Too bad. They all worked really hard in a meat packing plant, but got infections under their fingernails from the poor working conditions. After they couldn't continue working, they were fired and thrown off of the company PPO on a technicality. They went to a hospital for treatment, and walked out a month later with $250,000 in medical bills. This destroyed their credit, so they were unable to get a decent apartment in a safe neighborhood. After struggling for years to get ahead, the beetles wondered... could they have stayed on and helped to try and advance the cause of science?
Or was it better to follow the advice of a narrow-minded, bigoted, meritless, and anti-human demagogue simply because he had a microphone. They realized that he was right all along. Societal progress can only be accomplished by performing some menial task for someone else. Everything else is just a waste of time.
If you read the public notice it has some valid points about how it works:
1. Voluntary self-identification process 2. When non-genuine thought is detected, citizenship is NOT reduced 3. Yes, we did decide to notify/annoy everyone that certain people are enemies of the state which is a good thing because most people don't know who they are 4. The goal is reduce the number of unidentified enemies of the state, many of whom oppose our policies 5. No harm will come to any identified enemies of the State. This is stated CLEARLY in our current propaganda 6. It does not apply to any real free speech where corporate sponsors are used. @FreeAssembly, lots of states are selective about their fundamental rights... what planet are you on...:o)
The newspaper headline is a little outlandish considering the aforementioned propaganda we are providing. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts before they are illegal.
Most of the western world has a sufficient police force to allow all kinds of backwards hate speech to exist. Some people are bigots, and there's not much you can do about it. Providing a passion for their narrative, by trying to suppress their free speech or incarcerating them for saying something, helps them more than it hurts them. It gives them the attention that they crave, an in some ways legitimizes their "struggle."
Here in the states this is one thing we get mostly right. You can parade around in white sheets, and say nigger and kike all you want. The rest of us will be over here, chuckling at your foolish costume and face tattoos, while the FBI continues to build a profile of your idiocy.
Then, if you actually follow through with the nonsense, hate crime laws will put you away for a few decades. In essence, you're welcome to continue acting like an idiot, but if you actually hurt someone you're going to pay dearly for the crime.
I only wish we could apply the same principles to drug users and other non-violent criminals.
When you call someone an uncivilized savage, there's an implication that you find your own society superior. When your own society engages in interventionist wars that have killed and displaced tens of millions of people for half a century, you can't simply ignore this integral part of your culture because it suits your argument. It would be like examining the British based solely on how they treat British citizens.
If you find the "middle east" uncivilized because you think it is savage, I think you are swallowing wholesale the idea that our culture isn't savage. Just because it's mildly tolerant of it's internal population doesn't separate it morally from any other state.
And then, you state without a hint of irony:
If you include everyone in the government, you have to give equal power to everyone. And I don't want uncivilized savages from the Middle East having any kind of say about what goes on in my life.
Last I checked, the "middle east" does not have any military bases in America. The "middle east" has not invaded any part of the Western world since the decline of the Ottoman Empire. So, you live in a society 100% guilty of what you fear of "uncivilized savages" and you're too buried in your own worldview to even realize what you're saying is that you are afraid of what your society does to other people.
And now you claim you don't "believe" in intervention. And that nearly leaves me speechless.
Hey stupid asshole, when did I ever say America was some paragon of human rights?
You said that the UN was "run" by "Iran, Sudan, Libya, etc" which is total nonsense, as I pointed out.
As for "abject poverty", you've got to be kidding me. No one lives in "abject poverty" in the US. "Poor" people here live in trailers and have TVs and eat tons of junk food. Compared to places like Somalia and Haiti, that's luxury. When people are starving to death in the streets of Omaha, then you can tell me something about poverty in the US.
I was keeping mostly to the way we treat our own population to illustrate that we're no better than any third world nation. We just happen to have a ton of money. More than forty thousand a year die from a lack of health insurance, and our infant mortality is one of the highest in the west.
Incidentally, one of the reasons Haiti is dirt poor is because we destroyed their way of life for a profit by decimating their local pig population and then making them eliminate tariffs for rice production in order to receive emergency loans from the IMF in the late eighties. After all of their farmers drowned in cheap, subsidized rice from the American heartland, they became a dependent state. They elected Aristide who tried to undo the policies, but that was rejected by a US sponsored coup in the early nineties. He violated the golden moral of American foreign policy: Do Not Interfere With Profit. Haiti is our third largest importer of rice.
Which is another way of saying that we are the foxes guarding the henhouse.
Alas, these are mere meanderings in the real world, which have nothing to do with your imagination. Move along, nothing to see here.
Tell me, are these the sort of people who would force you to change your way of life using violence? BEING AN AMERICAN, I CAN'T IMAGINE LIVING IN A SOCIETY LIKE THAT.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to run to a closed door military conference deciding the fate of Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and a smattering of Latin American countries. It's a good thing we know how to save their poor, wretched souls from their own savagery, isn't it?
PS Do not confuse this with something a conquistador or nazi or British imperialist would say. It's totally different!
What, is crushing a peaceful pro-democracy movement by killing its own citizens in the name of peace not bad enough for you?
For a WorldNetDaily reader?
They sell help peddle penny stocks, "crisis seed banks," and one of their favorite talking heads literally suggested that we should invade nations, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity. If anything, WND readers are jealous of the Iranian theocracy.
The United Nations Security Council 'power of veto' refers to the veto power wielded solely by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States), enabling them to prevent the adoption of any 'substantive' draft Council resolution, regardless of the level of international support for the draft.
And as far as opposing human rights, there are a scant few who can avoid being hypocrites. America has the death penalty, the western world's highest incarceration rate, an indigenous population that still lives in abject poverty, and has invaded dozens of nations with regular and covert military operations. As for the Chinese, the Russians, the British, and the French, you were allowed to learn about their human rights abuses, so I don't need to outline them.
The advertising model of American media is going to go away, either through self-destruction or consumer choice. Advertisement subsidized content is mostly worthless. You have a choice between low production value in niche markets, or high production value where the content is dumbed down and filtered through corporate "values" lenses so you can sell enough ads to pay for the production. In the first option you have marginally interesting but poorly presented content. In the second, it's a highly polished turd. There are a few outlets that manage to hit the middle, but not many.
You're better off trying to found some sort of non-profit to provide free speech services for proxy use. But it seems like you just want to help people fuck off at work, and if they're not willing to pay for that privilege, what's the point?
If someone is still on XP and IE6, it indicates one or all of the following:
1. they are locked down by a cheap or technologically depressed corporation 2. they haven't bought a new PC in quite a few years 3. they haven't bothered to patch XP in a quite a few years, so it's probably pirated
In either of these cases, they are less likely to have money to spend. Opera at least indicates that they are somewhat tech savvy, and Safari usually indicates that they bought a Mac.
So, IE6 is dead to me in the sense that it's very unlikely that people who use it have any money to spend.
Researchers from Imperial College London and their European partners, including Volvo Car Corporation, are developing a prototype material which can store and discharge electrical energy and which is also strong and lightweight enough to be used for car parts.
Now, take your foot out of your mouth, and enjoy the following quote:
"When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities." -David Hume
I'm living proof that slashdot is mostly full of arrogant people who enjoy misinformed and cynical deconstruction above all else.
Because that would concentrate insurance agencies into a state that is friendly to their interests, just as all credit card companies seem to be based out of Nebraska or Delaware.
You only forgot two things about US history: slavery and Native Americans. It's alright though. In the rosy imaginations of star spangled brains, I'm sure a nation founded on the idea that only rich white men should make decisions for a nation doesn't cause a second of discomfort.
As far as being doomed, America still has a long way to fall. But if the richest Americans are successful into duping the middle class into voting themselves out of existence, we will very abruptly be unable to compete with the rest of the western world. As corporations concentrate, prices and instability rise, especially when there is basically no regulation of the financial industry. Canada, for instance, has the most regulated and only solvent banking system in the world, because they don't treat it like a casino. And instead of being short sighted and having irrational faith in "the market," they learn from their mistakes, adjust policy, and move forward.
But yes, most of your conception of US history is imagined, and I'll bet your conception of the present is also mostly a hallucination.
I don’t think monopolies are nearly as much of a problem in a free market as opposed to one that’s been heavily regulated.
Look around the world to see the results. Strong regulatory states dominate GDP per capita. This is because a powerful regulatory body steadies the market as it inevitably moves through it's cycles.
these arguments come down to a moral one: is it okay to forcibly take from one person in order to provide a basic level of care for another? I don’t think that’s morally sound, in fact, I think it’s horribly unjust
Ah. So, building roads is okay. Rail, airports, municipal buildings, all fine. Fighter jets, tanks, helicopter gunships, and we're still on the moral high ground. And the second an orphaned child receives state funded care, you think it's "horribly unjust." You're really just full of shit, aren't you?
You will always be forced to make unconscionable choices: who deserves to bear the burden of supporting the others? Why shouldn’t we take equal amounts from everyone, why should some bear a higher burden than others from a moral perspective? What do you define as the bare minimum that everyone deserves?
So, the more unconscionable choice is to decide to let your countrymen suffer because you won't come off an extra 10% on your taxes? Do you have any idea what happens to a society when wealth inequality leads to starvation, or what an economy looks like when a vast majority of the country is illiterate, uneducated, and wallowing in poverty?
If a poor person needs an $1,000,000 surgery in order to survive, should he get it or not? If that person needs $10,000,000, should he get it? Or should we just let him die? At what point is it okay to let a person die? I would never want to be the one making these decisions because I don’t believe there are right answers here. They are all wrong.
If poor people aren't worth keeping alive, why not sponsor hunts like the good old days in the Wild West? We could offer $1,000 for the head of any minority (since they're most likely to be poor), or offer them $1,000 in exchange for getting sterilized so they won't breed. I'm sure none of the major businesses would suffer if the lowest wage they could pay an employee was $15 an hour, since all of the people who earned a minimum wage are now dead. I'm sure prices wouldn't go up a bit. And I'm sure you would never get caught up in that cycle, where the bottom 20% of the population is wiped out, jobs are cut, more people sink to the "poor" level, and another round of head bounties begins.
I'll get serious just for another moment. Here is a list of the most expensive uninsured hospital expenditures. The top one translates to about $52,000 per procedure, which is an AMI/heart attack, for a total of 2.08 billion. The next is a pregnancy and delivery, at $9,300 per person, for a total of 2.04 billion. And the costs go down from there. As far as I can tell, the total cost of uninsured care which doesn't get paid is $40 billion per year. So, less than three months of war spending, or half of what we spend a year on cigarettes.
That's a fine moral argument you're making. If you're a complete lunatic.
These exercises are mostly pointless. Yes, in a perfect world we could have communism or a completely free market. But to completely destroy your first hypothetical in an instant, all you have to do is realize that there are many products which are owned by one company. Even if there wasn't a patent system, they could quite easily buy off any competition as it arises, and continue to charge whatever they like. This would make progress impossible. Nearly all alternatives would be eliminated in their infancy. The market works when there is competition. Sometimes you need more government regulation to foster competition, and sometimes you need less.
Your second paragraph ignores the fact that insurance companies are now doing the choosing for their patients. While there may be some good arguments for decentralizing these bureaucracies, they already exist in the insurance industry. And in your imaginary world, insurance companies would have no incentive to keep treating their most expensive clients. Just as they do now, they would find some technicality to kick them off their rolls, and rope-a-dope with lawyers until their former clients give up or die. A government bureaucrat has no reason to deny you the health care, and I think it would be trivial to anonymize any patient information that could lead to discrimination.
I propose that the fairest solution is to let the decision be based on the patient's values, priorities, and resources.
The subtext to this proposal is that poor people deserve to die more than rich people. I think it's pretty obvious that most Americans disagree with this sentiment. (In fact, I'd trade any out of work blue collar employee for a thousand Paris Hiltons.) Do you really think anyone who happens to be low on money and in a car accident deserves to die? Or that any kid without parents who comes down with the flu should be patted on the head and sent back to work?
The problem with the hardline capitalist viewpoint is that it ignores the fact that people have bad luck, that accidents happen, and fails to recognize that society is much better as a whole when everyone has a fair shake at life. I'd challenge you to find anyone even ten people who truly believe that the consequences of complete deregulation are acceptable.
Listen. Your anecdotal claims backed up by zero statistics are surely fascinating. And I'm so excited that here in the "science" section of slashdot, hearsay is apparently super awesome.
If you want to go back to 50s medicine, you're welcome to it. People who have heart problems can die twenty years earlier. Severe forms of diabetes can go back to being lethal. Patients with mental illnesses can be lobotomized and put in a walled garden somewhere. Let's just throw out the massive advances in medical technology just so you can make some cheap, baseless, and most importantly, false political points.
Medical care is now highly specialized, with many, many fields, staffed by many different doctors, and I can guarantee you that that leading oncologists, heart surgeons, and neurosurgeons will not visit your house for an extra fifty cents. Sorry, but your childhood fantasy is just a childhood fantasy.
Out in the rest of civilization, the best way to cope with the increase of medical technology is to socialize it to reduce overhead. This is because it is very difficult to incentivize keeping someone healthy in a pure market. Without regulations, companies have no reason not to charge you outrageously for everything, since the cost you're willing to pay to live his virtually no limit.
I'll use this opportunity to make a larger point: you're not going to get much progress out of the corporate game of developing a product. The difference is in these two questions:
There's a reason that the 17,000 U.S. troops in Haiti weren't donated to the U.N. mission there
It was more likely the same reason a UN mission didn't kidnap the democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide, into exile in 2004. There have been 8,000 UN troops fighting in Haiti since then.
just like there's a reason why the only action taken against Sudan has been an arrest warrant in Europe. It's unfortunate that the UN security council is a reminder to so many other countries about their comparative lack of power.
The UN lacks power because the US, currently the only world superpower, has steadily decreased its credibility, cut funding, and defied nearly every vote critical of the US with its permanent veto power. Trying to say that the only action taken by the UN is an arrest warrant is simple dishonesty. They have charted a course of action, but they lack the funding to carry it out.
The United States and Europe standing by while Darfur rages is more of an indictment of our moral character than anything else. They'll watch it the same way they watched Rwanda and Somalia and East Timor and Cambodia. If the resources aren't important, the people who live near them are worthless in the eyes of the West. Other nations act similarly, but it's pathetic that the West is unable to accept their own value system.
Cuba. Sudan. China, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Germany. You're not insane, those things certainly do exists, but you may wish to note they've been notoriously unreliable at actually accomplishing anything.
I really doubt this is evidence of any attempt at diplomacy. Why not point to Turkey or Egypt or Syria or Jordan or even Libya? I guess because it would be counter to your argument. (Incidentally, all those are countries with atrocious human rights records and except for Turkey, no democratic institutions. They all plead fealty to the Empire, so diplomacy is therefore an option.)
I would base it on logistical difficulty, the current tactical impossibility, and that I imagine both sides being armed with nuclear weapons makes the possibility of ever conquering either one pretty unlikely.
No one said there would be conquering. There would be a fight, and in fact, the rhetoric just got inched up since we made a 6 billion dollar arms deal with Taiwan, I'm guessing in retribution for the cyber attacks.
Chinese state media have lambasted the US arms deal with Taiwan, turning up the pressure over the $6.4bn (£4bn) agreement.
Beijing's reaction to the package – which includes Black Hawk helicopters, Patriot missiles and mine-hunter ships – was described by one official newspaper as its toughest in three decades of sales. It comes as the bilateral relationship faces other strains over issues including climate change, Tibet, censorship and trade.
A commentary in the official Communist party newspaper the People's Daily accused Washington of "rude and unreasonable cold war thinking"... China Daily, an official English language paper, said in an editorial: "China's response, no matter how vehement, is justified. No country worthy of respect can sit idle while its national security is endangered and core interests damaged."
1) They don't [have the means]
They do. We are no longer the majority importer of Chinese goods. They are now the largest exporter in the world. What manufacturing sector can we replace theirs with?
2) Why would a one party dictatorship growing rich on the exploitation of their people want to attack the people most responsible for the never ending stream of money that has made their economic success possible?
The UN has had some very minor paper power - that which people like to point to and mumble about "international law" (a non-existent fallacy) - but the world court is nothing.
The UN and World Court do exist when they agree with the United States. Isn't that peculiar.
There is no legal recourse at the sovereign level. That's the meaning of the word. The only recourse is militaristic
So, the trade agreements around the world are a figment of my imagination? Trade embargoes don't exist, multi-party talks to persuade foreign governments exist entirely in my imagination. It is fascinating how insane I am.
and China will not be invading the US. Nor will the US be invading China.
And you'd base this on what fortune telling ability? I'm glad simple assertions are gaining traction here on slashdot. By this time next year we can all be Brothers in Christ.
Both are sad, pathetic, fantasies of bizarrely twisted and broken minds.
What do you think the result will be in the end if the caveman ethic of violent response continues to be the most popular option among powerful nations? It seems like adhering to legal treaties at every opportunity would be a better idea than blowing people up, or testing the reliability of Soviet era nuclear defense systems.
But to hell with international law, right? No constitutional republic really believes in the rule of law. Finally we can admit it's all a farce, and move on with whatever benefits the empire. I'm so glad you've seen the light, sir. Your fealty has been noted.
I'd say the US will have hung itself with it's own rope. All China will have to do is claim that the United States has the capacity to conduct terrorism, and then if it has the means, China can setup a blockade, wage a currency war, or invade under the precedent we set a few years ago. Since we've destroyed the power of the UN and the World Court, we won't even have symbolic legal recourse.
The Golden Rule ain't for nothing. You can call it silly European bullshit I guess, but you also seem like the sort of person who fantasizes about nuclear war. Too bad.
Toyota has said its latest problem happened because condensation from heaters caused increased friction in the gas pedal, making it stick in some cases, making the problem a mechanical one and not an issue of electronics
So, this is in all likelihood, a fluff piece about a mechanical issue that tries to scapegoat the lack of an electronic safety on the pedal. Which defeats the implied issues with malfunctioning electronics - it's the lack of more electronics that may be the problem.
Second, the old saying is that you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Truly, you can't improve technology unless you are willing to make mistakes. As long as companies aren't being reckless with the risks they are taking, and as long as we are trying to move forward instead of being terrified of the future, these mistakes are signs of progress, not failure.
He's organizing a secret Bolshevik style plot to overthrow the government by passing health care legislation! And hiring people who used to work at companies that file patents! Or something...
Do you think you'll get more of a response if you write your senator or the CEOs of Comcast and AT&T and Verizon?
If there were no regulation against monopolies, internet service would almost certainly be in the hands of one. They wouldn't ask anyone for permission to block any protocol, they would just do it. (CEO Bob wants another 10% to the bottom line? No problem... shut down port 25 and double the price of mail storage.) Not to mention the fact that without serious investment by DARPA, the internet may not have existed in the first place.
When a functioning democracy is in place, you can affect change with your vote, and it barely costs you anything except your time. That's supposed to be the equalizer for corporate power, since you're not going to have as much money as anyone in the Fortune 10,000 (if there is such a thing). When there's not even a mechanism in place to reign in business shenanigans, they just have to hold back enough so there aren't riots. Unless they can figure out a way to make money from riots.
We are supposed to be a constitutional republic, which holds everyone equal in the eyes of the law, which should be written by the society as a whole -- not just the rich and powerful. This is specifically due to the abuses of the monarchies and churches and companies that dominated society at the time of our founding, and continue today. Once again, the answer to a non-functioning democracy is a functioning one. Throwing away the government check to corporate power won't do anyone a damn bit of good, except for the people who own the corporations.
Big businesses welcome regulation that they lobby for. They despise regulation that comes from any other source. In an nutshell, your problem isn't regulation but lobbyists and corruption.
When big businesses really ran the show a hundred years ago, you had kids working in sweatshops, factory fires that killed scores of people, and the government literally sending in the marines to break up union strikes. Businesses have been forced to become civilized, not by their own will, but by government regulation and public pressure.
Americans could change the way business is done, but collectively, we have been hoodwinked into believing that we can't do anything, and that football and famous twats deserve more of our attention than the decisions that really do affect our lives. The real issue now is that so much money is being diverted to the military and away from education and infrastructure that each successive generation is dumber and more apolitical than the last.
Slashdot Mirror
Too bad. They all worked really hard in a meat packing plant, but got infections under their fingernails from the poor working conditions. After they couldn't continue working, they were fired and thrown off of the company PPO on a technicality. They went to a hospital for treatment, and walked out a month later with $250,000 in medical bills. This destroyed their credit, so they were unable to get a decent apartment in a safe neighborhood. After struggling for years to get ahead, the beetles wondered... could they have stayed on and helped to try and advance the cause of science?
Or was it better to follow the advice of a narrow-minded, bigoted, meritless, and anti-human demagogue simply because he had a microphone. They realized that he was right all along. Societal progress can only be accomplished by performing some menial task for someone else. Everything else is just a waste of time.
//South Carolina Congressman Here//
If you read the public notice it has some valid points about how it works:
1. Voluntary self-identification process :o)
2. When non-genuine thought is detected, citizenship is NOT reduced
3. Yes, we did decide to notify/annoy everyone that certain people are enemies of the state which is a good thing because most people don't know who they are
4. The goal is reduce the number of unidentified enemies of the state, many of whom oppose our policies
5. No harm will come to any identified enemies of the State. This is stated CLEARLY in our current propaganda
6. It does not apply to any real free speech where corporate sponsors are used. @FreeAssembly, lots of states are selective about their fundamental rights... what planet are you on...
The newspaper headline is a little outlandish considering the aforementioned propaganda we are providing. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts before they are illegal.
Most of the western world has a sufficient police force to allow all kinds of backwards hate speech to exist. Some people are bigots, and there's not much you can do about it. Providing a passion for their narrative, by trying to suppress their free speech or incarcerating them for saying something, helps them more than it hurts them. It gives them the attention that they crave, an in some ways legitimizes their "struggle."
Here in the states this is one thing we get mostly right. You can parade around in white sheets, and say nigger and kike all you want. The rest of us will be over here, chuckling at your foolish costume and face tattoos, while the FBI continues to build a profile of your idiocy.
Then, if you actually follow through with the nonsense, hate crime laws will put you away for a few decades. In essence, you're welcome to continue acting like an idiot, but if you actually hurt someone you're going to pay dearly for the crime.
I only wish we could apply the same principles to drug users and other non-violent criminals.
When you call someone an uncivilized savage, there's an implication that you find your own society superior. When your own society engages in interventionist wars that have killed and displaced tens of millions of people for half a century, you can't simply ignore this integral part of your culture because it suits your argument. It would be like examining the British based solely on how they treat British citizens.
If you find the "middle east" uncivilized because you think it is savage, I think you are swallowing wholesale the idea that our culture isn't savage. Just because it's mildly tolerant of it's internal population doesn't separate it morally from any other state.
And then, you state without a hint of irony:
If you include everyone in the government, you have to give equal power to everyone. And I don't want uncivilized savages from the Middle East having any kind of say about what goes on in my life.
Last I checked, the "middle east" does not have any military bases in America. The "middle east" has not invaded any part of the Western world since the decline of the Ottoman Empire. So, you live in a society 100% guilty of what you fear of "uncivilized savages" and you're too buried in your own worldview to even realize what you're saying is that you are afraid of what your society does to other people.
And now you claim you don't "believe" in intervention. And that nearly leaves me speechless.
Hey stupid asshole, when did I ever say America was some paragon of human rights?
You said that the UN was "run" by "Iran, Sudan, Libya, etc" which is total nonsense, as I pointed out.
As for "abject poverty", you've got to be kidding me. No one lives in "abject poverty" in the US. "Poor" people here live in trailers and have TVs and eat tons of junk food. Compared to places like Somalia and Haiti, that's luxury. When people are starving to death in the streets of Omaha, then you can tell me something about poverty in the US.
I was keeping mostly to the way we treat our own population to illustrate that we're no better than any third world nation. We just happen to have a ton of money. More than forty thousand a year die from a lack of health insurance, and our infant mortality is one of the highest in the west.
Incidentally, one of the reasons Haiti is dirt poor is because we destroyed their way of life for a profit by decimating their local pig population and then making them eliminate tariffs for rice production in order to receive emergency loans from the IMF in the late eighties. After all of their farmers drowned in cheap, subsidized rice from the American heartland, they became a dependent state. They elected Aristide who tried to undo the policies, but that was rejected by a US sponsored coup in the early nineties. He violated the golden moral of American foreign policy: Do Not Interfere With Profit. Haiti is our third largest importer of rice.
Which is another way of saying that we are the foxes guarding the henhouse.
Alas, these are mere meanderings in the real world, which have nothing to do with your imagination. Move along, nothing to see here.
Tell me, are these the sort of people who would force you to change your way of life using violence? BEING AN AMERICAN, I CAN'T IMAGINE LIVING IN A SOCIETY LIKE THAT.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to run to a closed door military conference deciding the fate of Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and a smattering of Latin American countries. It's a good thing we know how to save their poor, wretched souls from their own savagery, isn't it?
PS Do not confuse this with something a conquistador or nazi or British imperialist would say. It's totally different!
What, is crushing a peaceful pro-democracy movement by killing its own citizens in the name of peace not bad enough for you?
For a WorldNetDaily reader?
They sell help peddle penny stocks, "crisis seed banks," and one of their favorite talking heads literally suggested that we should invade nations, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity. If anything, WND readers are jealous of the Iranian theocracy.
The UN is run by the five permanent members of the Security Council.
The United Nations Security Council 'power of veto' refers to the veto power wielded solely by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States), enabling them to prevent the adoption of any 'substantive' draft Council resolution, regardless of the level of international support for the draft.
And as far as opposing human rights, there are a scant few who can avoid being hypocrites. America has the death penalty, the western world's highest incarceration rate, an indigenous population that still lives in abject poverty, and has invaded dozens of nations with regular and covert military operations. As for the Chinese, the Russians, the British, and the French, you were allowed to learn about their human rights abuses, so I don't need to outline them.
The advertising model of American media is going to go away, either through self-destruction or consumer choice. Advertisement subsidized content is mostly worthless. You have a choice between low production value in niche markets, or high production value where the content is dumbed down and filtered through corporate "values" lenses so you can sell enough ads to pay for the production. In the first option you have marginally interesting but poorly presented content. In the second, it's a highly polished turd. There are a few outlets that manage to hit the middle, but not many.
You're better off trying to found some sort of non-profit to provide free speech services for proxy use. But it seems like you just want to help people fuck off at work, and if they're not willing to pay for that privilege, what's the point?
If someone is still on XP and IE6, it indicates one or all of the following:
1. they are locked down by a cheap or technologically depressed corporation
2. they haven't bought a new PC in quite a few years
3. they haven't bothered to patch XP in a quite a few years, so it's probably pirated
In either of these cases, they are less likely to have money to spend. Opera at least indicates that they are somewhat tech savvy, and Safari usually indicates that they bought a Mac.
So, IE6 is dead to me in the sense that it's very unlikely that people who use it have any money to spend.
Read the article.
Researchers from Imperial College London and their European partners, including Volvo Car Corporation, are developing a prototype material which can store and discharge electrical energy and which is also strong and lightweight enough to be used for car parts.
Now, take your foot out of your mouth, and enjoy the following quote:
"When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities." -David Hume
I'm living proof that slashdot is mostly full of arrogant people who enjoy misinformed and cynical deconstruction above all else.
Because that would concentrate insurance agencies into a state that is friendly to their interests, just as all credit card companies seem to be based out of Nebraska or Delaware.
You only forgot two things about US history: slavery and Native Americans. It's alright though. In the rosy imaginations of star spangled brains, I'm sure a nation founded on the idea that only rich white men should make decisions for a nation doesn't cause a second of discomfort.
As far as being doomed, America still has a long way to fall. But if the richest Americans are successful into duping the middle class into voting themselves out of existence, we will very abruptly be unable to compete with the rest of the western world. As corporations concentrate, prices and instability rise, especially when there is basically no regulation of the financial industry. Canada, for instance, has the most regulated and only solvent banking system in the world, because they don't treat it like a casino. And instead of being short sighted and having irrational faith in "the market," they learn from their mistakes, adjust policy, and move forward.
But yes, most of your conception of US history is imagined, and I'll bet your conception of the present is also mostly a hallucination.
I don’t think monopolies are nearly as much of a problem in a free market as opposed to one that’s been heavily regulated.
Look around the world to see the results. Strong regulatory states dominate GDP per capita. This is because a powerful regulatory body steadies the market as it inevitably moves through it's cycles.
these arguments come down to a moral one: is it okay to forcibly take from one person in order to provide a basic level of care for another? I don’t think that’s morally sound, in fact, I think it’s horribly unjust
Ah. So, building roads is okay. Rail, airports, municipal buildings, all fine. Fighter jets, tanks, helicopter gunships, and we're still on the moral high ground. And the second an orphaned child receives state funded care, you think it's "horribly unjust." You're really just full of shit, aren't you?
You will always be forced to make unconscionable choices: who deserves to bear the burden of supporting the others? Why shouldn’t we take equal amounts from everyone, why should some bear a higher burden than others from a moral perspective? What do you define as the bare minimum that everyone deserves?
So, the more unconscionable choice is to decide to let your countrymen suffer because you won't come off an extra 10% on your taxes? Do you have any idea what happens to a society when wealth inequality leads to starvation, or what an economy looks like when a vast majority of the country is illiterate, uneducated, and wallowing in poverty?
If a poor person needs an $1,000,000 surgery in order to survive, should he get it or not? If that person needs $10,000,000, should he get it? Or should we just let him die? At what point is it okay to let a person die? I would never want to be the one making these decisions because I don’t believe there are right answers here. They are all wrong.
If poor people aren't worth keeping alive, why not sponsor hunts like the good old days in the Wild West? We could offer $1,000 for the head of any minority (since they're most likely to be poor), or offer them $1,000 in exchange for getting sterilized so they won't breed. I'm sure none of the major businesses would suffer if the lowest wage they could pay an employee was $15 an hour, since all of the people who earned a minimum wage are now dead. I'm sure prices wouldn't go up a bit. And I'm sure you would never get caught up in that cycle, where the bottom 20% of the population is wiped out, jobs are cut, more people sink to the "poor" level, and another round of head bounties begins.
I'll get serious just for another moment. Here is a list of the most expensive uninsured hospital expenditures. The top one translates to about $52,000 per procedure, which is an AMI/heart attack, for a total of 2.08 billion. The next is a pregnancy and delivery, at $9,300 per person, for a total of 2.04 billion. And the costs go down from there. As far as I can tell, the total cost of uninsured care which doesn't get paid is $40 billion per year. So, less than three months of war spending, or half of what we spend a year on cigarettes.
That's a fine moral argument you're making. If you're a complete lunatic.
These exercises are mostly pointless. Yes, in a perfect world we could have communism or a completely free market. But to completely destroy your first hypothetical in an instant, all you have to do is realize that there are many products which are owned by one company. Even if there wasn't a patent system, they could quite easily buy off any competition as it arises, and continue to charge whatever they like. This would make progress impossible. Nearly all alternatives would be eliminated in their infancy. The market works when there is competition. Sometimes you need more government regulation to foster competition, and sometimes you need less.
Your second paragraph ignores the fact that insurance companies are now doing the choosing for their patients. While there may be some good arguments for decentralizing these bureaucracies, they already exist in the insurance industry. And in your imaginary world, insurance companies would have no incentive to keep treating their most expensive clients. Just as they do now, they would find some technicality to kick them off their rolls, and rope-a-dope with lawyers until their former clients give up or die. A government bureaucrat has no reason to deny you the health care, and I think it would be trivial to anonymize any patient information that could lead to discrimination.
I propose that the fairest solution is to let the decision be based on the patient's values, priorities, and resources.
The subtext to this proposal is that poor people deserve to die more than rich people. I think it's pretty obvious that most Americans disagree with this sentiment. (In fact, I'd trade any out of work blue collar employee for a thousand Paris Hiltons.) Do you really think anyone who happens to be low on money and in a car accident deserves to die? Or that any kid without parents who comes down with the flu should be patted on the head and sent back to work?
The problem with the hardline capitalist viewpoint is that it ignores the fact that people have bad luck, that accidents happen, and fails to recognize that society is much better as a whole when everyone has a fair shake at life. I'd challenge you to find anyone even ten people who truly believe that the consequences of complete deregulation are acceptable.
Listen. Your anecdotal claims backed up by zero statistics are surely fascinating. And I'm so excited that here in the "science" section of slashdot, hearsay is apparently super awesome.
If you want to go back to 50s medicine, you're welcome to it. People who have heart problems can die twenty years earlier. Severe forms of diabetes can go back to being lethal. Patients with mental illnesses can be lobotomized and put in a walled garden somewhere. Let's just throw out the massive advances in medical technology just so you can make some cheap, baseless, and most importantly, false political points.
Medical care is now highly specialized, with many, many fields, staffed by many different doctors, and I can guarantee you that that leading oncologists, heart surgeons, and neurosurgeons will not visit your house for an extra fifty cents. Sorry, but your childhood fantasy is just a childhood fantasy.
Out in the rest of civilization, the best way to cope with the increase of medical technology is to socialize it to reduce overhead. This is because it is very difficult to incentivize keeping someone healthy in a pure market. Without regulations, companies have no reason not to charge you outrageously for everything, since the cost you're willing to pay to live his virtually no limit.
Jeff Han did this four years ago:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html
He now has a company spun off from his research at NYU:
http://www.perceptivepixel.com/
I'll use this opportunity to make a larger point: you're not going to get much progress out of the corporate game of developing a product. The difference is in these two questions:
1. What is possible to sell?
2. What is possible?
There's a reason that the 17,000 U.S. troops in Haiti weren't donated to the U.N. mission there
It was more likely the same reason a UN mission didn't kidnap the democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide, into exile in 2004. There have been 8,000 UN troops fighting in Haiti since then.
just like there's a reason why the only action taken against Sudan has been an arrest warrant in Europe. It's unfortunate that the UN security council is a reminder to so many other countries about their comparative lack of power.
The UN lacks power because the US, currently the only world superpower, has steadily decreased its credibility, cut funding, and defied nearly every vote critical of the US with its permanent veto power. Trying to say that the only action taken by the UN is an arrest warrant is simple dishonesty. They have charted a course of action, but they lack the funding to carry it out.
The United States and Europe standing by while Darfur rages is more of an indictment of our moral character than anything else. They'll watch it the same way they watched Rwanda and Somalia and East Timor and Cambodia. If the resources aren't important, the people who live near them are worthless in the eyes of the West. Other nations act similarly, but it's pathetic that the West is unable to accept their own value system.
Cuba. Sudan. China, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Germany. You're not insane, those things certainly do exists, but you may wish to note they've been notoriously unreliable at actually accomplishing anything.
I really doubt this is evidence of any attempt at diplomacy. Why not point to Turkey or Egypt or Syria or Jordan or even Libya? I guess because it would be counter to your argument. (Incidentally, all those are countries with atrocious human rights records and except for Turkey, no democratic institutions. They all plead fealty to the Empire, so diplomacy is therefore an option.)
I would base it on logistical difficulty, the current tactical impossibility, and that I imagine both sides being armed with nuclear weapons makes the possibility of ever conquering either one pretty unlikely.
No one said there would be conquering. There would be a fight, and in fact, the rhetoric just got inched up since we made a 6 billion dollar arms deal with Taiwan, I'm guessing in retribution for the cyber attacks.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/01/chinese-us-taiwan-arms-deal
Chinese state media have lambasted the US arms deal with Taiwan, turning up the pressure over the $6.4bn (£4bn) agreement.
Beijing's reaction to the package – which includes Black Hawk helicopters, Patriot missiles and mine-hunter ships – was described by one official newspaper as its toughest in three decades of sales. It comes as the bilateral relationship faces other strains over issues including climate change, Tibet, censorship and trade.
A commentary in the official Communist party newspaper the People's Daily accused Washington of "rude and unreasonable cold war thinking"... China Daily, an official English language paper, said in an editorial: "China's response, no matter how vehement, is justified. No country worthy of respect can sit idle while its national security is endangered and core interests damaged."
1) They don't [have the means]
They do. We are no longer the majority importer of Chinese goods. They are now the largest exporter in the world. What manufacturing sector can we replace theirs with?
2) Why would a one party dictatorship growing rich on the exploitation of their people want to attack the people most responsible for the never ending stream of money that has made their economic success possible?
Because, amazingly, some co
The UN has had some very minor paper power - that which people like to point to and mumble about "international law" (a non-existent fallacy) - but the world court is nothing.
The UN and World Court do exist when they agree with the United States. Isn't that peculiar.
There is no legal recourse at the sovereign level. That's the meaning of the word. The only recourse is militaristic
So, the trade agreements around the world are a figment of my imagination? Trade embargoes don't exist, multi-party talks to persuade foreign governments exist entirely in my imagination. It is fascinating how insane I am.
and China will not be invading the US. Nor will the US be invading China.
And you'd base this on what fortune telling ability? I'm glad simple assertions are gaining traction here on slashdot. By this time next year we can all be Brothers in Christ.
Both are sad, pathetic, fantasies of bizarrely twisted and broken minds.
What do you think the result will be in the end if the caveman ethic of violent response continues to be the most popular option among powerful nations? It seems like adhering to legal treaties at every opportunity would be a better idea than blowing people up, or testing the reliability of Soviet era nuclear defense systems.
But to hell with international law, right? No constitutional republic really believes in the rule of law. Finally we can admit it's all a farce, and move on with whatever benefits the empire. I'm so glad you've seen the light, sir. Your fealty has been noted.
I'd say the US will have hung itself with it's own rope. All China will have to do is claim that the United States has the capacity to conduct terrorism, and then if it has the means, China can setup a blockade, wage a currency war, or invade under the precedent we set a few years ago. Since we've destroyed the power of the UN and the World Court, we won't even have symbolic legal recourse.
The Golden Rule ain't for nothing. You can call it silly European bullshit I guess, but you also seem like the sort of person who fantasizes about nuclear war. Too bad.
First of all, the article says:
Toyota has said its latest problem happened because condensation from heaters caused increased friction in the gas pedal, making it stick in some cases, making the problem a mechanical one and not an issue of electronics
So, this is in all likelihood, a fluff piece about a mechanical issue that tries to scapegoat the lack of an electronic safety on the pedal. Which defeats the implied issues with malfunctioning electronics - it's the lack of more electronics that may be the problem.
Second, the old saying is that you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Truly, you can't improve technology unless you are willing to make mistakes. As long as companies aren't being reckless with the risks they are taking, and as long as we are trying to move forward instead of being terrified of the future, these mistakes are signs of progress, not failure.
He's organizing a secret Bolshevik style plot to overthrow the government by passing health care legislation! And hiring people who used to work at companies that file patents! Or something...
How solipsistic are Apple users? They pay $99 a year for the privilege of having an e-mail address at me.com.
Zing! Pow!
Do you think you'll get more of a response if you write your senator or the CEOs of Comcast and AT&T and Verizon?
If there were no regulation against monopolies, internet service would almost certainly be in the hands of one. They wouldn't ask anyone for permission to block any protocol, they would just do it. (CEO Bob wants another 10% to the bottom line? No problem... shut down port 25 and double the price of mail storage.) Not to mention the fact that without serious investment by DARPA, the internet may not have existed in the first place.
When a functioning democracy is in place, you can affect change with your vote, and it barely costs you anything except your time. That's supposed to be the equalizer for corporate power, since you're not going to have as much money as anyone in the Fortune 10,000 (if there is such a thing). When there's not even a mechanism in place to reign in business shenanigans, they just have to hold back enough so there aren't riots. Unless they can figure out a way to make money from riots.
We are supposed to be a constitutional republic, which holds everyone equal in the eyes of the law, which should be written by the society as a whole -- not just the rich and powerful. This is specifically due to the abuses of the monarchies and churches and companies that dominated society at the time of our founding, and continue today. Once again, the answer to a non-functioning democracy is a functioning one. Throwing away the government check to corporate power won't do anyone a damn bit of good, except for the people who own the corporations.
Big businesses welcome regulation that they lobby for. They despise regulation that comes from any other source. In an nutshell, your problem isn't regulation but lobbyists and corruption.
When big businesses really ran the show a hundred years ago, you had kids working in sweatshops, factory fires that killed scores of people, and the government literally sending in the marines to break up union strikes. Businesses have been forced to become civilized, not by their own will, but by government regulation and public pressure.
Americans could change the way business is done, but collectively, we have been hoodwinked into believing that we can't do anything, and that football and famous twats deserve more of our attention than the decisions that really do affect our lives. The real issue now is that so much money is being diverted to the military and away from education and infrastructure that each successive generation is dumber and more apolitical than the last.