Wrong. There are many others. African Leopards for example are unique among the big cats for refusing to eat fur. Leopards actually sit for hours plucking the fur from their pray before beginning to eat them.
All fine and well... So do you have a suggestion as to what we do with them here on earth in the meantime ?
Religion is one thing, but when people use it to shift the responsibility of evil onto God (he will punish the wicked so we don't have to protect the victims) then it's become a danger to society.
I can't speak for all countries but in mine at least if you are the first driver to pass an accident scene you are legally obligated to stop, offer help AND (if possible - i.e. you have a cellphone) phone the police. Failing to do so can be charged with aggravated assault if anybody was injured (as you didn't attempt to get them helped).
On the other hand if you're any car AFTER the first you are legally obligated to just drive past and NOT stop (in the interest of not blocking up the scene so emergency personnel can actually get to the victims). Not that I've ever really seen this one enforced...
More-over we are actually encouraging people to ride buses. If just half the cars that get on the road each day with a single passenger (many of them fuel heavy vehicles that can carry as many as 10) stood in their garages most of the time while their drivers were taking the bus that would be a massive cut in CO2.
One of the biggest pushes from the green side in this matter has been IMPROVED public transport, to achieve just that goal. In about 2 months time a dedicated-lane high-speed bus (similar to S.F.'s BART) will be running a route that starts half a block from my house and ends at the front door of my office. From that day on - I will drive my car to work only if I have to go somewhere else during the day (very rare). The rest of the time I'll use the bus. It's cheaper (much), greener (much), faster (by almost 30 minutes on a 45 minute commute) and more convenient. Instead of sitting in traffic praying some idiot doesn't run a red-light and ram me... I get to relax on a dedicated lane with no other traffic and I can whip out my laptop and actually work, or read a good book... It's a win-win all the way. But the deniers hate things like that, because tax-money was spent to build the bus-lane.
>Yes. We can form beliefs about things based on our beliefs in the consequences of not doing so. Example: Believing in god because you'll go to hell if you don't.
Argumentum ad consequentiam - a fallacy. The consequences of something being true is not relevant to the likelihood of it being true.
>There is actually a good reason. Because ceasing all carbon emissions would be an (absolute) economic catastrophe, but dealing with the slow changes of global warming might not be.
That's a reason to doubt some suggested responses to the science. Not a reason to doubt the science itself. The science predicts global warming as a result of pollution. You only have a reason to doub the science if 1) You have reason to doubt that warming will happen 2) You have reason to doubt pollution is the cause
The deniers have come up with lots of answers to those but all of it have been thoroughly debunked -none hold any scientific credibility.
The economic impact of ending the pollution is something to consider - and the ideal is to find a way to end the pollution with minimal economic impact - but that has absolutely NO bearing on the validity of the scientific conclusions, only on how we REACT to those conclusions.
>Well, the ideas were, but both words, and the phrase itself, are from the 19th century. The same is true for 'capitalism'.
Only in English. The word libertarian is derived from the French "Libertaire" and dates back before Proudhom to De Jacques. Around 400 years ago. De Jacques invented libertarianism and Proudhom added much to it. The concept of capitalist libertarianism didn't arise until the mid-20th century, and is an American philosophy. Elsewhere the idea of Socialist Libertarianism is a tautology as all libertarians are socialist.
>True, and I would love it if non-profits and co-ops became a much larger sector of the economy. On the other hand, they tend to do best in specific niches, so I'm not too confident that they're ready to take on Apple and McDonald's.
Why do they need to ? Making computers and selling food are Niches too. A thousand coops or a thousand macdonalds restaurants make no difference to the availability of the product, but a huge difference in quality for price (that is value) to the consumer.
I'm not American - I first encountered the idea of free speech zones during news reports about Bush keeping anti-war protesters out of his sight.
The second link is a bit easier to read (less history) and suggests one approach to a practical implementation of socialist libertarianism, while the first link gives loads of details about the history of libertarian thought, it's socialist nature and the various ideas within it about implementation.
Sorry, but your definitions are still completely wrong.
Libertarianism: a political (NOT economic) philosophy based on anarchism built on a fundamental principle that whenever authority is exerted it is an act of brutal violence. Therefore the burden of proof is on the wielder of authority to show that having that authority is not avoidable by any means and all authority that cannot prove this must be disbanded. Libertarian philosophy is not lawless but does reject any system of lawmaking or government that institutes a hierarchy - and hence favors lawmaking through direct democracy (specific practical form of the direct democracy is up for debate but the philosophy demands it). In other words- if you don't believe EVERY citizen should get a vote on EVERY law they live under - then you are not a libertarian.
Now - libertarian philosophy being about freedom has two main branches, and they sprout from believes about what constitutes power. Capitalist libertarians define power as "the ability to remove property by force" - and so see only the government as a holder of power (though most of htem have forgotten they are supposed to have no government). Socialist libertarians believe that inequality in wealth automatically CREATES power - that is authority and the ability to coerce. He who has more money can afford better lawyers, better advertising for campaigns. Socialist libertarians believe any contract where both parties do not have equal bargaining power is coercion - and so they reject wage-work as a form a slavery, corporations as private tyranny and the state as a public tyranny. Instead socialist libertarians seek to replace corporations with cooperations or mutualisms.
Both capitalist and socialist libertarians agree that the proceeds of ones labour must belong to you - but disagree about the practical meaning of that. For a capitalist libertarian - a completely unhindered free market with sacrosanct private property is the means to achieving that. For socialist libertarians the idea that when workers produce value, investors make the profit directly contradicts the principle that one must own the proceeds of ones own labour. That's why we believe that large organisations can only JUSTLY function as democratic cooperations. Democratic because only through worker-self-management can you eradicate the private tyranny of corporations, and cooperations because only if you yourself get the profit from your labour are you not being exploited.
Not all of us can be small self-employed entrepreneurs, and not all business can be done that way. The capitalist answer is corporations - with a structure internally that is exactly like monarchist countries and an attitude externally that is ALSO like monarchist countries were (you get what you grab by force). Socialist libertarians believe the workers should be equal in status within a company, have equal democratic say in it's management and retain it's profits. Some declare that profit sharing in cooperation must be equal, others that there must be adjustment for level of contribution (say by hours worked), and others like myself a combination (half the profits are divided equally - the other half is divided on a percentile basis based on contribution - to encourage and reward those who worked the hardest for it).
Again - do some research. Learn at least the basic principles of a philosophy before you decide you agree or do not agree with it and how it fits into the world. For starters - there is no such thing as a definition of a philosophy. Philosophers spent long years, often lifetimes, developing their ideas -you can never sum them up in a single sentence and any attempt to do so can only lead you into false thinking and ideas that are oversimplified to the point of being dangerous. Libertarianism is a much more elloquent philosophy even in it's very earliest forms than you give it credit for. Socialist and Capitalist libertarianism are more alike than you think, and the difference isn't even close to the place you are looking for it.
In a very sad sort of way... that almost makes sense... it's dead wrong of course. As the old saying goes "first they came for the Jews..." (or these days the gays?).
So telling somebody the 500 year old philosophy they support is an oxymoron and dismissing it out of hand without having the slightest clue what it even IS - that is not offensive ?
Sorry, only in America is such will full ignorance considered acceptable behaviour. Elsewhere it's just plain rude. My response to him was simply a response in kind to the level of civility in his post.
That's a fairly accurate assessment, anarcho-communism and council-communism are both variants of social libertarianism. But anarchism has dozens of variants while social libertarianism tends to largely describe a specific type of anarchism that uses government-by-consensus and worker-owned production.
The difference is pretty small though - indeed the word libertarian was original coined as a synonymn for anarchist and was coined to get around laws prohibiting anarchism in France at the time. Much like how vibrators are all labelled as "massagers" to get around republican laws that prohibit sex toys.
And WTF does that have to do with whose laws are more intrusive on your most important liberties ?
It's not the democrats who want to make laws about who you are allowed to have sex with (seriously is - there any MORE personal responsibility question than that ?)
>socialist libertarianism? That is an oxymoron, by definition. Socialist Libertarianism was around for 400 years before Ayn Rand was even born dumbass.
>libertarian = no government interference in economy Yes, on this capitalist and socialist libertarians agree.
>socialism = complete government intervention in economy False. Socialism is defined as an economy where the producers of wealth are also the recipients of wealth. That is to say an economy where the workers are the ones who make the profit, and own the means of production. What you describe is state socialism, one (failed) experiment in how one may achieve a socialist system (by having the government control the economy). There are at least 5 other major branches of socialism in existence and only one of them involves any government at all. Socialist libertarians favour a system with no government at all, instead the population rules themselves through a system of direct democratic government by consensus. Likewise there are no employers and employees. Instead if you work for a company, you are a member of that company. Management is done on a basis of democratic vote by the members. Everybody gets an equal vote and the profits are divided among them. This kind of company is called a cooperation or a mutualism - and there are thousands of successful ones in the world today - proving the concept.
There is some variance beyond this - some socialist libertarians believe cooperations should compete in a free market (I am one of those), others believe that there should be no markets (and indeed, no money). Most (but not all) believe in abolishing all private property and replacing it with a concept of possession instead.
All agree that there is no one right way of doing it so the proper philosophy demands that communities find their own best ways to deal with various questions using their democratic consensus means of governance - and that the right answer in one community may not work in another (where-as capitalist libertarians have one right answer for everything - in their own minds anyway).
In fact, if you had bothered to spend five minutes - wikipedia would have told you how wrong you were. Now imagine how much wronger you are in light of proper resources ?
>The republican party is definitely not the party of censorship (free speech zones, fairness doctrine, etc have all been the domain of liberals)
Free speech zones were instituted by the Bush administration.
>nor is there any party agenda to put religion into government Are you fucking stupid. You have a presidential candidate whose entire platform is a promise to legislate religious morality into law ! The last republican president publicly stated that he believed God wanted him to rule.
Congratulations, you are now three times less ignorant than you were.
More importantly. God promises he won't destroy it "with water, but will do so with fire" (which is what revelations then details... but contrary to the good congresscritter, it only speaks about what God will do. It never says "you will not destroy yourselves."
Except of course that statistically global crime rates have been dropping for over a century, global violent crime rates showing the largest drop of all.
In the USA in the 1890s being killed by a gang in the street was so common that newspapers didn't consider it news worth reporting. Now it's so rare that each time it happens there's a huge public and community outcry.
And that's why there is such a thing as a constitution. To prevent democracy from translating into oppression-by-the-majority. To strictly limit what the government is capable of actually doing - REGARDLESS of what the voters want.
To ensure that even if just one person in all the USA wants to play violent video games, the people who want to write them and sell them to him cannot be legally censored or prevented from doing so.
Result: they try to use a sort of emotional censorship through labeling instead. Like put a sticker on a box, and maybe people will feel bad about buying them for their kids. In an ideal scenario -there is just accurate information on there, and if somebody genuinely believes a violent video game will make their kids violent - then they can avoid buying those games without intruding on the rights of sane people. What makes this a particularly stupid one though is that it effectively labels ALL video games. For the vast majority of people, even the over-protective soccer-moms when they see such stickers on everything- even games they know for a fact to be harmless, the stickers will quickly become meaningless and get completely ignored.
So in fact, this is the most self-defeating idea imaginable. If anything, it would make the current labels which are useful completely useless and utterly remove the ability from parents to actually judge what they buy by the information sticker. If government is to mandate such things from a consumer information point (not all that different from mandating that coca-cola print their list of ingredients after all) then fine - but mandating that the labeling be - lets face it - not accurate is completely stupid.
I sincerely do NOT believe the majority of voters actually are THAT stupid or want THAT. Even if they were - we come back to the reason there is a constitution - to prevent oppression-by-the-majority. To ensure that no matter what stupid labels government sticks on the packet, the game cannot be banned.
Actually the platform he proposed is essentially socialist libertarianism. Except without the government-by-consensus model (which no politician would support since it would put them out of a job). But that you see some parallels is not surprising. Socialist and capitalist libertarianism (a version of it that does not exist anywhere outside the US and is less than a century old so really "libertarian" ought to imply the 500 year old socialist version) only really differ on one aspect.
That said - my problem with right libertarians (or American Libertarians rather) is more deep. In theory we completely agree on civil liberties. The American libertarian party is on record as saying "we support the Republican party on economic matters but the democratic party on civil matters."
So why the fuck do American libertarians keep voting republican ? Surely civil liberties is MORE important than economic liberty ? Regardless of which definition of economic liberty you subscribe to ? Surely then American libertarians - having decided that at the ballot you can only vote for half of what you want, are consistently choosing the less important half ? Voting for the party that's pro-censorship, pro-war and pro-religion-in-government because you agree with their tax-plan is, as far as I'm concerned, not libertarian AT ALL nor compatible with ANY variant there-off.
Sports cause more violent behavior. Hell arguably some sports (like boxing and wrestling) ARE violent behavior. Sports Jocks are far more likely to be bullies than video-game geeks. Sportsmen are far more likely to use performance enhancing drugs that are also known to increase aggression levels (pretty much all steroids are known to do that)...
So why doesn't the NFL have to come with a label ? Why aren't they campaigning to ban contact sports from a school ? Why on earth are video games actually seen as worse than activities that involve ACTUALLY knocking somebody to the ground (to the extent that he needs to wear body armor), or beating the crap out of somebody and winning by beating him unconscious ?
"through" is an adverb indicating a passage between locations or a change of state. "threw" is the past tense of throw.
Grammar Nazi's often get a bit extreme but when your basic spelling is up-to-shit the actual meaning of your writing gets lost. Yes language evolves - this means we coin new words, we gradually change laws of grammar - but it is not a license to write whatever you want and claim it means what you intended to mean.
I'm fairly certain from context that you intended to write "through" for example - but if I hadn't recognized it I would have been wondering if you were so badly bullied that teachers actually threw you around in school.
>I have only learned to dislike people who feel the need to correct every detail, and discredit my arguments
It's not a discrediting of arguments to correct grammar mistakes. However, repeating them when you have been corrected just makes you look stupid. Worse, it makes you an asshole. Yeah, YOU are the asshole. Why ? Because using the proper conventions of language (grammar, spelling etc.) is a form of politeness. It makes your writing easy to read. Furthermore, it is to your own advantage as well. When you ignore good language rules what you write more often than not doesn't mean what you intended it to mean. Some of your readers will simply misunderstand you. Others will be annoyed. Very few will actually have a clue what you were trying to say- because what you were trying to write and what you actually write no longer bear any but the most limited of resemblances.
The only thing that saves the grammar-ignorant from being completely illiterate is the human ability to infer meaning from context - but context is incredibly culture, time and location specific. So the meaning of your words now become discernible exclusively to people who share your background. Everybody else (that could literally be people who live two neighborhoods away) are just sitting there shaking their heads and wondering what the fuck you're trying to say.
Oh and for a little encouragement... I am writing in my THIRD Language and very nearly all of the fucking time I get it right... you first language speakers have absolutely no excuse.
Actually step 4 is wrong. What really happens is a few steps:
4) Go public 5) Discover that the people who now control your company have absolutely no incentive in it's long-term survival but every incentive to make their shares worth more next quarter. 6) Fire the founder and appoint a new CEO (unless the founder plays ball - 96% of them get fired). 7) Make a lot of moves that give massive short term profit boosts by effectively selling off the very assets that made your company a success in the first place - mass layoffs for example. 8) Report a record profit 9) Watch as all those share-holders sell their pricey stocks - the price now comes back down 10) Discover that without good staff you can't make good products. Stagnate while competition forges ahead.
Slashdot Mirror
Wrong.
There are many others. African Leopards for example are unique among the big cats for refusing to eat fur. Leopards actually sit for hours plucking the fur from their pray before beginning to eat them.
All fine and well...
So do you have a suggestion as to what we do with them here on earth in the meantime ?
Religion is one thing, but when people use it to shift the responsibility of evil onto God (he will punish the wicked so we don't have to protect the victims) then it's become a danger to society.
I can't speak for all countries but in mine at least if you are the first driver to pass an accident scene you are legally obligated to stop, offer help AND (if possible - i.e. you have a cellphone) phone the police. Failing to do so can be charged with aggravated assault if anybody was injured (as you didn't attempt to get them helped).
On the other hand if you're any car AFTER the first you are legally obligated to just drive past and NOT stop (in the interest of not blocking up the scene so emergency personnel can actually get to the victims). Not that I've ever really seen this one enforced...
>In the early Eocene there were rainforests at the latitude of northern North America.
Fair enough... if you happen to ignore that at the time the Northern North of America was in the equatorial zone that almost sounds impressive.
More-over we are actually encouraging people to ride buses. If just half the cars that get on the road each day with a single passenger (many of them fuel heavy vehicles that can carry as many as 10) stood in their garages most of the time while their drivers were taking the bus that would be a massive cut in CO2.
One of the biggest pushes from the green side in this matter has been IMPROVED public transport, to achieve just that goal. In about 2 months time a dedicated-lane high-speed bus (similar to S.F.'s BART) will be running a route that starts half a block from my house and ends at the front door of my office. From that day on - I will drive my car to work only if I have to go somewhere else during the day (very rare). The rest of the time I'll use the bus. It's cheaper (much), greener (much), faster (by almost 30 minutes on a 45 minute commute) and more convenient. Instead of sitting in traffic praying some idiot doesn't run a red-light and ram me... I get to relax on a dedicated lane with no other traffic and I can whip out my laptop and actually work, or read a good book...
It's a win-win all the way. But the deniers hate things like that, because tax-money was spent to build the bus-lane.
>Yes. We can form beliefs about things based on our beliefs in the consequences of not doing so. Example: Believing in god because you'll go to hell if you don't.
Argumentum ad consequentiam - a fallacy.
The consequences of something being true is not relevant to the likelihood of it being true.
>There is actually a good reason. Because ceasing all carbon emissions would be an (absolute) economic catastrophe, but dealing with the slow changes of global warming might not be.
That's a reason to doubt some suggested responses to the science. Not a reason to doubt the science itself. The science predicts global warming as a result of pollution. You only have a reason to doub the science if
1) You have reason to doubt that warming will happen
2) You have reason to doubt pollution is the cause
The deniers have come up with lots of answers to those but all of it have been thoroughly debunked -none hold any scientific credibility.
The economic impact of ending the pollution is something to consider - and the ideal is to find a way to end the pollution with minimal economic impact - but that has absolutely NO bearing on the validity of the scientific conclusions, only on how we REACT to those conclusions.
One word dude: Bob.
No, it will never be long enough after the fact to either forgive them or stop laughing at them for that one.
>Well, the ideas were, but both words, and the phrase itself, are from the 19th century. The same is true for 'capitalism'.
Only in English. The word libertarian is derived from the French "Libertaire" and dates back before Proudhom to De Jacques. Around 400 years ago. De Jacques invented libertarianism and Proudhom added much to it. The concept of capitalist libertarianism didn't arise until the mid-20th century, and is an American philosophy. Elsewhere the idea of Socialist Libertarianism is a tautology as all libertarians are socialist.
>True, and I would love it if non-profits and co-ops became a much larger sector of the economy. On the other hand, they tend to do best in specific niches, so I'm not too confident that they're ready to take on Apple and McDonald's.
Why do they need to ? Making computers and selling food are Niches too. A thousand coops or a thousand macdonalds restaurants make no difference to the availability of the product, but a huge difference in quality for price (that is value) to the consumer.
I'm not American - I first encountered the idea of free speech zones during news reports about Bush keeping anti-war protesters out of his sight.
While we're going there then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participism
The second link is a bit easier to read (less history) and suggests one approach to a practical implementation of socialist libertarianism, while the first link gives loads of details about the history of libertarian thought, it's socialist nature and the various ideas within it about implementation.
Sorry, but your definitions are still completely wrong.
Libertarianism: a political (NOT economic) philosophy based on anarchism built on a fundamental principle that whenever authority is exerted it is an act of brutal violence. Therefore the burden of proof is on the wielder of authority to show that having that authority is not avoidable by any means and all authority that cannot prove this must be disbanded. Libertarian philosophy is not lawless but does reject any system of lawmaking or government that institutes a hierarchy - and hence favors lawmaking through direct democracy (specific practical form of the direct democracy is up for debate but the philosophy demands it).
In other words- if you don't believe EVERY citizen should get a vote on EVERY law they live under - then you are not a libertarian.
Now - libertarian philosophy being about freedom has two main branches, and they sprout from believes about what constitutes power. Capitalist libertarians define power as "the ability to remove property by force" - and so see only the government as a holder of power (though most of htem have forgotten they are supposed to have no government). Socialist libertarians believe that inequality in wealth automatically CREATES power - that is authority and the ability to coerce. He who has more money can afford better lawyers, better advertising for campaigns.
Socialist libertarians believe any contract where both parties do not have equal bargaining power is coercion - and so they reject wage-work as a form a slavery, corporations as private tyranny and the state as a public tyranny.
Instead socialist libertarians seek to replace corporations with cooperations or mutualisms.
Both capitalist and socialist libertarians agree that the proceeds of ones labour must belong to you - but disagree about the practical meaning of that. For a capitalist libertarian - a completely unhindered free market with sacrosanct private property is the means to achieving that.
For socialist libertarians the idea that when workers produce value, investors make the profit directly contradicts the principle that one must own the proceeds of ones own labour. That's why we believe that large organisations can only JUSTLY function as democratic cooperations. Democratic because only through worker-self-management can you eradicate the private tyranny of corporations, and cooperations because only if you yourself get the profit from your labour are you not being exploited.
Not all of us can be small self-employed entrepreneurs, and not all business can be done that way. The capitalist answer is corporations - with a structure internally that is exactly like monarchist countries and an attitude externally that is ALSO like monarchist countries were (you get what you grab by force).
Socialist libertarians believe the workers should be equal in status within a company, have equal democratic say in it's management and retain it's profits.
Some declare that profit sharing in cooperation must be equal, others that there must be adjustment for level of contribution (say by hours worked), and others like myself a combination (half the profits are divided equally - the other half is divided on a percentile basis based on contribution - to encourage and reward those who worked the hardest for it).
Again - do some research. Learn at least the basic principles of a philosophy before you decide you agree or do not agree with it and how it fits into the world. For starters - there is no such thing as a definition of a philosophy. Philosophers spent long years, often lifetimes, developing their ideas -you can never sum them up in a single sentence and any attempt to do so can only lead you into false thinking and ideas that are oversimplified to the point of being dangerous.
Libertarianism is a much more elloquent philosophy even in it's very earliest forms than you give it credit for. Socialist and Capitalist libertarianism are more alike than you think, and the difference isn't even close to the place you are looking for it.
In a very sad sort of way... that almost makes sense...
it's dead wrong of course. As the old saying goes "first they came for the Jews..." (or these days the gays?).
So telling somebody the 500 year old philosophy they support is an oxymoron and dismissing it out of hand without having the slightest clue what it even IS - that is not offensive ?
Sorry, only in America is such will full ignorance considered acceptable behaviour. Elsewhere it's just plain rude. My response to him was simply a response in kind to the level of civility in his post.
That's a fairly accurate assessment, anarcho-communism and council-communism are both variants of social libertarianism.
But anarchism has dozens of variants while social libertarianism tends to largely describe a specific type of anarchism that uses government-by-consensus and worker-owned production.
The difference is pretty small though - indeed the word libertarian was original coined as a synonymn for anarchist and was coined to get around laws prohibiting anarchism in France at the time. Much like how vibrators are all labelled as "massagers" to get around republican laws that prohibit sex toys.
Just to show you HOW wrong you are. Ever heard of participism ? You know participatory politics and participatory economics ?
Did you know that participism includes no government - just consensus based direct democracy ?
Participism is a form of socialist libertarianism.
And WTF does that have to do with whose laws are more intrusive on your most important liberties ?
It's not the democrats who want to make laws about who you are allowed to have sex with (seriously is - there any MORE personal responsibility question than that ?)
You are an idiot.
>socialist libertarianism? That is an oxymoron, by definition.
Socialist Libertarianism was around for 400 years before Ayn Rand was even born dumbass.
>libertarian = no government interference in economy
Yes, on this capitalist and socialist libertarians agree.
>socialism = complete government intervention in economy
False. Socialism is defined as an economy where the producers of wealth are also the recipients of wealth. That is to say an economy where the workers are the ones who make the profit, and own the means of production.
What you describe is state socialism, one (failed) experiment in how one may achieve a socialist system (by having the government control the economy). There are at least 5 other major branches of socialism in existence and only one of them involves any government at all.
Socialist libertarians favour a system with no government at all, instead the population rules themselves through a system of direct democratic government by consensus.
Likewise there are no employers and employees. Instead if you work for a company, you are a member of that company. Management is done on a basis of democratic vote by the members. Everybody gets an equal vote and the profits are divided among them.
This kind of company is called a cooperation or a mutualism - and there are thousands of successful ones in the world today - proving the concept.
There is some variance beyond this - some socialist libertarians believe cooperations should compete in a free market (I am one of those), others believe that there should be no markets (and indeed, no money). Most (but not all) believe in abolishing all private property and replacing it with a concept of possession instead.
All agree that there is no one right way of doing it so the proper philosophy demands that communities find their own best ways to deal with various questions using their democratic consensus means of governance - and that the right answer in one community may not work in another (where-as capitalist libertarians have one right answer for everything - in their own minds anyway).
In fact, if you had bothered to spend five minutes - wikipedia would have told you how wrong you were. Now imagine how much wronger you are in light of proper resources ?
>The republican party is definitely not the party of censorship (free speech zones, fairness doctrine, etc have all been the domain of liberals)
Free speech zones were instituted by the Bush administration.
>nor is there any party agenda to put religion into government
Are you fucking stupid. You have a presidential candidate whose entire platform is a promise to legislate religious morality into law ! The last republican president publicly stated that he believed God wanted him to rule.
Congratulations, you are now three times less ignorant than you were.
More importantly. God promises he won't destroy it "with water, but will do so with fire" (which is what revelations then details... but contrary to the good congresscritter, it only speaks about what God will do. It never says "you will not destroy yourselves."
Except of course that statistically global crime rates have been dropping for over a century, global violent crime rates showing the largest drop of all.
In the USA in the 1890s being killed by a gang in the street was so common that newspapers didn't consider it news worth reporting. Now it's so rare that each time it happens there's a huge public and community outcry.
>I wonder what we will blame when we turn old and conservative.
Corporations. Duh.
And that's why there is such a thing as a constitution. To prevent democracy from translating into oppression-by-the-majority. To strictly limit what the government is capable of actually doing - REGARDLESS of what the voters want.
To ensure that even if just one person in all the USA wants to play violent video games, the people who want to write them and sell them to him cannot be legally censored or prevented from doing so.
Result: they try to use a sort of emotional censorship through labeling instead. Like put a sticker on a box, and maybe people will feel bad about buying them for their kids. In an ideal scenario -there is just accurate information on there, and if somebody genuinely believes a violent video game will make their kids violent - then they can avoid buying those games without intruding on the rights of sane people.
What makes this a particularly stupid one though is that it effectively labels ALL video games. For the vast majority of people, even the over-protective soccer-moms when they see such stickers on everything- even games they know for a fact to be harmless, the stickers will quickly become meaningless and get completely ignored.
So in fact, this is the most self-defeating idea imaginable. If anything, it would make the current labels which are useful completely useless and utterly remove the ability from parents to actually judge what they buy by the information sticker. If government is to mandate such things from a consumer information point (not all that different from mandating that coca-cola print their list of ingredients after all) then fine - but mandating that the labeling be - lets face it - not accurate is completely stupid.
I sincerely do NOT believe the majority of voters actually are THAT stupid or want THAT. Even if they were - we come back to the reason there is a constitution - to prevent oppression-by-the-majority.
To ensure that no matter what stupid labels government sticks on the packet, the game cannot be banned.
Actually the platform he proposed is essentially socialist libertarianism. Except without the government-by-consensus model (which no politician would support since it would put them out of a job).
But that you see some parallels is not surprising. Socialist and capitalist libertarianism (a version of it that does not exist anywhere outside the US and is less than a century old so really "libertarian" ought to imply the 500 year old socialist version) only really differ on one aspect.
That said - my problem with right libertarians (or American Libertarians rather) is more deep. In theory we completely agree on civil liberties. The American libertarian party is on record as saying "we support the Republican party on economic matters but the democratic party on civil matters."
So why the fuck do American libertarians keep voting republican ? Surely civil liberties is MORE important than economic liberty ? Regardless of which definition of economic liberty you subscribe to ? Surely then American libertarians - having decided that at the ballot you can only vote for half of what you want, are consistently choosing the less important half ? Voting for the party that's pro-censorship, pro-war and pro-religion-in-government because you agree with their tax-plan is, as far as I'm concerned, not libertarian AT ALL nor compatible with ANY variant there-off.
Sports cause more violent behavior. Hell arguably some sports (like boxing and wrestling) ARE violent behavior. Sports Jocks are far more likely to be bullies than video-game geeks. Sportsmen are far more likely to use performance enhancing drugs that are also known to increase aggression levels (pretty much all steroids are known to do that)...
So why doesn't the NFL have to come with a label ? Why aren't they campaigning to ban contact sports from a school ?
Why on earth are video games actually seen as worse than activities that involve ACTUALLY knocking somebody to the ground (to the extent that he needs to wear body armor), or beating the crap out of somebody and winning by beating him unconscious ?
*facepalm*
At least I have the excuse that I'm not writing in my first, or indeed even my second language.
s/threw/through/g
"through" is an adverb indicating a passage between locations or a change of state.
"threw" is the past tense of throw.
Grammar Nazi's often get a bit extreme but when your basic spelling is up-to-shit the actual meaning of your writing gets lost. Yes language evolves - this means we coin new words, we gradually change laws of grammar - but it is not a license to write whatever you want and claim it means what you intended to mean.
I'm fairly certain from context that you intended to write "through" for example - but if I hadn't recognized it I would have been wondering if you were so badly bullied that teachers actually threw you around in school.
>I have only learned to dislike people who feel the need to correct every detail, and discredit my arguments
It's not a discrediting of arguments to correct grammar mistakes. However, repeating them when you have been corrected just makes you look stupid. Worse, it makes you an asshole. Yeah, YOU are the asshole. Why ? Because using the proper conventions of language (grammar, spelling etc.) is a form of politeness. It makes your writing easy to read.
Furthermore, it is to your own advantage as well. When you ignore good language rules what you write more often than not doesn't mean what you intended it to mean. Some of your readers will simply misunderstand you. Others will be annoyed. Very few will actually have a clue what you were trying to say- because what you were trying to write and what you actually write no longer bear any but the most limited of resemblances.
The only thing that saves the grammar-ignorant from being completely illiterate is the human ability to infer meaning from context - but context is incredibly culture, time and location specific. So the meaning of your words now become discernible exclusively to people who share your background. Everybody else (that could literally be people who live two neighborhoods away) are just sitting there shaking their heads and wondering what the fuck you're trying to say.
Oh and for a little encouragement... I am writing in my THIRD Language and very nearly all of the fucking time I get it right... you first language speakers have absolutely no excuse.
Actually step 4 is wrong. What really happens is a few steps:
4) Go public
5) Discover that the people who now control your company have absolutely no incentive in it's long-term survival but every incentive to make their shares worth more next quarter.
6) Fire the founder and appoint a new CEO (unless the founder plays ball - 96% of them get fired).
7) Make a lot of moves that give massive short term profit boosts by effectively selling off the very assets that made your company a success in the first place - mass layoffs for example.
8) Report a record profit
9) Watch as all those share-holders sell their pricey stocks - the price now comes back down
10) Discover that without good staff you can't make good products. Stagnate while competition forges ahead.
Continue with your original step 5.