No, that's a no. And I'll explain, again, for readers, who, might be too inexperienced to recognize that you lack the ability to draw meaningful conclusions from a preponderance of evidence.
The original statement was : Democrats do not want to reduce the power of the government, they want to keep power for themselves. They don't want to end torture, wiretaps, or even presidential arrests, as they may want to do the same thing themselves.
My argument was:
a) All criticism about any of those things has been that Bush has been inappropriate with them...never, that, is the wrong behavior and should not be done at all.
b) Obama and Clinton both in debates have suggested that there are times when people ought to be tortured.
c) Neither has introduced legislation to ban FISA courts and warrantless wiretaps of US Citizens altogether. In fact, FISA courts were something that was actually created by Democrats.
d) Neither has introduced legislation to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security or repeal the USA PATRIOT ACT. Neither has promised to do that.
e) The Democratic Party has promised to implement the full recommendations of the 9/11 commission. This includes national ID cards and the whole RealID initiative.
Of course, we have the traditional conservative complaints as well.
f) Democrats want to confiscate firearms and destroy the 2nd amendment Hillary and Obama have both voted in favor of every anti-gun resolution they could get their hands.
g) Democrats want to squash free speech by re-instituting their old trick of federal monitoring of radio and TV for political content. What part of, the entire country had its speech oppressed for 50 years spells freedom to you?
When I asked you to prove otherwise, all I was saying, show me the thing that the Democrats have done to unravel the police state that they helped to create. Please! Have they reduced the number of police? No. In fact, they promised to hire 100,000 MORE police on top of the 100,000 MORE they hired. What have they done to reduce the power of the government to either arrest or harrass or tax or confiscate?
You still haven't verified your claim. Can we take this as an admission that you're full of shit?
I have. You ignore. Furthermore, you have both candidates on record saying that they would use torture and signing statements alike. go google it yourself. I'm not doing your work for you, you subhuman.
Give me a link on either web site for Obama or Clinton which promises to
a) end all torture, and b) end all signing statements.
Its not there, and the implication and promise is not so much that Bush has this power, but has merely misused it. In fact, you won't find a promise to repeal the PATRIOT act. Nor will you won't find a promise to really legally undo any of the intrusions into civil liberty in the same of security made by the Bush administration.
This phenomenon is by no means uniquely something Democrat. Republicans, after all, are suppose to reduce government power, not increase it.
I just think that we need thinking divorced from left/right dichotomies if we're going to balance things out before the poorest %90 decide to take back the wealth being hoarded by the richest %10.
Income inequality is a problem only seen when viewed through the left wing dichotomies.
I mean, if you want to really look at the problems of the world, they aren't aligned with the environmental movement AT ALL.
The third world doesn't need to be planting trees to save mother earth, the third world needs to building power plants, water treatment and desalination facilities, and also use genetically modified and industrial farming techniques to improve crop output. I've talked to people from Kenya, and they to a one say that all of these ranges and beautiful things that people want Kenya to have are screwing the country up. Gorillas suck dude...no one wants lions and tigers in their back yard...
But all of this crap about mother nature is getting shoved down the throats of the third world. I mean, Bush gets a bad rap for linking aid to abstinence, but meanwhile 300 million people died because DDT was pulled off of the market worldwide due to a problem that frankly was not nearly as severe as the consequences of not using it.... and mosquitos went on a rampage.
I'm thinking about the "superghettos" that are growing in cities all over Africa, South America, Asia, where millions of people per city are packed into neighbourhoods consisting of cardboard or mud shacks.
Lawful societies and free trade fix that. The UN calls for something like 1% of GDP in the form of a charity black hole and really, even the so-called carbon tax is really just a disguised attempt to shuffle money to the third world, but, ultimately, meaningful trade is what will elevate these people.
I mean, come on... yeah, people in Africa have it bad off, but we firebombed Japan and Germany, completely destroyed their infrastructure, and, by the way, killed 10% of their respective populations, and still, those countries have rebuilt themselves into economic powerhouses. If you even look at the stats... you would see that such renewal actually came from within both countries and that aid such as the Marshall Plan was really more of a jump start mechanism than anything else.
I don't pretend that my idea is a whole solution, or even that it would prove workable in practice. I just think that we need thinking divorced from left/right dichotomies if we're going to balance things out before the poorest %90 decide to take back the wealth being hoarded by the richest %10.
See, I don't believe that there needs to be an equal distribution of wealth at all. And, if you do look at at a world wide level, nothing has actually been better at enriching the planet than the Bush policy of free trade. Sure, people may moan about how the USA is faring under free trade, but in the meantime, the rest of the planet is moving up. Chinese, Indian, asian standards of living are all up. The Phillipines is closing in on first world status. Malaysia is rising, so is Taiwan. Prosperity is spreading around the world because of trade.
The problem is that Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, let him get away with this. C
The problem, fundamentally, is that Democrats see the power that Bush has amassed for the Presidency, and they want it for themselves.
It's a small irony that only John McCain has actually said that he would not issue "signing statements" and that he would not allow for torture to take place in his administration. Dems just argue that signing statements and torture should only take place for their causes....
Peter Arnett made stuff up and got busted for it. Operation Tailwind? Yeah, right. He was a self promoting dick who cloaked himself in the false mantle of left wing hero worship to make himself some kind of a martyr. Too many people on the left eat up his peacenik crap and can't see that he just did it to cover his own sorry ass, and those that aren't dedicated lefties just assume that all lefties are that way.
Seriously, you have no recollection of all the horseshit we were fed through the media in the months just before and after the war started?
A lot of us knew it was horseshit and wanted the war anyway. Quite honestly, I did not care that Saddam maybe had no WMD and had no connection to 9/11. I just thought 9/11 was carte blanche for the USA to clean house of all of its enemies in the middle east. Had the war not dragged on for five years, nobody would give a shit that there were no wmds and saddam was theoretically innocent... Saddam was enough of a dick that a quick war to take his out would have been well worth it.
I mean, come on, if Bush had pulled it off, knocked off Saddam but kept Iraq from falling apart, and right now Iraq was pumping 5 million barrels a day to keep gas prices at around $1.50 / gallon, who would even care about the whether the war was honest or not?
Sure, but look at it from the network's perspective. If they are going to hire an analyst, they are going to hire an insider, someone with contacts, someone who is successful and in the business. Any John Q. Historian could come to a conclusion, but who is the viewer going to believe, him or a buddy of Gen. Petraeus?
They would hire these guys called REPORTERS. What these reporters would do, is go and sneak around and get information for themselves, liquor up a few buddies from high school or college that were connected, plug into the good old boys network and get the real story. Now, the network puts on a talking head because, really, they are semi-popular figures with a bit of domain expertise but really are just sorta entertaining. Like, nobody watches Ollie North or Wesley Clarke because they are somehow "plugged in". They watch these guys because they are entertaining.
So really, when it boils down to it, the talking heads might as well just shoot from the hip rather than grovel or let themselves be manipulated for access to information, because the people already think they are making it up anyway and it is just so much more entertainment.
I don't think one needs to have detailed information of this sort of a military initiative to be able to determine the larger picture
Very true. I knew that we were in trouble in the Iraq war when I saw a ship unload cars of equipment in PA. Rail car after rail car was loaded with battered and broken down HMMVs and other vehicles... everything looked used and beat up...
I have a bunch of CD's that I bought from a record store that went belly up. They still work. Maybe this DRM world ain't all its cracked up to be after all.
The socialist objection is that for any randomly chosen person, no matter what that person does, her odds of getting rich are essentially nil, and the current economic system is rigged to maintain that status quo.
But the flipside is that, even if a person does not get rich, if he works hard and works smartly, he or she will inevitably improve himself or herself. I've got one statistic that proves that point undeniably - education. People with degrees tend to earn far more over a lifetime than people that don't. Those people that went to college either worked harder, or worked smarter, made a commitment and invested themselves, and yes, they do finish on top.
I for one don't think that limiting how much money one person can make is quite the right way of doing it: I'm more in favour of putting limits on how much money can be passed from parent to child
This I can agree with but with the exception of businesses. I say this not because I believe in a meritocracy over a nobility. I say this because those businesses that stay family held tend to take a longer term view than public corporations, have better working conditions for the people and tend to be a better part of the community. But if you own a bunch of stock and real estate that's really just a big collection of stuff, then, that's all up for grabs by the government. And, if the family had a big business, and sold it, like Wanamakers did, then, yeah, those investments that were there should probably be taxed at the point of sale.
War must be declared between two nations. Even if some foreigner wanders into the country without getting stopped at the boarder and kills a thousand people, that still isn't an act of war unless it was sponsored by a foreign nation. By definition, war can only exist between two nation states
War can be between a nation and any group of people, from one to many, that decides to make war on it. I can declare war on the USA right now, if I wanted to, and you can too. In fact, there are individual Americans who have done it. Timothy McVeigh declared war on the USA, blew up a building, and now he is dead.
If you are right, then by your own definition, your country does not deserve to exist, you are under the jurisprudence of the British Crown, and all private property in your entire country, having being illegally transfered from a traitor to his children without exception, belongs to the Queen of England.
Nope, not at all. The founding fathers were traitors to the British crown, and they knew it. Therefor, they were smart and got tons of money from the French, turned a hopeless revolution into a world war, and secured their lives and our freedom. It's pretty simple. You aren't a traitor once you win and the war ends.
You can't have it both ways.
I'm not. It's just that, victory changes everything.
In other words, treason is a crime that does not exist except where there is war.
Well that's the point, and you missed it. If you declare yourself a non-citizen of a country, than, your act of inhabiting its lands while refusing to obey its laws is an invasion. That makes you in a state of war against the country, and it against you, satisfies your argument that requires a state of war for treason to exist, and makes you a traitor.
If it is your opinion that my statements are false, then that means you are a supporter of totalitarianism. This is the only perspective that allows the rule of law to overrule a citizens desire not to participate in a society. Free societies are made of people who voluntarily participate because the co-operation and leadership empowers them.
That statement is utterly absurd because you are attempting to justify treason. With your definition of a free society, you expect to receive all of its benefits and honor none of its obligations.
If you do not agree to follow the rules of the boat, then everyone else on the boat is well within their right to kick you off and toss you into the water.
Similarly, if you do not like the laws of the USA, then you can either live with them and work to change them, or you can have a revolution and impose your own by force of arms, or you can leave. If you choose to stay, and violate those laws, then by definition, you are a traitor to those who don't, and they have every right to do with you what they will.
In the 1960s, when America was enjoying successful capitalism unequaled since,
Well, there were some special circumstances... like, all of our rivals were either firebombed - ala europe or japan, broke, like the UK, or didn't want any economic ties, like the Soviet bloc. So there was -only- American manufacturing...
and even then, if everyone was so happy, why were there so many riots?
Germany certainly did not fail because of secrecy, but rather because they had a madman at their helm. Soviet Russia just had an unsustainable government structure... The US economy is currently failing not because of our secrecy, but rather because we want to try grow our economy on the ever continued consumption of debt...:)
Well, part of the consequence of Germany having a madman at the helm was that there were a number of different weapons projects, all running in parallel and in secret from each other. Had they shared their information, they could have had a more coordinated economy, but, even then, when you look at sheer numbers, lowly Great Britain, was also bombed, but managed to not only produce more aircraft than Germany (in addition to fielding a real heavy bomber), 18 aircraft carriers, I think at least 6 battleships, and quite a few destroyers, better radars and, while they were at it, gave us the mathematics upon which all computers were based, and the first computer... and did it all despite having quite a bit less of a population than Germany did. I think you have to attribute some of that to an open society.
I agree with you, overall though. I think openness is more efficient although I too am guilty at looking at everything through a political lens. With that said, one has to wonder if the Bush administration (and I supported it), have been more successful had they merely been more open and forthcoming with information, invited participation and feedback. Instead of hunkering down and tightening up the security screws because "there's a war on", maybe the Bush administration should have opened up -everything-, because, "there's a war on."
Poor intelligent people don't steal from dumb rich people because they are "jealous". They often just believe that wealth has been misappropriated.
Misappropriated? That's a rationalization. They do it because they rationalize their own bad decisions into a sense of victimization and convince themselves they are entitled to do something wrong.
Liberalism would go along way if it could just admit that people who are in tough spots got there most of the time because either they or their leaders screwed up.
I mean, look at black america. That's a minority group that has just been screwed. With a huge tech boom just behind us, there's no reason black america should be any poorer than white america is, but what happened?
Many whites jumped off of manufacturing and into technology, whereas black america - in some parts of the country, jumped off of a cliff. While whites were getting into engineering and building the likes of Sun, Microsoft and Oracle, blacks interpreted their economic plight through the lens of 1960s liberalism and in doing so missed the greatest wealth generating opportunity of a generation.
Now, there of course other circumstances, too, that play into that. Schools in many poor black areas tend to suck and no solution has been found for the drug problem that pervades poorer neighborhoods. But in both of those cases, liberal policies have completely undermined their communities.
Look at schools. We've had voucher ideas on the table now for 30 years and instead, libs choose teacher's unions over students. Look at drugs. So many libs give a wink and a nod to drug culture and laughed at Nancy Reagan's just say no campaign that it completely undermined. Guess what? Kids need to learn how to say no to drugs, and that message needs to be reinforced by everyone. Look at even the arts. White people haven't done crap in the arts in America compared to blacks, for probably around 100 years - particularly in music, but even the most popular black music is filled with basically useless and counterproductive messages. Where's the liberal leadership on that? I mean, how many well off liberal families, where mummy and daddy are professors with a good bit of stock, actually tell their kids to hate people, sell drugs, beat women, and shoot cops. No, they don't. They tell their kids to stay clean and stay in school and get an education.
Now, on the flip side of the coin, there's an area where racism probably still plays a part, and that is capitalization. Does a black owned business, on its merits, have the same chance of attracting venture capital as a white business? Even there, Republican policies could have worked, for example, if we had created a public social security system and invested it, as Bush suggested, you could have had people using that capital to fund minority businesses at the same rate. You could have turned Wall Street into an ally against poverty... but instead, you had to look at things.
Even Reverend Wright said one thing - when he took up (sic), for Louis Farrakhan, it was that, -anything- that helps minorities get ahead is a good thing. But instead, libs demonize the source or the solution, unless it is a government program they can stuff patronage jobs into.
It's sad, really, it's just sad. Hopefully, with the next coming boom in better food production and alternative energy, african americans will stick to leaders that get their kids the best possible education, so they can have a generation with the tech know-how and marketing savvy to come up with a product and then the capital to market it. The best future for minorities, really, isn't some socialist mecca, its a country where minorities realize that they too could be the next car company that supplants GM the same way Microsoft knocked off IBM and Netscape, bringing billions of dollars into their communities the same way tech businesses pour money into Seattle.
And, not only is your case weak as a generalization, it might even be weak in that instance. Is Paris Hilton stupid? She might not know calculus, but, she has managed to turn herself into a highly profitable brand. There's some brains in that, for sure.
Disproof by contradiction [wikipedia.org]. And just in case you decide to say that "getting rich" doesn't include inheriting (even though inheritance is the biggest factor in persisting inequitable distribution of wealth), note that Ms. Hilton probably earned about $7M in 2005-06.
The disprove case is weak. It's like arguing that global warming isn't happening because it snowed later in one part of the world. By and large, most people get ahead in life because they work smarter or harder. Being evil is largely a myth self reinforced by liberal types largely because they cluster in socialist style institutions where, in fact, the only way you can get ahead is by being evil. But in the real world, working harder, more honestly and better matters and a lot of people succeed for that reason.
I always love how nut job capitalists think if you are poor then you deserve to live without dignity or the ability to make ends meat.
Did I say that? I said that poor people are often poor because of the choices that they make. That's not the same as saying they don't deserve to eat. Why is it that the sense of entitlement has to be buoyed by victimization?
In my opinion, as an industry we need to re-examine how documents are managed.
And what's the cost benefit of that? You are talking about security and secrecy but really at the price of throwing innovation and efficiency out the window.
How can anyone on slashdot in their right mind be so dull-wittingly committed to doing in IT the very things that caused so many societies to fail! Secrecy and an atmosphere of secrecy, authentication at every turn,... my god, we have turned information into a virtual police state where you have to have papers, everywhere you go. And guess what, our digital Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia has failed just as much as their physical counterparts did.
Centralization is why IT sucks. Big Data Centers = Big Government, with the same long lead times, ineffective management, unaccountable projects and reduced performance.
We don't need an internet web 2.0, we need a PC 2.0 and push the data and decisions out to the people.
The best way to improve a company's efficiency is to eliminate internal gestapo security.
The difference between the rich and the poor is greater than ever, and power over the unwilling must be maintained through security.
What... criminy... can you put down your Karl Marx for a second and look at the reality.
The solution is to re-engineer the economic system, to prevent people from having the capability of getting so rich that poor people feel they are better off attacking or exploiting the system than they are living within its boundaries.
There's always going to be jealousy and that jealousy is more the fault of the have-nots than the haves. Guess what? If you are stupid, you will not get rich.
I always love how socialists argue that we are too caught up in property while they, more than anyone else, continually keeps score on who has what.
Slashdot Mirror
True. I think pretty much the entire world wouldn't have had any problems if the Iraq war was short - no matter if the WMD was found or not.
the point is, the longer we stay, the greater the perception of empire.
So that's a yes.
No, that's a no. And I'll explain, again, for readers, who, might be too inexperienced to recognize that you lack the ability to draw meaningful conclusions from a preponderance of evidence.
The original statement was : Democrats do not want to reduce the power of the government, they want to keep power for themselves. They don't want to end torture, wiretaps, or even presidential arrests, as they may want to do the same thing themselves.
My argument was:
a) All criticism about any of those things has been that Bush has been inappropriate with them...never, that, is the wrong behavior and should not be done at all.
b) Obama and Clinton both in debates have suggested that there are times when people ought to be tortured.
c) Neither has introduced legislation to ban FISA courts and warrantless wiretaps of US Citizens altogether. In fact, FISA courts were something that was actually created by Democrats.
d) Neither has introduced legislation to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security or repeal the USA PATRIOT ACT. Neither has promised to do that.
e) The Democratic Party has promised to implement the full recommendations of the 9/11 commission. This includes national ID cards and the whole RealID initiative.
Of course, we have the traditional conservative complaints as well.
f) Democrats want to confiscate firearms and destroy the 2nd amendment Hillary and Obama have both voted in favor of every anti-gun resolution they could get their hands.
g) Democrats want to squash free speech by re-instituting their old trick of federal monitoring of radio and TV for political content. What part of, the entire country had its speech oppressed for 50 years spells freedom to you?
When I asked you to prove otherwise, all I was saying, show me the thing that the Democrats have done to unravel the police state that they helped to create. Please! Have they reduced the number of police? No. In fact, they promised to hire 100,000 MORE police on top of the 100,000 MORE they hired. What have they done to reduce the power of the government to either arrest or harrass or tax or confiscate?
Just what?
You still haven't verified your claim. Can we take this as an admission that you're full of shit?
I have. You ignore. Furthermore, you have both candidates on record saying that they would use torture and signing statements alike. go google it yourself. I'm not doing your work for you, you subhuman.
Citation, please.
Give me a link on either web site for Obama or Clinton which promises to
a) end all torture, and
b) end all signing statements.
Its not there, and the implication and promise is not so much that Bush has this power, but has merely misused it. In fact, you won't find a promise to repeal the PATRIOT act. Nor will you won't find a promise to really legally undo any of the intrusions into civil liberty in the same of security made by the Bush administration.
This phenomenon is by no means uniquely something Democrat. Republicans, after all, are suppose to reduce government power, not increase it.
I just think that we need thinking divorced from left/right dichotomies if we're going to balance things out before the poorest %90 decide to take back the wealth being hoarded by the richest %10.
Income inequality is a problem only seen when viewed through the left wing dichotomies.
I mean, if you want to really look at the problems of the world, they aren't aligned with the environmental movement AT ALL.
The third world doesn't need to be planting trees to save mother earth, the third world needs to building power plants, water treatment and desalination facilities, and also use genetically modified and industrial farming techniques to improve crop output. I've talked to people from Kenya, and they to a one say that all of these ranges and beautiful things that people want Kenya to have are screwing the country up. Gorillas suck dude...no one wants lions and tigers in their back yard...
But all of this crap about mother nature is getting shoved down the throats of the third world. I mean, Bush gets a bad rap for linking aid to abstinence, but meanwhile 300 million people died because DDT was pulled off of the market worldwide due to a problem that frankly was not nearly as severe as the consequences of not using it.... and mosquitos went on a rampage.
I'm thinking about the "superghettos" that are growing in cities all over Africa, South America, Asia, where millions of people per city are packed into neighbourhoods consisting of cardboard or mud shacks.
Lawful societies and free trade fix that. The UN calls for something like 1% of GDP in the form of a charity black hole and really, even the so-called carbon tax is really just a disguised attempt to shuffle money to the third world, but, ultimately, meaningful trade is what will elevate these people.
I mean, come on... yeah, people in Africa have it bad off, but we firebombed Japan and Germany, completely destroyed their infrastructure, and, by the way, killed 10% of their respective populations, and still, those countries have rebuilt themselves into economic powerhouses. If you even look at the stats... you would see that such renewal actually came from within both countries and that aid such as the Marshall Plan was really more of a jump start mechanism than anything else.
I don't pretend that my idea is a whole solution, or even that it would prove workable in practice. I just think that we need thinking divorced from left/right dichotomies if we're going to balance things out before the poorest %90 decide to take back the wealth being hoarded by the richest %10.
See, I don't believe that there needs to be an equal distribution of wealth at all. And, if you do look at at a world wide level, nothing has actually been better at enriching the planet than the Bush policy of free trade. Sure, people may moan about how the USA is faring under free trade, but in the meantime, the rest of the planet is moving up. Chinese, Indian, asian standards of living are all up. The Phillipines is closing in on first world status. Malaysia is rising, so is Taiwan. Prosperity is spreading around the world because of trade.
Really, just do the unthinkable and go:
New York Times
Wall Street Journal
Fox News
CNN
CBS used to substitute for all of the above, but now it sucks.
The problem is that Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, let him get away with this. C
The problem, fundamentally, is that Democrats see the power that Bush has amassed for the Presidency, and they want it for themselves.
It's a small irony that only John McCain has actually said that he would not issue "signing statements" and that he would not allow for torture to take place in his administration. Dems just argue that signing statements and torture should only take place for their causes....
Look what happened to Peter Arnett:
Peter Arnett made stuff up and got busted for it. Operation Tailwind? Yeah, right. He was a self promoting dick who cloaked himself in the false mantle of left wing hero worship to make himself some kind of a martyr. Too many people on the left eat up his peacenik crap and can't see that he just did it to cover his own sorry ass, and those that aren't dedicated lefties just assume that all lefties are that way.
Seriously, you have no recollection of all the horseshit we were fed through the media in the months just before and after the war started?
A lot of us knew it was horseshit and wanted the war anyway. Quite honestly, I did not care that Saddam maybe had no WMD and had no connection to 9/11. I just thought 9/11 was carte blanche for the USA to clean house of all of its enemies in the middle east. Had the war not dragged on for five years, nobody would give a shit that there were no wmds and saddam was theoretically innocent... Saddam was enough of a dick that a quick war to take his out would have been well worth it.
I mean, come on, if Bush had pulled it off, knocked off Saddam but kept Iraq from falling apart, and right now Iraq was pumping 5 million barrels a day to keep gas prices at around $1.50 / gallon, who would even care about the whether the war was honest or not?
Sure, but look at it from the network's perspective. If they are going to hire an analyst, they are going to hire an insider, someone with contacts, someone who is successful and in the business. Any John Q. Historian could come to a conclusion, but who is the viewer going to believe, him or a buddy of Gen. Petraeus?
They would hire these guys called REPORTERS. What these reporters would do, is go and sneak around and get information for themselves, liquor up a few buddies from high school or college that were connected, plug into the good old boys network and get the real story. Now, the network puts on a talking head because, really, they are semi-popular figures with a bit of domain expertise but really are just sorta entertaining. Like, nobody watches Ollie North or Wesley Clarke because they are somehow "plugged in". They watch these guys because they are entertaining.
So really, when it boils down to it, the talking heads might as well just shoot from the hip rather than grovel or let themselves be manipulated for access to information, because the people already think they are making it up anyway and it is just so much more entertainment.
I don't think one needs to have detailed information of this sort of a military initiative to be able to determine the larger picture
Very true. I knew that we were in trouble in the Iraq war when I saw a ship unload cars of equipment in PA. Rail car after rail car was loaded with battered and broken down HMMVs and other vehicles... everything looked used and beat up...
I have a bunch of CD's that I bought from a record store that went belly up. They still work. Maybe this DRM world ain't all its cracked up to be after all.
The socialist objection is that for any randomly chosen person, no matter what that person does, her odds of getting rich are essentially nil, and the current economic system is rigged to maintain that status quo.
But the flipside is that, even if a person does not get rich, if he works hard and works smartly, he or she will inevitably improve himself or herself. I've got one statistic that proves that point undeniably - education. People with degrees tend to earn far more over a lifetime than people that don't. Those people that went to college either worked harder, or worked smarter, made a commitment and invested themselves, and yes, they do finish on top.
I for one don't think that limiting how much money one person can make is quite the right way of doing it: I'm more in favour of putting limits on how much money can be passed from parent to child
This I can agree with but with the exception of businesses. I say this not because I believe in a meritocracy over a nobility. I say this because those businesses that stay family held tend to take a longer term view than public corporations, have better working conditions for the people and tend to be a better part of the community. But if you own a bunch of stock and real estate that's really just a big collection of stuff, then, that's all up for grabs by the government. And, if the family had a big business, and sold it, like Wanamakers did, then, yeah, those investments that were there should probably be taxed at the point of sale.
War must be declared between two nations. Even if some foreigner wanders into the country without getting stopped at the boarder and kills a thousand people, that still isn't an act of war unless it was sponsored by a foreign nation. By definition, war can only exist between two nation states
War can be between a nation and any group of people, from one to many, that decides to make war on it. I can declare war on the USA right now, if I wanted to, and you can too. In fact, there are individual Americans who have done it. Timothy McVeigh declared war on the USA, blew up a building, and now he is dead.
If you are right, then by your own definition, your country does not deserve to exist, you are under the jurisprudence of the British Crown, and all private property in your entire country, having being illegally transfered from a traitor to his children without exception, belongs to the Queen of England.
Nope, not at all. The founding fathers were traitors to the British crown, and they knew it. Therefor, they were smart and got tons of money from the French, turned a hopeless revolution into a world war, and secured their lives and our freedom. It's pretty simple. You aren't a traitor once you win and the war ends.
You can't have it both ways.
I'm not. It's just that, victory changes everything.
In other words, treason is a crime that does not exist except where there is war.
Well that's the point, and you missed it. If you declare yourself a non-citizen of a country, than, your act of inhabiting its lands while refusing to obey its laws is an invasion. That makes you in a state of war against the country, and it against you, satisfies your argument that requires a state of war for treason to exist, and makes you a traitor.
If it is your opinion that my statements are false, then that means you are a supporter of totalitarianism. This is the only perspective that allows the rule of law to overrule a citizens desire not to participate in a society. Free societies are made of people who voluntarily participate because the co-operation and leadership empowers them.
That statement is utterly absurd because you are attempting to justify treason. With your definition of a free society, you expect to receive all of its benefits and honor none of its obligations.
If you do not agree to follow the rules of the boat, then everyone else on the boat is well within their right to kick you off and toss you into the water.
Similarly, if you do not like the laws of the USA, then you can either live with them and work to change them, or you can have a revolution and impose your own by force of arms, or you can leave. If you choose to stay, and violate those laws, then by definition, you are a traitor to those who don't, and they have every right to do with you what they will.
In the 1960s, when America was enjoying successful capitalism unequaled since,
Well, there were some special circumstances... like, all of our rivals were either firebombed - ala europe or japan, broke, like the UK, or didn't want any economic ties, like the Soviet bloc. So there was -only- American manufacturing...
and even then, if everyone was so happy, why were there so many riots?
Germany certainly did not fail because of secrecy, but rather because they had a madman at their helm. Soviet Russia just had an unsustainable government structure... The US economy is currently failing not because of our secrecy, but rather because we want to try grow our economy on the ever continued consumption of debt... :)
Well, part of the consequence of Germany having a madman at the helm was that there were a number of different weapons projects, all running in parallel and in secret from each other. Had they shared their information, they could have had a more coordinated economy, but, even then, when you look at sheer numbers, lowly Great Britain, was also bombed, but managed to not only produce more aircraft than Germany (in addition to fielding a real heavy bomber), 18 aircraft carriers, I think at least 6 battleships, and quite a few destroyers, better radars and, while they were at it, gave us the mathematics upon which all computers were based, and the first computer... and did it all despite having quite a bit less of a population than Germany did. I think you have to attribute some of that to an open society.
I agree with you, overall though. I think openness is more efficient although I too am guilty at looking at everything through a political lens. With that said, one has to wonder if the Bush administration (and I supported it), have been more successful had they merely been more open and forthcoming with information, invited participation and feedback. Instead of hunkering down and tightening up the security screws because "there's a war on", maybe the Bush administration should have opened up -everything-, because, "there's a war on."
One wonders.
Poor intelligent people don't steal from dumb rich people because they are "jealous". They often just believe that wealth has been misappropriated.
Misappropriated? That's a rationalization. They do it because they rationalize their own bad decisions into a sense of victimization and convince themselves they are entitled to do something wrong.
Liberalism would go along way if it could just admit that people who are in tough spots got there most of the time because either they or their leaders screwed up.
I mean, look at black america. That's a minority group that has just been screwed. With a huge tech boom just behind us, there's no reason black america should be any poorer than white america is, but what happened?
Many whites jumped off of manufacturing and into technology, whereas black america - in some parts of the country, jumped off of a cliff. While whites were getting into engineering and building the likes of Sun, Microsoft and Oracle, blacks interpreted their economic plight through the lens of 1960s liberalism and in doing so missed the greatest wealth generating opportunity of a generation.
Now, there of course other circumstances, too, that play into that. Schools in many poor black areas tend to suck and no solution has been found for the drug problem that pervades poorer neighborhoods. But in both of those cases, liberal policies have completely undermined their communities.
Look at schools. We've had voucher ideas on the table now for 30 years and instead, libs choose teacher's unions over students. Look at drugs. So many libs give a wink and a nod to drug culture and laughed at Nancy Reagan's just say no campaign that it completely undermined. Guess what? Kids need to learn how to say no to drugs, and that message needs to be reinforced by everyone. Look at even the arts. White people haven't done crap in the arts in America compared to blacks, for probably around 100 years - particularly in music, but even the most popular black music is filled with basically useless and counterproductive messages. Where's the liberal leadership on that? I mean, how many well off liberal families, where mummy and daddy are professors with a good bit of stock, actually tell their kids to hate people, sell drugs, beat women, and shoot cops. No, they don't. They tell their kids to stay clean and stay in school and get an education.
Now, on the flip side of the coin, there's an area where racism probably still plays a part, and that is capitalization. Does a black owned business, on its merits, have the same chance of attracting venture capital as a white business? Even there, Republican policies could have worked, for example, if we had created a public social security system and invested it, as Bush suggested, you could have had people using that capital to fund minority businesses at the same rate. You could have turned Wall Street into an ally against poverty... but instead, you had to look at things.
Even Reverend Wright said one thing - when he took up (sic), for Louis Farrakhan, it was that, -anything- that helps minorities get ahead is a good thing. But instead, libs demonize the source or the solution, unless it is a government program they can stuff patronage jobs into.
It's sad, really, it's just sad. Hopefully, with the next coming boom in better food production and alternative energy, african americans will stick to leaders that get their kids the best possible education, so they can have a generation with the tech know-how and marketing savvy to come up with a product and then the capital to market it. The best future for minorities, really, isn't some socialist mecca, its a country where minorities realize that they too could be the next car company that supplants GM the same way Microsoft knocked off IBM and Netscape, bringing billions of dollars into their communities the same way tech businesses pour money into Seattle.
Disproof by contradiction [wikipedia.org].
And, not only is your case weak as a generalization, it might even be weak in that instance. Is Paris Hilton stupid? She might not know calculus, but, she has managed to turn herself into a highly profitable brand. There's some brains in that, for sure.
Disproof by contradiction [wikipedia.org]. And just in case you decide to say that "getting rich" doesn't include inheriting (even though inheritance is the biggest factor in persisting inequitable distribution of wealth), note that Ms. Hilton probably earned about $7M in 2005-06.
The disprove case is weak. It's like arguing that global warming isn't happening because it snowed later in one part of the world. By and large, most people get ahead in life because they work smarter or harder. Being evil is largely a myth self reinforced by liberal types largely because they cluster in socialist style institutions where, in fact, the only way you can get ahead is by being evil. But in the real world, working harder, more honestly and better matters and a lot of people succeed for that reason.
I always love how nut job capitalists think if you are poor then you deserve to live without dignity or the ability to make ends meat.
Did I say that? I said that poor people are often poor because of the choices that they make. That's not the same as saying they don't deserve to eat. Why is it that the sense of entitlement has to be buoyed by victimization?
In my opinion, as an industry we need to re-examine how documents are managed.
And what's the cost benefit of that? You are talking about security and secrecy but really at the price of throwing innovation and efficiency out the window.
How can anyone on slashdot in their right mind be so dull-wittingly committed to doing in IT the very things that caused so many societies to fail! Secrecy and an atmosphere of secrecy, authentication at every turn,... my god, we have turned information into a virtual police state where you have to have papers, everywhere you go. And guess what, our digital Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia has failed just as much as their physical counterparts did.
Centralization is why IT sucks. Big Data Centers = Big Government, with the same long lead times, ineffective management, unaccountable projects and reduced performance.
We don't need an internet web 2.0, we need a PC 2.0 and push the data and decisions out to the people.
The best way to improve a company's efficiency is to eliminate internal gestapo security.
The difference between the rich and the poor is greater than ever, and power over the unwilling must be maintained through security.
What... criminy... can you put down your Karl Marx for a second and look at the reality.
The solution is to re-engineer the economic system, to prevent people from having the capability of getting so rich that poor people feel they are better off attacking or exploiting the system than they are living within its boundaries.
There's always going to be jealousy and that jealousy is more the fault of the have-nots than the haves. Guess what? If you are stupid, you will not get rich.
I always love how socialists argue that we are too caught up in property while they, more than anyone else, continually keeps score on who has what.