People tend to forget that nuclear power comes from rock that you have to get out of the ground with effort and not some magic bean. Are you sure? Look, everyone knows magic beans grow very big very fast. The only other thing I know that grows that big or that fast is Godzilla. Who got that way from radiation. Ergo, the beans must be radioactive.
Read up on natural monopolies to discover why no company in a completely free market would ever make a second set of sewers after another company had made the first. They would go bankrupt nearly immediately.
People always seem to think I'm advocating the use of force. I challenge you to find any statements I've ever made to back up that assertion.
In reality, it is the free market system, based as it is in private ownership of real estate, that requires the use of force. Free market advocates create a system where they unilaterally decide on ownership rights and enforce their ideas through the threat of violence
But say I couldn't find any land anywhere near where I wanted to live? All I'm claiming is that it's an analogous situation to a person living in a country like the USA and wanting to opt out. Neither system provides a completely perfect solution.
How would that work? You can't physically have that many sewer lines, for instance. And many of said services fall prey to classic market failure modes, namely externalities and natural monopoly
I know that's how it was traditionally done, but come on man, this is the twenty first century. Killing them all off is so inefficient when you can indenture them to you permanently through economic coercion. Huzzah for the owning class!
Leave the country. Start your own. Go live in a cave or camp out in a national forest. I know some people who've opted out of the system and pay no taxes.
How would I opt out of a lassez-faire free market system where all the real estate was owned?
You are so right, and I thought about this while writing my post. But I thought, "Well, Buddhism is a philosophy," and that's about as far as I went, forgetting about the Jains and other groups, and perhaps thinking that people would read "religions" as "Abrahamic religions."
And as for the Buddhists, do you know the Shaolin monasteries in China were founded by a Buddhist?
Personally, my ethics of killing are somewhat complex, and probably not that defensible. I eat meat, support the rights of a woman to choose abortion, but abhor capital punishment. I believe in the right to kill in self defense, but also acknowledge that sometimes, choosing to die rather than defend oneself is the right choice. I also think suicide is an important right.
Thank you. I hate having to point this out to libertarian types over and over and over again. They seem to want all of the benefits of society without paying the costs.
You opt out by leaving the country and making your own. Sorry, you don't get to dictate to the rest of us. If you want it to be different, go through the process we all have to go through to change things, or leave and do your own thing. You don't own the whole country, and you own your property only because we all agree to private ownership of property. Without us around, I'd like to see how long you could defend your property from those who don't recognize your unilateral claim to it.
I know, government regulation of telecoms is so crazy considering that all we taxpayers have done is pay for much of the infrastructure, granted them monopolies, and gave up our property for their right of way. I mean, we should just cancel all our deals with them and let them do whatever they like.
I'd love to see a couple dozen telephone lines coming to my house so I can lease from the company I like, rather than having only one. And I'd also like a couple dozen sewer lines, water lines, and road networks I can choose from, too. As well as competing fire departments, police departments, and sanitation.
I mean, why should I pay for garbage removal when I have no sense of smell. My property, my rules. If I don't want to pay for fire protection, I shouldn't have to. If my house burns down, who else could that possibly hurt?
All these government regulations of private industry do nothing but hurt us. Competition will always ensure we have the best possible services available, and there is nothing government can do that corporations can't do better.
The scary thing is, there are people who actually believe that crap, and want to force those beliefs on us rather than just opting out of the system and making one of their own.
Cute joke, but let me just point out where this line of thinking goes fundamentally wrong and misses the point. There is no correct or incorrect morality. These are absolute terms. Rather, one must judge morality by a set of relative criteria.
First, is it self consistent? If not, throw it out. Next, is it useful? A moral system based around the concept that "Fwab is the greatest good, and everyone should fwab," is completely useless unless perhaps one happens to know what fwab is. Is it shared? A personal morality made up of precepts no one else shares is not necessarily useless, and one that everyone agrees to is not necessarily useful, but its a good rule of thumb. Is it comprehensive? A moral system that only purports to govern the behavior of one legged eunuchs on alternate Thursdays is too limited to be useful. The more situations it governs, the better.
And remember, "There are no absolutes," is.... wait for it... an absolute. Within any finite framework, there are absolutes. One can theoretically say whether some action is good for a person or not. That is an absolute. But it does not necessarily apply to the larger system of the family, which has its own absolutes. These absolutes are relative in comparison to other families which make up a community, which has its own absolutes, and so on all the way up to humanity, life on earth, and even all life in the universe. But the bigger the category, the harder it is to determine what the correct absolutes are.
If there is no absolute authority, then each person is free to create their own meaning in life. This is the only real freedom we have.
I base my morality on enlightened and compassionate self interest. Enlightened meaning I look at the larger picture, and compassionate because compassion feels good to me.
Would your self interest extend to measuring up to a higher authority that did not have your self interest at heart? Would any old dictator do? If not, how do you determine what authority to trust? Isn't that decision, in the end, completely subjective?
Trusting in a higher authority is the easy path. One can stop asking questions and just take things on faith. Unfortunately, history shows that doing so is incredibly dangerous. And in the end, one can not even blame said higher authority for the consequences. You make the decision to trust based on your own life experience, as that is all anyone has to go by. One does not have access to perfect information, and therefore, one can not ever be certain whether one's chosen absolute is really absolute at all.
It is a painful and frightening state of affairs, granted. But that is the reality of life as a finite being. Everything else is comforting illusion, and based on nothing more than a personal choice. I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, and I have no real hope that you will believe me, but that is what I believe, based on my life experience and choices.
Abortions are not birth control and shouldn't be used as such. I've never met a woman who has had one who took it lightly at all. They are emotionally traumatic even for those who really want them.
There is a slippery slope to all moral arguments simply because there is no objective morality. All morality is subjective. There is no real bedrock on which to base such a system. Life would be a lot simpler if there were, but all we have are appeals to authority or self interest. Even 'God says this is good and this is bad' is simply an appeal to authority, and the choice of weather to accept such a position really comes down to self interest.
I wish I could RTFM for life, I really do. But there is no such thing, unfortunately. We have to make it up as best we can.
All religions recognize the difference between socially sanctioned killing, and murder. Killing other humans can be socially sanctioned for many reasons including self defense, punishment, and warfare. The distinguishing factor is, does the killing do more harm than good, from that society's point of view?
So the question is not, "Is a fetus a person?" but rather, "Is it in society's best interest to sanction this type of killing?" I think it is both a benefit to society and a blessing to the unborn. Being raised in a family that doesn't want you is worse than death, and creates the type of person who is neither happy and fulfilled, nor a net benefit to society.
Well, to be fair, I have been in one minor fender bender, but it was totally the cow's fault. Driving in Utah late at night, I came upon a small herd of cows hanging out in the middle of the road. My girlfriend was asleep in the back of the van, so I didn't want to slam on the brakes. Instead, I headed for a clear space in the other lane while slowing down as quick as I could. Unfortunately, this pointed me straight at a particularly dumb calf. As I turned back towards my lane, he dodged the wrong way, putting him directly in front of where I was turning. I struck the poor fella a glancing blow at ten miles per hour, sent him ass over hoofs and dented the front of my van. He got up, gave me a hurt look, and took off. The rest of the cows just stood there and watched.
You lie. You do not provide true information about a product, you provide lies designed to appeal to people subconscious and their baser needs. Does drinking one brand of beer over another give you more social acceptance? Really?
Your life's work is worse than a waste of time. You could be doing something useful, providing actual value, helping make people's lives better. But despite the lies you tell yourself, you are not.
You are engaged in mind control. You know full well that 'free will' is bullshit. Your techniques are scientifically proven to influence people whether they want to be influenced or not. The techniques you are taught are not designed to engage the logical, rational self interest of people, they are designed specifically to bypass those areas of the psyche and appeal to emotions.
And you create emotional needs, you deliberately try to make people feel bad about themselves and then sell them a false hope that won't actually make them feel good. Because if you did that, they may not continue to try to fill the emotional voids you've helped create with useless material things.
The profession of marketer is one of the worst, most useless and evil professions on the planet. You can lie to yourself about what you do if that helps you sleep at night, but your profession boils down to making people feel bad about themselves and then selling them false hopes. You are not increasing people's happiness, fulfillment, or self esteem.
You ascribe qualities to products that they don't have. Beer will not gain you social acceptance. A sports car will not make the barrista at Starbucks fall in love with you. One brand of dish soap does not really perform any better than any other.
And the products cost more because of you. We are literally paying for you to fuck with our heads. What you do is sick, the profession of marketing is a sickness on society, a cancer that we can't seem to cure.
How is 'pushing past another product's attempts to get you to purchase them' helping anyone fulfill a need? Wouldn't the other product have done so, too? If you were payed to say it would, wouldn't you? Do the actual qualities of a product matter at all to you? Have you ever turned down a job because you didn't like the product?
You claim below to be contributing academic insight to this discussion, where is that, exactly? You are so comfortable with lying and spinning the truth, you don't even know when you are doing it anymore, do you?
Finally, you have admitted to working in a profession that lies as a matter of course, why should anyone believe a single word that ever comes out of your mouth? You are a fundamentally dishonest person.
The original post claimed that it was the government's fault without mentioning the corporation that was also party to the process. It did not say, "Corporation steals $x million in tax-payer money for first time in history," now did it? No. It laid the blame squarely on the government, thereby excusing the corporation. All I was doing was stating the obvious unspoken subtext. I'd love to see you try to claim that wasn't what was meant. Contortionists are so fun to watch.
So, where's the straw man? What's the invalid condition? There actually weren't any of those things. Nice try, though.
Do those signs also say, "No speed limit in passing lane?" Nope, didn't think so. The passing lane is for people going the speed limit who want to pass those doing less than the speed limit. It's not called the speeding lane.
Speeders always think of people going slower than they are as jerkoffs. They're really just obstacles, not real people, aren't they? You are perfectly justified in tailgating or cutting them off, because they're just obstacles and they aren't nearly as important as you, right? Yeah, right.
The rules apply equally to everyone. There are good excuses for breaking unfair rules, but this is not one of them. When you speed, you aren't practicing civil disobedience, you're just being a jerk.
I love how selfish assholes assume everyone else is like them. That's right, I must be lying about the way I drive, no one could possibly really drive like that. Actually, many people do drive safely. It really is just a few douchebags like you that don't, sorry.
Where I drive, +5 is always acceptable because, guess what? Not everyone is a speeder asshole like you and goes fifteen miles over the speed limit. I'm keeping up with the majority of traffic that drives at or around the speed limit, while you are keeping up with the asshole lawbreakers.
And you all make excuses like "I was just keeping up with the flow of traffic, officer!" Speeders want to speed, and they will make up all sorts of fairy stories in their head to justify their actions.
Have fun with your high insurance premiums and greater chance of fiery death, person who is too afraid to post using an account.
So what you are saying is that we need to raise the fines, eh? In order to make the trade off more even and ensure that people either follow the rules or elect a government that will change them.
But what you have forgotten to factor in is the potential cost of accidents and raised insurance premiums. Sure, it may never happen to you even if you do speed, but it is more likely and you should count that in. Plus, going, say, 75 as opposed to 65 takes more fuel, so figure in the cost for that.
Then to be fair you have to figure in the externalities. These may not impact you directly, but the cost is there. Accidents that your actions caused that you were not a part of. Increased pollution. All the people you've inconvenienced, frightened, cut off, slowed down, or even startled into causing an accident, they matter too.
Figure all that into your cost as well, and the choice is less clear, unless you are the type of person who thinks anything they can get away with is fair game, and externalities aren't your problem.
Damn straight, skippy, or I will 'have a mild stroke' and drive my Buick straight into your living room. Now where did I leave my pants? Pill lady! Pill lady, did you take my pants?
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3D does nothing for me ever since I lost an eye in a mugging.
Obviously, we should grow more of these beans.
It's a funny thing, but 'drugs' and 'drugs' mean two completely different things depending on who is profiting from them.
Read up on natural monopolies to discover why no company in a completely free market would ever make a second set of sewers after another company had made the first. They would go bankrupt nearly immediately.
People always seem to think I'm advocating the use of force. I challenge you to find any statements I've ever made to back up that assertion.
In reality, it is the free market system, based as it is in private ownership of real estate, that requires the use of force. Free market advocates create a system where they unilaterally decide on ownership rights and enforce their ideas through the threat of violence
Well, yes, perhaps a little. But which part did you mean?
But say I couldn't find any land anywhere near where I wanted to live? All I'm claiming is that it's an analogous situation to a person living in a country like the USA and wanting to opt out. Neither system provides a completely perfect solution.
How would that work? You can't physically have that many sewer lines, for instance. And many of said services fall prey to classic market failure modes, namely externalities and natural monopoly
I know that's how it was traditionally done, but come on man, this is the twenty first century. Killing them all off is so inefficient when you can indenture them to you permanently through economic coercion. Huzzah for the owning class!
Leave the country. Start your own. Go live in a cave or camp out in a national forest. I know some people who've opted out of the system and pay no taxes.
How would I opt out of a lassez-faire free market system where all the real estate was owned?
You are so right, and I thought about this while writing my post. But I thought, "Well, Buddhism is a philosophy," and that's about as far as I went, forgetting about the Jains and other groups, and perhaps thinking that people would read "religions" as "Abrahamic religions."
And as for the Buddhists, do you know the Shaolin monasteries in China were founded by a Buddhist?
Personally, my ethics of killing are somewhat complex, and probably not that defensible. I eat meat, support the rights of a woman to choose abortion, but abhor capital punishment. I believe in the right to kill in self defense, but also acknowledge that sometimes, choosing to die rather than defend oneself is the right choice. I also think suicide is an important right.
Thank you. I hate having to point this out to libertarian types over and over and over again. They seem to want all of the benefits of society without paying the costs.
You opt out by leaving the country and making your own. Sorry, you don't get to dictate to the rest of us. If you want it to be different, go through the process we all have to go through to change things, or leave and do your own thing. You don't own the whole country, and you own your property only because we all agree to private ownership of property. Without us around, I'd like to see how long you could defend your property from those who don't recognize your unilateral claim to it.
I know, government regulation of telecoms is so crazy considering that all we taxpayers have done is pay for much of the infrastructure, granted them monopolies, and gave up our property for their right of way. I mean, we should just cancel all our deals with them and let them do whatever they like.
I'd love to see a couple dozen telephone lines coming to my house so I can lease from the company I like, rather than having only one. And I'd also like a couple dozen sewer lines, water lines, and road networks I can choose from, too. As well as competing fire departments, police departments, and sanitation.
I mean, why should I pay for garbage removal when I have no sense of smell. My property, my rules. If I don't want to pay for fire protection, I shouldn't have to. If my house burns down, who else could that possibly hurt?
All these government regulations of private industry do nothing but hurt us. Competition will always ensure we have the best possible services available, and there is nothing government can do that corporations can't do better.
The scary thing is, there are people who actually believe that crap, and want to force those beliefs on us rather than just opting out of the system and making one of their own.
Cute joke, but let me just point out where this line of thinking goes fundamentally wrong and misses the point. There is no correct or incorrect morality. These are absolute terms. Rather, one must judge morality by a set of relative criteria.
First, is it self consistent? If not, throw it out. Next, is it useful? A moral system based around the concept that "Fwab is the greatest good, and everyone should fwab," is completely useless unless perhaps one happens to know what fwab is. Is it shared? A personal morality made up of precepts no one else shares is not necessarily useless, and one that everyone agrees to is not necessarily useful, but its a good rule of thumb. Is it comprehensive? A moral system that only purports to govern the behavior of one legged eunuchs on alternate Thursdays is too limited to be useful. The more situations it governs, the better.
And remember, "There are no absolutes," is.... wait for it... an absolute. Within any finite framework, there are absolutes. One can theoretically say whether some action is good for a person or not. That is an absolute. But it does not necessarily apply to the larger system of the family, which has its own absolutes. These absolutes are relative in comparison to other families which make up a community, which has its own absolutes, and so on all the way up to humanity, life on earth, and even all life in the universe. But the bigger the category, the harder it is to determine what the correct absolutes are.
If there is no absolute authority, then each person is free to create their own meaning in life. This is the only real freedom we have.
I base my morality on enlightened and compassionate self interest. Enlightened meaning I look at the larger picture, and compassionate because compassion feels good to me.
Would your self interest extend to measuring up to a higher authority that did not have your self interest at heart? Would any old dictator do? If not, how do you determine what authority to trust? Isn't that decision, in the end, completely subjective?
Trusting in a higher authority is the easy path. One can stop asking questions and just take things on faith. Unfortunately, history shows that doing so is incredibly dangerous. And in the end, one can not even blame said higher authority for the consequences. You make the decision to trust based on your own life experience, as that is all anyone has to go by. One does not have access to perfect information, and therefore, one can not ever be certain whether one's chosen absolute is really absolute at all.
It is a painful and frightening state of affairs, granted. But that is the reality of life as a finite being. Everything else is comforting illusion, and based on nothing more than a personal choice. I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, and I have no real hope that you will believe me, but that is what I believe, based on my life experience and choices.
Abortions are not birth control and shouldn't be used as such. I've never met a woman who has had one who took it lightly at all. They are emotionally traumatic even for those who really want them.
There is a slippery slope to all moral arguments simply because there is no objective morality. All morality is subjective. There is no real bedrock on which to base such a system. Life would be a lot simpler if there were, but all we have are appeals to authority or self interest. Even 'God says this is good and this is bad' is simply an appeal to authority, and the choice of weather to accept such a position really comes down to self interest.
I wish I could RTFM for life, I really do. But there is no such thing, unfortunately. We have to make it up as best we can.
All religions recognize the difference between socially sanctioned killing, and murder. Killing other humans can be socially sanctioned for many reasons including self defense, punishment, and warfare. The distinguishing factor is, does the killing do more harm than good, from that society's point of view?
So the question is not, "Is a fetus a person?" but rather, "Is it in society's best interest to sanction this type of killing?" I think it is both a benefit to society and a blessing to the unborn. Being raised in a family that doesn't want you is worse than death, and creates the type of person who is neither happy and fulfilled, nor a net benefit to society.
Well, to be fair, I have been in one minor fender bender, but it was totally the cow's fault. Driving in Utah late at night, I came upon a small herd of cows hanging out in the middle of the road. My girlfriend was asleep in the back of the van, so I didn't want to slam on the brakes. Instead, I headed for a clear space in the other lane while slowing down as quick as I could. Unfortunately, this pointed me straight at a particularly dumb calf. As I turned back towards my lane, he dodged the wrong way, putting him directly in front of where I was turning. I struck the poor fella a glancing blow at ten miles per hour, sent him ass over hoofs and dented the front of my van. He got up, gave me a hurt look, and took off. The rest of the cows just stood there and watched.
You lie. You do not provide true information about a product, you provide lies designed to appeal to people subconscious and their baser needs. Does drinking one brand of beer over another give you more social acceptance? Really?
Your life's work is worse than a waste of time. You could be doing something useful, providing actual value, helping make people's lives better. But despite the lies you tell yourself, you are not.
You are engaged in mind control. You know full well that 'free will' is bullshit. Your techniques are scientifically proven to influence people whether they want to be influenced or not. The techniques you are taught are not designed to engage the logical, rational self interest of people, they are designed specifically to bypass those areas of the psyche and appeal to emotions.
And you create emotional needs, you deliberately try to make people feel bad about themselves and then sell them a false hope that won't actually make them feel good. Because if you did that, they may not continue to try to fill the emotional voids you've helped create with useless material things.
The profession of marketer is one of the worst, most useless and evil professions on the planet. You can lie to yourself about what you do if that helps you sleep at night, but your profession boils down to making people feel bad about themselves and then selling them false hopes. You are not increasing people's happiness, fulfillment, or self esteem.
You ascribe qualities to products that they don't have. Beer will not gain you social acceptance. A sports car will not make the barrista at Starbucks fall in love with you. One brand of dish soap does not really perform any better than any other.
And the products cost more because of you. We are literally paying for you to fuck with our heads. What you do is sick, the profession of marketing is a sickness on society, a cancer that we can't seem to cure.
How is 'pushing past another product's attempts to get you to purchase them' helping anyone fulfill a need? Wouldn't the other product have done so, too? If you were payed to say it would, wouldn't you? Do the actual qualities of a product matter at all to you? Have you ever turned down a job because you didn't like the product?
You claim below to be contributing academic insight to this discussion, where is that, exactly? You are so comfortable with lying and spinning the truth, you don't even know when you are doing it anymore, do you?
Finally, you have admitted to working in a profession that lies as a matter of course, why should anyone believe a single word that ever comes out of your mouth? You are a fundamentally dishonest person.
The original post claimed that it was the government's fault without mentioning the corporation that was also party to the process. It did not say, "Corporation steals $x million in tax-payer money for first time in history," now did it? No. It laid the blame squarely on the government, thereby excusing the corporation. All I was doing was stating the obvious unspoken subtext. I'd love to see you try to claim that wasn't what was meant. Contortionists are so fun to watch.
So, where's the straw man? What's the invalid condition? There actually weren't any of those things. Nice try, though.
Do those signs also say, "No speed limit in passing lane?" Nope, didn't think so. The passing lane is for people going the speed limit who want to pass those doing less than the speed limit. It's not called the speeding lane.
Speeders always think of people going slower than they are as jerkoffs. They're really just obstacles, not real people, aren't they? You are perfectly justified in tailgating or cutting them off, because they're just obstacles and they aren't nearly as important as you, right? Yeah, right.
The rules apply equally to everyone. There are good excuses for breaking unfair rules, but this is not one of them. When you speed, you aren't practicing civil disobedience, you're just being a jerk.
I love how selfish assholes assume everyone else is like them. That's right, I must be lying about the way I drive, no one could possibly really drive like that. Actually, many people do drive safely. It really is just a few douchebags like you that don't, sorry.
Where I drive, +5 is always acceptable because, guess what? Not everyone is a speeder asshole like you and goes fifteen miles over the speed limit. I'm keeping up with the majority of traffic that drives at or around the speed limit, while you are keeping up with the asshole lawbreakers.
And you all make excuses like "I was just keeping up with the flow of traffic, officer!" Speeders want to speed, and they will make up all sorts of fairy stories in their head to justify their actions.
Have fun with your high insurance premiums and greater chance of fiery death, person who is too afraid to post using an account.
So what you are saying is that we need to raise the fines, eh? In order to make the trade off more even and ensure that people either follow the rules or elect a government that will change them.
But what you have forgotten to factor in is the potential cost of accidents and raised insurance premiums. Sure, it may never happen to you even if you do speed, but it is more likely and you should count that in. Plus, going, say, 75 as opposed to 65 takes more fuel, so figure in the cost for that.
Then to be fair you have to figure in the externalities. These may not impact you directly, but the cost is there. Accidents that your actions caused that you were not a part of. Increased pollution. All the people you've inconvenienced, frightened, cut off, slowed down, or even startled into causing an accident, they matter too.
Figure all that into your cost as well, and the choice is less clear, unless you are the type of person who thinks anything they can get away with is fair game, and externalities aren't your problem.
Damn straight, skippy, or I will 'have a mild stroke' and drive my Buick straight into your living room. Now where did I leave my pants? Pill lady! Pill lady, did you take my pants?