There's no incentive in a free market to provide a service to every single person regardless of ability to pay. And yet we as a society have for the most part decided that health care should be a right granted to everyone.
1. You can't grant rights to people, rights are your natural state and outside forces can only prevent you from exercising them, not grant them to you. Modern health care is not a right, it's someone's goods and services. That we feel compassion for sick people doesn't change that. Private corporations won't help people for free, but I'm not sure why you think private individuals won't. It's called charity. If people are so grossly self centered and uncharitable as not help their friends and neighbors when they're sick, what makes you think they all want health care for everyone?
2. No, we as a society clearly haven't decided that, as debate still rages. Most Americans were against this law. A large chunk of Americans are still against this law. Honestly, I'm surprised more people on the left aren't against it. As someone earlier mentioned, we've managed to find a "solution" even worse than socialism. It's a mandate that everyone has to buy the overpriced products of an industry that caused the problem in the first place.
Dreams of a benevolent progressive government that leaves it's entire workings open to the world is delusional. It's never existed in history and you young gents didn't just invent a new way to do it.
It's delusional to say that we should excuse systemic wrongdoing and a dramatic rise in the unnecessary government secrecy and unaccountability that is objectively dangerous to our civil liberties just so you can pretend that you're secure.
This is only about how evil those dirty Americans are, with their interewebs and censorships. The rest of the world sits on holy ground--I know this because I read the leaks.
Your point is that it is wrong to criticize or expose the wrongdoing of the United States government because other, worse governments exist?
Should I also not be concerned with maintaining my house because someone on the other side of town doesn't maintain his?
Part of the problem from the beginning was that Microsoft's vision of IE6 was that, having won the browser war against Netscape, it was the web browser perfected, and that no further innovation in that market would ever be required.
This led to people exploiting the many quirks, bugs and weaknesses to create to apps that were so tightly coupled to IE6 that even future versions of IE could not support them, or developers simply took the short cut of hard-coding a check for IE6 into their business logic thinking that there wouldn't be another version.
It may have been the best browser at the time it was released, but that doesn't mean it isn't the monster we think it is.
As a "non-treaty treaty" negotiated in secret without any attempt at public accountability or a public vote of adoption, ACTA represents an abuse of process and should be opposed even if all it did was support Motherhood and Apple Pie.
At first I read that as "Motörhead and Apple Pie" and was thinking that sounded like a pretty awesome treaty.
Also, for all the vitriolic rhetoric from the left and the right throughout history, the two systems are far more alike than they are different, and either is more similar to the other than to a Western liberal democracy.
What I'd like to see is some of the legal risk being reassigned back to the owners of corporations. That'd make corporations clean up their acts, though it'd do nothing wrt the problem of political spending.
While I also like this idea in principle, where do you draw the line? What about someone who participates in a fund that owns part of Corp X, and this person doesn't even realize they own a portion of Corp X? Are they liable? Is the fund manager? If jail time is being handed out, do you distribute it evenly between shareholders based on their stake in the company? Do you hand it out at the top?
Not disagreeing with you, but the thought raises some complicated questions.
Is it only us Europeans these days who know that your Civil War was fought to maintain the union and not to forcefully abolish slavery?
No, you're not.
While that's technically correct, the political tension that led to the potential dissolution of the union was almost entirely over the issue of slavery. The south seceded because they feared the north would abolish slavery, the north fought to preserve the union, then did abolish slavery.
Like Newtonian gravity, the simple explanation for the US civil war is inaccurate, but good enough for most people.
I was trying to get directions to my friend's house the other day and Google maps kept giving me directions to the Milwaukee Public Museum. The address was right, and it would consistently give me the same, incorrect destination.
Just a little anecdote. I can't disprove a conspiracy, but there may be a simpler explanation.
My favorite was August 29, 1997. I came into work that day and was like, "Happy Judgment Day, everyone!"
I was disappointed when no one knew what I was talking about.
You are not forced to buy city water in Washington. When I lived there I had a well, as did most people I knew. I'm sure there are many people in Washington who live who far outside the service area of any city or town's water supply.
Perhaps it's a city law you're thinking of and not a state law?
While I find most advertising to be boring, manipulative and a general waste of time for both the advertisers and their audience, and also find Bill Hicks very funny, I think a blanket statement like that betrays not only the useful purpose ads can serve (making people aware of consumer choice where they would otherwise be limited) and also the fact that many ads can be genuinely clever, creative and inherently entertaining.
Advertising makes possible the magazines people enjoy reading, the TV shows they enjoy watching, the web sites and newspapers that educate and inform them.
frankly, these parasites are worse than Al Capone, who at least was providing an actual service to his customers.
So are the casinos. That service is "entertainment". If you're a gambling addict or terribly naive, it might not be the service you think they're providing, but it's still a service that is considered by many to be perfectly legitimate.
Many people go to casinos expecting, or at least willing to accept, losing some money in the name of having a good time.
Personally, I don't get the appeal of slot machines, but to each their own.
It's not that other browsers can't view HTML5, it's that Apple is sniffing for other browsers and not allowing them even try viewing it.
It was an allegory for the browser wars...
on
Lost Ends
·
· Score: 1
The light represents the open web - a noble ideal to be protected
Jacob is the W3C - the dedicated protector, sometimes bumbling and subverted by his own backers
The black smoke is Internet Explorer - a horror unleashed via man's arrogance and short sightedness
The Dharma initiative was Netscape - an interesting pioneer, sometimes reaching too far, doomed to be crushed by evil and duplicity
The survivors are the gecko team, the others are the webkit team - Struggling with the best of intentions, sometimes against each other, sometimes together
Walt is Opera - initially promising but ultimately irrelevant
The secret service has their failures in civil liberties, the Steve Jackson Games incident being the most obvious recent incident, and I'm not suggesting they don't.
But there's really nothing Steve Jackson could have done to prevent his situation, nor is there anything you or I could do to prevent the secret service from ruining our lives on a wildly off-base investigation, and the fact is it really doesn't happen very often.
We should certainly note any government infringement on our liberties and hold the relevant parties accountable, but I just don't see any reason to waste time worrying about the secret service falsely implicating you.
It's like worrying about being stuck by lightning.
I'm as suspicious of government as anyone, and I'd hate to be falsely suspected by the USSS, but the fact is they really do only look into a couple of types of very serious crimes. The average person, who is not a counterfeiter or an assassin, has little chance of attracting their notice.
Yeah, be cautious when dealing with authorities. And yes, The innocent might very well have things to hide. However, there's no reason to live your life paranoid about being busted by the secret service when are many, many other agencies which are far more likely to come after you for crimes real or imagined.
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There's no incentive in a free market to provide a service to every single person regardless of ability to pay. And yet we as a society have for the most part decided that health care should be a right granted to everyone.
1. You can't grant rights to people, rights are your natural state and outside forces can only prevent you from exercising them, not grant them to you. Modern health care is not a right, it's someone's goods and services. That we feel compassion for sick people doesn't change that. Private corporations won't help people for free, but I'm not sure why you think private individuals won't. It's called charity. If people are so grossly self centered and uncharitable as not help their friends and neighbors when they're sick, what makes you think they all want health care for everyone?
2. No, we as a society clearly haven't decided that, as debate still rages. Most Americans were against this law. A large chunk of Americans are still against this law. Honestly, I'm surprised more people on the left aren't against it. As someone earlier mentioned, we've managed to find a "solution" even worse than socialism. It's a mandate that everyone has to buy the overpriced products of an industry that caused the problem in the first place.
When they quite literally have you by your life, they can charge whatever they want.
If all your potential customers die because you charged more than they could afford, how much money have you made?
Dreams of a benevolent progressive government that leaves it's entire workings open to the world is delusional. It's never existed in history and you young gents didn't just invent a new way to do it.
It's delusional to say that we should excuse systemic wrongdoing and a dramatic rise in the unnecessary government secrecy and unaccountability that is objectively dangerous to our civil liberties just so you can pretend that you're secure.
This is only about how evil those dirty Americans are, with their interewebs and censorships. The rest of the world sits on holy ground--I know this because I read the leaks.
Your point is that it is wrong to criticize or expose the wrongdoing of the United States government because other, worse governments exist?
Should I also not be concerned with maintaining my house because someone on the other side of town doesn't maintain his?
I also wish that someone like Carmack offered some sort of consultation service to whip cappy code, and coders, into shape.
Well, you're in luck. id software is now Zenimax's (parent co of Bethesda) engine shop, which makes Carmack their engine programmer.
Part of the problem from the beginning was that Microsoft's vision of IE6 was that, having won the browser war against Netscape, it was the web browser perfected, and that no further innovation in that market would ever be required.
This led to people exploiting the many quirks, bugs and weaknesses to create to apps that were so tightly coupled to IE6 that even future versions of IE could not support them, or developers simply took the short cut of hard-coding a check for IE6 into their business logic thinking that there wouldn't be another version.
It may have been the best browser at the time it was released, but that doesn't mean it isn't the monster we think it is.
As a "non-treaty treaty" negotiated in secret without any attempt at public accountability or a public vote of adoption, ACTA represents an abuse of process and should be opposed even if all it did was support Motherhood and Apple Pie.
At first I read that as "Motörhead and Apple Pie" and was thinking that sounded like a pretty awesome treaty.
Pretty much.
Also, for all the vitriolic rhetoric from the left and the right throughout history, the two systems are far more alike than they are different, and either is more similar to the other than to a Western liberal democracy.
The reason we protect the privacy of individuals is because we recognize a need for human dignity
Or to help protect us from overreaching laws by making those laws unenforceable.
I think protecting us from overreaching laws falls under the "human dignity" part.
What I'd like to see is some of the legal risk being reassigned back to the owners of corporations. That'd make corporations clean up their acts, though it'd do nothing wrt the problem of political spending.
While I also like this idea in principle, where do you draw the line? What about someone who participates in a fund that owns part of Corp X, and this person doesn't even realize they own a portion of Corp X? Are they liable? Is the fund manager? If jail time is being handed out, do you distribute it evenly between shareholders based on their stake in the company? Do you hand it out at the top?
Not disagreeing with you, but the thought raises some complicated questions.
Here in Europe we don't really consider America to be the Land of the Free anymore.
Some of us in the US feel that way too.
Is it only us Europeans these days who know that your Civil War was fought to maintain the union and not to forcefully abolish slavery?
No, you're not.
While that's technically correct, the political tension that led to the potential dissolution of the union was almost entirely over the issue of slavery. The south seceded because they feared the north would abolish slavery, the north fought to preserve the union, then did abolish slavery.
Like Newtonian gravity, the simple explanation for the US civil war is inaccurate, but good enough for most people.
I was trying to get directions to my friend's house the other day and Google maps kept giving me directions to the Milwaukee Public Museum. The address was right, and it would consistently give me the same, incorrect destination.
Just a little anecdote. I can't disprove a conspiracy, but there may be a simpler explanation.
My favorite was August 29, 1997. I came into work that day and was like, "Happy Judgment Day, everyone!" I was disappointed when no one knew what I was talking about.
You are not forced to buy city water in Washington. When I lived there I had a well, as did most people I knew. I'm sure there are many people in Washington who live who far outside the service area of any city or town's water supply.
Perhaps it's a city law you're thinking of and not a state law?
Since when is it considered illegal for me to give away my own content, if I chose to do so?
It isn't. ASCAP's position is that it should be.
...copyright has a finite length and automatically expires...
In theory. We'll see about that the next time a corporate copyright is close to expiration.
While I find most advertising to be boring, manipulative and a general waste of time for both the advertisers and their audience, and also find Bill Hicks very funny, I think a blanket statement like that betrays not only the useful purpose ads can serve (making people aware of consumer choice where they would otherwise be limited) and also the fact that many ads can be genuinely clever, creative and inherently entertaining.
Advertising makes possible the magazines people enjoy reading, the TV shows they enjoy watching, the web sites and newspapers that educate and inform them.
frankly, these parasites are worse than Al Capone, who at least was providing an actual service to his customers.
So are the casinos. That service is "entertainment". If you're a gambling addict or terribly naive, it might not be the service you think they're providing, but it's still a service that is considered by many to be perfectly legitimate.
Many people go to casinos expecting, or at least willing to accept, losing some money in the name of having a good time.
Personally, I don't get the appeal of slot machines, but to each their own.
It's not that other browsers can't view HTML5, it's that Apple is sniffing for other browsers and not allowing them even try viewing it.
Nor do I.
The secret service has their failures in civil liberties, the Steve Jackson Games incident being the most obvious recent incident, and I'm not suggesting they don't.
But there's really nothing Steve Jackson could have done to prevent his situation, nor is there anything you or I could do to prevent the secret service from ruining our lives on a wildly off-base investigation, and the fact is it really doesn't happen very often.
We should certainly note any government infringement on our liberties and hold the relevant parties accountable, but I just don't see any reason to waste time worrying about the secret service falsely implicating you.
It's like worrying about being stuck by lightning.
I'm as suspicious of government as anyone, and I'd hate to be falsely suspected by the USSS, but the fact is they really do only look into a couple of types of very serious crimes. The average person, who is not a counterfeiter or an assassin, has little chance of attracting their notice.
Yeah, be cautious when dealing with authorities. And yes, The innocent might very well have things to hide. However, there's no reason to live your life paranoid about being busted by the secret service when are many, many other agencies which are far more likely to come after you for crimes real or imagined.
Remember kids, privacy != freedom
Yes, however !privacy == !freedom
I was confused by that as well.
... who's going to try stopping a jet traveling Mach 2?
I'm just guessing.