South of Finland there is Estonia doing just fine. West of Finland there is Sweden doing record fine. A little bit more south (and west) there is Germany basically bulldozing exports and money. What makes Finland any different from those countries? Well, the ancient socialist system is what makes it different.
Erm, except for the fact that Sweden and Germany are both socialistic as well, Sweden even remarkably close in many ways to us. I agree that the model(s) of taxation here need to be updated, but you should realize that when other countries with similar social policies (single payer healthcare and education) are doing massively better,, the problem is not the socialism itself, the problem is the implementation of thereof.
In addition, keep in mind that the economic downturn comes as a result of several right-leaning coalition cabinets that have done nothing to improve this: they cut gignatic amount of corporate taxes few years back which did nothing except increase to profits of corporations but ended up creating no jobs, or for that matter increasing exports. And now they're basically re-doing the same thing: blaming the problems on costs of production which is not a primary factor in the dilemma. We're already at Germany's level or even below in costs of production. The problem is structural: ever since Nokia exploded and took nearly a fourth of the export sector away, there simply haven't been enough large global companies to come and take its place.
So to summarize: is the economy broken at the moment? Yes. Should the taxation laws be re-examined to make both corporate and private taxation simpler? Yes. But is the economic downturn because of "socialism" in general? No.
Maybe it's because I've been raised in what the Americans would call a 'socialist' country (Finland) but it always irks me to see capitalism and socialism thrown about as some sort of polar opposites, or capitalism in general being talked about as if it's some single clearly defined ideology.
There are many versions of capitalist economies, and some of them are socialistic. In fact, most all of them are that to a degree, as even the US has a large public sector. Capitalism at its core means nothing more or less than the private ownership of the means of production. If the question was framed "Do you support the right of individuals to own goods provided they pay their share of taxes on them?", the answers would look quite different I reckon.
So the problem is not capitalism as such, the problem is they paying of the fair share of taxes. Neo-liberalism and the fact that the US sliding to the right continuously for the past decades has created this tilted landscape in which gigantic corporations and massively rich individuals have been uplifted to a status in which they're quite openly above governments: bribery and outright buying of bills via lobbying has been made legal (and relatively cheap compared to the profits of these companies), taxes can be circumvented easily if you're wealthy, and megacorps are allowed to wreck havoc to the environment and cause global economic meltdowns without any risk of anyone facing any jail time or even significant fines. They're given fines which are slaps on the wrist compared to the kind of money they can make by continuing illegal operations. To them, it's just a cost of doing business, and the cycle repeats.
So is that capitalism? Well, yes, yes it is, but it's not the one and only true implementation of capitalism, in fact I'd argue it's one of the absolute worst implementations of it possible. It's a corporatocracy/plutocracy. And unless you happen to be one of the chosen few who actually benefits from such a system, there's no rational reason for anyone, on the right or on the left, to support such a model. Even a true conservative should realize that the government allowing legislation as well as elections to be sold to the highest bidder skews the market as it means whoever has the most cash can dictate the rules. That's not how a fair market is supposed to operate, regardless of what one thinks of socialist income redistribution policies.
The tittle would be more appropriately stated: "A majority of millenials now oppose free market/laissez-faire capitalism." And that's only a good thing.
Assange likely has very little to do with this, although the Russians will probably be delighted if people think so. If it is the case that the attacks originated from Russia, then this is likely to be just the latest addition in the information warfare campaign that Russia is waging across Europe. It's very much within Russia's interest at the moment to play as much with the migrant crisis and the media as they possibly can to sow political distrust. They've been running their own 'news' channels (Sputnik) with English language content but additionally they're supporting the so called "anti-media" or "underground media" sites which are basically anti-immigration/anti-EU blogs that run hearsay or entirely made up stories mixed in with bits and pieces of actual news.
Russia does not give a flying fuck about Assange, or Snowden for that matter. They might say they do, but again, do you think Russia for example is not doing exactly the same type of surveillance on its people than what Snowden revealed in the US? Hell, this is the country in which people have recently been jailed both for being openly atheist as well as for criticizing the invasion of Crimea or calling for a change of leadership.
So what are the odds that this country launches a cyber attack against a north-European nation because they care so much about justice and the rights of individuals for a fair trial, or any of that? Slim. Extremely slim.
This is geopolitics, plain and simple. Divide and conquer etc.
the world isn't free. If you want an education, figure out how to pay for it. Maybe lots of loans for that basket weaving class.
Wow, americans straw manning universal education/health care arguments by the age old 'nothings free' -argument. How surprising.
We are already paying for it, dumb ass. We've just decided that it should be collectively and publicly funded because one needs not to look very far to understand that limiting education chances based on the income of the person/their family is not a solution.
I want my fellow citizens to be able to get higher education and health care and other base necessities of modern day life regardless of whether or not they were born to a rich family. And I want people to continue to graduate without student debt weighing them down so they can actually spend the money they make and thus help the economy. This system works, and has worked in here and across Europe for decades. it's never been free, but it's still cheaper, per person, than any of the privatized university models.
I'm paying for my past education and the education of the coming generations by paying across the board higher taxes than most people in say, the US- And I'm completely alright with that, as are most of the people here, so shut the fuck up.
I get it that Torvalds went to school there etc, but this isn't any different than any other school that hundreds of other developers have gone to that have had staff cuts.
You clearly do not understand the context or the background to this, so allow me to explain why this is relevant. Firstly, the university of Helsinki is THE university here. Sure, we have a few other major ones and they're decent, but we're a nation of 5,4 million people, the university of Helsinki is the bedrock and pinnacle of our much praised educational system. Gutting it means they're making a huge dent in the higher education of the entire country. Secondly, the cuts are nationwide, they're cutting across the board from higher education, the university of Helsinki is just getting the hardest hit as it is the biggest.
But most importantly, this is about much more than the simple cuts themselves. This is about politicians fucking us over in every way imaginable and betraying their own principles on which they ran for the parliament in a record time. We had elections last year, and one of the biggest promises made by the winning centre-right coalition was that no matter how tough cuts they'd have to make, they'd stay off the education. Our current prime minister and minister of treasury even posed in twitter pictures with students with cards saying 'no cuts'.
35 days. It took 35 days from the elections to them start suggesting cuts. Then they introduced tuition fees for exchange students coming from outside the Union. Now, this raised concern since the worry was that once the concept of tuition fees has been introduced, the next step would be to start suggesting everyone should pay them. This is a major deal as universities have always been free to attend to for those who have the grades to get in. Without free universities, we likely wouldn't have risen from a fairly backwater nation that suffered a civil war and the 2nd world war to a first world post-industrialized welfare state in less than a century. Without free higher education it's likely we would never have produced people such as Torvalds, companies such as Nokia and Rovio etc. Free higher education is at the very core of what this nation is supposed to be built on, which is why it is in our constitution:
Section 16 - Educational rights
Everyone has the right to basic education free of charge. Provisions on the duty to receive education are laid down by an Act.
The public authorities shall, as provided in more detail by an Act, guarantee for everyone equal opportunity to receive other educational services in accordance with their ability and special needs, as well as the opportunity to develop themselves without being prevented by economic hardship. The freedom of science, the arts and higher education is guaranteed.
When they announced the cuts they promised they would never expand the tuition fees. Yet, unsurprisingly, one MP just proposed that today: the introduction of nationwide tuition fees and simultaneous cutting of student benefits. At the same time they cut the amount of corporate taxes MORE than they cut universities (the total combined cuts to education are about 600 million euros). They're literally trying to wipe their ass on the constitution that we have, pissing on a fundamental cornerstone of well being in our country, and lying through their teeth while doing so. They say they have to do these cuts to save the economy. But destroying the basis for all intellectual capital in this country is not going to do anything else than destroy the economy in the long term. But they do not seem to care. And to make matters worse, the universities appear to have given up any sort of resistance to this and are allowing this all top happen with very little protest.
In my life so far, never have I been so angry and sad at the same time, nor have I EVER felt this betrayed and fucked over by our elected representatives. They're a fucking national disgrac
keep in mind a survey done a few months back showed 30% of Canadian subscribers watched the US site. Spread that around the world, it's significant.
As a Finn, I couldn't agree with you more. Netflix has shot up interest in VPN services across the board. The majority of my friends who use netflix here use a VPN to access the american catalog, myself included, because the Finnish Netflix selection is poor in comparison. However my friends are mostly male nerds in their 20s and 30s, so obviously there's selection bias. When F-secure launched their new service that included VPN, one of the main features people were talking about was the ability to easily watch Netflix and other streaming services as an 'american'.
I've been a continuous customer almost since Netflix launched here, but when this goes through I might have to halt the subscription, because I've seen pretty much everything worth watching on the Finnish side of Netflix, so it's just not worth the money anymore. It will not destroy the company but it will severely affect their business.
Lol. First of all, I was rounding the number because the ex act number of claimed years is irrelevant to the point that I was making, which is that there's no evidence that any of the supposed miraculous claims occurred. Do you obviously believe I am so stupid I don't know what year we're living in, or what the Gregorian calendar is supposedly based on? Really, are you that dense?
Secondly, if you had any clue as to how the timeline was actually derived back when the church was trying to calculate it, you'd know that the probable estimated birth date of Jesus is not in fact AD 1, but closer to AD 4-7. So not only is your logic of latching on to a rounded year figure dumb as fuck, you're also ignorant of the actual historical estimates of the guy you hold, without any evidence, to be the son of God.
2.18 billion is 10 decimal digits and you think God is a cat smiling and vanishing or whatever?
The number of people believing something to be true has no bearing on whether or not it actually is true.
The biblical claims of godhood/Jesus' supernatural origins and actions are without any historical or scientific evidence, so there's no reason whatsoever for a rational minded individual to take them as anything but fables and allegory, just like any other old myths.
This is not to say one cannot appreciate the teachings of the supposed character of Jesus, but again, just because you have 2 billion people believing that 2000 years ago the supernatural invisible ruler of the universe fathered himself from a virgin and then schemed to have himself executed as a sacrificial gift to himself to save us from the sin he himself implemented to begin with, does not mean any of this is true, empirical, or logical.
I did none of the things you listed and I do not know where you got the idea I did. Of course we'll discover new sources of materials in all likeliness, but that doesn't mean it's a good strategy to simply always assume technology/new sources will solve the issue.
Take the oil for example: yes, it's entirely possible we'll figure out a way to survive once the viable sources of oil are extracted, in fact I'd even go on to say it's likely. However one does not get to logically jump from this to "peak oil is not a concern", when the fact is we currently do not have viable solutions for it that're proven effective on a global scale. There are certainly options with which research is being made, such as artificially creating oil from other materials, different sort of biofuels etc etc.. but none of these are as of yet at the level on which they can realistically replace the current oil industry. Hopefully they will be by the time the transition has to be made, but we don't get to declare that as of yet-
The ozone hole, is an appeal to authority. An authority that regularly makes false statements as demonstrated by my links.
No, it's based on observable science and measurements. If you think only a scientific source which has done 0 errors is trustworthy, then you can off hand discredit all science, because there is no such source. Again, as far as I know the data about the current status of the ozone layer, ie. the total diminishing of it having halted and the ozone layer slowly recovering, are things widely supported by climatologists. If you have actual data saying otherwise, please provide it and we can continue the discussion. Saying "these dudes have made mistakes before therefore this is wrong", without providing any sort of factual refutation of the data itself does not invalidate scientific research.
Simple question why is the ozone still there why does it still grow in the winter and shrink in the summer ?
Because like everything else in the climate, it too varies also based on weather. This shouldn't be that hard to grasp: it's not as if the scientists are claiming all changes in the ozone layer are caused by man made activity, but that our previous activity was making the dissipation of ozone worse. Seasonal variation is to be expected, but what we need to be looking for is the averages over time. Those were falling previously and have now stabilized with the banning of the ozone depleting chemicals, and are expected to rise back to their previous levels within a couple of decades.
Any reasonable examination you have to conclude it was always there and it wasn't noticed until people started studying the polar upper atmosphere in a way that would detect it.
No, any reasonable examination would conclude that we must not look at complex systems such as the climate/atmosphere as being only affected by weather or man made activity but rather understand that as both of those can and do release chemicals which affect the ozone layer over time, both of those can therefore affect its condition, a conclusion in fact supported by measurements and laboratory experiments.
As for the population bomb, I tried to explain to you that I do not in fact, think that the population growth will lead to any sort of mass catastrophe. This is why I do not consider myself a Malthusian or neo-Malthusian. At the same time, I think it's sensible to recognize that the increase in population will unavoidably cause massive challenges especially in the oarts of the globe where it is most rapid. You can of course already find examples of this in densely populated areas: pollution, slums, etc.. these things are bound to get worse as we have more and more people concentrated on certain areas.
This should be obvious to anyone, and I do not think that alone makes one a Malthusian. My original point was that just because we haven't had mass starvation does not mean that the population growth is without its issues.
I like my science with less politics and less people screaming doom you must do this, that way so they can make money off of it.
Again, if you have data contradicting the things the report says about the ozone levels and the estimates I'll gladly look into it, but just saying "it's by the IPCC therey it must be false" is faulty logic and you know it.
So new sources of oil and oil products don't count because ?????
I didn't say the do not count. The original issue raised was peak oil, ie. the running out of natural deposits of oil. This is an undenianble fact for which we have to look for solutions. Artificially manufactured oil(s) are one of those possible answers, but not necessarily the best/only one.
The point was again that the original post was implying peak oil is not a nconcern, and I'm saying it is. Again, this does not mean I think it's an insurmountable issue, but it is something we need solutions on, as your link itself proves
Seriously you need to learn what a strawman is so you can build better ones.
I wasn't making a straw man, you just misunderstood what I was trying to argue. I
My first thought is Malthus is into his third century of being wrong, but still people think it makes them look intelligent to wring their hands and repeat what he said.
Where did I say anything about Malthus? Malthus argued we'd run out of food, and that's proved to be wrong consistently for the majority of humans. I never said or argued that reaching 10 billion people will cause large amounts of people to die, but there's no doubt it'll cause issues. Increased need for energy and the rising standard of living across the globe present new challenges environmentally and economically.
To equivocate any such argument to Malthus and just waive it off is dishonest. It's not just about food or water - although both have their challenges in certain parts of the world - it's about trying to provide a decent standard of living for 10 billion people when we cannot even properly do it for 7. I'm not saying it's impossible, not by a long shot, but it's definitely a challenge.
As someone else commented the "Ozone Hole was there before we were using CFCs" We have cut our use down to nearly nothing and it is still there. Someone who was objective, would have to come to the conclusion that it is a natural phenomena independent of CFC use.
This is just wrong. Certainly there are natural causes contributing to ozone depletion as well, but we know for a fact these chemicals increase the depletion. This is something that can and has been prioved in a lab, which is what lead to the ban to begin with. The reason it's still there is because it takes time for the chemicals we managed to pump into the atmosphere to clear out. But the depletion itself has largely stopped, and the situation is estimated to improve over time. Quoting the appropriate section of wiki:
"A 2005 IPCC review of ozone observations and model calculations concluded that the global amount of ozone has now approximately stabilized. Although considerable variability is expected from year to year, including in polar regions where depletion is largest, the ozone layer is expected to begin to recover in coming decades due to declining ozone-depleting substance concentrations, assuming full compliance with the Montreal Protocol.
A 2005 IPCC review of ozone observations and model calculations concluded that the global amount of ozone has now approximately stabilized. Although considerable variability is expected from year to year, including in polar regions where depletion is largest, the ozone layer is expected to begin to recover in coming decades due to declining ozone-depleting substance concentrations, assuming full compliance with the Montreal Protocol."
You obviously have done little to no reading on the actual science behind ozone depletiona nd CFS if you think they have no connection.
Well why yes.
I'm well ware of the different processes and methods to manufacture oil from different sources, and those are certainly something to look into, but again, it doesn't negate the fact that natural deposits of fossil fuels are limited and we cannot ignore this. If anything it backs up my point: if we didn't need to worry about running out of oil, technologies such as this would not be investigated or needed.
The population of the world is still rising, and by any estimates will keep rising until at least 10 billion inhabitants, and the limited resources we have are not growing at an equal pace, so this is still an issue.
Ozone hole
Ozone depletion is a genuine threat, and the ozone hole is one of the few examples of environmental dangers that was actually tackled by agreeing globally to ban the use of CFS andf other ozone depleting gases. If it wasn't for these actions, we'd be facing a lot more issues with regards to added UV radiation.
Peak Oil
Unless you've found a endless source of oil, this too is still an issue. It makes no sense to ignore the fact that oil and other fossil fuels will inevitably run put when designing the long term fuel and energy policies around the world. Throwing one's arms up and going "Ha, see, this limited resource is not running out quite as quickly as we thought, no reason to worry about it then" is idiotic. Oil is a finite resource, and one we rely on heavily across a multitude of fields, so its scarcity is definitely something we need to plan ahead for.
So I don't get it, you listed 3 ongoing problems 1 of which has sort of been solved by adopting smarter policies in manufacturing and you expect this to prove that we shouldn't listen to science? What the fuck man?
So in cases where their is no doubt you feel it is okay? Take the Boston Bomber for example.
No, I'm not, as like I said I do not believe the justice system should hold the power to kill anyone, as I believe even criminals have the right to be alive if they're successfully captured.
As I was trying to say arguments can be made for both sides.
Certainly they can, I just do not agree with the argumentation of the other side.
I never take joy in any death but I can see the need at times for such an event to happen.
As I said, in the form of the police having to use deadly force, certainly. Whereas the justice system, not so much.
So if a someone has taken hostages and has killed a few of them an officer shooting the gunman is immoral?
I was talking specifically about trials and the capital punishment. If you read my next response to him you'll note that I agree there are situations wherein use of lethal force is justified to neutralize someone who's an immediate threat to others around him.
This is an entirely different issue because we're talking about what to do with the people who have been caught and detained.
It can be argued that some people are to dangerous to risk ever letting out of the prison system or ever risk them escaping.
Yes, both of those thing can be argued, and the first one is most assuredly true in some cases. However, the main argument I've been making the whole time is that the existence of capital punishment creates a situation in which sooner or later innocent people will die at the hands of the state, because evn the lengthy appeals process is not perfect by any means.
To me, this alone is enough to keep the death penalty banned forever. I'll take the risk of a murderer escaping prison over the state accidentally killing someone who's done nothing wrong.
As to keeping someone alive simply on the off chance that there was a shadow of a doubt... again, I'm not imprisoning people at all unless I have confidence in the system.
At all.
Having confidence in the system is one thing, of course there needs to be confidence in the justice system. However, no model or system of justice is perfect. We know people get wrongly convicted. That's just a fact of being human, errors happen.
This is not something one can get rid of, so it needs to be taken into consideration when setting up the system. We know a certain percentage of people who end up in jail or in death row are innocent, and we have to account for this possibility somehow.
Now as I said, the only way to make absolutely sure no innocents ever get executed by the state is to not have executions at all. This is why it has become the norm of justice in the most of the rest of the world outside the US.
You either have confidence in the system or you don't.
Having confidence in the system does not mean one has to at the same time believe/assume and act as if the system is flawless and makes no erroneous judgements ever.
If you convict, then you need to own it. If you don't then let him go.
Yes, and if you later find out you've convicted wrongly, you need to equally own up to it and let him go. If you execute and execute wrongly, you've just killed an innocent man and there's no recourse you can offer him/her whatsoever.
Give him to me and if he did terrible things then there is a good chance I'm going to put him down. So... do you care about this precious human life enough to save it?
No I won't and yes I do. Which is precisely why we do not extradite people to states and nations in which they might face the capital punishment, and neither do most other countries in the European Union.
As to capital punishment being too expensive, not really. It only expensive because the cases have about a million appeals and people on death row draw it out endlessly even if they're guilty as sin because it means they stay alive longer.
How come then, even as a result of this massive process you have people who are innocent being released from death row? Clearly the system is dysfucntional in that even with the 'million appeals' it is not successful in rooting out all of the innocent people, and you want to make it simpler? Remember, all of these people have been convicted originally 'beyond reasonable doubt', and all of them were 'guilty as sin' before it was discovered that they actually weren't.
I'll wait 12 months AFTER conviction. That is generous and patient. I am agreeing to hold a man convicted beyond a shadow of a doubt for 12 months on the chance that some new evidence will come up
Most of the people who have been released as innocent have been released far, far after 12 months in death row, so clearly drawing a line at 12 months will only serve to increase the amount of people being wrongfully executed and make the issue worse.
See, my response to your notion that I can't kill him because his life is sacred is that I'm going to put him on a plane and send him to your country. You can take care of him.
You can kill him, it's your country and your laws. I'm saying that I do not agree with those laws, and would not turn over a man to be executed. If you can somehow convince the US authorities to ship the people on death row to Europe because your sense of humanity is at the level of a bronze aged tribesmen sure I'll take 'em. Won't be holding my breath though.
And to conclude, you have not convinced me that you have a legal system that is capable of not imprisoning innocent people. If you can't keep yourself from imprisoning innocent people then you really shouldn't be
As to nothing beneficial being achieved by killing someone... what is beneficial about keeping them alive?
The possibility of them being released if they turn out to be innocent of the crime they were sentenced of. This is the huge issue which you have been consistently neglecting because you choose to place higher value on killing convicted criminals than the collateral damage in the form of innocent people losing their life at the hands of the justice system, for whatever illogical reason. Also really, if there is no need to kill them to prevent them from doing harm - as there isn't in a situation in which you already have them detained - then there really is no good reason to kill them.
As to your statement that you're comfortable with the courts making life and death choices... okay. Then we have nothing more to discuss on the issue. The courts are competent to execute. Next issue.
Okay here's where I got to correct myself a bit, as I explained it badly in my previous response. I come from a country which has neither the death penalty nor the concept of "life without the possibility of parole", so I am not, indeed, fine with courts making life and death choices. What I meant to convey is that I recognize that the courts have the authority to incarcerate people they deem guilty to safeguard the society from crime, but also to try and rehabilitate the individual if and when possible. If not possible, then I recognize that there are cases in which the person may have to remain incarcerated for the rest of his/her life, but that is not something that I think the court has the power to decide once and for all, ie. the person will always be given a chance to seek freedom.
If he leaves the city and doesn't come back then that is that. Far less harmful than incarceration.
We've come a long way since the time just dumping our criminals to our neighbors was considered acceptable.
If you're not comfortable making nasty choices then you have no business throwing people in jail for years on end either.
I never said nor implied I'm uncomfortable making nasty choices, but for the millionth time killing someone who's already detained is not the same choice as imprisoning them, and I believing the latter is sometimes necessary for the safety of people in general, while the former is not. This really shouldn't be that hard to understand.
There is no way to do this without hurting people. There is no lesser evil
Yes there is Again, in a hypothetical situation where I'd be wrongly accused of a major crime, I'd very much prefer being incarcerated to being killed. A more clear cut example of a a "lesser evil" is hard to imagine.
There is no good served by keeping a mass murderer alive in a jail cell, spending perhaps millions of dollars on his medical bills or whatever else.
Again, as said before it's cheaper to keep him alive, and making capital punishment less expensive would make it even more likely to take innocent lives, so this is really a non-argument.
He isn't entitled to it.
Again, this is your opinion. I believe everyone's right to life is irrevocable. That is to say, the only context in which someone can justifiably be killed by the state is if they cannot be captured. Once they're captured, the state can limit their freedom to keep the rest of us safe, but they cannot, however, take their life.
He has been found guilty by a jury of his peers. If that later turns out to be false we'll look into that.
You're sidestepping my entire argument. The point is precisely that once you execute someone, you cannot 'look into that' later and then release them, whereas with life imprisonment, if 'beyond shadow of a doubt' fails and the guy is indeed innoc
First, we have various law breakers that have to be killed to be brought down. You can't even arrest them. So you don't try. You kill them.
This is a different situation and I addressed it already. Yes, there are cases when lethal force is required to neutralize someone wo is a threat to others, nobody is denying that. My argument was and is that executions are needless killings, as nothing beneficial is achieved via them as compared to life imprisonment for reasons I have already listed.
The courts officiate over life and death all the time with or without a death penalty. IF you're saying they are unsuitable to make such judgements then I question why they're doing it all the time.
No, I'm not saying they're unsuitable to make such judgements but I'm saying that because the system makes mistakes, it's better if those mistakes (that are inevitable) lead to innocent people being incarcerated rather than killed, I think I was fairly clear on this. I'm also saying that since data shows that executing people costs more and doesn't help keep the crime rate down any more than life imprisonment does, it doesn't benefit the society at all.
You feel you have a right to lock me a box for 50 years but you don't have a right to shoot me? How do you figure that?
No, I don't have the right to do any of those things. But if you do something which proves you to be a danger to me and other people around you, then we have to make sure that danger is controlled. Incarceration is least harmful to the individual in question, and most people would rather be alive and incarcerated rather than dead. Hence most nations have opted to discard the capital punishment. If you argue that you'd rather be dead than incarcerated for life, that's alright, you're within your rights to self-terminate and I think people serving a life sentence should be given that option.
As to how I justify killing someone... again... justify imprisoning someone for 50 years
See above.
That is full disclosure. I'm letting you peak inside my brain. That is what I see
And why that is I do not knoq, because it should be obvious to anyone that killing someone and imprisoning them are not equivocal things, nor should any rational person treat them as such.
Ask any culture outside of our privileged bubble what they think of this issue and they're going to come down the on the side of executions
Except they won't. The countries and cultures employing capital punishment have long since been in the minority in the world. The vast majority of people globally oppose capital punishment.
I don't understand how killing a dude is going to make him less likely to unsavory things.
That is not what I said. I said that the capital punsihment doesn't work in reducing crime. I meant it overall. Areas with capital punishment have higher rates of violent crime than areas without it. It doesn't work a sa deterrent. Again, surely it prevents the individual from doing more crimes, but so does life imprisonment and again, with zero risk of killing innocent people by accident.
But if that's the case then why not kill them? They're clearly damaged beyond all recovery and can't be allowed to remain in society. Why am I feeding this person?
It's cheaper to you to feed and clothe said prisoenr for the rest of his life in prison than it is to go through the trouble of executing him, so the 'why am I feeding thisd person' argument makes no logical sense. You're achieving no enefit in killing them other than exacting vengeance; you're spending more of society's resources just for the sake of fulfilling a sense of revenge, which to me is outright stupid, no matter how 'beyond repair' this indicidual is,
There is no logical difference between execution and murder versus imprisonment and kidnapping.
Okay, but if one is of the opinion (as I am) that murder is always wrong, then saying "well we held this trail so now this is legal" does not change the moral argument one bit.
I do not believe any state anywhere should be i the business of killing its citizenry except in cases where it's absolutely required to protect others from harm. It's as simple as that.
If the state LACKS evidence, they resort to imprisonment next.
So? How does this justify the use of death penalty again? Sure, the state can imprison people more easily than it can execute them, but this doesn't make executions reasonable or acceptable.
In any case, I'd love to hear why executions are illegitimate in any kind of logical or rational sense. The only position that is going to argue against an execution is going to be an ideological one.
This is absolute bullshit. There are several rational reasons to be opposed to the capital punishment: a) It doesn't work in reducing crime b) In the cases where wrongful convictions occur (as they will) the sentences are irrevocable, leading to the cruel fact that the State will sooner or later kill an innocent person (and it already has) c) Ir costs more than a life in prison, while achieving no added benefits to the society at large, in fact it only has downsides
Really the only purpose death penalty achieves is to quench the thirst for revenge that people have, and the basis of any justice system should not be revenge, but rather sensible laws and punishments which help reduce crime and keep the society safe. But even if you disagree with most of this for some reason, b alone should be enough to make any rational human being realize why capital punishment has been abandoned in most countries in the world: even if the margin of error is extremely small, as long as it is greater than 0 (and it is, according to some studies quoted here it's as high as 4 %), it means that sooner or later the state will execute an innocent person. Now, that is something that should never happen. Yes, wrongful prison convictions happen too, but even if one spends 20 years in jail for a crime one did not commit, it is superior to being dead..
So yes, you do have opinions too, but your opinions are based on faulty reasoning and a very twisted notion of what the justice system should do (hint: the answer should never be "kill innocent people by accident)..
A land mine is an autonomous weapon, that has the following logic: 'Is trigger depressed? If so, detonate'.
A land mine is not autonomous anymore than a hole covered with leaves and a sharp stick at the bottom is "autonomous". A land mine is a mechanism, a trigger, which will do one thing if acted upon, ie. if stepped on. The landmine will not suddenly move on its own, or decide that it will not explode if the person stepping on it isn't an adult etc.
Autonomy implies the capability of a weapon to affect its own behavior, a mine has none of that.
today we'd like to give these jobs to really expensive machines instead of people
The machines are capable of working 24/7/365 (minus the maintanance hours) for no pay. In the long run, the reason menial jobs are being replaced by machines is that in many cases the machines are capable of doing the same job with far less cost per hour, and in the end that's what matters, not how much the machine costs out front.
right at the moment when jobs for people are disappearing
Jobs for people aren't disappearing, they're changing. The demand for low-skill physical labor has been going steadily down since the 1700s because as I already said: if you can do the job with a machine, chances are it's going to be cheaper and faster in the long run. At the same time as many jobs have disappeared, new ones have emerged and keep emerging.
we'd rather interact with machines, because you don't have to say "Thank You" to a machine.
Thank you has nothing to do with it. The two possible scenarios for me to charge my local travel card (ie. train ticket) here in Helsinki are as follows:
1) Go to a kiosk or a store, wait in line, hand the card to the person and state the amount of money/time I want entered, wait for the person to do that, then pay and take the card or 2) go to an ticket vending machine, put the card in, press literally 4 buttons to renew my last purchase (I usually buy a month at a time), slap in my debit card, punch in the pin and be done
The fact of the matter is, there's usually way less waiting in line at the machine, and the actual buying itself takes less time. I've no problem telling thank you to the sale's lady, but in most situations using the machine is just more handy unless I happen to have some other business to take care of at the store at the same time.
The same is true for many, many services that used to be handled by clerks: I'll rather do my check-in at the airport or the harbor via a machine because it's easier and quicker, no need to go stand in line to buy concert tickets as I can buy them online and print them out or just have 'em read the QR-code from the phone screen, etc...
So unfortunately no, I cannot agree with this" you don't have to thank the machine" -BS. The machine gives me the exact same end result as I'd get from a person, except it usually does it faster. Unless the product/service I'm buying is so complicated that I need a guy there to help me figure out what I need to get, having a person there brings no additional benefit for me as a customer.
As others have already mentioned, the summary is blatantly wrong. What's actually happening is that as of 2016, this sort of topic-based teaching will become mandatory for all elementary schools for at least once a year and the schools get the freedom to decide how long these projects will last. So yes, while this is a rather big change in a way, it's not like they're doing away with subjects altogether, not at all,
Are you sure, it's the COUNTRY that absolutely loves to censor stuff - and not its (elected) government?
The elected government is a result of the people. Turkey is a mostly functioning democracy and they have voted Erdogan into power twice now (well, he wasn't voted for rpime minister but his party was, and later he was elected presisent despite his actions as prime minister). Now, as someone who used to date a secular liberal Turkish woman (who at the time lived in Turkey) a few years back, trust me, I'm more than aware that not all of Turkey or its people support such policies, but unfortunately at this point it seems that most, even the majority does (although in fairness sake, he won the presidential elections with a very narrow margin, just over 51 % if the votes, so the country was/is split on the middle
Erdogan has gained popularity because he has done some good to the Turkish economy and improved general infrastructure etc. This is all fine and well. Unfortunately the man is also religious bigot and a conservative who's doing his best to slowly dismantle the secular basis which Turkey has maintained ever since Ataturk. There was recently a case of a woman being jailed for having the audacity to stand on a quran. A guy was jailed and is facing charges for (literally) "insulting the president".... Not to mention he handled the riots, the attempted banning of youtube etc etc.... He's an authoritarian through and through when it comes to social issues and rights.
So either the majority of Turks living in their native country do not realize this, do not care about this, or are actively in favor of it (and outside the larger cities there are still large areas were this sort of conservative islamic rhetoric is popular as hell). Either way the populace is not entirely to blame for his actions, but when you have over half the people voting in favor of a guy who has a track record of favoring banning things he does not agree with, well the country is not exactly blameless either.
Gold is market money, it has intrinsic value first of all, before it is even money
The idea that anything has "intrinsic value" is so badly flawed I don't know why this myth persist. Gold and other metals have practical uses, which gives it some additional value yes, but assuming that gold will retain its value, or in fact have any value whatsoever, under all conditions is false.
USD used to be a meaningful reserve currency before 1971
I don't know exactly what your definition of 'meaningful' is, but approximately 60 % of the world's currency reserves are still in USD, with the Euro being the only one coming even close. I'd call that rather meaningful. So yes, the dominance of the dollar has shifted a bit (which mind you, is not an altogether negative thing either), but dollar is still the go-to reserve currency of the world.
Of course they can afford to pay more, I wasn't implying that. I was just saying that unless this starts to become a regular issue I doubt they'll do it whereas larger banks really have no choice.
Slashdot Mirror
Erm, except for the fact that Sweden and Germany are both socialistic as well, Sweden even remarkably close in many ways to us. I agree that the model(s) of taxation here need to be updated, but you should realize that when other countries with similar social policies (single payer healthcare and education) are doing massively better,, the problem is not the socialism itself, the problem is the implementation of thereof.
In addition, keep in mind that the economic downturn comes as a result of several right-leaning coalition cabinets that have done nothing to improve this: they cut gignatic amount of corporate taxes few years back which did nothing except increase to profits of corporations but ended up creating no jobs, or for that matter increasing exports. And now they're basically re-doing the same thing: blaming the problems on costs of production which is not a primary factor in the dilemma. We're already at Germany's level or even below in costs of production. The problem is structural: ever since Nokia exploded and took nearly a fourth of the export sector away, there simply haven't been enough large global companies to come and take its place.
So to summarize: is the economy broken at the moment? Yes. Should the taxation laws be re-examined to make both corporate and private taxation simpler? Yes. But is the economic downturn because of "socialism" in general? No.
Maybe it's because I've been raised in what the Americans would call a 'socialist' country (Finland) but it always irks me to see capitalism and socialism thrown about as some sort of polar opposites, or capitalism in general being talked about as if it's some single clearly defined ideology.
There are many versions of capitalist economies, and some of them are socialistic. In fact, most all of them are that to a degree, as even the US has a large public sector. Capitalism at its core means nothing more or less than the private ownership of the means of production. If the question was framed "Do you support the right of individuals to own goods provided they pay their share of taxes on them?", the answers would look quite different I reckon.
So the problem is not capitalism as such, the problem is they paying of the fair share of taxes. Neo-liberalism and the fact that the US sliding to the right continuously for the past decades has created this tilted landscape in which gigantic corporations and massively rich individuals have been uplifted to a status in which they're quite openly above governments: bribery and outright buying of bills via lobbying has been made legal (and relatively cheap compared to the profits of these companies), taxes can be circumvented easily if you're wealthy, and megacorps are allowed to wreck havoc to the environment and cause global economic meltdowns without any risk of anyone facing any jail time or even significant fines. They're given fines which are slaps on the wrist compared to the kind of money they can make by continuing illegal operations. To them, it's just a cost of doing business, and the cycle repeats.
So is that capitalism? Well, yes, yes it is, but it's not the one and only true implementation of capitalism, in fact I'd argue it's one of the absolute worst implementations of it possible. It's a corporatocracy/plutocracy. And unless you happen to be one of the chosen few who actually benefits from such a system, there's no rational reason for anyone, on the right or on the left, to support such a model. Even a true conservative should realize that the government allowing legislation as well as elections to be sold to the highest bidder skews the market as it means whoever has the most cash can dictate the rules. That's not how a fair market is supposed to operate, regardless of what one thinks of socialist income redistribution policies.
The tittle would be more appropriately stated: "A majority of millenials now oppose free market/laissez-faire capitalism." And that's only a good thing.
Assange likely has very little to do with this, although the Russians will probably be delighted if people think so. If it is the case that the attacks originated from Russia, then this is likely to be just the latest addition in the information warfare campaign that Russia is waging across Europe. It's very much within Russia's interest at the moment to play as much with the migrant crisis and the media as they possibly can to sow political distrust. They've been running their own 'news' channels (Sputnik) with English language content but additionally they're supporting the so called "anti-media" or "underground media" sites which are basically anti-immigration/anti-EU blogs that run hearsay or entirely made up stories mixed in with bits and pieces of actual news.
Russia does not give a flying fuck about Assange, or Snowden for that matter. They might say they do, but again, do you think Russia for example is not doing exactly the same type of surveillance on its people than what Snowden revealed in the US? Hell, this is the country in which people have recently been jailed both for being openly atheist as well as for criticizing the invasion of Crimea or calling for a change of leadership.
So what are the odds that this country launches a cyber attack against a north-European nation because they care so much about justice and the rights of individuals for a fair trial, or any of that? Slim. Extremely slim.
This is geopolitics, plain and simple. Divide and conquer etc.
Wow, americans straw manning universal education/health care arguments by the age old 'nothings free' -argument. How surprising.
We are already paying for it, dumb ass. We've just decided that it should be collectively and publicly funded because one needs not to look very far to understand that limiting education chances based on the income of the person/their family is not a solution.
I want my fellow citizens to be able to get higher education and health care and other base necessities of modern day life regardless of whether or not they were born to a rich family. And I want people to continue to graduate without student debt weighing them down so they can actually spend the money they make and thus help the economy. This system works, and has worked in here and across Europe for decades. it's never been free, but it's still cheaper, per person, than any of the privatized university models.
I'm paying for my past education and the education of the coming generations by paying across the board higher taxes than most people in say, the US- And I'm completely alright with that, as are most of the people here, so shut the fuck up.
You clearly do not understand the context or the background to this, so allow me to explain why this is relevant. Firstly, the university of Helsinki is THE university here. Sure, we have a few other major ones and they're decent, but we're a nation of 5,4 million people, the university of Helsinki is the bedrock and pinnacle of our much praised educational system. Gutting it means they're making a huge dent in the higher education of the entire country. Secondly, the cuts are nationwide, they're cutting across the board from higher education, the university of Helsinki is just getting the hardest hit as it is the biggest.
But most importantly, this is about much more than the simple cuts themselves. This is about politicians fucking us over in every way imaginable and betraying their own principles on which they ran for the parliament in a record time. We had elections last year, and one of the biggest promises made by the winning centre-right coalition was that no matter how tough cuts they'd have to make, they'd stay off the education. Our current prime minister and minister of treasury even posed in twitter pictures with students with cards saying 'no cuts'.
35 days. It took 35 days from the elections to them start suggesting cuts. Then they introduced tuition fees for exchange students coming from outside the Union. Now, this raised concern since the worry was that once the concept of tuition fees has been introduced, the next step would be to start suggesting everyone should pay them. This is a major deal as universities have always been free to attend to for those who have the grades to get in. Without free universities, we likely wouldn't have risen from a fairly backwater nation that suffered a civil war and the 2nd world war to a first world post-industrialized welfare state in less than a century. Without free higher education it's likely we would never have produced people such as Torvalds, companies such as Nokia and Rovio etc. Free higher education is at the very core of what this nation is supposed to be built on, which is why it is in our constitution:
When they announced the cuts they promised they would never expand the tuition fees. Yet, unsurprisingly, one MP just proposed that today: the introduction of nationwide tuition fees and simultaneous cutting of student benefits. At the same time they cut the amount of corporate taxes MORE than they cut universities (the total combined cuts to education are about 600 million euros). They're literally trying to wipe their ass on the constitution that we have, pissing on a fundamental cornerstone of well being in our country, and lying through their teeth while doing so. They say they have to do these cuts to save the economy. But destroying the basis for all intellectual capital in this country is not going to do anything else than destroy the economy in the long term. But they do not seem to care. And to make matters worse, the universities appear to have given up any sort of resistance to this and are allowing this all top happen with very little protest.
In my life so far, never have I been so angry and sad at the same time, nor have I EVER felt this betrayed and fucked over by our elected representatives. They're a fucking national disgrac
Rest in bits eternally.
As a Finn, I couldn't agree with you more. Netflix has shot up interest in VPN services across the board. The majority of my friends who use netflix here use a VPN to access the american catalog, myself included, because the Finnish Netflix selection is poor in comparison. However my friends are mostly male nerds in their 20s and 30s, so obviously there's selection bias. When F-secure launched their new service that included VPN, one of the main features people were talking about was the ability to easily watch Netflix and other streaming services as an 'american'.
I've been a continuous customer almost since Netflix launched here, but when this goes through I might have to halt the subscription, because I've seen pretty much everything worth watching on the Finnish side of Netflix, so it's just not worth the money anymore. It will not destroy the company but it will severely affect their business.
Lol. First of all, I was rounding the number because the ex act number of claimed years is irrelevant to the point that I was making, which is that there's no evidence that any of the supposed miraculous claims occurred. Do you obviously believe I am so stupid I don't know what year we're living in, or what the Gregorian calendar is supposedly based on? Really, are you that dense?
Secondly, if you had any clue as to how the timeline was actually derived back when the church was trying to calculate it, you'd know that the probable estimated birth date of Jesus is not in fact AD 1, but closer to AD 4-7. So not only is your logic of latching on to a rounded year figure dumb as fuck, you're also ignorant of the actual historical estimates of the guy you hold, without any evidence, to be the son of God.
The number of people believing something to be true has no bearing on whether or not it actually is true.
The biblical claims of godhood/Jesus' supernatural origins and actions are without any historical or scientific evidence, so there's no reason whatsoever for a rational minded individual to take them as anything but fables and allegory, just like any other old myths.
This is not to say one cannot appreciate the teachings of the supposed character of Jesus, but again, just because you have 2 billion people believing that 2000 years ago the supernatural invisible ruler of the universe fathered himself from a virgin and then schemed to have himself executed as a sacrificial gift to himself to save us from the sin he himself implemented to begin with, does not mean any of this is true, empirical, or logical.
I did none of the things you listed and I do not know where you got the idea I did. Of course we'll discover new sources of materials in all likeliness, but that doesn't mean it's a good strategy to simply always assume technology/new sources will solve the issue.
Take the oil for example: yes, it's entirely possible we'll figure out a way to survive once the viable sources of oil are extracted, in fact I'd even go on to say it's likely. However one does not get to logically jump from this to "peak oil is not a concern", when the fact is we currently do not have viable solutions for it that're proven effective on a global scale. There are certainly options with which research is being made, such as artificially creating oil from other materials, different sort of biofuels etc etc.. but none of these are as of yet at the level on which they can realistically replace the current oil industry. Hopefully they will be by the time the transition has to be made, but we don't get to declare that as of yet-
No, it's based on observable science and measurements. If you think only a scientific source which has done 0 errors is trustworthy, then you can off hand discredit all science, because there is no such source. Again, as far as I know the data about the current status of the ozone layer, ie. the total diminishing of it having halted and the ozone layer slowly recovering, are things widely supported by climatologists. If you have actual data saying otherwise, please provide it and we can continue the discussion. Saying "these dudes have made mistakes before therefore this is wrong", without providing any sort of factual refutation of the data itself does not invalidate scientific research.
Because like everything else in the climate, it too varies also based on weather. This shouldn't be that hard to grasp: it's not as if the scientists are claiming all changes in the ozone layer are caused by man made activity, but that our previous activity was making the dissipation of ozone worse. Seasonal variation is to be expected, but what we need to be looking for is the averages over time. Those were falling previously and have now stabilized with the banning of the ozone depleting chemicals, and are expected to rise back to their previous levels within a couple of decades.
No, any reasonable examination would conclude that we must not look at complex systems such as the climate/atmosphere as being only affected by weather or man made activity but rather understand that as both of those can and do release chemicals which affect the ozone layer over time, both of those can therefore affect its condition, a conclusion in fact supported by measurements and laboratory experiments.
As for the population bomb, I tried to explain to you that I do not in fact, think that the population growth will lead to any sort of mass catastrophe. This is why I do not consider myself a Malthusian or neo-Malthusian. At the same time, I think it's sensible to recognize that the increase in population will unavoidably cause massive challenges especially in the oarts of the globe where it is most rapid. You can of course already find examples of this in densely populated areas: pollution, slums, etc.. these things are bound to get worse as we have more and more people concentrated on certain areas.
This should be obvious to anyone, and I do not think that alone makes one a Malthusian. My original point was that just because we haven't had mass starvation does not mean that the population growth is without its issues.
Again, if you have data contradicting the things the report says about the ozone levels and the estimates I'll gladly look into it, but just saying "it's by the IPCC therey it must be false" is faulty logic and you know it.
I didn't say the do not count. The original issue raised was peak oil, ie. the running out of natural deposits of oil. This is an undenianble fact for which we have to look for solutions. Artificially manufactured oil(s) are one of those possible answers, but not necessarily the best/only one.
The point was again that the original post was implying peak oil is not a nconcern, and I'm saying it is. Again, this does not mean I think it's an insurmountable issue, but it is something we need solutions on, as your link itself proves
I wasn't making a straw man, you just misunderstood what I was trying to argue. I
Where did I say anything about Malthus? Malthus argued we'd run out of food, and that's proved to be wrong consistently for the majority of humans. I never said or argued that reaching 10 billion people will cause large amounts of people to die, but there's no doubt it'll cause issues. Increased need for energy and the rising standard of living across the globe present new challenges environmentally and economically.
To equivocate any such argument to Malthus and just waive it off is dishonest. It's not just about food or water - although both have their challenges in certain parts of the world - it's about trying to provide a decent standard of living for 10 billion people when we cannot even properly do it for 7. I'm not saying it's impossible, not by a long shot, but it's definitely a challenge.
This is just wrong. Certainly there are natural causes contributing to ozone depletion as well, but we know for a fact these chemicals increase the depletion. This is something that can and has been prioved in a lab, which is what lead to the ban to begin with. The reason it's still there is because it takes time for the chemicals we managed to pump into the atmosphere to clear out. But the depletion itself has largely stopped, and the situation is estimated to improve over time. Quoting the appropriate section of wiki:
"A 2005 IPCC review of ozone observations and model calculations concluded that the global amount of ozone has now approximately stabilized. Although considerable variability is expected from year to year, including in polar regions where depletion is largest, the ozone layer is expected to begin to recover in coming decades due to declining ozone-depleting substance concentrations, assuming full compliance with the Montreal Protocol.
A 2005 IPCC review of ozone observations and model calculations concluded that the global amount of ozone has now approximately stabilized. Although considerable variability is expected from year to year, including in polar regions where depletion is largest, the ozone layer is expected to begin to recover in coming decades due to declining ozone-depleting substance concentrations, assuming full compliance with the Montreal Protocol."
Source:
The IPCC Report
You obviously have done little to no reading on the actual science behind ozone depletiona nd CFS if you think they have no connection.
I'm well ware of the different processes and methods to manufacture oil from different sources, and those are certainly something to look into, but again, it doesn't negate the fact that natural deposits of fossil fuels are limited and we cannot ignore this. If anything it backs up my point: if we didn't need to worry about running out of oil, technologies such as this would not be investigated or needed.
The population of the world is still rising, and by any estimates will keep rising until at least 10 billion inhabitants, and the limited resources we have are not growing at an equal pace, so this is still an issue.
Ozone depletion is a genuine threat, and the ozone hole is one of the few examples of environmental dangers that was actually tackled by agreeing globally to ban the use of CFS andf other ozone depleting gases. If it wasn't for these actions, we'd be facing a lot more issues with regards to added UV radiation.
Unless you've found a endless source of oil, this too is still an issue. It makes no sense to ignore the fact that oil and other fossil fuels will inevitably run put when designing the long term fuel and energy policies around the world. Throwing one's arms up and going "Ha, see, this limited resource is not running out quite as quickly as we thought, no reason to worry about it then" is idiotic. Oil is a finite resource, and one we rely on heavily across a multitude of fields, so its scarcity is definitely something we need to plan ahead for.
So I don't get it, you listed 3 ongoing problems 1 of which has sort of been solved by adopting smarter policies in manufacturing and you expect this to prove that we shouldn't listen to science? What the fuck man?
No, I'm not, as like I said I do not believe the justice system should hold the power to kill anyone, as I believe even criminals have the right to be alive if they're successfully captured.
Certainly they can, I just do not agree with the argumentation of the other side.
As I said, in the form of the police having to use deadly force, certainly. Whereas the justice system, not so much.
I was talking specifically about trials and the capital punishment. If you read my next response to him you'll note that I agree there are situations wherein use of lethal force is justified to neutralize someone who's an immediate threat to others around him.
This is an entirely different issue because we're talking about what to do with the people who have been caught and detained.
Yes, both of those thing can be argued, and the first one is most assuredly true in some cases. However, the main argument I've been making the whole time is that the existence of capital punishment creates a situation in which sooner or later innocent people will die at the hands of the state, because evn the lengthy appeals process is not perfect by any means.
To me, this alone is enough to keep the death penalty banned forever. I'll take the risk of a murderer escaping prison over the state accidentally killing someone who's done nothing wrong.
Having confidence in the system is one thing, of course there needs to be confidence in the justice system. However, no model or system of justice is perfect. We know people get wrongly convicted. That's just a fact of being human, errors happen.
This is not something one can get rid of, so it needs to be taken into consideration when setting up the system. We know a certain percentage of people who end up in jail or in death row are innocent, and we have to account for this possibility somehow.
Now as I said, the only way to make absolutely sure no innocents ever get executed by the state is to not have executions at all. This is why it has become the norm of justice in the most of the rest of the world outside the US.
Having confidence in the system does not mean one has to at the same time believe/assume and act as if the system is flawless and makes no erroneous judgements ever.
Yes, and if you later find out you've convicted wrongly, you need to equally own up to it and let him go. If you execute and execute wrongly, you've just killed an innocent man and there's no recourse you can offer him/her whatsoever.
No I won't and yes I do. Which is precisely why we do not extradite people to states and nations in which they might face the capital punishment, and neither do most other countries in the European Union.
How come then, even as a result of this massive process you have people who are innocent being released from death row? Clearly the system is dysfucntional in that even with the 'million appeals' it is not successful in rooting out all of the innocent people, and you want to make it simpler? Remember, all of these people have been convicted originally 'beyond reasonable doubt', and all of them were 'guilty as sin' before it was discovered that they actually weren't.
Most of the people who have been released as innocent have been released far, far after 12 months in death row, so clearly drawing a line at 12 months will only serve to increase the amount of people being wrongfully executed and make the issue worse.
You can kill him, it's your country and your laws. I'm saying that I do not agree with those laws, and would not turn over a man to be executed. If you can somehow convince the US authorities to ship the people on death row to Europe because your sense of humanity is at the level of a bronze aged tribesmen sure I'll take 'em. Won't be holding my breath though.
The possibility of them being released if they turn out to be innocent of the crime they were sentenced of. This is the huge issue which you have been consistently neglecting because you choose to place higher value on killing convicted criminals than the collateral damage in the form of innocent people losing their life at the hands of the justice system, for whatever illogical reason. Also really, if there is no need to kill them to prevent them from doing harm - as there isn't in a situation in which you already have them detained - then there really is no good reason to kill them.
Okay here's where I got to correct myself a bit, as I explained it badly in my previous response. I come from a country which has neither the death penalty nor the concept of "life without the possibility of parole", so I am not, indeed, fine with courts making life and death choices. What I meant to convey is that I recognize that the courts have the authority to incarcerate people they deem guilty to safeguard the society from crime, but also to try and rehabilitate the individual if and when possible. If not possible, then I recognize that there are cases in which the person may have to remain incarcerated for the rest of his/her life, but that is not something that I think the court has the power to decide once and for all, ie. the person will always be given a chance to seek freedom.
We've come a long way since the time just dumping our criminals to our neighbors was considered acceptable.
I never said nor implied I'm uncomfortable making nasty choices, but for the millionth time killing someone who's already detained is not the same choice as imprisoning them, and I believing the latter is sometimes necessary for the safety of people in general, while the former
is not. This really shouldn't be that hard to understand.
Yes there is Again, in a hypothetical situation where I'd be wrongly accused of a major crime, I'd very much prefer being incarcerated to being killed. A more clear cut example of a a "lesser evil" is hard to imagine.
Again, as said before it's cheaper to keep him alive, and making capital punishment less expensive would make it even more likely to take innocent lives, so this is really a non-argument.
Again, this is your opinion. I believe everyone's right to life is irrevocable. That is to say, the only context in which someone can justifiably be killed by the state is if they cannot be captured. Once they're captured, the state can limit their freedom to keep the rest of us safe, but they cannot, however, take their life.
You're sidestepping my entire argument. The point is precisely that once you execute someone, you cannot 'look into that' later and then release them, whereas with life imprisonment, if 'beyond shadow of a doubt' fails and the guy is indeed innoc
This is a different situation and I addressed it already. Yes, there are cases when lethal force is required to neutralize someone wo is a threat to others, nobody is denying that. My argument was and is that executions are needless killings, as nothing beneficial is achieved via them as compared to life imprisonment for reasons I have already listed.
No, I'm not saying they're unsuitable to make such judgements but I'm saying that because the system makes mistakes, it's better if those mistakes (that are inevitable) lead to innocent people being incarcerated rather than killed, I think I was fairly clear on this. I'm also saying that since data shows that executing people costs more and doesn't help keep the crime rate down any more than life imprisonment does, it doesn't benefit the society at all.
No, I don't have the right to do any of those things. But if you do something which proves you to be a danger to me and other people around you, then we have to make sure that danger is controlled. Incarceration is least harmful to the individual in question, and most people would rather be alive and incarcerated rather than dead. Hence most nations have opted to discard the capital punishment. If you argue that you'd rather be dead than incarcerated for life, that's alright, you're within your rights to self-terminate and I think people serving a life sentence should be given that option.
See above.
And why that is I do not knoq, because it should be obvious to anyone that killing someone and imprisoning them are not equivocal things, nor should any rational person treat them as such.
Except they won't. The countries and cultures employing capital punishment have long since been in the minority in the world. The vast majority of people globally oppose capital punishment.
That is not what I said. I said that the capital punsihment doesn't work in reducing crime. I meant it overall. Areas with capital punishment have higher rates of violent crime than areas without it. It doesn't work a sa deterrent. Again, surely it prevents the individual from doing more crimes, but so does life imprisonment and again, with zero risk of killing innocent people by accident.
It's cheaper to you to feed and clothe said prisoenr for the rest of his life in prison than it is to go through the trouble of executing him, so the 'why am I feeding thisd person' argument makes no logical sense. You're achieving no enefit in killing them other than exacting vengeance; you're spending more of society's resources just for the sake of fulfilling a sense of revenge, which to me is outright stupid, no matter how 'beyond repair' this indicidual is,
Okay, but if one is of the opinion (as I am) that murder is always wrong, then saying "well we held this trail so now this is legal" does not change the moral argument one bit.
I do not believe any state anywhere should be i the business of killing its citizenry except in cases where it's absolutely required to protect others from harm. It's as simple as that.
So? How does this justify the use of death penalty again? Sure, the state can imprison people more easily than it can execute them, but this doesn't make executions reasonable or acceptable.
This is absolute bullshit. There are several rational reasons to be opposed to the capital punishment:
a) It doesn't work in reducing crime
b) In the cases where wrongful convictions occur (as they will) the sentences are irrevocable, leading to the cruel fact that the State will sooner or later kill an innocent person (and it already has)
c) Ir costs more than a life in prison, while achieving no added benefits to the society at large, in fact it only has downsides
Really the only purpose death penalty achieves is to quench the thirst for revenge that people have, and the basis of any justice system should not be revenge, but rather sensible laws and punishments which help reduce crime and keep the society safe. But even if you disagree with most of this for some reason, b alone should be enough to make any rational human being realize why capital punishment has been abandoned in most countries in the world: even if the margin of error is extremely small, as long as it is greater than 0 (and it is, according to some studies quoted here it's as high as 4 %), it means that sooner or later the state will execute an innocent person. Now, that is something that should never happen. Yes, wrongful prison convictions happen too, but even if one spends 20 years in jail for a crime one did not commit, it is superior to being dead..
So yes, you do have opinions too, but your opinions are based on faulty reasoning and a very twisted notion of what the justice system should do (hint: the answer should never be "kill innocent people by accident)..
A land mine is not autonomous anymore than a hole covered with leaves and a sharp stick at the bottom is "autonomous". A land mine is a mechanism, a trigger, which will do one thing if acted upon, ie. if stepped on. The landmine will not suddenly move on its own, or decide that it will not explode if the person stepping on it isn't an adult etc.
Autonomy implies the capability of a weapon to affect its own behavior, a mine has none of that.
The machines are capable of working 24/7/365 (minus the maintanance hours) for no pay. In the long run, the reason menial jobs are being replaced by machines is that in many cases the machines are capable of doing the same job with far less cost per hour, and in the end that's what matters, not how much the machine costs out front.
Jobs for people aren't disappearing, they're changing. The demand for low-skill physical labor has been going steadily down since the 1700s because as I already said: if you can do the job with a machine, chances are it's going to be cheaper and faster in the long run. At the same time as many jobs have disappeared, new ones have emerged and keep emerging.
Thank you has nothing to do with it. The two possible scenarios for me to charge my local travel card (ie. train ticket) here in Helsinki are as follows:
1) Go to a kiosk or a store, wait in line, hand the card to the person and state the amount of money/time I want entered, wait for the person to do that, then pay and take the card
or
2) go to an ticket vending machine, put the card in, press literally 4 buttons to renew my last purchase (I usually buy a month at a time), slap in my debit card, punch in the pin and be done
The fact of the matter is, there's usually way less waiting in line at the machine, and the actual buying itself takes less time. I've no problem telling thank you to the sale's lady, but in most situations using the machine is just more handy unless I happen to have some other business to take care of at the store at the same time.
The same is true for many, many services that used to be handled by clerks: I'll rather do my check-in at the airport or the harbor via a machine because it's easier and quicker, no need to go stand in line to buy concert tickets as I can buy them online and print them out or just have 'em read the QR-code from the phone screen, etc...
So unfortunately no, I cannot agree with this" you don't have to thank the machine" -BS. The machine gives me the exact same end result as I'd get from a person, except it usually does it faster. Unless the product/service I'm buying is so complicated that I need a guy there to help me figure out what I need to get, having a person there brings no additional benefit for me as a customer.
As others have already mentioned, the summary is blatantly wrong. What's actually happening is that as of 2016, this sort of topic-based teaching will become mandatory for all elementary schools for at least once a year and the schools get the freedom to decide how long these projects will last. So yes, while this is a rather big change in a way, it's not like they're doing away with subjects altogether, not at all,
The elected government is a result of the people. Turkey is a mostly functioning democracy and they have voted Erdogan into power twice now (well, he wasn't voted for rpime minister but his party was, and later he was elected presisent despite his actions as prime minister). Now, as someone who used to date a secular liberal Turkish woman (who at the time lived in Turkey) a few years back, trust me, I'm more than aware that not all of Turkey or its people support such policies, but unfortunately at this point it seems that most, even the majority does (although in fairness sake, he won the presidential elections with a very narrow margin, just over 51 % if the votes, so the country was/is split on the middle
Erdogan has gained popularity because he has done some good to the Turkish economy and improved general infrastructure etc. This is all fine and well. Unfortunately the man is also religious bigot and a conservative who's doing his best to slowly dismantle the secular basis which Turkey has maintained ever since Ataturk. There was recently a case of a woman being jailed for having the audacity to stand on a quran. A guy was jailed and is facing charges for (literally) "insulting the president".... Not to mention he handled the riots, the attempted banning of youtube etc etc.... He's an authoritarian through and through when it comes to social issues and rights.
So either the majority of Turks living in their native country do not realize this, do not care about this, or are actively in favor of it (and outside the larger cities there are still large areas were this sort of conservative islamic rhetoric is popular as hell). Either way the populace is not entirely to blame for his actions, but when you have over half the people voting in favor of a guy who has a track record of favoring banning things he does not agree with, well the country is not exactly blameless either.
The idea that anything has "intrinsic value" is so badly flawed I don't know why this myth persist. Gold and other metals have practical uses, which gives it some additional value yes, but assuming that gold will retain its value, or in fact have any value whatsoever, under all conditions is false.
I don't know exactly what your definition of 'meaningful' is, but approximately 60 % of the world's currency reserves are still in USD, with the Euro being the only one coming even close. I'd call that rather meaningful. So yes, the dominance of the dollar has shifted a bit (which mind you, is not an altogether negative thing either), but dollar is still the go-to reserve currency of the world.
Of course they can afford to pay more, I wasn't implying that. I was just saying that unless this starts to become a regular issue I doubt they'll do it whereas larger banks really have no choice.