Yup, you're wrong -- you have misinterpreted my intent and attributed arguments and implication to me that I did not make.
I don't know what else to conclude from your presented argument.
You stated that you are against our attempts to produce more food:
In many ways TFA sounds a lot like the mentality Monsanto has: make more food for more people with fewer resources. This is completely backwards, and will fail us in a devastating way long term.
You link food availability to population increases:
Food availability is the single most important factor that drives population growth.
And, you state that this linkage between food and population is a universal fact:
This is an enormously complex area, but some countries that demonstrate negative population growth fails to discredit the larger pattern of 10,000 years of human history (and many other species) that food availability drives population.
The only conclusion I can draw from these statements is that you are against increasing the availability of food for people who need it.
Please show me how you conclude this. Whomever modded this as insightful is as confused as you are.
Okay. Here's what you wrote in your first post in this thread:
Food availability is the single most important factor that drives population growth. The solution we need is not to re-engineer nature to meet the demands of growing populations better, but rather to focus on moderating the needs of people to fit within a natural environment created over 2 billions years which we *cannot* recreate if we destroy it.
And, from the quote you provided in this current post:
[...] human population growth is a rapidly cycling positive feedback loop in which food availability drives population growth [...]
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're stating that as long as food remains "available", we'll have a growing population, right? And to solve this problem, we should make food less "available", correct?
Do you know what happens when food is less "available"? People starve to death. You're arguing that it would be a better world if fewer people had enough to eat. (though certainly not better for those hungry people, I suppose)
You know nothing about me. I ride a bike to work, I grow my own food. Do you?
No. But I'm not the one implying that there are too many people in the world, and that reducing the "availability" of food to some of them would be a good thing.
This is an enormously complex area, but some countries that demonstrate negative population growth fails to discredit the larger pattern of 10,000 years of human history (and many other species) that food availability drives population.
Certainly. But it does suggest that those countries have hit some other limit to growth; one that doesn't involve starving people to death.
It's especially important in cases such as AIDS, where current drugs are only effective at stalling the progression of the disease for what, 20, 30, 40 years?
Tell that to the average HIV-positive African. Sure, he probably has trouble affording a simple dose of penicillin, but I suppose a lifetime supply of expensive HIV drugs is no problem.
Yeah, because there are no differences between western countries and sub-Saharan Africa other than the amount of food available. No economic differences, cultural differences, environmental differences, etc. Nice controlled scientific experiment there.
I never said it was scientific. It's simply an observation which leads me to believe that the hypothesis of "less food != fewer children" may have some validity.
I would have thought that the prospect of watching some of your children die of starvation because you don't have enough food for them all, would be about the strongest non-mandatory population control measure.
From what I can tell, his argument is that rather than trying to continually increase resources which will eventually reach a natural limit, we should try to moderate consumption.
Sure, but in terms of food, "moderate consumption" is a euphemism. There is only a certain amount of moderation you can handle before you starve to death.
But really, your argument seems to come down to this: any behavior/planning which doesn't lead immediately to feeding poor people in far away countries is immoral, and people who engage in such behavior should kill themselves.
Nope. It's a little more subtle than that. I'm saying that refusing to take an action, simply because a side effect of that action may result in someone not starving to death, is ghoulish and immoral. I am specifically not saying that we should devote 100% of our resources and energy to feeding the poor, but that we should not restrain ourselves from taking an action because it might result in helping them.
If I want genetically engineered food (tuna, rice, or whatever). But, I stop myself from developing that food, because it might mean that someone in the world doesn't starve to death. I would be a monster, and should kill myself.
And another question that always bothers me a little: why should poor people starving in far away countries bother me more than poor people starving in my own country?
It shouldn't. The fact that people starve anywhere in the world is terrible. I only use sub-Saharan Africa as an example, because hunger is much more endemic and visible there. Hunger and famine don't decimate entire communities in the US (any more); they do in Africa.
First off, scarcity of food may possibly cause people (consciously or unconsciously) to have fewer children. I don't know the science on that one, but it's possible.
It doesn't. Look at the fertility rates in countries where starvation and famine aren't a problem (Western Europe, US, Japan). Then, compare that with the fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa.
The whole point of an argument like the one the GP is making is, if you increase the food supply, the population increases to the point where people start starving to death again.
So, you're saying that no matter how much (or little) food we produce, we'll always have people starving to death?
If you want mandatory population control, implement a one child policy like China, forced sterilization, or simply shoot the excess people in the head. But seriously, almost anything would be less cruel and cause less suffering than condemning someone to die of starvation.
Honestly, the argument the GP is making is that we should, by our inaction, allow some poor people in some far away country to starve to death. Those poor people consume far fewer of the earth's resources than the average American. If the GP really wants to make a difference and free up some resources, maybe he should start with himself.
Of course some are more important than others but when we get down to small segments that are higher value, we can get by without those for a day or two while either the computers are repaired or the work is process manually.
I'm not arguing that there is a single facet of our economy that could not run just fine without computers. I am arguing that there are plenty that could not tomorrow. Changing the work flow in those instances takes time. If you have time to prepare contingency plans, you can probably continue working uninterrupted. But, if you don't have them, and know them well, that will mean downtime in the event of some kind of cyber-attack (or many other more innocent types of disruption).
For example: I used to work at a factory that made plastic film. To compete with the lower costs of production in China, we specialized in quick turn around order processing. A customer would fax/email in an order, and we would be producing, and perhaps shipping it, the same day. If there were some kind of disruption to the telecommunications network, work would have stopped within a couple hours, as we would have run out of orders to fill. There's no way to make up for that lost time, as all our machines were already running 24/7. Any downtime is production lost; it's goods which will never be produced.
But when we talk about day to day dependencies, then we're talking about survival. I am still unconvinced that I need a computers to survive.
Maybe you don't. If you have a personal, sustainable source of food and water, you might not. But there are tens of millions of Americans living in large cities who have neither. They rely, on a day to day basis, on the continued existence of our computer networks; those networks that keep the electricity on, direct food to their local grocery, and manage their money.
I'm not saying that anyone will die in one day (even though a disruption to the 911 system would surely mean that). Nor that there is nothing a person can do to prepare for such a situation (many of those preparations make sense for other, more likely disasters). Nor even that we could not transition to a computer-less economy, at least in the long term. All I'm arguing is that the period of transition will be disruptive, and people will die if it takes too long.
Well, I've never experienced a terror attack personally, but I have been through the eye of more than one Category 5 hurricane, and I can assure you people go pretty batty over that.
Sure, in the midst of the hurricane people go pretty batty. But, when it's not hurricane season people don't lose too much sleep over the possibility of hurricanes sometime in the future.
A hurricane, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, is a known unknown. You don't know exactly when or where one will strike, or how strong it will be; but, you do know quite a bit about hurricanes in general, what you can do to minimize your risk, and what kind of warning you'll have before it hits. In short, there's something you can do. You have some control; even if that control is only an illusion.
But, for most people, a cyber-attack is an unknown unknown. With a hurricane, you know the variables that you don't know the value of: landfall location, strength, storm surge, etc. With a cyber-attack, most people don't even know what variables they don't know the value of. Because they don't know this, they have no options to weigh, no cost/benefit and risk/reward calculations to make. They have no control. And they have no idea what they don't have control over. To a person in that type of situation, it is scary.
You know how horror movies (i.e. Alien, Jaws) are always scarier before the full reveal of the monster? It's because you can always imagine something far more terrifying than you can ever be shown. For a lot of people in the US, and around the world, 9/11 was like that first scene of Jaws with that girl night-swimming: It let them know that there was something out there to be scared of, but only giving the faintest hints of the true monster which lurks off camera. People have become aware that their world is filled with countless unknown unknowns. And now, we have to live with their fear.
Really? I personally don't. Can you cite examples?
Sure.
Though you state later that you don't need electricity, a large percentage of the food sold in the US requires refrigeration of some kind. Most people could last a week eating just the non-perishables in their homes, but any longer and they might start running into problems.
The production and transportation network which gets that food to your supermarket is heavily reliant upon computers. Just-in-time shipping, and complex international supply chains rely upon networks of computers to function.
Even then, the employees of those companies which produce the things you need are usually paid by check or direct-deposit, not cash. How long do you think they'll continue to work if the banking system--which relies upon computers--is down, and they can't cash their checks or withdraw funds from their accounts?
Now yes, we don't strictly need computers to do any of this. We got by just fine fifty years ago, and could do the same thing today. It's the sudden transition that's the problem.
I'm pretty sure I can manage for quite a while without any of those.
Probably. But, I'm not just talking about some Mad Max style societal breakdown. The US GDP is $38 billion per day. If you could disrupt even 2.5% of our economy through a cyber-attack, thats one billion dollars per day in lost production. That's a big deal.
Because no one fully understands it. And not understanding something can easily lead to fear.
Understanding plays a large part. But, it's also about an individual's lack of control. Most everyone depends upon the network and computer infrastructure of our world to meet their basic, day-to-day needs. Almost all of that infrastructure is out of their individual control. Their actions have no direct relationship to how likely they are to be affected by any "cyber"-attack.
People don't get this batty about hurricanes or even conventional terrorist attacks (like 9/11); not everyone is equally likely to experience such an event, and there are actions one can take to minimize their risk. Things like cyber-attacks and virulent diseases provoke more fear because they are seemingly harder to mitigate by individual action, and are seen as more equal-opportunity.
To specifically avoid the ambiguity that the British non-constitution has, the Founders made sure the document was written, written well in clear lucid writing and signed by all the Founders as a sort of ratification.
Oh yeah: "Unreasonable", "necessary and proper", "probable cause", "due process", "cruel and unusual". Yep, nothing to interpret there.
If these methods work, they need to show they have, or let the methods be taken away.
I certainly agree. Personally, I find these types of laws very objectionable. But, as we live in a representative republic and there could be national security considerations, they don't have to show it to you or I; that's what Congress and the Courts are for. We have a system (a flawed one, in my opinion) for this type of oversight.
Can you imagine the prosecution saying that to a judge in a trial? I can't... well I can, but it ends very badly for the prosecution.
But this isn't a trial. When this kind of evidence is required, it'll be shown to judges and congressmen with security clearances.
Surely they can say they used their new law in one particular case, without going into detail?
I wouldn't be so sure about that. If they are too specific about what they reveal, they risk giving away information as to the source of the information, which could compromise an existing source. And if they are too vague, they will be crucified politically.
(For an example of this, look at the response to Cheney, when he said that we had prevented a terrorist attack through information we learned from torture. He was accused of lying (which I believe he was) to justify the previous administration's actions, because he would not (or could not) supply details. The exact same thing would happen if they tried to show how these new laws had been effective without providing details.)
That being said, I'm against these laws, and our use of torture. But your line of reasoning will be ineffective. You have to take a play from the anti-torture people on this one, and say that it doesn't matter if these laws work or not; they are simply un-American. You have to reject the premise that there can ever be a security/freedom trade-off.
You'll never see the evidence you're looking for, because of very real national security concerns. There are many people who understand this restriction on information. And, if that's the entirety of your argument, you'll lose those people. This will have to be overturned on principle, not effectiveness.
You completely missed it when you assigned "as a group" to "the vast majority of people" and you continued to do so when you completely missed my rewriting of your statement to say "as individuals" and went on to repeat your original point by saying "No. The vast majority of the people have all the power."
This is a misunderstanding, and it's my fault.
Yes, as isolated individuals, the vast majority of the people are powerless to effect change in their government; those people bear a commensurate amount of responsibility for their government's actions. That's a valid paraphrasing of what you're saying, right?
Now, where I think we disagree is in exactly who doesn't fall into the group: "the vast majority of people". I think you're arguing that there are powerful people in a country--the leaders, the wealthy, etc.--who possess a disproportionate amount of power, and thusly, a disproportionate share of the responsibility, right?
I am arguing that even those powerful people derive their power from their acceptance by the "vast majority". Even the President of the United States would be another powerless, isolated individual, if the vast majority in our country simply refused to follow his orders. The only power he has derives from that source.
Further, I'm arguing that the individual is the only entity capable of making the decision to accept his leadership, or to refuse to follow orders. And, as the sole source of the President's power flows from these individuals' acceptance, the individuals bear the responsibility for allowing him to lead them.
Again, what is the point in saying that someone is responsible for the SYSTEM, you've just restated your original claim that merely by voting, people are responsible "for the democratic form of their government". FORM and SYSTEM are just synonyms in your usage.
Close. By participating in a democratic election, you have chosen to respect the will of the majority. You are giving a certain measure of support to the winner, regardless of who you voted for. With that support comes a certain share in the responsibility for that government's actions.
Interesting also that you have no response for the key point that oil exports have made the Iran of today loaded to the gills with outside influence in support of the current regime.
All the money, guns, and outside financial support cannot keep a government in power if the vast majority of the people within the country simply refuse to participate. The excuse of, "I was just following orders," never absolves one of his responsibility for his actions.
But the reality is that anything stopped was through the old traditional channels which existed pre-9/11.
sounds much like an opinion at all.
The burden is on the state to show that the limiting of liberities is outweighed by the need for public safety. That's consistent with the 5th and 15th Amendments.
Yes it is (or at least, should be). But this has nothing to do with what I was responding to.
Anyway, there is proof. Research the few foiled terror plots since 9/11, none of them used anything outside normal police work.
Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
You're telling me that you cannot even conceive of a situation where the government might have a compelling interest in keeping a foiled terrorist plot under-wraps?
You've also argued that someone who is a non-voter and merely born into a country and can't find or afford to immigrate to another country is also responsible for the actions of that government.
Yes, I have. I suppose that a hypothetical person, who does not vote, pays no taxes, and produces nothing which is not personally consumed, is not responsible for the actions of his government. I'm arguing that only a vanishingly small number of people in any country fit these criteria.
Of what point is sharing responsibility for the FORM of a government in assigning responsibility for the actions of a particular set of government employees?
By voting, a person implicitly approves of the democratic process for the selection of a leader. He is responsible for the legitimacy of the system, even though his candidate didn't win. Democracy is all about agreeing to be ruled by whoever gets the most votes, even if it's not your guy.
The "vast majority of people", as individuals, have practically none of the power and thus none of the responsibility.
No. The vast majority of the people have all the power, in a democracy or a dictatorship. The most oppressive tyrant imaginable only has power to the extent that the vast majority of people follow his orders.
Not even the most democratic and free of governments can represent the will of every individual.
I never said that they did, could, or should do so.
If the military is not conscripting them, they need not join. If they are conscripted, they can still surrender, go awol, etc. Thus those who continue to fight do bear a significantly greater fraction of responsibility.
The same logic applies to the citizenry at large. An army cannot fight without the massive amount of supplies and armaments produced by the civilian population of its country. If a baker is making bread for a soldier's rations, he is only marginally less responsible than the soldier himself; because, without the baker, no one dies, as the soldier cannot fight.
You argue for collective responsibility even when individual responsibility requires different actions - where choosing an extremely small chance of revolution over the almost certain imprisonment, torture and death of your family means endorsement of tyranny.
I haven't argued at all for any notion of "collective responsibility"; there is no such thing. There is only individual responsibility. A government or a nation is not some kind of meta-person, capable of action, possessing a will, or bearing responsibility. A nation is simply a bunch of people, each capable of individual action, possessing an individual will, and bearing individual responsibility for the results of their actions.
A person's approval of his government is of no relevance, only his actions are. Wishing that your government were different, while still participating in the system, does not absolve you of any responsibility for your actions.
You write as if responsibility is shared equally by all.
No, I most certainly do not.
A person who votes for the winning Presidential candidate is more responsible than the one who votes for the loser. But, by the very act of voting, they share equal measures of responsibility for the democratic form of their government.
The President is more responsible than a soldier for the actions of the military. But, the soldier bears some responsibility: without him, there would be no military.
The soldier is more responsible, though, for the actions of the military than the taxpayer. But, without the taxpayer, there would be no funding for the military.
The powerful in a country are more responsible than the weak. But, in all cases, the powerful depend upon the complacency of the weak to hold on to power. Even the weak share in responsibility.
To some extent, every member of a society bears responsibility for the actions of their government. As long as you participate at all, it is inescapable.
The vast majority of people do not have an effective say in either case - the common man's responsibility is so small as to be practically non-existent.
This is exactly wrong. The "vast majority of people", as a group, have all the power, and all the responsibility. Not even the most tyrannical and totalitarian of governments can hold on to power without the acquiesce of the masses.
Which is why your justification of the fire-bombing of Dresden, the nuking of Japan, Sherman's March and pratically every suicide bombing ever is bogus - the people killed in those actions received 100% death in return for sharing something akin to 0.0001% of the responsibility for the situations they found themselves in.
By that rationale, no one--not a civilian, an enemy soldier, nor the leader of the enemy--bears 100% responsibility for the situation. An individual soldier bears only a slightly higher fraction of the responsibility than a civilian, yet killing him is okay?
Yes, it's not fair that those civilians find themselves in those kinds of situations. But, each of us bears full responsibility for our own actions. To believe that we do not, is what allows tyranny to exist in the first place.
So your choice is to either support the government or lose your liberty. And don't even try to say "move to a country where you do support the government" - that only works if you are permitted to immigrate and can afford to immigrate everytime you disagree with a government's actions.
You are correct about one thing: there is nothing you can do to absolve yourself of partial responsibility for your government's actions, short of leaving the country.
But, that responsibility, which we all share, is what motivates those of us who disagree with the actions of our government to act politically to change those policies. It is what underlies the concept of a "loyal opposition". Without that, there can be no functioning democracy.
And not to Godwin this or anything, but your logic is precisely the same logic Osama bin Laden has used in justifying the killing of American civilians.
Yes, I suppose it is. It's also the logic we use to justify the fire-bombing of Dresden, the incineration of Japan's cities, the dropping of the atom bomb, and Sherman's march to the sea. It's been used as justification in every war in recorded history. Just because bin Laden uses this justification too, doesn't make it incorrect.
To take just one example, consider our destruction of Japanese cities in WWII. Through our ceaseless bombing campaign of the Japanese home islands, we destroyed (read: burnt to the ground) a huge percentage of their urban areas, killing hundreds of thousands, mostly civilians. But, those civilians were the ones making the bullets being fired at our troops; they were the ones baking the bread to feed those bullet-makers; they were the ones who, directly or indirectly, provided every bit of matériel that their government was using to kill our soldiers.
To some degree, those civilians were responsible for their actions. Yes, I understand that people living under a repressive tyranny face extreme punishment for disobedience to the government. But, the fact remains that Tojo would have been completely powerless to do anything, if those people would simply have stopped following orders.
It is universally true, even in the most repressive of tyrannies (when unsupported by external forces, unlike the US and the Shah), that the power of the government depends entirely upon the consent of the governed. Iran today is no exception.
And if you don't vote and just merely reside in the country?
Yes. Voting is not the only sanction you give to your government. If you pay taxes, if some portion of your labor is consumed by the government, if you patronize or support those who do, or if you contribute, in any way, to the legitimacy of the government, you share in some measure, responsibility for the government's actions.
Given the right circumstances, ANY culture will do evil things.
Sure they will. Every culture has a history that includes some evil acts. That's universal. That does not imply, however, that the "right circumstances" for every culture are identical, or that the evil things a culture would do would be identical--or even similar--to the evil acts of a different culture.
If you take two different cultures, and expose them to identical interventionist actions, you'll get two different reactions. That's simply undeniable.
Response: Ok, we got rid of the dictator, what could we do to ensure our new government doesn't get into bed with the US?
I think what the guy, who originally started this thread, was trying to say that the answer to that question depends upon the culture of the people in that country. A theocratic regime is not the only answer. That's what the Iranians chose, but not the Vietnamese, Filipinos, Cubans, many former Soviet-bloc nations, or a host of others.
Why not? The cultural differences of the people who live in those countries.
When you vote for the losing candidate in a presidential election are you responsible for the actions of the winner?
Of course. Your vote is an implicit approval of the democratic process, and an acceptance of whatever results follow from the election. By voting, you are responsible for sanctioning the system which elected the winning candidate. That's the concept which separates functioning from non-functioning democracies.
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Yup, you're wrong -- you have misinterpreted my intent and attributed arguments and implication to me that I did not make.
I don't know what else to conclude from your presented argument.
You stated that you are against our attempts to produce more food:
In many ways TFA sounds a lot like the mentality Monsanto has: make more food for more people with fewer resources. This is completely backwards, and will fail us in a devastating way long term.
You link food availability to population increases:
Food availability is the single most important factor that drives population growth.
And, you state that this linkage between food and population is a universal fact:
This is an enormously complex area, but some countries that demonstrate negative population growth fails to discredit the larger pattern of 10,000 years of human history (and many other species) that food availability drives population.
The only conclusion I can draw from these statements is that you are against increasing the availability of food for people who need it.
Please show me how you conclude this. Whomever modded this as insightful is as confused as you are.
Okay. Here's what you wrote in your first post in this thread:
Food availability is the single most important factor that drives population growth. The solution we need is not to re-engineer nature to meet the demands of growing populations better, but rather to focus on moderating the needs of people to fit within a natural environment created over 2 billions years which we *cannot* recreate if we destroy it.
And, from the quote you provided in this current post:
[...] human population growth is a rapidly cycling positive feedback loop in which food availability drives population growth [...]
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're stating that as long as food remains "available", we'll have a growing population, right? And to solve this problem, we should make food less "available", correct?
Do you know what happens when food is less "available"? People starve to death. You're arguing that it would be a better world if fewer people had enough to eat. (though certainly not better for those hungry people, I suppose)
You know nothing about me. I ride a bike to work, I grow my own food. Do you?
No. But I'm not the one implying that there are too many people in the world, and that reducing the "availability" of food to some of them would be a good thing.
This is an enormously complex area, but some countries that demonstrate negative population growth fails to discredit the larger pattern of 10,000 years of human history (and many other species) that food availability drives population.
Certainly. But it does suggest that those countries have hit some other limit to growth; one that doesn't involve starving people to death.
It's especially important in cases such as AIDS, where current drugs are only effective at stalling the progression of the disease for what, 20, 30, 40 years?
Tell that to the average HIV-positive African. Sure, he probably has trouble affording a simple dose of penicillin, but I suppose a lifetime supply of expensive HIV drugs is no problem.
Yeah, because there are no differences between western countries and sub-Saharan Africa other than the amount of food available. No economic differences, cultural differences, environmental differences, etc. Nice controlled scientific experiment there.
I never said it was scientific. It's simply an observation which leads me to believe that the hypothesis of "less food != fewer children" may have some validity.
I would have thought that the prospect of watching some of your children die of starvation because you don't have enough food for them all, would be about the strongest non-mandatory population control measure.
From what I can tell, his argument is that rather than trying to continually increase resources which will eventually reach a natural limit, we should try to moderate consumption.
Sure, but in terms of food, "moderate consumption" is a euphemism. There is only a certain amount of moderation you can handle before you starve to death.
But really, your argument seems to come down to this: any behavior/planning which doesn't lead immediately to feeding poor people in far away countries is immoral, and people who engage in such behavior should kill themselves.
Nope. It's a little more subtle than that. I'm saying that refusing to take an action, simply because a side effect of that action may result in someone not starving to death, is ghoulish and immoral. I am specifically not saying that we should devote 100% of our resources and energy to feeding the poor, but that we should not restrain ourselves from taking an action because it might result in helping them.
If I want genetically engineered food (tuna, rice, or whatever). But, I stop myself from developing that food, because it might mean that someone in the world doesn't starve to death. I would be a monster, and should kill myself.
And another question that always bothers me a little: why should poor people starving in far away countries bother me more than poor people starving in my own country?
It shouldn't. The fact that people starve anywhere in the world is terrible. I only use sub-Saharan Africa as an example, because hunger is much more endemic and visible there. Hunger and famine don't decimate entire communities in the US (any more); they do in Africa.
First off, scarcity of food may possibly cause people (consciously or unconsciously) to have fewer children. I don't know the science on that one, but it's possible.
It doesn't. Look at the fertility rates in countries where starvation and famine aren't a problem (Western Europe, US, Japan). Then, compare that with the fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa.
The whole point of an argument like the one the GP is making is, if you increase the food supply, the population increases to the point where people start starving to death again.
So, you're saying that no matter how much (or little) food we produce, we'll always have people starving to death?
If you want mandatory population control, implement a one child policy like China, forced sterilization, or simply shoot the excess people in the head. But seriously, almost anything would be less cruel and cause less suffering than condemning someone to die of starvation.
Honestly, the argument the GP is making is that we should, by our inaction, allow some poor people in some far away country to starve to death. Those poor people consume far fewer of the earth's resources than the average American. If the GP really wants to make a difference and free up some resources, maybe he should start with himself.
Food availability is the single most important factor that keeps people from starving to death.
FTFY.
If that's how you want to control the population, at least be honest about it.
Of course some are more important than others but when we get down to small segments that are higher value, we can get by without those for a day or two while either the computers are repaired or the work is process manually.
I'm not arguing that there is a single facet of our economy that could not run just fine without computers. I am arguing that there are plenty that could not tomorrow. Changing the work flow in those instances takes time. If you have time to prepare contingency plans, you can probably continue working uninterrupted. But, if you don't have them, and know them well, that will mean downtime in the event of some kind of cyber-attack (or many other more innocent types of disruption).
For example: I used to work at a factory that made plastic film. To compete with the lower costs of production in China, we specialized in quick turn around order processing. A customer would fax/email in an order, and we would be producing, and perhaps shipping it, the same day. If there were some kind of disruption to the telecommunications network, work would have stopped within a couple hours, as we would have run out of orders to fill. There's no way to make up for that lost time, as all our machines were already running 24/7. Any downtime is production lost; it's goods which will never be produced.
But when we talk about day to day dependencies, then we're talking about survival. I am still unconvinced that I need a computers to survive.
Maybe you don't. If you have a personal, sustainable source of food and water, you might not. But there are tens of millions of Americans living in large cities who have neither. They rely, on a day to day basis, on the continued existence of our computer networks; those networks that keep the electricity on, direct food to their local grocery, and manage their money.
I'm not saying that anyone will die in one day (even though a disruption to the 911 system would surely mean that). Nor that there is nothing a person can do to prepare for such a situation (many of those preparations make sense for other, more likely disasters). Nor even that we could not transition to a computer-less economy, at least in the long term. All I'm arguing is that the period of transition will be disruptive, and people will die if it takes too long.
Well, I've never experienced a terror attack personally, but I have been through the eye of more than one Category 5 hurricane, and I can assure you people go pretty batty over that.
Sure, in the midst of the hurricane people go pretty batty. But, when it's not hurricane season people don't lose too much sleep over the possibility of hurricanes sometime in the future.
A hurricane, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, is a known unknown. You don't know exactly when or where one will strike, or how strong it will be; but, you do know quite a bit about hurricanes in general, what you can do to minimize your risk, and what kind of warning you'll have before it hits. In short, there's something you can do. You have some control; even if that control is only an illusion.
But, for most people, a cyber-attack is an unknown unknown. With a hurricane, you know the variables that you don't know the value of: landfall location, strength, storm surge, etc. With a cyber-attack, most people don't even know what variables they don't know the value of. Because they don't know this, they have no options to weigh, no cost/benefit and risk/reward calculations to make. They have no control. And they have no idea what they don't have control over. To a person in that type of situation, it is scary.
You know how horror movies (i.e. Alien, Jaws) are always scarier before the full reveal of the monster? It's because you can always imagine something far more terrifying than you can ever be shown. For a lot of people in the US, and around the world, 9/11 was like that first scene of Jaws with that girl night-swimming: It let them know that there was something out there to be scared of, but only giving the faintest hints of the true monster which lurks off camera. People have become aware that their world is filled with countless unknown unknowns. And now, we have to live with their fear.
Really? I personally don't. Can you cite examples?
Sure.
Though you state later that you don't need electricity, a large percentage of the food sold in the US requires refrigeration of some kind. Most people could last a week eating just the non-perishables in their homes, but any longer and they might start running into problems.
The production and transportation network which gets that food to your supermarket is heavily reliant upon computers. Just-in-time shipping, and complex international supply chains rely upon networks of computers to function.
Even then, the employees of those companies which produce the things you need are usually paid by check or direct-deposit, not cash. How long do you think they'll continue to work if the banking system--which relies upon computers--is down, and they can't cash their checks or withdraw funds from their accounts?
Now yes, we don't strictly need computers to do any of this. We got by just fine fifty years ago, and could do the same thing today. It's the sudden transition that's the problem.
I'm pretty sure I can manage for quite a while without any of those.
Probably. But, I'm not just talking about some Mad Max style societal breakdown. The US GDP is $38 billion per day. If you could disrupt even 2.5% of our economy through a cyber-attack, thats one billion dollars per day in lost production. That's a big deal.
Because no one fully understands it. And not understanding something can easily lead to fear.
Understanding plays a large part. But, it's also about an individual's lack of control. Most everyone depends upon the network and computer infrastructure of our world to meet their basic, day-to-day needs. Almost all of that infrastructure is out of their individual control. Their actions have no direct relationship to how likely they are to be affected by any "cyber"-attack.
People don't get this batty about hurricanes or even conventional terrorist attacks (like 9/11); not everyone is equally likely to experience such an event, and there are actions one can take to minimize their risk. Things like cyber-attacks and virulent diseases provoke more fear because they are seemingly harder to mitigate by individual action, and are seen as more equal-opportunity.
Similarly, I should assume my ISP would not divulge my IP with names unless there was a warrant.
Boy, you must get awfully pissed at the phone company for publishing your telephone number with your name attached.
Seriously, you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy just because you--personally--expect it.
To specifically avoid the ambiguity that the British non-constitution has, the Founders made sure the document was written, written well in clear lucid writing and signed by all the Founders as a sort of ratification.
Oh yeah: "Unreasonable", "necessary and proper", "probable cause", "due process", "cruel and unusual". Yep, nothing to interpret there.
Wait a minute...
Why can't a bill about something be only about something?
Because, without the behind-the-scenes horse trading that results in these kinds of provisions, nothing would ever get passed.
Wait...
And we know Captain Kirk can do warp. What's your point?
If these methods work, they need to show they have, or let the methods be taken away.
I certainly agree. Personally, I find these types of laws very objectionable. But, as we live in a representative republic and there could be national security considerations, they don't have to show it to you or I; that's what Congress and the Courts are for. We have a system (a flawed one, in my opinion) for this type of oversight.
Can you imagine the prosecution saying that to a judge in a trial? I can't... well I can, but it ends very badly for the prosecution.
But this isn't a trial. When this kind of evidence is required, it'll be shown to judges and congressmen with security clearances.
Surely they can say they used their new law in one particular case, without going into detail?
I wouldn't be so sure about that. If they are too specific about what they reveal, they risk giving away information as to the source of the information, which could compromise an existing source. And if they are too vague, they will be crucified politically.
(For an example of this, look at the response to Cheney, when he said that we had prevented a terrorist attack through information we learned from torture. He was accused of lying (which I believe he was) to justify the previous administration's actions, because he would not (or could not) supply details. The exact same thing would happen if they tried to show how these new laws had been effective without providing details.)
That being said, I'm against these laws, and our use of torture. But your line of reasoning will be ineffective. You have to take a play from the anti-torture people on this one, and say that it doesn't matter if these laws work or not; they are simply un-American. You have to reject the premise that there can ever be a security/freedom trade-off.
You'll never see the evidence you're looking for, because of very real national security concerns. There are many people who understand this restriction on information. And, if that's the entirety of your argument, you'll lose those people. This will have to be overturned on principle, not effectiveness.
You completely missed it when you assigned "as a group" to "the vast majority of people" and you continued to do so when you completely missed my rewriting of your statement to say "as individuals" and went on to repeat your original point by saying "No. The vast majority of the people have all the power."
This is a misunderstanding, and it's my fault.
Yes, as isolated individuals, the vast majority of the people are powerless to effect change in their government; those people bear a commensurate amount of responsibility for their government's actions. That's a valid paraphrasing of what you're saying, right?
Now, where I think we disagree is in exactly who doesn't fall into the group: "the vast majority of people". I think you're arguing that there are powerful people in a country--the leaders, the wealthy, etc.--who possess a disproportionate amount of power, and thusly, a disproportionate share of the responsibility, right?
I am arguing that even those powerful people derive their power from their acceptance by the "vast majority". Even the President of the United States would be another powerless, isolated individual, if the vast majority in our country simply refused to follow his orders. The only power he has derives from that source.
Further, I'm arguing that the individual is the only entity capable of making the decision to accept his leadership, or to refuse to follow orders. And, as the sole source of the President's power flows from these individuals' acceptance, the individuals bear the responsibility for allowing him to lead them.
Again, what is the point in saying that someone is responsible for the SYSTEM, you've just restated your original claim that merely by voting, people are responsible "for the democratic form of their government". FORM and SYSTEM are just synonyms in your usage.
Close. By participating in a democratic election, you have chosen to respect the will of the majority. You are giving a certain measure of support to the winner, regardless of who you voted for. With that support comes a certain share in the responsibility for that government's actions.
Interesting also that you have no response for the key point that oil exports have made the Iran of today loaded to the gills with outside influence in support of the current regime.
All the money, guns, and outside financial support cannot keep a government in power if the vast majority of the people within the country simply refuse to participate. The excuse of, "I was just following orders," never absolves one of his responsibility for his actions.
Right.. this is my opinion, not the GPs.
I don't think this:
But the reality is that anything stopped was through the old traditional channels which existed pre-9/11.
sounds much like an opinion at all.
The burden is on the state to show that the limiting of liberities is outweighed by the need for public safety. That's consistent with the 5th and 15th Amendments.
Yes it is (or at least, should be). But this has nothing to do with what I was responding to.
Anyway, there is proof. Research the few foiled terror plots since 9/11, none of them used anything outside normal police work.
Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
You're telling me that you cannot even conceive of a situation where the government might have a compelling interest in keeping a foiled terrorist plot under-wraps?
You've also argued that someone who is a non-voter and merely born into a country and can't find or afford to immigrate to another country is also responsible for the actions of that government.
Yes, I have. I suppose that a hypothetical person, who does not vote, pays no taxes, and produces nothing which is not personally consumed, is not responsible for the actions of his government. I'm arguing that only a vanishingly small number of people in any country fit these criteria.
Of what point is sharing responsibility for the FORM of a government in assigning responsibility for the actions of a particular set of government employees?
By voting, a person implicitly approves of the democratic process for the selection of a leader. He is responsible for the legitimacy of the system, even though his candidate didn't win. Democracy is all about agreeing to be ruled by whoever gets the most votes, even if it's not your guy.
The "vast majority of people", as individuals, have practically none of the power and thus none of the responsibility.
No. The vast majority of the people have all the power, in a democracy or a dictatorship. The most oppressive tyrant imaginable only has power to the extent that the vast majority of people follow his orders.
Not even the most democratic and free of governments can represent the will of every individual.
I never said that they did, could, or should do so.
If the military is not conscripting them, they need not join. If they are conscripted, they can still surrender, go awol, etc. Thus those who continue to fight do bear a significantly greater fraction of responsibility.
The same logic applies to the citizenry at large. An army cannot fight without the massive amount of supplies and armaments produced by the civilian population of its country. If a baker is making bread for a soldier's rations, he is only marginally less responsible than the soldier himself; because, without the baker, no one dies, as the soldier cannot fight.
You argue for collective responsibility even when individual responsibility requires different actions - where choosing an extremely small chance of revolution over the almost certain imprisonment, torture and death of your family means endorsement of tyranny.
I haven't argued at all for any notion of "collective responsibility"; there is no such thing. There is only individual responsibility. A government or a nation is not some kind of meta-person, capable of action, possessing a will, or bearing responsibility. A nation is simply a bunch of people, each capable of individual action, possessing an individual will, and bearing individual responsibility for the results of their actions.
A person's approval of his government is of no relevance, only his actions are. Wishing that your government were different, while still participating in the system, does not absolve you of any responsibility for your actions.
You write as if responsibility is shared equally by all.
No, I most certainly do not.
A person who votes for the winning Presidential candidate is more responsible than the one who votes for the loser. But, by the very act of voting, they share equal measures of responsibility for the democratic form of their government.
The President is more responsible than a soldier for the actions of the military. But, the soldier bears some responsibility: without him, there would be no military.
The soldier is more responsible, though, for the actions of the military than the taxpayer. But, without the taxpayer, there would be no funding for the military.
The powerful in a country are more responsible than the weak. But, in all cases, the powerful depend upon the complacency of the weak to hold on to power. Even the weak share in responsibility.
To some extent, every member of a society bears responsibility for the actions of their government. As long as you participate at all, it is inescapable.
The vast majority of people do not have an effective say in either case - the common man's responsibility is so small as to be practically non-existent.
This is exactly wrong. The "vast majority of people", as a group, have all the power, and all the responsibility. Not even the most tyrannical and totalitarian of governments can hold on to power without the acquiesce of the masses.
Which is why your justification of the fire-bombing of Dresden, the nuking of Japan, Sherman's March and pratically every suicide bombing ever is bogus - the people killed in those actions received 100% death in return for sharing something akin to 0.0001% of the responsibility for the situations they found themselves in.
By that rationale, no one--not a civilian, an enemy soldier, nor the leader of the enemy--bears 100% responsibility for the situation. An individual soldier bears only a slightly higher fraction of the responsibility than a civilian, yet killing him is okay?
Yes, it's not fair that those civilians find themselves in those kinds of situations. But, each of us bears full responsibility for our own actions. To believe that we do not, is what allows tyranny to exist in the first place.
But the reality is that anything stopped was through the old traditional channels which existed pre-9/11.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's a much stronger statement than the GP's. And you offer just as much evidence (none).
So your choice is to either support the government or lose your liberty. And don't even try to say "move to a country where you do support the government" - that only works if you are permitted to immigrate and can afford to immigrate everytime you disagree with a government's actions.
You are correct about one thing: there is nothing you can do to absolve yourself of partial responsibility for your government's actions, short of leaving the country.
But, that responsibility, which we all share, is what motivates those of us who disagree with the actions of our government to act politically to change those policies. It is what underlies the concept of a "loyal opposition". Without that, there can be no functioning democracy.
And not to Godwin this or anything, but your logic is precisely the same logic Osama bin Laden has used in justifying the killing of American civilians.
Yes, I suppose it is. It's also the logic we use to justify the fire-bombing of Dresden, the incineration of Japan's cities, the dropping of the atom bomb, and Sherman's march to the sea. It's been used as justification in every war in recorded history. Just because bin Laden uses this justification too, doesn't make it incorrect.
To take just one example, consider our destruction of Japanese cities in WWII. Through our ceaseless bombing campaign of the Japanese home islands, we destroyed (read: burnt to the ground) a huge percentage of their urban areas, killing hundreds of thousands, mostly civilians. But, those civilians were the ones making the bullets being fired at our troops; they were the ones baking the bread to feed those bullet-makers; they were the ones who, directly or indirectly, provided every bit of matériel that their government was using to kill our soldiers.
To some degree, those civilians were responsible for their actions. Yes, I understand that people living under a repressive tyranny face extreme punishment for disobedience to the government. But, the fact remains that Tojo would have been completely powerless to do anything, if those people would simply have stopped following orders.
It is universally true, even in the most repressive of tyrannies (when unsupported by external forces, unlike the US and the Shah), that the power of the government depends entirely upon the consent of the governed. Iran today is no exception.
And if you don't vote and just merely reside in the country?
Yes. Voting is not the only sanction you give to your government. If you pay taxes, if some portion of your labor is consumed by the government, if you patronize or support those who do, or if you contribute, in any way, to the legitimacy of the government, you share in some measure, responsibility for the government's actions.
Given the right circumstances, ANY culture will do evil things.
Sure they will. Every culture has a history that includes some evil acts. That's universal. That does not imply, however, that the "right circumstances" for every culture are identical, or that the evil things a culture would do would be identical--or even similar--to the evil acts of a different culture.
If you take two different cultures, and expose them to identical interventionist actions, you'll get two different reactions. That's simply undeniable.
Response: Ok, we got rid of the dictator, what could we do to ensure our new government doesn't get into bed with the US?
I think what the guy, who originally started this thread, was trying to say that the answer to that question depends upon the culture of the people in that country. A theocratic regime is not the only answer. That's what the Iranians chose, but not the Vietnamese, Filipinos, Cubans, many former Soviet-bloc nations, or a host of others.
Why not? The cultural differences of the people who live in those countries.
When you vote for the losing candidate in a presidential election are you responsible for the actions of the winner?
Of course. Your vote is an implicit approval of the democratic process, and an acceptance of whatever results follow from the election. By voting, you are responsible for sanctioning the system which elected the winning candidate. That's the concept which separates functioning from non-functioning democracies.