Because, when I read that statement, it is not an example of pragmatism, but an excuse for moral cowardice. While it may be pragmatic to ignore the internal policies of genocidal dictator, is it right? Is is a desirable policy for the US to take?
Cowardice? What's cowardly about taking up your own arms and going over to Yugoslavia and stopping the genocide on your own, as Badnarik himself suggests here:
If you or I want to unseat or kill a thug like Saddam Hussein, we're morally free to do so. He's a tyrant and a murderer. We'd only be acting on behalf of his victims.
And if you don't think Americans haven't done this, consider the Lafayette Escadrille.
Badnarik's point (and mine) is that interventionism is bad policy for These United States. It's clearly not bad policy for individual Americans, or groups of Americans.
Interventionism in WWI brought us the devastation of the Versailles Treaty, which led directly to Adolph Hitler's rise to power. Interventionism led These United States directly into the quagmire of Viet Nam, and now Iraq.
Interventionism just isn't a good way to make international friends or influence people to not blow up our buildings with airliners.
Government schools are propogandizing tools, created very specifically to put out a product that is easily persuaded of the "fact" that Government solutions are the only possible solutions. You might consider yourself one of those "products" if you believe everything posted on a Government website.
People have the right to shoot themselves in the foot all they want, but not to try to convince others that shooting themselves in the foot is good fun.
Why don't people have the right to convince others of anything whatsoever? Isn't that what "free speech" is all about? Isn't that guaranteed in the Constitution? Where were you or your ilk granted the right to use the force and violence of Government to supress anybody's wish to convince someone that a particular behaviour is fun, even if it might get them killed? 50,000 people die every year in automobile accidents. That doesn't mean car companies shouldn't advertise the fun of driving.
Where did you get the idea he's eliminating the Fed? You obviously didn't read his answers:
My expectation is that if we eliminate the Fed's monopoly on currency provision, the Fed will continue exist -- it will just have to compete with other currency options on a truly level playing field without the government demanding that its currency be accepted instead of others.
Unlike you, I sat next to Michael Badnarik at a banquet in Boulder, CO, USA on September 9. 2004.
Liar is not a word that can applied to this man. There's not a lying bone in his body, nor a lying mind in his head.
He speaks the painful truth, and authoritarian leftists like yourself have a hard time with the truth, often dismissing it by calling it "lying."
If you had given some specifics, I'd be more likely to listen to you, but just saying:
You think he will protect the environment? No way! He will leave it to the free market to decide. That means cutting down all our trees and using all the resources available.
leaves you open to being called a liar and a populist yourself.
Clearly, you haven't heard of the Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, and other private organizations that actually work to preserve the Environment rather than "managing" it or polluting it to death, as government almost always does.
But you're right when you say
Free market might be efficient but will never be able to provide everyone with happiness.
Name me a way of distributing resources that does provide everyone with happiness and I will call you a liar with good reason. Utopia doesn't exist, but the Free Market is the closest thing to a fair and equitable distribution of resources that anybody knows about.
I have lived in countries where the median income is almost certainly an order of magnitude lower than your income, but my motivation has never come from looking down on poorer people, but instead, I've been motivated by looking up to those who have worked hard to provide what only a Free Market can provide: a longer, less painful and much more fulfilling life.
I'd invite you to consider the positive benefits of looking to countries like Hong Kong (whose per-capita GNP now exceeds that of their "mother" country, Great Britain), where the Free Market is just about as unbridled as it is possible to get.
But of course, if you prefer a highly-regulated, authoritarian leftist country, I recommend Ethiopia, Cuba, or perhaps North Korea, all wonderful examples of how various versions of anti-Free Market authoritarianism "work."
I'll say a hearty Amen to that. And note that the real problem is that most of the people engaged in "Education" are paid with coerced money (taxes), so they can always blame the "taxpayers" for not paying them enough.
The even bigger picture is that Abdula and Apu cannot do exactly what a local programmer can do because of cultural, language, and geographical distance (if Abdula and Apu still reside in their home countries).
Local programmers who are willing to market themselves properly regarding these differences will still do well.
Just like much of the mindless mechanical work that used to be done in factories in the U.S., much mindless mechanical programming is being exported so that Abdula and Apu can work for 1/3 the cost of a U.S. programmer, who would eventually not want to do that kind of mindless mechanical programming anyway.
Not even the "pros" know much about Bluetooth. I quote:
As of this writing there is no single standard for PANs, but Apple has developed a short-range networking technology, called Bluetooth, that is already in use, and the IEEE is creating a standard named P802.15--dubbed the wireless personal area network (WPAN).
--"Guide to Networking Essentials" by Greg Tomsho, Ed Tittel, and David Johnson
I'm not aware of Apple's having had much to do with the deveopment of Bluetooth. Apple has been an early adopter of the technology, but Ericcson seems to have been the "developer."
Really good question. You don't hear about CFC's "destroying" the ozone layer any more because the evidence that this happens isn't anywhere near to being conclusive See Ozone, Skin Cancer, and the SST for more information.
Granted, all this can happen with a PC,, but before you go slinging the shit about how its all easy and it "just works" and trying to get everyone in the world to join your little reality distortion club, check out google to find how even the most seasoned Mac fan folks are finding that using OS X requires the users to be more technical than the average Mac user of the past.
pre binding? permsissions? Kernel panics? etc?
Hmmm... I've been using MacOS X (10.2.4) myself ever since it came out and my computer (G4/450MP) has tons more junk on it than I'd ever consider putting on my parents machines, and I've rarely seen the spinning beach ball, have NEVER seen a kernel panic on 10.2 (saw some on 10.1), and don't have system freezes or other odd behavior. Yes, I do use beta software like X11 and use OpenOffice under it.
My parents have never reported any of the above symptoms.
My Mom has called with an AppleWorks question and my Dad asked about how to create a particular kind of file in Excel, but other than that, no hardware or OS problems whatsoever.
Of course if you dick around a lot with hardware or programming, YMMV.
Finally got both my Mom and Dad (he was the holdout) to switch to Macintosh. They both now have their own iMac G4 flatscreens. Makes things much easier to troubleshoot and handhold. No more worrying about whether the cheap modem stuck in the PC was crapping out or whether the heat in the garage was going to fry the processor.
Perhaps driving dumbed-down cars is why most European countries have such high unemployment rates. Perhaps people just don't feel like driving to that interview.
Or maybe it's because using that 70% tax for stupid government unemployment "insurance" incentivizes people not to work, thus dragging down the economy.
You may have this all wrong. I'm an American, and I don't believe Bush is doing Iraq for oil. He's doing it for revenge. His Daddy, George I, messed up in the first Iraq war, so George II has to finish off Saddam because George I didn't. Got very little to do with oil, lots to do with finishing a job that Daddy didn't finish because he raised taxes and lost the election.
AIX 1.3 on an Intel PS/2-386 was the first AIX I laid hands on. Worked better on a 486, but then IBM dropped the Intel port altogether until supposedly AIX 5.0 was going to run on Itanic, which it did for maybe, oh, 5 seconds.
Funny (true) story. Several years ago, Pope John Paul visited Denver for a big Youth Rally. The main downtown Denver Cathedral took its lightning rods down so it would look better for the Pope. They forgot to put them back up. My wife works in downtown Denver, and, a couple of years after the Pope's visit was working in a tall building that overlooks the Cathedral. She was taking a break looking out the window one day and was very surprised to see a lightning bolt hit one of the Cathedral's spires and break off a good chunk of it, which fell to the sidewalk below. Fortunately, nobody was walking by at the time, but they spent a good chunk of change repairing the spire and putting the lightning rods back on.
Slashdot Mirror
Badnarik's point (and mine) is that interventionism is bad policy for These United States. It's clearly not bad policy for individual Americans, or groups of Americans.
Interventionism in WWI brought us the devastation of the Versailles Treaty, which led directly to Adolph Hitler's rise to power. Interventionism led These United States directly into the quagmire of Viet Nam, and now Iraq.
Interventionism just isn't a good way to make international friends or influence people to not blow up our buildings with airliners.
Government schools are propogandizing tools, created very specifically to put out a product that is easily persuaded of the "fact" that Government solutions are the only possible solutions. You might consider yourself one of those "products" if you believe everything posted on a Government website.
Liar is not a word that can applied to this man. There's not a lying bone in his body, nor a lying mind in his head.
He speaks the painful truth, and authoritarian leftists like yourself have a hard time with the truth, often dismissing it by calling it "lying."
If you had given some specifics, I'd be more likely to listen to you, but just saying:
leaves you open to being called a liar and a populist yourself.Clearly, you haven't heard of the Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, and other private organizations that actually work to preserve the Environment rather than "managing" it or polluting it to death, as government almost always does.
But you're right when you say
Name me a way of distributing resources that does provide everyone with happiness and I will call you a liar with good reason. Utopia doesn't exist, but the Free Market is the closest thing to a fair and equitable distribution of resources that anybody knows about.I have lived in countries where the median income is almost certainly an order of magnitude lower than your income, but my motivation has never come from looking down on poorer people, but instead, I've been motivated by looking up to those who have worked hard to provide what only a Free Market can provide: a longer, less painful and much more fulfilling life.
I'd invite you to consider the positive benefits of looking to countries like Hong Kong (whose per-capita GNP now exceeds that of their "mother" country, Great Britain), where the Free Market is just about as unbridled as it is possible to get.
But of course, if you prefer a highly-regulated, authoritarian leftist country, I recommend Ethiopia, Cuba, or perhaps North Korea, all wonderful examples of how various versions of anti-Free Market authoritarianism "work."
For another look at this, check out John Taylor Gatto, New York State's Teacher of the Year for 1991 (and three time winner of New York City Teacher of the year.
Local programmers who are willing to market themselves properly regarding these differences will still do well.
Just like much of the mindless mechanical work that used to be done in factories in the U.S., much mindless mechanical programming is being exported so that Abdula and Apu can work for 1/3 the cost of a U.S. programmer, who would eventually not want to do that kind of mindless mechanical programming anyway.
I suspect they originally intended .NET to be some kind of all-encompassing hyper-technology that put its fingers into everything M$ does.
These days, .NET is just another competitor for J2EE and other web-enabling technologies.
You got it. See Yellow Dog Linux for Linux on the G5.
Bush and Gore!
Jobs didn't, at least for his board.
Well, guess who I think is a gullible moron who has been screwed out of his money.
Better framerates are on the way. Check this out for more info on higher quality HD video and movies.
Really good question. You don't hear about CFC's "destroying" the ozone layer any more because the evidence that this happens isn't anywhere near to being conclusive See Ozone, Skin Cancer, and the SST for more information.
My parents have never reported any of the above symptoms.
My Mom has called with an AppleWorks question and my Dad asked about how to create a particular kind of file in Excel, but other than that, no hardware or OS problems whatsoever.
Of course if you dick around a lot with hardware or programming, YMMV.
Finally got both my Mom and Dad (he was the holdout) to switch to Macintosh. They both now have their own iMac G4 flatscreens. Makes things much easier to troubleshoot and handhold. No more worrying about whether the cheap modem stuck in the PC was crapping out or whether the heat in the garage was going to fry the processor.
Or maybe it's because using that 70% tax for stupid government unemployment "insurance" incentivizes people not to work, thus dragging down the economy.
Or maybe both.
You may have this all wrong. I'm an American, and I don't believe Bush is doing Iraq for oil. He's doing it for revenge. His Daddy, George I, messed up in the first Iraq war, so George II has to finish off Saddam because George I didn't. Got very little to do with oil, lots to do with finishing a job that Daddy didn't finish because he raised taxes and lost the election.
The only appropriate place for an apostrophe is normally where something is abbreviated:
The above are correct. Other uses of apostrophes like: are all incorrect.Easy rule: if something's left out, use an apostrophe; if nothing's left out, don't.
AIX 1.3 on an Intel PS/2-386 was the first AIX I laid hands on. Worked better on a 486, but then IBM dropped the Intel port altogether until supposedly AIX 5.0 was going to run on Itanic, which it did for maybe, oh, 5 seconds.
Some people forget that ethanol (drinkable) ~= methanol (poison).
The people of Italy loved Mussolini. He made the trains run on time.
This is not frightening at all. It's what's happening. You need to know what's really going on in the public schools these days.
Yeah, but the FBI and CIA and HSA(KGB) probably never even think to read /.