Next time please preface your snarky comment with "Warning, smug alert. Heavy chance of douchebaggery below."
On a side note, your type of comments have no place in any sort of meaningful discussion. If all you're going to do is dismiss someone because you and your supposedly high circles don't find their reasoning advanced enough, then you're no better than a filthy cultist that plugs his ears and goes "LalaLaLa" when someone tries to convince them of a point.
This is a PUBLIC outlet.. He pays taxes, so I say he deserves to use the public utility or public property that he supposedly has a share in.
Now if you step back and actually ask yourself what public property is, then you'll quickly realize it isn't public at all, nor does it belong to you. It belongs to the government, and you're not part of that niche group. That is why he got arrested; he took something that wasn't his.
What a shame it is that our country operates in this manner.
It's a good thing that people are starting to see it for what it really is.
Regardless of which or both parties are to blame it's the publics complacency in allowing our elected leaders to behave this way.
Yes, and no. It's their fault for letting it get this bad. And no, it's not their fault because the system was instituted generations before they were born. They had a chance to mold their form of governance for the better, but they didn't and just let it deteriorate while they watched Survivor Island and Idols.
This is supposed to be a capitalist democracy. There is supposedly a free market.
The two are, to me, orthogonal concepts, so I don't see how you can put them in the same sentence. The free market is the truest form of "democracy" if democracy represents everyone having equal opportunity. But a democratic system implies a state, and as soon as you have a state that enforces rules/regulations on free individuals then you no longer have a free market.
Wave goodbye to innovation when you can no longer bring it to market because it is more lucrative to stifle it.
Just like the internet routing around bad hops. So too will the free-market find routes and means around the stifling, even while some of the players decide to use the near-absolute power of the state to help them and their business models. Most people look down on their fellow man. I, however, have full confidence in the ingenuity and resourcefulness that we are capable of to achieve our goals. The question is, are you going to use these gifts to help society, or are you going to use them to further suppress and manipulate those that you think you know better than? One leads toward a free society, the other towards democracy. Take your pick.
I agree with you fully. Thing is, I'm struggling to exchange my currency for bitcoin in an easy and reliable fashion. Right now, it seems the only reliable way to do it is via bank transfer. This is something that they sorely need to address if they want people to use it more. I understand that once a sizeable chunk of people have bitcoins, it will flow more readily and conversion to USD or other currencies will become less important and less frequent. But until such a point, we need ways to get bitcoin.
Do you not already pay fees when using a credit card processor? I've always been under that impression, so I'm quite curious if you've got a credit card payment processor that doesn't take a fee on transactions?
Agreed... Just the other day I decided I wanted to buy some bitcoin, just to give it a go. I was perfectly willing to buy. Yet every single place I looked at didn't want to accept a credit card, or paypal, or Skrill(Moneybookers). There were a few dodgy ones I could have plausibly gone for like "convert to Linden dollars(SecondLife currency) via creditcard/paypal, then use the Linden dollars to buy bitcoins here". I mean, come on. The rest all wanted bank wire transfers with up to three days to process, plus 5% transaction fees. I sense that the normal financial institutions are putting up barriers that make it unfeasible for us to buy bitcoin easily. Either that, or they're just plain incompatible like it is with Paypal and it's reversal poliucy.
At this rate, if I wanted to buy bitcoins, I'd be better off buying a dedicated mining rig/asic. Which is also bullshit, because all the feasible ones are either on backorder, or you have to pay anything from $2000 to $15000. Which is pretty much insane. Makes me wish I got in on the bitcoin craze back in the start just so I wouldn't have to buy bitcoins now using one of the dodgy payment options on the various exchanges.
What did you expect when they make a vague law that requires interpretation? Fallible people will err, they will favor according to their own biases, and the law will never be applied equally to all. Apparently that's a feature, not a bug. I sternly disagree. It's one of the biggest failings of a judicial system that supposedly honors equality.
Your original claim was that "no bank or financial institution will ever be able to do as much harm to a population as a bad government." Of course the Weimar Repulic screwed up, but I'm saying that private banks in the US were able to screw up just as badly.
You misunderstood what the guy said. He didn't say that the private banking institutions don't mess up as much as a bad government. What he did say is that private banking institutions will never be able to do as much harm to a population as a bad government. Private entities can't put you into jail for not obeying their demands/directives, whereas a government can. Leaving aside issues where private entities collude with the government, btw. But even in that scenario, the harm is facilitated by the presence of a state, even if it was done on behalf of a private entity.
Tell me what other definition of "power" and "mitigate" you had in mind. Go ahead, your naivete is quite funny.
I don't have a definition of "power" in the context I was using it as I was re-using the terms of the person I responded to. But if you want to be pedantic, I suppose I was referring to some sort of physical force, intimidation or property-right violation.
Go ahead, tell me where you explicitly ruled out violence in your proposal [...]The United States Constitution preserves a strong right to violence in the form of the Second Amendment, but the canonical example is violence in defense of your own life. Another right of revolutionary violence is commonly held to be preserved. Finally we may say that anything one may not take from you, you have some inherent right to, and your ability to do harm to your fellow creature is only subject to so much limitation.
Captain pedantic, eh. You're trying to point out some sort of contradiction between "not having a right to harm another" and "self defense" which I implied when I said "mitigate such power imposition". "No man has the right to cause harm to anyone besides himself" is what I said. Now if you want to argue that I didn't include an exception for "harm" to cater for self defense, then sure, knock yourself out. But it won't lead this conversation anywhere... And your childish remarks regarding my supposed naivety aren't helping, either.
Just the act of putting your coins on the market is enough. No need for there to be a willing buyer. In fact, the lack of a buyer plays an even bigger role in what precipitates the "crashing". So what ends up happening is you keep lowering your "price" in an attempt to lure a buyer. Now imagine that across the market with all the other investors being told to "sell now while it's hot".
And you, what, want to revert back to anarchy and barbarism because you think that there's some sort of optimum point that is achieved when every man has the right to cause every other man harm? Do you imagine that out of this martial anarchy there would emerge no specialists?
No man has the right to cause harm to anyone besides himself. I'm sorry, you sound like you're well-speaking and want to have a meaningful discussion on the topic. But as long as you think that I believe that any individual has a right to harm another, then you don't deserve a response.
Sounds like you're advocating some sort of technologically-implemented direct-democracy. Being a libertarian myself, the bare minimum moral alternative to our current society would be a direct-democracy, similar to what you advocate.
However, let's be honest. It will never happen. An entire ecosystem, with copious amounts of momentum, has grown around our current implementation of governance. The system was designed to be a job-program, to divvy up work at every level by adding administrative overhead, and slicing the pie in as many pieces as possible. The entire fabric of society will have to change in order to accommodate a truly pure democratic government, of which direct-democracy is the only type.
You give each human the right to prevent others having power over him only, in whatever way he chooses. If he chooses to exert "power" over another, then that other individual is free to pursue whatever means is required to mitigate such power imposition.
Maybe quite true, actually. The difference is we don't try to impose our "wrong" or "right" values on anyone else; nor do we kidnap and imprison them if they disagree with our values/beliefs.
"Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person." - Madeleine L'Engle
I'm not saying I agree with this law, but how do you ever prove intent? How do you prove what somebody was thinking?
It's just vague non-sense... There are all sorts of scenarios out there where it's obvious someone was about to, just did, or is planning on doing something illegal. This word they use, "intent" is technical enough to fly, and vague enough to be interpreted however the law-enforcement officials wish. In essence, it's a thought crime. Yet another tool in their selective-enforcement arsenal, I guess.
Perhaps you should move to the third world, then and see how well your "laughable" salary treats you. It really isn't as bad as they tell you. I know, I work there. Good companies here don't actually hire the "outsource" labor that the first/western world uses when they want cheap stuff done. They hire quality developers that set themselves apart from the "outsource" type of labor.
I love reading articles pertaining to GMO. It brings out the anti-GMO nutjobs in droves. Which I then proceed to add as foes, so I can ignore their obvious trolling and idiocy in other articles.
Lol, it's so funny reading you speak of "the nature of TCP/IP" with such blatant ignorance of the actual things involved. Obvious trolling, dude. Go to twitter.
Do you have any idea how much that would cost? We're not all rich politicians or corporations. As such, we don't have neither the time nor the deep pockets to challenge this.
Remind us again what form of government we supposedly have? Democracy, yes? Well then, let's have a referendum on the matter, enough of this complicated court/appeals process. You want to make democracy noble, then stand up to that ideal and let people choose. Otherwise you're just playing the popularity card only when it suits you. i.e. when you think you know better than the majority.
By "you", I don't mean you specifically, I'm specifically referring to the proponents and champions of democracy.
If you want to fix the health care system, you're going to have to do something you don't want to do: You're going to have to give up on capitalism. Private-run insurance, private-run health care, private-run... kill it.
Lol, you say regulation is the problem but then you say we have to get rid of capitalism? As if capitalism is the cause of all the regulation. The level of WTF in your two posts is just outstanding. But I see you have behind you a regular contingency of slashdotters loving your posts, so that must make your right, right? Wrong.
The Moon is humanity's patrimony. Individuals and private entities must not have ownership right on the moon just in the same way we do with Antarctica. It is simply just too early. Here be dragons.
Oh, so you want it to be like public property, right? Where it's simultaneously your property, everyone's property, and nobody's property but the government's all at the same time? Yeah, how about no.
Land is precious. Land is what set a lot of humanity free from oppressive/persecutive states and religions. People explored, created new frontiers and made new lives for themselves in new lands at great expense and danger to themselves. This is no different. Just because you feel some sort of sentimental attachment to a dead piece of rock floating around us does not give you the right do deny it to those who wish to go there to make a new life. A new life free from interference by people like you, who think they have some sort of intellectually-imposed authority when it comes to decisions like this.
You have taken ALL the land on this earth, divvied it up to groups of individuals and now you seek to do the same on the moon? So much for being a free society, when you force people to live under your rule while at the same time you call "dibbs" on every useable piece of land in the solar system. Because yeah, people like you will eventually extend whatever you do to the moon such that it applies to the solar system, and beyond.
The moon is not yours to cut up into "N billion equal pieces", just like the earth is not yours to cut up in those pieces. Quit blaming capitalism for everything you see as greedy. It isn't capitalism when your own moral system can't extend to novel scenarios. It is not capitalism when you see someone trying to gain benefit from investing in a new frontier.
We may very well have problems coming up with a framework for dealing with these sorts of things. But to come out and call it evil capitalism for someone trying to get reform in that area, even if it's for their own benefit, is just bullshit.
He wants the moon carved up and given to the wealthiest people to make them even wealthier, backed by the world military to make sure that the poor get nothing out of it..
Well, why the fuck not? I'm not doing anything with that land that you claim is mine, supposedly. Why the fuck should it "belong" to me solely because I exist on planet earth? What about all our children that you are fucking over by not giving them their share? Are you going to take it from someone that already owns a moon share? And if you did want to give it to subsequent children what's to stop people from over-breeding just to get "their fair share" of the moon land by having it taken from existing owners? Because fuck them, that's why? And people like you think capitalism is somehow wrong.
Face it, communal property is just bullshit. Either you admit it belongs to those that use it first, or you admit to it being given equally to all and constantly take from existing owners to give to newborns, or you give it all to some authoritarian entity to divvy up in whatever manner it sees fit (or rather tax it). I don't know about you, but I see only one option above that is fair to all.
Slashdot Mirror
Next time please preface your snarky comment with "Warning, smug alert. Heavy chance of douchebaggery below."
On a side note, your type of comments have no place in any sort of meaningful discussion. If all you're going to do is dismiss someone because you and your supposedly high circles don't find their reasoning advanced enough, then you're no better than a filthy cultist that plugs his ears and goes "LalaLaLa" when someone tries to convince them of a point.
This is a PUBLIC outlet.. He pays taxes, so I say he deserves to use the public utility or public property that he supposedly has a share in.
Now if you step back and actually ask yourself what public property is, then you'll quickly realize it isn't public at all, nor does it belong to you. It belongs to the government, and you're not part of that niche group. That is why he got arrested; he took something that wasn't his.
What a shame it is that our country operates in this manner.
It's a good thing that people are starting to see it for what it really is.
Regardless of which or both parties are to blame it's the publics complacency in allowing our elected leaders to behave this way.
Yes, and no. It's their fault for letting it get this bad. And no, it's not their fault because the system was instituted generations before they were born. They had a chance to mold their form of governance for the better, but they didn't and just let it deteriorate while they watched Survivor Island and Idols.
This is supposed to be a capitalist democracy. There is supposedly a free market.
The two are, to me, orthogonal concepts, so I don't see how you can put them in the same sentence. The free market is the truest form of "democracy" if democracy represents everyone having equal opportunity. But a democratic system implies a state, and as soon as you have a state that enforces rules/regulations on free individuals then you no longer have a free market.
Wave goodbye to innovation when you can no longer bring it to market because it is more lucrative to stifle it.
Just like the internet routing around bad hops. So too will the free-market find routes and means around the stifling, even while some of the players decide to use the near-absolute power of the state to help them and their business models. Most people look down on their fellow man. I, however, have full confidence in the ingenuity and resourcefulness that we are capable of to achieve our goals. The question is, are you going to use these gifts to help society, or are you going to use them to further suppress and manipulate those that you think you know better than? One leads toward a free society, the other towards democracy. Take your pick.
I agree with you fully. Thing is, I'm struggling to exchange my currency for bitcoin in an easy and reliable fashion. Right now, it seems the only reliable way to do it is via bank transfer. This is something that they sorely need to address if they want people to use it more. I understand that once a sizeable chunk of people have bitcoins, it will flow more readily and conversion to USD or other currencies will become less important and less frequent. But until such a point, we need ways to get bitcoin.
Ignore the obvious troll. Just mark "globaljustin" red and move along. It's best not to waste time on them, you're just giving them trolling practice.
Do you not already pay fees when using a credit card processor? I've always been under that impression, so I'm quite curious if you've got a credit card payment processor that doesn't take a fee on transactions?
Agreed... Just the other day I decided I wanted to buy some bitcoin, just to give it a go. I was perfectly willing to buy. Yet every single place I looked at didn't want to accept a credit card, or paypal, or Skrill(Moneybookers). There were a few dodgy ones I could have plausibly gone for like "convert to Linden dollars(SecondLife currency) via creditcard/paypal, then use the Linden dollars to buy bitcoins here". I mean, come on. The rest all wanted bank wire transfers with up to three days to process, plus 5% transaction fees. I sense that the normal financial institutions are putting up barriers that make it unfeasible for us to buy bitcoin easily. Either that, or they're just plain incompatible like it is with Paypal and it's reversal poliucy.
At this rate, if I wanted to buy bitcoins, I'd be better off buying a dedicated mining rig/asic. Which is also bullshit, because all the feasible ones are either on backorder, or you have to pay anything from $2000 to $15000. Which is pretty much insane. Makes me wish I got in on the bitcoin craze back in the start just so I wouldn't have to buy bitcoins now using one of the dodgy payment options on the various exchanges.
What did you expect when they make a vague law that requires interpretation? Fallible people will err, they will favor according to their own biases, and the law will never be applied equally to all. Apparently that's a feature, not a bug. I sternly disagree. It's one of the biggest failings of a judicial system that supposedly honors equality.
Your original claim was that "no bank or financial institution will ever be able to do as much harm to a population as a bad government." Of course the Weimar Repulic screwed up, but I'm saying that private banks in the US were able to screw up just as badly.
You misunderstood what the guy said. He didn't say that the private banking institutions don't mess up as much as a bad government. What he did say is that private banking institutions will never be able to do as much harm to a population as a bad government. Private entities can't put you into jail for not obeying their demands/directives, whereas a government can. Leaving aside issues where private entities collude with the government, btw. But even in that scenario, the harm is facilitated by the presence of a state, even if it was done on behalf of a private entity.
Tell me what other definition of "power" and "mitigate" you had in mind. Go ahead, your naivete is quite funny.
I don't have a definition of "power" in the context I was using it as I was re-using the terms of the person I responded to. But if you want to be pedantic, I suppose I was referring to some sort of physical force, intimidation or property-right violation.
Go ahead, tell me where you explicitly ruled out violence in your proposal [...]The United States Constitution preserves a strong right to violence in the form of the Second Amendment, but the canonical example is violence in defense of your own life. Another right of revolutionary violence is commonly held to be preserved. Finally we may say that anything one may not take from you, you have some inherent right to, and your ability to do harm to your fellow creature is only subject to so much limitation.
Captain pedantic, eh. You're trying to point out some sort of contradiction between "not having a right to harm another" and "self defense" which I implied when I said "mitigate such power imposition". "No man has the right to cause harm to anyone besides himself" is what I said. Now if you want to argue that I didn't include an exception for "harm" to cater for self defense, then sure, knock yourself out. But it won't lead this conversation anywhere... And your childish remarks regarding my supposed naivety aren't helping, either.
Just the act of putting your coins on the market is enough. No need for there to be a willing buyer. In fact, the lack of a buyer plays an even bigger role in what precipitates the "crashing". So what ends up happening is you keep lowering your "price" in an attempt to lure a buyer. Now imagine that across the market with all the other investors being told to "sell now while it's hot".
And you, what, want to revert back to anarchy and barbarism because you think that there's some sort of optimum point that is achieved when every man has the right to cause every other man harm? Do you imagine that out of this martial anarchy there would emerge no specialists?
No man has the right to cause harm to anyone besides himself. I'm sorry, you sound like you're well-speaking and want to have a meaningful discussion on the topic. But as long as you think that I believe that any individual has a right to harm another, then you don't deserve a response.
Sounds like you're advocating some sort of technologically-implemented direct-democracy. Being a libertarian myself, the bare minimum moral alternative to our current society would be a direct-democracy, similar to what you advocate.
However, let's be honest. It will never happen. An entire ecosystem, with copious amounts of momentum, has grown around our current implementation of governance. The system was designed to be a job-program, to divvy up work at every level by adding administrative overhead, and slicing the pie in as many pieces as possible. The entire fabric of society will have to change in order to accommodate a truly pure democratic government, of which direct-democracy is the only type.
You give each human the right to prevent others having power over him only, in whatever way he chooses. If he chooses to exert "power" over another, then that other individual is free to pursue whatever means is required to mitigate such power imposition.
Maybe quite true, actually. The difference is we don't try to impose our "wrong" or "right" values on anyone else; nor do we kidnap and imprison them if they disagree with our values/beliefs.
"Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person." - Madeleine L'Engle
Don't even try arguing with intellectual statists, they're too smart to admit they're wrong.
I'm not saying I agree with this law, but how do you ever prove intent? How do you prove what somebody was thinking?
It's just vague non-sense... There are all sorts of scenarios out there where it's obvious someone was about to, just did, or is planning on doing something illegal. This word they use, "intent" is technical enough to fly, and vague enough to be interpreted however the law-enforcement officials wish. In essence, it's a thought crime. Yet another tool in their selective-enforcement arsenal, I guess.
Perhaps you should move to the third world, then and see how well your "laughable" salary treats you. It really isn't as bad as they tell you. I know, I work there. Good companies here don't actually hire the "outsource" labor that the first/western world uses when they want cheap stuff done. They hire quality developers that set themselves apart from the "outsource" type of labor.
I love reading articles pertaining to GMO. It brings out the anti-GMO nutjobs in droves. Which I then proceed to add as foes, so I can ignore their obvious trolling and idiocy in other articles.
Lol, it's so funny reading you speak of "the nature of TCP/IP" with such blatant ignorance of the actual things involved. Obvious trolling, dude. Go to twitter.
I sent you an email about that thing yesterday.
Do you have any idea how much that would cost? We're not all rich politicians or corporations. As such, we don't have neither the time nor the deep pockets to challenge this.
Remind us again what form of government we supposedly have? Democracy, yes? Well then, let's have a referendum on the matter, enough of this complicated court/appeals process. You want to make democracy noble, then stand up to that ideal and let people choose. Otherwise you're just playing the popularity card only when it suits you. i.e. when you think you know better than the majority.
By "you", I don't mean you specifically, I'm specifically referring to the proponents and champions of democracy.
If you want to fix the health care system, you're going to have to do something you don't want to do: You're going to have to give up on capitalism. Private-run insurance, private-run health care, private-run... kill it.
Lol, you say regulation is the problem but then you say we have to get rid of capitalism? As if capitalism is the cause of all the regulation. The level of WTF in your two posts is just outstanding. But I see you have behind you a regular contingency of slashdotters loving your posts, so that must make your right, right? Wrong.
The Moon is humanity's patrimony. Individuals and private entities must not have ownership right on the moon just in the same way we do with Antarctica. It is simply just too early. Here be dragons.
Oh, so you want it to be like public property, right? Where it's simultaneously your property, everyone's property, and nobody's property but the government's all at the same time? Yeah, how about no.
Land is precious. Land is what set a lot of humanity free from oppressive/persecutive states and religions. People explored, created new frontiers and made new lives for themselves in new lands at great expense and danger to themselves. This is no different. Just because you feel some sort of sentimental attachment to a dead piece of rock floating around us does not give you the right do deny it to those who wish to go there to make a new life. A new life free from interference by people like you, who think they have some sort of intellectually-imposed authority when it comes to decisions like this.
You have taken ALL the land on this earth, divvied it up to groups of individuals and now you seek to do the same on the moon? So much for being a free society, when you force people to live under your rule while at the same time you call "dibbs" on every useable piece of land in the solar system. Because yeah, people like you will eventually extend whatever you do to the moon such that it applies to the solar system, and beyond.
We may very well have problems coming up with a framework for dealing with these sorts of things. But to come out and call it evil capitalism for someone trying to get reform in that area, even if it's for their own benefit, is just bullshit.
He wants the moon carved up and given to the wealthiest people to make them even wealthier, backed by the world military to make sure that the poor get nothing out of it..
Well, why the fuck not? I'm not doing anything with that land that you claim is mine, supposedly. Why the fuck should it "belong" to me solely because I exist on planet earth? What about all our children that you are fucking over by not giving them their share? Are you going to take it from someone that already owns a moon share? And if you did want to give it to subsequent children what's to stop people from over-breeding just to get "their fair share" of the moon land by having it taken from existing owners? Because fuck them, that's why? And people like you think capitalism is somehow wrong.
Face it, communal property is just bullshit. Either you admit it belongs to those that use it first, or you admit to it being given equally to all and constantly take from existing owners to give to newborns, or you give it all to some authoritarian entity to divvy up in whatever manner it sees fit (or rather tax it). I don't know about you, but I see only one option above that is fair to all.