The logical consequence of making prostitution legal is that it becomes just another job. In socialists countries people get benefits from the state if they can't find a job. A suitable job. If they do get a suitable job offer, they got to take it or lose their benefits.
Your wife, sister, mother, girlfriend looses her job and can't find another one. The job center tells her the local whorehouse has a vacancy. Are you okay she should take it rather then keep claiming benefits?
No?
Then legalizing prostitution is not a simple solution that will fix everything.
As I've never seen or heard of job center forcing anyone to work in porn industry either, which is considered by many to be far less stigmatizing and in all ways less worse, I don't see it ever happening that way - and it has not in countries with legalized prostitution either.
With all the potential problems of prostitution, legal or not, this is not one of them really.
I notice you don't counter my argument mere attack individual sentences on details not the general message.
The true hallmark of a person with no original thought of his own. Go away and grow a spine.
I was going to "attack" them too, but overall your post still contained a lot of good points and you weren't suggesting making prostitution illegal so let me say that I'm not attacking the general message.
However I feel that those quotes above were offensive towards many prostitutes and there was also one that offended me - as a person who would not consider prostitution as job of girl friend to be a deal killer - and a friend of mine who in fact had a good relationship with a prostitute in past.
I don't think you really meant to be that offending though.
For me, the saved time would not be used in a gym.
Find a gym or whatever that you want to go to. I don't mind exercise if I like the place, the people, and the activity. Life's too short to do stuff you don't like because someone else says you should from a hair shirt perspective.
What a funny thing to say while telling someone else what to do:D
They've probably just not paid off enough officials.
Honestly, even the Microsoft anti-trust trial was a joke, Netscape died out because frankly, it was shit. I distinctly remember how bad it was compared to IE, and I chose IE because IE didn't have Netscape's ugly ass UI.
Oh phlueesh, I clearly remember how bad IE was in comparison to Netscape, which is why I chose Netscape despite of it's ugly UI - and yes, it was ugly, but IE wasn't exactly pretty back then either. Not that it matters, IE was so bad that choosing it for UI style despite of it's flaws would have needed it to have sexually arousing UI;p
The fact the Microsoft bundles IE with Windows had fuck all to do with it, as the loss of IE dominance in recent years has shown, no the loss of IE's dominance was due to Firefox/Chrome - i.e. browsers that were actually better. IE was still bundled and integrated all this time even with the anti-trust settlement so it shows that all that was needed was competent competition and that bundling gave no real advantage - people are plenty capable of sticking alternative browsers on their systems if a superior one comes along, which it did.
Netscape was better than IE but it's minor in comparison to how much better alternatives there had been for a long time. For me Opera was the first browser to give me tabs and session saver (which was crucial with Windows stability back then - on top of that IE was absurdly shaky itself... Think what you want of the anti trust laws but don't come claiming me that bundling IE with Windows did not give them competitive advantage on that platform. That would be absurd even without considering how reasonable expectation it was for computer illiterate to even realize that he had options for other browsers - sure, people who had made deal with ISP back when IE wasn't bundled it was the norm that ISP provided you with install disks (floppy or CD) of browser they had chosen (often based on deal with browsers creators) and usually you got IE or Netscape, but average people still usually only knew that there was a browser, not browsers, and after bundling that browser was by default IE. The bold font is to emphasize the competitive advantage, if you don't get it.
And saying that FireFox/Chrome are proof that it just took someone to make a browser "actually better" is not just wrong, it's a blatant lie considering how much better those browsers had to get to sink IE and IE6 even which was technically outdated when it freaking came out and was not updated until way into end half of last decade (I don't mean security upgrades, though I don't can't take seriously anyone who would even try to use that argument while maintaining that IE was quality stuff), if all it had to take was competing product to be better the IE would have sunk (and MS would have invested in IE7) way back with Opera becoming dominant when they took off the advertising bar from free version - or if not Opera then FireFox at least, quite likely even Mozilla - hell, even Netscape was better in everything but it's UI (which generally is not what you focus on).
As for "actually innovating", well, MS stopped it's work in IE for years with no innovation when they reached the position where they felt secure enough of their dominance after IEvs.Netscape war - it took really superior browser for it to gain enough common users that their share came threatening enough for MS that they felt that their browser needed a new release. Meanwhile when other browser manufacturers were innovating MS dominated the browser shares with piece of crap outdated at release IE6 with no even freaking *tabs* being supported - they were even blatantly passive on getting known security holes patched, sometimes even when not only known to them but also known to them that outsiders had the knowledge as well. Don't make me laugh with trying to say that MS was the one who had been innovative at all, that's just crazy ass BS only a truly blind fanboi could sprout...
As for this case against Google, I think it's BS - comparison to MS antitrust case, no matter how you feel about those laws, is not realistic.
The US dos not have public health care where such "waiting lists" could exist.
Yes it does. Medicare, Medicaid, Medi-cal, Veterans Administration (VA), and other programs make up "60-65% of healthcare provision and spending".
But being ignorant of the topic sure makes arguing in support of your opinion so much easier, doesn't it?
I admit I may have been mistaken - I do correct my opinion when confronted with facts or views that convince me that I was. I could have thrown the ignorance blame myself just as justified (and unpolitely) as you here...
Anyway, I'm not sure what you're point is so I couldn't yet consider if I were in fact wrong in what I meant... Is it any of these: * USA has public health care system similar to ours where waiting lists can occur? (in this case I'd still be in disagreement with "numerous problems unheard in US") * USA has public health care with no waiting lists (considering my post above I would have to admit that the public health care in Finland does have waiting lists depending on case - I don't believe this is the case and I wouldn't know where then anyone would originally be disagreeing at all as there would not have been argument against public health care, at least not the same argument. Also my statement was that USA has not universal public health care system that could be compared to Scandinavian, the original statement I was arguing against was that each country health care system has numerous problems unheard in US) * USA has waiting lists, but not public health care? (my limited knowledge of details can always be wrong but I assume that you're pointing out systems related to public health care - I don't know/remember what exactly Medicare, Medicaid or Medi-cal are, but VA sure sounds like something government would/should pay for... Anyway this one would be the most contradicting for pointing "problems unheard in US health care system" in other countries health care)
* Something else... I really admit that I could possibly be missing something that might even be obvious to others, so seriously (as in "this is not attempt to discredit you"): Please do explain what is it you were trying to point if I really missed it if you think that is the case. I'm willing to consider it - or explain myself better if it's a case of misunderstanding my point (whethever fault of mine, yours, no ones or whatever is not an issue I'm interested here, just getting my point understood).
That's the harm of prohibition. It allows people to say "hey, it's illegal, what more can we do?" Or "those criminals get what they deserve." But legalizing drugs has its own set of harms too.
I know. There's rarely a solution with no harms at all - absolute perfection is a utopia... In fact my own words in "I'm not claiming that legalizing all drugs totally would be the best possible solution" were there primarily to state that I do know that legalization is not without any problems, as well as to make it clear that I'm not sure how far from (almost) absolute prohibition of today we should go to not get more harm than we are fixing. I believe that the correct path is 100% decriminalization of drugs in/for personal use, massive improvements in treatment of addicts (including giving drugs like heroin for free to addicts considered "hopeless" to benefit from substitutes like buprenorphine or methadon), legalizing sales of at least most drugs that are not causing considerable number of people getting addicted and addicts suffering considerable harm from it (which also ends up harming the society in general), taxing and regulating the sale of such drugs - with drugs not in legislation taxed like stuff in herbal remedy shops but required to be sold with "warning"/information leaflet such as "research chemical FAQ" on erowid.org, etc. - it's a very complex issue but after serious studying/observations/considerations for over decade this is what my opinion (described briefly and simplified) has formed into so far...
No it's not, it's methylphenidate, which is not chemically related to amphetamines at all. It's similar to them in that it acts as dopaminergic stimulant, though the mechanism (dopamine re-uptake inhibitor) is actually more like that of cocaine (not chemically related either).
I think you are confusing ritalin with adderal - if my memory servers right.
I'm not saying that it makes it safer than amphetamines, in fact depending on what amphetamines exactly you compare to it may even be more (potentionally) dangerous - as it's the case (generally, people are individuals) with ritalin vs. dexedrine where ritalin has more and worse physical (and likely psychological) side effects and also, even though often marketed to scared parents as not having the same potential for abuse, has stronger recreational potential than dexedrine (dextroamphetamine alone does not produce the same euphoria related to racemic (50/50 dextro-/levo-apmhetamine) or metamphetamine).
If a doctor didn't prescribe it you would be calling them junkies. If they are functional then you shouldn't be medicating them.
Junkie generally refers to addicts - and sometimes is used limited to addiction from recreational use (covering abusing drugs that were prescribed for medication). But yes, many (not sure about parent, don't know him) do just call a person junkie just based on knowing that the person has/is sometimes using them without doctors prescription.
P.S. I'm personally on Concerta (also methylphenidate) medication for ADHD, and also am not unfamiliar with recreational use of dopaminergic stimulants.
I'm not claiming that legalizing all drugs totally would be the best possible solution (certainly don't believe it would do good in "free market magic with total lack of regulation" system some are proposing), but one should consider if keeping drugs illegal is doing any good at all to shrink the problem and if it's actually making things even worse.
I do claim that there are reasons to choose at least partial and possibly full legalization of drugs over what you in America as well as we in most of Europe currently have - and place them under regulation and taxing like with other business, such as alcohol and other legal drugs, food, drugs as in meds, etc... And having grown from naive young adult who mainly saw war on drugs as insult of personal freedom and thought little of the drug problem to person who has seen it all, the good and bad sides, I'm demanding that current prohibition must be ended also to help battle the drug problem - having had number of friends die for reasons related strongly to their drug problems has made me more angry than ever at current system that I see doing more bad than good in minimizing drug problem.
Worse yet is that some of those simply don't work at all unless you resort to "Temporarily allow all from this page", in which case I tend to just bail and never go back. I mean seriously...WTF??? I can't tell you how that burns my ass.
I've actually been thinking of writing a short rant about this for last couple days - what's especially annoying is when you do the "Temporarily allow all from this page" (I usually resort to this to see the comment thread on pages, many which don't even show hints of such even existing before you allow several domains) and instead of getting a working site after enabling 3-5 domains you now get "scripts partially allowed" with those 3-5 allowed and something like 4-8 new domains introduced by these 3-5 ones - that's usually when I just go the "Revoke temporary permissions" and leave for good strategy.
It's already shame how badly sites ungracefully degrade without scripting, but this is absolutely intolerable.
Asimov goes without saying. I'd say his writings were great, but were positive -- the dystopian hellholes most people write about start to get boring.
Steel Caves. Naked Sun. The worlds these books take place in are not exactly utopian... Great books anyway, as well as the more positive ones you refer to.
Then patent system is not broken, its being used in a manner in which it was not intended to be used or foreseen to be used. There's a difference between the two:
e.g you cannot call a car broken if you try and fit 7 people in a 5 seater car. on the other hand if the steering wheel doesn't turn the car while accelerating/decellerating then the steering might be claimed to be broken in a car.
How legal/regulatory system being broken or not is really not defined in way that it could be compared to mechanical devices working or not like you seem to think. The comparison works if you define "working" as how the system is used and affects the society the way it was accomplished to do.
Example: war on drugs is not working because the drug criminals that get caught are sentenced heavily as is meant by law - it's broken because it doesn't achieve what it was designed to do, that is destroying or even shrinking the drug problem and the nasty related issues.
In case of patent system it has very much to do with it if it's being used for something it was not meant to and that something is counteractive to what the system is meant to achieve - in such case the system is broken.
I don't think Laxori666 was intimating that "The Market" was broken, but rather that our regulatory systems (that would include the Patent system) have shackled it to the extent that it can be more profitable to engage in legal assaults against your competitors than to actually PRODUCE something new for sale.
Your interpretation makes sense, but seemed to me that he basically put the emphasis on stating that the problem was the whole existence of regulatory system in the first place, which is something I associate with FMN's (Free Market Nutjobs).
MP3 was not invented when minidisc was released, also, the ATRAC codec was designed specifically to be implemented in hardware (remember how even desktop PCs of the time (486, low speed Pentiums) struggled to decode MP3 fast enough, and you want that processing power in a tiny portable device)).
Minidisc did not die right after it was invented, they could have designed it for storing data as well, no?
" You are labouring under on the false assumption that all medical care needs to be available immediately, on demand, and that waiting a few weeks for non-urgent surgery is somehow a terrible indictment of that country's system."
No, I was pointing out that there the parent should just stop denying that there are indeed some trade-offs with a public system, and no advantages of a private system.
And I, the parent poster, never said there was no trade-offs between public and private system, it's just that we can choose to get private health care if we want (and it's generally much cheaper here too - as is getting a [private] health insurances)...
Some also misunderstand waiting lists to mean stuff like not getting critical treatment in time - a common problem for your people who can't afford your system - but I don't know if you have. And you can always get acute treatment.
And now, you're spinning it to a ridiculous degree to justify your opinion. NHS has had problems with waiting-lists of as much as 2 years. That's more than "a few". And "non-urgent" is debatable... particularly when the issue is making a person unable to earn a living, yet they just have to keep on waiting. I'll bet you even know of people who've opted to pay twice for private insurance, or have traveled to other countries for care because they just couldn't wait.
In Finland? Why would anyone pay twice for private insurance? If you mean their taxes being the first payment, I still claim it's cheaper than what you have (and indeed most working people do choose to get medical insurance here).
As for traveling to other countries because they couldn't wait - I don't know any myself, but I've heard of that happening, and it seems to happen in countries with private health care system like yours (though I don't know another example where the private care has so much problems yours does) as well as those with public. Over there it also happens because people can't afford health care.
" I don't give a flying fuck about choosing Hospital A over Hospital B, I want the closest one."
Good for you, because if you get sick or injured while traveling, and check-in to any other hospital than hospital A, expect that you'll be refused treatment, and shipped back to hospital A.
Finnish people have the option to get private treatment and medical insurances, much like yours but a lot cheaper (for various reasons). They often do - especially insurances. The US dos not have public health care where such "waiting lists" could exist.
I don't see a problem here that you don't share with us, but I see two over there that we don't share with you.
P.S. I pretty much knew that someone was going to claim this...
It is the job of the opposition to ensure that alternatives are presented, that proposals are examined for loopholes and deficiencies, and that different views are considered. It doesn't matter if they agree with the proposition or not. They should still be trying to improve it, or find better solutions.
...and if they have no better solutions they should not oppose the thing blindly or to try force improvements unconditionally if it seems to be leading to a thing they basically agree (especially if improvements they want may well even be crafted afterward) being ditched.
Frankly, anyone working (or able to work) should be working AND...have to pay SOME federal tax..I don't care if it is $10 or so....just as long as everyone has some skin in the game, eh?
There are people that don't pay taxes? I'd like to live in a place with no payroll tax or sales tax or other tolls and fees. Please point those places to me.
I don't like it that a large block of people are just voting themselves more money out of the general tax fund.
It's mostly the wealthy that provide these benefits to the poor, so that their money eventually goes back to the rich.
You don't think welfare/food stamps/unemployment money are meant for those people only, do you?
The buck doesn't stop with the poor. If the poor ended up with the money, they wouldn't be poor.
Seems like many over there don't see this that clearly - their vision gets blurred after they think how "those people vote to get my money" and they end up looping a thought such as "damn them, partying on my tax money...".
I've always found that the problem with the government getting involved in social programs is that despite their initial intentions, they end up acting effectively like bribes for votes. Not for one particular party, but for the programs themselves. Once enough people get paid, no elected politician can dislodge them, and most of them don't even suggest it. That works until the money runs out, and then sooner or later, you're Greece.
I don't think that the "Greece Case" has that much to do with social programs - more to do with tax frauds, corruption (got that right though), etc.
Personally I'm happy to live in a country with government doing good work with social programs - with relatively little political corruption (there's always plenty, that's why saying relatively) and also not stuck in dead end loop like two party lock-in situations etc... No wonder you have stuff going badly...
Um... It is the opposition's job to oppose the government, whether they agree with the particular proposition or not - just like it is the defense attorney's duty to try to get the child molesting serial killer acquitted even if the person committed the crimes. If a party gets elected, it is not hypocritical for them to try to pass the same legislation that they tried to stifle when they were the opposition. They have a different role.
I assume what you're saying makes perfect sense to people around where you live? Meanwhile for the rest of the democratic world the job of opposition is to oppose government if they disagree with the particular proposition. And it's not a court session.
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The logical consequence of making prostitution legal is that it becomes just another job. In socialists countries people get benefits from the state if they can't find a job. A suitable job. If they do get a suitable job offer, they got to take it or lose their benefits.
Your wife, sister, mother, girlfriend looses her job and can't find another one. The job center tells her the local whorehouse has a vacancy. Are you okay she should take it rather then keep claiming benefits?
No?
Then legalizing prostitution is not a simple solution that will fix everything.
As I've never seen or heard of job center forcing anyone to work in porn industry either, which is considered by many to be far less stigmatizing and in all ways less worse, I don't see it ever happening that way - and it has not in countries with legalized prostitution either.
With all the potential problems of prostitution, legal or not, this is not one of them really.
I notice you don't counter my argument mere attack individual sentences on details not the general message.
The true hallmark of a person with no original thought of his own. Go away and grow a spine.
I was going to "attack" them too, but overall your post still contained a lot of good points and you weren't suggesting making prostitution illegal so let me say that I'm not attacking the general message.
However I feel that those quotes above were offensive towards many prostitutes and there was also one that offended me - as a person who would not consider prostitution as job of girl friend to be a deal killer - and a friend of mine who in fact had a good relationship with a prostitute in past.
I don't think you really meant to be that offending though.
Punishing prostitutes *helps* them!?
OMG...
Additionally, shouldn't sexual harassment case note be against the one committing the harassment!?
How could that ever go through in a system that makes any sense at all!?
*high five from Finland*
For me, the saved time would not be used in a gym.
Find a gym or whatever that you want to go to. I don't mind exercise if I like the place, the people, and the activity. Life's too short to do stuff you don't like because someone else says you should from a hair shirt perspective.
What a funny thing to say while telling someone else what to do :D
Glad to see some voice of reason...
Isn't USA in debt?
They've probably just not paid off enough officials.
Honestly, even the Microsoft anti-trust trial was a joke, Netscape died out because frankly, it was shit. I distinctly remember how bad it was compared to IE, and I chose IE because IE didn't have Netscape's ugly ass UI.
Oh phlueesh, I clearly remember how bad IE was in comparison to Netscape, which is why I chose Netscape despite of it's ugly UI - and yes, it was ugly, but IE wasn't exactly pretty back then either. Not that it matters, IE was so bad that choosing it for UI style despite of it's flaws would have needed it to have sexually arousing UI ;p
The fact the Microsoft bundles IE with Windows had fuck all to do with it, as the loss of IE dominance in recent years has shown, no the loss of IE's dominance was due to Firefox/Chrome - i.e. browsers that were actually better. IE was still bundled and integrated all this time even with the anti-trust settlement so it shows that all that was needed was competent competition and that bundling gave no real advantage - people are plenty capable of sticking alternative browsers on their systems if a superior one comes along, which it did.
Netscape was better than IE but it's minor in comparison to how much better alternatives there had been for a long time. For me Opera was the first browser to give me tabs and session saver (which was crucial with Windows stability back then - on top of that IE was absurdly shaky itself...
Think what you want of the anti trust laws but don't come claiming me that bundling IE with Windows did not give them competitive advantage on that platform. That would be absurd even without considering how reasonable expectation it was for computer illiterate to even realize that he had options for other browsers - sure, people who had made deal with ISP back when IE wasn't bundled it was the norm that ISP provided you with install disks (floppy or CD) of browser they had chosen (often based on deal with browsers creators) and usually you got IE or Netscape, but average people still usually only knew that there was a browser, not browsers, and after bundling that browser was by default IE. The bold font is to emphasize the competitive advantage, if you don't get it.
And saying that FireFox/Chrome are proof that it just took someone to make a browser "actually better" is not just wrong, it's a blatant lie considering how much better those browsers had to get to sink IE and IE6 even which was technically outdated when it freaking came out and was not updated until way into end half of last decade (I don't mean security upgrades, though I don't can't take seriously anyone who would even try to use that argument while maintaining that IE was quality stuff), if all it had to take was competing product to be better the IE would have sunk (and MS would have invested in IE7) way back with Opera becoming dominant when they took off the advertising bar from free version - or if not Opera then FireFox at least, quite likely even Mozilla - hell, even Netscape was better in everything but it's UI (which generally is not what you focus on).
As for "actually innovating", well, MS stopped it's work in IE for years with no innovation when they reached the position where they felt secure enough of their dominance after IEvs.Netscape war - it took really superior browser for it to gain enough common users that their share came threatening enough for MS that they felt that their browser needed a new release. Meanwhile when other browser manufacturers were innovating MS dominated the browser shares with piece of crap outdated at release IE6 with no even freaking *tabs* being supported - they were even blatantly passive on getting known security holes patched, sometimes even when not only known to them but also known to them that outsiders had the knowledge as well. Don't make me laugh with trying to say that MS was the one who had been innovative at all, that's just crazy ass BS only a truly blind fanboi could sprout...
As for this case against Google, I think it's BS - comparison to MS antitrust case, no matter how you feel about those laws, is not realistic.
Yes it does. Medicare, Medicaid, Medi-cal, Veterans Administration (VA), and other programs make up "60-65% of healthcare provision and spending".
But being ignorant of the topic sure makes arguing in support of your opinion so much easier, doesn't it?
I admit I may have been mistaken - I do correct my opinion when confronted with facts or views that convince me that I was. I could have thrown the ignorance blame myself just as justified (and unpolitely) as you here...
Anyway, I'm not sure what you're point is so I couldn't yet consider if I were in fact wrong in what I meant... Is it any of these:
* USA has public health care system similar to ours where waiting lists can occur? (in this case I'd still be in disagreement with "numerous problems unheard in US")
* USA has public health care with no waiting lists (considering my post above I would have to admit that the public health care in Finland does have waiting lists depending on case - I don't believe this is the case and I wouldn't know where then anyone would originally be disagreeing at all as there would not have been argument against public health care, at least not the same argument. Also my statement was that USA has not universal public health care system that could be compared to Scandinavian, the original statement I was arguing against was that each country health care system has numerous problems unheard in US)
* USA has waiting lists, but not public health care? (my limited knowledge of details can always be wrong but I assume that you're pointing out systems related to public health care - I don't know/remember what exactly Medicare, Medicaid or Medi-cal are, but VA sure sounds like something government would/should pay for... Anyway this one would be the most contradicting for pointing "problems unheard in US health care system" in other countries health care)
* Something else... I really admit that I could possibly be missing something that might even be obvious to others, so seriously (as in "this is not attempt to discredit you"): Please do explain what is it you were trying to point if I really missed it if you think that is the case. I'm willing to consider it - or explain myself better if it's a case of misunderstanding my point (whethever fault of mine, yours, no ones or whatever is not an issue I'm interested here, just getting my point understood).
That's the harm of prohibition. It allows people to say "hey, it's illegal, what more can we do?" Or "those criminals get what they deserve." But legalizing drugs has its own set of harms too.
I know. There's rarely a solution with no harms at all - absolute perfection is a utopia...
In fact my own words in "I'm not claiming that legalizing all drugs totally would be the best possible solution" were there primarily to state that I do know that legalization is not without any problems, as well as to make it clear that I'm not sure how far from (almost) absolute prohibition of today we should go to not get more harm than we are fixing.
I believe that the correct path is 100% decriminalization of drugs in/for personal use, massive improvements in treatment of addicts (including giving drugs like heroin for free to addicts considered "hopeless" to benefit from substitutes like buprenorphine or methadon), legalizing sales of at least most drugs that are not causing considerable number of people getting addicted and addicts suffering considerable harm from it (which also ends up harming the society in general), taxing and regulating the sale of such drugs - with drugs not in legislation taxed like stuff in herbal remedy shops but required to be sold with "warning"/information leaflet such as "research chemical FAQ" on erowid.org, etc. - it's a very complex issue but after serious studying/observations/considerations for over decade this is what my opinion (described briefly and simplified) has formed into so far...
Ritalin is like 4 amphetamines blended together.
No it's not, it's methylphenidate, which is not chemically related to amphetamines at all. It's similar to them in that it acts as dopaminergic stimulant, though the mechanism (dopamine re-uptake inhibitor) is actually more like that of cocaine (not chemically related either).
I think you are confusing ritalin with adderal - if my memory servers right.
I'm not saying that it makes it safer than amphetamines, in fact depending on what amphetamines exactly you compare to it may even be more (potentionally) dangerous - as it's the case (generally, people are individuals) with ritalin vs. dexedrine where ritalin has more and worse physical (and likely psychological) side effects and also, even though often marketed to scared parents as not having the same potential for abuse, has stronger recreational potential than dexedrine (dextroamphetamine alone does not produce the same euphoria related to racemic (50/50 dextro-/levo-apmhetamine) or metamphetamine).
If a doctor didn't prescribe it you would be calling them junkies. If they are functional then you shouldn't be medicating them.
Junkie generally refers to addicts - and sometimes is used limited to addiction from recreational use (covering abusing drugs that were prescribed for medication).
But yes, many (not sure about parent, don't know him) do just call a person junkie just based on knowing that the person has/is sometimes using them without doctors prescription.
P.S. I'm personally on Concerta (also methylphenidate) medication for ADHD, and also am not unfamiliar with recreational use of dopaminergic stimulants.
I'm not claiming that legalizing all drugs totally would be the best possible solution (certainly don't believe it would do good in "free market magic with total lack of regulation" system some are proposing), but one should consider if keeping drugs illegal is doing any good at all to shrink the problem and if it's actually making things even worse.
I do claim that there are reasons to choose at least partial and possibly full legalization of drugs over what you in America as well as we in most of Europe currently have - and place them under regulation and taxing like with other business, such as alcohol and other legal drugs, food, drugs as in meds, etc... And having grown from naive young adult who mainly saw war on drugs as insult of personal freedom and thought little of the drug problem to person who has seen it all, the good and bad sides, I'm demanding that current prohibition must be ended also to help battle the drug problem - having had number of friends die for reasons related strongly to their drug problems has made me more angry than ever at current system that I see doing more bad than good in minimizing drug problem.
Worse yet is that some of those simply don't work at all unless you resort to "Temporarily allow all from this page", in which case I tend to just bail and never go back. I mean seriously...WTF??? I can't tell you how that burns my ass.
I've actually been thinking of writing a short rant about this for last couple days - what's especially annoying is when you do the "Temporarily allow all from this page" (I usually resort to this to see the comment thread on pages, many which don't even show hints of such even existing before you allow several domains) and instead of getting a working site after enabling 3-5 domains you now get "scripts partially allowed" with those 3-5 allowed and something like 4-8 new domains introduced by these 3-5 ones - that's usually when I just go the "Revoke temporary permissions" and leave for good strategy.
It's already shame how badly sites ungracefully degrade without scripting, but this is absolutely intolerable.
Religious texts aside, very similar here:
Asimov goes without saying. I'd say his writings were great, but were positive -- the dystopian hellholes most people write about start to get boring.
Steel Caves. Naked Sun. The worlds these books take place in are not exactly utopian... Great books anyway, as well as the more positive ones you refer to.
Then patent system is not broken, its being used in a manner in which it was not intended to be used or foreseen to be used. There's a difference between the two :
e.g you cannot call a car broken if you try and fit 7 people in a 5 seater car. on the other hand if the steering wheel doesn't turn the car while accelerating/decellerating then the steering might be claimed to be broken in a car.
How legal/regulatory system being broken or not is really not defined in way that it could be compared to mechanical devices working or not like you seem to think. The comparison works if you define "working" as how the system is used and affects the society the way it was accomplished to do.
Example: war on drugs is not working because the drug criminals that get caught are sentenced heavily as is meant by law - it's broken because it doesn't achieve what it was designed to do, that is destroying or even shrinking the drug problem and the nasty related issues.
In case of patent system it has very much to do with it if it's being used for something it was not meant to and that something is counteractive to what the system is meant to achieve - in such case the system is broken.
I don't think Laxori666 was intimating that "The Market" was broken, but rather that our regulatory systems (that would include the Patent system) have shackled it to the extent that it can be more profitable to engage in legal assaults against your competitors than to actually PRODUCE something new for sale.
Your interpretation makes sense, but seemed to me that he basically put the emphasis on stating that the problem was the whole existence of regulatory system in the first place, which is something I associate with FMN's (Free Market Nutjobs).
MP3 was not invented when minidisc was released, also, the ATRAC codec was designed specifically to be implemented in hardware (remember how even desktop PCs of the time (486, low speed Pentiums) struggled to decode MP3 fast enough, and you want that processing power in a tiny portable device)).
Minidisc did not die right after it was invented, they could have designed it for storing data as well, no?
" You are labouring under on the false assumption that all medical care needs to be available immediately, on demand, and that waiting a few weeks for non-urgent surgery is somehow a terrible indictment of that country's system."
No, I was pointing out that there the parent should just stop denying that there are indeed some trade-offs with a public system, and no advantages of a private system.
And I, the parent poster, never said there was no trade-offs between public and private system, it's just that we can choose to get private health care if we want (and it's generally much cheaper here too - as is getting a [private] health insurances)...
Some also misunderstand waiting lists to mean stuff like not getting critical treatment in time - a common problem for your people who can't afford your system - but I don't know if you have. And you can always get acute treatment.
And now, you're spinning it to a ridiculous degree to justify your opinion. NHS has had problems with waiting-lists of as much as 2 years. That's more than "a few". And "non-urgent" is debatable... particularly when the issue is making a person unable to earn a living, yet they just have to keep on waiting. I'll bet you even know of people who've opted to pay twice for private insurance, or have traveled to other countries for care because they just couldn't wait.
In Finland? Why would anyone pay twice for private insurance? If you mean their taxes being the first payment, I still claim it's cheaper than what you have (and indeed most working people do choose to get medical insurance here).
As for traveling to other countries because they couldn't wait - I don't know any myself, but I've heard of that happening, and it seems to happen in countries with private health care system like yours (though I don't know another example where the private care has so much problems yours does) as well as those with public. Over there it also happens because people can't afford health care.
" I don't give a flying fuck about choosing Hospital A over Hospital B, I want the closest one."
Good for you, because if you get sick or injured while traveling, and check-in to any other hospital than hospital A, expect that you'll be refused treatment, and shipped back to hospital A.
Also not true here.
Finnish people have the option to get private treatment and medical insurances, much like yours but a lot cheaper (for various reasons). They often do - especially insurances.
The US dos not have public health care where such "waiting lists" could exist.
I don't see a problem here that you don't share with us, but I see two over there that we don't share with you.
P.S. I pretty much knew that someone was going to claim this...
It is the job of the opposition to ensure that alternatives are presented, that proposals are examined for loopholes and deficiencies, and that different views are considered. It doesn't matter if they agree with the proposition or not. They should still be trying to improve it, or find better solutions.
...and if they have no better solutions they should not oppose the thing blindly or to try force improvements unconditionally if it seems to be leading to a thing they basically agree (especially if improvements they want may well even be crafted afterward) being ditched.
Frankly, anyone working (or able to work) should be working AND...have to pay SOME federal tax..I don't care if it is $10 or so....just as long as everyone has some skin in the game, eh?
There are people that don't pay taxes? I'd like to live in a place with no payroll tax or sales tax or other tolls and fees. Please point those places to me.
Well, you're in luck, such place exists =) <3
I don't like it that a large block of people are just voting themselves more money out of the general tax fund.
It's mostly the wealthy that provide these benefits to the poor, so that their money eventually goes back to the rich.
You don't think welfare/food stamps/unemployment money are meant for those people only, do you?
The buck doesn't stop with the poor. If the poor ended up with the money, they wouldn't be poor.
Seems like many over there don't see this that clearly - their vision gets blurred after they think how "those people vote to get my money" and they end up looping a thought such as "damn them, partying on my tax money...".
I've always found that the problem with the government getting involved in social programs is that despite their initial intentions, they end up acting effectively like bribes for votes. Not for one particular party, but for the programs themselves. Once enough people get paid, no elected politician can dislodge them, and most of them don't even suggest it. That works until the money runs out, and then sooner or later, you're Greece.
I don't think that the "Greece Case" has that much to do with social programs - more to do with tax frauds, corruption (got that right though), etc.
Personally I'm happy to live in a country with government doing good work with social programs - with relatively little political corruption (there's always plenty, that's why saying relatively) and also not stuck in dead end loop like two party lock-in situations etc...
No wonder you have stuff going badly...
What giant hypocrites conservatives are!
Um... It is the opposition's job to oppose the government, whether they agree with the particular proposition or not - just like it is the defense attorney's duty to try to get the child molesting serial killer acquitted even if the person committed the crimes. If a party gets elected, it is not hypocritical for them to try to pass the same legislation that they tried to stifle when they were the opposition. They have a different role.
I assume what you're saying makes perfect sense to people around where you live?
Meanwhile for the rest of the democratic world the job of opposition is to oppose government if they disagree with the particular proposition.
And it's not a court session.