The root problem is China is a communist state with a restrictive market that prevents people from "shopping around" and getting the best prices possible for their labor.
The west has boycotted North Korea for several years and because of that human rights violations are nearly non-existent, North Korea now has a thriving economy and freely elected leaders... Oh wait... Because of North Korea's isolation they've descended even deeper into leader worship, further behind in technology and have even worse human rights abuses.
Due to western trade with China in the past few years China has become more free. Trade and free markets create more free people. Yes, China still has a long way to go but they have made substantial progress.
Trade with China is a good thing, both for the Chinese citizens (keep in mind that without factory labor they would be working most likely in worse conditions in agriculture) and for western citizens.
A) Free press. Create a cool concept car and your company gets in the spotlight for a few days.
B) Technical feasibility. Concept cars are a good way to see if something is technically possible, without worrying about things like safety, regulations, etc. Lets face it, as cool as some concept cars look, the chances of surviving in an accident are much better with more conventional designs.
C) Market testing. Even non-production concept cars can judge what the market thinks of a particular car design. Spending a few hundred thousand on one or two cars that are hand made is a lot less risky then spending millions on the infrastructure and production of an unpopular production model.
Because you always have it with you. If I feel like listening to some music for an hour or so, it doesn't drain the battery much more than slightly above average use. Just plug in a micro USB cord into the next computer I sit at (or my car charger if I'm in the car, or the wall charger, etc.) and in the next few minutes it will be all charged back up. That minor inconvenience is worth it when the alternative is carrying around a separate device.
And no, it is quite possible. I have a cheap Motorola Android phone which I flashed with Cyangenomod to upgrade it to Gingerbread and I can long press my volume button up to change to the next song and press it down to go back. If I really have to stop the song I just pull out my headphones.
And honestly the sound quality isn't too terrible, especially if you are in a noisy environment such as outside, in a car, etc. Of course, since I use cheap headphones, it might just be that.
But, considering I use my phone for more than just music, it makes a lot more sense for me to carry it around rather than lugging around a dumbphone, MP3 player, camera, netbook, etc. All at once.
Heaven forbid that we actually you know, base decisions on fact and the marketplace of ideas. Instead we need our supreme overlords to tell us what to think/believe!
Of course there will be some irrational people who don't look at the facts and conclude that the holocaust/genocides never happened. But its a small minority and you are only feeding them by banning debate over it.
It is counterproductive to ban debate over these issues because what will inevitably occur is that there will be a rise in anti-antisemitism and the like because of these bans. Which is more likely to get a following?
A) Using an obscure incorrect mathematical calculation, the furnaces used to burn the Jews could have only killed a 2,000 of them, ignoring all the historical evidence otherwise.
Or:
B) My theory is illegal because the evil Zionist Jewish bankers/new world order are suppressing the truth! Look! They've banned public discussion about it simply to shut us up! Clearly this shows that we know something that they don't! And the facts must be shaky because they don't open up debate!
By banning debate over these topics, not only are you committing an absolutely massive human rights violation but you are also creating the very problem you are trying to stop. Given enough time, lies will fade away, but if you try to suppress ideas they will grow even stronger. After all, every cause needs martyrs...
Really now? Europe has tons of really, really, stupid laws (of course they differ depending on the countries), some criminalize belief (like the French law preventing people from saying that the killing of Armenians was not genocide) others criminalize even basic dress (Burqa bans), still others have the net effect of preventing religious freedom (minaret ban in Switzerland), etc.
Yes the US is screwed up but Europe is just as screwed up too in their laws.
Since the PATRIOT act allows the government to pretty much get logs of whatever for whatever reason they feel like, they can easily say they are fighting "terrorism" and gain these logs and then see that there was a "crime" committed (or plant evidence) and then charge you with that "crime".
The one thing that keeps me from switching to Chrome is the lack of customization. With Firefox I have the wonderful about:config, but Chrome has no such feature. Even basic settings like moving where the tabs are or fine-grained privacy settings are missing from Chrome and most Chrome derived browsers.
Until Firefox somehow becomes totally unusable or Chrome actually lets me change basic settings, I'm sticking with Firefox.
...And there are still just as many who don't. Its a catch-22 here on/.
If you post Macs are quality you are going to get attacked by people who don't like using Macs.
If you post that Macs aren't quality you are going to get attacked by Apple fanboys.
So in my post I used a neutral and factually correct term to avoid a flamewar, because, if you asked the masses they would generally say that Macs are quality machines.
My own views of Apple are irrelevant to my post and your views on Apple are too. We are talking about that Apple has sky high profitability. Not that X user likes using a Mac. That doesn't matter. There were famous Mac users back when Apple almost went bankrupt. What matters is that the masses are embracing Apple.
Of course it is a bubble. Apple is currently the only company that can charge huge margins for their tech because they are looked at as the best. If you want quality, the masses think, you need to get a Mac/iPod/iPad/etc. Of course if Apple slips up like they did back in the 90s and slips backwards of course they won't be as profitable. But, at the moment, everyone thinks Apple has very high quality products. If they really do or don't, it is irrelevant. The fact is, the masses think that its made by Apple, it has to be good. Couple this with having large revenues per product makes Apple super profitable. Compare it to most technology companies that operate on razor thin profit margins and powerful hardware and sell it to the masses.
Exactly. I'm a bit confused to why Google has taken down all the emulators since they are used for legal purposes (see homebrew). Now of course the various ROM packs available via the market were questionable, but as for the emulators themselves, they could have given people a reason to buy a "game phone" like the Xperia play. Courts have proven time and time again that emulators are completely legal, so long as they are reverse engineered.
Yes, I've considered it too and I'm not really ready to move quite yet but its 2012, why should I be a slave to geography and the country I was simply born into? The world is a large place and quite frankly it seems like there are places that are more stable and more economically free than the US. Of course it will take much more research to determine when and where to leave if I do choose to live outside of the US but being ignorant to global events isn't an option anymore. Its becoming more evident daily that the west is heading for disaster. The dollar is being printed into oblivion, its becoming clear the EU and a united Europe behind a single currency was a mistake, the recession shows no sign of ending anytime soon and so, why stay? While I don't see major unrest in the west happening like is happening in the middle east, both the Tea party and Occupy Wall-Street movements have proved that there is a major difference between a good chunk of the American people and their politicians. And despite both group's best efforts, there has not been a major political change in either group's favor. This worries me because when the elections held this year roll around, chances are neither group will get a candidate they want. Obama isn't OWS's friend and Romney (or Gingrich) are no friends to the tea party movement. So we have a lose-lose situation for both of them.
I have to say, I enjoyed the fact that the university I went to had none of these problems because textbooks were included. Before classes started, you went to the bookstore and got all the textbooks you needed for a flat "textbook usage fee" I think it was somewhere around like $15-20 a class. You got the version the professor was using and didn't have to worry about reselling it. About the only drawbacks is you weren't supposed to really deface it (though in reality they really didn't care) and you didn't get to keep the books. However, looking back, I can't say that there was any textbook that would be any too useful if I had it today.
I don't understand why more universities and colleges don't do this. It saves a lot of time and hassle and is much cheaper because the costs of a $100 book are spread across many different departments and years. So books which need updating frequently (law, computers, modern history) could be quickly updated while books which rarely need updating (mathematics, English, some sciences, etc.) weren't which allowed for up to date textbooks when needed.
Its becoming increasingly evident that the US government doesn't want US citizens to compete globally. While it is most evident in the financial sector (try opening an ordinary bank account in a foreign country) that US citizens are unwanted due to our tyrannical state. It is soon going to be that US citizens are not wanted on most of the internet because they are too big of a liability.
So the question is raised. How much longer till it makes more sense to move outside of the US? Between a lack of freedom of movement, even within the country, to increasingly less freedom of speech and increasingly less economic freedoms it is becoming obvious that US citizenship is no longer really desirable but is slowly becoming a liability.
We need more accountability for cops. A cop has the potential to do a lot more harm than a crooked member of congress. Your elected official can't burst into your house with guns drawn. Your neighborhood cop can.
Preferably, either directly elected cops or an elected board that oversees the police departments. Because in most places the only thing checking your neighborhood cop is.... another cop. Imagine if we had the same thing with politicians with no outside checks.
They are voluntary. Don't like cookies? Disable them. It is your computer. Heck, super paranoid about that? Don't use a computer or don't use a web browser.
Guess what? Every browser made since the early 90s has had an option to disable cookies. There are even tools to make your browsing close to anonymous. There is a huge difference between something you voluntarily consent to, and something that you absolutely do not.
No it isn't different from being arrested. The point of that clause was to make sure that someone couldn't prevent an elected official from going to congress so that it would be fair to their constituents and the entire democratic principles. The idea is that you can't use red tape to prevent a congressman from carrying out his duties. If you interpret it to simply just mean arrest, almost any bureaucrat could prevent congress from working by putting up red tape and making them jump through hoops. Worse yet, it could be used maliciously to prevent supporters or opponents of a bill from casting their votes. The idea isn't that they can't break any laws, but rather any prosecution and detainment has to wait until they are done with their official business, except in very extreme circumstances.
Except for the fact that he is a senator, and he was going to Washington DC to do official business (while his primary motivation was to speak at a political rally, chances are he was going to also do official business there too) And the Constitution states:
The Senators and Representatives . . . shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same.
Now, I suppose you could make an argument that this wasn't technically an "arrest" but the point of that clause is to make sure that elected officials aren't prevented from doing their duty. The TSA quite clearly violated that part of the constitution by unlawfully detaining senator Paul.
Exercising your rights should not be cause for alarm or suspicion. Per the constitution, Senator Rand has an explicit right not to be delayed by the TSA:
The Senators and Representatives . . . shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same.
Exercising your rights is just that, a right. It shouldn't be cause for suspicion or concern.
It does. At least all evidence points to it. After all, a few months ago a drone was nearly blown up when they accidentally pressed the spacebar. And I think there was some drone in 1999 which was accidentally blown up too because of a similar glitch.
However, if Iran was jamming the signal and there was no way to get commands to it, a failsafe of landing is usually much better than a faildeadly of exploding. Especially when you are dealing with millions of dollars. Saying a drone got hijacked/malfunctioned/etc. and fell into enemy hands is a lot better than saying, yeah, we just blew up a drone that cost us $5 million to build.
There is a difference between influencing or not supporting. By its very nature, taxation does not let you not support a regime. There is no way that I can live my life while remaining in the US and not pay for bullets/missiles to ruin other countries. It simply is impossible.
Not supporting is much more powerful than influencing and it allows everyone to decide for themselves without forcing it on others. My decision not to support X corporation will not affect someone else who has no problems supporting X corporation. Of course, if by me and others not supporting it, it can no longer remain profitable and closes that is fair enough, but my decision in and of itself doesn't affect someone else who may enjoy supporting X corporation.
The US is not a capitalist state. There is nothing legal that says that the business philosophy of the US is capitalism. If you look in the constitution it never says anything about it being a capitalist state. On the other hand, if you look in the legal documents of the USSR, North Korea, Vietnam, etc. they will all say that they are communist states, while (aside from perhaps some successor states to former communist states) no state practicing "capitalism" ever declares it. Capitalism is simply the default method of organization that everyone innately participates in. So long as we all have different talents and exist in a society larger than say a single family unit, division of labor and voluntary trade will exist. Such simplicity is the core of capitalism. Someone has something that you value, be it knowledge, talent, time, energy, products, etc. and you have something that they value, therefore it benefits both of you if you trade.
But no, capitalists don't want to let people live their life, they've intruded upon many many cultures and civilizations, and resent being told to keep out, that they can't have things. Don't believe me? Just go ask some indigenous cultures. What's left of them.
Is completely false because the nations that did that did not do it because of their economic system, but rather by their government system. Even then, the only major ideology that truly embraces (pure) capitalism is the libertarian philosophy (speaking from a US point of view of course, the word libertarian means different things in other cultures) which are completely non-interventionist and would let people live however they want. It is the statists that want to conform.
If you want Marx's communism, you need a (minimal) government and one that embraces capitalism because it is the only way that would provide enough choice to allow for Marx's vision of communism to exist. If government enters into communism you simply get Stalin 2.0 or Kim Jung-Il 2.0. So, paradoxically, a philosophy of capitalism is needed if you really want communism to succeed. Because capitalism is the only national economic system based on voluntary trade, it is the only system conductive for a non-totalitarian communist commune to exist.
Depending on what you do, debt may be, or may not be a bad thing. There are things that are pretty stupid to get into debt (meaning with interest) such as cars, furniture, TVs, computers, etc. but lets say you have a skillset to work with aging luxury cars and restoring them and selling them at a much higher price. If you don't have enough capital to buy the raw materials you need for this business, or enough capital to buy enough inventory of cars, not going into debt means not making a profit. Whereas you can get into debt, buy these things and quickly pay it off when you sell it because you are adding value to the car beyond the sum of its parts (and beyond the interest rate).
You are forgetting key differences between capitalism and communism (communism as it was implemented in Russia, North Korea, etc.). First is that capitalism revolves around voluntary exchanges. If you disagree with corporation X you don't have to give money to corporation X (assuming it isn't done via taxation). With communism if you disagree with the government (assuming for a moment this government allows dissent) you still do not have the right to not fund them because you must pay your taxes. No one forces you at gunpoint to buy something at Wal-Mart, if you are so inclined you can live your life so that not a dime goes to Wal-Mart, however, if you disagree with the conditions at the government's factories, you cannot vote with your wallet and choose not to support them.
And what about "steady leeching of life"? Guess what? With capitalism (and a willing government) if you are so inclined you don't/have/ to be part of the capitalist ideology. Go live in a commune if you want! Capitalism offers that freedom because it is based on voluntary exchange and if you voluntarily want to live in a commune, live in a monastery, or heck, live alone on your own little piece of land and become a hermit, capitalism lets you.
But as for me, I'll keep my capitalism and keep my quality of life. But you are free to do as you wish, such, is the beauty of capitalism.
Social responsibility is a personal issue, not a corporate one. A corporation's job is to make a profit, the government's job is to protect against force and fraud, but it is each individual's job to be a good person.
If we want to see various causes enacted, we need to cut the corporations and governments out of it. First off, so people can choose the causes they care most about, and secondly so that they have as much disposable income to donate to various charities. Today, every taxpayer can say they are "charitable" because a large chunk of the money they earned gets forcibly redistributed to others, they think by buying a certain product they help X. But if we would focus on giving consumers more income, there would be a much, much, larger base of donations because they would have more money to spend.
A cartel is simply a prisoner's dilemma, something that has been studied for years. While it benefits all companies in the cartel to stay with the cartel, if one person breaks the cartel, the rest of the companies are in worse off shape (investors will go for the company that broke the cartel and has higher profits). So the diagram goes something like this
Lets say this is between Google and Apple.
Case 1, Google and Apple both agree to the cartel, both are better off.
Case 2, Google breaks the cartel Apple stays, Google is better off, Apple is much worse off.
Case 3, Apple breaks the cartel, Google stays, Apple is better off, Google is much worse off
Case 4. Both break the cartel. Both are better off than if only 1 broke the cartel, but both are worse off than if they would have stayed with the cartel.
Because neither company knows what the other is going to do, the natural tendency is for the cartel to be broken up.
The reason why diamonds are so expensive isn't the result of De Beers, but rather the governments of the western world refusing to sell diamonds unless they are certified as "conflict free" and the government of many diamond producing nations having laws in place to limit the harvesting and exporting of diamonds.
Most of the evil that De Beers does isn't done by De Beers but rather by willing governments. Take the government out of the equation and corporations become a whole lot less menacing.
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Boycotting China wouldn't help.
The root problem is China is a communist state with a restrictive market that prevents people from "shopping around" and getting the best prices possible for their labor.
The west has boycotted North Korea for several years and because of that human rights violations are nearly non-existent, North Korea now has a thriving economy and freely elected leaders... Oh wait... Because of North Korea's isolation they've descended even deeper into leader worship, further behind in technology and have even worse human rights abuses.
Due to western trade with China in the past few years China has become more free. Trade and free markets create more free people. Yes, China still has a long way to go but they have made substantial progress.
Trade with China is a good thing, both for the Chinese citizens (keep in mind that without factory labor they would be working most likely in worse conditions in agriculture) and for western citizens.
A few reasons:
A) Free press. Create a cool concept car and your company gets in the spotlight for a few days.
B) Technical feasibility. Concept cars are a good way to see if something is technically possible, without worrying about things like safety, regulations, etc. Lets face it, as cool as some concept cars look, the chances of surviving in an accident are much better with more conventional designs.
C) Market testing. Even non-production concept cars can judge what the market thinks of a particular car design. Spending a few hundred thousand on one or two cars that are hand made is a lot less risky then spending millions on the infrastructure and production of an unpopular production model.
Because you always have it with you. If I feel like listening to some music for an hour or so, it doesn't drain the battery much more than slightly above average use. Just plug in a micro USB cord into the next computer I sit at (or my car charger if I'm in the car, or the wall charger, etc.) and in the next few minutes it will be all charged back up. That minor inconvenience is worth it when the alternative is carrying around a separate device.
And no, it is quite possible. I have a cheap Motorola Android phone which I flashed with Cyangenomod to upgrade it to Gingerbread and I can long press my volume button up to change to the next song and press it down to go back. If I really have to stop the song I just pull out my headphones.
And honestly the sound quality isn't too terrible, especially if you are in a noisy environment such as outside, in a car, etc. Of course, since I use cheap headphones, it might just be that.
But, considering I use my phone for more than just music, it makes a lot more sense for me to carry it around rather than lugging around a dumbphone, MP3 player, camera, netbook, etc. All at once.
Heaven forbid that we actually you know, base decisions on fact and the marketplace of ideas. Instead we need our supreme overlords to tell us what to think/believe!
Of course there will be some irrational people who don't look at the facts and conclude that the holocaust/genocides never happened. But its a small minority and you are only feeding them by banning debate over it.
It is counterproductive to ban debate over these issues because what will inevitably occur is that there will be a rise in anti-antisemitism and the like because of these bans. Which is more likely to get a following?
A) Using an obscure incorrect mathematical calculation, the furnaces used to burn the Jews could have only killed a 2,000 of them, ignoring all the historical evidence otherwise.
Or:
B) My theory is illegal because the evil Zionist Jewish bankers/new world order are suppressing the truth! Look! They've banned public discussion about it simply to shut us up! Clearly this shows that we know something that they don't! And the facts must be shaky because they don't open up debate!
By banning debate over these topics, not only are you committing an absolutely massive human rights violation but you are also creating the very problem you are trying to stop. Given enough time, lies will fade away, but if you try to suppress ideas they will grow even stronger. After all, every cause needs martyrs...
Really now? Europe has tons of really, really, stupid laws (of course they differ depending on the countries), some criminalize belief (like the French law preventing people from saying that the killing of Armenians was not genocide) others criminalize even basic dress (Burqa bans), still others have the net effect of preventing religious freedom (minaret ban in Switzerland), etc.
Yes the US is screwed up but Europe is just as screwed up too in their laws.
Since the PATRIOT act allows the government to pretty much get logs of whatever for whatever reason they feel like, they can easily say they are fighting "terrorism" and gain these logs and then see that there was a "crime" committed (or plant evidence) and then charge you with that "crime".
The one thing that keeps me from switching to Chrome is the lack of customization. With Firefox I have the wonderful about:config, but Chrome has no such feature. Even basic settings like moving where the tabs are or fine-grained privacy settings are missing from Chrome and most Chrome derived browsers.
Until Firefox somehow becomes totally unusable or Chrome actually lets me change basic settings, I'm sticking with Firefox.
...And there are still just as many who don't. Its a catch-22 here on /.
If you post Macs are quality you are going to get attacked by people who don't like using Macs.
If you post that Macs aren't quality you are going to get attacked by Apple fanboys.
So in my post I used a neutral and factually correct term to avoid a flamewar, because, if you asked the masses they would generally say that Macs are quality machines.
My own views of Apple are irrelevant to my post and your views on Apple are too. We are talking about that Apple has sky high profitability. Not that X user likes using a Mac. That doesn't matter. There were famous Mac users back when Apple almost went bankrupt. What matters is that the masses are embracing Apple.
Of course it is a bubble. Apple is currently the only company that can charge huge margins for their tech because they are looked at as the best. If you want quality, the masses think, you need to get a Mac/iPod/iPad/etc. Of course if Apple slips up like they did back in the 90s and slips backwards of course they won't be as profitable. But, at the moment, everyone thinks Apple has very high quality products. If they really do or don't, it is irrelevant. The fact is, the masses think that its made by Apple, it has to be good. Couple this with having large revenues per product makes Apple super profitable. Compare it to most technology companies that operate on razor thin profit margins and powerful hardware and sell it to the masses.
Exactly. I'm a bit confused to why Google has taken down all the emulators since they are used for legal purposes (see homebrew). Now of course the various ROM packs available via the market were questionable, but as for the emulators themselves, they could have given people a reason to buy a "game phone" like the Xperia play. Courts have proven time and time again that emulators are completely legal, so long as they are reverse engineered.
Yes, I've considered it too and I'm not really ready to move quite yet but its 2012, why should I be a slave to geography and the country I was simply born into? The world is a large place and quite frankly it seems like there are places that are more stable and more economically free than the US. Of course it will take much more research to determine when and where to leave if I do choose to live outside of the US but being ignorant to global events isn't an option anymore. Its becoming more evident daily that the west is heading for disaster. The dollar is being printed into oblivion, its becoming clear the EU and a united Europe behind a single currency was a mistake, the recession shows no sign of ending anytime soon and so, why stay? While I don't see major unrest in the west happening like is happening in the middle east, both the Tea party and Occupy Wall-Street movements have proved that there is a major difference between a good chunk of the American people and their politicians. And despite both group's best efforts, there has not been a major political change in either group's favor. This worries me because when the elections held this year roll around, chances are neither group will get a candidate they want. Obama isn't OWS's friend and Romney (or Gingrich) are no friends to the tea party movement. So we have a lose-lose situation for both of them.
I have to say, I enjoyed the fact that the university I went to had none of these problems because textbooks were included. Before classes started, you went to the bookstore and got all the textbooks you needed for a flat "textbook usage fee" I think it was somewhere around like $15-20 a class. You got the version the professor was using and didn't have to worry about reselling it. About the only drawbacks is you weren't supposed to really deface it (though in reality they really didn't care) and you didn't get to keep the books. However, looking back, I can't say that there was any textbook that would be any too useful if I had it today.
I don't understand why more universities and colleges don't do this. It saves a lot of time and hassle and is much cheaper because the costs of a $100 book are spread across many different departments and years. So books which need updating frequently (law, computers, modern history) could be quickly updated while books which rarely need updating (mathematics, English, some sciences, etc.) weren't which allowed for up to date textbooks when needed.
Its becoming increasingly evident that the US government doesn't want US citizens to compete globally. While it is most evident in the financial sector (try opening an ordinary bank account in a foreign country) that US citizens are unwanted due to our tyrannical state. It is soon going to be that US citizens are not wanted on most of the internet because they are too big of a liability.
So the question is raised. How much longer till it makes more sense to move outside of the US? Between a lack of freedom of movement, even within the country, to increasingly less freedom of speech and increasingly less economic freedoms it is becoming obvious that US citizenship is no longer really desirable but is slowly becoming a liability.
We need more accountability for cops. A cop has the potential to do a lot more harm than a crooked member of congress. Your elected official can't burst into your house with guns drawn. Your neighborhood cop can.
Preferably, either directly elected cops or an elected board that oversees the police departments. Because in most places the only thing checking your neighborhood cop is.... another cop. Imagine if we had the same thing with politicians with no outside checks.
Why?
They are voluntary. Don't like cookies? Disable them. It is your computer. Heck, super paranoid about that? Don't use a computer or don't use a web browser.
Guess what? Every browser made since the early 90s has had an option to disable cookies. There are even tools to make your browsing close to anonymous. There is a huge difference between something you voluntarily consent to, and something that you absolutely do not.
No it isn't different from being arrested. The point of that clause was to make sure that someone couldn't prevent an elected official from going to congress so that it would be fair to their constituents and the entire democratic principles. The idea is that you can't use red tape to prevent a congressman from carrying out his duties. If you interpret it to simply just mean arrest, almost any bureaucrat could prevent congress from working by putting up red tape and making them jump through hoops. Worse yet, it could be used maliciously to prevent supporters or opponents of a bill from casting their votes. The idea isn't that they can't break any laws, but rather any prosecution and detainment has to wait until they are done with their official business, except in very extreme circumstances.
The Senators and Representatives . . . shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same.
Now, I suppose you could make an argument that this wasn't technically an "arrest" but the point of that clause is to make sure that elected officials aren't prevented from doing their duty. The TSA quite clearly violated that part of the constitution by unlawfully detaining senator Paul.
The Senators and Representatives . . . shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same.
Exercising your rights is just that, a right. It shouldn't be cause for suspicion or concern.
It does. At least all evidence points to it. After all, a few months ago a drone was nearly blown up when they accidentally pressed the spacebar. And I think there was some drone in 1999 which was accidentally blown up too because of a similar glitch.
However, if Iran was jamming the signal and there was no way to get commands to it, a failsafe of landing is usually much better than a faildeadly of exploding. Especially when you are dealing with millions of dollars. Saying a drone got hijacked/malfunctioned/etc. and fell into enemy hands is a lot better than saying, yeah, we just blew up a drone that cost us $5 million to build.
Not supporting is much more powerful than influencing and it allows everyone to decide for themselves without forcing it on others. My decision not to support X corporation will not affect someone else who has no problems supporting X corporation. Of course, if by me and others not supporting it, it can no longer remain profitable and closes that is fair enough, but my decision in and of itself doesn't affect someone else who may enjoy supporting X corporation.
The US is not a capitalist state. There is nothing legal that says that the business philosophy of the US is capitalism. If you look in the constitution it never says anything about it being a capitalist state. On the other hand, if you look in the legal documents of the USSR, North Korea, Vietnam, etc. they will all say that they are communist states, while (aside from perhaps some successor states to former communist states) no state practicing "capitalism" ever declares it. Capitalism is simply the default method of organization that everyone innately participates in. So long as we all have different talents and exist in a society larger than say a single family unit, division of labor and voluntary trade will exist. Such simplicity is the core of capitalism. Someone has something that you value, be it knowledge, talent, time, energy, products, etc. and you have something that they value, therefore it benefits both of you if you trade.
But no, capitalists don't want to let people live their life, they've intruded upon many many cultures and civilizations, and resent being told to keep out, that they can't have things. Don't believe me? Just go ask some indigenous cultures. What's left of them.
Is completely false because the nations that did that did not do it because of their economic system, but rather by their government system. Even then, the only major ideology that truly embraces (pure) capitalism is the libertarian philosophy (speaking from a US point of view of course, the word libertarian means different things in other cultures) which are completely non-interventionist and would let people live however they want. It is the statists that want to conform.
If you want Marx's communism, you need a (minimal) government and one that embraces capitalism because it is the only way that would provide enough choice to allow for Marx's vision of communism to exist. If government enters into communism you simply get Stalin 2.0 or Kim Jung-Il 2.0. So, paradoxically, a philosophy of capitalism is needed if you really want communism to succeed. Because capitalism is the only national economic system based on voluntary trade, it is the only system conductive for a non-totalitarian communist commune to exist.
Or how about:
Buy low, sell high.
Buy high, sell higher.
Buy when undervalued, sell when overvalued
Buy, add value, resell.
Profit.
Depending on what you do, debt may be, or may not be a bad thing. There are things that are pretty stupid to get into debt (meaning with interest) such as cars, furniture, TVs, computers, etc. but lets say you have a skillset to work with aging luxury cars and restoring them and selling them at a much higher price. If you don't have enough capital to buy the raw materials you need for this business, or enough capital to buy enough inventory of cars, not going into debt means not making a profit. Whereas you can get into debt, buy these things and quickly pay it off when you sell it because you are adding value to the car beyond the sum of its parts (and beyond the interest rate).
You are forgetting key differences between capitalism and communism (communism as it was implemented in Russia, North Korea, etc.). First is that capitalism revolves around voluntary exchanges. If you disagree with corporation X you don't have to give money to corporation X (assuming it isn't done via taxation). With communism if you disagree with the government (assuming for a moment this government allows dissent) you still do not have the right to not fund them because you must pay your taxes. No one forces you at gunpoint to buy something at Wal-Mart, if you are so inclined you can live your life so that not a dime goes to Wal-Mart, however, if you disagree with the conditions at the government's factories, you cannot vote with your wallet and choose not to support them.
/have/ to be part of the capitalist ideology. Go live in a commune if you want! Capitalism offers that freedom because it is based on voluntary exchange and if you voluntarily want to live in a commune, live in a monastery, or heck, live alone on your own little piece of land and become a hermit, capitalism lets you.
And what about "steady leeching of life"? Guess what? With capitalism (and a willing government) if you are so inclined you don't
But as for me, I'll keep my capitalism and keep my quality of life. But you are free to do as you wish, such, is the beauty of capitalism.
Social responsibility is a personal issue, not a corporate one. A corporation's job is to make a profit, the government's job is to protect against force and fraud, but it is each individual's job to be a good person.
If we want to see various causes enacted, we need to cut the corporations and governments out of it. First off, so people can choose the causes they care most about, and secondly so that they have as much disposable income to donate to various charities. Today, every taxpayer can say they are "charitable" because a large chunk of the money they earned gets forcibly redistributed to others, they think by buying a certain product they help X. But if we would focus on giving consumers more income, there would be a much, much, larger base of donations because they would have more money to spend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma
A cartel is simply a prisoner's dilemma, something that has been studied for years. While it benefits all companies in the cartel to stay with the cartel, if one person breaks the cartel, the rest of the companies are in worse off shape (investors will go for the company that broke the cartel and has higher profits). So the diagram goes something like this
Lets say this is between Google and Apple.
Case 1, Google and Apple both agree to the cartel, both are better off.
Case 2, Google breaks the cartel Apple stays, Google is better off, Apple is much worse off.
Case 3, Apple breaks the cartel, Google stays, Apple is better off, Google is much worse off
Case 4. Both break the cartel. Both are better off than if only 1 broke the cartel, but both are worse off than if they would have stayed with the cartel.
Because neither company knows what the other is going to do, the natural tendency is for the cartel to be broken up.
I said not involving government.
The reason why diamonds are so expensive isn't the result of De Beers, but rather the governments of the western world refusing to sell diamonds unless they are certified as "conflict free" and the government of many diamond producing nations having laws in place to limit the harvesting and exporting of diamonds.
Most of the evil that De Beers does isn't done by De Beers but rather by willing governments. Take the government out of the equation and corporations become a whole lot less menacing.