"You stole my sig!" "No I didn't." "Yes you did, it's exactly the same as mine!" "No it isn't." "Yes it is!" "No it isn't. Look, mine is in two lines." "That hardly makes a difference." "Yes it does!" "No it doesn't."
Really? You can't see ONE example of someone's obbsessive quest for wealth harming the country? Every rich person makes the world better, there are no rich crooks, liars, cheats, or frauds? What a nice happy shiny magical world you live in. How do I get there?
Your cynicism is not your most endearing quality. And that's really the best I've got, right there, damn it.
Food at Rainbow is paid for by people like me, who choose to donate our time, money, and effort to make it a fun party for everyone else. But the secret is that the real party is for those who plug in and help. The more you give, the more you get from the experience. In a purely selfish sense, that is.
Your claim of being worse off than you individualists in the face of artillery and air support is laughable. I mean, we'd both be obliterated and you know it. You also don't know about A Camp. You see alcohol isn't socially sanctioned at the main gathering. You won't get any shit if you keep it out of sight, but everyone and their aunt will tell you to fuck off (in nicer, hippie terms) if you carry it around and act drunk.
But hey, we can't keep free individuals from doing what they want, right? And Rainbow tends to attract a lot of... colorful characters. Bikers, punks, crusties, road dogs, crazed loners, ex cons, drifters, and so forth. They cluster in the designated parking areas with their campers and cars and easy access to the road out to get booze. Many of them have weapons and know how to use them. That's A camp and it's our first line of defense.;)
As for the shit, we dig a lot of shitters and use lime and ash to keep the flies from spreading disease.
The thing about the Snickers bars and other things is, it's actually quite limited. Barter is segregated into trade circle, it's considered crass to trade in public outside of it. Especially products of 'Babylon.' So what do you think actually goes on?
Do you know how a gift economy works? The real units of barter are social regard and connections. You gain social regard by giving of yourself in an effective way. Meaning, you get more regard by saying you'll do a little, and then doing it, than by saying you'll do a lot and doing a half-assed job. Regard gets you connections, which get you the other things you want.
But as I said, it's a temporary thing, a net drain on the resources of those who participate. It's a party. But it's also a good real world example to look at if you are interested in a non hierarchal society. Not that any society will be free from hierarchy, or should be. Just that it should be the natural hierarchy of freely given respect, not an artificial hierarchy maintained through coercion.
Certainly it isn't armed revolution against the state, it's more like flipping them the bird. But armed revolution is no answer either, as the most brutal and ruthless almost always rise to the top and take control of those.
Damn it, why have I been saying they are from South America? I even link to their wiki page on occasion. I feel like a total dolt now, thank you very much.;)
Nicely put. But there is a positive feedback loop in our economic system that is not damped by an effective check or balance. Money gives one more power to influence the economic system itself, to influence valuation for various goods and services. And that lets one make more money than others without benefiting society. This leads to a runaway concentration of wealth in the hands of those least likely to care about the community, and most able to treat ruthlessly with their fellow man.
I've decided. I'm going to stop being a dick to individualist anarchists just because I'm a social anarchist. You individualist anarchists always take me for a statist tool just because I think a cooperative society provides a vital defense against tyranny that pure individualism lacks.
I partially agree with your analysis of group behavior, the natural small group size is 8-15. But the natural large group size is 80-150. And people can be taught to extrapolate to much larger groups.
Perhaps one reason I believe in social anarchism is that I've seen it work, in both limited and general circumstances. I frequently participate in Rainbow Gatherings, which are organized and run in a true anarchist fashion. They are gatherings of 20,000 to 40,000 people that go on for about two weeks every summer in a national forest. They are completely free, and no one is compelled to donate time or money. But everyone is fed and has shelter for the duration, whether they come with any or not. We even have free socialized medicine. And I could tell you some very interesting stories about our Shanti Sena ('peace keepers').
The other example is the Mondragon Cooperative, with which I am less personally familiar. But it's a great example of social anarchism that works on a large, industrial scale and competes with capitalist businesses in the global market. Rainbow is a limited circumstance, it only works because it isn't permanent, but Mondragon has been going strong for 65 years.
What do you guys have to point to? And don't say Hong Kong, it's nowhere near what libertarians and other individualist anarchists are advocating. Seriously, any working projects on the ground, or are you individualist anarchists all talk? No.. no, I promised I wouldn't be dick, sorry;)
So who would you listen to? Or have you already made up your mind, and your STFU is the equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and screaming, "I can't hear you!" over and over again?
Do you actually disagree that the pentagon has been manipulating the media, or do you just think that that's a Good Thing(tm) and don't want the practice questioned?
Ok, honestly. Who didn't know this? Just watch Fox News people, 'freedom of press' has been history in US for long, long time.
Now THAT should be discussed in election debates, but no. What ARE you talking about, no freedom of the press? Aren't you publicizing your opinion right now? Oh, you mean the freedom to have your opinion listened to by large numbers of people. Sorry, you have to earn that freedom by proving yourself capable of providing value to society by earning obscene amounts of money.
As always, freedom of the press only applies to those who own a press.
Chimps do teach each other things, and will not generally steal from friends. Younger males will often cooperate to distract a dominant male while a few slip in for a little hanky panky with his harem. They are quite secretive, though.
But pygmy chimps (also known as bonobos) are very, very different animals behaviorally. Researchers speculate that the abundance of resources in the South American habitat of the bonobos, as compared to the African chimps, leads to more cooperative behavior. Bonobos are highly cooperative and non-heirarchal. Pygmy chimps are also the sluts of the animal world, and use sex to diffuse any societal tension. Which leads me to hypothesize (especially to any available females) that more sex would lead to a more peaceful, cooperative world.
Hehe, that is SO true. Who DIDN'T root for the coyote to catch the roadrunner? Life isn't fair, yet most of us are born with an innate desire for it to be so. This desire for fairness has been shown to be more powerful than the profit motive. Yet our economic system is based on the premise that individual profit is most rewarding to individuals. It is set up to reward selfishness, and in essence makes life less fair. When it seems there is no possibility that life can be fair, most people resort to selfish behavior. So our economic system becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Ah, so that's it. You got fucked over, the system failed you, and you said, "Fuck the system, it's every person for themselves."
Look, I'm all for self reliance and responsibility. But we are not islands. Everything we do effects others, and everything we are we learned from others.
People join together into societies for a reason. Because we are weak, because the world is uncertain, and there is nothing we can do that will provide perfect protection. There is no training available that will prevent all rapes, muggings, or violence. No one can be perfectly vigilant. So we join together into societies for protection, to share the profits and the risks.
Most people not only benefit from that proposition, they do not feel whole without it. The only good correlation with individual happiness is belonging to a group. That is true worldwide, in all cultures. I feel that you are damaged goods, and reacting out of hurt by advocating selfishness and self reliance.
That is of course your right, but you will find yourself 'yelling in the wilderness' and wondering why no one is paying you any attention.
I'm just wondering why, genetically speaking, it should feel so good to hear about justice being served? Justice, fairness, reciprocity, selflessness: these things naturally feel good to most people, while their opposites usually feel bad, even when they have absolutely nothing to do with us.
If we were truly selfish creatures, wouldn't the opposite be true? We would have evidence that we could get away with our selfishness, and that would feel good. It seems our genetics code for cooperative behaviors over selfish ones. Is this simply the selfish best choice for individuals, to cooperate with each other, or can genes code for behaviors that are detrimental to the individual but good for the gene pool overall?
Oh hai twitter! SAMBA had to reverse engineer everything because those were trade secrets, not patents. Patents protect against reverse engineering. You can't just reverse engineer a patented invention, you will be sued into oblivion.
You certainly can keep others from using patented inventions, for a set period of time anyway, but do you have any evidence of Microsoft doing that? Specifically, patenting something, not licensing it to anyone, and suing others to keep them from using the tech?
Microsoft sucks badly enough, in enough different ways, you shouldn't have to make stuff up. You give the rest of us M$ haters a bad name. Are you sure you don't actually work for them? You might as well, for all the good you're doing.
Yes, there are examples. Group of emigrants from, eh, the middle east? India? Somewhere. Anyway, they move to England and start getting B12 deficiency. They're vegetarians, so the doctors prescribe B12 supplements, but they wonder why they didn't get sick back in the old country. Turns out, they were getting enough B12 from fecal contamination of the water. Nutritious, and delicious!
All you do is bitch and moan about how other people can't come up with solutions when you can't come up with any either. Then you complain about 'collectivists' wanting to shove their ideas down other people's throats, when your entire ideology is based on shoving your idea of ownership of natural resources down other people's throats by force.
You whine and whine about contracts, but only contracts that benefit you and support your ideology. Never mind that we had contracts with the telco providers. We gave them public right of way, fat infusions of public cash, and monopoly powers, but hey, that doesn't mean shit, right, because private entities should always be free to break contracts with the evil public sector.
Your entire world view is "fuck the weak, if they can't protect themselves." You even blame people for letting rape happen, you sick fuck.
What do you mean, no vegetarian sources for B12? You've got plenty of B12 producing bacteria in your gut. Unfortunately, they are too far down for absorption to take place. Fortunately, there is an age old solution! Simply fertilize your veggie garden with your own feces and don't wash your veggies. That has worked for dozens of vegetarian cultures the world over for thousands of years.
I don't think Christ is a liar, because he never wrote anything. All we have are other people's writings about him. And I think it much more likely that they were liars than that they told the truth.
There is a lot of evidence for abiogenesis, just none that is conclusive, yet.
Evolution is a fact. Speciation has been seen in the lab. We've seen microbes evolve to digest nylon. We've witnessed evolution. Whether the whole of evolutionary theory is true or not is still debatable, but on a micro level, it is fact.
Moore-izing? I've yet to see the movie, but if it's what I epect it to be then it's no better or no worse than what Moore has one. And other than Roger and Me, not of Moore's films were worth my time -- I doubt Stein's will be either. Really? Care to tell me what part of Sicko was a lie? It was his best film to date, you may want to revise your opinion.
And please stop with the Moore-bashing, it's getting tiresome. So are his movies, but he doesn't seem to be stopping. That said, I agree with the rest of your post:) Really? I thought Sicko was his best film yet.
It's not nit-picking definitions. You need to understand that the word 'theory,' in scientific terms, means something quite different than it does in every day terminology. The common understanding of the word theory is something like a guess or a supposition, what in scientific terms is called a hypothesis. ID is a hypothesis.
A theory in scientific terms is something far more concrete. It has certain characteristics that differ from common usage. For something to be considered a scientific theory, it must be falsifiable. That is, it must be possible to prove it wrong. "God did it" can never be proved wrong, so it can never be called a theory.
This is how the word is used by scientists. It is not intolerant, it is simply a different, more specific use of language.
Slashdot Mirror
I can already see how this is going to go.
"You stole my sig!"
"No I didn't."
"Yes you did, it's exactly the same as mine!"
"No it isn't."
"Yes it is!"
"No it isn't. Look, mine is in two lines."
"That hardly makes a difference."
"Yes it does!"
"No it doesn't."
Really? You can't see ONE example of someone's obbsessive quest for wealth harming the country? Every rich person makes the world better, there are no rich crooks, liars, cheats, or frauds? What a nice happy shiny magical world you live in. How do I get there?
Very nicely put. That's it, from now on I'm not ranting myself, I'm just asking leading questions. ;)
Your cynicism is not your most endearing quality. And that's really the best I've got, right there, damn it.
;)
Food at Rainbow is paid for by people like me, who choose to donate our time, money, and effort to make it a fun party for everyone else. But the secret is that the real party is for those who plug in and help. The more you give, the more you get from the experience. In a purely selfish sense, that is.
Your claim of being worse off than you individualists in the face of artillery and air support is laughable. I mean, we'd both be obliterated and you know it. You also don't know about A Camp. You see alcohol isn't socially sanctioned at the main gathering. You won't get any shit if you keep it out of sight, but everyone and their aunt will tell you to fuck off (in nicer, hippie terms) if you carry it around and act drunk.
But hey, we can't keep free individuals from doing what they want, right? And Rainbow tends to attract a lot of... colorful characters. Bikers, punks, crusties, road dogs, crazed loners, ex cons, drifters, and so forth. They cluster in the designated parking areas with their campers and cars and easy access to the road out to get booze. Many of them have weapons and know how to use them. That's A camp and it's our first line of defense.
As for the shit, we dig a lot of shitters and use lime and ash to keep the flies from spreading disease.
The thing about the Snickers bars and other things is, it's actually quite limited. Barter is segregated into trade circle, it's considered crass to trade in public outside of it. Especially products of 'Babylon.' So what do you think actually goes on?
Do you know how a gift economy works? The real units of barter are social regard and connections. You gain social regard by giving of yourself in an effective way. Meaning, you get more regard by saying you'll do a little, and then doing it, than by saying you'll do a lot and doing a half-assed job. Regard gets you connections, which get you the other things you want.
But as I said, it's a temporary thing, a net drain on the resources of those who participate. It's a party. But it's also a good real world example to look at if you are interested in a non hierarchal society. Not that any society will be free from hierarchy, or should be. Just that it should be the natural hierarchy of freely given respect, not an artificial hierarchy maintained through coercion.
Certainly it isn't armed revolution against the state, it's more like flipping them the bird. But armed revolution is no answer either, as the most brutal and ruthless almost always rise to the top and take control of those.
Damn it, why have I been saying they are from South America? I even link to their wiki page on occasion. I feel like a total dolt now, thank you very much. ;)
Nicely put. But there is a positive feedback loop in our economic system that is not damped by an effective check or balance. Money gives one more power to influence the economic system itself, to influence valuation for various goods and services. And that lets one make more money than others without benefiting society. This leads to a runaway concentration of wealth in the hands of those least likely to care about the community, and most able to treat ruthlessly with their fellow man.
I'm too cynical about cynicism to even bother trying to parse this post. ;)
You mean this isn't how it's done now? Dammit, no wonder I never get any play...
Affect and effect, my grammatical nemesis.
;)
I've decided. I'm going to stop being a dick to individualist anarchists just because I'm a social anarchist. You individualist anarchists always take me for a statist tool just because I think a cooperative society provides a vital defense against tyranny that pure individualism lacks.
I partially agree with your analysis of group behavior, the natural small group size is 8-15. But the natural large group size is 80-150. And people can be taught to extrapolate to much larger groups.
Perhaps one reason I believe in social anarchism is that I've seen it work, in both limited and general circumstances. I frequently participate in Rainbow Gatherings, which are organized and run in a true anarchist fashion. They are gatherings of 20,000 to 40,000 people that go on for about two weeks every summer in a national forest. They are completely free, and no one is compelled to donate time or money. But everyone is fed and has shelter for the duration, whether they come with any or not. We even have free socialized medicine. And I could tell you some very interesting stories about our Shanti Sena ('peace keepers').
The other example is the Mondragon Cooperative, with which I am less personally familiar. But it's a great example of social anarchism that works on a large, industrial scale and competes with capitalist businesses in the global market. Rainbow is a limited circumstance, it only works because it isn't permanent, but Mondragon has been going strong for 65 years.
What do you guys have to point to? And don't say Hong Kong, it's nowhere near what libertarians and other individualist anarchists are advocating. Seriously, any working projects on the ground, or are you individualist anarchists all talk? No.. no, I promised I wouldn't be dick, sorry
So who would you listen to? Or have you already made up your mind, and your STFU is the equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and screaming, "I can't hear you!" over and over again?
Do you actually disagree that the pentagon has been manipulating the media, or do you just think that that's a Good Thing(tm) and don't want the practice questioned?
Now THAT should be discussed in election debates, but no. What ARE you talking about, no freedom of the press? Aren't you publicizing your opinion right now? Oh, you mean the freedom to have your opinion listened to by large numbers of people. Sorry, you have to earn that freedom by proving yourself capable of providing value to society by earning obscene amounts of money.
As always, freedom of the press only applies to those who own a press.
Chimps do teach each other things, and will not generally steal from friends. Younger males will often cooperate to distract a dominant male while a few slip in for a little hanky panky with his harem. They are quite secretive, though.
But pygmy chimps (also known as bonobos) are very, very different animals behaviorally. Researchers speculate that the abundance of resources in the South American habitat of the bonobos, as compared to the African chimps, leads to more cooperative behavior. Bonobos are highly cooperative and non-heirarchal. Pygmy chimps are also the sluts of the animal world, and use sex to diffuse any societal tension. Which leads me to hypothesize (especially to any available females) that more sex would lead to a more peaceful, cooperative world.
Hehe, that is SO true. Who DIDN'T root for the coyote to catch the roadrunner? Life isn't fair, yet most of us are born with an innate desire for it to be so. This desire for fairness has been shown to be more powerful than the profit motive. Yet our economic system is based on the premise that individual profit is most rewarding to individuals. It is set up to reward selfishness, and in essence makes life less fair. When it seems there is no possibility that life can be fair, most people resort to selfish behavior. So our economic system becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Ah, so that's it. You got fucked over, the system failed you, and you said, "Fuck the system, it's every person for themselves."
Look, I'm all for self reliance and responsibility. But we are not islands. Everything we do effects others, and everything we are we learned from others.
People join together into societies for a reason. Because we are weak, because the world is uncertain, and there is nothing we can do that will provide perfect protection. There is no training available that will prevent all rapes, muggings, or violence. No one can be perfectly vigilant. So we join together into societies for protection, to share the profits and the risks.
Most people not only benefit from that proposition, they do not feel whole without it. The only good correlation with individual happiness is belonging to a group. That is true worldwide, in all cultures. I feel that you are damaged goods, and reacting out of hurt by advocating selfishness and self reliance.
That is of course your right, but you will find yourself 'yelling in the wilderness' and wondering why no one is paying you any attention.
I'm just wondering why, genetically speaking, it should feel so good to hear about justice being served? Justice, fairness, reciprocity, selflessness: these things naturally feel good to most people, while their opposites usually feel bad, even when they have absolutely nothing to do with us.
If we were truly selfish creatures, wouldn't the opposite be true? We would have evidence that we could get away with our selfishness, and that would feel good. It seems our genetics code for cooperative behaviors over selfish ones. Is this simply the selfish best choice for individuals, to cooperate with each other, or can genes code for behaviors that are detrimental to the individual but good for the gene pool overall?
Oh hai twitter! SAMBA had to reverse engineer everything because those were trade secrets, not patents. Patents protect against reverse engineering. You can't just reverse engineer a patented invention, you will be sued into oblivion.
You certainly can keep others from using patented inventions, for a set period of time anyway, but do you have any evidence of Microsoft doing that? Specifically, patenting something, not licensing it to anyone, and suing others to keep them from using the tech?
Microsoft sucks badly enough, in enough different ways, you shouldn't have to make stuff up. You give the rest of us M$ haters a bad name. Are you sure you don't actually work for them? You might as well, for all the good you're doing.
Yes, there are examples. Group of emigrants from, eh, the middle east? India? Somewhere. Anyway, they move to England and start getting B12 deficiency. They're vegetarians, so the doctors prescribe B12 supplements, but they wonder why they didn't get sick back in the old country. Turns out, they were getting enough B12 from fecal contamination of the water. Nutritious, and delicious!
No, a trade secret is for something you don't want copied. A patent is for something where you want to make money off of the copies.
All you do is bitch and moan about how other people can't come up with solutions when you can't come up with any either. Then you complain about 'collectivists' wanting to shove their ideas down other people's throats, when your entire ideology is based on shoving your idea of ownership of natural resources down other people's throats by force.
You whine and whine about contracts, but only contracts that benefit you and support your ideology. Never mind that we had contracts with the telco providers. We gave them public right of way, fat infusions of public cash, and monopoly powers, but hey, that doesn't mean shit, right, because private entities should always be free to break contracts with the evil public sector.
Your entire world view is "fuck the weak, if they can't protect themselves." You even blame people for letting rape happen, you sick fuck.
What do you mean, no vegetarian sources for B12? You've got plenty of B12 producing bacteria in your gut. Unfortunately, they are too far down for absorption to take place. Fortunately, there is an age old solution! Simply fertilize your veggie garden with your own feces and don't wash your veggies. That has worked for dozens of vegetarian cultures the world over for thousands of years.
I don't think Christ is a liar, because he never wrote anything. All we have are other people's writings about him. And I think it much more likely that they were liars than that they told the truth.
There is a lot of evidence for abiogenesis, just none that is conclusive, yet.
Evolution is a fact. Speciation has been seen in the lab. We've seen microbes evolve to digest nylon. We've witnessed evolution. Whether the whole of evolutionary theory is true or not is still debatable, but on a micro level, it is fact.
Moore-izing? I've yet to see the movie, but if it's what I epect it to be then it's no better or no worse than what Moore has one. And other than Roger and Me, not of Moore's films were worth my time -- I doubt Stein's will be either. Really? Care to tell me what part of Sicko was a lie? It was his best film to date, you may want to revise your opinion.
It's not nit-picking definitions. You need to understand that the word 'theory,' in scientific terms, means something quite different than it does in every day terminology. The common understanding of the word theory is something like a guess or a supposition, what in scientific terms is called a hypothesis. ID is a hypothesis.
A theory in scientific terms is something far more concrete. It has certain characteristics that differ from common usage. For something to be considered a scientific theory, it must be falsifiable. That is, it must be possible to prove it wrong. "God did it" can never be proved wrong, so it can never be called a theory.
This is how the word is used by scientists. It is not intolerant, it is simply a different, more specific use of language.