Just reframing the question makes a world of difference.
In fact, my definition of a 'free society' is simply one where the DEFAULT position is freedom.
Forget a second about details about what regulation is best... and just phrase all your questions in respect is 'freedom' the default position.
If freedom is the default position, then it is up to the government to prove that the freedom granted to individuals is too great for the society that the government must use violence or threat thereof to stop the activity.
So for example for gun control... the default position is that people are allowed to owned guns. Then the government must prove that certain kinds of weapons are too deadly or certain kinds of people are too unstable to possess them.
But generally this is not how questions are asked. Consider education. The default position is that every child should go to government school. It is up to charter schools or independent schools to prove they are significantly better to get the same treatment. This is an example of an unfree aspect of society.
Rather the question should be if independent schools are so harmful that the government not fund students who wish to attend them to the same level as public school.
Or is Marijuana so harmful to society that the government should send people to jail for smoking a plant.
What it really boils down to is having enough cash flow to freely innovate.
So yes, it means Joe the Plumber being able to afford cheap housing and life to be cheap enough for him to take a few years off 'regular' work to pursue his dream. Let's not discount this. People like Thomas Edison basically pursued this model. He worked pretty regular clerk like jobs to then work on his inventions in his off time.
At the corporate level, it means having stable cash-flow. Microsoft Research for example is able to do all kinds of wonky things basically because Microsoft has a big STABLE cash cow to fund regular operations.
Google is able to throw money at all kinds of wonkey things like self-driving cars because it has very STABLE cash-flow with the ad business.
If you see a big company doing innovative things, look to find the stable cash-cow to fund it.
Back in the days, ATT used to do a lot of good research. Wait for it... the big STABLE cash-flow was a monopoly on the telecom sector. Government splits up ATT and kills the monopoly... and well Bell labs/ATT basically died and hasn't done anything.
I'm much more in favor of so called monopolies as long as they are well regulated then most of my engineering people. This is not to say I support the model... just that, I don't see it as being that bad.
Or at least, it is much better than the current model where venture capitalists funneled by cheap debt start random companies, hope it gains enough attention, then goes IPO, and no one sees any long term vision to being a researcher or engineer.
IMHO global warming is happening and there's not much we can do in our life time to stop it. So we should just live with it and counter the bad effects as best as possible and enjoy the good effects as much as possible.
We can deal with slowing out pollution at a reasonable pace in time... as we are already doing.
I'm in Canada, and well... anecdotally, winters are warmer and I rather enjoy it actually.
Supposedly, the Arctic shipping lanes will open making transport easier.
Supposedly, we can grow more food up North which will help them as well.
No, I'm not discounting the rising sea levels, dislocation of people near flood areas... but installing a windfarm is probably not going to stop that in your life time. Might as well build levies, move to a safer region... deal with the bad effects.
Luckily, my region (Toronto) doesn't have much of a downside with respect to global warming. It's mainly positive. We're at no risk of flooding and a warmer winter is only a plus.
Short answer: You shouldn't Long answer: You really shouldn't listen to them when it comes to areas outside their limited domain expertise. Some climatologist (to pick a current example) might tell you something about pollution or climate change, but you shouldn't listen to him on his policy advice. He is not an expert in economics, social studies, government, bureaucracy, history...
The reality: The public perception of *truth* remains as elusive as ever despite our ever increasing access to information. Ultimately, all knowledge relies upon trust of the person/institution delivering it. As institutions are made of people, it ultimately rests with people.
We must balance all the rights granted to us in the constitution.
How does the public danger or war affect these clauses? What exactly is due process? Maybe in a time of 'insecurity' the internal bureaucracy provides enough due process to authorize a kill. What exactly is deprivation of life?
I ask these questions only with slight rhetoric... as if we use the same text and ask it about other terms, they are definitely valid.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"
What people are we talking about here? All people, registered people, sane people, people authorized by the government?
What arms? All arms, small guns, military guns, tanks, nukes?
Is it dependent on those with arms being part of a militia?...
also, there is relative consensus on which hadiths are chosen depending on the Islamic sect.
For example, the largest group of Muslims are Sunni Muslims. You can think like they had their own Canon and use hadith collections from Bhukari or Muslim...
In a sense, each major Islamic sect has their own canonized version of the hadiths.
It's not unlike say Christianity, where a few Christian churches differ in their 'canon'. Like the Ethiopian church's canon has slightly different books that say Roman Catholic Christianity...
There isn't much scriptual evidence that the Koran should be taken as so perfect and unable to have been corrupted.
As a matter of fact, there are hadiths that say how hard and error prone it was to assemble the written koran and how some people complain that some versus are missing... the versus on stoning people for example are missing from the koran, but many people claim they were in the original. This is mentioned in the Hadith.
My own view is that this notion of the perfection and eternal protection of the koran comes more from the attempt to differentiate it from christianity as Islam makes a big deal about the Chrsitian bible being corrupted and changed... so what better way to make Islam better than to claim it's text cannot be corrupted.
But I don't see much in the Koran or the Hadith for that matter that would emphasize god protecting the koran from change to any great degree... again... vague versus on it... yes.
My other working theory is that Islam was formed as an offshoot of Chrisitianity by those who believed in the the Christian books rejected by the Canon. Hence the emphasis on the corruption of christianity.
There are many core concepts in Islam that are found in the rejected biblical books. Things like the Devil not bowing down to adam... is found in the rejected book of Enoch and in Islam.
Well in general, the Koran is considered perfect and God has protected from any changes.
But the Koran itself contains many versus that on first glance appear contradictory. Yet, I don't consider them as such. For example, there are versus in the koran that say to not come to the mosque drunk... and there are other versus that say alcohol should be avoided.
Islam has Abrogation, which is basically a newer verse can overrule an older verse. So you really need to know when a verse was revealed to know it's actual meaning.
And of course the koran is very vague and contextual... it is written as the prophet lives his live in mecca and medina and as he goes through battles and life. The versus revealed are generally contextual... and so rarely is something clear cut enough that I would call it cherry picking.
There are a few versus that are more rigid... like inheritance for some reason... but for almost any issue we'd consider important, the koranic versus are vague enough.
And the idea that the Koran can be understood without the hadith is a futile attempt. There are attempts by some muslims who try to use the Koran alone... and while they tend to be on the more liberal side, I think it's quite silly. You'd be hard pressed to understand almost any of the Islamic practices (anything that makes up Islam) without referring to the hadith.
5 daily prayers... not in the koran... only hadith. What is actually meant by veiling... not in the koran... only in the hadith...
My favorite example is this:
This is a koran verse [33.53] O you who believe! do not enter the houses of the Prophet unless permission is given to you for a meal, not waiting for its cooking being finished-- but when you are invited, enter, and when you have taken the food, then disperse-- not seeking to listen to talk;... "
What is the point of verse. Where does it come from? Like most versus in the Koran, there is an accompanying hadith that shows where it came from.
In this case: People were annoying Mohamed when they came to visit him... so amazingly... he had a koranic revelation telling them how to behave when visiting his home.
Narrated Anas bin Malik: When Allah's Apostle married Zainab bint Jahsh, he invited the people to a meal. They took the meal and remained sitting and talking. Then the Prophet (showed them) as if he is ready to get up, yet they did not get up. When he noticed that (there was no response to his movement), he got up, and the others too, got up except three persons who kept on sitting. The Prophet came back in order to enter his house, but he went away again. Then they left, whereupon I set out and went to the Prophet to tell him that they had departed, so he came and entered his house. I wanted to enter along with him, but he put a screen between me and him. Then Allah revealed: 'O you who believe! Do not enter the houses of the Prophet...' (33.53)
And you cannot just ignore the hadith and think the koran will itself be on rosy and clean. I kept this example pretty clean, just to avoid any controversy.
If you're Sunni Muslim and believe in Sahih Bukhari or Sahih Muslim... that is where the core of your practice derives from.
Take a read through it some time.
That's the source of your religion. It's not a pretty text filled with everything I say. But obviously you haven't read any of the texts you supposedly believe in.
Just where do you get the idea you need to pray 5 times a day from? The koran?... not there. It's in the Hadith... and I won't bother quoting hadith to you because it's easy to read and find online.
As an secular/cultural Muslim, this is one of the biggest points.
This is such an important point. It is hard to describe to people what Islam is. It is not just belief in God or attending church once in a week.
I grew up overseas, went to Islam school, not an extreme one by any stretch of the imagination, so I do consider myself quite learned.
Islam is composed of the Koran which is relatively vague and you can read it to mean a lot of things and you can apply a lot of context to things.
But the Koran is not the core of Islamic practice. That is the hadith... which basically stems from the belief that Mohamed was a great man... therefore we should do as Mohamed did to have the best Islamic practice.
So I was literally taught to enter the washroom with the left food, to sleep on my right side, not to stand up and pee... That is the level of detail we have in the Hadith on the life of Mohamed and what it is that Muslims are taught to do. This is standard Sunni/Shia Islam.
So you can of course imagine the problems with this... a detailed log of a man who lived 1400 years ago being held up as the final perfections of mankind. The logs orally recorded and then written down over centuries across wars/assassins/politics... You don't need a PHd to figure this out.
And so there are many 'bad' hadiths out there. Stoning single mothers for sex out of wedlock... check. Going to war, capturing the women and making them sex slaves... check. Going to war to spead Islam... check. Killing those who speak against Islam... check....
Yes, most people of all faiths have done similar things in their own religion. The difference in Islam is that this is taken as THE FINAL PERFECT WAY TO LIVE with the hadith to show you how to live.
And this is taken seriously by Muslims. As you say, the old testament has lots of 'bad things', but no one takes it seriously and much of Christian thinking today would suggest that many parts have been superceeded by the new testament... which is relatively good... and the portrayal of Jesus himself as a model is a relatively good one.
Now what most Muslims have resorted to is ignoring the bad parts of Islam and simply saying they are out of context... Sure its an intellectual cop out.
It is the same text (the hadith) that tells you to pray five time a day as the one that tells you to go to war and capture slave women. Yes most modern Muslims will ignore the war and slave part.
But in the end, it is for the good. I can't handle the silliness of it all, so I don't follow the religion. But I'd rather have this kind of peaceful ignorance than 'real Islam'.
It's rather funny actually. There is a common mantra that is gradually and thankfully being eroded away... and that is EDUCATION=JOBS.
In the later half of the 20th century, many jobs did require an education and many of these jobs needed college or university. Combine this with the general progressive mentality that there isn't a problem education can solve and you got this massive push towards high education.
But the key is not so much that getting an education leads to a job. The key is that certain jobs need an education. One enough people had the education to fill those jobs, it just introduced new competition and lower wages for people with that education. Further people who got an education without an eye on the job market just got degrees.
This worked for a while. If you got your went to college, even if you couldn't get a college related job, you still had a leg up on the high school graduate and you would get the office or retail job ahead of them.
Then more and more people got college degrees... and suddenly getting a college degree meant nothing even in the office or retail environment.
now we see the trend further... people getting their masters or PHd to out do their fellow man.
What's really sad is the big thinkers and planners in society buying into this rubish.
This idea that because something brings success to a few... it means everyone doing that same thing can also get success.
Ever heard people say things like "we don't need to be like China and compete on the low-end, we can be like Germany and have skilled high value export oriented manufacturing"
Yes... and if the US or Canada or UK became like Germany... suddenly the German high value manufacturing would not be so valuable and it would not afford Germany a better lifestyle. We all can't be like German manufacturing... because then we'd all be like China competing with everyone.
Or we have it with the high tech areas. The creative or information economy. Just because Silicon valley provides lots of good high paying jobs for a few in the field, that means the whole of the United States can be employed in high-tech... We just need to simulate the Silicon Valley model... they don't take into account the need or supply and demand. Create more centers of innovation and they just compete with each other and take labor from each other once any shortage is filled.
You know like how auto centers compete with each other for the next line of production.
You'll often hear in such studies that conservatives operate from a place of fear.
That's not really a bad thing a lot of the time. Life is pretty dangerous. As the recent economic crises showed, big risk can become big problems.
And of course progressives seek novelty and uncertainly. That's also not really bad thing a lot of the time. You can discover new things. Sometimes the 'bad things' don't out to be as bad...
There's also the MBTI scale (INTP, INFJ, INTJ...) classification as well.
A lot of it might even be good from an evolutionary perspective... kind of like epi-genetics. If you gave birth to your child during a famine, then your child will actually be genetically tuned to store more fat... taking into account the famine.
Who knows how this all plays in with politics. If you were raised in disorder, maybe you crave authority or something... I don't know. Just guessing
They're all useful mode of thinking. And yes, they don't all match directly to political movements.
When it comes to the environment, liberals/progressives seem to operate like a conservative... and conservatives operate like progressives.
I've taught both high school and a few college courses. I also have my education degree in addition to my engineering degree.
The reality is that the bar is lower.
As others have pointed out, it is a problem with high school and elementary school. It appears to me that we've spent more and more on education and theories and gotten less and less out of it.
I did my up to grade 3 under a British colonial system. I didn't learn anything well into high school. I'm in Canada, and many students graduating couldn't even do fractions. One of my friends became a teacher and couldn't do fractions.
A big part of the problem is not getting a solid base. I understand that rote learning is not very useful and you need free and critical thinking. Yet, you also need a solid base... which is typically rote.
This is simply not forced anymore. It's like trying to teach kids artistic dance without teaching them the rote exercise of walking.
In the end the whole educational system system seems more geared to pushing out degrees and keeping the educational bureaucracy and unions readily employed.
People used to repair TVs. Today, it is often cheaper to just buy another one. Good for the consumer. Good for the manufacturer. Bad for the repairman.
It depends of course on each device, but often times buy a new one is a pretty good answer.
I've got a Nexus 7 tablet. If it should break, chances are I won't try and repair it. It is cheap enough that I could get the latest and greatest newest comparable tablet for not much more.
You're confusing the free-market and libertarianism with capitalism.
It's a common thing to think that everything is either a for-profit thing or a government program. It's a common thing to think everything is either government run and bureaucratically administered or its the wild wild west and there are no police around.
That you don't know the difference between an anarcho-capitalist, a constitutionalist... or any of the other terms and beliefs in between is quite telling. How are you lost?
That's never been the case historically and really is not the case today.
There are cooperatives, mutuals, guilds, registrar bodies, government regulations... and a million other things.
ICANN is the body that deals with domain name registrations. Ultimately, there has to be such a body to handle registrations, whether public or private.
That body has an arbitration process for this purpose of handling disputes which can arise due to trade mark, famous names, offense... whatever
So Ron Paul goes to the body and makes use of that body.
I really don't understand what you have an issue with.
That he chose not to pay 250k and instead went to the body in charge of handling disputes? You cannot escape 'the state' no matter which way you go here. It is 'the state' the grants the license to use the domain name. Paying 250k just means you're still dealing with 'the state'.
I'm not going to pretend to know the legalese of ICANN to know if it should do anything about this. It seems to me, the owners acted in good faith. But that's up to the arbitration process ICANN has in place to handle such things.
What on Earth is wrong with Ron Paul going to the body in charge of registration to make this case?
As the poster said that he's not an engineer, let's try a life example.
Suppose we take a morning drive to work. How hard is it to make an accurate progress bar showing how close you are to your work?
Well on first glance at the problem, you might say just the distance to the destination? Well does that take into account traffic, accidents, red lights, your driving speed, construction, time of day, different routes...
The answer is no, and such a calculator would be very inaccurate.
That is what some basic progress do in the computer world. Let's say they are copying a bunch of files and there are 5 files to copy, it might decide to increment the progress bar by 20% for each file copied. What if one file is really big and another small... this will look very weird.
Another progress bar measuring the same thing might increment it based on the number of bytes written. This would handle the big file problem.
In truth, we could design much better and more accurate progress bars. They'd still be approximations, but they'd be much better. We could get the historical and real-time performance of the harddrive to get a measure on how fast it could copy files. We could ping network servers to get a measure on the network performance. We could interact with server to see their load and how long it would take to process requests.
And in the end, that progress bar will be more complicated than the program you're trying to use:P
There is and always will be legal system to go hand in hand with a free market.
Anyone who thinks a free-market = highest bidder is pretty sad. There are always non-profits, mutual, regulatory systems, legal systems, voluntary organizations....
The key to a free market is not maximum profit, but freedom of choice.
In any case, domain name registration is not just a bidding process. There are other concerns such as trade mark and if you have a genuine interest in the name. There have been many legal cases about it in the past.
It is perfectly valid for anyone to use the legal system to give them their due rights. I'm not a lawyer to know if he's in the right here. Suffice to say the domain name is HIS NAME, but the registrants are currently using his name in good faith. But I think it is a valid case to take to the regulatory bodies to sort out.
Property rights are the foundation of all rights. That is not the question. The question is if his *name* is his property and how to handle that conflict.
Suffice to say those who currently own ronpaul.com should not be left without due compensation from either Ron Paul or the regulatory body.
Deterrents work very well on those with something to lose. As backwards as it seems, deterrents work best on those society doesn't want to use it against. They work least on the 'evil' crimes when people don't have anything to lose or have an impulse desire and inability to control it.
I'm a regular middle class person. Why don't I speed too much in my car, smuggle drugs, drink and drive... (all potentially harmless crimes)? Because I don't want to lose my middle class lifestyle.
The threat of jail and repossession of assets would probably work very well at constraining risk for executives.
Different kinds of criminals respond to different kids of punishment and deterrents. For middle class and upper class people, you really want deterrents to work as you don't want to lose a reasonably productive person.
Take a drive to your local walmart and see how prices are lower.
But if you'd like a lesson.... here we go. The free market doesn't guarantee that every single business will sell for the lowest price.
What it does is allow for competition so when prices get too high or a new innovation comes along, someone is FREE to setup a new company.
You know... like how Google was FREE to compete with Microsoft even though Microsoft was in a virtual monopoly position on the desktop.
But it is rather interesting to note how the things you rant about occurring SOMETIMES in the private sector are things that ALWAYS occur in government run systems.
Price-fixing is evil for the private sector. But public sector unions are not.
Monopolies are evil for the private sector. But government monopolies are not.
Prices going up are evil in the private sector. Tell me... has the cost of education or healthcare gone down?
Profiting off pain is evil in the private sector. But police officers and prison guard unions profit from the drug war sending people to jail for smoking a plant.
Yeah, the free market is not pretty. In the long run though, it is much better as at least anyone can enter a sector and start change.
There is no Islamic state. All the Islamic states don't practice true Islam. What we need for utopia is a real Islamic state.
There is Keynesian economic state. All governments claiming to be Keynesian are not following true Keynesian. What we need for utopia is true Keynesian state.
There is no communist state. All governments claiming to be communist are not following true communism. What we need for utopia is true communism.
If something has been shown to be historically undoable in the real world, that should tell you something about reality and the ability to implement such a theory.
As a secular Muslim... allow me to throw in my little comparative example.
As a Muslim, we are told... the solution to our ills is the Islamic state. Poverty, violence, drugs... solution is the virtue created by Islam and God's commands. When people are in a proper Islamic state they will be generous and give charity and the zakat will take care of the poor.
Reality tells us... we have over 1400 years of Islamic history tried in various states and empires. This Islamic utopia has never been reached. Rather, it has often made the problem worse. The centralization of authority, the abuse of power by religious authorities, the lack of individual rights, the concentration of wealth in 'kings' and 'Emirs'. The people don't become any more virtuous than any other people. In many cases, they are worse.
But listen to any Islamist... and well... the pursuit of the Islamic state is not the problem... it's just... we keep getting it wrong again and again.
Which brings us back to Keynesian theory. I'll break it down for you.
Theoretically, we save in good times, spend the savings in bad times.
Reality tells us:
Democracies and most societies find it near impossible to bring that kind of discipline. There's always problems in the world. Between public sector workers who demand raises as part of the new boom, to the constant war on poverty... how do you constrain spending during the boom? Very hard to do democratically.
Special interest groups hijack the Keynesian spending. Tax cuts for the rich are Keynesian economics... as of course they have the clout in government. Funneling trillions of dollars into the financial sector is Keynesian economics as they hold the ear of government and the central banks. Not to mention, the inherent corruption involved in government handing out money. It basically amounts to central planning. Those most connected to government get the money (public sector workers, corporations, banks...). Could a theoretical cheque to every citizen be Keynesian... sure. But that's not how most governments choose to utilize Keynesian economics to bolster their policy.
It requires economists to manage the economy. Do you trust them? We live in a rare time with some of the world's brightest and most educated people in charge of the banks and financial system. Yet these rather brilliant people couldn't even account for a housing bubble. Again, I don't really care if a few identified it. The reality is that no one wanted to stop the party.
Let's not even get into the potential for inflation and the inability to adjust to new norms as you keep trying to inflate the old norm.
So while perhaps Keynesian theory offers a way to manage the economy, so do a multitude of theories on everything. What matters is how well suited such theories match the reality of our complex world of politics and society.
In that respect, Keynesian theory has failed throughout history of being even remotely doable in reality. The general idea of government spending more to stimulate the economy is nothing new and has a long history. Most of our 'economic theories' are perhaps refined but their basis has long been tried. Ancient Rome tried printing money, tried to have a service economy...
I'll leave with a final example.
The US thought he could stabilize medicare funding via automatic cuts if spending got too much as it relate
Real software engineering takes a lot of time and a lot of resources. The closest I've heard of it is from those older workers who used to work for the old telecom companies back in the day. In my case Nortel in Canada. But even that was pretty far off.
They simply required a lot of resources in terms of people, time, equipment, and training.
Contrast that to 'brogramming'. New Idea... bunch of college kids whip out something usuable in a short time... get to market... deal with the rest of the stuff later.
The only way to protect against 'brogramming' would be to have software as a profession with standards enforced... like doctors, lawyers...
What progress would be served by making college universal, free, and affordable.
Could it make college less education by dumbing down the degree?
We already did that with high school to provide universal secondary education. Now you want to make university even dumber. What goal is served here expect that of more paper degrees?
Most people in today's universities and colleges barely get any real advancement as people due to the mass education of shoving as many people through it as possible.
Science concludes global warming is occuring.... therefore disagreeing with government policies on how to combat at make you anti-science.
Study shows transfats are bad for your health.... therefore if you disagree with banning transfats you are anti-science.
Study shows wearing bicycle helmets reduces head injuries while cycling... therefore being against mandatory bicycle helmets makes you anti-science.....
All this talk of efficiency, and competing globally... only ever seems to apply to the unprotected private sector worker bee.
Doctors, lawyers, teachers, financial people... when it's their jobs... it's suddenly not right to talk about efficiency.
Indeed, if Obama wants to reduce healthcare costs, the first thing he should do is bring in thousands of cheap doctors and nurses from the developing world... that would reduce the cost of healthcare pretty well.
As to tackling the big money guys. I don't think there has ever been a period where us little people can overcome their influence... aside from the limited impact our democratic institutions have.
The super wealthy have been and will always be wealthy.
The interesting thing is that the attempts to prop up the middle class have resulted in great abuses... and continue to be used by the super-wealthy to keep them in power.
The lords of power as you would call them have used the fight of the middle class to make their power permanent. Trillions of dollars spent in financial games and bailouts... by what justification did this pass democratic muscle? Precisely because the middle class was convinced... and rightly so... that they are dependent on that system.
While I agree we might find ourselves on the heel of oppression again... my point is that the attempt to prop up the middle class is part of the oppression.
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Just reframing the question makes a world of difference.
In fact, my definition of a 'free society' is simply one where the DEFAULT position is freedom.
Forget a second about details about what regulation is best... and just phrase all your questions in respect is 'freedom' the default position.
If freedom is the default position, then it is up to the government to prove that the freedom granted to individuals is too great for the society that the government must use violence or threat thereof to stop the activity.
So for example for gun control... the default position is that people are allowed to owned guns. Then the government must prove that certain kinds of weapons are too deadly or certain kinds of people are too unstable to possess them.
But generally this is not how questions are asked. Consider education. The default position is that every child should go to government school. It is up to charter schools or independent schools to prove they are significantly better to get the same treatment. This is an example of an unfree aspect of society.
Rather the question should be if independent schools are so harmful that the government not fund students who wish to attend them to the same level as public school.
Or is Marijuana so harmful to society that the government should send people to jail for smoking a plant.
What it really boils down to is having enough cash flow to freely innovate.
So yes, it means Joe the Plumber being able to afford cheap housing and life to be cheap enough for him to take a few years off 'regular' work to pursue his dream. Let's not discount this. People like Thomas Edison basically pursued this model. He worked pretty regular clerk like jobs to then work on his inventions in his off time.
At the corporate level, it means having stable cash-flow.
Microsoft Research for example is able to do all kinds of wonky things basically because Microsoft has a big STABLE cash cow to fund regular operations.
Google is able to throw money at all kinds of wonkey things like self-driving cars because it has very STABLE cash-flow with the ad business.
If you see a big company doing innovative things, look to find the stable cash-cow to fund it.
Back in the days, ATT used to do a lot of good research. Wait for it... the big STABLE cash-flow was a monopoly on the telecom sector. Government splits up ATT and kills the monopoly... and well Bell labs/ATT basically died and hasn't done anything.
I'm much more in favor of so called monopolies as long as they are well regulated then most of my engineering people. This is not to say I support the model... just that, I don't see it as being that bad.
Or at least, it is much better than the current model where venture capitalists funneled by cheap debt start random companies, hope it gains enough attention, then goes IPO, and no one sees any long term vision to being a researcher or engineer.
Global warming is good and bad.
IMHO global warming is happening and there's not much we can do in our life time to stop it. So we should just live with it and counter the bad effects as best as possible and enjoy the good effects as much as possible.
We can deal with slowing out pollution at a reasonable pace in time... as we are already doing.
I'm in Canada, and well... anecdotally, winters are warmer and I rather enjoy it actually.
Supposedly, the Arctic shipping lanes will open making transport easier.
Supposedly, we can grow more food up North which will help them as well.
No, I'm not discounting the rising sea levels, dislocation of people near flood areas... but installing a windfarm is probably not going to stop that in your life time. Might as well build levies, move to a safer region... deal with the bad effects.
Luckily, my region (Toronto) doesn't have much of a downside with respect to global warming. It's mainly positive. We're at no risk of flooding and a warmer winter is only a plus.
Short answer: You shouldn't
Long answer: You really shouldn't listen to them when it comes to areas outside their limited domain expertise. Some climatologist (to pick a current example) might tell you something about pollution or climate change, but you shouldn't listen to him on his policy advice. He is not an expert in economics, social studies, government, bureaucracy, history...
The reality:
The public perception of *truth* remains as elusive as ever despite our ever increasing access to information. Ultimately, all knowledge relies upon trust of the person/institution delivering it. As institutions are made of people, it ultimately rests with people.
But we need to account for a living constitution.
We must balance all the rights granted to us in the constitution.
How does the public danger or war affect these clauses?
What exactly is due process? Maybe in a time of 'insecurity' the internal bureaucracy provides enough due process to authorize a kill.
What exactly is deprivation of life?
I ask these questions only with slight rhetoric... as if we use the same text and ask it about other terms, they are definitely valid.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"
What people are we talking about here? All people, registered people, sane people, people authorized by the government?
What arms? All arms, small guns, military guns, tanks, nukes?
Is it dependent on those with arms being part of a militia? ...
also, there is relative consensus on which hadiths are chosen depending on the Islamic sect.
For example, the largest group of Muslims are Sunni Muslims. You can think like they had their own Canon and use hadith collections from Bhukari or Muslim...
In a sense, each major Islamic sect has their own canonized version of the hadiths.
It's not unlike say Christianity, where a few Christian churches differ in their 'canon'. Like the Ethiopian church's canon has slightly different books that say Roman Catholic Christianity...
Just in addition.
There isn't much scriptual evidence that the Koran should be taken as so perfect and unable to have been corrupted.
As a matter of fact, there are hadiths that say how hard and error prone it was to assemble the written koran and how some people complain that some versus are missing... the versus on stoning people for example are missing from the koran, but many people claim they were in the original. This is mentioned in the Hadith.
My own view is that this notion of the perfection and eternal protection of the koran comes more from the attempt to differentiate it from christianity as Islam makes a big deal about the Chrsitian bible being corrupted and changed... so what better way to make Islam better than to claim it's text cannot be corrupted.
But I don't see much in the Koran or the Hadith for that matter that would emphasize god protecting the koran from change to any great degree... again... vague versus on it... yes.
My other working theory is that Islam was formed as an offshoot of Chrisitianity by those who believed in the the Christian books rejected by the Canon. Hence the emphasis on the corruption of christianity.
There are many core concepts in Islam that are found in the rejected biblical books.
Things like the Devil not bowing down to adam... is found in the rejected book of Enoch and in Islam.
In any case...
Well in general, the Koran is considered perfect and God has protected from any changes.
But the Koran itself contains many versus that on first glance appear contradictory. Yet, I don't consider them as such. For example, there are versus in the koran that say to not come to the mosque drunk... and there are other versus that say alcohol should be avoided.
Islam has Abrogation, which is basically a newer verse can overrule an older verse. So you really need to know when a verse was revealed to know it's actual meaning.
And of course the koran is very vague and contextual... it is written as the prophet lives his live in mecca and medina and as he goes through battles and life. The versus revealed are generally contextual... and so rarely is something clear cut enough that I would call it cherry picking.
There are a few versus that are more rigid... like inheritance for some reason... but for almost any issue we'd consider important, the koranic versus are vague enough.
And the idea that the Koran can be understood without the hadith is a futile attempt. There are attempts by some muslims who try to use the Koran alone... and while they tend to be on the more liberal side, I think it's quite silly. You'd be hard pressed to understand almost any of the Islamic practices (anything that makes up Islam) without referring to the hadith.
5 daily prayers... not in the koran... only hadith.
What is actually meant by veiling... not in the koran... only in the hadith...
My favorite example is this:
This is a koran verse ...
[33.53] O you who believe! do not enter the houses of the Prophet unless permission is given to you for a meal, not waiting for its cooking being finished-- but when you are invited, enter, and when you have taken the food, then disperse-- not seeking to listen to talk;
"
What is the point of verse. Where does it come from? Like most versus in the Koran, there is an accompanying hadith that shows where it came from.
In this case:
People were annoying Mohamed when they came to visit him... so amazingly... he had a koranic revelation telling them how to behave when visiting his home.
Narrated Anas bin Malik: When Allah's Apostle married Zainab bint Jahsh, he invited the people to a meal. They took the meal and remained sitting and talking. Then the Prophet (showed them) as if he is ready to get up, yet they did not get up. When he noticed that (there was no response to his movement), he got up, and the others too, got up except three persons who kept on sitting. The Prophet came back in order to enter his house, but he went away again. Then they left, whereupon I set out and went to the Prophet to tell him that they had departed, so he came and entered his house. I wanted to enter along with him, but he put a screen between me and him. Then Allah revealed: 'O you who believe! Do not enter the houses of the Prophet...' (33.53)
And you cannot just ignore the hadith and think the koran will itself be on rosy and clean. I kept this example pretty clean, just to avoid any controversy.
If you're Sunni Muslim and believe in Sahih Bukhari or Sahih Muslim... that is where the core of your practice derives from.
Take a read through it some time.
That's the source of your religion. It's not a pretty text filled with everything I say. But obviously you haven't read any of the texts you supposedly believe in.
Just where do you get the idea you need to pray 5 times a day from? The koran?... not there. It's in the Hadith... and I won't bother quoting hadith to you because it's easy to read and find online.
As an secular/cultural Muslim, this is one of the biggest points.
This is such an important point.
It is hard to describe to people what Islam is. It is not just belief in God or attending church once in a week.
I grew up overseas, went to Islam school, not an extreme one by any stretch of the imagination, so I do consider myself quite learned.
Islam is composed of the Koran which is relatively vague and you can read it to mean a lot of things and you can apply a lot of context to things.
But the Koran is not the core of Islamic practice. That is the hadith... which basically stems from the belief that Mohamed was a great man... therefore we should do as Mohamed did to have the best Islamic practice.
So I was literally taught to enter the washroom with the left food, to sleep on my right side, not to stand up and pee... That is the level of detail we have in the Hadith on the life of Mohamed and what it is that Muslims are taught to do. This is standard Sunni/Shia Islam.
So you can of course imagine the problems with this... a detailed log of a man who lived 1400 years ago being held up as the final perfections of mankind. The logs orally recorded and then written down over centuries across wars/assassins/politics... You don't need a PHd to figure this out.
And so there are many 'bad' hadiths out there. ...
Stoning single mothers for sex out of wedlock... check.
Going to war, capturing the women and making them sex slaves... check.
Going to war to spead Islam... check.
Killing those who speak against Islam... check.
Yes, most people of all faiths have done similar things in their own religion. The difference in Islam is that this is taken as THE FINAL PERFECT WAY TO LIVE with the hadith to show you how to live.
And this is taken seriously by Muslims. As you say, the old testament has lots of 'bad things', but no one takes it seriously and much of Christian thinking today would suggest that many parts have been superceeded by the new testament... which is relatively good... and the portrayal of Jesus himself as a model is a relatively good one.
Now what most Muslims have resorted to is ignoring the bad parts of Islam and simply saying they are out of context... Sure its an intellectual cop out.
It is the same text (the hadith) that tells you to pray five time a day as the one that tells you to go to war and capture slave women. Yes most modern Muslims will ignore the war and slave part.
But in the end, it is for the good. I can't handle the silliness of it all, so I don't follow the religion. But I'd rather have this kind of peaceful ignorance than 'real Islam'.
It's rather funny actually.
There is a common mantra that is gradually and thankfully being eroded away... and that is EDUCATION=JOBS.
In the later half of the 20th century, many jobs did require an education and many of these jobs needed college or university. Combine this with the general progressive mentality that there isn't a problem education can solve and you got this massive push towards high education.
But the key is not so much that getting an education leads to a job. The key is that certain jobs need an education. One enough people had the education to fill those jobs, it just introduced new competition and lower wages for people with that education.
Further people who got an education without an eye on the job market just got degrees.
This worked for a while. If you got your went to college, even if you couldn't get a college related job, you still had a leg up on the high school graduate and you would get the office or retail job ahead of them.
Then more and more people got college degrees... and suddenly getting a college degree meant nothing even in the office or retail environment.
now we see the trend further... people getting their masters or PHd to out do their fellow man.
What's really sad is the big thinkers and planners in society buying into this rubish.
This idea that because something brings success to a few... it means everyone doing that same thing can also get success.
Ever heard people say things like
"we don't need to be like China and compete on the low-end, we can be like Germany and have skilled high value export oriented manufacturing"
Yes... and if the US or Canada or UK became like Germany... suddenly the German high value manufacturing would not be so valuable and it would not afford Germany a better lifestyle. We all can't be like German manufacturing... because then we'd all be like China competing with everyone.
Or we have it with the high tech areas. The creative or information economy. Just because Silicon valley provides lots of good high paying jobs for a few in the field, that means the whole of the United States can be employed in high-tech... We just need to simulate the Silicon Valley model... they don't take into account the need or supply and demand.
Create more centers of innovation and they just compete with each other and take labor from each other once any shortage is filled.
You know like how auto centers compete with each other for the next line of production.
You'll often hear in such studies that conservatives operate from a place of fear.
That's not really a bad thing a lot of the time. Life is pretty dangerous. As the recent economic crises showed, big risk can become big problems.
And of course progressives seek novelty and uncertainly. That's also not really bad thing a lot of the time. You can discover new things. Sometimes the 'bad things' don't out to be as bad...
There's also the MBTI scale (INTP, INFJ, INTJ...) classification as well.
A lot of it might even be good from an evolutionary perspective... kind of like epi-genetics. If you gave birth to your child during a famine, then your child will actually be genetically tuned to store more fat... taking into account the famine.
Who knows how this all plays in with politics. If you were raised in disorder, maybe you crave authority or something... I don't know. Just guessing
They're all useful mode of thinking.
And yes, they don't all match directly to political movements.
When it comes to the environment, liberals/progressives seem to operate like a conservative... and conservatives operate like progressives.
I've taught both high school and a few college courses.
I also have my education degree in addition to my engineering degree.
The reality is that the bar is lower.
As others have pointed out, it is a problem with high school and elementary school. It appears to me that we've spent more and more on education and theories and gotten less and less out of it.
I did my up to grade 3 under a British colonial system. I didn't learn anything well into high school.
I'm in Canada, and many students graduating couldn't even do fractions. One of my friends became a teacher and couldn't do fractions.
A big part of the problem is not getting a solid base. I understand that rote learning is not very useful and you need free and critical thinking. Yet, you also need a solid base... which is typically rote.
This is simply not forced anymore. It's like trying to teach kids artistic dance without teaching them the rote exercise of walking.
In the end the whole educational system system seems more geared to pushing out degrees and keeping the educational bureaucracy and unions readily employed.
Dare I say, what's wrong with that?
People used to repair TVs. Today, it is often cheaper to just buy another one. Good for the consumer. Good for the manufacturer. Bad for the repairman.
It depends of course on each device, but often times buy a new one is a pretty good answer.
I've got a Nexus 7 tablet. If it should break, chances are I won't try and repair it. It is cheap enough that I could get the latest and greatest newest comparable tablet for not much more.
"So this is how capitalism works"
You're confusing the free-market and libertarianism with capitalism.
It's a common thing to think that everything is either a for-profit thing or a government program.
It's a common thing to think everything is either government run and bureaucratically administered or its the wild wild west and there are no police around.
That you don't know the difference between an anarcho-capitalist, a constitutionalist... or any of the other terms and beliefs in between is quite telling. How are you lost?
That's never been the case historically and really is not the case today.
There are cooperatives, mutuals, guilds, registrar bodies, government regulations... and a million other things.
ICANN is the body that deals with domain name registrations. Ultimately, there has to be such a body to handle registrations, whether public or private.
That body has an arbitration process for this purpose of handling disputes which can arise due to trade mark, famous names, offense... whatever
So Ron Paul goes to the body and makes use of that body.
I really don't understand what you have an issue with.
That he chose not to pay 250k and instead went to the body in charge of handling disputes? You cannot escape 'the state' no matter which way you go here. It is 'the state' the grants the license to use the domain name. Paying 250k just means you're still dealing with 'the state'.
I'm not going to pretend to know the legalese of ICANN to know if it should do anything about this. It seems to me, the owners acted in good faith. But that's up to the arbitration process ICANN has in place to handle such things.
What on Earth is wrong with Ron Paul going to the body in charge of registration to make this case?
As the poster said that he's not an engineer, let's try a life example.
Suppose we take a morning drive to work.
How hard is it to make an accurate progress bar showing how close you are to your work?
Well on first glance at the problem, you might say just the distance to the destination?
Well does that take into account traffic, accidents, red lights, your driving speed, construction, time of day, different routes...
The answer is no, and such a calculator would be very inaccurate.
That is what some basic progress do in the computer world. Let's say they are copying a bunch of files and there are 5 files to copy, it might decide to increment the progress bar by 20% for each file copied. What if one file is really big and another small... this will look very weird.
Another progress bar measuring the same thing might increment it based on the number of bytes written. This would handle the big file problem.
In truth, we could design much better and more accurate progress bars. They'd still be approximations, but they'd be much better. We could get the historical and real-time performance of the harddrive to get a measure on how fast it could copy files. We could ping network servers to get a measure on the network performance. We could interact with server to see their load and how long it would take to process requests.
And in the end, that progress bar will be more complicated than the program you're trying to use :P
There is and always will be legal system to go hand in hand with a free market.
Anyone who thinks a free-market = highest bidder is pretty sad. There are always non-profits, mutual, regulatory systems, legal systems, voluntary organizations....
The key to a free market is not maximum profit, but freedom of choice.
In any case, domain name registration is not just a bidding process. There are other concerns such as trade mark and if you have a genuine interest in the name. There have been many legal cases about it in the past.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property00/domain/main.html
It is perfectly valid for anyone to use the legal system to give them their due rights. I'm not a lawyer to know if he's in the right here. Suffice to say the domain name is HIS NAME, but the registrants are currently using his name in good faith. But I think it is a valid case to take to the regulatory bodies to sort out.
Property rights are the foundation of all rights.
That is not the question.
The question is if his *name* is his property and how to handle that conflict.
Suffice to say those who currently own ronpaul.com should not be left without due compensation from either Ron Paul or the regulatory body.
On the contrary.
Deterrents work very well on those with something to lose.
As backwards as it seems, deterrents work best on those society doesn't want to use it against. They work least on the 'evil' crimes when people don't have anything to lose or have an impulse desire and inability to control it.
I'm a regular middle class person. Why don't I speed too much in my car, smuggle drugs, drink and drive... (all potentially harmless crimes)? Because I don't want to lose my middle class lifestyle.
The threat of jail and repossession of assets would probably work very well at constraining risk for executives.
Different kinds of criminals respond to different kids of punishment and deterrents. For middle class and upper class people, you really want deterrents to work as you don't want to lose a reasonably productive person.
Take a drive to your local walmart and see how prices are lower.
But if you'd like a lesson.... here we go.
The free market doesn't guarantee that every single business will sell for the lowest price.
What it does is allow for competition so when prices get too high or a new innovation comes along, someone is FREE to setup a new company.
You know... like how Google was FREE to compete with Microsoft even though Microsoft was in a virtual monopoly position on the desktop.
But it is rather interesting to note how the things you rant about occurring SOMETIMES in the private sector are things that ALWAYS occur in government run systems.
Price-fixing is evil for the private sector.
But public sector unions are not.
Monopolies are evil for the private sector.
But government monopolies are not.
Prices going up are evil in the private sector.
Tell me... has the cost of education or healthcare gone down?
Profiting off pain is evil in the private sector.
But police officers and prison guard unions profit from the drug war sending people to jail for smoking a plant.
Yeah, the free market is not pretty.
In the long run though, it is much better as at least anyone can enter a sector and start change.
Of course you can.
There is no Islamic state. All the Islamic states don't practice true Islam. What we need for utopia is a real Islamic state.
There is Keynesian economic state. All governments claiming to be Keynesian are not following true Keynesian. What we need for utopia is true Keynesian state.
There is no communist state. All governments claiming to be communist are not following true communism. What we need for utopia is true communism.
If something has been shown to be historically undoable in the real world, that should tell you something about reality and the ability to implement such a theory.
As a secular Muslim... allow me to throw in my little comparative example.
As a Muslim, we are told... the solution to our ills is the Islamic state. Poverty, violence, drugs... solution is the virtue created by Islam and God's commands. When people are in a proper Islamic state they will be generous and give charity and the zakat will take care of the poor.
Reality tells us... we have over 1400 years of Islamic history tried in various states and empires. This Islamic utopia has never been reached. Rather, it has often made the problem worse. The centralization of authority, the abuse of power by religious authorities, the lack of individual rights, the concentration of wealth in 'kings' and 'Emirs'. The people don't become any more virtuous than any other people. In many cases, they are worse.
But listen to any Islamist... and well... the pursuit of the Islamic state is not the problem... it's just... we keep getting it wrong again and again.
Which brings us back to Keynesian theory. I'll break it down for you.
Theoretically, we save in good times, spend the savings in bad times.
Reality tells us:
Democracies and most societies find it near impossible to bring that kind of discipline. There's always problems in the world. Between public sector workers who demand raises as part of the new boom, to the constant war on poverty... how do you constrain spending during the boom? Very hard to do democratically.
Special interest groups hijack the Keynesian spending.
Tax cuts for the rich are Keynesian economics... as of course they have the clout in government. Funneling trillions of dollars into the financial sector is Keynesian economics as they hold the ear of government and the central banks. Not to mention, the inherent corruption involved in government handing out money. It basically amounts to central planning. Those most connected to government get the money (public sector workers, corporations, banks...). Could a theoretical cheque to every citizen be Keynesian... sure. But that's not how most governments choose to utilize Keynesian economics to bolster their policy.
It requires economists to manage the economy. Do you trust them? We live in a rare time with some of the world's brightest and most educated people in charge of the banks and financial system. Yet these rather brilliant people couldn't even account for a housing bubble. Again, I don't really care if a few identified it. The reality is that no one wanted to stop the party.
Let's not even get into the potential for inflation and the inability to adjust to new norms as you keep trying to inflate the old norm.
So while perhaps Keynesian theory offers a way to manage the economy, so do a multitude of theories on everything. What matters is how well suited such theories match the reality of our complex world of politics and society.
In that respect, Keynesian theory has failed throughout history of being even remotely doable in reality. The general idea of government spending more to stimulate the economy is nothing new and has a long history.
Most of our 'economic theories' are perhaps refined but their basis has long been tried. Ancient Rome tried printing money, tried to have a service economy...
I'll leave with a final example.
The US thought he could stabilize medicare funding via automatic cuts if spending got too much as it relate
Real software engineering takes a lot of time and a lot of resources. The closest I've heard of it is from those older workers who used to work for the old telecom companies back in the day. In my case Nortel in Canada. But even that was pretty far off.
They simply required a lot of resources in terms of people, time, equipment, and training.
Contrast that to 'brogramming'. New Idea... bunch of college kids whip out something usuable in a short time... get to market... deal with the rest of the stuff later.
The only way to protect against 'brogramming' would be to have software as a profession with standards enforced... like doctors, lawyers...
What progress would be served by making college universal, free, and affordable.
Could it make college less education by dumbing down the degree?
We already did that with high school to provide universal secondary education. Now you want to make university even dumber. What goal is served here expect that of more paper degrees?
Most people in today's universities and colleges barely get any real advancement as people due to the mass education of shoving as many people through it as possible.
And you just entered stage 1 scientism.
Science concludes global warming is occuring.... therefore disagreeing with government policies on how to combat at make you anti-science.
Study shows transfats are bad for your health.... therefore if you disagree with banning transfats you are anti-science.
Study shows wearing bicycle helmets reduces head injuries while cycling... therefore being against mandatory bicycle helmets makes you anti-science. ....
This is the big question isn't it.
All this talk of efficiency, and competing globally... only ever seems to apply to the unprotected private sector worker bee.
Doctors, lawyers, teachers, financial people... when it's their jobs... it's suddenly not right to talk about efficiency.
Indeed, if Obama wants to reduce healthcare costs, the first thing he should do is bring in thousands of cheap doctors and nurses from the developing world... that would reduce the cost of healthcare pretty well.
Our voice comes from democracy.
As to tackling the big money guys. I don't think there has ever been a period where us little people can overcome their influence... aside from the limited impact our democratic institutions have.
The super wealthy have been and will always be wealthy.
The interesting thing is that the attempts to prop up the middle class have resulted in great abuses... and continue to be used by the super-wealthy to keep them in power.
The lords of power as you would call them have used the fight of the middle class to make their power permanent. Trillions of dollars spent in financial games and bailouts... by what justification did this pass democratic muscle? Precisely because the middle class was convinced... and rightly so... that they are dependent on that system.
While I agree we might find ourselves on the heel of oppression again... my point is that the attempt to prop up the middle class is part of the oppression.