Nope, I don't. But I do have a right to say that if your boss asks you to do that HE is violating everybody else's freedom and I certainly have a right to say that if you have DONE that then you shouldn't qualify for tax-funded medical care (since your early death is caused by your own stupidity), you sure as hell aren't allowed to drive (but by all means, take the bus).
See the thing is though, there is SO much that I can RIGHTFULLY tell you you CANNOT do if you do that (on the basis that if you do you ARE infringing on MY freedoms) - and so little that is LEFT, that it's really simpler to just ban it outright because frankly you really are NOT losing anything that's worth the price *I* have to pay for YOUR drug addiction.
And yes, working that much IS an addiction. Not all drugs are chemicals.
>Would people complain if prices went up as conditions in said countries improved? Damn right they would, unfortunately.
Not so sure, a survey among apple customers found that 90% of them said they would happily pay 10% more for an apple product if they could get a written guarantee that, that entire 10% would be given to the factory workers. If apple added a dollar to the price of every iphone - with a guarantee that it would go to a factory worker as a whole - that dollar would probably double their income per hour.
The truth is that low labour cost is really not so needed. A study calculated that for every 30 dollars apple spends per iphone -only 1 dollar actually pays labour costs in manufacturing. It's one 1/30th of the cost - if you cut the margin on an iphone by just 1/30th you could pay the workers double what they earn now. That cannot be a major price for the executives to bear now can it ?
So it's not like improving this would require the prices to go up - but even if it did - it seems most consumers have already said they would be happy to pay more to make it better. Understandably - we would want guarantees. Spending an extra 20 dollars per phone if it goes into the hands of the already-rich apple executives will piss us off. Spending an extra 20 dollars if it goes directly to the factory workers would make us feel GOOD. It would be charity that actually DOES uplift people and buy them a chance at a better life. The kind even most rightwingers actually rather like.
> they are not getting compensated for that work, have unsafe conditions, don't have adequate breaks, etc, then that's different, but long hours don't automatically equate to worker abuse.
Actually - it does, to the extend where even in some developing countries (like mine) there is a law that can send managers to jail if they ALLOW a worker to do more than 40 hours overtime a week. The legal reasoning is pretty sound - anybody who is working that much overtime (even with the required 1.5X pay) is either under duress or is harming himself (and more importantly harming and risking the lives of others) to an unacceptable degree. I the idea that anybody who has worked a 16 hour day is safe to drive home is just outright ludicrous. Preventing that is no more an infringement of liberty than to say you can't drive drunk.
Either way - yes, it IS worker abuse. The fact that this worker abuse happens in developing nations as well just proves that the problem is wide-spread it doesn't mean it's not a problem.
I notice a common thread here - everyone of these "I used to work 12-hour days too" posts have something in common: they all did it when their career choices were limited. In my view the idea that it was "just how I got my success when I started out" is stupid. That's trying to feel good about not standing up for yourself back then. No - the difference is - if your boss tried to demand that now, you would probably tell him to shove his job since you've got the qualifications and education to get another one (which will probably pay MORE than what you are earning now). Back then you didn't - and somebody exploited your lack of options.
The 40 hour work-week wasn't just made up. It began with ath 1895 May Day riots in New York, which would subsequently lead to the yearly celebration of worker's day internationally. Those strikes and riots were specifically about getting the 40-hour work-week. The people who led the organisation got framed for murder (which they were subsequently proven absolutely innocent off) - and received summary executions (back then the USA did that). Good people died so you could have the right to demand extra pay for overtime, they died so you could refuse it, they died so you could see your family at night, so you could get a night's rest, so you could have a social life and not JUST a work life. I think it's important that their death not be in vain because you take pride in your work. Taking pride in your work is fine, it's nobel, but so is damn well insisting that you will go home at the end of the day.
Neither would I - I never said she could conclude that from the LOOK - I said she could conclude it from reading the TEXT on the screen - FSN does show the names of the directories.
In 1993, only one class of operating systems had directories like/etc,/usr,/bin and/var (these days some do that are unix derived but don't really behave like Unix in other ways anymore - e.g. macOSX).
Now one can go further - the system it was running on was Irix (no other system had FSN or a similar file manager at the time) - and if you actually kept pace with Unix at the time, many people familiar with it would have recognized it at a glance ANYWAY because it was one of the major Unix systems of the time.
But there is a major silly-ness in the movie on a different level. The books clearly state that the park's genetic research and controls used the same computer system which was built using Cray supercomputers (three of them). The movie I think also references them being Crays.
Irix did NOT run on the Cray.
Which means she wasn't using the main systems. Though I suppose it's possible that they interacted with the crays via terminals that could have been running Irix. After all remote-X11 and RSH were available at the time so such a setup would not be impossible.
>Right, but the actual human toll, the suffering it will cause because Africa is so poor, is that suddenly made alright since tourists have one less deadly disease to worry about?
In a round-about way, it actually might be. Tourism is one of the largest single sources of foreign capital in most African countries. Indeed for quite a few it's their single largest export- and creates a market that has among the lowest barriers of entry for some of it (anybody can set up a curio stall with relatively little start-up capital and no need to afford expensive business locales).
>It is still mock-worthy that the child would see a monitor with FSN running
Why recognizing Unix is not that hard, if you see a system with a/etc and a/usr is almost certainly a close derivative of Unix. The interface you see it through won't throw you off.
>and know how to operate the park's complex proprietary security systems.
Is it ? If the interface is well written, and the program easy to locate - why would it be ? Most people who are good at computers can figure out a new program in a few minutes. At least the basics of it's operation. I do it all the time, and I was younger than her when I started doing it, on computers that ONLY had command-line interfaces based on a language which was NOT my mothertongue.
It's really not that hard to believe - I say, fairly confident that I could have actually DONE what she did in the movie.
>Moa was apparently delicious... hence becoming extinct.
I disagree with your premise. Chickens, cattle, pigs and sheep all exist today in numbers far beyond what they would have under natural conditions. The only logical conclusion is that being tasty to humans is actually an evolved survival trait (from the point of view of the species as a whole - not the individual members who get eaten).
>But that's not what the trial was about. At all. I realize you slashtards are groupthinking yourselves into believing some gross miscarriage of justice must have happened because you don't like the outcome,
Four courts in four three countries had trials on the SAME patents. 3 out of 4 courts found in favour of the defendant. One of them found so STRONGLY in favour of the defendant that it ordered the claimant to publicly post advertisements declaring the innocence of the defendant. That's a highly unusual thing in a case not directly involving something like slander - it's the court telling the claimant that he was SERIOUSLY full of shit in bringing the suit.
1 out of the four trials finds in favour of the claimant. The Jury in this trial admits to "sending a message" - directly against the orders of the judge and also admits to reaching it's decision WITHOUT reading the jury instructions - which I'm pretty sure is grounds for a mistrial by itself.
But the truth is, that with this context, I (as a citizen of NONE of the countries involved and a customer of neither of these companies) have to conclude that the 4th trial WAS a massive miscarriage of justice. When 3/4 courts finds somebody innocent and the 4th finds guilt - all on the SAME available evidence (it's not like we suddenly discovered DNA testing for patents or something) - I believe that the odds are very good the 4th court screwed up.
Two years ago I wrote a SIFI story set about 5 years from now in which a geneticist wanting to do a secret study away from work built herself a supercomputer out of old smartphones.
Granted in the story phones had completely replaced PC's, when not used mobile they had 3-D projectors and laser-scanners to create large 3D displays (with the phone lying flat on the table) and a full-sized projected keyboard as well as voice operation where useful. Ubuntu's phone-dock idea is effectively the same idea except without the 3D part:P
Agreed, circumstances draw the line between paranoia and fact.
Here in South Africa in the 1980's as more and more white people became anti-appartheid the government's clampdown on people supporting banned organisations (e.g. any organisations that wasn't supporting appartheid) led to litterally thousands of civilians having their phones bugs. Mostly people whose only crime had been to express some "liberal" viewpoints. In fact it became so common (and so rarely did anything get done about it if you were white) that people who discovered a phone bug would deliberately leave it in place so they could show them off at cocktail parties. Being "bugged by the cops" was a STATUS symbol for liberal whites - proof that you really WERE against the evil nationalists.
But making it legal for students (who are not employed- they are investing time in future employment) to remain on the insurance of their employed parents (who can actually pay for it) is a national disaster ?
If you get fired (seems to be happening to rather a lot of Americans lately) and it takes a few months to get a new job and your savings run out and your insurance gets cancelled, you should be allowed to die on a pavement if you have an accident instead of being treated, getting better, finding a job and once more being able to contribute to the economy ?
I daresay sir, that you are not only a heartless psychopath, but a headless idiot as well.
Just a minor correction, although I agree with your post. I live in a country where there is such a system, and employers DO pay for healthcare if there are on-the-job injuries, indeed it's illegal to claim those from private insurance - it MUST be paid by the employer (who is free to take out insurance against such events but not forced to - they can cover accidents out of pocket if they prefer - at least for smaller companies this is often viable).
The reason has nothing to do with healthcare cost however, it's one of the more efficient and effective ways to regulate work-place safety. If the employer is automatically liable for the cost of on-the-job injuries (however minor or major) without litigation or such ever entering into it - a guilty-by-default status, then they have every possible incentive to make the workplace as safe as possible. Frankly if you pay for every skull fracture caused by slippery floors, it's no longer economic to save money on slip-proof mats now is it ? Ultimately this may increase the cost of doing business but I would argue it only increases it to what it OUGHT to be in the first place. Skimping on worker-safety is not a saving, it's basically murder-for-money.
>There's a flaw in this argument. Somebody will always arrive carrying a club. And all of the arguments for equality in the world won't help you if they decide to use their club instead of their brains.
And that's why the full philosophy of socialist libertarianism contains measures to protect against that -including military. But that's beyond the scope of this discussion. My point was just that the flaws of government are not present in my philosophy so citing them at me is a strawman.
>As for "protection from harm" -- is it not harmful for the only ISP in my area to partner with Apple and prevent me from using Microsoft products? Say what you will about Microsoft, its still an option that would be taken away from me against my will, which in my mind is a form of harm.
Agreed - which is why I said I support market regulations.
>- Regulation: Let the government "harm" the ISPs.
I don't consider it harm. It's policing to prevent harm - that's what the government is FOR.
>Personally, I'm going for option 2. For all of the "legal person" rhetoric, I still tend to hold real people in higher esteem than a corporation.
I hold corporations in no esteem at all - I believe they are effectively a form of organized labour theft. I support the idea of worker owned cooperations - where nobody is "the boss" - instead decisions are made democratically by the workers, who also OWN the business, and work for a share of the profit rather than wages. I've heard all the arguments against that, they've all been thoroughly debunked, they are not relevant to this discussion so please don't even bother saying them - if you want to challenge the idea of cooperations, first read up on them, how they really work and how WELL they work where-ever they exist, and when you wrapped your head around the fact THAT they work, then the only debate becomes why we ALLOW businesses that are effectively private dictatorships to exist when clearly they aren't required for success.
I tend to agree but as far as I know airbags aren't a legal requirement or a regulation - cheaper cars still don't have those. Most (if not all) of the ones that are required by law really do affect other people's safety as well.
But I agree on the personal safety aspects, the reason I drive an Audi A3 is because it has all the extra safety features, and frankly I wouldn't mind if regulations extended to cover some of those. Not so much airbags and the like - but things like ABS and ESP which (much like brakes and suspension) are there to reduce your risk of an accident happening in the first place. I've seen the ESP pull the car safely out of an aqua-plane that would have killed me (and possibly somebody else) without it once already. Pool of water on a hidden bend, next thing I know the car is basically floating - I have no control, a brief moment later I felt the ESP kicking in - finding a grip and let me pull the car safely around that bend without going into a deadly spin instead.
Those things save lives, and yes, lives are valuable rationally, economicaly and emotionally.
There you go. Locke's theory of value goes: "Only through human labour can value be created". That's why I say it's the basis of both communism and capitalism. Indeed Adam Smith and Murray Rothbard share with Karl Marx a fondness for quoting that.
They just disagreed on what to do about it. From this Locke derived his theory of property which goes: "All natural resources are initially in an unowned state. When a man mixes his labour with a resource, he creates value, and this then becomes property". This is the basis of property laws all over the world now. Trouble is, it was great in the 17th century - but it's ridiculous now (simply because we have 400 years of knowledge he didn't have access to).
For starters: it's decidedly speciecist. I stated that but for the word "man" there is nothing in there that stops a beaver claiming property rights on his dam - after all, with labour he added value to a natural resource (a river). Nobody is proposing humans should recognize the property rights of other species though - indeed we claim the right to EXERT property rights OVER other species. That's problematic - what we create a truly sentient AI ? Would it never have property rights ? On what basis do we actually claim that the antelope do NOT own the savannah ? They probably think of it as "home" after all ? And do we really think we'll be the only sentient lifeform for EVER ?
Locke lived 400 years ago, before the age of reason (which it must be said -he helped start) - he had no concept that humanity may NOT be special, religion after all teaches that we are the chosen ones.
What's worse is - it fails to recognize the EXISTING value that something may have. A piece of arable land, which you dig gold from - has him accurately turning the gold into property, but what about the land which is decidedly not arable anymore ? You've reduced it's value, not added to it, so how is that still property ? And if it isn't - what now, since you've basically destroyed it ?
So Locke's philosophy of property is great for it's time, but it's 400 years overdue for an update.
>You believe that we have big government order to counter the growing corporatism. In order to keep it in check
I most certainly do not ! I believe that if we MUST have a government, that should be a subset of it's primary (and indeed sole) function: to protect citizens from harm. I am a socialist libertarian - I believe in NO government at all, I believe that people should vote on the laws they want to live under as small communities. No countries, no states, no governments, NOBODY with more power than his neighbour - everybody truly equal not just BEFORE the law but in the CRAFTING of the law.
So considering I don't believe in politics or government at all - nothing you say applies to me at all. I did say that since we DO have a government, that the standard I would hold them to is to promote liberty - largely by limiting laws to protection from harm. Whether the source of that harm is an individual or a corporation is immaterial. Market regulation is one means to protect against harm. In my ideal world the concept and structure of market regulation is very different, and there are no corporations - only cooperations, which are an entirely different beast. But I know I don't live in that world (yet), so I can try to make the best of the one I do live in, in part by promoting PARTIAL cures in lieu of the full cure.
"Fascism should more correctly be known as corporatism as it's the alignment of corporate and state power." - Mussolini
All that other stuff, racism etc. - those are optional extras, government and corporations in cahoots rather than government actively POLICING corporations that is the DEFINITION of Fascism and it's stated end-goal.
What Fascism is diametrically opposed to is individual liberty. The REASON for aligning state and corporate power is to create a power structure that is capable of MORE control and less likely to be overthrown. Opposition to personal liberty doesn't HAVE to include racist or ethnic bases, but it's certainly prone to doing so.
Nonetheless that is a side-effect, it's by no means required for the concept of fascism.
I consider capitalism (at least in MOST forms) to be diametrically opposed to individual personal liberty as well. Because to my belief the very CONCEPT of liberty cannot EXIST without the assumption of personal RESPONSIBILITY to TAKE CARE OF OTHER PEOPLE.
Capitalist love to talk of personal responsibility - but they only mean "to take care of yourself" - they deny that we have a responsibility to ONE ANOTHER as well. They are wrong. That responsibility is very real - indeed it's both the foundation of a good society and the very PURPOSE for which humans formed societies in the FIRST place (we survive better in a group - logically that's only POSSIBLE we assume SHARED responsibility for each other's well-being). So what they are really saying is "I want to shirk my responsibility to other people by pretending it doesn't exist". Hell the Randian's go so far as to call any and all forms of welfare "slavery".
Very true. You also haven't been forced to make any large upfront investments you need to recoup from their labour - so there is absolutely ZERO financial incentive to keep them healthy and alive so they can work for long enough to make you a return.
>Barebone car with a very efficient engine would drive miles on a teaspoon of gas but it won't exist because cars have to have a shitload of safety stuff
I would be all for removing safety regulation if the only risk involved is to yourself. Just as you can buy a motorcycle if you want - even though it's provably far less safe for you to drive than a car.
But it's not just YOUR safety at stake, many (maybe most) of the safety regulations are to reduce the risk you pose to MY safety to reasonable levels. Decent breaks and shocks and the like adds cost to your car - because otherwise you're risking MY life unreasonably (when you crash your barebones car into me because it cannot corner properly and kill me).
That's a pretty major infringement of my liberty - so I'm in favor of a law that says you can't drive a car without good brakes and the autocompany cannot SELL you a car without good brakes.
>2. The abolition of the modern corporation, replaced instead with a corporation with strict limits on size, life span and ability to garner wealth and power.
Socialist libertarians would say - that won't work. What it must be replaced with is worker-owned cooperations which are run by democratic one-employee-one-vote rather than the corporotacratic one-share-one-vote system.
>Now we can argue if his interpretation of the legal framework is proper or not or what scope should the laws be, but your claim that he is pro-antisodomy is a fat lie.
If states rights are allowed to interfere with basic human rights then they have been allowed to go too far. No government should have the right to discriminate against citizens on ANY grounds except one: "have committed and been CONVICTED in a fair trial of a fellony". Everybody else should be given exactly equal treatment by government in ALL laws. No government should be allowed to make a law that does not PREVENT active and REAL harm to other people.
Not a state, not the federal government. That is the SOLE AND ONLY excusable legal action of government: to prevent one person (or corporation) from harming another. As a left libertarian - I think we can do even THAT without NEEDING a government but while governments exist - it's the ONLY laws I would support. So yes, I support market regulations as a subset of the principle of "laws that prevent the causing of harm".
Ron Paul seems to think you should have the right to vote on where your NEIGHBOUR is allowed to stick his dick when ONLY other consenting adults are involved. Sorry. No. States do not, and should not, have that right.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, I don't.
But I do have a right to say that if your boss asks you to do that HE is violating everybody else's freedom and I certainly have a right to say that if you have DONE that then you shouldn't qualify for tax-funded medical care (since your early death is caused by your own stupidity), you sure as hell aren't allowed to drive (but by all means, take the bus).
See the thing is though, there is SO much that I can RIGHTFULLY tell you you CANNOT do if you do that (on the basis that if you do you ARE infringing on MY freedoms) - and so little that is LEFT, that it's really simpler to just ban it outright because frankly you really are NOT losing anything that's worth the price *I* have to pay for YOUR drug addiction.
And yes, working that much IS an addiction. Not all drugs are chemicals.
South Africa. :P
Mind you - I left management behind about 5 years ago because I prefer to be a real engineer
So if it's changed since then, I wouldn't know, it certainly was the labour law around 2006.
>Would people complain if prices went up as conditions in said countries improved? Damn right they would, unfortunately.
Not so sure, a survey among apple customers found that 90% of them said they would happily pay 10% more for an apple product if they could get a written guarantee that, that entire 10% would be given to the factory workers.
If apple added a dollar to the price of every iphone - with a guarantee that it would go to a factory worker as a whole - that dollar would probably double their income per hour.
The truth is that low labour cost is really not so needed. A study calculated that for every 30 dollars apple spends per iphone -only 1 dollar actually pays labour costs in manufacturing. It's one 1/30th of the cost - if you cut the margin on an iphone by just 1/30th you could pay the workers double what they earn now. That cannot be a major price for the executives to bear now can it ?
So it's not like improving this would require the prices to go up - but even if it did - it seems most consumers have already said they would be happy to pay more to make it better. Understandably - we would want guarantees. Spending an extra 20 dollars per phone if it goes into the hands of the already-rich apple executives will piss us off. Spending an extra 20 dollars if it goes directly to the factory workers would make us feel GOOD.
It would be charity that actually DOES uplift people and buy them a chance at a better life. The kind even most rightwingers actually rather like.
> they are not getting compensated for that work, have unsafe conditions, don't have adequate breaks, etc, then that's different, but long hours don't automatically equate to worker abuse.
Actually - it does, to the extend where even in some developing countries (like mine) there is a law that can send managers to jail if they ALLOW a worker to do more than 40 hours overtime a week.
The legal reasoning is pretty sound - anybody who is working that much overtime (even with the required 1.5X pay) is either under duress or is harming himself (and more importantly harming and risking the lives of others) to an unacceptable degree. I the idea that anybody who has worked a 16 hour day is safe to drive home is just outright ludicrous. Preventing that is no more an infringement of liberty than to say you can't drive drunk.
Either way - yes, it IS worker abuse. The fact that this worker abuse happens in developing nations as well just proves that the problem is wide-spread it doesn't mean it's not a problem.
I notice a common thread here - everyone of these "I used to work 12-hour days too" posts have something in common: they all did it when their career choices were limited.
In my view the idea that it was "just how I got my success when I started out" is stupid. That's trying to feel good about not standing up for yourself back then.
No - the difference is - if your boss tried to demand that now, you would probably tell him to shove his job since you've got the qualifications and education to get another one (which will probably pay MORE than what you are earning now). Back then you didn't - and somebody exploited your lack of options.
The 40 hour work-week wasn't just made up. It began with ath 1895 May Day riots in New York, which would subsequently lead to the yearly celebration of worker's day internationally. Those strikes and riots were specifically about getting the 40-hour work-week. The people who led the organisation got framed for murder (which they were subsequently proven absolutely innocent off) - and received summary executions (back then the USA did that).
Good people died so you could have the right to demand extra pay for overtime, they died so you could refuse it, they died so you could see your family at night, so you could get a night's rest, so you could have a social life and not JUST a work life.
I think it's important that their death not be in vain because you take pride in your work. Taking pride in your work is fine, it's nobel, but so is damn well insisting that you will go home at the end of the day.
Neither would I - I never said she could conclude that from the LOOK - I said she could conclude it from reading the TEXT on the screen - FSN does show the names of the directories.
In 1993, only one class of operating systems had directories like /etc, /usr, /bin and /var (these days some do that are unix derived but don't really behave like Unix in other ways anymore - e.g. macOSX).
Now one can go further - the system it was running on was Irix (no other system had FSN or a similar file manager at the time) - and if you actually kept pace with Unix at the time, many people familiar with it would have recognized it at a glance ANYWAY because it was one of the major Unix systems of the time.
But there is a major silly-ness in the movie on a different level. The books clearly state that the park's genetic research and controls used the same computer system which was built using Cray supercomputers (three of them). The movie I think also references them being Crays.
Irix did NOT run on the Cray.
Which means she wasn't using the main systems. Though I suppose it's possible that they interacted with the crays via terminals that could have been running Irix. After all remote-X11 and RSH were available at the time so such a setup would not be impossible.
ROFL - this is true, but granted, that didn't exist in 1993/4 now did it ?
>Right, but the actual human toll, the suffering it will cause because Africa is so poor, is that suddenly made alright since tourists have one less deadly disease to worry about?
In a round-about way, it actually might be. Tourism is one of the largest single sources of foreign capital in most African countries. Indeed for quite a few it's their single largest export- and creates a market that has among the lowest barriers of entry for some of it (anybody can set up a curio stall with relatively little start-up capital and no need to afford expensive business locales).
So more tourists would mean less starvation.
>It is still mock-worthy that the child would see a monitor with FSN running
Why recognizing Unix is not that hard, if you see a system with a /etc and a /usr is almost certainly a close derivative of Unix. The interface you see it through won't throw you off.
>and know how to operate the park's complex proprietary security systems.
Is it ? If the interface is well written, and the program easy to locate - why would it be ? Most people who are good at computers can figure out a new program in a few minutes. At least the basics of it's operation. I do it all the time, and I was younger than her when I started doing it, on computers that ONLY had command-line interfaces based on a language which was NOT my mothertongue.
It's really not that hard to believe - I say, fairly confident that I could have actually DONE what she did in the movie.
>Moa was apparently delicious... hence becoming extinct.
I disagree with your premise. Chickens, cattle, pigs and sheep all exist today in numbers far beyond what they would have under natural conditions. The only logical conclusion is that being tasty to humans is actually an evolved survival trait (from the point of view of the species as a whole - not the individual members who get eaten).
>But that's not what the trial was about. At all. I realize you slashtards are groupthinking yourselves into believing some gross miscarriage of justice must have happened because you don't like the outcome,
Four courts in four three countries had trials on the SAME patents. 3 out of 4 courts found in favour of the defendant. One of them found so STRONGLY in favour of the defendant that it ordered the claimant to publicly post advertisements declaring the innocence of the defendant. That's a highly unusual thing in a case not directly involving something like slander - it's the court telling the claimant that he was SERIOUSLY full of shit in bringing the suit.
1 out of the four trials finds in favour of the claimant. The Jury in this trial admits to "sending a message" - directly against the orders of the judge and also admits to reaching it's decision WITHOUT reading the jury instructions - which I'm pretty sure is grounds for a mistrial by itself.
But the truth is, that with this context, I (as a citizen of NONE of the countries involved and a customer of neither of these companies) have to conclude that the 4th trial WAS a massive miscarriage of justice. When 3/4 courts finds somebody innocent and the 4th finds guilt - all on the SAME available evidence (it's not like we suddenly discovered DNA testing for patents or something) - I believe that the odds are very good the 4th court screwed up.
Two years ago I wrote a SIFI story set about 5 years from now in which a geneticist wanting to do a secret study away from work built herself a supercomputer out of old smartphones.
Granted in the story phones had completely replaced PC's, when not used mobile they had 3-D projectors and laser-scanners to create large 3D displays (with the phone lying flat on the table) and a full-sized projected keyboard as well as voice operation where useful. :P
Ubuntu's phone-dock idea is effectively the same idea except without the 3D part
Agreed, circumstances draw the line between paranoia and fact.
Here in South Africa in the 1980's as more and more white people became anti-appartheid the government's clampdown on people supporting banned organisations (e.g. any organisations that wasn't supporting appartheid) led to litterally thousands of civilians having their phones bugs. Mostly people whose only crime had been to express some "liberal" viewpoints. In fact it became so common (and so rarely did anything get done about it if you were white) that people who discovered a phone bug would deliberately leave it in place so they could show them off at cocktail parties.
Being "bugged by the cops" was a STATUS symbol for liberal whites - proof that you really WERE against the evil nationalists.
I think Ron Paul is still relatively honest and mostly unbought.
Too bad he is also batshit insane....
But making it legal for students (who are not employed- they are investing time in future employment) to remain on the insurance of their employed parents (who can actually pay for it) is a national disaster ?
If you get fired (seems to be happening to rather a lot of Americans lately) and it takes a few months to get a new job and your savings run out and your insurance gets cancelled, you should be allowed to die on a pavement if you have an accident instead of being treated, getting better, finding a job and once more being able to contribute to the economy ?
I daresay sir, that you are not only a heartless psychopath, but a headless idiot as well.
>of course employers would NOT pay for healthcare
Just a minor correction, although I agree with your post. I live in a country where there is such a system, and employers DO pay for healthcare if there are on-the-job injuries, indeed it's illegal to claim those from private insurance - it MUST be paid by the employer (who is free to take out insurance against such events but not forced to - they can cover accidents out of pocket if they prefer - at least for smaller companies this is often viable).
The reason has nothing to do with healthcare cost however, it's one of the more efficient and effective ways to regulate work-place safety. If the employer is automatically liable for the cost of on-the-job injuries (however minor or major) without litigation or such ever entering into it - a guilty-by-default status, then they have every possible incentive to make the workplace as safe as possible.
Frankly if you pay for every skull fracture caused by slippery floors, it's no longer economic to save money on slip-proof mats now is it ? Ultimately this may increase the cost of doing business but I would argue it only increases it to what it OUGHT to be in the first place. Skimping on worker-safety is not a saving, it's basically murder-for-money.
>There's a flaw in this argument. Somebody will always arrive carrying a club. And all of the arguments for equality in the world won't help you if they decide to use their club instead of their brains.
And that's why the full philosophy of socialist libertarianism contains measures to protect against that -including military. But that's beyond the scope of this discussion. My point was just that the flaws of government are not present in my philosophy so citing them at me is a strawman.
>As for "protection from harm" -- is it not harmful for the only ISP in my area to partner with Apple and prevent me from using Microsoft products? Say what you will about Microsoft, its still an option that would be taken away from me against my will, which in my mind is a form of harm.
Agreed - which is why I said I support market regulations.
>- Regulation: Let the government "harm" the ISPs.
I don't consider it harm. It's policing to prevent harm - that's what the government is FOR.
>Personally, I'm going for option 2. For all of the "legal person" rhetoric, I still tend to hold real people in higher esteem than a corporation.
I hold corporations in no esteem at all - I believe they are effectively a form of organized labour theft. I support the idea of worker owned cooperations - where nobody is "the boss" - instead decisions are made democratically by the workers, who also OWN the business, and work for a share of the profit rather than wages. I've heard all the arguments against that, they've all been thoroughly debunked, they are not relevant to this discussion so please don't even bother saying them - if you want to challenge the idea of cooperations, first read up on them, how they really work and how WELL they work where-ever they exist, and when you wrapped your head around the fact THAT they work, then the only debate becomes why we ALLOW businesses that are effectively private dictatorships to exist when clearly they aren't required for success.
I tend to agree but as far as I know airbags aren't a legal requirement or a regulation - cheaper cars still don't have those. Most (if not all) of the ones that are required by law really do affect other people's safety as well.
But I agree on the personal safety aspects, the reason I drive an Audi A3 is because it has all the extra safety features, and frankly I wouldn't mind if regulations extended to cover some of those. Not so much airbags and the like - but things like ABS and ESP which (much like brakes and suspension) are there to reduce your risk of an accident happening in the first place.
I've seen the ESP pull the car safely out of an aqua-plane that would have killed me (and possibly somebody else) without it once already. Pool of water on a hidden bend, next thing I know the car is basically floating - I have no control, a brief moment later I felt the ESP kicking in - finding a grip and let me pull the car safely around that bend without going into a deadly spin instead.
Those things save lives, and yes, lives are valuable rationally, economicaly and emotionally.
> But "failing to help" and "causing harm" are different in kind
"When good men do nothing, that is evil enough." - Mahatma Ghandi.
Sorry, failing to help IS causing harm.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7370
There you go. Locke's theory of value goes: "Only through human labour can value be created". That's why I say it's the basis of both communism and capitalism. Indeed Adam Smith and Murray Rothbard share with Karl Marx a fondness for quoting that.
They just disagreed on what to do about it. From this Locke derived his theory of property which goes: "All natural resources are initially in an unowned state. When a man mixes his labour with a resource, he creates value, and this then becomes property".
This is the basis of property laws all over the world now. Trouble is, it was great in the 17th century - but it's ridiculous now (simply because we have 400 years of knowledge he didn't have access to).
For starters: it's decidedly speciecist. I stated that but for the word "man" there is nothing in there that stops a beaver claiming property rights on his dam - after all, with labour he added value to a natural resource (a river).
Nobody is proposing humans should recognize the property rights of other species though - indeed we claim the right to EXERT property rights OVER other species. That's problematic - what we create a truly sentient AI ? Would it never have property rights ? On what basis do we actually claim that the antelope do NOT own the savannah ? They probably think of it as "home" after all ? And do we really think we'll be the only sentient lifeform for EVER ?
Locke lived 400 years ago, before the age of reason (which it must be said -he helped start) - he had no concept that humanity may NOT be special, religion after all teaches that we are the chosen ones.
What's worse is - it fails to recognize the EXISTING value that something may have. A piece of arable land, which you dig gold from - has him accurately turning the gold into property, but what about the land which is decidedly not arable anymore ?
You've reduced it's value, not added to it, so how is that still property ? And if it isn't - what now, since you've basically destroyed it ?
So Locke's philosophy of property is great for it's time, but it's 400 years overdue for an update.
>You believe that we have big government order to counter the growing corporatism. In order to keep it in check
I most certainly do not ! I believe that if we MUST have a government, that should be a subset of it's primary (and indeed sole) function: to protect citizens from harm.
I am a socialist libertarian - I believe in NO government at all, I believe that people should vote on the laws they want to live under as small communities. No countries, no states, no governments, NOBODY with more power than his neighbour - everybody truly equal not just BEFORE the law but in the CRAFTING of the law.
So considering I don't believe in politics or government at all - nothing you say applies to me at all. I did say that since we DO have a government, that the standard I would hold them to is to promote liberty - largely by limiting laws to protection from harm. Whether the source of that harm is an individual or a corporation is immaterial. Market regulation is one means to protect against harm.
In my ideal world the concept and structure of market regulation is very different, and there are no corporations - only cooperations, which are an entirely different beast. But I know I don't live in that world (yet), so I can try to make the best of the one I do live in, in part by promoting PARTIAL cures in lieu of the full cure.
"Fascism should more correctly be known as corporatism as it's the alignment of corporate and state power." - Mussolini
All that other stuff, racism etc. - those are optional extras, government and corporations in cahoots rather than government actively POLICING corporations that is the DEFINITION of Fascism and it's stated end-goal.
What Fascism is diametrically opposed to is individual liberty. The REASON for aligning state and corporate power is to create a power structure that is capable of MORE control and less likely to be overthrown. Opposition to personal liberty doesn't HAVE to include racist or ethnic bases, but it's certainly prone to doing so.
Nonetheless that is a side-effect, it's by no means required for the concept of fascism.
I consider capitalism (at least in MOST forms) to be diametrically opposed to individual personal liberty as well. Because to my belief the very CONCEPT of liberty cannot EXIST without the assumption of personal RESPONSIBILITY to TAKE CARE OF OTHER PEOPLE.
Capitalist love to talk of personal responsibility - but they only mean "to take care of yourself" - they deny that we have a responsibility to ONE ANOTHER as well. They are wrong. That responsibility is very real - indeed it's both the foundation of a good society and the very PURPOSE for which humans formed societies in the FIRST place (we survive better in a group - logically that's only POSSIBLE we assume SHARED responsibility for each other's well-being).
So what they are really saying is "I want to shirk my responsibility to other people by pretending it doesn't exist". Hell the Randian's go so far as to call any and all forms of welfare "slavery".
Very true. You also haven't been forced to make any large upfront investments you need to recoup from their labour - so there is absolutely ZERO financial incentive to keep them healthy and alive so they can work for long enough to make you a return.
>Barebone car with a very efficient engine would drive miles on a teaspoon of gas but it won't exist because cars have to have a shitload of safety stuff
I would be all for removing safety regulation if the only risk involved is to yourself. Just as you can buy a motorcycle if you want - even though it's provably far less safe for you to drive than a car.
But it's not just YOUR safety at stake, many (maybe most) of the safety regulations are to reduce the risk you pose to MY safety to reasonable levels. Decent breaks and shocks and the like adds cost to your car - because otherwise you're risking MY life unreasonably (when you crash your barebones car into me because it cannot corner properly and kill me).
That's a pretty major infringement of my liberty - so I'm in favor of a law that says you can't drive a car without good brakes and the autocompany cannot SELL you a car without good brakes.
>2. The abolition of the modern corporation, replaced instead with a corporation with strict limits on size, life span and ability to garner wealth and power.
Socialist libertarians would say - that won't work. What it must be replaced with is worker-owned cooperations which are run by democratic one-employee-one-vote rather than the corporotacratic one-share-one-vote system.
>Now we can argue if his interpretation of the legal framework is proper or not or what scope should the laws be, but your claim that he is pro-antisodomy is a fat lie.
If states rights are allowed to interfere with basic human rights then they have been allowed to go too far.
No government should have the right to discriminate against citizens on ANY grounds except one: "have committed and been CONVICTED in a fair trial of a fellony". Everybody else should be given exactly equal treatment by government in ALL laws. No government should be allowed to make a law that does not PREVENT active and REAL harm to other people.
Not a state, not the federal government. That is the SOLE AND ONLY excusable legal action of government: to prevent one person (or corporation) from harming another.
As a left libertarian - I think we can do even THAT without NEEDING a government but while governments exist - it's the ONLY laws I would support. So yes, I support market regulations as a subset of the principle of "laws that prevent the causing of harm".
Ron Paul seems to think you should have the right to vote on where your NEIGHBOUR is allowed to stick his dick when ONLY other consenting adults are involved. Sorry. No. States do not, and should not, have that right.