I was thinking of refuting some of your points and then I realized that a great deal of our arguments rests in our somewhat different definition of human rights. I'm currently on about 4 hours of sleep for several consecutive days so if what I say next doesn't make any sense, please forgive me.
I agree that a great deal of our arguments do rest on a different interpetation of rights. What you wrote made sense, although I do disagree on some points. I hope my quote & respond style is not overly annoying. And I have recently read some rather nasty rants, so I apologize in advance if that voice sneaks into my reply.
"Universal rights to which every person is entitled because they are justified by a moral standard that stands above the laws of any individual."
Seems like a reasonable definition. However, you then get to "A list compiled in 1991 of many universal human traits", leading eventually to "So if you want to build up a theory of morality axiomatically, it seems that the only human right is to not be forced to have sex with your mom." Basically, this is moral relativism + the intersection of all moral systems. A universal moral standard need not rely on what every society has developed.
Utilitarianism posits a universal set of standards (doing the greatest good for the greatest number.) So does the Categorical Imperitive (something is moral only if everyone doing it does not eliminate the opportunity you are taking advantage of. It is immoral to take all the pennies every time from the "take-a-penny" tray because the system breaks down if everyone does it.) Obviously, the Categorical Imperitive is more complex, but that is the basic idea as a concept if you ignore all the nitpicky problems with my formulation. Rawls suggests an offshoot of utiltarianism where a society's rules are set up to make the worst off as well off as possible.
The reason that I get into all this, is because I believe that morality can be argued in the abstract from any of these positions. Any variances in moral systems set up in real life can be explained by errors, or biases, or an intentional advantage to the formulators.
So the next level of requirements would have extremely broad, but not universal acceptance - things like prohibitions on unnecessary killing. So most (and I think we can agree in all relatively functional) civil societies, we can adopt this idea.
I would contend that murder is immoral because if everyone were to murder, society would break down. But we agree on this result so I shall continue.
However, like your drowning man example, if it is an effortless or nearly effortless action to save someone from death, but you let them die, aren't you in effect killing them?
I say yes. You then raise two objections. One is how much effort is required to actually save the person. The other is the range of the obligation. I would contend the latter is essentially asking how much effort is required to find out about the situation.
You then conclude "After all, how can you sleep at night? Literally. People die while you are sleeping." I disagree on this point. I believe that there is a moral obligation to save people in Africa. You also have a moral obligation to take care of yourself. There is also a problem in that you are treating morality as binary (you either are or are not moral). I believe that morality is an ideal that nobody can live up to (okay, 1/6 of the people on earth think 1 guy did 2000 years ago) completly, and instead the morality of a person is a float that describes how good someone is. Mother Teresa devoted her life to helping poor people. I certainly don't. She's more moral than I am. I wish I knew more about fyzzy logic.
Positive obligations to all people add many simultaneous steps each second and build up at an unmanageable rate. Not taking action to kill peop
Yes but that doesn't mean that it could not be used by, say an agency that wishes to monitor who is distributing political leaflets for example. Looking at the US from the outside, freedom of speech and the press are wonderful - it seems that your government is accessing more and more ways to check how you are using those freedoms
That's true.. I just was trying to explain the laser printer/inkjet divide, not justify whether the tracking is reasonable. There is a legitimate anti-forgery concern, but that seems solved by making the official versions more complicated/use holograms or foil/etc.
Next I suppose you'll be telling us 'niggardly' is racist...
Niggardly comes from a Scandavian language, and just happens to sound similar a racist term that refers to black people. Other then sounding similar, there is no connection. On the other hand, "ricer" is a derogitory term for Japanese, that then applied to a subset of the Japanese, that then applied to people who were similar to that subset regardless of race. Because the origin of the term is racist, it has racist connotations that niggardly does not.
AFAIK, it has to do with the DPI of the printer. I think only laser printers have those resolutions, however. The idea is to prevent someone from printing $100 bills/IDs/etc on their printer.
Most vocal Slashdot'ers, including myself, feel that in the balance between (effective counter-terrorism) and (personal freedom, open government), Bush and Congress err far too much in the (effective counter-terrorism) direction.
Wait, there's a choice of effective counter-terrorism? I thought the two choices were "make people 'feel safer' becuase they are spied on and there are obnoxious new rules while paying cronies hundreds of billions" and "personal freedom, open government". Effective counter-terrorism might be a useful choice. Who do I vote for that one?
2) Following orders isn't an excuse. The aides are in contempt of Congress if they refuse to testify, whether someone else told them not to testify or not.
Following orders can be an excuse. Personally, I would be fine with the aides saying "I have been ordered not to testify," getting off scotfree, and having the person who gave them the order take their place in the hotseat. Repeat as necessary until someone is responsible.
That's a one-sided report. What I heard on the radio yesterday is that the Republicans were upset that the democrats were wasting time on the vote to hold Bush Officials in contempt of Congress. The Republican senators claimed that they were in support of the investigation, but felt that President and adviser communications should have some degree of privilege. They wanted to move on to the business for the day (which happened to be the surveillance bill) and called for a walk-out when the Democrats were insistent on worrying about the (probably impotent anyway) contempt vote.
This doesn't makes sense. First, why do Republican senators influence the House? Second, why would the House move on two the next item on the agenda before deciding on the previous one. Which is to say, just because a bunch of Republicans don't want to vote for X, why would that mean that there shouldn't be a vote on X, and instead it get tabled.
To summarize: Republican (probably Representitives and not Senators) were pissed that the House was trying to hold Bush officials in contempt, but couldn't table or vote down the issue. So they walked out. Then they claimed that all the House should have been doing that day was sucking the President off.
. As a moderate liberal I find it frustrating that the vast majority of "liberals" don't see the hypocrisy in their condemnation and virulent tirades to shut down or muzzle Limbaugh.
I don't want to shut down or muzzle Limbaugh. His existance, repugnent as it may be, is useful to me. Anytime someone claims to be a fan/believe he has good ideas, it makes my decision to ignore that person henceforth. And I'm a busy man. I need things like that to help out.
Republicans want the House to simply pass the Senate bill, but House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday his chamber is "not a lap dog of the president or the United States Senate any more than they are of us."
Sure. Social Security's solution is to allow the spouse to collect money, and children under 18. I would be fine with the children under 18 rule, that is, the lifespan of the artist or until his biological children become 18.
I think way marriage is legally dealt with needs to be overhauled, so I would not be in favor of spousal priviledges (esp. if it allowed people to remarry, and those rights to go on to the third adult, etc.) My spousal solution would be to allow a marriage to file for a copyright, with a marriage being considered terminated for copyright purposes in the death of both parties or a divorce.
To my understanding, the points they give you are equal to what you spent, but not earmarked. That is, you get an equivalent value of content, but if you no longer like what you purchased you can get other media in exchange.
Which seems like a reasonable perk to extend to people who have to go through that rigormorale.
But once you upgrade the Air to have a solid-state drive, the price difference seems to disappear (or be in the Thinkpad's favor, since the final price seems to be flexible.) And if you start adding in the peripherials (and multiple USB ports to run them) you get a DVD drive, changable battery, cellular modem and GPS over the Air (the last two making a world of difference, as the thread on the Air pointed out ad nauseum.) If I'm going to drop $2500 - $3000 on a laptop, I lean more towards the Thinkpad than the Air.
By the way, did anyone else note (which necessitates reading the article) that when comparing the two computers the article says "And, like the Air, it offers a fast, rugged solid-state drive instead of a hard disk." In other words, its a good feature that both have. But when differentiating them, the article says "The biggest downsides to the new ThinkPad X300 are price and limited storage capacity. Unlike the Apple, which can be ordered with a higher-capacity, lower-priced hard disk, the new ThinkPad will only be available with the expensive, limited capacity solid-state drive." That's a big jerk around. The Air line spans an over a thousand dollar range. It's hardly fair to compare one product to the best of all worlds combination of Air models. (Wow, a solid state drive, a large hard drive and a low price. Hard to beat combo.)
. Since human rights tend to center around freedom, any "human right" that creates undue dependencies probably does not qualify as such (although it might be a good idea).
You are making this assumption that human rights involve only negative obligations. This additional claim has no grounding in your argument. We accept positive moral obligations for a variety of other reasons (jury duty, voting, paying taxes, responding to a draft, testifying if summoned, etc.) Even Locke admits these, and he is the epitome of the "my rights merely entail non-interference" school of thought. He goes on to assert that there may be other positive obligations, e.g. to toss a life preserver to a drowning man. Other philosophers, e.g. Rawls, have asserted that human rights entail not only a lack of interference with, but also some level of promotion, by society/government/others. For instance, because you have a right to pursue happiness through rational decision making skills, the government is obligated to provide (although your parents need not take them up on it) a minimum level of education to allow you to achieve this goal.
The other contention that you sneak into your argument is that resources are a right. While a case can certainly be made that ownership of resources is necessary to pursue human rights (such as happiness), on face property rights are given by governments, not created. Because, if property rights are innate, than the method of original acquisition would have to allow all comers equal access. Since it did not, both at the time and intertemporally, it is trivial to make the claim that our property rights system is merely an approximated convience. Which means that some readjustment can be made to the approximation without violating any human right.
...if you are a doctor or lawyer, you by definition have the skills and accreditation...and can then compete in the market. If you don't have those credentials, then you by definition are not a Dr. or lawyer...
Right. You have to have those credentials to sell those services. Merely having those skills (or demonstrably having those skills) is insufficent. There are additional barriers to those credentials. Which is why I explained that the prices are not fixed by the free market. Not that I have an issue with it. But I do have an issue with people who see nothing wrong with a union determining the number of people legally allowed to work in an industry while they have a problem with other unions.
Where do you get that doctors and lawyers have legal restrictions against competition????
Go try selling your legal/medical/accounting services. Unless you have the right crednetials (which are not simply based on demonstrating competency/skill) it is illegal.
Not sure what you mean about politicians...kind of a different category, they do compete for votes
They set their own salary. While there has never (to my knowledge) been massive abuse of this power, notice the Congress's sefl-anointed raise every year (for instance). As I will address in detail in response to your next point competition != free market forces.
..and executives....sure, they compete for jobs.
Sure they compete. However, they do not compete by lowering their demanded salary. To say that market forces and/or what specific CEOs are willing to work for drives CEO salaries is ridiculous. Lottery players (or raffle players, to ensure exactly one winner), all compete over a new car. That doesn't mean that one "deserves" the new car and others don;t.
In a free market, the employer could hire anyone he wanted....that is not a natural evolution, that is having artificial boundries placed on the market. If an employer wished to stop being a union shop, and was able to hire whomever he wanted....he should be able to.
They can.
The union worker displaced thusly, well, he could quit the union and go back to work and negotiate on his own. But, that doesn't happen.
Because it's better for that worker to stay a member of the union and work for someone else.
I do believe that there are laws out there that force unions in some areas, or at least help to entrench them and skew the 'free market' for jobs/salaries.
There are laws out there that limit unions power. However, no laws help unions or entrench them (with the exceptions of those I listed in my response to your "skilled labor" question).
Well, in general, a high skill job, is one that requires skills that most people do not have, and therefore is rare and in demand more, and commands a higher rate of pay.
Except for doctors, lawyers, politicans and executives which have legal resrictions against competition (or in the case of executives, other non-free market forces), that indicate that their skills and the value of their work are not the primary determinant. What's a counterexample?
I'd argue that they are NOT determined by a free market. Without unions, someone that was willing to take a bit less could get the job. Union areas...well, I've heard that in some places and some jobs...you can NOT even be considered for a job, unless you are a union member. That is hardly 'free market'.
But that's a natural evolution of the free market. Not only must you pay $X for all of us to work for you, but you cannot hire anyone who is not part of our group AND SIMULTANIOUSLY people from our group. It's not a law, it's a negotiated result.
Especially with music, certain forms of art are being created at such a prodigious rate that it's impossible to keep your signal-to-noise ratio up. There aren't any more Jimi Hendrix's, instead we've got two dozen 50 Cent's.
How many thousands of bad folk singers were there when Bob Dylan was around? We may have dozens of 50 Centses, but only one needs to be great (if there is such a thing as great rap.) And greatness will emerge if given the time. Certainly, it would be best if only great art was produced, but given no art or overprodigious art, I choose overprodigioys. And that assumes that the bad artists don't inspire the good.
Why does someone in a low skill job deserve $30+ hour, full benefits, and a pension plan?
Why does someone in a high-skill job? They are both people, after all... Before you say "well, the market set the prices at..." let me remind you that most "high-skilled jobs" do not have market forces set their compensation. In fact, the union benefits are determined by a free-market, whereas the medical, legal and political fields are not. Executive compensation has other aspects that imply the executive's labor is not the sole reason for the high salary.
Why should "full benefits" (assuming that, since you remove pensions, all that is left is health/dental benefits) be dependendent on having a job at all? Seems like a human right.
There aren't any clauses in there that could be interpreted as "unless it legalizes an act", so ANY law that changes the legal ramifications of an act that occurred before that law was passed is unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court ruled back in 1798 that Article 1, Section 9 only applies to criminal laws, not civil cases (see also, Shivo, Teri).
Why are retroactive laws even possible in the US system? I'm really wondering about that. Where I come from, the laws at the time of your action count, both for and against you.
What's next? Retro-actively making something illegal and then putting you in jail for it?
Retroactive laws are allowed when the allow something that used to be disallowed. However, they are expressly forbidden when they disallow something that used to be allowed. For instance, if they legalized cocaine use, they could choose to make past use of cocaine no longer a crime (releasing those people from prison) or not. But they could not outlaw alcohol and throw everyone who used to drink in jail. In fact, I believe if they made alcohol illegal, you could have whatever alcohol you already owned grandfathered into legality.
You present a strong argument for a core tenet of Republican beliefs, namely, a smaller Federal government. That is actually one belief I share with Republicans. This is the best way to provide a "market" of governance. States that do poorly will see their populations fleeing to states that govern the best.
This argument is the best reason for federalism. To prevent corporations and other large actors from bidding state against state (and town against town) to eke out ridiculous incentive packages.
. The libertarian ideal of "free-market capitalism" only works when our freedom is counterbalanced by we having absolute responsibility for our actions.
If not the federal government, who sets and collects the fees to offset pollution? In other words, where does your responsibiliy for air or water pollution actually gets recognized. Where does your pollution of the EM spectrum that you broadcast on get reflected?
Either providing power/networking/etc. is extremely profitable, meaning it costs little and can be sold for a lot, or it also costs a lot, and thus the profits aren't that huge in comparison. Now, in either case, it's still a matter of investing 'x' and recovering 'x' over some time, then profit afterwards. Why, exactly, wouldn't competitors be interested?
The answer is fixed costs vs. marginal costs. It costs a lot to build all the power lines, compared to the cost of pumping electricity though them. Hence, the monopoly can charge huge rates. If someone seeks to compete, they start in one area. Suddenly, that area's rates go down, so the competitor loses money after factoring in the cost of the lines. As soon as the competitor goes out of business because it cannot pay the interest on the loans to build the lines(unlike the monopoly which already owns the lines so it only has to pay upkeep costs, and is big enough that the money comes from elsewhere), the monopoly raises the rates again.
In other words, the options we have in a free market of energy are either correct offer vs. demand prices due to creative competition, or a kind of forced nature preservation. I don't know about you, but whatever the outcome of such a move was, to me it still would seem like a win-win situation.
Alternatively, rather than one company getting all that cash, the government could unilaterally raise the rates to that level and use the cash to pay down the debt. Or lower taxes. But, honestly, no one thinks excessive profit taking is good for the economy, conservation or any other cause.
I certainly must have missed something. They are only doing a DNS level "block" of Pirate Bay? No shutting down of specific IP addresses that go to servers or at least some attempt at firewall (ie, Great Wall of China variant) filtering ?!?!?
You are missing something. The ISP was ordered to block Pirate Bay, and is sueing so that they no longer will have to do so. Therefore, I have no doubt the effort to block it was knowingly prefunctory.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that a great deal of our arguments do rest on a different interpetation of rights. What you wrote made sense, although I do disagree on some points. I hope my quote & respond style is not overly annoying. And I have recently read some rather nasty rants, so I apologize in advance if that voice sneaks into my reply.
Seems like a reasonable definition. However, you then get to "A list compiled in 1991 of many universal human traits", leading eventually to "So if you want to build up a theory of morality axiomatically, it seems that the only human right is to not be forced to have sex with your mom." Basically, this is moral relativism + the intersection of all moral systems. A universal moral standard need not rely on what every society has developed.
Utilitarianism posits a universal set of standards (doing the greatest good for the greatest number.) So does the Categorical Imperitive (something is moral only if everyone doing it does not eliminate the opportunity you are taking advantage of. It is immoral to take all the pennies every time from the "take-a-penny" tray because the system breaks down if everyone does it.) Obviously, the Categorical Imperitive is more complex, but that is the basic idea as a concept if you ignore all the nitpicky problems with my formulation. Rawls suggests an offshoot of utiltarianism where a society's rules are set up to make the worst off as well off as possible.
The reason that I get into all this, is because I believe that morality can be argued in the abstract from any of these positions. Any variances in moral systems set up in real life can be explained by errors, or biases, or an intentional advantage to the formulators.
I would contend that murder is immoral because if everyone were to murder, society would break down. But we agree on this result so I shall continue.
I say yes. You then raise two objections. One is how much effort is required to actually save the person. The other is the range of the obligation. I would contend the latter is essentially asking how much effort is required to find out about the situation.
You then conclude "After all, how can you sleep at night? Literally. People die while you are sleeping." I disagree on this point. I believe that there is a moral obligation to save people in Africa. You also have a moral obligation to take care of yourself. There is also a problem in that you are treating morality as binary (you either are or are not moral). I believe that morality is an ideal that nobody can live up to (okay, 1/6 of the people on earth think 1 guy did 2000 years ago) completly, and instead the morality of a person is a float that describes how good someone is. Mother Teresa devoted her life to helping poor people. I certainly don't. She's more moral than I am. I wish I knew more about fyzzy logic.
That's true.. I just was trying to explain the laser printer/inkjet divide, not justify whether the tracking is reasonable. There is a legitimate anti-forgery concern, but that seems solved by making the official versions more complicated/use holograms or foil/etc.
Niggardly comes from a Scandavian language, and just happens to sound similar a racist term that refers to black people. Other then sounding similar, there is no connection. On the other hand, "ricer" is a derogitory term for Japanese, that then applied to a subset of the Japanese, that then applied to people who were similar to that subset regardless of race. Because the origin of the term is racist, it has racist connotations that niggardly does not.
AFAIK, it has to do with the DPI of the printer. I think only laser printers have those resolutions, however. The idea is to prevent someone from printing $100 bills/IDs/etc on their printer.
Wait, there's a choice of effective counter-terrorism? I thought the two choices were "make people 'feel safer' becuase they are spied on and there are obnoxious new rules while paying cronies hundreds of billions" and "personal freedom, open government". Effective counter-terrorism might be a useful choice. Who do I vote for that one?
Following orders can be an excuse. Personally, I would be fine with the aides saying "I have been ordered not to testify," getting off scotfree, and having the person who gave them the order take their place in the hotseat. Repeat as necessary until someone is responsible.
This doesn't makes sense. First, why do Republican senators influence the House? Second, why would the House move on two the next item on the agenda before deciding on the previous one. Which is to say, just because a bunch of Republicans don't want to vote for X, why would that mean that there shouldn't be a vote on X, and instead it get tabled.
To summarize: Republican (probably Representitives and not Senators) were pissed that the House was trying to hold Bush officials in contempt, but couldn't table or vote down the issue. So they walked out. Then they claimed that all the House should have been doing that day was sucking the President off.
I don't want to shut down or muzzle Limbaugh. His existance, repugnent as it may be, is useful to me. Anytime someone claims to be a fan/believe he has good ideas, it makes my decision to ignore that person henceforth. And I'm a busy man. I need things like that to help out.
FTFA:
Sure. Social Security's solution is to allow the spouse to collect money, and children under 18. I would be fine with the children under 18 rule, that is, the lifespan of the artist or until his biological children become 18. I think way marriage is legally dealt with needs to be overhauled, so I would not be in favor of spousal priviledges (esp. if it allowed people to remarry, and those rights to go on to the third adult, etc.) My spousal solution would be to allow a marriage to file for a copyright, with a marriage being considered terminated for copyright purposes in the death of both parties or a divorce.
To my understanding, the points they give you are equal to what you spent, but not earmarked. That is, you get an equivalent value of content, but if you no longer like what you purchased you can get other media in exchange.
Which seems like a reasonable perk to extend to people who have to go through that rigormorale.
But once you upgrade the Air to have a solid-state drive, the price difference seems to disappear (or be in the Thinkpad's favor, since the final price seems to be flexible.) And if you start adding in the peripherials (and multiple USB ports to run them) you get a DVD drive, changable battery, cellular modem and GPS over the Air (the last two making a world of difference, as the thread on the Air pointed out ad nauseum.) If I'm going to drop $2500 - $3000 on a laptop, I lean more towards the Thinkpad than the Air.
By the way, did anyone else note (which necessitates reading the article) that when comparing the two computers the article says "And, like the Air, it offers a fast, rugged solid-state drive instead of a hard disk." In other words, its a good feature that both have. But when differentiating them, the article says "The biggest downsides to the new ThinkPad X300 are price and limited storage capacity. Unlike the Apple, which can be ordered with a higher-capacity, lower-priced hard disk, the new ThinkPad will only be available with the expensive, limited capacity solid-state drive." That's a big jerk around. The Air line spans an over a thousand dollar range. It's hardly fair to compare one product to the best of all worlds combination of Air models. (Wow, a solid state drive, a large hard drive and a low price. Hard to beat combo.)
You are making this assumption that human rights involve only negative obligations. This additional claim has no grounding in your argument. We accept positive moral obligations for a variety of other reasons (jury duty, voting, paying taxes, responding to a draft, testifying if summoned, etc.) Even Locke admits these, and he is the epitome of the "my rights merely entail non-interference" school of thought. He goes on to assert that there may be other positive obligations, e.g. to toss a life preserver to a drowning man. Other philosophers, e.g. Rawls, have asserted that human rights entail not only a lack of interference with, but also some level of promotion, by society/government/others. For instance, because you have a right to pursue happiness through rational decision making skills, the government is obligated to provide (although your parents need not take them up on it) a minimum level of education to allow you to achieve this goal.
The other contention that you sneak into your argument is that resources are a right. While a case can certainly be made that ownership of resources is necessary to pursue human rights (such as happiness), on face property rights are given by governments, not created. Because, if property rights are innate, than the method of original acquisition would have to allow all comers equal access. Since it did not, both at the time and intertemporally, it is trivial to make the claim that our property rights system is merely an approximated convience. Which means that some readjustment can be made to the approximation without violating any human right.
Right. You have to have those credentials to sell those services. Merely having those skills (or demonstrably having those skills) is insufficent. There are additional barriers to those credentials. Which is why I explained that the prices are not fixed by the free market. Not that I have an issue with it. But I do have an issue with people who see nothing wrong with a union determining the number of people legally allowed to work in an industry while they have a problem with other unions.
Go try selling your legal/medical/accounting services. Unless you have the right crednetials (which are not simply based on demonstrating competency/skill) it is illegal.
They set their own salary. While there has never (to my knowledge) been massive abuse of this power, notice the Congress's sefl-anointed raise every year (for instance). As I will address in detail in response to your next point competition != free market forces.
Sure they compete. However, they do not compete by lowering their demanded salary. To say that market forces and/or what specific CEOs are willing to work for drives CEO salaries is ridiculous. Lottery players (or raffle players, to ensure exactly one winner), all compete over a new car. That doesn't mean that one "deserves" the new car and others don;t.
They can.
Because it's better for that worker to stay a member of the union and work for someone else.
There are laws out there that limit unions power. However, no laws help unions or entrench them (with the exceptions of those I listed in my response to your "skilled labor" question).
Except for doctors, lawyers, politicans and executives which have legal resrictions against competition (or in the case of executives, other non-free market forces), that indicate that their skills and the value of their work are not the primary determinant. What's a counterexample?
But that's a natural evolution of the free market. Not only must you pay $X for all of us to work for you, but you cannot hire anyone who is not part of our group AND SIMULTANIOUSLY people from our group. It's not a law, it's a negotiated result.
How many thousands of bad folk singers were there when Bob Dylan was around? We may have dozens of 50 Centses, but only one needs to be great (if there is such a thing as great rap.) And greatness will emerge if given the time. Certainly, it would be best if only great art was produced, but given no art or overprodigious art, I choose overprodigioys. And that assumes that the bad artists don't inspire the good.
Why does someone in a high-skill job? They are both people, after all... Before you say "well, the market set the prices at..." let me remind you that most "high-skilled jobs" do not have market forces set their compensation. In fact, the union benefits are determined by a free-market, whereas the medical, legal and political fields are not. Executive compensation has other aspects that imply the executive's labor is not the sole reason for the high salary.
Why should "full benefits" (assuming that, since you remove pensions, all that is left is health/dental benefits) be dependendent on having a job at all? Seems like a human right.
The Supreme Court ruled back in 1798 that Article 1, Section 9 only applies to criminal laws, not civil cases (see also, Shivo, Teri).
Retroactive laws are allowed when the allow something that used to be disallowed. However, they are expressly forbidden when they disallow something that used to be allowed. For instance, if they legalized cocaine use, they could choose to make past use of cocaine no longer a crime (releasing those people from prison) or not. But they could not outlaw alcohol and throw everyone who used to drink in jail. In fact, I believe if they made alcohol illegal, you could have whatever alcohol you already owned grandfathered into legality.
This argument is the best reason for federalism. To prevent corporations and other large actors from bidding state against state (and town against town) to eke out ridiculous incentive packages.
If not the federal government, who sets and collects the fees to offset pollution? In other words, where does your responsibiliy for air or water pollution actually gets recognized. Where does your pollution of the EM spectrum that you broadcast on get reflected?
The answer is fixed costs vs. marginal costs. It costs a lot to build all the power lines, compared to the cost of pumping electricity though them. Hence, the monopoly can charge huge rates. If someone seeks to compete, they start in one area. Suddenly, that area's rates go down, so the competitor loses money after factoring in the cost of the lines. As soon as the competitor goes out of business because it cannot pay the interest on the loans to build the lines(unlike the monopoly which already owns the lines so it only has to pay upkeep costs, and is big enough that the money comes from elsewhere), the monopoly raises the rates again.
Alternatively, rather than one company getting all that cash, the government could unilaterally raise the rates to that level and use the cash to pay down the debt. Or lower taxes. But, honestly, no one thinks excessive profit taking is good for the economy, conservation or any other cause.
You are missing something. The ISP was ordered to block Pirate Bay, and is sueing so that they no longer will have to do so. Therefore, I have no doubt the effort to block it was knowingly prefunctory.
The threats discussed are: