I mean, if people have been doing it forever, it's natural, and it must be okay, right? After all, we can't change anything about our nature.
Honestly, people aren't infinitely perfectable, but we can change. People can be taught to look out for their long term interests, delay gratification, and not give in to short sighted desires. But I guess it's "cool" to be cynical about human nature. It's an attitude that can excuse a whole lot of inaction. "ah, fuggedabout it, that's just how humans are. Nothing we can do, you know?"
Your a "boomer," aren't you? Looking for some excuse for a little personal debt relief? There's this concept called bankruptcy: when your debt gets to the point you can't pay it back, you can declare bankruptcy. This is better for society, as it keeps people from sinking into abject poverty. Keeping people from sinking into abject poverty is a societal good, as it keeps society stable.
IMHO, give it twenty years and the US will be the one screaming for debt relief, at least if the current crop of borrow and spend Republicans get their way.
Which only makes it more ludicrous that he did not write that bit as "on our website." I mean, come on, writing "on their website" makes it seem as if you are not affiliated, but then having your name link directly to "their" site? That's just sloppy!
Wouldn't it be ironic if we developed all those wonderful things you listed, but it then turned out that in order to make them economically and efficiently, we needed to do it in zero-g. And wouldn't it be a funny ol' world if the Chinese then took our innovations and capitalized on them because they had the zero-g fabs? And in retaliation for their stealing our ideas we used our secret space lasers and blew their fabs out of orbit? And that started WWIII and...
I would say instead that private ownership means an individual is free to profit from the destruction of a resource, invest their plunder in ownership of a new resource and move on, leaving the world a poorer place. Collective and democratic control of a resource encourages real stewrdeship far more effectively than private ownership. A group has a far more difficult time moving on than an individual.
There are no such things as natural rights. Sure, you are born with the right to try to do anything you like. But without society, there is no need for the concept of rights, only power. Every right you have impinges on another member of society in some way. So while society and collectives have no consciousness, the individuals that make up those groups do, and one man's rights are anothers restrictions.
You owe society because society upholds your rights. The right to property is an exclusive right, and requires the intiation of force to take and hold. If not force initiated by the individual, then force initiated by society on his behalf. Why should any member of society respect your right to fence off something we all collectively enjoyed the use of before you came along with your fence and your force? What's in it for me?
No man is an island. We are all shaped by society, and in turn shape it. We are caretakers of the culture we receive. Without those who went before us, we would have nothing. For the gift we receive from them, we owe future generations a debt. We can pay off that debt by leaving the social framework better than we found it.
It is not presumptous to ask a person who has encured a debt, who has benefited from a transaction, to pay the fair worth of that which they have received. Do not deny that you have benefited from living in a society, or I will know you are a fool. You may claim you signed no contract with society, but you sign no contract when you go into a restaraunt, either. Yet when you eat the food, you pay the bill.
Nothing is new, but there are novel arangements of old things. Thus patents and trademarks are not entirely without merit. But it's not about rewarding a particular individual, it's about what's best for all individuals as a whole. Rewarding innovation encourages people to share their innovations, which benefits the greatest number.
I can't support doing away with property entirely. There ahould be a cap on ownership, though. High enough to encourage excellence, but enough to put a check on the runaway feedback cycle of money and power that allows the very rich to get keep getting richer at the expense of the other 90% of us.
As a liberal, I would have to say that protection of human rights is governments' sole legitimate role. Property is a social concept, without society there would be no need for the concept of property. By owning property, you are stealing the opportunity to use that property from everyone else, most of whom would never grant you that right without some recompense. For the privelege of private ownership of anything, you owe a debt to everyone. Private property is not a right, it is a privelege granted to the individual by society.
All "intellectual property" is based on ideas freely granted to the individual by society. The individual owes society for the ideas that sparked the innovation. Processes and other abstract things should never be patentable because doing so does not benefit society. It does not protect innovation at all.
Collective property is at least as valid as private property, and given the right control structure it is as feasible to maintain collectively as it is privately. In fact, one could argue the opposite of the tragedy of the commons, saying that an individual owner would always find it easier to profit from a resource in a destructive fashion and then move on than a collective owner of the same resource. Collective ownership is far more natural to the human mind than private ownership. Witness the fact that most "primitive" (as we in the west see them) societies have little conception of private ownership.
I postulate that you and people like you benefit from private ownership in an unfair fashion and that you cling to the myth of the benefits of private ownership in order to justify your ego-based worldview and your position of power and privilege rather than from an real and logically arrived at conclusion that it truely benefits the collection of individuals known as society the most.
Yes, this post is slightly trollish but hey, wouldn't you conservatives and libertarians out there rather point out how foolish and knee-jerk my post is rather than mod me down? After all, if my arguments are so knee-jerk, they should be pretty easy to refute, right?
However, if you want to mod me down for using a sixty seven word, paragraph-long run on sentence, be my guest.
A quick google for "ibm nazi" proves you wrong. IBM helped automate the death camps with a punch card system. Here's a link to a review of Edwin Black's book "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation."
Whether there was a high level strategic alliance between IBM and the Third Reich, as the book alleges, is open to debate. That IBM helped automate the death camps is a simple historical fact.
Oh, but it is a class issue. The owners do not micromanage, but hire CEOs and managers who will carry out their agenda. And if you think Ted Turner or Sumner Redstone are "liberal" because they donate to the Democratic party, you are mistaken. They my be socially liberal, but I am willing to bet they are fiscally conservative. They, like other wealthy media owners, support the things that will increase their own wealth and power. Most poor people in the world would do the same thing in their shoes. But they are poor, so they don't have the power to protect and further their interests the way the rich do. And thus the gap between the wealthy and the poor widens, but you never hear about that on Ted or Sumner's stations because they want the poor to think they have common cause with the rich, which they emphatically do not.
Everything anyone says is biased. "Water is wet." Oh yeah? Why do you want me to know that? Do you have an anti water bias? A pro wetness bias? Anytime anyone communicates, they are doing so for a reason, that reason is their bias. That being said, some things I believe about the media: 1. Reporters are generally more liberal than the communities they serve. 2. Owners and editors are usually more conservative than the communities they serve. 3. The wealthy media owners have a vested interest in pushing a conservative agenda, as a conservative agenda serves the wealthy. 4. Media has a generally conservative bias because the interests of the owners trumps the liberal bias of the reporters.
Ah, so it was the "apathetic american" part. Okay, okay, that's a little bigoted, but it matches my prejudices so it must be okay. You mean Americans aren't politically apathetic? What's the average voter turn out again? Sorry, but a case can be made for calling Americans apathetic. Or are you so PC that you can't stand to hear anything remotely bad said about anyone?
Anonymous bigot. People actually like the stuff mentioned. Just because you don't is no reason to make fun of them. It's not bigoted or a stereotype to say that people like Jerry Springer, Nascar and Reality TV. It's bigoted to assume that merely mentioning that fact is tantamount to denouncing those things. Idiot.
It's not that the value of a constituent's opinion varies in proportion to the amount of difficulty one has to undergo to have their opinion heard, it's that the difficulty means that fewer people who feel that way will express themselves. Therefore, someone expressing themselves through a relatively difficult medium like snail mail are thought to represent a higher number who did not represent themselves. So a letter received is counted as expressing the opinions of hundreds of consituents who did not write, while an email recieved is counted as only representing the opinions of the author. I don't see this as unfair or illogical.
But yes, Representative democracy in the United States is all shot to hell, largely thanks to the "career politician" fucktards.
What exactly is bigoted about the GP post? Is there something wrong with the name Bubba? Is it wrong or bad to watch Nascar, Jerry Springer, or Reality TV shows? If you think so, you are the bigot. If you are objecting to the phrase "American apathy" you are merely unobservant.
Way to pick nits. I thought I made it clear that this was only a law in some states, and that the ADA might or might not apply. My point is they are not risking as much as it would seem by enacting this policy, and they stand to gain, publicity-wise. You aren't disputing that, are you?
Typical corporate grandstanding. Discrimination of this sort is already illegal in many states, likely is illegal under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and likely to be made illegal nation wide soon. So they lose nothing and gain a PR coup by being the first to announce they are abiding by the law.
That of course has nothing to do with the fact that all crazed left-wing slashbots are dead wrong, and all corporations are Good and Just and they all Love and Care for every living thing on the planet.
Sadly, studies have shown that a child's peer group has a greater impact on their personality than parents do. Whether that is because of a general lack of parenting, I don't know. I don't think the studies addressed that. But good parenting looses out to bad peer groups almost every time.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, if people have been doing it forever, it's natural, and it must be okay, right? After all, we can't change anything about our nature.
Honestly, people aren't infinitely perfectable, but we can change. People can be taught to look out for their long term interests, delay gratification, and not give in to short sighted desires. But I guess it's "cool" to be cynical about human nature. It's an attitude that can excuse a whole lot of inaction. "ah, fuggedabout it, that's just how humans are. Nothing we can do, you know?"
Your a "boomer," aren't you? Looking for some excuse for a little personal debt relief? There's this concept called bankruptcy: when your debt gets to the point you can't pay it back, you can declare bankruptcy. This is better for society, as it keeps people from sinking into abject poverty. Keeping people from sinking into abject poverty is a societal good, as it keeps society stable.
IMHO, give it twenty years and the US will be the one screaming for debt relief, at least if the current crop of borrow and spend Republicans get their way.
Pull the other one, it's got bells on. You expect us to believe that the slashdot editors actually edited a submission?
Which only makes it more ludicrous that he did not write that bit as "on our website." I mean, come on, writing "on their website" makes it seem as if you are not affiliated, but then having your name link directly to "their" site? That's just sloppy!
Wouldn't it be ironic if we developed all those wonderful things you listed, but it then turned out that in order to make them economically and efficiently, we needed to do it in zero-g. And wouldn't it be a funny ol' world if the Chinese then took our innovations and capitalized on them because they had the zero-g fabs? And in retaliation for their stealing our ideas we used our secret space lasers and blew their fabs out of orbit? And that started WWIII and...
Wait, that wouldn't be funny at all, never mind.
I would say instead that private ownership means an individual is free to profit from the destruction of a resource, invest their plunder in ownership of a new resource and move on, leaving the world a poorer place. Collective and democratic control of a resource encourages real stewrdeship far more effectively than private ownership. A group has a far more difficult time moving on than an individual.
There are no such things as natural rights. Sure, you are born with the right to try to do anything you like. But without society, there is no need for the concept of rights, only power. Every right you have impinges on another member of society in some way. So while society and collectives have no consciousness, the individuals that make up those groups do, and one man's rights are anothers restrictions.
You owe society because society upholds your rights. The right to property is an exclusive right, and requires the intiation of force to take and hold. If not force initiated by the individual, then force initiated by society on his behalf. Why should any member of society respect your right to fence off something we all collectively enjoyed the use of before you came along with your fence and your force? What's in it for me?
No man is an island. We are all shaped by society, and in turn shape it. We are caretakers of the culture we receive. Without those who went before us, we would have nothing. For the gift we receive from them, we owe future generations a debt. We can pay off that debt by leaving the social framework better than we found it.
It is not presumptous to ask a person who has encured a debt, who has benefited from a transaction, to pay the fair worth of that which they have received. Do not deny that you have benefited from living in a society, or I will know you are a fool. You may claim you signed no contract with society, but you sign no contract when you go into a restaraunt, either. Yet when you eat the food, you pay the bill.
Nothing is new, but there are novel arangements of old things. Thus patents and trademarks are not entirely without merit. But it's not about rewarding a particular individual, it's about what's best for all individuals as a whole. Rewarding innovation encourages people to share their innovations, which benefits the greatest number.
I can't support doing away with property entirely. There ahould be a cap on ownership, though. High enough to encourage excellence, but enough to put a check on the runaway feedback cycle of money and power that allows the very rich to get keep getting richer at the expense of the other 90% of us.
As a liberal, I would have to say that protection of human rights is governments' sole legitimate role. Property is a social concept, without society there would be no need for the concept of property. By owning property, you are stealing the opportunity to use that property from everyone else, most of whom would never grant you that right without some recompense. For the privelege of private ownership of anything, you owe a debt to everyone. Private property is not a right, it is a privelege granted to the individual by society.
All "intellectual property" is based on ideas freely granted to the individual by society. The individual owes society for the ideas that sparked the innovation. Processes and other abstract things should never be patentable because doing so does not benefit society. It does not protect innovation at all.
Collective property is at least as valid as private property, and given the right control structure it is as feasible to maintain collectively as it is privately. In fact, one could argue the opposite of the tragedy of the commons, saying that an individual owner would always find it easier to profit from a resource in a destructive fashion and then move on than a collective owner of the same resource. Collective ownership is far more natural to the human mind than private ownership. Witness the fact that most "primitive" (as we in the west see them) societies have little conception of private ownership.
I postulate that you and people like you benefit from private ownership in an unfair fashion and that you cling to the myth of the benefits of private ownership in order to justify your ego-based worldview and your position of power and privilege rather than from an real and logically arrived at conclusion that it truely benefits the collection of individuals known as society the most.
Yes, this post is slightly trollish but hey, wouldn't you conservatives and libertarians out there rather point out how foolish and knee-jerk my post is rather than mod me down? After all, if my arguments are so knee-jerk, they should be pretty easy to refute, right?
However, if you want to mod me down for using a sixty seven word, paragraph-long run on sentence, be my guest.
I find your theories fascinating and wish to subscribe to your dating service.
A quick google for "ibm nazi" proves you wrong. IBM helped automate the death camps with a punch card system. Here's a link to a review of Edwin Black's book "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation."
Whether there was a high level strategic alliance between IBM and the Third Reich, as the book alleges, is open to debate. That IBM helped automate the death camps is a simple historical fact.
Oh, but it is a class issue. The owners do not micromanage, but hire CEOs and managers who will carry out their agenda. And if you think Ted Turner or Sumner Redstone are "liberal" because they donate to the Democratic party, you are mistaken. They my be socially liberal, but I am willing to bet they are fiscally conservative. They, like other wealthy media owners, support the things that will increase their own wealth and power. Most poor people in the world would do the same thing in their shoes. But they are poor, so they don't have the power to protect and further their interests the way the rich do. And thus the gap between the wealthy and the poor widens, but you never hear about that on Ted or Sumner's stations because they want the poor to think they have common cause with the rich, which they emphatically do not.
Everything anyone says is biased. "Water is wet." Oh yeah? Why do you want me to know that? Do you have an anti water bias? A pro wetness bias? Anytime anyone communicates, they are doing so for a reason, that reason is their bias. That being said, some things I believe about the media:
1. Reporters are generally more liberal than the communities they serve.
2. Owners and editors are usually more conservative than the communities they serve.
3. The wealthy media owners have a vested interest in pushing a conservative agenda, as a conservative agenda serves the wealthy.
4. Media has a generally conservative bias because the interests of the owners trumps the liberal bias of the reporters.
How about fat bloated crap factories and diminutive equines?
Ah, so it was the "apathetic american" part. Okay, okay, that's a little bigoted, but it matches my prejudices so it must be okay. You mean Americans aren't politically apathetic? What's the average voter turn out again? Sorry, but a case can be made for calling Americans apathetic. Or are you so PC that you can't stand to hear anything remotely bad said about anyone?
Anonymous bigot. People actually like the stuff mentioned. Just because you don't is no reason to make fun of them. It's not bigoted or a stereotype to say that people like Jerry Springer, Nascar and Reality TV. It's bigoted to assume that merely mentioning that fact is tantamount to denouncing those things. Idiot.
It's not that the value of a constituent's opinion varies in proportion to the amount of difficulty one has to undergo to have their opinion heard, it's that the difficulty means that fewer people who feel that way will express themselves. Therefore, someone expressing themselves through a relatively difficult medium like snail mail are thought to represent a higher number who did not represent themselves. So a letter received is counted as expressing the opinions of hundreds of consituents who did not write, while an email recieved is counted as only representing the opinions of the author. I don't see this as unfair or illogical.
But yes, Representative democracy in the United States is all shot to hell, largely thanks to the "career politician" fucktards.
What exactly is bigoted about the GP post? Is there something wrong with the name Bubba? Is it wrong or bad to watch Nascar, Jerry Springer, or Reality TV shows? If you think so, you are the bigot. If you are objecting to the phrase "American apathy" you are merely unobservant.
Thus the word "Republocrats." Or do you prefer "Demicans?"
Way to pick nits. I thought I made it clear that this was only a law in some states, and that the ADA might or might not apply. My point is they are not risking as much as it would seem by enacting this policy, and they stand to gain, publicity-wise. You aren't disputing that, are you?
Typical corporate grandstanding. Discrimination of this sort is already illegal in many states, likely is illegal under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and likely to be made illegal nation wide soon. So they lose nothing and gain a PR coup by being the first to announce they are abiding by the law.
That of course has nothing to do with the fact that all crazed left-wing slashbots are dead wrong, and all corporations are Good and Just and they all Love and Care for every living thing on the planet.
Is that what he says in Life of Brian? I always thought it was Naughtius Maximus, but Nortius makes sense.
No, no. It was Naughtius Maximus.
Sadly, studies have shown that a child's peer group has a greater impact on their personality than parents do. Whether that is because of a general lack of parenting, I don't know. I don't think the studies addressed that. But good parenting looses out to bad peer groups almost every time.