Government is a necessary evil. Government must be funded by taxes. When the economy changes, the government must change as well to collect taxes to continue to operate.
Imagine the look you'd get if you suggested that government shouldn't charge taxes on fuel for the new automobile, and should find a way to subsist on the taxes they currently collect on horse shoes.
You're making the same argument, and I'm giving you the same look.
If the free market decides on a standard, then that is the choice of the free market. And if you happen to look at the market share of linux, the free market isn't choosing linux: right now, it's overwhelmingly picking Apple at the high end and Vista at the low end.
The important thing is to pick something and stick with it, even if it is the wrong answer, you have a platform on which to build it's correction. If I could produce a single binary that would run on Linux 3.0, regardless of kernel options, window managers, or that computer's driver set, Linux would immediately become a serious contender in the desktop market as a platform for delivery.
You'll notice that the areas that Linux is a winner in now are things that run a platform of specific applications, like LAMP. Until "Desktop Linux" means a specific set of APIs that are standard across all installations, it will never, ever, not in a million years, become the desktop of choice for anyone but people like us. People who have time to skim man pages and forums for three hours to figure out how to do simple things, like get their wireless card up and running.
With labor costs going up, Linux has even less of a chance. Vista may suck, but I can make a program that will open on every single version of it without any tweaking at all. That should be the goal, if Linux users are serious about taking over the desktop.
I'm almost at a loss here. Do you understand what a principle is?
If you say that there is a choice when it comes to principles, then you don't have them. Either a person has the right to vote, or they don't. Two adults have the right to marry, or they don't. You either believe in the principle of democracy, or you don't.
Your principles seem to consist of holding someone accountable to principles, but only when it benefits you.
The control of resources by definition requires control over regional governments, so decoupling those two is impossible. If America did act on principle instead of unmitigated self interest, we might have less money, but we wouldn't spend it all destroying the lives of foreigners in order to keep it.
You've just reinforced an idea that is the reason the United States and the west in general are despised by Muslims worldwide. We have been propping up dictatorships in that area for decades, including countries like Saudi Arabia, where non-Muslims cannot testify in court, children are married off to forty year olds, and public beheadings are commonplace.
If you don't have any principles, that's fine, and at least I'm glad you admit it. But until the end of our military sponsorships of repressive governments, including the billions of dollars we've given Egypt, America and it's allies will remain the largest recipient of terror from the Middle East. If you wouldn't suffer Iran or China or Mexico propping up a dictatorship over you, why do you expect them to lay down their arms and allow you to tread on them?
According to the Declaration of Independence, "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
It doesn't say anything about oppressing other nations under the pretense of security. What another country does with it's own system of governance is frankly none of our business.
Besides, I'm in the defense industry, so I see our current investments in war as being very prosperous.
Wouldn't you rather help heal people than kill them? I'd rather have a nation full of well trained EMTs, doctors, policemen, firemen, and border patrol agents, in addition to a larger national guard. You know, to defend Americans instead of radicalizing people who live near oil.
I hope you reap what you sow. If you find yourself offended by that, I hope it gives you some new insights into your profession.
You might as well break down how much they spend on food. Who in America can make a good living without a car? Especially if you live in an area without mass transit...
Of course the system works very well for people who make a lot of money. That's why there's no political support for it, though a majority of Americans want socialized medicine. Smarter countries have realized that infrastructure goes beyond telecom and transportation. A healthy population to draw workers from is just as important.
And again, we are the richest country in the world. We can afford it, if we decide to invest in prosperity instead of war.
That's because 40% of American households earn less than 40k a year. Four thousand dollars is at least ten percent of their entire yearly income, before taxes, assuming that they have insurance that pays.
If they already have one child, that's basically out of their reach. And these people are not dropping money on anything but bills.
The reason you can't incentivize health care by rewarding treatment is because everyone becomes over-treated, and there's a big difference between how much having a baby actually costs and how much people are willing to pay for it. Just like utilities such as water and electricity would be far more expensive if they weren't regulated.
Single payer systems work all across the rest of the western world, even in Britain, where they have nearly the same obesity rates and exercise habits. Just allow everyone who wants to keep their private health care to keep paying for it and receive a tax credit.
The US population in late middle age is less healthy than the equivalent British population for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, myocardial infarction, stroke, lung disease, and cancer.
Can you tell me again why we need covert foreign intelligence? What do you consider their greatest achievements?
They missed the Russian army marching into Afghanistan. They missed the collapse of the Soviet Union. They missed the WTC attack in 93. They missed 9/11. They missed WMD in Iraq, or helped the Administration manufacture the evidence. So wouldn't it be better to spend 100 billion a year on securing our ports and borders, rather than hiring agents who pay double agents who we hope know something about anything, or trying to datamine e-mails for terrorist activity? It's colossally stupid. Do you really think you're going to find a non-encrypted, non-coded message between two guys that says, "Hey Ahmed! Zero hour is next Tuesday at three o'clock. Would you like to grab dinner before our salvation?" If you do decode the network, it's probably too late. Hell, they don't even have ten people who read Arabic at the FBI. They have more interest in power than in counter-intelligence.
And here someone will say that we're not allowed to know what they've prevented to protect our intelligence gathering methods. Well, here's to hoping you and the emperor continue to enjoy your new clothes.
Freedom and security are mutually exclusive options. If you lose important freedoms to have a small chance at security, there's nothing left to defend.
If you can make 1,000 a day, tax free, working thirty hours a week. And if they throw you in prison, you can take some classes and write J# middleware when you get out.
The downside is the anal raping. For most people, I mean.
Buy things at small retailers unlikely to have complicated security policies or good video surveillance. Use local criminals to do the deal for you, promising a cut if they are successful getting the item out of the store. Keep the purchases under $2,000.00
Sell those things for cash on the street. Don't sell in the same area that you bought the items. Stick to big cities, as the police have way more to deal with than small-time theft. Once you get a big enough stash, use it to start a cash friendly business or find a way to get it to a trusted party in the third world and do the same thing.
The object is to not piss one person off to the point where they dedicate themselves to finding you. As long as the victim has the credit card company to turn to for a refund, and the police don't think the fraud is connected, no one will even bother opening up a case number.
In short, the deregulation of credit derivatives and lowered lending standards created a real estate bubble. The depression will ease once homes return to their pre-bubble prices, which is still a ways off.
The only way to soften the impact of the trillions of dollars of equity disappearing in a few short months is to create jobs through government spending. If you give the money to anyone else, they will just hoard it in today's economic climate, so you have to keep the low and middle class working and spending, and at least direct money towards infrastructure improvements. We could easily afford it by halting foreign wars and slashing military spending, but that seems unlikely at this point.
As far as China is concerned, they will emerge from this crisis as a new economic superpower within five or ten years. They have huge growth potential internally, and they are essentially the manufacturing engine for the world. America will continue to slip behind unless we reinvest in education and the manufacture of high tech products, and drop our costly engagements in South America and the Middle East.
Personally, I don't want multi-national corporations to exist, and I certainly wouldn't want them operating in my country.
You happen to be on the good end of the transaction, but for nearly every other country in the world which has nothing comparable to western wealth, they face exploitation and ecological destruction in return for bumping GDP that never filters down to support a middle class. If you were a subsistence farmer, your land is sold out from under you and you have the freedom to either work in a factory for 14 hours a day or starve. If you're a merchant in the city and a Wal-Mart opens up across the street, you have the freedom to shut your doors or go bankrupt. If you're a manufacturing exporter that has to play by the labor rules of your country and an American manufacturer who makes your product opens in a free trade zone, you have the freedom to sell your equipment off and close your doors, or almost assuredly fail against a company with more capital and less rules.
If Dell wants to operate in England or Bangladesh, let it form a corporation according to the rules and customs of that local community. Dell America can loan it as much startup capital as that local community allows, but Dell Bangladesh has to pay it back. This enables Dell to compete in that market, but not to destroy every local player through it's wealth advantage. The gaping hole in this scenario is that the government is usually bought off by Dell during negotiations, sometimes as crass bribery, other times as a loss in tax revenue. This also promotes healthy competition, but that a terrible phrase to a corporation trying to make a profit.
This is why I think a manufacturer should be able to license the sale of their products through a foreign company, but by and large, multinationals wield too much power to be tolerated. You'll notice that there are close to zero Free Trade Zones in wealthy western countries, because they simply wouldn't be allowed by the local community, for the same reasons they are hated in Latin America.
Err, no. The main reason they are held in Guantanemo was for a jurisdictional dodge about holding them at all. One that didn't work out, as it turns out; the courts didn't buy the idea that they were beyond the reach of US courts just because they weren't within the boundaries of the United States.
My policy as the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo was that evidence derived through waterboarding was off limits. That should still be our policy. To do otherwise is not only an affront to American justice, it will potentially put prosecutors at risk for using illegally obtained evidence.
Emphasis mine.
Nothing in this report says the companies do no business in the "tax haven" countries.
Sure. If I posited the same argument that a person who fit the profile of a crack dealer was passing "something" to someone in a car after exchanging money, you'd be the first in line to throw him into prison. I'm not saying they don't deserve due process, but a judicial branch that wasn't a secretarial service for corporate America would at least investigate.
Horrors. Why would a country ever want to do that?
I'm not blaming the country, or claiming the corporations are automatically guilty. When they do business that removes tax money from the community that built it's wealth, I consider that a worse offense than someone who is falsely collecting welfare.
I'm upset with the habit of Americans getting upset over social welfare and not over corporate welfare. When corporations have more rights than an individual person, not even equal rights, I consider that to be reprehensible. I can't buy a palm tree in Costa Rica and reduce my tax liability as an individual, but I could if I formed an LLC. In my opinion, that's bullshit.
I really get frustrated when doublespeak is acceptable. It's like the question, "Are prisoners in Guantanamo being tortured?" If they weren't being tortured, they would be in New York state, sitting in the same jail cells we use for other suspected murderers. The fact that anyone is asking the question is mind-boggling.
Similarly, any company that sets up in a small country that they do no business in is obviously up to something. Otherwise they wouldn't be there.
American business is a game, where the winners are those who best exploit their workers, the tax code, government contracts, and the environment. The most important bit is not getting caught, and having a lot of lawyers if you do.
(I'd like to defuse any rebuttal by saying "Wal-Mart.")
The reason we supposedly fight wars is for the rights and freedoms of all men and women. If there was no constitution, there would be nothing worth fighting for. The "counter culture circle jerk" is probably the only reason you have the right to vote if you don't own property, or if you're black, or a woman, or a native American. The same circle jerk is the reason you don't work 16 hours a day from age 14 until you die of exposure to your work environment.
But let me translate for you: shut the fuck up, you ungrateful little shit. People have fought and died for your rights and their own, which are far more important than money. Or at least they used to be.
This is not a matter of multiple world views, all jostling for an equal share of turf and air time. This is militant, murderous thugs (Hamas) willing to kill anybody in order to prevent a modern, civil, democratic society from taking shape in their neighborhood.
It's quite a bit more complicated than that. I'm going to avoid the point-counterpoint monotony, but in general, the problem with your viewpoint is that you assume that Hamas is the will of the Palestinian people, which is true only in the current circumstance.
For instance, you could reason that all Japanese are murderous bastards for what they did to the Chinese in the 1930s. But that is not the will of the Japanese people, nor is the rise of Mexican drug gangs the will of the Mexican people, nor was the rise of the Nazi party the will of the German people.
Hamas was voted into power because the Palestinians had given up on diplomacy, because Israel refuses to work for peace. Israel refuses to work for peace because if there is an establishment of a Palestinian state, three things are probable. One is that they will not be able to seize any more land that they want to have. Two is that they won't get all of Jerusalem. Three is that eventually, and I'm talking in a hundred years, the Israeli state would cease to exist due to immigration and the natural progression of democratic demands for freedom from religion. Israel is "officially" Jewish, officially for one ethnic group and one religion, and the only state in the world with such a status. It's likely that under normal democratic functions, this will disappear, and that is something unacceptable to the hard liners who are currently running the country.
Blaming the Palestinians for voting Hamas in is like blaming the Black community for forming the Black Panthers. After your home has been taken, after your friends have been killed indiscriminately, after you see your children grow up in total poverty, after being under a foreign occupier's iron grip for sixty years, a society becomes quite damaged. But this is the goal for the occupier. As Ben-Gurion said, he hoped time would heal his wounds. He hoped the world would excuse Israel for the heinous acts it has committed to get what it wants, however much you agree with their goals.
All Israel is doing in Gaza right now is guaranteeing there is no peace, because peace means the end of their acquisition of Palestinian property. They destroyed Lebanon, they got Hezbollah. They destroyed the PLO, they got Hamas. These are predictable outcomes, and the planners of Israel are not stupid.
Citation needed. If protectionism worked, North Korea would be the wealthiest nation on earth.
You can pick the source - any source. Wage disparity has grown, average wages have declined, especially when benefits are all but disappearing.
North Korea is in bad shape for many reasons, least of all protectionism. A more accurate comparison to the United States would be Britain, where protectionism, social medicine, and things like the "token" tax on stock trades have resulted in a much more equitable society.
Yeah, just look at all those homeless people huddling in Apple Stores.
That'd be like looking for homeless people in a Cadillac dealership during the Great Depression. And remember, it's still 1929, not 1933.
So what's the solution? If you get rid of the restrictions on people moving you destroy national sovereignty and identity. If you get rid of free trade/adopt protectionism you drag the economy down a few pegs and probably destroy at least as many jobs as you save.
No. Protectionism protects economies. Free trade is designed to destroy small companies through market fluctuation, and to protect investor rights at the expense of worker rights.
If Free Trade worked, Mexico, America, and Canada would be doing better today then they were in the early 1990s. But they have all experienced a decline in real wages, increases in cost for basic needs, and suffered from market bubbles that have wiped out small companies. If you're IBM, you can afford to lose a few million dollars a day. If you're Bob's Computer Repair, you're sunk after six months of reduced income.
I hate what we've become but I'm at a loss for how to fix it. Ideas?
Restore bilateral trade. Allow countries to decide what they want to produce, not international corporations to dictate their desires. Penalize companies severely for moving jobs out of the United States, and flat, non-negotiable taxes for moving capital - ANY capital - out of the country.
Greedy international corporations would be shut out, and companies that wanted to invest in America, not just make money here, would benefit. None if this is a popular idea because a well paid middle class means there's less money for the top half percent that writes policy and owns the majority of the wealth.
Yes, it's class warfare. But the war is over, and the middle class has lost.
If spending a trillion dollars gets you an easy two trillion risk-free over a short time frame, private industry can do it.
Give me one example.
It's not the size of the investment that is a problem. It's the steep negative return on investment that is the problem.
That's the entire point. There is no ROI for establishing manned habitats in space, so private industry would never develop it.
NASA depends on the Delta II and Atlas V for a number of projects. Those rockets are run by private space companies Boeing and Lockheed Martin. You might have heard of them.
Indeed, I have. They are the top two recipients of government contracts.
Lockheed Martin received over 30 billion dollars in government contracts in 2007 (including 1 billion dollars for "space vehicles") which is twice the entire NASA budget. Boeing received 24 billion, also more than the NASA budget. If you read about the history of the development of those two launch systems, you'll also learn that they were almost entirely funded and commissioned by NASA and other government agencies.
I don't get this. When you go on a trip, do you memorize every map ahead of time? Do you plan for every conceivable outcome before you head out the door?
If I'm entering a vacuum that will instantly kill me unless I'm properly prepared... YES.
Plus, you're never going to find out what all you need, if you don't go first.
First, you should find a reason to go there beyond fulfilling some childhood fantasy.
Easy. Does a human live on Earth? Yes. Does that human use an infinite amount of resources? No. Hence, the human is living on a limited amount of resources and proves your conjecture. What "x" is isn't nearly so important, though there is a lot of research on that matter.
Almost everyone alive will leave the planet less able to sustain life as it was when they arrived. This problem needs to be addressed first. Consider the fact that you already are on a spaceship that is habitable, but it's running out of resources at a faster pace than can be replenished. So, x is very, very important, especially when the number of humans is far from shrinking.
The private sector doesn't have the money required to make manned habitats cost effective. No one company is going to flush trillions of dollars of money down into a hole, praying that their son or daughter might someday see a profit from it.
Government does have the resources. This is why NASA has been to the moon with 1960s technology, and private space companies pray that their stuff doesn't blow up on the launch pad.
Furthermore, the only celestial body in the universe known to support human life is Earth. Spending valuable resources to experiment trying to support life on the moon when we can't even live sustainably on our own planet is probably the most idiotic goal imaginable. The technology you need to live on the moon - super low water, air, and soil usage, zero reliance on fossil fuels, and super low electricity needs are things we can develop on earth first before a bunch of money is wasted trying to get ten souls on our nearest satellite.
The reality is that people would rather spend money that benefits humanity, not childish sci-fi dreams. Prove that a human can live on x amount of resources on Earth. Then talk to me about sending him to outer space.
Executive Summary: If we militarize space, it will probably cause the end of civilization as we know it. But we must militarize space, because America is the only righteous power with the foresight necessary to risk the very survival of human kind.
With each succeeding generation, mankind has increased the effectiveness of his weapons until, with the recent development of thermonucear weapons, he is capable of destroying civilization. We have progressed to the point, Stine argues, where we can no longer live by the Neolithic Ethic and must, therefore, develop a new ethic. Stine writes:
"It will take centuries of worldwide education -- using near-earth space as a location for communications satellites capable of beaming information to any spot on Earth for the education of humans everywhere -- before the Ethic can be changed, before the memories of past wrongs are erased by time, and before the fires of vengeance can be damped."
Stine contends that a new ethic for a world of peace, cooperation and unity can be developed. But until then, people are going to fight. We need to investigate all technological possibilities and prepare the weapons, the counter-weapons and other safegaurds as they become technologically feasible. But we need to do so with a purposeful goal -- to deter war in the hopes of buying time to transition to the new ethic.
Thus far there are no weapons in space. Thus far no battles have been waged in space or for dominion over space. Thus far the military use of space has contributed greatly to the knowledge that prevents adversaries from misjudging each other. The best way to avoid war is to employ those systems, in space as well as terrestrially, which contribute to the policy of mutual deterrence -- a policy which has worked over the past 35 years.
Even some atheists have admitted that Christianity is doing wonders in Africa at changing the hearts of millions and bringing them to a point where they can build peaceful, stable societies.
Yes... this is like saying, "Those gosh darned natives, after a hundred years of starvation, murder, torture, and succumbing to European diseases, have finally decided to give Jesus a chance."
Christianity was the excuse used to destroy the perfectly civilized tribes of Africa in order to give the Church and the King the right to plunder their natural wealth, as they did in the Americas, and everywhere else their foul hands touched. It would have happened anyway, but the Church and colonialism are like bread and butter. Perhaps you are just finally giving all the money back that you stole from Africa. It's too bad there's so much corruption in the churches and governments now that it doesn't reach the people who need it.
Aww heck, just ignore these details. Go back to using God's word to divide the country and give political power to the Republicans who can't stand you, or Sarah Palin. Go back to pretending that the bible doesn't say that your own wealth will nearly guarantee that you won't enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Go back to the church where you sit in an air conditioned auditorium for a whole hour once a week with people who think exactly as you do, and pretend you're a spiritual being who's really involved in the "community."
Slashdot Mirror
Government is a necessary evil. Government must be funded by taxes. When the economy changes, the government must change as well to collect taxes to continue to operate.
Imagine the look you'd get if you suggested that government shouldn't charge taxes on fuel for the new automobile, and should find a way to subsist on the taxes they currently collect on horse shoes.
You're making the same argument, and I'm giving you the same look.
Well if you compile from source it usually works across distributions.
If I ask if something works, and you say, "usually", then you're telling me that it doesn't work.
If the free market decides on a standard, then that is the choice of the free market. And if you happen to look at the market share of linux, the free market isn't choosing linux: right now, it's overwhelmingly picking Apple at the high end and Vista at the low end.
The important thing is to pick something and stick with it, even if it is the wrong answer, you have a platform on which to build it's correction. If I could produce a single binary that would run on Linux 3.0, regardless of kernel options, window managers, or that computer's driver set, Linux would immediately become a serious contender in the desktop market as a platform for delivery.
You'll notice that the areas that Linux is a winner in now are things that run a platform of specific applications, like LAMP. Until "Desktop Linux" means a specific set of APIs that are standard across all installations, it will never, ever, not in a million years, become the desktop of choice for anyone but people like us. People who have time to skim man pages and forums for three hours to figure out how to do simple things, like get their wireless card up and running.
With labor costs going up, Linux has even less of a chance. Vista may suck, but I can make a program that will open on every single version of it without any tweaking at all. That should be the goal, if Linux users are serious about taking over the desktop.
I'm almost at a loss here. Do you understand what a principle is?
If you say that there is a choice when it comes to principles, then you don't have them. Either a person has the right to vote, or they don't. Two adults have the right to marry, or they don't. You either believe in the principle of democracy, or you don't.
Your principles seem to consist of holding someone accountable to principles, but only when it benefits you.
The control of resources by definition requires control over regional governments, so decoupling those two is impossible. If America did act on principle instead of unmitigated self interest, we might have less money, but we wouldn't spend it all destroying the lives of foreigners in order to keep it.
You've just reinforced an idea that is the reason the United States and the west in general are despised by Muslims worldwide. We have been propping up dictatorships in that area for decades, including countries like Saudi Arabia, where non-Muslims cannot testify in court, children are married off to forty year olds, and public beheadings are commonplace.
If you don't have any principles, that's fine, and at least I'm glad you admit it. But until the end of our military sponsorships of repressive governments, including the billions of dollars we've given Egypt, America and it's allies will remain the largest recipient of terror from the Middle East. If you wouldn't suffer Iran or China or Mexico propping up a dictatorship over you, why do you expect them to lay down their arms and allow you to tread on them?
According to the Declaration of Independence, "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
It doesn't say anything about oppressing other nations under the pretense of security. What another country does with it's own system of governance is frankly none of our business.
Linus, Gnome, and KDE in are in the title. I'm surprised no one's been compared to Hitler yet.
That's a false-dichotomy.
Really? Can you spend money twice?
Besides, I'm in the defense industry, so I see our current investments in war as being very prosperous.
Wouldn't you rather help heal people than kill them? I'd rather have a nation full of well trained EMTs, doctors, policemen, firemen, and border patrol agents, in addition to a larger national guard. You know, to defend Americans instead of radicalizing people who live near oil.
I hope you reap what you sow. If you find yourself offended by that, I hope it gives you some new insights into your profession.
You might as well break down how much they spend on food. Who in America can make a good living without a car? Especially if you live in an area without mass transit...
Of course the system works very well for people who make a lot of money. That's why there's no political support for it, though a majority of Americans want socialized medicine. Smarter countries have realized that infrastructure goes beyond telecom and transportation. A healthy population to draw workers from is just as important.
And again, we are the richest country in the world. We can afford it, if we decide to invest in prosperity instead of war.
That's because 40% of American households earn less than 40k a year. Four thousand dollars is at least ten percent of their entire yearly income, before taxes, assuming that they have insurance that pays.
If they already have one child, that's basically out of their reach. And these people are not dropping money on anything but bills.
The reason you can't incentivize health care by rewarding treatment is because everyone becomes over-treated, and there's a big difference between how much having a baby actually costs and how much people are willing to pay for it. Just like utilities such as water and electricity would be far more expensive if they weren't regulated.
Single payer systems work all across the rest of the western world, even in Britain, where they have nearly the same obesity rates and exercise habits. Just allow everyone who wants to keep their private health care to keep paying for it and receive a tax credit.
The US population in late middle age is less healthy than the equivalent British population for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, myocardial infarction, stroke, lung disease, and cancer.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/295/17/2037
Can you tell me again why we need covert foreign intelligence? What do you consider their greatest achievements?
They missed the Russian army marching into Afghanistan. They missed the collapse of the Soviet Union. They missed the WTC attack in 93. They missed 9/11. They missed WMD in Iraq, or helped the Administration manufacture the evidence. So wouldn't it be better to spend 100 billion a year on securing our ports and borders, rather than hiring agents who pay double agents who we hope know something about anything, or trying to datamine e-mails for terrorist activity? It's colossally stupid. Do you really think you're going to find a non-encrypted, non-coded message between two guys that says, "Hey Ahmed! Zero hour is next Tuesday at three o'clock. Would you like to grab dinner before our salvation?" If you do decode the network, it's probably too late. Hell, they don't even have ten people who read Arabic at the FBI. They have more interest in power than in counter-intelligence.
And here someone will say that we're not allowed to know what they've prevented to protect our intelligence gathering methods. Well, here's to hoping you and the emperor continue to enjoy your new clothes.
Freedom and security are mutually exclusive options. If you lose important freedoms to have a small chance at security, there's nothing left to defend.
If you can make 1,000 a day, tax free, working thirty hours a week. And if they throw you in prison, you can take some classes and write J# middleware when you get out.
The downside is the anal raping. For most people, I mean.
Buy things at small retailers unlikely to have complicated security policies or good video surveillance. Use local criminals to do the deal for you, promising a cut if they are successful getting the item out of the store. Keep the purchases under $2,000.00
Sell those things for cash on the street. Don't sell in the same area that you bought the items. Stick to big cities, as the police have way more to deal with than small-time theft. Once you get a big enough stash, use it to start a cash friendly business or find a way to get it to a trusted party in the third world and do the same thing.
The object is to not piss one person off to the point where they dedicate themselves to finding you. As long as the victim has the credit card company to turn to for a refund, and the police don't think the fraud is connected, no one will even bother opening up a case number.
http://mediacow.tv/node/166
From October 2007
In short, the deregulation of credit derivatives and lowered lending standards created a real estate bubble. The depression will ease once homes return to their pre-bubble prices, which is still a ways off.
The only way to soften the impact of the trillions of dollars of equity disappearing in a few short months is to create jobs through government spending. If you give the money to anyone else, they will just hoard it in today's economic climate, so you have to keep the low and middle class working and spending, and at least direct money towards infrastructure improvements. We could easily afford it by halting foreign wars and slashing military spending, but that seems unlikely at this point.
As far as China is concerned, they will emerge from this crisis as a new economic superpower within five or ten years. They have huge growth potential internally, and they are essentially the manufacturing engine for the world. America will continue to slip behind unless we reinvest in education and the manufacture of high tech products, and drop our costly engagements in South America and the Middle East.
Personally, I don't want multi-national corporations to exist, and I certainly wouldn't want them operating in my country.
You happen to be on the good end of the transaction, but for nearly every other country in the world which has nothing comparable to western wealth, they face exploitation and ecological destruction in return for bumping GDP that never filters down to support a middle class. If you were a subsistence farmer, your land is sold out from under you and you have the freedom to either work in a factory for 14 hours a day or starve. If you're a merchant in the city and a Wal-Mart opens up across the street, you have the freedom to shut your doors or go bankrupt. If you're a manufacturing exporter that has to play by the labor rules of your country and an American manufacturer who makes your product opens in a free trade zone, you have the freedom to sell your equipment off and close your doors, or almost assuredly fail against a company with more capital and less rules.
If Dell wants to operate in England or Bangladesh, let it form a corporation according to the rules and customs of that local community. Dell America can loan it as much startup capital as that local community allows, but Dell Bangladesh has to pay it back. This enables Dell to compete in that market, but not to destroy every local player through it's wealth advantage. The gaping hole in this scenario is that the government is usually bought off by Dell during negotiations, sometimes as crass bribery, other times as a loss in tax revenue. This also promotes healthy competition, but that a terrible phrase to a corporation trying to make a profit.
This is why I think a manufacturer should be able to license the sale of their products through a foreign company, but by and large, multinationals wield too much power to be tolerated. You'll notice that there are close to zero Free Trade Zones in wealthy western countries, because they simply wouldn't be allowed by the local community, for the same reasons they are hated in Latin America.
Err, no. The main reason they are held in Guantanemo was for a jurisdictional dodge about holding them at all. One that didn't work out, as it turns out; the courts didn't buy the idea that they were beyond the reach of US courts just because they weren't within the boundaries of the United States.
Nope.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/opinion/17davis.html?_r=1&ex=1360990800&en=a3b1d35d17a4d480&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
My policy as the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo was that evidence derived through waterboarding was off limits. That should still be our policy. To do otherwise is not only an affront to American justice, it will potentially put prosecutors at risk for using illegally obtained evidence.
Emphasis mine.
Nothing in this report says the companies do no business in the "tax haven" countries.
Sure. If I posited the same argument that a person who fit the profile of a crack dealer was passing "something" to someone in a car after exchanging money, you'd be the first in line to throw him into prison. I'm not saying they don't deserve due process, but a judicial branch that wasn't a secretarial service for corporate America would at least investigate.
Horrors. Why would a country ever want to do that?
I'm not blaming the country, or claiming the corporations are automatically guilty. When they do business that removes tax money from the community that built it's wealth, I consider that a worse offense than someone who is falsely collecting welfare.
I'm upset with the habit of Americans getting upset over social welfare and not over corporate welfare. When corporations have more rights than an individual person, not even equal rights, I consider that to be reprehensible. I can't buy a palm tree in Costa Rica and reduce my tax liability as an individual, but I could if I formed an LLC. In my opinion, that's bullshit.
I really get frustrated when doublespeak is acceptable. It's like the question, "Are prisoners in Guantanamo being tortured?" If they weren't being tortured, they would be in New York state, sitting in the same jail cells we use for other suspected murderers. The fact that anyone is asking the question is mind-boggling.
Similarly, any company that sets up in a small country that they do no business in is obviously up to something. Otherwise they wouldn't be there.
American business is a game, where the winners are those who best exploit their workers, the tax code, government contracts, and the environment. The most important bit is not getting caught, and having a lot of lawyers if you do.
(I'd like to defuse any rebuttal by saying "Wal-Mart.")
The reason we supposedly fight wars is for the rights and freedoms of all men and women. If there was no constitution, there would be nothing worth fighting for. The "counter culture circle jerk" is probably the only reason you have the right to vote if you don't own property, or if you're black, or a woman, or a native American. The same circle jerk is the reason you don't work 16 hours a day from age 14 until you die of exposure to your work environment.
But let me translate for you: shut the fuck up, you ungrateful little shit. People have fought and died for your rights and their own, which are far more important than money. Or at least they used to be.
This is not a matter of multiple world views, all jostling for an equal share of turf and air time. This is militant, murderous thugs (Hamas) willing to kill anybody in order to prevent a modern, civil, democratic society from taking shape in their neighborhood.
It's quite a bit more complicated than that. I'm going to avoid the point-counterpoint monotony, but in general, the problem with your viewpoint is that you assume that Hamas is the will of the Palestinian people, which is true only in the current circumstance.
For instance, you could reason that all Japanese are murderous bastards for what they did to the Chinese in the 1930s. But that is not the will of the Japanese people, nor is the rise of Mexican drug gangs the will of the Mexican people, nor was the rise of the Nazi party the will of the German people.
Hamas was voted into power because the Palestinians had given up on diplomacy, because Israel refuses to work for peace. Israel refuses to work for peace because if there is an establishment of a Palestinian state, three things are probable. One is that they will not be able to seize any more land that they want to have. Two is that they won't get all of Jerusalem. Three is that eventually, and I'm talking in a hundred years, the Israeli state would cease to exist due to immigration and the natural progression of democratic demands for freedom from religion. Israel is "officially" Jewish, officially for one ethnic group and one religion, and the only state in the world with such a status. It's likely that under normal democratic functions, this will disappear, and that is something unacceptable to the hard liners who are currently running the country.
Blaming the Palestinians for voting Hamas in is like blaming the Black community for forming the Black Panthers. After your home has been taken, after your friends have been killed indiscriminately, after you see your children grow up in total poverty, after being under a foreign occupier's iron grip for sixty years, a society becomes quite damaged. But this is the goal for the occupier. As Ben-Gurion said, he hoped time would heal his wounds. He hoped the world would excuse Israel for the heinous acts it has committed to get what it wants, however much you agree with their goals.
All Israel is doing in Gaza right now is guaranteeing there is no peace, because peace means the end of their acquisition of Palestinian property. They destroyed Lebanon, they got Hezbollah. They destroyed the PLO, they got Hamas. These are predictable outcomes, and the planners of Israel are not stupid.
Hey, let's compare modern economies, where the euro is far more valuable than the dollar!
Oh wait...
Citation needed. If protectionism worked, North Korea would be the wealthiest nation on earth.
You can pick the source - any source. Wage disparity has grown, average wages have declined, especially when benefits are all but disappearing.
North Korea is in bad shape for many reasons, least of all protectionism. A more accurate comparison to the United States would be Britain, where protectionism, social medicine, and things like the "token" tax on stock trades have resulted in a much more equitable society.
Yeah, just look at all those homeless people huddling in Apple Stores.
That'd be like looking for homeless people in a Cadillac dealership during the Great Depression. And remember, it's still 1929, not 1933.
So what's the solution? If you get rid of the restrictions on people moving you destroy national sovereignty and identity. If you get rid of free trade/adopt protectionism you drag the economy down a few pegs and probably destroy at least as many jobs as you save.
No. Protectionism protects economies. Free trade is designed to destroy small companies through market fluctuation, and to protect investor rights at the expense of worker rights.
If Free Trade worked, Mexico, America, and Canada would be doing better today then they were in the early 1990s. But they have all experienced a decline in real wages, increases in cost for basic needs, and suffered from market bubbles that have wiped out small companies. If you're IBM, you can afford to lose a few million dollars a day. If you're Bob's Computer Repair, you're sunk after six months of reduced income.
I hate what we've become but I'm at a loss for how to fix it. Ideas?
Restore bilateral trade. Allow countries to decide what they want to produce, not international corporations to dictate their desires. Penalize companies severely for moving jobs out of the United States, and flat, non-negotiable taxes for moving capital - ANY capital - out of the country.
Greedy international corporations would be shut out, and companies that wanted to invest in America, not just make money here, would benefit. None if this is a popular idea because a well paid middle class means there's less money for the top half percent that writes policy and owns the majority of the wealth.
Yes, it's class warfare. But the war is over, and the middle class has lost.
If spending a trillion dollars gets you an easy two trillion risk-free over a short time frame, private industry can do it.
Give me one example.
It's not the size of the investment that is a problem. It's the steep negative return on investment that is the problem.
That's the entire point. There is no ROI for establishing manned habitats in space, so private industry would never develop it.
NASA depends on the Delta II and Atlas V for a number of projects. Those rockets are run by private space companies Boeing and Lockheed Martin. You might have heard of them.
Indeed, I have. They are the top two recipients of government contracts.
http://www.fedspending.org/fpds/tables.php?tabtype=t2&subtype=t&year=2007
Lockheed Martin received over 30 billion dollars in government contracts in 2007 (including 1 billion dollars for "space vehicles") which is twice the entire NASA budget. Boeing received 24 billion, also more than the NASA budget. If you read about the history of the development of those two launch systems, you'll also learn that they were almost entirely funded and commissioned by NASA and other government agencies.
I don't get this. When you go on a trip, do you memorize every map ahead of time? Do you plan for every conceivable outcome before you head out the door?
If I'm entering a vacuum that will instantly kill me unless I'm properly prepared... YES.
Plus, you're never going to find out what all you need, if you don't go first.
First, you should find a reason to go there beyond fulfilling some childhood fantasy.
Easy. Does a human live on Earth? Yes. Does that human use an infinite amount of resources? No. Hence, the human is living on a limited amount of resources and proves your conjecture. What "x" is isn't nearly so important, though there is a lot of research on that matter.
Almost everyone alive will leave the planet less able to sustain life as it was when they arrived. This problem needs to be addressed first. Consider the fact that you already are on a spaceship that is habitable, but it's running out of resources at a faster pace than can be replenished. So, x is very, very important, especially when the number of humans is far from shrinking.
The private sector doesn't have the money required to make manned habitats cost effective. No one company is going to flush trillions of dollars of money down into a hole, praying that their son or daughter might someday see a profit from it.
Government does have the resources. This is why NASA has been to the moon with 1960s technology, and private space companies pray that their stuff doesn't blow up on the launch pad.
Furthermore, the only celestial body in the universe known to support human life is Earth. Spending valuable resources to experiment trying to support life on the moon when we can't even live sustainably on our own planet is probably the most idiotic goal imaginable. The technology you need to live on the moon - super low water, air, and soil usage, zero reliance on fossil fuels, and super low electricity needs are things we can develop on earth first before a bunch of money is wasted trying to get ten souls on our nearest satellite.
The reality is that people would rather spend money that benefits humanity, not childish sci-fi dreams. Prove that a human can live on x amount of resources on Earth. Then talk to me about sending him to outer space.
Executive Summary: If we militarize space, it will probably cause the end of civilization as we know it. But we must militarize space, because America is the only righteous power with the foresight necessary to risk the very survival of human kind.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/report/1989/DCA.htm
With each succeeding generation, mankind has increased the effectiveness of his weapons until, with the recent development of thermonucear weapons, he is capable of destroying civilization. We have progressed to the point, Stine argues, where we can no longer live by the Neolithic Ethic and must, therefore, develop a new ethic. Stine writes:
Stine contends that a new ethic for a world of peace, cooperation and unity can be developed. But until then, people are going to fight. We need to investigate all technological possibilities and prepare the weapons, the counter-weapons and other safegaurds as they become technologically feasible. But we need to do so with a purposeful goal -- to deter war in the hopes of buying time to transition to the new ethic.
Thus far there are no weapons in space. Thus far no battles have been waged in space or for dominion over space. Thus far the military use of space has contributed greatly to the knowledge that prevents adversaries from misjudging each other. The best way to avoid war is to employ those systems, in space as well as terrestrially, which contribute to the policy of mutual deterrence -- a policy which has worked over the past 35 years.
Even some atheists have admitted that Christianity is doing wonders in Africa at changing the hearts of millions and bringing them to a point where they can build peaceful, stable societies.
Yes... this is like saying, "Those gosh darned natives, after a hundred years of starvation, murder, torture, and succumbing to European diseases, have finally decided to give Jesus a chance."
Christianity was the excuse used to destroy the perfectly civilized tribes of Africa in order to give the Church and the King the right to plunder their natural wealth, as they did in the Americas, and everywhere else their foul hands touched. It would have happened anyway, but the Church and colonialism are like bread and butter. Perhaps you are just finally giving all the money back that you stole from Africa. It's too bad there's so much corruption in the churches and governments now that it doesn't reach the people who need it.
Aww heck, just ignore these details. Go back to using God's word to divide the country and give political power to the Republicans who can't stand you, or Sarah Palin. Go back to pretending that the bible doesn't say that your own wealth will nearly guarantee that you won't enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Go back to the church where you sit in an air conditioned auditorium for a whole hour once a week with people who think exactly as you do, and pretend you're a spiritual being who's really involved in the "community."
Christ almighty, indeed.