It's the middle-aged geek's lament. I hear ya, buddy. Just wait 'till the kid's old enough to play. My dad and I played the original blue-box D&D when I was ten. When I started DMing, he came up with the best four character names ever: Eski Ker the fighter, Kneal Downs the cleric, Dewey Tewya the thief, and Balzo Phyre the wizard. Hehehe, and I still remember them. Every kid loves playing make believe, not much of a leap to RPGs.
Your Paranoia comment got me wondering, is this excellent game still around? Turns out it is! I thought it went out of print ten years ago, but a new publisher, Mongoose, is publishing a brand new edition. Okay, sorry Steve Jackson, but this just bumped "Space" off the #1 spot on my must buy list.
I've never like the GULLIVER unofficial rules all that much, but 4th edition is a big improvement over 3rd. Plus, you don't need to throw anything away, just make a few simple conversions. I mean, some of the 3rd edition stuff that's out of print probably won't get redone anyways.
THREE! Make that THREE very simple reasons: fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our four...no...
Damn "preview" should TELL me when I make a mistake like that, or what good is it?
You have missed a basic point here, which is why the roads analogy is bad. Anyone with the proper licensing can drive on the roads. Only the company that owns them can use the telephone or cable lines.
The question you seem to be asking (and obfuscating by bad analogy) is, does the government have the right to tell these companies what to do, and if so, why?
You answer that question with the analogy of the road, and say 1.) People claim that because companies must run their cables over public property, the public has the right to regulate them. 2.) However, companies ship things over public roads and the government doesn't regulate them in a special way, so claim 1.) is invalid and therefore 3.) We have no right to regulate what these companies do.
However, the analogy breaks down when you consider that everyone can use the public roads in the same fashion, whereas cables can only be used by their owners. I would love a situation where the cables could be used by anyone, just like a road. If that were the case, there would be no need for regulation, the market would sort things out. But that is not the case, now is it?
My answer is, yes, the government has the right to tell those companies what to charge, for two very simple reasons. 1.) They are EXCLUSIVELY using a public right of way that no one else has the right to use, 2.) They are a natural monopoly and must be regulated in order to ensure the proper working of the free market and 3.) They signed a contract giving us the power to do this.
So lets just forget the bad and obfuscating analogy of the road and concentrate on the real questions. Do we have the right to regulate those who use our property? Do we have a need to protect the free market from market failures? Do we have the right to enforce contracts?
The fourth edition is really great. Totally reworked a lot of things I thought were broken from the beginning. All skills progress at the same rate now. DX and IQ cost way more than HT and ST now, but they don't increase in cost. Advantages and Disadvantages can be modified with Enhancements and Limitations. The rules have, in general, been simplified and made logically consistent.
I have the "Characters," "Campaigns," and "Magic" books right now and have been waiting for the "Space" book so I can update my third edition space campaign. A new version of "Vehicles" would be nice, too.
Not to be too fanboyish, but GURPS beats any other tabletop RPG hands down for clarity, simplicity, realism, and playability. Plus it only uses 6 sided dice. It has the largest collection of licensed game worlds of any system, including Conan, Uplift and Riverworld, among others. Plus, it has a huge collection of historical supplements allowing people to role play in historically accurate game worlds from the Aztecs to the Vikings.
So all you other RPGers out there who haven't, please give it a try. You have nothing to lose but your huge bag of polyhedral dice.
I'm suggesting that we the people have the right to control what is done with our land, that simple enough for you? We own the land, they are borrowing it. We signed a contract with them saying they get to use it under certain conditions, and that we get to change those conditions if we want. They signed that contract too. If they don't like it, they don't have to use our land. As long as they use our land, we get a say in what they do. Are you seriously advocating doing away with property rights?
Phone and cable systems are natural monoplies. There would be monopolies in that market without government interference due to the very high cost of entry into that market. We need government legislation to protect us from market failures. This is simple and well understood mainstream economic theory.
My weird artistic roommate in college decided to make a short film of himself piercing his nipple with a nail. First he froze his nipple with a frozen stuffed clam (I kid you not!) then, holding the nail in a pair of vice grips he shoved that sucker through. You could even hear the little pop as it went in. Then he put in a nipple ring and bandaged it up.
Now, that's pretty funny, but what happened next makes the whole story hilarious. He was also a martial artist. About a week later, he had the bandage off his nipple and was sparring in the dojo when his partner hit him with a knife hand across the chest. About 30 seconds later said partner stops and stares in horror at the large bloodstain oozing across his shirt. Turns out he'd ripped that nipple ring clean out.
He showed me the ring later, still with the little piece of nipple stuck to it.
What a bad analogy. It actually makes the point you are trying to argue against. Companies that use public roads are subject to regulation. They have to drive vehicles that meet certain requirements. They have to drive the speed limit and obey other traffic laws. They have to pay any tolls.
If a company runs wires through public space or broadcasts on the public airwaves, they can be subject to regulation, just like companies that drive on public roads are subject to regulation.
What's more, the telecoms have gotten huge tax breaks to install these wires. They have a natural monopoly, and would have even without government interference. In order for a market to be free, it must be kept free through regulation. The free market breaks down in the case of monopolies, therefore it is in our best interest to regulate monopolies. We have every right to regulate these companies, and if they don't like it, they shouldn't suck off the public teat and use public land.
I gave up play-doh when I found out about plasticine, and I gave up plasticine when I found out about polymer clay like Fimo and Sculpey which you can work much like plasticine but you can bake and make permanent.
Never, ever, ever cut a deal based on net profits, because everyone who knows anything is cutting a deal on gross income. This is known as a "back end deal" and is what everyone who knows anything about the Hollywood system gets. Because they all get back end deals, and because these are all expenses that are subtracted from the gross to get the net, and because these deals are percentage based, and because when you add together all the back end deals and other expenses it comes to at least 100%, movies will never make a progit and anyone who cuts a front end deal will get shafted. It's not illegal, just sleazy.
I'm more of an anarcho syndicalist myself, so I have some problems with the way libertarians approach property, but libertarians are a type of anarchist, too and really not that different. I just have a problem with the libertarian fanbois and hangers on, who I suspect are closet Republicans like you say. They seem to just want to set the status quo into stone.
Eeew. Okay this is slashdot, so no one is going to believe me but I've been with over 20 women (I'm 35, so that's on average about two women a year, nothing to brag about, really), three of those I lived with for over 2 years each and I never smelled anything like fish. Maybe I'm just lucky. Anyways, thanks for the informative (if gross) links.
But how will we get our frosty pists if we are reading the article? Much better to come up with some ill-informed off the cuff remark based on a cursory glance at the summary.
You need to build up it's self esteem. Talk nicely to it, tell it what a good car it is. Buy it some premium when it's being good.
Don't belittle or yell at your car when it's naughty, a firm "No!" perhaps followed up by thwacking it in the grill with a rolled up newspaper should suffice to let the poor auto know it has been bad without destroying it's self esteem.
When the time comes and your car starts to notice cars of the opposite sex, do not make this a big deal, that can cause deep seated insecurities in any automobile. Let it know that the feelings it is having are natural and no big deal.
It will also help if the car does not have to worry about it's old age and retirement. Let your car know you have invested some money for it to live off of when it leaves the workforce.
None of the women I've been with smelled or tasted much like fish. Mostly it smells like BO and pee if they haven't bathed recently, or like not much of anything if they have. (one girl's smelled like flowers, if you can believe that.) If they have a yeast infection it smells like bread or something fermenting.
You can always tell the level of sexual experience in a group of men by how willing they are to believe the "pussy smells like fish" myth. Anyone who's ever spent much time around (or inside) one knows that is simply not true.
No one gets to use the "US Healthcare is so effin' great" argument EVER AGAIN. It's not great, it costs twice as much and does less to keep us healthy, that's what TFA is saying. Someone needs a refresher course in reading comprehension.
Based on scientific research, socialised medicine has been proven to be better, so you can go lick the Free Market's bunghole someplace else. Anecdotal evidence does not mean shit, and I would be willing to wager that most people who come up with these "Oh I live in a country with teh socialised medicine and I could not even get my hangnail fixed" stories in fact live in the US and are merely spreading FUD because they can't fact that "Their Team" is losing. For every one of these stories, I have heard two of the opposite, and now we have scientific evidence to back it up.
The free market works great, for some things, if no one is actively fucking with it, but for other things it does not work well at all.
but for more minor issues a privatised system with genuine market forces would ensure better standards of care for less.
I know your ideology tells you this must be so, but we have a free market for health care here in the US, and it sucks. Market forces don't work for health care. What are you going to do, not get sick if the price is too high?
So America's gonna give Hawaii back to the Hawaiians, hmm? Because you know it was seized in a coup d'état. Oh wait, that's right. Things are different for America.
Well, it's not, fundamentally. You got me. In both Libertarianism and Anarchism, big government is replaced by a collective structure comprised of freely associating individuals. Contract law, free association, free speach, all things both systems have in common. Libertarianism could be considered a direct intellectual offspring of Anarchism.
Where they differ is in the idea of property. Rather than trying to parrot back some supposed party line, I'm going to put this in my own words, so don't think I'm speaking for Anarchism with a capital A, if there is such a thing. Property is theft. As explained in the book by that name (which I haven't read, but this is slashdot;-) it is also freedom. As Pierre Joseph Proudhon said, "Property [is] a triumph of Liberty. For it is born of Liberty... Property is the only power that can act as a counterweight to the State, because it shows no reverence for princes, rebels against society and is, in short, anarchist."
But property is also theft. Theft of choice, my choice to go anywhere I want. Why should I agree to you taking physical resources and withholding access to those resources from others? I didn't sign a contract to stay off your land! If you interfere with my natural right to go anywhere I want and make whatever use of whatever resources I find there, you are initiating force against me.
Now, there are reasons that I might agree to uphold your right to do that. Maybe I fear that someone more powerful than me will come along and kill me. Maybe I have staked off a piece of land myself and am defending it against strangers and would like some help. Maybe those strangers don't seem to understand why they shouldn't take my fruit (that I found growing there) and hunt my animals (that I found living there). Maybe they need a little convincing, know what I mean?
And then maybe me and you could go "liberate" ourselves another piece of land. That one over there looks nice, oh don't mind the natives, they don't understand about property. They are mere wild savages with no conception of such things and it is our Manifest Destiny to rescue this property from the tragedy of the commons. They wouldn't make the proper use of it.
Do you see where I am going with this?
Now, in the Real-Worldville of Today-Land, things are much more complicated. People feel they have a legitimate claim to the property they bought, after all, they worked hard for it and ON it and don't they deserve the fruits of their labor? Of course. I'm not about the common guy getting screwed out of his property and having some kind of communal ownerhsip of everything. I'm just saying, there are some very serious inequities of ownership and control of resources going on.
Property is a social right, not a natural right. Without a society, the concept of property becomes moot. Natural rights aren't like that, they are the same whether society is there or not. Actually, without society, rights become moot, and it's all about power. Nature and yours and that's it.
We form societies and grant ourselves rights to shield ourselves from that brutal fact. But the rights we get come with the duty to uphold those rights in others, for without that reciprocity and without a willingness to defend them, rights are meaningless. So I agree to defend your right to stake off a piece of land as your own if you agree to do the same for me.
But it isn't just between you and me, is it? Not ever, unless you and I are the only two humans left on earth. We're excluding everyone else, too. So this is where society or "the other" has an interest in our business, why that is legit, you see? Why taxation is legit, why emminent domain is legit, why a whole host of compromises with the absolute bundle of property rights that Libertarians claim as "natural rights" has to be made, if you follow my run-on sentence.
It all supports the argument for a certain amount of collective and democratic control over at least some
Slashdot Mirror
It's the middle-aged geek's lament.
I hear ya, buddy. Just wait 'till the kid's old enough to play. My dad and I played the original blue-box D&D when I was ten. When I started DMing, he came up with the best four character names ever: Eski Ker the fighter, Kneal Downs the cleric, Dewey Tewya the thief, and Balzo Phyre the wizard. Hehehe, and I still remember them. Every kid loves playing make believe, not much of a leap to RPGs.
Your Paranoia comment got me wondering, is this excellent game still around? Turns out it is! I thought it went out of print ten years ago, but a new publisher, Mongoose, is publishing a brand new edition. Okay, sorry Steve Jackson, but this just bumped "Space" off the #1 spot on my must buy list.
Heh, social engineering is a technique that essentially all humans are vulnerable to.
That's why I never interact with humans. Or at least that's what I tell my mom when she says I shouldn't eat dinner in the basement.
How can you eat it? Now the inverse makes sense, you can't eat your cake and have it too, but you pretty much have to have the cake before you eat it.
Yes, I am a pedant, so what?
Pedant. ;-)
I've never like the GULLIVER unofficial rules all that much, but 4th edition is a big improvement over 3rd. Plus, you don't need to throw anything away, just make a few simple conversions. I mean, some of the 3rd edition stuff that's out of print probably won't get redone anyways.
THREE! Make that THREE very simple reasons: fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our four...no...
Damn "preview" should TELL me when I make a mistake like that, or what good is it?
You have missed a basic point here, which is why the roads analogy is bad. Anyone with the proper licensing can drive on the roads. Only the company that owns them can use the telephone or cable lines.
The question you seem to be asking (and obfuscating by bad analogy) is, does the government have the right to tell these companies what to do, and if so, why?
You answer that question with the analogy of the road, and say 1.) People claim that because companies must run their cables over public property, the public has the right to regulate them. 2.) However, companies ship things over public roads and the government doesn't regulate them in a special way, so claim 1.) is invalid and therefore 3.) We have no right to regulate what these companies do.
However, the analogy breaks down when you consider that everyone can use the public roads in the same fashion, whereas cables can only be used by their owners. I would love a situation where the cables could be used by anyone, just like a road. If that were the case, there would be no need for regulation, the market would sort things out. But that is not the case, now is it?
My answer is, yes, the government has the right to tell those companies what to charge, for two very simple reasons. 1.) They are EXCLUSIVELY using a public right of way that no one else has the right to use, 2.) They are a natural monopoly and must be regulated in order to ensure the proper working of the free market and 3.) They signed a contract giving us the power to do this.
So lets just forget the bad and obfuscating analogy of the road and concentrate on the real questions. Do we have the right to regulate those who use our property? Do we have a need to protect the free market from market failures? Do we have the right to enforce contracts?
The fourth edition is really great. Totally reworked a lot of things I thought were broken from the beginning. All skills progress at the same rate now. DX and IQ cost way more than HT and ST now, but they don't increase in cost. Advantages and Disadvantages can be modified with Enhancements and Limitations. The rules have, in general, been simplified and made logically consistent.
I have the "Characters," "Campaigns," and "Magic" books right now and have been waiting for the "Space" book so I can update my third edition space campaign. A new version of "Vehicles" would be nice, too.
Not to be too fanboyish, but GURPS beats any other tabletop RPG hands down for clarity, simplicity, realism, and playability. Plus it only uses 6 sided dice. It has the largest collection of licensed game worlds of any system, including Conan, Uplift and Riverworld, among others. Plus, it has a huge collection of historical supplements allowing people to role play in historically accurate game worlds from the Aztecs to the Vikings.
So all you other RPGers out there who haven't, please give it a try. You have nothing to lose but your huge bag of polyhedral dice.
I'm suggesting that we the people have the right to control what is done with our land, that simple enough for you? We own the land, they are borrowing it. We signed a contract with them saying they get to use it under certain conditions, and that we get to change those conditions if we want. They signed that contract too. If they don't like it, they don't have to use our land. As long as they use our land, we get a say in what they do. Are you seriously advocating doing away with property rights?
Come to slashdot and mod you down, obviously.
Phone and cable systems are natural monoplies. There would be monopolies in that market without government interference due to the very high cost of entry into that market. We need government legislation to protect us from market failures. This is simple and well understood mainstream economic theory.
My weird artistic roommate in college decided to make a short film of himself piercing his nipple with a nail. First he froze his nipple with a frozen stuffed clam (I kid you not!) then, holding the nail in a pair of vice grips he shoved that sucker through. You could even hear the little pop as it went in. Then he put in a nipple ring and bandaged it up.
Now, that's pretty funny, but what happened next makes the whole story hilarious. He was also a martial artist. About a week later, he had the bandage off his nipple and was sparring in the dojo when his partner hit him with a knife hand across the chest. About 30 seconds later said partner stops and stares in horror at the large bloodstain oozing across his shirt. Turns out he'd ripped that nipple ring clean out.
He showed me the ring later, still with the little piece of nipple stuck to it.
What a bad analogy. It actually makes the point you are trying to argue against. Companies that use public roads are subject to regulation. They have to drive vehicles that meet certain requirements. They have to drive the speed limit and obey other traffic laws. They have to pay any tolls.
If a company runs wires through public space or broadcasts on the public airwaves, they can be subject to regulation, just like companies that drive on public roads are subject to regulation.
What's more, the telecoms have gotten huge tax breaks to install these wires. They have a natural monopoly, and would have even without government interference. In order for a market to be free, it must be kept free through regulation. The free market breaks down in the case of monopolies, therefore it is in our best interest to regulate monopolies. We have every right to regulate these companies, and if they don't like it, they shouldn't suck off the public teat and use public land.
I gave up play-doh when I found out about plasticine, and I gave up plasticine when I found out about polymer clay like Fimo and Sculpey which you can work much like plasticine but you can bake and make permanent.
Never, ever, ever cut a deal based on net profits, because everyone who knows anything is cutting a deal on gross income. This is known as a "back end deal" and is what everyone who knows anything about the Hollywood system gets. Because they all get back end deals, and because these are all expenses that are subtracted from the gross to get the net, and because these deals are percentage based, and because when you add together all the back end deals and other expenses it comes to at least 100%, movies will never make a progit and anyone who cuts a front end deal will get shafted. It's not illegal, just sleazy.
I'm more of an anarcho syndicalist myself, so I have some problems with the way libertarians approach property, but libertarians are a type of anarchist, too and really not that different. I just have a problem with the libertarian fanbois and hangers on, who I suspect are closet Republicans like you say. They seem to just want to set the status quo into stone.
Eeew. Okay this is slashdot, so no one is going to believe me but I've been with over 20 women (I'm 35, so that's on average about two women a year, nothing to brag about, really), three of those I lived with for over 2 years each and I never smelled anything like fish. Maybe I'm just lucky. Anyways, thanks for the informative (if gross) links.
But how will we get our frosty pists if we are reading the article? Much better to come up with some ill-informed off the cuff remark based on a cursory glance at the summary.
You need to build up it's self esteem. Talk nicely to it, tell it what a good car it is. Buy it some premium when it's being good.
Don't belittle or yell at your car when it's naughty, a firm "No!" perhaps followed up by thwacking it in the grill with a rolled up newspaper should suffice to let the poor auto know it has been bad without destroying it's self esteem.
When the time comes and your car starts to notice cars of the opposite sex, do not make this a big deal, that can cause deep seated insecurities in any automobile. Let it know that the feelings it is having are natural and no big deal.
It will also help if the car does not have to worry about it's old age and retirement. Let your car know you have invested some money for it to live off of when it leaves the workforce.
None of the women I've been with smelled or tasted much like fish. Mostly it smells like BO and pee if they haven't bathed recently, or like not much of anything if they have. (one girl's smelled like flowers, if you can believe that.) If they have a yeast infection it smells like bread or something fermenting.
You can always tell the level of sexual experience in a group of men by how willing they are to believe the "pussy smells like fish" myth. Anyone who's ever spent much time around (or inside) one knows that is simply not true.
No one gets to use the "US Healthcare is so effin' great" argument EVER AGAIN. It's not great, it costs twice as much and does less to keep us healthy, that's what TFA is saying. Someone needs a refresher course in reading comprehension.
Based on scientific research, socialised medicine has been proven to be better, so you can go lick the Free Market's bunghole someplace else. Anecdotal evidence does not mean shit, and I would be willing to wager that most people who come up with these "Oh I live in a country with teh socialised medicine and I could not even get my hangnail fixed" stories in fact live in the US and are merely spreading FUD because they can't fact that "Their Team" is losing. For every one of these stories, I have heard two of the opposite, and now we have scientific evidence to back it up.
The free market works great, for some things, if no one is actively fucking with it, but for other things it does not work well at all.
but for more minor issues a privatised system with genuine market forces would ensure better standards of care for less.
I know your ideology tells you this must be so, but we have a free market for health care here in the US, and it sucks. Market forces don't work for health care. What are you going to do, not get sick if the price is too high?
So America's gonna give Hawaii back to the Hawaiians, hmm? Because you know it was seized in a coup d'état. Oh wait, that's right. Things are different for America.
Well, it's not, fundamentally. You got me. In both Libertarianism and Anarchism, big government is replaced by a collective structure comprised of freely associating individuals. Contract law, free association, free speach, all things both systems have in common. Libertarianism could be considered a direct intellectual offspring of Anarchism.
;-) it is also freedom. As Pierre Joseph Proudhon said, "Property [is] a triumph of Liberty. For it is born of Liberty ... Property is the only power that can act as a counterweight to the State, because it shows no reverence for princes, rebels against society and is, in short, anarchist."
Where they differ is in the idea of property. Rather than trying to parrot back some supposed party line, I'm going to put this in my own words, so don't think I'm speaking for Anarchism with a capital A, if there is such a thing. Property is theft. As explained in the book by that name (which I haven't read, but this is slashdot
But property is also theft. Theft of choice, my choice to go anywhere I want. Why should I agree to you taking physical resources and withholding access to those resources from others? I didn't sign a contract to stay off your land! If you interfere with my natural right to go anywhere I want and make whatever use of whatever resources I find there, you are initiating force against me.
Now, there are reasons that I might agree to uphold your right to do that. Maybe I fear that someone more powerful than me will come along and kill me. Maybe I have staked off a piece of land myself and am defending it against strangers and would like some help. Maybe those strangers don't seem to understand why they shouldn't take my fruit (that I found growing there) and hunt my animals (that I found living there). Maybe they need a little convincing, know what I mean?
And then maybe me and you could go "liberate" ourselves another piece of land. That one over there looks nice, oh don't mind the natives, they don't understand about property. They are mere wild savages with no conception of such things and it is our Manifest Destiny to rescue this property from the tragedy of the commons. They wouldn't make the proper use of it.
Do you see where I am going with this?
Now, in the Real-Worldville of Today-Land, things are much more complicated. People feel they have a legitimate claim to the property they bought, after all, they worked hard for it and ON it and don't they deserve the fruits of their labor? Of course. I'm not about the common guy getting screwed out of his property and having some kind of communal ownerhsip of everything. I'm just saying, there are some very serious inequities of ownership and control of resources going on.
Property is a social right, not a natural right. Without a society, the concept of property becomes moot. Natural rights aren't like that, they are the same whether society is there or not. Actually, without society, rights become moot, and it's all about power. Nature and yours and that's it.
We form societies and grant ourselves rights to shield ourselves from that brutal fact. But the rights we get come with the duty to uphold those rights in others, for without that reciprocity and without a willingness to defend them, rights are meaningless. So I agree to defend your right to stake off a piece of land as your own if you agree to do the same for me.
But it isn't just between you and me, is it? Not ever, unless you and I are the only two humans left on earth. We're excluding everyone else, too. So this is where society or "the other" has an interest in our business, why that is legit, you see? Why taxation is legit, why emminent domain is legit, why a whole host of compromises with the absolute bundle of property rights that Libertarians claim as "natural rights" has to be made, if you follow my run-on sentence.
It all supports the argument for a certain amount of collective and democratic control over at least some