying.
Well... some of that may be true, but as anyone that has worked out there knows high paying job != intelligence. In most places it's actually a reverse correlation.
I don't buy the argument that teachers unions cause all the problems since this problem is so complex and there as so many factors, but one my earliest observations I had of the school system as a child was that everything was being run for the good of the administrators first and the teacher's second. For instance the school year kept starting earlier in buildings that were not built to be usable during summer heat. Kids were always in classrooms that would bake while teachers could go to a cooled lounge and administrators worked their entire day in cooled offices, and that's just a trivial example.
However do you want a system where only the rich can get good healthcare and schooling?
In a basic way I agree with your point, but in the U.S. every system is dominated by corporate power that keeps pushing outcomes to their own ends. Do you really want corporate schools because that is what would happen. The corporate-dominated sector of healthcare is just as bad as the government sector.
Slashdot Mirror
The main argument of all government haters right now is I want the government out of my life because I get no benefits and pay huge amount of taxes.
First of all this, of course, ignores the fact that they use the roads, they live in safe conditions, etc etc etc that the government in its form has provided.
But, they always leave out the 2nd part which is they want government there when they are in need of something. I am not talking about the level of the individual so much as at the level of the organisation... the first thing a big org. wants when threatened is government help! (see RIAA, MPAA, the railroads in the early 1900s, etc.).
We live in the age of hypocrisy. It's so pervasive we don't even notice it any more.
I've already seen rants about the "free market" on other sites.
Here is something that people need to know: Adam Smith 1) didn't figure huge corporations into his thinking because he thought they could never be a force in the marketplace and 2) didn't believe that monopolies were a good thing so would probably not be hostile to breaking them up for the good of the market.
People that spout about the free market solving ALL problems are believers in faith-based economics...
That isn't a argument New Yorkers can grasp because nothing that exists out side of the NY Burroughs matters or has any value in their minds...
The idiocy... it BURNS!
Sorry, no.. it is only going to have "boy who cried wolf" effect if idiots like you keep talking about over-hype when there was clearly a potential for mass catastrophe.
To put it another way, STFU and be happy we have a way to tell that a storm is coming that has the potential to cause us massive harm.
With so many calls for constitutional amendments for irrelevant things I still can't understand why there is no movement for an amendment to end this abomination called corporate personhood.
You are missing the recent case in Rochester where a woman was arrested on her own front lawn for videotaping an arrest going on just off of her property. IIRC the D.A. decided to not bring the case to trial, but the police continued to harass the woman and a demonstration held against the arrest. There was also a news conference with one of those great police organisations going off about how the video recording makes them "less safe."
What bollocks... if the tables were turned you know the police would scream that there was no expectation of privacy on a public street... and the woman was standing on her very own lawn.
If they didn't want to distribute something that was in normal packaging of the product they should have negotiated a special run of the game, not broken every shrink wrap. It happens all the time (like certain games offering special unlocks when buying at certain outlets).
do you think they bother to Shill slashdot when half the posts will always be about the lack of a linux client.
Does anyone else throw up in their mouth a little bit when they read a corporate euphemism for "store clerk" like "game advisor"?
Steve Jobs lost me as a supporter when he started following the Microsoft playbook. Although he is much more important to the computer world than Bill Gates ever will be (Steve Jobs actually had some original ideas) he's still one of the most overhyped individuals over the past 30 years.
I wish him well as a person, but I can't say I support any of the directions he's taken technology since he's made to move to close everything off.
Thank you for your comment, however your comment assumes that school administrators and parents can act with basic common sense and logic. That assumption is not possible in the United States in 2011.
Since it was in Texas, if he had a gun they would of given him a medal for defending himself.
LOL, wut.. do you even own a cable box? If you made this statement I would think not.
There isn't a device in the home with so much potential that has been held back so much by backwards companies.
This needs to be brought up every time one of these jokers complains about welfare.
Does anyone know a study that compares how the poor and rich benefit from ALL government services. I am not talking about just welfare, but from roads, infrastructure, police protection, etc? Someone needs to do that study. My instinct says that the rich and corporations benefit a lot more in terms of dollars than anyone that is on the dole.
These people are all anti-government until they are become the exploited themselves.
Don't you know cures are not good investments?
It's palliatives and maintenance meds where the money is... not something that somebody takes one.
The good of humanity is such just a meaningless concepts to these people.
This is just another tax dodge by someone with too much money. We are heading towards a Phillip K. Dick type world filled with corporate anarchy and the pace is accelerating by the day.
All regulators are being captured. Captured regulators don't do their job. Problem is I think that the politicians WANT the regulators to be captured.
Today all they would need to survive is to hire a really good lobbyist firm.
Ahem.. new CN programs like Adventure Time and Regular Show are light years away from Sponge Bob. AT and RS work with little kids but watch them sometime and you'll see a whole lot of elements in there that are directed directly at 25-40 year olds... lots of references to old video games, inside jokes for the parents, etc. They are have more in common with the old Warner Brothers shorts meant for all ages than anything from the 1980s and clearly have jokes that the little ones won't get. There is a lot of great programming on Cartoon Network, but that is one of the exceptions on Cable right now. TNT and AMC are a couple of others and most of the other networks are no longer even trying.
Well... some of that may be true, but as anyone that has worked out there knows high paying job != intelligence. In most places it's actually a reverse correlation.
I don't buy the argument that teachers unions cause all the problems since this problem is so complex and there as so many factors, but one my earliest observations I had of the school system as a child was that everything was being run for the good of the administrators first and the teacher's second. For instance the school year kept starting earlier in buildings that were not built to be usable during summer heat. Kids were always in classrooms that would bake while teachers could go to a cooled lounge and administrators worked their entire day in cooled offices, and that's just a trivial example.
However do you want a system where only the rich can get good healthcare and schooling?
In a basic way I agree with your point, but in the U.S. every system is dominated by corporate power that keeps pushing outcomes to their own ends. Do you really want corporate schools because that is what would happen. The corporate-dominated sector of healthcare is just as bad as the government sector.
4 teach them word and excel because every corporation uses it.