Jimmy Carter at Three Mile island! Giuliani, when the towers fell? Elrond at Minas Tirith... Elvis, at Wal-Mart. Elvira, at Walgreens, buying anti-yeast infection cream. Wait, what the hell were we talking about again?
Do this a few times and shareholders will be electing boards with actual morals and ethics beyond "How hard can we screw them." Corporations are a privilege created by the people, for the benefit of the people. If it isn't working out that way, we need to kill them.
Where you from they call it endo? It's 'Indo,' foo! Either for 'indoor' i.e. hydroponic, or for indica. Kids these days... Although I suppose you could get blunt trauma from screwing up an endo (front-wheelie).
Really, the market will innovate solutions? How long will that take? And people will get screwed over in the mean time, unless they band together to form a monopsony. That is what government facilitates in the case of monopolies. The monopoly then has, essentially, only one customer, and they either play ball or their one customer says, 'screw you, we aren't buying at that price. Lower it, now."
You say each house only needs one line. And each person only needs one brand and model of car, and one outfit, eh? Why have markets at all? I mean, people can't pick their electricity provider, or their sewer provider, why should they get to pick their car or clothes?
Are you aware of the record of privatization? When commodity production such as, oh, shoe factories are privatized, efficiency goes up. When state run monopolies are privatized, as has happened with water in South America and virtually everything in the former USSR, efficiency goes down and people can't afford the basic necessities. That is documented fact.
There is a time and a place for free markets, and a time and a place for government regulation. Only extremists would try to argue otherwise. Even Adam Smith knew that markets needed to be regulated in order to remain free. Money is power, and just like government power, money can be used to make markets unfree. Therefore, money and markets need to be regulated.
Monopolies are bad because they can price fix, for one, and they don't have to worry about quality for another. Don't even try the old "But the market will innovate solutions to abusive monopolies" argument, because in the real world, that takes too long and people suffer.
Monopolies are dependent on markets, in a planned economy you don't have the same 'first mover' advantage that creates natural monopolies in the first place. If a planned economy wanted to run multiple electric and sewer lines to a house, giving people a choice, they'd have an easier time of it than a market economy would, because in a market economy the second company would have no economic incentive to compete with the first.
Hehe, I just said NK to take the piss a bit. They're about as communist as Russia was. Meaning, not. They're a dictatorship, and Russia was an oligarchy, plain and simple. I know, I know, "No true Scotsman" fallacy, that's what communism always leads too, I've heard it all before but I'm still not buying. But things were better off in Russia before the markets marched in, infant mortality and poverty are both up horrendously.
When the techniques are as cheap and simple as they are likely to become, how can you restrict access? It's like trying to restrict access to encryption.
The problem isn't concerned citizens, it's sociopaths and those brainwashed by sociopaths. You know, there are some people who hate humanity enough to wipe us all off the map if they could easily create a superbug to do it. You okay with that possibility? Now, the fact is, even if access to this tech were somehow restricted, criminals and crazies would still find a way to get it. How long before we see a virus tailored to wipe out, say, Jews? This is going to happen, we'd better start thinking of ways to deal with it now. I mean, if anyone could go down to Radio Shack and buy a kit to do genetic engineering for a few hundred bucks, how long before someone creates a species-killer by accident? I agree, restricting access isn't the answer, but I don't know what is.
We could not synthesize DNA with over 5,000 base pairs until recently. Obviously, natural DNA has more base pairs than this. Yes, you are correct, life exists on earth, and we did not create it. Glad that's sorted out.
Yes, absolutely Scientology leaders have been convicted in court. L. Ron's wife, among many other cult leaders, spent years in prison. Here's some more info: Operation Snow White Operation Freakout
Can you prove there is a point in you that initiates control without being controlled? Can you show how that would even be possible? I'm not saying any of this to fuck with people's heads. This is our current understanding of the way consciousness works, as far as I know from my layman's perusal of recent brain research and conversations with my neurophysiologist friend.
I've spent some time in other countries, so I realize that what is 'left-wing' here is actually centrist to the rest of the world. Our centrists are their right wing, and our right wing are their off-the-charts loonies.
Oh ArcherB, you always crack me up. I can barely converse with you I'm laughing so hard. Guess what? The NYTimes is a right wing paper. It caters to the part of the owning class that suffers from liberal guilt. There are no left wing daily papers left in the US. Sorry your sense of right/left has been so skewed by recent history. You might want to educate yourself as to the political spectrum the wider world goes by, if only to get a better grasp on your enemy.
No one is making me reply to your posts. Who makes the sun rise? The sun just rises. Replies to posts happen. Control is an illusion, because it posits a position outside of the system from which control is exercised. There is no point outside of the system of feedback loops from which control can be exercised. The supposed centers of control are subject to their own controlling feedbacks as well. So I ask you, who controls the decision to control your experiences? And who controls the decision to control the decision to control your experiences? Is there some end point that initiates all control? Or is there just a system of loops, controlling and being controlled at the same time.
The world you experience is a mental model built up from inputs. Your sense of self is a part of the model that is there to make sense of the rest of the model. When you need to know what those other sense inputs apply to, the sense of self tells you, and (for instance) sense of blue becomes Isense blue.
Self ownership is as ridiculous a concept as self. There is no self, or rather, self is an illusion. Does the sound track on a motion picture own the whole film? The sense of self is just another sense, that plays along side all the other sensory tracks. You do not control the set of experiences that come to you in a lifetime. That set of experiences creates your value systems, including what you define as 'self.'
You do not own yourself, that is impossible, and a preposterous basis for any set of rights. Pragmatism is the only true basis for rights.
Proudhon saw the paradox inherent in property, and said much the same thing in the very book I reference. He was not for the complete abolishment of private property, and neither am I. He and I are for rational limits to ownership. There is no logical argument for unrestricted property rights. All real property is usable by anyone before it is taken by an individual. And it must be taken before labor is applied to it. Labor applied is the only rational for the ownership, yet ownership must precede it. Therefore, ownership of real property involves taking something that could have been used by all of us. Where is my recompense? Why should I uphold another's right to own that property when I get nothing from it, and they have no rational grounds for keeping me off it? I support either collective or distributed ownership of the means of production, including real property. Anything else will lead to economic slavery, not freedom.
The whole is always greater than the sum of it's parts. Every interaction between individuals has unintended consequences that effect others. You are responsible to everyone else on the planet, as they are to you. No man is an island, no matter how much they wish they were.
Slashdot Mirror
No smartass, many of the parts are built locally, too, even though it causes problems with quality control.
I drive a Subaru. Made in Lafayette, Indiana. Was your American car made in the US? I doubt it.
Do this a few times and shareholders will be electing boards with actual morals and ethics beyond "How hard can we screw them." Corporations are a privilege created by the people, for the benefit of the people. If it isn't working out that way, we need to kill them.
I thought everyone on 4chan was an angsty teenager with a real reason to cry, being that no human woman will ever touch them.
Where you from they call it endo? It's 'Indo,' foo! Either for 'indoor' i.e. hydroponic, or for indica. Kids these days... Although I suppose you could get blunt trauma from screwing up an endo (front-wheelie).
Really, the market will innovate solutions? How long will that take? And people will get screwed over in the mean time, unless they band together to form a monopsony. That is what government facilitates in the case of monopolies. The monopoly then has, essentially, only one customer, and they either play ball or their one customer says, 'screw you, we aren't buying at that price. Lower it, now."
You say each house only needs one line. And each person only needs one brand and model of car, and one outfit, eh? Why have markets at all? I mean, people can't pick their electricity provider, or their sewer provider, why should they get to pick their car or clothes?
Are you aware of the record of privatization? When commodity production such as, oh, shoe factories are privatized, efficiency goes up. When state run monopolies are privatized, as has happened with water in South America and virtually everything in the former USSR, efficiency goes down and people can't afford the basic necessities. That is documented fact.
There is a time and a place for free markets, and a time and a place for government regulation. Only extremists would try to argue otherwise. Even Adam Smith knew that markets needed to be regulated in order to remain free. Money is power, and just like government power, money can be used to make markets unfree. Therefore, money and markets need to be regulated.
Monopolies are bad because they can price fix, for one, and they don't have to worry about quality for another. Don't even try the old "But the market will innovate solutions to abusive monopolies" argument, because in the real world, that takes too long and people suffer.
Monopolies are dependent on markets, in a planned economy you don't have the same 'first mover' advantage that creates natural monopolies in the first place. If a planned economy wanted to run multiple electric and sewer lines to a house, giving people a choice, they'd have an easier time of it than a market economy would, because in a market economy the second company would have no economic incentive to compete with the first.
Hehe, I just said NK to take the piss a bit. They're about as communist as Russia was. Meaning, not. They're a dictatorship, and Russia was an oligarchy, plain and simple. I know, I know, "No true Scotsman" fallacy, that's what communism always leads too, I've heard it all before but I'm still not buying. But things were better off in Russia before the markets marched in, infant mortality and poverty are both up horrendously.
When the techniques are as cheap and simple as they are likely to become, how can you restrict access? It's like trying to restrict access to encryption.
The problem isn't concerned citizens, it's sociopaths and those brainwashed by sociopaths. You know, there are some people who hate humanity enough to wipe us all off the map if they could easily create a superbug to do it. You okay with that possibility? Now, the fact is, even if access to this tech were somehow restricted, criminals and crazies would still find a way to get it. How long before we see a virus tailored to wipe out, say, Jews? This is going to happen, we'd better start thinking of ways to deal with it now. I mean, if anyone could go down to Radio Shack and buy a kit to do genetic engineering for a few hundred bucks, how long before someone creates a species-killer by accident? I agree, restricting access isn't the answer, but I don't know what is.
I guess you think every individual on the planet should have nuclear weapons? I mean, that would be "super-empowered individuals," right?
We could not synthesize DNA with over 5,000 base pairs until recently. Obviously, natural DNA has more base pairs than this. Yes, you are correct, life exists on earth, and we did not create it. Glad that's sorted out.
Natural monopolies are plenty bad without any help from a government. And monopolies have nothing to do with capitalism or lending money for profit, they are part of the market system. Capitalism and the free market aren't the same thing.
You've been to North Korea? What was that like? As for me, I'm talking other first world countries, like France, Italy, Germany, and the U.K.
Cults sue you when you call them a cult.
The R2-45 audit is an enormously effective procedure for externalizing someone's thetan.
Yes, absolutely Scientology leaders have been convicted in court. L. Ron's wife, among many other cult leaders, spent years in prison. Here's some more info:
Operation Snow White
Operation Freakout
Can you prove there is a point in you that initiates control without being controlled? Can you show how that would even be possible? I'm not saying any of this to fuck with people's heads. This is our current understanding of the way consciousness works, as far as I know from my layman's perusal of recent brain research and conversations with my neurophysiologist friend.
I've spent some time in other countries, so I realize that what is 'left-wing' here is actually centrist to the rest of the world. Our centrists are their right wing, and our right wing are their off-the-charts loonies.
Oh ArcherB, you always crack me up. I can barely converse with you I'm laughing so hard. Guess what? The NYTimes is a right wing paper. It caters to the part of the owning class that suffers from liberal guilt. There are no left wing daily papers left in the US. Sorry your sense of right/left has been so skewed by recent history. You might want to educate yourself as to the political spectrum the wider world goes by, if only to get a better grasp on your enemy.
No one is making me reply to your posts. Who makes the sun rise? The sun just rises. Replies to posts happen. Control is an illusion, because it posits a position outside of the system from which control is exercised. There is no point outside of the system of feedback loops from which control can be exercised. The supposed centers of control are subject to their own controlling feedbacks as well. So I ask you, who controls the decision to control your experiences? And who controls the decision to control the decision to control your experiences? Is there some end point that initiates all control? Or is there just a system of loops, controlling and being controlled at the same time.
The world you experience is a mental model built up from inputs. Your sense of self is a part of the model that is there to make sense of the rest of the model. When you need to know what those other sense inputs apply to, the sense of self tells you, and (for instance) sense of blue becomes Isense blue.
Self ownership is as ridiculous a concept as self. There is no self, or rather, self is an illusion. Does the sound track on a motion picture own the whole film? The sense of self is just another sense, that plays along side all the other sensory tracks. You do not control the set of experiences that come to you in a lifetime. That set of experiences creates your value systems, including what you define as 'self.'
You do not own yourself, that is impossible, and a preposterous basis for any set of rights. Pragmatism is the only true basis for rights.
Proudhon saw the paradox inherent in property, and said much the same thing in the very book I reference. He was not for the complete abolishment of private property, and neither am I. He and I are for rational limits to ownership. There is no logical argument for unrestricted property rights. All real property is usable by anyone before it is taken by an individual. And it must be taken before labor is applied to it. Labor applied is the only rational for the ownership, yet ownership must precede it. Therefore, ownership of real property involves taking something that could have been used by all of us. Where is my recompense? Why should I uphold another's right to own that property when I get nothing from it, and they have no rational grounds for keeping me off it? I support either collective or distributed ownership of the means of production, including real property. Anything else will lead to economic slavery, not freedom.
The whole is always greater than the sum of it's parts. Every interaction between individuals has unintended consequences that effect others. You are responsible to everyone else on the planet, as they are to you. No man is an island, no matter how much they wish they were.
Property is Theft!