Individual freedoms only go so far when food, clothing, shelter, and medicine are only available to those who tithe to the rich, either directly by working for them, or indirectly by paying taxes for government services that mainly benefit the rich. After all, who steals from a beggar? The police protect property. Does a homeless man fear his property burning down? No, he has none. The law forbids both him and the rich man from sleeping under a bridge, who does that law benefit.
No, the rich would not love socialized medicine, because (as I said) it isn't about money, it is about control. If you look at Republican policies, you will find one underlying current: cheap labor. Republicans these days are all 'cheap labor conservatives.' Every single policy can be analyzed in terms of it's impact on the labor market. Republican policies have the almost universal effect of depressing the price of labor.
With socialized medicine, people would be less afraid of losing their jobs, and therefore, less under the control of the rich. That is the entire reason conservatives oppose socialized medicine. Beyond a certain level, wealth does nothing for an individual except give them the ability to limit the freedoms of others.
Your argument holds no water whatsoever. You use only insults and appeals to emotion to back it up. You present your own assumptions as facts, without evidence or supporting reasoning of any kind. Perhaps you are capable of better, and you simply let your emotions overwhelm you. You argue like a small child, but perhaps you can do better. Please, by all means, back up your hypothesis with something substantive.
It's people like you who make me wish there were prenatal testing for stupidity so you would have had a coat hanger abortion.
What you consider rational is what the rest of the world considers inane, redundant, a waste of atoms.
Please, for the love of all that is holy, go off yourself.
You know, just posting "I'm an insecure asshole" is much shorter and conveys nearly the exact same message. Your anger does not frighten, it does not incite rage or frustration. It is like an elixir, a pleasant and refreshing drought from your wellspring of seething emotion. We all feel good because we now know that somewhere, an asshole is suffering in impotent rage. Thanks.
Nope. Research that was paid for by public funding is being sold for a profit. They are stealing the sweat off our brows. Your argument doesn't even make sense.
Either the research done at the schools was funded by them, and they're "entitled" to it,
If the school is entirely privately funded, this may be true. But if they receive even a little public funding for other things, the money they spent on research is money they would have spent on those other things.
or the research was done by the schools for some other reason, and they either licensed it (go argue with the licensor about the fees if they weren't enough) or the research was put in the public domain,
Huh? The reason the schools did the research is irrelevant. Did they receive public funding or not? Are you claiming that ALL research done by organizations that receive public funding goes into the public domain? That's just untrue.
You are forgetting the control aspect. If we socialize medicine, people won't be nearly as afraid of losing their jobs, and might not put up with as much crap. Deep in their hearts, every rich person knows this. Socialized medicine would erode their control. It's not even about money, per se. It's about being able to lord it over others, and them not being able to do anything about it. It's not a planned conspiracy, it's a dark little secret every rich person acts on without even acknowledging that is what they are doing.
No, I choose to live frugally and give away much of what I earn. I make decent money, but far from what I could be making if I cared more about material things. Nice try at hurting me, but it kinda misses the mark.
Good point, and entirely true. Cats generally need to learn that something is food before they will eat it, though they may find out by accident. And although a cat's killing maneuver (the neck-bite) is instinctual and doesn't need to be learned, learning the stalking and pouncing behavior specific to each prey species makes a cat a much more effective hunter.
I saw the same sort of behavior from my cats and guinea pig, which wasn't afraid of the cats at all. In fact, it seemed to realize that cats only sweat from their pads, and therefore their pads are salty, which guinea pigs love. The guinea pig would waddle up to the cats and attempt to eat their toes, which confused and upset the cats terribly, but they still wouldn't so much as whack the guinea pig with claws retracted.
Cats have very powerful hunting instincts, but they are much better hunters when taught techniques specific to the prey in their area. Farm cats learn to hunt from their mamas.
I saw a Russian fellow with some very well trained cats at the state fair a couple years back. His cats would walk tightropes, ride around on dogs, balance on balls, jump through flaming hoops, and tons of other crazy stunts. Most impressive animal show I've ever seen.
Companies exist to increase their shareholder's personal wealth. The corporate structure, enforced and protected by government, exists to increase the public wealth. Without the rules and structures created and maintained by government, corporations as such could not exist. All we would have are sole proprietorships and partnerships. Why then do governments create and maintain corporate structures? Simply to increase the wealth of their stakeholders? Or is it in fact to increase the public wealth?
So I really can't speak for people who do. People who do invest in amoral companies, do you feel guilty at all? Would you personally do the things those companies do? If not, why is it okay to profit from things you personally find reprehensible? Is it just something you don't think about? Is it okay because 'everyone is doing it?' Or do you just tell yourself a story about how it's all lies and corporations don't do bad things?
Well yes. I am trying to point out that the problems stem from the diffusion of responsibility inherent in the corporate structure. Very few people would poison a village for profit. Yet most people would invest in a company that poisoned a village for profit. So rather than petition the government to fix one problem by, say, sanctioning Egypt, we could fix a whole host of problems by enforcing what most Americans claim to desire: personal responsibility. People who invest in a company should be personally liable for the actions of that company, just as sole proprietors and partnerships are. No more limited liability for anyone.
Asking a corporation to be nice won't work, of course. But why do people continue to invest in companies that do things those people would never do? It seems that if we really wanted to end corporate injustice, rather than having our surrogates, the government, sanction the companies, we could do so ourselves by refusing to invest in them.
But we don't stop, because the diffusion of responsibility means that the investors will not feel badly about the actions the company takes on their behalf. Without ending that diffusion of responsibility, government measures will be simple stopgaps that never fully resolve the problem.
Why is it that corporations are expected, even encouraged, to act amorally, but we expect morality to be enforced by our government? It's like a sick dodge that lets us pretend that we are moral people, while acting amorally out of sheer greed. Sure, some people invest only in socially responsible, environmentally sound companies, but that is rare. Most people invest in companies that do things that those people themselves would never do. And they do so without feeling bad, or even slightly conflicted, because everyone is doing it, and what can they do, they're just one person. It wasn't their decision to poison whole villages and work people to death in unsafe conditions. They just profit from it, and they don't even have to know how that profit came about.
No joke, they really believe stars are powered by electricity. They will usually try to pull you in with talk of plasma and electromagnetism affecting stars and planets in unforeseen ways, and build up to the 'stars are big arc lamps!" bit once they get a nibble of interest.
Now look, everybody knows that the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the reverse vampires, has been secretly monitoring the meaningless babble of music nerds in order to develop non lethal weaponry capable of putting just about anyone to sleep.
Here's her bio, from the announcement for an event, 'Cyber Security Breakfast with Melissa Hathaway' held last month.
Melissa E. Hathaway is Senior Advisor to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and Cyber Coordination Executive. She chairs the National Cyber Study Group (NCSG), a senior-level interagency body that was instrumental in developing the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) aimed at substantially improving the ability of the United States to secure and defend its critical cyber national infrastructure. In January 2008, Ms. Hathaway was appointed the Director of the Joint Interagency Cyber Task Force (JIACTF), which coordinates and monitors the implementation of the broad portfolio of activities and programs that comprise the CNCI. In discussions at the highest levels of the U.S. Government, Ms. Hathaway has articulated a holistic, integrated vision to bridge offensive and defensive missions and capabilities to provide a full situational awareness of the Federal network environment and the global cyberspace environment. Her management of the CNCI ensures that this vision takes into account all of the U.S. Government mission areas, including law enforcement, intelligence, military, diplomatic, and homeland security.
Prior to her appointment as Senior Advisor, Ms. Hathaway was a Principal with the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, where her responsibilities focused on leading two primary business units: information operations and long range strategy and policy support. Her consulting efforts supported key offices within the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, including United States Strategic Command, United States Pacific Command, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Net Assessment, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Her work included the design and development of novel techniques for mapping social, business process, and infrastructure relationships. She also led the design and development of a methodology for evaluating new force options across the electromagnetic spectrum. Some of the more significant long range strategy and policy studies on which Ms. Hathaway worked focused on biotechnology, power projection, Asia, and other national security issues.
Earlier in her career, Ms. Hathaway was employed with the consulting firm Evidence Based Research, where she performed research and developed databases to track economic and political issues in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, developed a model to detect the routes and modes and to estimate the quantities of cocaine movement into the United States, and studied other key issues in support of the Intelligence Community.
Ms. Hathaway has a B.A. degree from The American University in Washington, D.C. She has completed graduate studies in international economics and technology transfer policy, and is a graduate of the US Armed Forces Staff College, with a special certificate in Information Operations.
MM confused degrees with radians (a mathematician and statistics guy don't know degrees from radians? Come on!) therefore, all of their conclusions are utterly worthless and their credibility is beyond suspect. Outside of the insular world of global warming deniers, where debunked and worthless 'research' is parroted back and forth in a circle-jerk echo chamber, these facts are widely know. Only amongst the cherry pickers of the so-called 'skeptics' is this study considered valid, because anything that denies global waring MUST be right. The deniers have decided the truth ahead of time, because they simply do not want global warming to be real.
No, kind of like an accused man defending himself. He's not the judge, he's the defendant. And everything I've read show that McIntyre and McKitrick are not any sort of credible scientists, their work has been thoroughly debunked, and Mann's work upheld by multiple independent, unbiased sources.
Seriously? You cite a weblog written by a mathematician without an advanced degree, who is a self proclaimed global warming denier? And where on that blog does it back up Rockoon's claims that the raw climate data is unavailable?
Slashdot Mirror
Individual freedoms only go so far when food, clothing, shelter, and medicine are only available to those who tithe to the rich, either directly by working for them, or indirectly by paying taxes for government services that mainly benefit the rich. After all, who steals from a beggar? The police protect property. Does a homeless man fear his property burning down? No, he has none. The law forbids both him and the rich man from sleeping under a bridge, who does that law benefit.
No, the rich would not love socialized medicine, because (as I said) it isn't about money, it is about control. If you look at Republican policies, you will find one underlying current: cheap labor. Republicans these days are all 'cheap labor conservatives.' Every single policy can be analyzed in terms of it's impact on the labor market. Republican policies have the almost universal effect of depressing the price of labor.
With socialized medicine, people would be less afraid of losing their jobs, and therefore, less under the control of the rich. That is the entire reason conservatives oppose socialized medicine. Beyond a certain level, wealth does nothing for an individual except give them the ability to limit the freedoms of others.
Your argument holds no water whatsoever. You use only insults and appeals to emotion to back it up. You present your own assumptions as facts, without evidence or supporting reasoning of any kind. Perhaps you are capable of better, and you simply let your emotions overwhelm you. You argue like a small child, but perhaps you can do better. Please, by all means, back up your hypothesis with something substantive.
You did by being a goat fucking idiot.
It's people like you who make me wish there were prenatal testing for stupidity so you would have had a coat hanger abortion.
What you consider rational is what the rest of the world considers inane, redundant, a waste of atoms.
Please, for the love of all that is holy, go off yourself.
You know, just posting "I'm an insecure asshole" is much shorter and conveys nearly the exact same message. Your anger does not frighten, it does not incite rage or frustration. It is like an elixir, a pleasant and refreshing drought from your wellspring of seething emotion. We all feel good because we now know that somewhere, an asshole is suffering in impotent rage. Thanks.
Nope. Research that was paid for by public funding is being sold for a profit. They are stealing the sweat off our brows. Your argument doesn't even make sense.
Either the research done at the schools was funded by them, and they're "entitled" to it,
If the school is entirely privately funded, this may be true. But if they receive even a little public funding for other things, the money they spent on research is money they would have spent on those other things.
or the research was done by the schools for some other reason, and they either licensed it (go argue with the licensor about the fees if they weren't enough) or the research was put in the public domain,
Huh? The reason the schools did the research is irrelevant. Did they receive public funding or not? Are you claiming that ALL research done by organizations that receive public funding goes into the public domain? That's just untrue.
You are forgetting the control aspect. If we socialize medicine, people won't be nearly as afraid of losing their jobs, and might not put up with as much crap. Deep in their hearts, every rich person knows this. Socialized medicine would erode their control. It's not even about money, per se. It's about being able to lord it over others, and them not being able to do anything about it. It's not a planned conspiracy, it's a dark little secret every rich person acts on without even acknowledging that is what they are doing.
No, I choose to live frugally and give away much of what I earn. I make decent money, but far from what I could be making if I cared more about material things. Nice try at hurting me, but it kinda misses the mark.
Good point, and entirely true. Cats generally need to learn that something is food before they will eat it, though they may find out by accident. And although a cat's killing maneuver (the neck-bite) is instinctual and doesn't need to be learned, learning the stalking and pouncing behavior specific to each prey species makes a cat a much more effective hunter.
I saw the same sort of behavior from my cats and guinea pig, which wasn't afraid of the cats at all. In fact, it seemed to realize that cats only sweat from their pads, and therefore their pads are salty, which guinea pigs love. The guinea pig would waddle up to the cats and attempt to eat their toes, which confused and upset the cats terribly, but they still wouldn't so much as whack the guinea pig with claws retracted.
Cats have very powerful hunting instincts, but they are much better hunters when taught techniques specific to the prey in their area. Farm cats learn to hunt from their mamas.
I saw a Russian fellow with some very well trained cats at the state fair a couple years back. His cats would walk tightropes, ride around on dogs, balance on balls, jump through flaming hoops, and tons of other crazy stunts. Most impressive animal show I've ever seen.
Companies exist to increase their shareholder's personal wealth. The corporate structure, enforced and protected by government, exists to increase the public wealth. Without the rules and structures created and maintained by government, corporations as such could not exist. All we would have are sole proprietorships and partnerships. Why then do governments create and maintain corporate structures? Simply to increase the wealth of their stakeholders? Or is it in fact to increase the public wealth?
I'm saying I'm poor.
So I really can't speak for people who do. People who do invest in amoral companies, do you feel guilty at all? Would you personally do the things those companies do? If not, why is it okay to profit from things you personally find reprehensible? Is it just something you don't think about? Is it okay because 'everyone is doing it?' Or do you just tell yourself a story about how it's all lies and corporations don't do bad things?
Well yes. I am trying to point out that the problems stem from the diffusion of responsibility inherent in the corporate structure. Very few people would poison a village for profit. Yet most people would invest in a company that poisoned a village for profit. So rather than petition the government to fix one problem by, say, sanctioning Egypt, we could fix a whole host of problems by enforcing what most Americans claim to desire: personal responsibility. People who invest in a company should be personally liable for the actions of that company, just as sole proprietors and partnerships are. No more limited liability for anyone.
Asking a corporation to be nice won't work, of course. But why do people continue to invest in companies that do things those people would never do? It seems that if we really wanted to end corporate injustice, rather than having our surrogates, the government, sanction the companies, we could do so ourselves by refusing to invest in them.
But we don't stop, because the diffusion of responsibility means that the investors will not feel badly about the actions the company takes on their behalf. Without ending that diffusion of responsibility, government measures will be simple stopgaps that never fully resolve the problem.
Why is it that corporations are expected, even encouraged, to act amorally, but we expect morality to be enforced by our government? It's like a sick dodge that lets us pretend that we are moral people, while acting amorally out of sheer greed. Sure, some people invest only in socially responsible, environmentally sound companies, but that is rare. Most people invest in companies that do things that those people themselves would never do. And they do so without feeling bad, or even slightly conflicted, because everyone is doing it, and what can they do, they're just one person. It wasn't their decision to poison whole villages and work people to death in unsafe conditions. They just profit from it, and they don't even have to know how that profit came about.
That sounds like an Information Operation. She has a special certificate in that!
No joke, they really believe stars are powered by electricity. They will usually try to pull you in with talk of plasma and electromagnetism affecting stars and planets in unforeseen ways, and build up to the 'stars are big arc lamps!" bit once they get a nibble of interest.
I asked the Spanish sergeant to seize her and he said "Si, sir.'
Now look, everybody knows that the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the reverse vampires, has been secretly monitoring the meaningless babble of music nerds in order to develop non lethal weaponry capable of putting just about anyone to sleep.
Here's her bio, from the announcement for an event, 'Cyber Security Breakfast with Melissa Hathaway' held last month.
Melissa E. Hathaway is Senior Advisor to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and Cyber Coordination Executive. She chairs the National Cyber Study Group (NCSG), a senior-level interagency body that was instrumental in developing the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) aimed at substantially improving the ability of the United States to secure and defend its critical cyber national infrastructure. In January 2008, Ms. Hathaway was appointed the Director of the Joint Interagency Cyber Task Force (JIACTF), which coordinates and monitors the implementation of the broad portfolio of activities and programs that comprise the CNCI. In discussions at the highest levels of the U.S. Government, Ms. Hathaway has articulated a holistic, integrated vision to bridge offensive and defensive missions and capabilities to provide a full situational awareness of the Federal network environment and the global cyberspace environment. Her management of the CNCI ensures that this vision takes into account all of the U.S. Government mission areas, including law enforcement, intelligence, military, diplomatic, and homeland security.
Prior to her appointment as Senior Advisor, Ms. Hathaway was a Principal with the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, where her responsibilities focused on leading two primary business units: information operations and long range strategy and policy support. Her consulting efforts supported key offices within the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, including United States Strategic Command, United States Pacific Command, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Net Assessment, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Her work included the design and development of novel techniques for mapping social, business process, and infrastructure relationships. She also led the design and development of a methodology for evaluating new force options across the electromagnetic spectrum. Some of the more significant long range strategy and policy studies on which Ms. Hathaway worked focused on biotechnology, power projection, Asia, and other national security issues.
Earlier in her career, Ms. Hathaway was employed with the consulting firm Evidence Based Research, where she performed research and developed databases to track economic and political issues in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, developed a model to detect the routes and modes and to estimate the quantities of cocaine movement into the United States, and studied other key issues in support of the Intelligence Community.
Ms. Hathaway has a B.A. degree from The American University in Washington, D.C. She has completed graduate studies in international economics and technology transfer policy, and is a graduate of the US Armed Forces Staff College, with a special certificate in Information Operations.
What did he do? AFAIK, 'tsar' and 'czar' are different spellings of the same word.
MM confused degrees with radians (a mathematician and statistics guy don't know degrees from radians? Come on!) therefore, all of their conclusions are utterly worthless and their credibility is beyond suspect. Outside of the insular world of global warming deniers, where debunked and worthless 'research' is parroted back and forth in a circle-jerk echo chamber, these facts are widely know. Only amongst the cherry pickers of the so-called 'skeptics' is this study considered valid, because anything that denies global waring MUST be right. The deniers have decided the truth ahead of time, because they simply do not want global warming to be real.
No, kind of like an accused man defending himself. He's not the judge, he's the defendant. And everything I've read show that McIntyre and McKitrick are not any sort of credible scientists, their work has been thoroughly debunked, and Mann's work upheld by multiple independent, unbiased sources.
Global warming skeptics like to cite this case as if it is clear and unambiguous. It is not. Be sure to read the talk page, it's a doozy!
Seriously? You cite a weblog written by a mathematician without an advanced degree, who is a self proclaimed global warming denier? And where on that blog does it back up Rockoon's claims that the raw climate data is unavailable?
Those are some pretty big accusations. Care to back them up with actual references?