You are claiming that the Fed is NOT a local branch of the international banking cartel? You don't think that the owning class profits from economic cycles of boom and bust? You don't think they manipulate the economy to create those cycles?
What is the Fed, in your mind? Perhaps you think there is no such thing as the owning class, after all, we have social mobility here, right? Anyone can become rich, is that what you think? Like, banker rich?
This isn't a conspiracy theory. This is the cold hard fact of the world. You are a serf. There is a small group of very rich, powerful, and sociopathic individuals who control or at least heavily influence world finance. As a serf, you can not join that group. You can become "regular rich," but even so, these people will not let you into the club. After all, this isn't really about wealth. It is about power over other people's lives. The power to look down, from a vast distance, at the tiny little lives of the tiny little ants, scurrying about as if they were people. The power to ruin whole countries, to change the course of world events, to create dynasties that will ensure that the system stays the same and the rich are venerated as 'better' than everyone else.
I mean, we're all going to die, right? But these fuckers want to make sure that in a hundred years, or a thousand, they will still be remembered as they want to be remembered. In their narcissistic ego-glorification, they seek a kind of immortality. But in order for that to work, the system must stay the same. The values must stay the same. And to do that, you need to create a ruling dynasty, to ensure there is no fundamental change in the way people think.
Now, the thing is, you can cry 'conspiracy' all you like. I'll rebut that with a cry of 'history.' Look at it. This is what the ruling class has done, ever since we started writing about it. Do you honestly think human nature has changed, or perhaps you think we are now 'free' and some sort of check and balance keeps people from doing what the kings, pashas, pharaohs, and emperors have been doing for thousands of years?
I'm sorry, I think you are incredibly naive. Perhaps it is more comforting to live in an illusionary world. Perhaps it is too painful to admit you are a serf. But more and more people are waking up to the fact that our society is infested with parasites, and I'm not talking about welfare mothers. I'm talking "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking REAL money" parasites. This is why rubycodez comment was modded insightful.
You can just plug your ears and yell "LALALALAH I CAN'T HEAR YOU." Go back to sleep. It's all just a goofy conspiracy theory. You're a free man, not a serf. Go back to sleep, it'll all be okay in the morning.
It wasn't a typo, it was Bernie Sanders speaking for an hour on the Senate floor today, pushing for a bill to audit the Fed. Everyone who is anyone knows what we will find if we audit the Fed, and it isn't good. Not just for us, but for the world. Which is why Obama threatened to veto this bill, citing national security. The dollar is the world's reserve currency. If all the plebeians of the world found out how utterly worthless our currency is, we would suffer a crash that would make the last one look like a cake-walk.
As for Greece, though, that crisis is actually pushing investors back to America.
Microsoft was not fixing a bug, it was removing a remote access feature. They didn't mention it because they didn't want people to complain that this valuable functionality was being removed.
Rights are only what we agree to
on
Flash Is Not a Right
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Rights derive from agreements between individuals to respect and defend certain conditions. There are no natural or God given rights. Without society, it is meaningless to talk about rights: there is only power. If we agree that 'developing on any platform, in any language you choose' is a right, then it is a right. As with all rights, we will have to give up something to gain something, in this case, we give up the right to make a closed platform.
You can try to make this an emotional issue. You can try to appeal to a higher authority such as nature, god, your ideal of morality, or common sense, but appeal to authority does not make for a logical argument. Apple is not wrong for making a closed platform. Developers aren't wrong for demanding an open platform. But your appeal to Apple's supposed 'right' to create a closed platform is the exact same argument as the developers appeal for the 'right' to an open environment. It is meaningless rhetoric meant to appeal to emotions.
What we should do instead is weigh the pros and cons. Is the freedom to create a closed environment more valuable than the freedom to develop on any environment as we see fit? The freedom to create a closed environment is just a special case of the freedom to do as we like with our own creations. This right does not impose anything on anyone: if you don't like the closed environment don't use it. If enough people decide not to use it, it will fail. The right to develop as we see fit on any environment imposes more restrictions, it makes demands on creators to open their environment. The thing is, we do have the freedom to develop for any platform in flash. Hack the thing, write your own flash interpreter for it, and go to town. Imposing on Apple the demand that they sell such programs in their store infringes on the already agreed upon right to do most anything we like with our own possessions. Is it worth making a special case here, where we infringe on that already agreed upon right? Well, there are cases where we already do, for instance, if you cause harm to others such as pollution, if you deny service based on race, or you are a monopoly. And while Apple may have a monopoly of sorts on the iPad and iPhone, this does not constitute a real monopoly as these products do not account for 80%+ of the market for these type of electronic devices. I can't really think of a similar existing case where we limit the rights of people to do whatever they want with their own possessions.
That being said, if developers feel it is important to have the right to develop in flash on any platform, they can pressure the platform creator to enact that right. Just don't put it in moral terms. Put it in power terms: do so, or we will punish you as best we can. That takes it out of the fuzzy, fuzzy realm of rights and into the cold hard world of negotiation and consequences. It acknowledges that it is really about "me, me, me," and not some moral argument. That's fine, people have conflicts like that all the time and manage to resolve them. I would have no problem with developers banding together to do this, and I would have no problem with Apple telling them to fuck off. I don't have a horse in this race. I just consider it an interesting case study of the concept of rights.
I'm sorry, but your argument is fallacious. The Earth is not static, of course. But that does not mean that we are free to do anything we like to it. You are basically saying, "Well, the Earth might give us troubles all on its own, so we might as well add our own troubles into the mix." I hope when your argument is rephrased like that, you can see the error.
You also fall victim of the is/ought fallacy further on. "Because we use oil for things like computers, (is) that is the way things ought to be (ought)" Then you make a completely unsupported allegation about green energy, where you say it will be too expensive. You don't know. And if it is, doesn't that mean more jobs? We have so much unemployment right now, couldn't we put some of those people, who capitalism has failed, to work on creating a better future? Look at the work projects of the Great Depression, that created infrastructure of lasting value.
If people die from our actions in satisfying our needs, then WE need to pay recompense. We need to take care of the people we hurt. With socialism for the needy, rather than the socialism for the rich we have now.
They are talking about the effects on the atmosphere itself in that study, not the effect on environment. We used to think the Earth was infinite in its capacity to absorb out wastes. Now we know this isn't true. While I'm not claiming that the environmental impact of this spill will be devastating in terms of human health, I am saying that our toxins do not simply disappear when they disperse. The Earth is not infinite.
My point is not that this particular example is huge. My point is that this is just one example of the types of unmeasured impacts this spill will have. I'm saying, a few more people will die of cancer than would have otherwise. Only a few, but where is the compensation for their families? There isn't one. The families of the dead will pay for the harm that BP caused.
And if you say something along the lines of "well, that's the price we pay for having oil" I will say, "why are WE paying that price?"
I really don't mind being modded troll. If I'm not pissing someone off, then I'm not saying anything useful or meaningful. I've got some people here who take any opportunity to mod me down. But look at my karma. They can't touch me. I can get a +5 insightful or informative without even thinking about it. People are just as quick to mod me up, so it all balances out. Being an old school 4-digit has its upside and its downside.
You said that gunpowder was improved by the military. I gave the counter example that hundreds of years of military did not in any way improve it.
No one who knows anything about it says the Magna Carta has anything to do with Democracy. It is the basis for common law and lays out the policy of Habeus Corpus. The Greeks invented democracy.
You have a logical fallacy in your argument that is easily explained if we put it in terms of a syllogism. 1.) The printing press was a device invented primarily to help spread the bible. 2.) The religion that wanted to spread the bible also went to war with other religions. 3.) therefore, the printing press is a military technology.
Please tell me I don't have to explain the fallacy further.
Sure there is. Society is just a set of agreements between individuals. It can encompass any set of agreements. You could say, "society won't function efficiently without private industry" and I would disagree, but at least your statement wouldn't be simplistic and easily disproven.
Oh, hey, begging isn't good enough. You've got to go out and proselytize for your masters. Then maybe one day, they will let you be one of them and you can shit on the lesser beings, just like they do!
I'd say it's a bit of both. I've got some people here who just despise the way I think, and what I say. But there are also people who don't know me from Adam, they just don't like it when anyone threatens the status quo. Weak little people who have no confidence in their ability to adapt to a changing world, they try to put it into stasis to ensure their own positions. They hate me too, even if they just met me.
But don't give up hope. There are always people here who can think logically and present a good argument. I would rather post someplace like this, where I will get a debate, rather than some place like dailykos, where I would just get an echo chamber.
Oh, hey, that's okay then. No one lives south of that rig! You think BP is just going to agree with the costs as assessed and pay them? I highly doubt that.
Seriously, do you really think BP will shoulder the entire cost of this?
Hahaha, oh really now? As if many people will even remember this story a year from now, or remember which evil corporation did it. Yeah, and BP is going to go out of their way to make sure they find and pay for every impact. And of course, they won't fight all the lawsuits from impacted industries, they will just agree they did wrong, and pay for it.
For your sake, I really hope you aren't this gullible about your own affairs.
Gunpowder used essentially the same formula for nearly a thousand years.
The Magna Carta has nothing to do with Democracy.
The funding for the printing press came from the church.
Life may not be fair, does that then mean it should not be fair? You are attempting to excuse unfairness by saying, "That's just how it is." Yes, I know. But it should not be unfair, and we as humans have both the desire and the ability to make it fair. Except, we have a bunch of people like you who throw up their hands and say, "We can't do anything about it!" Usually, and I'm not saying this is the case with you, but usually, people who say things like that are some how profiting from the unfairness. You'll have to excuse me if I don't listen to folks like you. I think fairness is worth fighting for.
You are not counting the true cost, you are just going on the costs that can be measured. What about the person who gets cancer from eating contaminated fish? Who pays their medical bills? And the lost tourism, the damage to the fishing industry, who pays for that?
I'm sorry, were you under the impression that the cost of the repair, collection, and cleanup operations actually come close to covering the true cost? You are forgetting all of the lawsuits from affected industries. Fishing and tourism are huge in the gulf.
And that just covers the groups large enough and unified enough to bring suit. What about the health impacts from eating contaminated fish and shellfish? Who will pay for the medical bills of the person who gets cancer from this?
Ah, you say, it will be the rest of us paying for it. Good. Because I don't use as much oil as the average American. I don't want to subsidize their energy usage by paying for the externalities. Let the people who use the energy pay it's true cost. I don't care if the higher prices impact me. It is fair and just for everyone to pay for the consequences of their actions.
We won't ever know the cost of the spill. It is more than the cost of the cleanup. There will be lawsuits from affected industries, but what of the myriad poor individuals impacted in some way, who don't have the resources to sue? The guy who owns a beach-side restaurant who will lose business, is he going to sue BP? And win?
Just because I do those things does not mean I am equally culpable as the rich who consume thousands of times more than I do. And you've fallen victim to the is/aught fallacy. Just because something is a certain way does not mean it should be that way.
No human is worth millions of times more than any other human. The pay of CEOs is outrageous, in comparison to the minimal good they do for society. Most people could run a business better than these sociopathic clowns. The boards of the Fortune 500 are an inbred nest of nepotism. Most board members sit on many, many Fortune 500 boards, even the boards of ostensible competitors. They do not pay themselves based on merit. They steal their bonuses directly from the pockets of the stock holders and workers.
And you believe them. How adorable. Let me ask you something, hypothetically, what would an amoral, unscrupulous company say if they were in the same position as BP? "We aren't going to do jack squat unless you make us?" I don't quite think so.
Because no one eats fish, and fish is never contaminated by an oil spill... Can you say that you know all the negative impacts this spill will have? I don't think you can. How do you know people in Mobile won't be impacted by the smoke?
Slashdot Mirror
You are claiming that the Fed is NOT a local branch of the international banking cartel? You don't think that the owning class profits from economic cycles of boom and bust? You don't think they manipulate the economy to create those cycles?
What is the Fed, in your mind? Perhaps you think there is no such thing as the owning class, after all, we have social mobility here, right? Anyone can become rich, is that what you think? Like, banker rich?
This isn't a conspiracy theory. This is the cold hard fact of the world. You are a serf. There is a small group of very rich, powerful, and sociopathic individuals who control or at least heavily influence world finance. As a serf, you can not join that group. You can become "regular rich," but even so, these people will not let you into the club. After all, this isn't really about wealth. It is about power over other people's lives. The power to look down, from a vast distance, at the tiny little lives of the tiny little ants, scurrying about as if they were people. The power to ruin whole countries, to change the course of world events, to create dynasties that will ensure that the system stays the same and the rich are venerated as 'better' than everyone else.
I mean, we're all going to die, right? But these fuckers want to make sure that in a hundred years, or a thousand, they will still be remembered as they want to be remembered. In their narcissistic ego-glorification, they seek a kind of immortality. But in order for that to work, the system must stay the same. The values must stay the same. And to do that, you need to create a ruling dynasty, to ensure there is no fundamental change in the way people think.
Now, the thing is, you can cry 'conspiracy' all you like. I'll rebut that with a cry of 'history.' Look at it. This is what the ruling class has done, ever since we started writing about it. Do you honestly think human nature has changed, or perhaps you think we are now 'free' and some sort of check and balance keeps people from doing what the kings, pashas, pharaohs, and emperors have been doing for thousands of years?
I'm sorry, I think you are incredibly naive. Perhaps it is more comforting to live in an illusionary world. Perhaps it is too painful to admit you are a serf. But more and more people are waking up to the fact that our society is infested with parasites, and I'm not talking about welfare mothers. I'm talking "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking REAL money" parasites. This is why rubycodez comment was modded insightful.
You can just plug your ears and yell "LALALALAH I CAN'T HEAR YOU." Go back to sleep. It's all just a goofy conspiracy theory. You're a free man, not a serf. Go back to sleep, it'll all be okay in the morning.
What part do you take issue with?
What are you on about? I'm explaining the reasoning these assholes use, I'm not excusing it.
It wasn't a typo, it was Bernie Sanders speaking for an hour on the Senate floor today, pushing for a bill to audit the Fed. Everyone who is anyone knows what we will find if we audit the Fed, and it isn't good. Not just for us, but for the world. Which is why Obama threatened to veto this bill, citing national security. The dollar is the world's reserve currency. If all the plebeians of the world found out how utterly worthless our currency is, we would suffer a crash that would make the last one look like a cake-walk.
As for Greece, though, that crisis is actually pushing investors back to America.
Microsoft was not fixing a bug, it was removing a remote access feature. They didn't mention it because they didn't want people to complain that this valuable functionality was being removed.
Rights derive from agreements between individuals to respect and defend certain conditions. There are no natural or God given rights. Without society, it is meaningless to talk about rights: there is only power. If we agree that 'developing on any platform, in any language you choose' is a right, then it is a right. As with all rights, we will have to give up something to gain something, in this case, we give up the right to make a closed platform.
You can try to make this an emotional issue. You can try to appeal to a higher authority such as nature, god, your ideal of morality, or common sense, but appeal to authority does not make for a logical argument. Apple is not wrong for making a closed platform. Developers aren't wrong for demanding an open platform. But your appeal to Apple's supposed 'right' to create a closed platform is the exact same argument as the developers appeal for the 'right' to an open environment. It is meaningless rhetoric meant to appeal to emotions.
What we should do instead is weigh the pros and cons. Is the freedom to create a closed environment more valuable than the freedom to develop on any environment as we see fit? The freedom to create a closed environment is just a special case of the freedom to do as we like with our own creations. This right does not impose anything on anyone: if you don't like the closed environment don't use it. If enough people decide not to use it, it will fail. The right to develop as we see fit on any environment imposes more restrictions, it makes demands on creators to open their environment. The thing is, we do have the freedom to develop for any platform in flash. Hack the thing, write your own flash interpreter for it, and go to town. Imposing on Apple the demand that they sell such programs in their store infringes on the already agreed upon right to do most anything we like with our own possessions. Is it worth making a special case here, where we infringe on that already agreed upon right? Well, there are cases where we already do, for instance, if you cause harm to others such as pollution, if you deny service based on race, or you are a monopoly. And while Apple may have a monopoly of sorts on the iPad and iPhone, this does not constitute a real monopoly as these products do not account for 80%+ of the market for these type of electronic devices. I can't really think of a similar existing case where we limit the rights of people to do whatever they want with their own possessions.
That being said, if developers feel it is important to have the right to develop in flash on any platform, they can pressure the platform creator to enact that right. Just don't put it in moral terms. Put it in power terms: do so, or we will punish you as best we can. That takes it out of the fuzzy, fuzzy realm of rights and into the cold hard world of negotiation and consequences. It acknowledges that it is really about "me, me, me," and not some moral argument. That's fine, people have conflicts like that all the time and manage to resolve them. I would have no problem with developers banding together to do this, and I would have no problem with Apple telling them to fuck off. I don't have a horse in this race. I just consider it an interesting case study of the concept of rights.
I'm sorry, but your argument is fallacious. The Earth is not static, of course. But that does not mean that we are free to do anything we like to it. You are basically saying, "Well, the Earth might give us troubles all on its own, so we might as well add our own troubles into the mix." I hope when your argument is rephrased like that, you can see the error.
You also fall victim of the is/ought fallacy further on. "Because we use oil for things like computers, (is) that is the way things ought to be (ought)" Then you make a completely unsupported allegation about green energy, where you say it will be too expensive. You don't know. And if it is, doesn't that mean more jobs? We have so much unemployment right now, couldn't we put some of those people, who capitalism has failed, to work on creating a better future? Look at the work projects of the Great Depression, that created infrastructure of lasting value.
If people die from our actions in satisfying our needs, then WE need to pay recompense. We need to take care of the people we hurt. With socialism for the needy, rather than the socialism for the rich we have now.
They are talking about the effects on the atmosphere itself in that study, not the effect on environment. We used to think the Earth was infinite in its capacity to absorb out wastes. Now we know this isn't true. While I'm not claiming that the environmental impact of this spill will be devastating in terms of human health, I am saying that our toxins do not simply disappear when they disperse. The Earth is not infinite.
My point is not that this particular example is huge. My point is that this is just one example of the types of unmeasured impacts this spill will have. I'm saying, a few more people will die of cancer than would have otherwise. Only a few, but where is the compensation for their families? There isn't one. The families of the dead will pay for the harm that BP caused.
And if you say something along the lines of "well, that's the price we pay for having oil" I will say, "why are WE paying that price?"
I really don't mind being modded troll. If I'm not pissing someone off, then I'm not saying anything useful or meaningful. I've got some people here who take any opportunity to mod me down. But look at my karma. They can't touch me. I can get a +5 insightful or informative without even thinking about it. People are just as quick to mod me up, so it all balances out. Being an old school 4-digit has its upside and its downside.
You said that gunpowder was improved by the military. I gave the counter example that hundreds of years of military did not in any way improve it.
No one who knows anything about it says the Magna Carta has anything to do with Democracy. It is the basis for common law and lays out the policy of Habeus Corpus. The Greeks invented democracy.
You have a logical fallacy in your argument that is easily explained if we put it in terms of a syllogism.
1.) The printing press was a device invented primarily to help spread the bible.
2.) The religion that wanted to spread the bible also went to war with other religions.
3.) therefore, the printing press is a military technology.
Please tell me I don't have to explain the fallacy further.
Sure there is. Society is just a set of agreements between individuals. It can encompass any set of agreements. You could say, "society won't function efficiently without private industry" and I would disagree, but at least your statement wouldn't be simplistic and easily disproven.
So where does the smoke end up, then? "Disperses" is a nice way of saying "ends up in the food chain that eventually leads to human consumption."
No, it is OUR fault. If the government sucks, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Corporations can't vote. Yet.
Oh, hey, begging isn't good enough. You've got to go out and proselytize for your masters. Then maybe one day, they will let you be one of them and you can shit on the lesser beings, just like they do!
I'd say it's a bit of both. I've got some people here who just despise the way I think, and what I say. But there are also people who don't know me from Adam, they just don't like it when anyone threatens the status quo. Weak little people who have no confidence in their ability to adapt to a changing world, they try to put it into stasis to ensure their own positions. They hate me too, even if they just met me.
But don't give up hope. There are always people here who can think logically and present a good argument. I would rather post someplace like this, where I will get a debate, rather than some place like dailykos, where I would just get an echo chamber.
Oh, hey, that's okay then. No one lives south of that rig! You think BP is just going to agree with the costs as assessed and pay them? I highly doubt that.
Seriously, do you really think BP will shoulder the entire cost of this?
Hahaha, oh really now? As if many people will even remember this story a year from now, or remember which evil corporation did it. Yeah, and BP is going to go out of their way to make sure they find and pay for every impact. And of course, they won't fight all the lawsuits from impacted industries, they will just agree they did wrong, and pay for it.
For your sake, I really hope you aren't this gullible about your own affairs.
You would have a point, except that BP carries no insurance for spills.
Gunpowder used essentially the same formula for nearly a thousand years.
The Magna Carta has nothing to do with Democracy.
The funding for the printing press came from the church.
Life may not be fair, does that then mean it should not be fair? You are attempting to excuse unfairness by saying, "That's just how it is." Yes, I know. But it should not be unfair, and we as humans have both the desire and the ability to make it fair. Except, we have a bunch of people like you who throw up their hands and say, "We can't do anything about it!" Usually, and I'm not saying this is the case with you, but usually, people who say things like that are some how profiting from the unfairness. You'll have to excuse me if I don't listen to folks like you. I think fairness is worth fighting for.
Yes, I was criticizing his use of false dichotomies. Your point?
The people who use the energy should pay the true and full cost of using that energy. That is only fair.
You are not counting the true cost, you are just going on the costs that can be measured. What about the person who gets cancer from eating contaminated fish? Who pays their medical bills? And the lost tourism, the damage to the fishing industry, who pays for that?
I'm sorry, were you under the impression that the cost of the repair, collection, and cleanup operations actually come close to covering the true cost? You are forgetting all of the lawsuits from affected industries. Fishing and tourism are huge in the gulf.
And that just covers the groups large enough and unified enough to bring suit. What about the health impacts from eating contaminated fish and shellfish? Who will pay for the medical bills of the person who gets cancer from this?
Ah, you say, it will be the rest of us paying for it. Good. Because I don't use as much oil as the average American. I don't want to subsidize their energy usage by paying for the externalities. Let the people who use the energy pay it's true cost. I don't care if the higher prices impact me. It is fair and just for everyone to pay for the consequences of their actions.
We won't ever know the cost of the spill. It is more than the cost of the cleanup. There will be lawsuits from affected industries, but what of the myriad poor individuals impacted in some way, who don't have the resources to sue? The guy who owns a beach-side restaurant who will lose business, is he going to sue BP? And win?
Just because I do those things does not mean I am equally culpable as the rich who consume thousands of times more than I do. And you've fallen victim to the is/aught fallacy. Just because something is a certain way does not mean it should be that way.
No human is worth millions of times more than any other human. The pay of CEOs is outrageous, in comparison to the minimal good they do for society. Most people could run a business better than these sociopathic clowns. The boards of the Fortune 500 are an inbred nest of nepotism. Most board members sit on many, many Fortune 500 boards, even the boards of ostensible competitors. They do not pay themselves based on merit. They steal their bonuses directly from the pockets of the stock holders and workers.
And you believe them. How adorable. Let me ask you something, hypothetically, what would an amoral, unscrupulous company say if they were in the same position as BP? "We aren't going to do jack squat unless you make us?" I don't quite think so.
Because no one eats fish, and fish is never contaminated by an oil spill... Can you say that you know all the negative impacts this spill will have? I don't think you can. How do you know people in Mobile won't be impacted by the smoke?