Sales tax in much of America is under 10% of purchased goods, and most food stuffs are not taxed at all. You can generally go to the grocery store, buy nothing but food, and pay very little in taxes (some food stuffs are taxed depending on it, but generally none of your produce, meats, etc are). Also, most anything bought under WIC (Program to help families who are in need of assistance to help care for a child, mostly relates to formula, baby food, and diapers) is not taxed as well (most states do not tax formula, diapers, etc). So people who are poor can live without luxury items like MP3 players and Big Screen TVs, buy the stuff they really need, and get taxed hardly on any of it. So really, the whole sales tax debate is just one brought up to make it seem like Americans pay a lot more taxes than they do. The taxes I pay for buying a Playstation 3 or a diamond ring go to the state anyways, not the Federal Government. In the US, we believe in smaller Federal Government, more power by the states, Fed Government protects us from outside powers, keeps the states from breaking the US Constitution, and provides assistance where the states are not capable. Also provides for a means of arbitrating between states and providing law enforcement in areas where the states are not capable (such as interstate crime) and provides some social services in addition to what states already provide. So, in conclusion, yes, you can pay high taxes, but are not forced to. No one says you really have to have that MP3 player, and if you want it really bad but don't want to pay sales tax for it, you can just buy it online. In the US, anything bought online from out of state is not taxable unless your state (hardly any IIRC) imposes an internet sales tax. I know in Florida, if I buy something online, as long as that company does not have a brick and mortar presence in the state of Florida, I pay zero taxes on it.
Umm, this is the 1980's we're talking about. Come join us in the 21st century. I doubt you will find many that share that belief anymore. Of course, you will find some, there are nutjobs in any large group of people. However, I doubt you will find many that have a real position of authority. Most people in those sort of positions, even if they did hold such a viewpoint, would generally keep that viewpoint as much a secret as possible if they cared about their job. In this day and age, anything that anyone does gets scrutinized to the nth degree thanks to the age of internet reporting and the 24 hour cable news cycle.
I do appreciate the fact that unlike some, you are willing to debate these issues with me without just calling me a, quote, "Mental Midget" and telling me I'm fucking clueless. I'd mod you up just for that fact. However, one direct quote from the metagovernment.org site bothers me a bit, and perhaps you can either confirm my worry or dispel my line of thought.
Metagovernment.org:
Metascore makes the basic assumption that the participating parties are on some level willing to cooperate with each other and work towards common solutions.
Now right here is where you have a serious problem, if I understand this right. It's making the assumption that there is a level of cooperation among communities. The problem is, this is a bad assumption to make. Yeah, in most cases it'd probably hold true. But I can envision many scenarios where it would not. And that is why you have police, a court system, and various levels of government leadership. They take a lot of the emotion out of the equation (you cannot get discourse among large groups of people without a serious amount of emotion playing into the equation, no matter how much you try not to. It's human nature). An example of this would be in the situation of the trial of someone who is being charged with a racially motivated crime. Now granted, if the person is guilty, they are a scumbag and deserve to be punished. However, they are innocent until proven guilty. If you have a system of government such as the Metagovernment, how are they judged? A poll among peers? A debate? Here's another quote that bothers me:
Even if it were possible (security breech of Metascore), it wouldn't be necessary, since all data is and code that runs on it is absolutely open. Any manipulation/corruption or security breach would be noticed. Furthermore, since the way that a community operates in metascore, is entirely based on consensus
Two problems that I have with this. 1) Assumption is made that a security breach would be noticed. Security experts will tell you that nothing in security is 100% guaranteed. It's simply a matter of odds, and odds are that there is likely some vulnerability that cannot be accounted for, even in an open system. And 2) It's entirely based on consensus. Goes back to my trial example. People will assume someone is guilty of a racial crime because "they seem like the type." This is the way blacks were judged by ignorant communities back in the days of racism in it's most extreme in the south. Lot of lynchings happened just because someone white was dead and the black guy got pegged for it. I really would like to learn more about this Metagovernment, as I haven't heard of it before this, but it just sounds way too gimmicky to me, and something that was thought out in terms of social communities online but not necessarily to administer civil and criminal justice. I'm not necessarily just dismissing the idea outright, I just do not think it'll work in the real world. It'd work in an online community, I have no doubt of that. Web 2.0 is all about social interaction online. That takes nothing of the real human element into account, however, as you do not have to worry about real crime in an online social environment.
I'll give you an example based on the "free TVs" concept that I'd like you to take into consideration, and this is based on a real world example. I live in Pensacola, Florida. Not too bad a place, crime is about average for a city of its sort, most people that live here are transplants due to the US Military (Navy base here, Air Force bases less than 1 hour away) and also because it's a retirement town, so you get a wide mix of ideaologies here. So a concept such as yours might actually be somewhat viable here. However (and people who are from around here know what I'm talking about, I guess you'll just have to assume I'm not just making this up) there is a town probably 30 mins away called Jay, Florida. You can probably google it and find out some stuff on what I'm talking about. It's one of the most shockingly racist communities that I've ever seen. Literally, people who are black who live around there are warned not to be out at night. I mean, we're in the year two thousand and fucking eight, and people from particular ethnic groups are warned not to be outside in a community in the USA at night. Now, granted, that town is under the current system. However, there are still laws that enforce civil rights and the Escambia County Sherrifs Office is actually pretty good at even taking care of the places out in the boonies. But if that town were under a system such as you describe, I'm sure that community would just, as a whole, decide that minorities are not welcome there ever.
Also, nice to see that you have two accounts on two separate IPs so you can bash me on one and mod me down on another. Too bad for you that you won't find too many people sympathetic with your argument that active drug users deserve the treatments or that making one argument and then citing sources that relate to a separate argument (having nothing to do with being sexually active or because people think they are sinners)
Or, we could look at this rationally instead of "hugging the druggies." If you give someone treatment and they are a drug user, there is a good chance that they'll simply go out and contract HIV again before the treatment is complete. I'm assuming that no current treatment available to help control HIV is a one-shot deal. So you worry first about the people who really care about getting treatment, just the same as is done with an organ donation. Because an organ donation can save a life just as HIV treatment does, so yes, the two are comparable. And if you believe that active drug users get easy organ donation, go talk to a Chief Doctor at any local hospital that is rated as an Organ Clinic and you'll get a bit of a shock, I suppose. You were basically saying that people would get punished because they were promiscuous. What I'm saying is that they are getting punished for contracting the disease through drug use and they are still actively using drugs even as they try to get treatment for the disease caused by the drug use. Use some common sense.
My point was that I read your post 10 times and couldn't discern what the fuck point you were trying to make. Use the English language to its fullest and try to make coherent thoughts instead of random lines of text.
And since this post was a bit more coherent, I will respond to it. There are racist people in this world. It's shitty but hey, that's life. But by your hinted fragments of thought, you are implying that racists are all southern white shits. Plenty of racists to go around in various ethnic backgrounds and political leanings. You made a vast generalization and I guess what you are really trying to say is that whitey is racist, right? Gee, and I was actually thinking for a moment that no one would try to paint this election as Obama versus Whitey. People who think along the lines that you do are the reason there is still rampant hate in this country along racial or ethnic lines, no matter which "side" they are for. Personally I'm on the "side" of Americans, and I guess I just wasn't born with the gene that made me give a fuck about the race, religion, or creed of a person. I generally only care if they are competent or not.
So fix the system that for the most part is still effective, rather than trying to start from the ground up. I've long been for strict term limits in all elected positions. Kind of hard to build up a system of lobbyists if you have to lobby to brand new politicians every single term. In other words, the President can run for a total of two terms (if a president generally runs a good ship, give them an extra 4 years), A Senator can run for one term max (6 years total), an a Rep can run for three terms max (which brings their total of years to the same as a Senator). Once you run for the Senate, you are disqualified from running for the House of Representatives ever, and once you run for President, you are disqualified from running for the Senate or House ever. This would limit the "Putin effect" of having continual influence after your time is up. Also, make the financial records of anyone in any elected office public domain, other than any funding obtained privately. This of course doesn't mean you get to see what they charge on their visa debit card, but basically any money that passes into or out of their accounts used for the purposes of campaigning, running their offices, etc, are subject to public scrutiny. Then the press can keep tabs on if they are getting their money from sources they should, and how they are spending that money. And in order to accomplish this, they have to spend or receive money only in special accounts set up with specific banks, and any expenditure on behalf of their political office by any other means is subject to congressional review. You can fix the system without blowing it up and starting over, but I do agree our system needs some work.
Both of those sources have nothing to do with your argument. They are mainly discussing the relation between drug users and HIV resources. And personally, if you are a drug abuser, I'm all for someone else getting the HIV treatments over you. Someone who got HIV because they slept with the wrong person trumps someone who got HIV because they were shooting up crack, IMO. And there is precedent here. Someone who is a high risk patient (like someone who does serious drugs, etc) is unlikely to get an organ transplant over someone who is not a drug user. You are comparing apples and oranges.
Didn't say that. I said either he was right, and the page was edited, or he was just blowing smoke and/or he is illiterate. In other words, I was just covering my ass in case he was full of it. Hence, I'm ready to run for a seat in Congress.
Show me evidence of the Republican party trying to court racists. I'd love to see this. And Immigration Control has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with preventing people who haven't obtained the right to come live in our country to just waltz in. The best analogy would be if someone owns an apartment complex, and there are a few unrented apartments available. There is a list of people who want to get into the apartment, and they have gone through the proper process to apply to rent the apartment, put down a deposit, etc. But a few guys sneak in the back door, claim the apartment for theirs, and then (sometimes) start paying for rent. Nevermind that they might be paying (illegal immigrants do pay taxes in the way of sales tax, property taxes (sometimes), etc, but many do not pay income taxes when they are paid under the table), they went around the proper process. I'm not saying the process is great, it needs to be overhauled. But just because you don't like the rules doesn't give you the right to just ignore them.
You want me to grow up, however anyone who disagrees with your point of view must be immature. Yeah, if this is the way the Metagovernment Project is going to project itself, I want none of it, and I'm sure I have at least a few dozen-million people who agree with me. He compared government to Web 2.0, and I pointed out how the act of running a country and Web 2.0, a la Myspace, Facebook, etc, really have no comparison. And fyi, if lashing out is the only way you can defend your positions, perhaps it's time you re-evaluate your assumptions.
I'd be more worried when there are no politicians who are working for the rights of anyone (yes, not all politicians are in it just for themselves, some actually do good things on behalf of their constituents) then worrying about some of the politicians being corrupt or simply doing the bidding of their financiers. It is because of politicians that good legislation gets put into place. Saying that because there are some corrupt elements out there doesn't negate the fact that it is still a useful system. That'd be like saying that because there are crooked cops, we should just get rid of police forces and all self govern. If you did that, there would be rampant violence in every big city in American that would make current crime statistics look paltry by comparison. Especially in Philadelphia after the Phillies won the World Series. That town probably would've been burnt to a crisp right now, considering how fanatical Eagles/Sixers/Phillies fans are.
Scientifically speaking what you say makes sense, but morally speaking is it right to subject people to mandatory sterilization? I'd think it would be better to provide the people considering this procedure with all of the education to make a sound judgement themselves, and some might volunteer for the sterilization, while others obviously would not. Either way, I think making it mandatory would just cause more unsanctioned procedures (i.e.- Go to someone working out of their garage who provides illegal bone marrow transplants) which in turn would cause more complications in these procedures and would end up providing more work for Hospitals who have to treat people who have infections from bad transplants, etc.
The problem with that is that you would need to administer the drug reliably on schedule for every infected person all the time and that doesn't happen. The treatments are expensive
Agree with you here, the drugs are expensive and therefore access is not widely available around the globe to these drugs.
and even worse, enough people see HIV/AIDS as some sort of punishment for promiscuity that some people are denied treatments intermittently because people don't feel comfortable giving it to them.
This is where you lost me and likely others in your argument. Show me proof that people are denied drugs based on moral grounds, or don't spout such bullshit. What you are trying to say here is people hate whores and gays, and you are trying to hide that statement in a carefully worded post. Good try but you'd have an easier time trying to convince people that JFK went into hiding and that the guy who was shot was a double. I'm not saying there aren't those people who think this way, but there's no evidence that any HIV or AIDS treatment drug that's being withheld on moral grounds. Most of the problems with getting this stuff to everyone is that, A) Most of the drugs widely available are very experimental and most of it simply doesn't work well yet or we don't know enough about how well it works, or B) It's all costly and most people cannot afford the treatments. Now if you had claimed that it's class warfare and that only the rich have easy access to that, then I'd probably be more understanding of your argument.
Yeah, like, for real, our government should be run like Web 2.0. If our government became a mirror of MySpace, we'd all be fucked. Seriously, your idea is fucking retarded on so many levels I do not know where to begin. Yeah, we should all sit around and decide as a community what our society should be like. You do realize how much rampant crime there would be, and the basis of defense would be "Well, most of the people in our community agree that we should all have free tv's and shouldn't have to pay for them, therefore we had the right to break the store windows and take them." I doubt even far-left nuts agree with you on this.
I stand corrected, and you are right, that's totally different. I guess the massive amount of people who can't even count change without an electronic register makes me cynical to the point where I assume all young people hate math.
Yeah, let's just get rid of leaders, and while we're at it, that means we also get rid of the infrastructure to enforce laws. That means get rid of the military and the police. Yeah, no one will take advantage of that. If you can get people to buy into that bullshit, you should run for some sort of public office. Because then you'd be a real good bullshit artist...*ahem* I mean politician. Oh, but in your perfect world, there would be no politicians. I guess that fucks that plan up.
Or maybe he doesn't need a full four years worth of schooling before he has adequate skills to begin a career. I know, hard for some people to grasp that you might actually be able to develop a talent without full tutelage of a PhD. But then again, you were a Math major so I wouldn't expect you to understand CS or Software Engineering in relation to real world jobs and the fact that a big chunk of people who are successful in the field started well before they got the degree or don't have a degree at all. Note he didn't say his degree was useless or that he learned nothing in College. But he managed to learn how to think for himself without first asking a professor how to do so.
The way schools are becoming (combination firing range and brainwash camps) I will most certainly be either homeschooling or sending my son to a school that I can trust will do what schools used to do. Teach the stuff that will prepare him for life after high school, and leave the other stuff to me. Oh who am I kidding. My wife's responsible for all of the raising. I just use him to get out of cutting the lawn.
Slashdot Mirror
Sales tax in much of America is under 10% of purchased goods, and most food stuffs are not taxed at all. You can generally go to the grocery store, buy nothing but food, and pay very little in taxes (some food stuffs are taxed depending on it, but generally none of your produce, meats, etc are). Also, most anything bought under WIC (Program to help families who are in need of assistance to help care for a child, mostly relates to formula, baby food, and diapers) is not taxed as well (most states do not tax formula, diapers, etc). So people who are poor can live without luxury items like MP3 players and Big Screen TVs, buy the stuff they really need, and get taxed hardly on any of it. So really, the whole sales tax debate is just one brought up to make it seem like Americans pay a lot more taxes than they do. The taxes I pay for buying a Playstation 3 or a diamond ring go to the state anyways, not the Federal Government. In the US, we believe in smaller Federal Government, more power by the states, Fed Government protects us from outside powers, keeps the states from breaking the US Constitution, and provides assistance where the states are not capable. Also provides for a means of arbitrating between states and providing law enforcement in areas where the states are not capable (such as interstate crime) and provides some social services in addition to what states already provide. So, in conclusion, yes, you can pay high taxes, but are not forced to. No one says you really have to have that MP3 player, and if you want it really bad but don't want to pay sales tax for it, you can just buy it online. In the US, anything bought online from out of state is not taxable unless your state (hardly any IIRC) imposes an internet sales tax. I know in Florida, if I buy something online, as long as that company does not have a brick and mortar presence in the state of Florida, I pay zero taxes on it.
Umm, this is the 1980's we're talking about. Come join us in the 21st century. I doubt you will find many that share that belief anymore. Of course, you will find some, there are nutjobs in any large group of people. However, I doubt you will find many that have a real position of authority. Most people in those sort of positions, even if they did hold such a viewpoint, would generally keep that viewpoint as much a secret as possible if they cared about their job. In this day and age, anything that anyone does gets scrutinized to the nth degree thanks to the age of internet reporting and the 24 hour cable news cycle.
I do appreciate the fact that unlike some, you are willing to debate these issues with me without just calling me a, quote, "Mental Midget" and telling me I'm fucking clueless. I'd mod you up just for that fact. However, one direct quote from the metagovernment.org site bothers me a bit, and perhaps you can either confirm my worry or dispel my line of thought.
Metagovernment.org:
Metascore makes the basic assumption that the participating parties are on some level willing to cooperate with each other and work towards common solutions.
Now right here is where you have a serious problem, if I understand this right. It's making the assumption that there is a level of cooperation among communities. The problem is, this is a bad assumption to make. Yeah, in most cases it'd probably hold true. But I can envision many scenarios where it would not. And that is why you have police, a court system, and various levels of government leadership. They take a lot of the emotion out of the equation (you cannot get discourse among large groups of people without a serious amount of emotion playing into the equation, no matter how much you try not to. It's human nature). An example of this would be in the situation of the trial of someone who is being charged with a racially motivated crime. Now granted, if the person is guilty, they are a scumbag and deserve to be punished. However, they are innocent until proven guilty. If you have a system of government such as the Metagovernment, how are they judged? A poll among peers? A debate? Here's another quote that bothers me:
Even if it were possible (security breech of Metascore), it wouldn't be necessary, since all data is and code that runs on it is absolutely open. Any manipulation/corruption or security breach would be noticed. Furthermore, since the way that a community operates in metascore, is entirely based on consensus
Two problems that I have with this. 1) Assumption is made that a security breach would be noticed. Security experts will tell you that nothing in security is 100% guaranteed. It's simply a matter of odds, and odds are that there is likely some vulnerability that cannot be accounted for, even in an open system. And 2) It's entirely based on consensus. Goes back to my trial example. People will assume someone is guilty of a racial crime because "they seem like the type." This is the way blacks were judged by ignorant communities back in the days of racism in it's most extreme in the south. Lot of lynchings happened just because someone white was dead and the black guy got pegged for it. I really would like to learn more about this Metagovernment, as I haven't heard of it before this, but it just sounds way too gimmicky to me, and something that was thought out in terms of social communities online but not necessarily to administer civil and criminal justice. I'm not necessarily just dismissing the idea outright, I just do not think it'll work in the real world. It'd work in an online community, I have no doubt of that. Web 2.0 is all about social interaction online. That takes nothing of the real human element into account, however, as you do not have to worry about real crime in an online social environment.
I'll give you an example based on the "free TVs" concept that I'd like you to take into consideration, and this is based on a real world example. I live in Pensacola, Florida. Not too bad a place, crime is about average for a city of its sort, most people that live here are transplants due to the US Military (Navy base here, Air Force bases less than 1 hour away) and also because it's a retirement town, so you get a wide mix of ideaologies here. So a concept such as yours might actually be somewhat viable here. However (and people who are from around here know what I'm talking about, I guess you'll just have to assume I'm not just making this up) there is a town probably 30 mins away called Jay, Florida. You can probably google it and find out some stuff on what I'm talking about. It's one of the most shockingly racist communities that I've ever seen. Literally, people who are black who live around there are warned not to be out at night. I mean, we're in the year two thousand and fucking eight, and people from particular ethnic groups are warned not to be outside in a community in the USA at night. Now, granted, that town is under the current system. However, there are still laws that enforce civil rights and the Escambia County Sherrifs Office is actually pretty good at even taking care of the places out in the boonies. But if that town were under a system such as you describe, I'm sure that community would just, as a whole, decide that minorities are not welcome there ever.
Also, nice to see that you have two accounts on two separate IPs so you can bash me on one and mod me down on another. Too bad for you that you won't find too many people sympathetic with your argument that active drug users deserve the treatments or that making one argument and then citing sources that relate to a separate argument (having nothing to do with being sexually active or because people think they are sinners)
Or, we could look at this rationally instead of "hugging the druggies." If you give someone treatment and they are a drug user, there is a good chance that they'll simply go out and contract HIV again before the treatment is complete. I'm assuming that no current treatment available to help control HIV is a one-shot deal. So you worry first about the people who really care about getting treatment, just the same as is done with an organ donation. Because an organ donation can save a life just as HIV treatment does, so yes, the two are comparable. And if you believe that active drug users get easy organ donation, go talk to a Chief Doctor at any local hospital that is rated as an Organ Clinic and you'll get a bit of a shock, I suppose. You were basically saying that people would get punished because they were promiscuous. What I'm saying is that they are getting punished for contracting the disease through drug use and they are still actively using drugs even as they try to get treatment for the disease caused by the drug use. Use some common sense.
My point was that I read your post 10 times and couldn't discern what the fuck point you were trying to make. Use the English language to its fullest and try to make coherent thoughts instead of random lines of text.
And since this post was a bit more coherent, I will respond to it. There are racist people in this world. It's shitty but hey, that's life. But by your hinted fragments of thought, you are implying that racists are all southern white shits. Plenty of racists to go around in various ethnic backgrounds and political leanings. You made a vast generalization and I guess what you are really trying to say is that whitey is racist, right? Gee, and I was actually thinking for a moment that no one would try to paint this election as Obama versus Whitey. People who think along the lines that you do are the reason there is still rampant hate in this country along racial or ethnic lines, no matter which "side" they are for. Personally I'm on the "side" of Americans, and I guess I just wasn't born with the gene that made me give a fuck about the race, religion, or creed of a person. I generally only care if they are competent or not.
And in other news, Steve Jobs has announced that Apple is funding new studies in the reliability of the iPhone.
So fix the system that for the most part is still effective, rather than trying to start from the ground up. I've long been for strict term limits in all elected positions. Kind of hard to build up a system of lobbyists if you have to lobby to brand new politicians every single term. In other words, the President can run for a total of two terms (if a president generally runs a good ship, give them an extra 4 years), A Senator can run for one term max (6 years total), an a Rep can run for three terms max (which brings their total of years to the same as a Senator). Once you run for the Senate, you are disqualified from running for the House of Representatives ever, and once you run for President, you are disqualified from running for the Senate or House ever. This would limit the "Putin effect" of having continual influence after your time is up. Also, make the financial records of anyone in any elected office public domain, other than any funding obtained privately. This of course doesn't mean you get to see what they charge on their visa debit card, but basically any money that passes into or out of their accounts used for the purposes of campaigning, running their offices, etc, are subject to public scrutiny. Then the press can keep tabs on if they are getting their money from sources they should, and how they are spending that money. And in order to accomplish this, they have to spend or receive money only in special accounts set up with specific banks, and any expenditure on behalf of their political office by any other means is subject to congressional review. You can fix the system without blowing it up and starting over, but I do agree our system needs some work.
Both of those sources have nothing to do with your argument. They are mainly discussing the relation between drug users and HIV resources. And personally, if you are a drug abuser, I'm all for someone else getting the HIV treatments over you. Someone who got HIV because they slept with the wrong person trumps someone who got HIV because they were shooting up crack, IMO. And there is precedent here. Someone who is a high risk patient (like someone who does serious drugs, etc) is unlikely to get an organ transplant over someone who is not a drug user. You are comparing apples and oranges.
Didn't say that. I said either he was right, and the page was edited, or he was just blowing smoke and/or he is illiterate. In other words, I was just covering my ass in case he was full of it. Hence, I'm ready to run for a seat in Congress.
Show me evidence of the Republican party trying to court racists. I'd love to see this. And Immigration Control has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with preventing people who haven't obtained the right to come live in our country to just waltz in. The best analogy would be if someone owns an apartment complex, and there are a few unrented apartments available. There is a list of people who want to get into the apartment, and they have gone through the proper process to apply to rent the apartment, put down a deposit, etc. But a few guys sneak in the back door, claim the apartment for theirs, and then (sometimes) start paying for rent. Nevermind that they might be paying (illegal immigrants do pay taxes in the way of sales tax, property taxes (sometimes), etc, but many do not pay income taxes when they are paid under the table), they went around the proper process. I'm not saying the process is great, it needs to be overhauled. But just because you don't like the rules doesn't give you the right to just ignore them.
You want me to grow up, however anyone who disagrees with your point of view must be immature. Yeah, if this is the way the Metagovernment Project is going to project itself, I want none of it, and I'm sure I have at least a few dozen-million people who agree with me. He compared government to Web 2.0, and I pointed out how the act of running a country and Web 2.0, a la Myspace, Facebook, etc, really have no comparison. And fyi, if lashing out is the only way you can defend your positions, perhaps it's time you re-evaluate your assumptions.
I'd be more worried when there are no politicians who are working for the rights of anyone (yes, not all politicians are in it just for themselves, some actually do good things on behalf of their constituents) then worrying about some of the politicians being corrupt or simply doing the bidding of their financiers. It is because of politicians that good legislation gets put into place. Saying that because there are some corrupt elements out there doesn't negate the fact that it is still a useful system. That'd be like saying that because there are crooked cops, we should just get rid of police forces and all self govern. If you did that, there would be rampant violence in every big city in American that would make current crime statistics look paltry by comparison. Especially in Philadelphia after the Phillies won the World Series. That town probably would've been burnt to a crisp right now, considering how fanatical Eagles/Sixers/Phillies fans are.
High taxation is such a quaint European concept.
Scientifically speaking what you say makes sense, but morally speaking is it right to subject people to mandatory sterilization? I'd think it would be better to provide the people considering this procedure with all of the education to make a sound judgement themselves, and some might volunteer for the sterilization, while others obviously would not. Either way, I think making it mandatory would just cause more unsanctioned procedures (i.e.- Go to someone working out of their garage who provides illegal bone marrow transplants) which in turn would cause more complications in these procedures and would end up providing more work for Hospitals who have to treat people who have infections from bad transplants, etc.
The problem with that is that you would need to administer the drug reliably on schedule for every infected person all the time and that doesn't happen. The treatments are expensive
Agree with you here, the drugs are expensive and therefore access is not widely available around the globe to these drugs.
and even worse, enough people see HIV/AIDS as some sort of punishment for promiscuity that some people are denied treatments intermittently because people don't feel comfortable giving it to them.
This is where you lost me and likely others in your argument. Show me proof that people are denied drugs based on moral grounds, or don't spout such bullshit. What you are trying to say here is people hate whores and gays, and you are trying to hide that statement in a carefully worded post. Good try but you'd have an easier time trying to convince people that JFK went into hiding and that the guy who was shot was a double. I'm not saying there aren't those people who think this way, but there's no evidence that any HIV or AIDS treatment drug that's being withheld on moral grounds. Most of the problems with getting this stuff to everyone is that, A) Most of the drugs widely available are very experimental and most of it simply doesn't work well yet or we don't know enough about how well it works, or B) It's all costly and most people cannot afford the treatments. Now if you had claimed that it's class warfare and that only the rich have easy access to that, then I'd probably be more understanding of your argument.
Yeah, like, for real, our government should be run like Web 2.0. If our government became a mirror of MySpace, we'd all be fucked. Seriously, your idea is fucking retarded on so many levels I do not know where to begin. Yeah, we should all sit around and decide as a community what our society should be like. You do realize how much rampant crime there would be, and the basis of defense would be "Well, most of the people in our community agree that we should all have free tv's and shouldn't have to pay for them, therefore we had the right to break the store windows and take them." I doubt even far-left nuts agree with you on this.
I stand corrected, and you are right, that's totally different. I guess the massive amount of people who can't even count change without an electronic register makes me cynical to the point where I assume all young people hate math.
Yeah, let's just get rid of leaders, and while we're at it, that means we also get rid of the infrastructure to enforce laws. That means get rid of the military and the police. Yeah, no one will take advantage of that. If you can get people to buy into that bullshit, you should run for some sort of public office. Because then you'd be a real good bullshit artist...*ahem* I mean politician. Oh, but in your perfect world, there would be no politicians. I guess that fucks that plan up.
Or maybe he doesn't need a full four years worth of schooling before he has adequate skills to begin a career. I know, hard for some people to grasp that you might actually be able to develop a talent without full tutelage of a PhD. But then again, you were a Math major so I wouldn't expect you to understand CS or Software Engineering in relation to real world jobs and the fact that a big chunk of people who are successful in the field started well before they got the degree or don't have a degree at all. Note he didn't say his degree was useless or that he learned nothing in College. But he managed to learn how to think for himself without first asking a professor how to do so.
The government is paying a good chunk of your tuition in exchange for 100 hours of community service. Sounds like a fair exchange for me.
Jesus, now you want our infants and toddlers doing mandatory community service too? You insensitive clod!"
The way schools are becoming (combination firing range and brainwash camps) I will most certainly be either homeschooling or sending my son to a school that I can trust will do what schools used to do. Teach the stuff that will prepare him for life after high school, and leave the other stuff to me. Oh who am I kidding. My wife's responsible for all of the raising. I just use him to get out of cutting the lawn.
This is slashdot. Logical thinking is desired, but not required.
Except Obama did spend his childhood as a giant radioactive spider. proof