Considering "survival of the fittest" can basically be summed up as "throwing genes at the wall of entropy in the blind hope something sticks", I'd rather invent new and better ways of living - like computers and nanotechnology and philanthropic economic engineering - than scrounge in the jungle while nature continues rolling craps.
Because they're not going to steal all your stuff.
GP may have presented an idealistic scenario, but why is your only alternative the other extreme? If you think his scenario is unlikely, why are you presenting an equally unlikely one as any more probable, let alone certain?
Your idea also has the great "advantage" of preventing the faceless masses from being empowered with individual financial liquidity rather than be stifled and gate-keepered by a bureaucratic one-size-fits-all institution (you're an outlier? sucks to be you)... well, it's a great advantage to politicians and industry lobbyists, at least.
But if you want to run a socialist experiment, this is how I'd start it, not by handing out a check.
Of course not, providing individuals with money (actual fungibility / buying power) would be a capitalist endeavour. UBI could be described as angel investing on a ubiquitous scale, in exchange for a more prosperous, peaceful and technologically advanced civilization in which to live in.
But it hasn't. You already have a basic income level. It's zero, and it's been that way for a long time*.
Politicians already make plenty of promises they don't keep. So think: why don't we already have a non-zero UBI? As a concept it's been around for a long time. Centuries, even. And the answer is (amongst other factors), the money to pay the politicians comes from the same taxes that would be paid to the citizens, everyone getting the same basic amount makes it difficult for politicians who prefer to lobby on a "scratch my back I'll scratch yours" basis and/or hide pork-barreling in bureaucratic overhead, it raises the individual financial liquidity of the populace (empowering citizens whilst devaluing industry lobbyists), etc.
TL,DR; we don't have a non-zero UBI because it is not in the selfish interest of a politician to provide it. Fortunately, even a completely selfish politician will enact selfless policies with enough popular pressure.
*(technically we do have a non-zero UBI, if we count utilities such as public roads, fire, ambulance, police, etc, but none of those directly provide liquidity to empower citizens as individuals rather than as politically controllable masses)
I do not begrudge the needy support necessary to live.
Yet in most countries, including the United States, the government your votes elect and your taxes pay for does begrudge them that support. It insists on the sick, the injured and the unlucky navigating its hoops of paper before it will dole out a single nickel of "kindness".
And if a government, a "super power", should claim it cannot afford to provide all its citizens even a basic living income, merely enough that none shall be born below the poverty line, what does that say about its actual power?
"I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization." That quote by a Supreme Court justice has long influenced me, in part because it provoked a followup in my mind: "Since I'm paying anyway, what kind of civilization do I want?"
So ask yourself. Do you want one where everyone is provided with enough to survive on, without having to jump through a set of arbitrary hoops dictated by a prosperous few, or one where only those who are both strong enough and lucky enough to make it through the hoops may climb out of the muck for their turn as the top spoke on the wheel?
Because one way or another, our taxes are buying _a_ civilization. Which particular one do you want?
"The very fact that the boy admitted to the fact that he himself had concerns about exactly how suspicious it appeared gives me the impression that he (and / or his parents or whomever) were trying to walk the finest line possible on making this benign from a legal standpoint (it wasn't locked, and wasn't dangerous at the end of the day), but still raise questions and some amount of suspicion as to what all may be inside."
Seriously? You're looking at children, seriously looking at children, and thinking that they're deliberately trying to walk a line that could get them charged with life-ruining crimes?
Here's a simpler explanation: children in the U.S. are now so conditioned to be scared of authority that even those still daring enough to give into the natural childhood instinct to show off what they can achieve are pre-emptively trying to avoid being mistaken as a threat by the very people they are supposed to look up to.
And really, neither possibility suggests anything good about our society.
Perhaps GP and GGGP are referring to the concept of the smoke-filled room.
You said it yourself: he _politically_ appoints the directors. Or do you honestly fully believe he made no compromises whatsoever for every single one of those appointments? For that matter, do you honestly fully believe that not a single one of those appointees ever lied or compromised their own beliefs or oaths on the way up?
Or perhaps they are referring to the US voting system itself, which is mathematically proven to contain serious flaws (e.g. the ability to elect a candidate whom an absolute majority of voters did not choose).
If you were truly theorising, you wouldn't have appended "probably the real truth". I agree with the AC. Seriously, take a look at your actions and get over that instinctive human reaction to deny responsibility.
Nope. Still mangling simple math. "48 / (551+48) = 0.08, so of those whose fates were ultimately determined, 8% were exonerated and 92% executed." Finally.
That last sentence's not right. Technically should be, "48 / 551 = 0.087 to 2 significant digits, so of those whose fates were ultimately determined, 8.7% were exonerated and 91.3% executed." Since it doesn't include those who were still on death row, awaiting their own final outcome.
I obtained 8% by examining the US judicial system's own records back in 2013. According to the horse's mouth, between 2001 and 2010 there were 551 state executions and 48 exonerations on appeal. The math is pretty simple: 48 / ( 551 + 48 ) = 0.08 to 2 significant digits, so 8% of people convicted and awaiting execution were found innocent.
Perhaps the next time you "think my argument out a few steps in advance", you could first bother to notice that you completely missed the other fellow's point, and he's now wondering if you're a few planks short of a deck.
The military training aspect doesn't make someone less dangerous. That might teach proper use but your problem with guns is not that people don't know how to use them but what they might choose to do with them.
Actually, grasshopper, my problem is NOT with guns, it is with irresponsible gun owners. What I am is pro-responsibility. Learn your weapon. Maintain your weapon. Secure your weapon. Your weapon is not a toy*. I'm not afraid that US gun owners will miss, I'm afraid that their gun will hit - the wrong poor bastard - because the owner didn't bother to learn basic firearm safety.
That was, in fact, my entire damn point. The Swiss do not just "give" weapons and ammunition to all the men in their society. The rifle and pistol so issued are responsibilities, provided so that the citizen may defend their right and the right of their family and nation to independence and freedom, and the citizen will accept that responsibility and the associated training or be deemed unfit to bear those arms.
You put false words in my mouth ("your problem with guns is..."), made incorrect assumptions about my ability, and you did indeed toot your own horn. Nice shootin' there, I'm sure your foot deserved everything you gave it...
*Do not mistake a "tool that you enjoy practicing with" for a "toy". It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye by way of exiting the back of their skull.
You are afforded a trial. Due process. if convicted of a capital offense, then I'm not losing any sleep over your coming oblivion.
Does that mean you wouldn't allow appeals? Have you done the math on the exoneration rate for death penalty convictions in the United States? Because I have.
Statistically, if you were sentenced to death in the United States between 2001 and 2010, the chance was over 8% that you would be exonerated on appeal. That's the reality: that over 8% of the time, the government's "due process" has fucked up and ordered the execution of the wrong person.
Sadly, it's not actually possible to determine just _how much_ over 8% that chance is - i.e. how many innocents have been executed. Particularly since the government has fought very hard to prevent attempts to examine the possible innocence of those it has already executed.
Here's an experiment for you. Line up thirteen friends. Select one at random. Explain to him that your government has just sentenced him to death for a capital crime he did not commit. Ask him how he feels about that. Ask him whether he'd truly mind you not losing any sleep over the fact that a government decided to execute your friend and called it justice.
And before you bad mouth it, consider that the Swiss literally give all the men in their society a machine gun and a bag full of bullets.
The Swiss also have compulsory military service for all of those men, during which time they receive professional instruction in the responsible use and keeping of the firearms.
In Australia, the law is that you aren't considered a commercial taxi service if you only accept money for the cost of the fuel, but you may be considered one if you accept additional money for your time. So even if you gave someone a lift all the way from Cooktown to Perth, and it cost you $600 in fuel and they gave you $600, you'd be in the clear.
You seem to be under a misapprehension that the government cares about obtaining a few dollars from "mom and pop" online businesses in any way, shape or form, when the summary mentions the major targets are multi-million-dollar corporations like Steam and Netflix?
As to how, surely given a minute or two you could come up with at least an inkling of possible ways to check compliance? And perhaps it's possible that the people whose job it is to come up with such methods might devote rather more than a minute or two to the task?
It's "sustainable" only in the sense that a given population of a species can "sustain" a certain population of parasites. That doesn't make it a sustainable ethos for the species itself to indulge in.
> Feel free to disprove that by donating deveral hundred dollars to Nepali relief efforts. Or any international relief effort for that matter.
If GP went and did exactly that, would you (a) admit you were wrong, or (b) change the goalposts?
So what you're saying is, we COULD have clean desalination plants if it weren't for the profiteers cutting corners on them like they do on everything else?
Just like nuclear power, the problem isn't the tech. The problem is human greed.
Well, later in the second paragraph there may be a homage: "He pulled out his phone and blogged the event, moving his stiff thumbs (for he was high on a mountain and the air was as cold as it was clear) as fast as he could to secure the claim to himself."
Really? It is? Seriously, do explain how giving preferential treatment to a religious establishment is not a constitutional violation of the First Amendment...
Indeed, and further, I'm trying to understand how "religious and talk stations are exempt" is supposed to be reconciled with "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". E.g. per the majority decision by the Supreme Court in Everson v. Board of Education (1947):
The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion to another... in the words of Jefferson, the [First Amendment] clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between church and State'... That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.
Seriously, how does a specific exemption for religious stations pass Constitutional muster? How are "Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)" not in violation of their oath of office by introducing this bill?
Slashdot Mirror
Considering "survival of the fittest" can basically be summed up as "throwing genes at the wall of entropy in the blind hope something sticks", I'd rather invent new and better ways of living - like computers and nanotechnology and philanthropic economic engineering - than scrounge in the jungle while nature continues rolling craps.
Because they're not going to steal all your stuff.
GP may have presented an idealistic scenario, but why is your only alternative the other extreme? If you think his scenario is unlikely, why are you presenting an equally unlikely one as any more probable, let alone certain?
Your idea also has the great "advantage" of preventing the faceless masses from being empowered with individual financial liquidity rather than be stifled and gate-keepered by a bureaucratic one-size-fits-all institution (you're an outlier? sucks to be you)... well, it's a great advantage to politicians and industry lobbyists, at least.
Of course not, providing individuals with money (actual fungibility / buying power) would be a capitalist endeavour. UBI could be described as angel investing on a ubiquitous scale, in exchange for a more prosperous, peaceful and technologically advanced civilization in which to live in.
But it hasn't. You already have a basic income level. It's zero, and it's been that way for a long time*.
Politicians already make plenty of promises they don't keep. So think: why don't we already have a non-zero UBI? As a concept it's been around for a long time. Centuries, even. And the answer is (amongst other factors), the money to pay the politicians comes from the same taxes that would be paid to the citizens, everyone getting the same basic amount makes it difficult for politicians who prefer to lobby on a "scratch my back I'll scratch yours" basis and/or hide pork-barreling in bureaucratic overhead, it raises the individual financial liquidity of the populace (empowering citizens whilst devaluing industry lobbyists), etc.
TL,DR; we don't have a non-zero UBI because it is not in the selfish interest of a politician to provide it. Fortunately, even a completely selfish politician will enact selfless policies with enough popular pressure.
*(technically we do have a non-zero UBI, if we count utilities such as public roads, fire, ambulance, police, etc, but none of those directly provide liquidity to empower citizens as individuals rather than as politically controllable masses)
Yet in most countries, including the United States, the government your votes elect and your taxes pay for does begrudge them that support. It insists on the sick, the injured and the unlucky navigating its hoops of paper before it will dole out a single nickel of "kindness".
And if a government, a "super power", should claim it cannot afford to provide all its citizens even a basic living income, merely enough that none shall be born below the poverty line, what does that say about its actual power?
"I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization." That quote by a Supreme Court justice has long influenced me, in part because it provoked a followup in my mind: "Since I'm paying anyway, what kind of civilization do I want?"
So ask yourself. Do you want one where everyone is provided with enough to survive on, without having to jump through a set of arbitrary hoops dictated by a prosperous few, or one where only those who are both strong enough and lucky enough to make it through the hoops may climb out of the muck for their turn as the top spoke on the wheel?
Because one way or another, our taxes are buying _a_ civilization. Which particular one do you want?
Seriously? You're looking at children, seriously looking at children, and thinking that they're deliberately trying to walk a line that could get them charged with life-ruining crimes?
Here's a simpler explanation: children in the U.S. are now so conditioned to be scared of authority that even those still daring enough to give into the natural childhood instinct to show off what they can achieve are pre-emptively trying to avoid being mistaken as a threat by the very people they are supposed to look up to.
And really, neither possibility suggests anything good about our society.
In case anyone wants a link re the above example: http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
Perhaps GP and GGGP are referring to the concept of the smoke-filled room.
You said it yourself: he _politically_ appoints the directors. Or do you honestly fully believe he made no compromises whatsoever for every single one of those appointments? For that matter, do you honestly fully believe that not a single one of those appointees ever lied or compromised their own beliefs or oaths on the way up?
Or perhaps they are referring to the US voting system itself, which is mathematically proven to contain serious flaws (e.g. the ability to elect a candidate whom an absolute majority of voters did not choose).
If you were truly theorising, you wouldn't have appended "probably the real truth". I agree with the AC. Seriously, take a look at your actions and get over that instinctive human reaction to deny responsibility.
Why do you keep resorting to ad hominems?
Nope. Still mangling simple math. "48 / (551+48) = 0.08, so of those whose fates were ultimately determined, 8% were exonerated and 92% executed." Finally.
That last sentence's not right. Technically should be, "48 / 551 = 0.087 to 2 significant digits, so of those whose fates were ultimately determined, 8.7% were exonerated and 91.3% executed." Since it doesn't include those who were still on death row, awaiting their own final outcome.
Grim either way.
I obtained 8% by examining the US judicial system's own records back in 2013. According to the horse's mouth, between 2001 and 2010 there were 551 state executions and 48 exonerations on appeal. The math is pretty simple: 48 / ( 551 + 48 ) = 0.08 to 2 significant digits, so 8% of people convicted and awaiting execution were found innocent.
Perhaps the next time you "think my argument out a few steps in advance", you could first bother to notice that you completely missed the other fellow's point, and he's now wondering if you're a few planks short of a deck.
Actually, grasshopper, my problem is NOT with guns, it is with irresponsible gun owners. What I am is pro-responsibility. Learn your weapon. Maintain your weapon. Secure your weapon. Your weapon is not a toy*. I'm not afraid that US gun owners will miss, I'm afraid that their gun will hit - the wrong poor bastard - because the owner didn't bother to learn basic firearm safety.
That was, in fact, my entire damn point. The Swiss do not just "give" weapons and ammunition to all the men in their society. The rifle and pistol so issued are responsibilities, provided so that the citizen may defend their right and the right of their family and nation to independence and freedom, and the citizen will accept that responsibility and the associated training or be deemed unfit to bear those arms.
You put false words in my mouth ("your problem with guns is..."), made incorrect assumptions about my ability, and you did indeed toot your own horn. Nice shootin' there, I'm sure your foot deserved everything you gave it...
*Do not mistake a "tool that you enjoy practicing with" for a "toy". It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye by way of exiting the back of their skull.
Does that mean you wouldn't allow appeals? Have you done the math on the exoneration rate for death penalty convictions in the United States? Because I have.
Statistically, if you were sentenced to death in the United States between 2001 and 2010, the chance was over 8% that you would be exonerated on appeal. That's the reality: that over 8% of the time, the government's "due process" has fucked up and ordered the execution of the wrong person.
Sadly, it's not actually possible to determine just _how much_ over 8% that chance is - i.e. how many innocents have been executed. Particularly since the government has fought very hard to prevent attempts to examine the possible innocence of those it has already executed.
Here's an experiment for you. Line up thirteen friends. Select one at random. Explain to him that your government has just sentenced him to death for a capital crime he did not commit. Ask him how he feels about that. Ask him whether he'd truly mind you not losing any sleep over the fact that a government decided to execute your friend and called it justice.
The Swiss also have compulsory military service for all of those men, during which time they receive professional instruction in the responsible use and keeping of the firearms.
The USA? Nope.
Okay, thanks, found the footage.
Just to note, there is no mention in the article of a propane tank. Just a pressure cooker.
Make it $200/month net, rather than gross?
In Australia, the law is that you aren't considered a commercial taxi service if you only accept money for the cost of the fuel, but you may be considered one if you accept additional money for your time. So even if you gave someone a lift all the way from Cooktown to Perth, and it cost you $600 in fuel and they gave you $600, you'd be in the clear.
You seem to be under a misapprehension that the government cares about obtaining a few dollars from "mom and pop" online businesses in any way, shape or form, when the summary mentions the major targets are multi-million-dollar corporations like Steam and Netflix?
As to how, surely given a minute or two you could come up with at least an inkling of possible ways to check compliance? And perhaps it's possible that the people whose job it is to come up with such methods might devote rather more than a minute or two to the task?
It's "sustainable" only in the sense that a given population of a species can "sustain" a certain population of parasites. That doesn't make it a sustainable ethos for the species itself to indulge in.
> Feel free to disprove that by donating deveral hundred dollars to Nepali relief efforts. Or any international relief effort for that matter.
If GP went and did exactly that, would you (a) admit you were wrong, or (b) change the goalposts?
So what you're saying is, we COULD have clean desalination plants if it weren't for the profiteers cutting corners on them like they do on everything else?
Just like nuclear power, the problem isn't the tech. The problem is human greed.
Well, later in the second paragraph there may be a homage: "He pulled out his phone and blogged the event, moving his stiff thumbs (for he was high on a mountain and the air was as cold as it was clear) as fast as he could to secure the claim to himself."
Really? It is? Seriously, do explain how giving preferential treatment to a religious establishment is not a constitutional violation of the First Amendment...
Indeed, and further, I'm trying to understand how "religious and talk stations are exempt" is supposed to be reconciled with "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". E.g. per the majority decision by the Supreme Court in Everson v. Board of Education (1947):
Seriously, how does a specific exemption for religious stations pass Constitutional muster? How are "Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)" not in violation of their oath of office by introducing this bill?