Just because you believe that religion doesn't work that way doesn't mean you are right.
Jesus preferred to pray in private. He spent time with lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, and children. He devoted his life to people who needed compassion and care.
For the most part, Christians in the US gather every Sunday to pat themselves on the back for being so righteous as to show up somewhere for an hour. Politically they have voted with a party that advocates violence over diplomacy, and who seemingly despise any use of government funds to help to care for those who can't care for themselves.
Talking about ethics has no moral value, and that's all that the Christian culture seems to be interested in doing. When it comes to actual sacrifice, whether it's in the form of giving up wealth to help the needy, or turning the other cheek in the face of violence, they are strangely motionless.
"In the Bullshit Department, a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman. 'Cause I gotta tell you the truth, folks. When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told.
Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!
But He loves you.
He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!"
Girls want to play games. They're emotional beings, who need some push and pull to feel stable themselves. If you don't fight with your girlfriend at least once a week, she'll leave you eventually.
More than that, "nice" guys make the mistake of trying to get into a serious relationship way too early. Only religious nutcases or the severely codependent girls are looking for that before 25. You have to wait for them to stop "exploring" (aka fucking random dudes/chicks) and for that biological clock to kick in.
Also, remember that it's in this order:
1) Power (money/success/position) 2) Fitness 3) Sense of humor 4) Resemblance to father
If you want to get laid every night, you need to look good, feel good about yourself, be enough of an ass to advertise these thoughts at a bar and make a move. Women go to bars for the same reason you do - to get laid.
Just using these girls here for advertising my point. Oldest marketing trick in the book.
PS: The ones that laugh are the best in bed. The crazy ones are better. Just make sure you use their apartment instead of yours, or get a hotel. Changing your number is more of a headache than spending a hundred bucks.
Let's assume this kid didn't realize the gravity of his actions. He's 18, after all. As a society, we can take someone with obvious talent, send them to a full year of constant psychiatric care and put him on parole for two years. Punish him by putting him on house arrest for six months without access to a computer.
The benefit for the perpetrator is that they get a real chance at not becoming part of the revolving door of our prison system. The benefit for society is you take someone on the wrong track, make him a productive member of society instead of another burden.
And if he violates the law while on parole, then you stick him in jail for a year. But don't give him more time that someone who commits violent acts. That's just fucking stupid.
People by definition aren't corrupt. You can assume that by definition but then there is no reason for anyone to take you seriously.
People aren't corrupt? And I guess they aren't jealous, vain, or "bad" in any way. It's just that they don't have the free market to liberate their true good will. I don't think I'm the one who has a credibility problem on this issue...
Let's break this down. A corporation offers an elected official money...
That's an oversimplified example. More often, the corruption is that political favors are done with no money involved until the corrupt official exits office and gets a cushy job with the benefactor of his dishonesty. If there's no big salary at the end of the election, the people in politics for greed will be forced to directly break the law instead of skirting around loopholes and handing multi-billion dollar contracts to friends and associates. Dick Cheney is a great example.
Now, I ask you how to stop this from happening... You would rather go after the companies. The problem is that there will always be new companies, and they will always find a way to entice politicians. The problem is not with the companies, but with the politicians willing to accept the bribes. That is where to place the blame. Officials who are charged with upholding rights, are freely violating them in exchange for bribes.
The government is going to exist. Companies don't have to exist in their current form. You hit the nail on the head when you said there will always be new companies - many of them, in fact, which remain small because as soon as they reach a certain size, they are probably going to start doing bad things. And if they do then they'll be split up by the government, if they are doing their job, and you end up with many competitive entities instead of large uncontrollable behemoths.
Without a law preventing private ownership of the Hudson, the Hudson would be privately owned, and that owner has a right not to have their property destroyed by surrounding property. They could practically sue DuPont out of existence if that happened. When the government decides it owns a piece of property, and does not bother to treat it as a property owner would treat their property, then you end up with situations like this - the Cuyahoga River fire comes to mind.
If natural resources are privately owned, all you're doing is creating a natural monopoly. What's going to stop Hudson River Co. from charging $1,000 a day for access for it's non-business partners? They could bankrupt shipping companies overnight, buy them up, and continue abusing their power until it destroyed the local economy for everyone else except for them. And if you don't think companies will destroy themselves so the top members of management can walk away with a few hundred million dollars, you don't watch the news very much. The EPA is not cleaning up after the government. They're cleaning up after companies who destroyed their own property to make huge sums of money.
In straight capitalism, corporations do anything for a profit. They'll clear-cut a forest, dump raw chemicals into lakes and rivers, and put people in the belly of coal mines and work them to death. Before regulation arrived at the beginning of the 20th century, employees and the environment were being obliterated because they were cheap or free. Only after massive public protest did the government step in to limit the damage.
Wanting the most product from your money and work is not by itself immoral, and that is all that is represented by the word "greed".
Greed is obviously subjective. The problem with the free market is that companies have no rules. If they can make a profit marketing a known carcinogen to children, they will do it, have done it, and continue in countries where there is no regulation.
You have not shown that to be true.
There isn't a single counter-example that I can think of, unless you cons
I wanted to add this before I responded: I am thinking in the context of a real democracy, not America. In my opinion, it's a fascist state nearly beyond repair.
That is not capitalism, but corporatism. Which, again, is the end result of free market capitalism, because people are and always will be greedy and corrupt. Corporations get so large that they hold power to coerce government, so it matters very little that they can't use guns to enforce their will. They use lawyers and politicians instead, who do have access to them.
What is this based on? Do you have any supporting evidence that "greed wrecks society", or should we just accept what you say? Without a law, explain why DuPont wouldn't stop dumping paint in the Hudson if it saved them money.
The other is a matter of what you consider society. In America, so far that has meant the privilege of living comfortably at the expense of other cultures. It started with the indigenous population, spread to slavery, and now we are nice enough to kill foreigners who happen to be nearby the resources we consider necessary to our lifestyle. I consider this morally reprehensible and the worst kind of greed. You may believe otherwise.
Corruption only becomes a concern to the public when it is backed by force, something which only the government can apply. The government has to have force, otherwise they aren't a government. The corruption of a corporation, or the collusion of government and a corporation are inevitable. You can either eliminate the corporate entity or the government. I choose to eliminate the corporation.
And that official will be replaced by another corrupt official. As long as the government is able to manipulate the economy, individuals and businesses will flock to them to get manipulation in their favor (otherwise they risk seeing unfavorable legislation forced against them). The government has to establish law and enforce contracts. If you can point out a society that you would like to emulate that has done otherwise, I'd love to hear about it. When corporations have less rights than people, it will be less of a problem, as the corporations who don't have a positive impact for the society they operate in are dissolved.
The ends do not justify the means, ever. A few temporary positives are not worth giving up all your rights. That's an empty phrase. Which rights are automatically taken away from you in a well regulated economy?
I can agree with that, although you seem to think the fault lies with the businesses, whereas for me, because the state is the entity actually applying the force on the public, I see the state as to blame. In America, there's no difference between the desires of business and government. In any case, you can choose to concentrate power in corporations where no one has oversight or the power to change anything, or concentrate it in limited local government, where you do have the power to change something.
The military industrial complex is a very real entity, and they make hundreds of billions of dollars each year as a reward for manufacturing weapons, as long as they collude with the government to provide false pretenses for war. If the arms dealers were under government oversight, they could be dismantled by the constituents of the democracy. Of course, real democracy -- that is, the will of the general population being accomplished, is the greatest threat to our current government, and thus, the symbiotic corporate structure attached to it. That's why they deeply despise public opinion, and proudly ignore it. That's why there's a constant barrage of media on the ineffectiveness of government. They want to make sure people don't use it.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. By that definition, shouldn't the people from the Reagan Administration involved in the Iran Contra affair still be in prison? Last I checked they were still in office, or hosting shows on Fox News.
Corrupt government officials passing legislation favoring corrupt companies is the antithesis of capitalism. And that is the inevitable result of free market capitalism, or fascist states where the government is "the shadow of business cast over society."
Well regulated markets work the best. Without regulation, you cannot assign cost to environmental damage, or prevent greed from wrecking society. Hierarchies will always get top heavy with power and corruption. If that hierarchy is in a corporation, there's nothing the public can do about it. If they are in a functioning democracy, at least the public can vote corruption out during the next election cycle.
So, a healthy but limited government keeping corporate power in check will yield many of the benefits of capitalism. I think in order to do this we need to introduce the separation of business and state.
Public officials should not be allowed to seek employment after their service with any firm that does business with the government. If you don't like it, don't run for office. You're running because you want to participate as a proud citizen of our democracy, not so you can enjoy power and kickbacks. Right?
All you have to do is get enough people who are unified as a community and perform acts of public civil disobedience to agree with you. For referene, see the civil rights movement, women's suffrage movement, India's break from British rule.
Picking up a gun is for cowards who would rather die for a cause than live for one. The only exception (in the modern era) would be a foreign invasion. And then the occupying force would of course label you a terrorist.
Sorry, compadre. In heterogeneous environments which are a lot more commonplace these days, Office is prohibitively expensive. You either need Terminal Servers, or Parallels plus a windows license, or I can hand out OOo to everyone, not worry about file formats, and get on with my life.
I switched another office that had already bought copies of Office 2008 for Mac, but the spreadsheets from Office 2003 never translated quite right. So they converted everything to OOo instead of wasting another couple of thousand dollars upgrading to office 2007.
Access and Infopath are dead because of web services. Graphic guys are going to buy Adobe anyway. That leaves Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. Which are handily beat by OOo 3.0, which works all the time, every time, on Linux, Windows, and Mac.
This may seem counter-intuitive at first, and believe me I don't compare any current people to MLK or any nonsense like that. However, like the civil rights movement, the internet offers a place for regular people to exchange information and ideas (at very little cost and in a semi-anonymous fashion). Websites like Wikileaks frankly scare the shit out of governments. The masses are, and always will be, the #1 enemy of the state.
Basically, as the internet grows more adept at connecting disparate people, the less likely we'll be willing to fight wars. I can go right now and become friends or at least become familiar with someone from China, Iran, Egypt, and even Iraq. Wars, especially for America, are extremely profitable for the propertied classes. It's the reason businesses like Standard Oil sold to the Nazis and the British in WWII. It's the reason IBM had no qualms helping the Germans index Jews for extermination. Now these same companies lobby to congresspeople on a daily basis, and you and I will probably never meet our representatives in person.
And people wonder why the needs of the people aren't being met. It's really quite simple - the people don't matter to most governments. They are the enemy. The people at the top -- you know, the 1 percent of people who own nearly half of all investments in the stock market -- really like things the way they are.
Law determines how far your liberty reaches until it meets mine. I'm saying that you should pay extra for your inefficient use of resources, which is a well established capitalist ideal.
Go ahead and poll your peers. Ask them if they'd like to live in a neighborhood where they could walk or bike to a park, a city square, and a bus or rail station that had reasonable commute times to the work place, or if they'd like to have a Suburban and a Jetski. Believe it or not, most people don't see sitting in traffic in an SUV as a pinnacle of human achievement.
All I want for you to do is to pay the full cost for your lifestyle, and I'll pay the full cost of mine. If I live in a smaller house, produce less trash, produce less pollution, use less electricity, and drive a smaller car, I'm saving resources, and I should be saving money.
However, gas is subsidized because the taxes don't pay for the cost of our military expenditures in the middle east. Less efficient road systems are subsidized instead of rail because lobbyists from the oil and auto industries want them to be.
You're just another dog feeding at the tit of the SPQR. You just don't know it. Without the corrupt American government, your lifestyle wouldn't exist, because it's wasteful and benefits the greed of corporations. I'd still gladly let you live it, as long as you're paying $12 a gallon and extra taxes for your heavy vehicle's stress on the infrastructure.
I'm sorry, hauling 3500 pounds of steel to carry one person and groceries using controlled explosions is monumentally stupid.
We need to conserve energy dense fuels for situations where they are are truly needed (emergency vehicles, long-haul transportation through sparse landscapes, aviation).
What people are upset about is that life is much less convenient when we're all not driving powerful vehicles than can carry 10 folks and tow a boat on a whim. Well, tough shit. You may have to carpool or take the bus. You may not be able to keep your own jetski in a garage a hundred miles from your lake house. These are privileges, not rights.
Algae based biodiesel is interesting, but again, we need to get away from ICEs except where they are absolutely necessary. An electric car can receive power from any source - nuclear, coal, and even biodiesel through small on-board generators. ICEs will always be addicted to one type of depletable resource - that derived from dead organic material.
A person needs very little energy to move around. In fact, a burrito can get you at least fifteen miles on foot. As a civilization, we have to recognize that as the goal, and give up on the idea of cars as we know them. They're just not viable in the long run.
You're right - we'll never see a battery powered Hummer. But electric vehicles that serve the needs of 90% of the population have been in mass production (even if subsequently shut down) since 1996. All because the government of California demanded that car companies deliver them.
Now consumer demand and energy awareness are at an all time high. They're backordering SmartCars and Apteras and even high-performance Tesla Motors sports cars into two and three year waits.
And I have to say, I hope gas goes to it's true cost where it covers our involvement in the middle east. Anyone who wants to stick with their 6 liter engine after gas hits $12 a gallon is getting exactly what they deserve.
There is no simple solution. Any solution that involves combustion is the wrong direction, because you will use up whatever resource it depends on in a heartbeat. That even goes for solar energy, but there are millions of square miles in deserts that could be used for power generation, since it produces no other benefit for human civilization.
In Kathmandu, they already have a fleet of operating electric vehicles, because they're cheaper, more reliable, and cleaner than oil-propelled vehicles. They are run by private businesses, not the government.
Mass transit ridership is the highest since the mid-50s (when GM was tearing down mass transit to sell more cars). Cars are as good as dead in towns and cities.
Whenever possible, build electric propulsion systems. Regardless of what becomes our solution beyond the dead-organic storage we've been using, we can have an infrastructure that uses it.
I thought my electricity was generated about thirty miles away where they burn coal. I wonder how they get a ship on the highway?
Sure, power lines don't work when I want to send energy across a continent or an ocean. But I have this wild idea where smaller solar plants dotting the landscape can decentralize the grid, improve transmission efficiency, and use existing infrastructure and proven technology.
There's that headache again... perhaps my brain is warning me that you're a dumb douchebag who will miss everything cool and die angry.
I'm sorry to yell. But where exactly do you think coal and oil and natural gas come from?
Here's a hint: it's all dead organic material, which originally gathered energy from something that gathered energy from what original source? Yes, that's right kids! It's the sun! Revered for millenniums for a reason...
Wind generation? Another form of solar energy. No sun, no wind. Lakes and rivers? No sun, no rain, no fresh water, no lakes and rivers! Not to say you can't harness these different manifestations of the sun's energy...
Passive solar plants are already in use all over the world, and even store energy using gravity or other passive methods that waste very little energy. Many small power plants can decentralize the grid, improve efficiency since the grid is smaller, and are much more viable than millions of little ICEs.
Imagine, Wal-Mart borrows ten billion dollars to install solar panels to cover their parking lots, which stop local heating effects, decrease A/C usage in all customer cars, and provide them with another revenue stream all in one master stroke.
kpppppffffffffft. Like running solar power through the electric grid into batteries isn't triply inefficient itself? Guess again. Quite more efficient than hauling yet another form of solar energy around as dead weight.
But let's build a new infrastructure around an unproven technology that's dependent on a corporation's patents. That sounds like a much better idea.
Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea. Why? The process is totally inefficient.
Grow sawgrass -> harvest sawgress -> haul sawgrass -> process sawgrass -> haul SwiftFuel -> store SwiftFuel
OR
solar power -> through existing electric infrastructure -> to the battery of your electric car/mower/series of tubes
This is not hard to understand. Why it continues to elude everyone gives me a headache every time I read about "alternative energy." Gasoline combustion or any similar idea involving controlled explosions are highly unreliable and expensive to maintain. It may be necessary for air travel but has no place powering anything with wheels.
Furthermore, there's no such thing as alternative energy. There are three choices when it comes to energy given our current technology: thermal, nuclear, and solar. Sawgrass biofuel is yet another pathetically short sighted delivery system for solar energy. Thermal energy is viable in only a few places in the world like Iceland. Nuclear uses finite resources and requires a lot of investment and still presents many, many environmental concerns.
Solar energy, whether directly converted to electricity with panels or used in a novel solar-powered plants, is decentralized, clean, uses existing infrastructure, and uses electricity as it's delivery medium which is the only transmission system which doesn't move even a single atom after the line is in place.
It uses recyclable materials. We've been working with it for well over a hundred years. We have the engine technology. Am I missing something?
Iran has in the past contacted people who have also been monitored to have visited a nuclear facility in Pakistan. Recommend making diplomatic contact to get some more intel. (fieldofficerfred 8/23/99, imported from file)
Anyone? Need some direction on this. (fieldofficerfred 9/8/00, imported from file)
Hello? (fieldofficerfred 2/23/01, imported from file)
We're listening. How can we make this suit our needs? (pwolfawitz, rrumsfeld, dcheney 9/10/01, imported from file)
Saddam's a softer target. Hang on. (dcheney 10/25/02, imported from file)
Saddam? Iran is refining uranium! With all due repsect, what the fuck are you guys thinking? (fieldofficerfred 11/26/02, imported from file)
Don't question my authority to not know what I may or may not know that I know. You're fired. (rrumsfeld 1/8/03, imported from file)
Hey, did you guys know Iran was refining uranium? (rrumsfeld (deprecated) 11/16/07)
Iran has offered to accept the delivery of peaceful fissile material and a shutdown of their own refineries in exchange for guarantees from Europe that they won't allow the US to attack them. (gathered from the AP 5/2/08)
Disregard that. We will not allow Europe to negotiate with extremists on the other side. Iran is the greatest threat to America and the known universe, second only to waxy buildup and auto erotic asphyxiation. (dcheney 5/4/08)
Iran continues to refine uranium as they see it as their only diplomatic leverage and hope to prevent the United States from invading. (gathered from the AP 5/29/08)
IRAN HAS NUKES. [citation needed] JESUS TOLD ME TO ATTACK AT DAWN!!!!!!!!1111 [citation needed] (gwbush 8/5/08)
Mer mer mer attack at dawn, mer mer mer. (dcheney 8/5/08)
I'm not sure if it was from the Pentagon papers, but Chomsky gave a talk where he discussed the CIA's incompetence and outright idiocy while they were trying to figure out if China or Russia was sending Ho Chi Minh orders in the 60s.
They chased down every lead, and the most they ever found was a Russian newspaper in a Vietnamese embassy. Their conclusion? Ho Chi Minh was such a dedicated communist client that they didn't even need to send orders. Ho Chi Minh just "knew what to do."
I also recently finished watching "RFK Must Die," and at this point, we just need to wipe the whole intelligence community out the door and start over again.
Slashdot Mirror
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=190286&cid=15656478
Just because you believe that religion doesn't work that way doesn't mean you are right.
Jesus preferred to pray in private. He spent time with lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, and children. He devoted his life to people who needed compassion and care.
For the most part, Christians in the US gather every Sunday to pat themselves on the back for being so righteous as to show up somewhere for an hour. Politically they have voted with a party that advocates violence over diplomacy, and who seemingly despise any use of government funds to help to care for those who can't care for themselves.
Talking about ethics has no moral value, and that's all that the Christian culture seems to be interested in doing. When it comes to actual sacrifice, whether it's in the form of giving up wealth to help the needy, or turning the other cheek in the face of violence, they are strangely motionless.
You will be missed, pal.
"In the Bullshit Department, a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman. 'Cause I gotta tell you the truth, folks. When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told.
Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!
But He loves you.
He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!"
-George Carlin
Girls want to play games. They're emotional beings, who need some push and pull to feel stable themselves. If you don't fight with your girlfriend at least once a week, she'll leave you eventually.
More than that, "nice" guys make the mistake of trying to get into a serious relationship way too early. Only religious nutcases or the severely codependent girls are looking for that before 25. You have to wait for them to stop "exploring" (aka fucking random dudes/chicks) and for that biological clock to kick in.
Also, remember that it's in this order:
1) Power (money/success/position)
2) Fitness
3) Sense of humor
4) Resemblance to father
If you want to get laid every night, you need to look good, feel good about yourself, be enough of an ass to advertise these thoughts at a bar and make a move. Women go to bars for the same reason you do - to get laid.
Just using these girls here for advertising my point. Oldest marketing trick in the book.
PS: The ones that laugh are the best in bed. The crazy ones are better. Just make sure you use their apartment instead of yours, or get a hotel. Changing your number is more of a headache than spending a hundred bucks.
Let's assume this kid didn't realize the gravity of his actions. He's 18, after all. As a society, we can take someone with obvious talent, send them to a full year of constant psychiatric care and put him on parole for two years. Punish him by putting him on house arrest for six months without access to a computer.
The benefit for the perpetrator is that they get a real chance at not becoming part of the revolving door of our prison system. The benefit for society is you take someone on the wrong track, make him a productive member of society instead of another burden.
And if he violates the law while on parole, then you stick him in jail for a year. But don't give him more time that someone who commits violent acts. That's just fucking stupid.
Then he'd be on parole or even jailed for two years. Much better to serve five for messing with an insecure computer system.
People by definition aren't corrupt. You can assume that by definition but then there is no reason for anyone to take you seriously.
People aren't corrupt? And I guess they aren't jealous, vain, or "bad" in any way. It's just that they don't have the free market to liberate their true good will. I don't think I'm the one who has a credibility problem on this issue...
Let's break this down. A corporation offers an elected official money...
That's an oversimplified example. More often, the corruption is that political favors are done with no money involved until the corrupt official exits office and gets a cushy job with the benefactor of his dishonesty. If there's no big salary at the end of the election, the people in politics for greed will be forced to directly break the law instead of skirting around loopholes and handing multi-billion dollar contracts to friends and associates. Dick Cheney is a great example.
Now, I ask you how to stop this from happening... You would rather go after the companies. The problem is that there will always be new companies, and they will always find a way to entice politicians. The problem is not with the companies, but with the politicians willing to accept the bribes. That is where to place the blame. Officials who are charged with upholding rights, are freely violating them in exchange for bribes.
The government is going to exist. Companies don't have to exist in their current form. You hit the nail on the head when you said there will always be new companies - many of them, in fact, which remain small because as soon as they reach a certain size, they are probably going to start doing bad things. And if they do then they'll be split up by the government, if they are doing their job, and you end up with many competitive entities instead of large uncontrollable behemoths.
Without a law preventing private ownership of the Hudson, the Hudson would be privately owned, and that owner has a right not to have their property destroyed by surrounding property. They could practically sue DuPont out of existence if that happened. When the government decides it owns a piece of property, and does not bother to treat it as a property owner would treat their property, then you end up with situations like this - the Cuyahoga River fire comes to mind.
If natural resources are privately owned, all you're doing is creating a natural monopoly. What's going to stop Hudson River Co. from charging $1,000 a day for access for it's non-business partners? They could bankrupt shipping companies overnight, buy them up, and continue abusing their power until it destroyed the local economy for everyone else except for them. And if you don't think companies will destroy themselves so the top members of management can walk away with a few hundred million dollars, you don't watch the news very much. The EPA is not cleaning up after the government. They're cleaning up after companies who destroyed their own property to make huge sums of money.
In straight capitalism, corporations do anything for a profit. They'll clear-cut a forest, dump raw chemicals into lakes and rivers, and put people in the belly of coal mines and work them to death. Before regulation arrived at the beginning of the 20th century, employees and the environment were being obliterated because they were cheap or free. Only after massive public protest did the government step in to limit the damage.
Wanting the most product from your money and work is not by itself immoral, and that is all that is represented by the word "greed".
Greed is obviously subjective. The problem with the free market is that companies have no rules. If they can make a profit marketing a known carcinogen to children, they will do it, have done it, and continue in countries where there is no regulation.
You have not shown that to be true.
There isn't a single counter-example that I can think of, unless you cons
I wanted to add this before I responded: I am thinking in the context of a real democracy, not America. In my opinion, it's a fascist state nearly beyond repair.
That is not capitalism, but corporatism. Which, again, is the end result of free market capitalism, because people are and always will be greedy and corrupt. Corporations get so large that they hold power to coerce government, so it matters very little that they can't use guns to enforce their will. They use lawyers and politicians instead, who do have access to them. What is this based on? Do you have any supporting evidence that "greed wrecks society", or should we just accept what you say? Without a law, explain why DuPont wouldn't stop dumping paint in the Hudson if it saved them money.The other is a matter of what you consider society. In America, so far that has meant the privilege of living comfortably at the expense of other cultures. It started with the indigenous population, spread to slavery, and now we are nice enough to kill foreigners who happen to be nearby the resources we consider necessary to our lifestyle. I consider this morally reprehensible and the worst kind of greed. You may believe otherwise.
Corruption only becomes a concern to the public when it is backed by force, something which only the government can apply. The government has to have force, otherwise they aren't a government. The corruption of a corporation, or the collusion of government and a corporation are inevitable. You can either eliminate the corporate entity or the government. I choose to eliminate the corporation. And that official will be replaced by another corrupt official. As long as the government is able to manipulate the economy, individuals and businesses will flock to them to get manipulation in their favor (otherwise they risk seeing unfavorable legislation forced against them). The government has to establish law and enforce contracts. If you can point out a society that you would like to emulate that has done otherwise, I'd love to hear about it. When corporations have less rights than people, it will be less of a problem, as the corporations who don't have a positive impact for the society they operate in are dissolved. The ends do not justify the means, ever. A few temporary positives are not worth giving up all your rights. That's an empty phrase. Which rights are automatically taken away from you in a well regulated economy? I can agree with that, although you seem to think the fault lies with the businesses, whereas for me, because the state is the entity actually applying the force on the public, I see the state as to blame. In America, there's no difference between the desires of business and government. In any case, you can choose to concentrate power in corporations where no one has oversight or the power to change anything, or concentrate it in limited local government, where you do have the power to change something.The military industrial complex is a very real entity, and they make hundreds of billions of dollars each year as a reward for manufacturing weapons, as long as they collude with the government to provide false pretenses for war. If the arms dealers were under government oversight, they could be dismantled by the constituents of the democracy. Of course, real democracy -- that is, the will of the general population being accomplished, is the greatest threat to our current government, and thus, the symbiotic corporate structure attached to it. That's why they deeply despise public opinion, and proudly ignore it. That's why there's a constant barrage of media on the ineffectiveness of government. They want to make sure people don't use it.
Well regulated markets work the best. Without regulation, you cannot assign cost to environmental damage, or prevent greed from wrecking society. Hierarchies will always get top heavy with power and corruption. If that hierarchy is in a corporation, there's nothing the public can do about it. If they are in a functioning democracy, at least the public can vote corruption out during the next election cycle.
So, a healthy but limited government keeping corporate power in check will yield many of the benefits of capitalism. I think in order to do this we need to introduce the separation of business and state.
Public officials should not be allowed to seek employment after their service with any firm that does business with the government. If you don't like it, don't run for office. You're running because you want to participate as a proud citizen of our democracy, not so you can enjoy power and kickbacks. Right?
Ah well.
All you have to do is get enough people who are unified as a community and perform acts of public civil disobedience to agree with you. For referene, see the civil rights movement, women's suffrage movement, India's break from British rule.
Picking up a gun is for cowards who would rather die for a cause than live for one. The only exception (in the modern era) would be a foreign invasion. And then the occupying force would of course label you a terrorist.
Sorry, compadre. In heterogeneous environments which are a lot more commonplace these days, Office is prohibitively expensive. You either need Terminal Servers, or Parallels plus a windows license, or I can hand out OOo to everyone, not worry about file formats, and get on with my life.
I switched another office that had already bought copies of Office 2008 for Mac, but the spreadsheets from Office 2003 never translated quite right. So they converted everything to OOo instead of wasting another couple of thousand dollars upgrading to office 2007.
Access and Infopath are dead because of web services. Graphic guys are going to buy Adobe anyway. That leaves Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. Which are handily beat by OOo 3.0, which works all the time, every time, on Linux, Windows, and Mac.
This may seem counter-intuitive at first, and believe me I don't compare any current people to MLK or any nonsense like that. However, like the civil rights movement, the internet offers a place for regular people to exchange information and ideas (at very little cost and in a semi-anonymous fashion). Websites like Wikileaks frankly scare the shit out of governments. The masses are, and always will be, the #1 enemy of the state.
Basically, as the internet grows more adept at connecting disparate people, the less likely we'll be willing to fight wars. I can go right now and become friends or at least become familiar with someone from China, Iran, Egypt, and even Iraq. Wars, especially for America, are extremely profitable for the propertied classes. It's the reason businesses like Standard Oil sold to the Nazis and the British in WWII. It's the reason IBM had no qualms helping the Germans index Jews for extermination. Now these same companies lobby to congresspeople on a daily basis, and you and I will probably never meet our representatives in person.
And people wonder why the needs of the people aren't being met. It's really quite simple - the people don't matter to most governments. They are the enemy. The people at the top -- you know, the 1 percent of people who own nearly half of all investments in the stock market -- really like things the way they are.
Law determines how far your liberty reaches until it meets mine. I'm saying that you should pay extra for your inefficient use of resources, which is a well established capitalist ideal.
Go ahead and poll your peers. Ask them if they'd like to live in a neighborhood where they could walk or bike to a park, a city square, and a bus or rail station that had reasonable commute times to the work place, or if they'd like to have a Suburban and a Jetski. Believe it or not, most people don't see sitting in traffic in an SUV as a pinnacle of human achievement.
All I want for you to do is to pay the full cost for your lifestyle, and I'll pay the full cost of mine. If I live in a smaller house, produce less trash, produce less pollution, use less electricity, and drive a smaller car, I'm saving resources, and I should be saving money.
However, gas is subsidized because the taxes don't pay for the cost of our military expenditures in the middle east. Less efficient road systems are subsidized instead of rail because lobbyists from the oil and auto industries want them to be.
You're just another dog feeding at the tit of the SPQR. You just don't know it. Without the corrupt American government, your lifestyle wouldn't exist, because it's wasteful and benefits the greed of corporations. I'd still gladly let you live it, as long as you're paying $12 a gallon and extra taxes for your heavy vehicle's stress on the infrastructure.
I'm sorry, hauling 3500 pounds of steel to carry one person and groceries using controlled explosions is monumentally stupid.
We need to conserve energy dense fuels for situations where they are are truly needed (emergency vehicles, long-haul transportation through sparse landscapes, aviation).
What people are upset about is that life is much less convenient when we're all not driving powerful vehicles than can carry 10 folks and tow a boat on a whim. Well, tough shit. You may have to carpool or take the bus. You may not be able to keep your own jetski in a garage a hundred miles from your lake house. These are privileges, not rights.
Algae based biodiesel is interesting, but again, we need to get away from ICEs except where they are absolutely necessary. An electric car can receive power from any source - nuclear, coal, and even biodiesel through small on-board generators. ICEs will always be addicted to one type of depletable resource - that derived from dead organic material.
A person needs very little energy to move around. In fact, a burrito can get you at least fifteen miles on foot. As a civilization, we have to recognize that as the goal, and give up on the idea of cars as we know them. They're just not viable in the long run.
You're right - we'll never see a battery powered Hummer. But electric vehicles that serve the needs of 90% of the population have been in mass production (even if subsequently shut down) since 1996. All because the government of California demanded that car companies deliver them.
Now consumer demand and energy awareness are at an all time high. They're backordering SmartCars and Apteras and even high-performance Tesla Motors sports cars into two and three year waits.
And I have to say, I hope gas goes to it's true cost where it covers our involvement in the middle east. Anyone who wants to stick with their 6 liter engine after gas hits $12 a gallon is getting exactly what they deserve.
There is no simple solution. Any solution that involves combustion is the wrong direction, because you will use up whatever resource it depends on in a heartbeat. That even goes for solar energy, but there are millions of square miles in deserts that could be used for power generation, since it produces no other benefit for human civilization.
In Kathmandu, they already have a fleet of operating electric vehicles, because they're cheaper, more reliable, and cleaner than oil-propelled vehicles. They are run by private businesses, not the government.
Mass transit ridership is the highest since the mid-50s (when GM was tearing down mass transit to sell more cars). Cars are as good as dead in towns and cities.
Whenever possible, build electric propulsion systems. Regardless of what becomes our solution beyond the dead-organic storage we've been using, we can have an infrastructure that uses it.
I thought my electricity was generated about thirty miles away where they burn coal. I wonder how they get a ship on the highway?
Sure, power lines don't work when I want to send energy across a continent or an ocean. But I have this wild idea where smaller solar plants dotting the landscape can decentralize the grid, improve transmission efficiency, and use existing infrastructure and proven technology.
There's that headache again... perhaps my brain is warning me that you're a dumb douchebag who will miss everything cool and die angry.
With apologies to Patton Oswalt.
I'm sorry to yell. But where exactly do you think coal and oil and natural gas come from?
Here's a hint: it's all dead organic material, which originally gathered energy from something that gathered energy from what original source? Yes, that's right kids! It's the sun! Revered for millenniums for a reason...
Wind generation? Another form of solar energy. No sun, no wind. Lakes and rivers? No sun, no rain, no fresh water, no lakes and rivers! Not to say you can't harness these different manifestations of the sun's energy...
Passive solar plants are already in use all over the world, and even store energy using gravity or other passive methods that waste very little energy. Many small power plants can decentralize the grid, improve efficiency since the grid is smaller, and are much more viable than millions of little ICEs.
Imagine, Wal-Mart borrows ten billion dollars to install solar panels to cover their parking lots, which stop local heating effects, decrease A/C usage in all customer cars, and provide them with another revenue stream all in one master stroke.
But let's build a new infrastructure around an unproven technology that's dependent on a corporation's patents. That sounds like a much better idea.
Copper and steel have gone up while everything else has gone down. Silly me. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the poor valuation of the dollar.
Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea. Why? The process is totally inefficient.
Grow sawgrass -> harvest sawgress -> haul sawgrass -> process sawgrass -> haul SwiftFuel -> store SwiftFuel
OR
solar power -> through existing electric infrastructure -> to the battery of your electric car/mower/series of tubes
This is not hard to understand. Why it continues to elude everyone gives me a headache every time I read about "alternative energy." Gasoline combustion or any similar idea involving controlled explosions are highly unreliable and expensive to maintain. It may be necessary for air travel but has no place powering anything with wheels.
Furthermore, there's no such thing as alternative energy. There are three choices when it comes to energy given our current technology: thermal, nuclear, and solar. Sawgrass biofuel is yet another pathetically short sighted delivery system for solar energy. Thermal energy is viable in only a few places in the world like Iceland. Nuclear uses finite resources and requires a lot of investment and still presents many, many environmental concerns.
Solar energy, whether directly converted to electricity with panels or used in a novel solar-powered plants, is decentralized, clean, uses existing infrastructure, and uses electricity as it's delivery medium which is the only transmission system which doesn't move even a single atom after the line is in place.
It uses recyclable materials. We've been working with it for well over a hundred years. We have the engine technology. Am I missing something?
Iran has in the past contacted people who have also been monitored to have visited a nuclear facility in Pakistan. Recommend making diplomatic contact to get some more intel. (fieldofficerfred 8/23/99, imported from file)
Anyone? Need some direction on this. (fieldofficerfred 9/8/00, imported from file)
Hello? (fieldofficerfred 2/23/01, imported from file)
We're listening. How can we make this suit our needs? (pwolfawitz, rrumsfeld, dcheney 9/10/01, imported from file)
Saddam's a softer target. Hang on. (dcheney 10/25/02, imported from file)
Saddam? Iran is refining uranium! With all due repsect, what the fuck are you guys thinking? (fieldofficerfred 11/26/02, imported from file)
Don't question my authority to not know what I may or may not know that I know. You're fired. (rrumsfeld 1/8/03, imported from file)
Hey, did you guys know Iran was refining uranium? (rrumsfeld (deprecated) 11/16/07)
Iran has offered to accept the delivery of peaceful fissile material and a shutdown of their own refineries in exchange for guarantees from Europe that they won't allow the US to attack them. (gathered from the AP 5/2/08)
Disregard that. We will not allow Europe to negotiate with extremists on the other side. Iran is the greatest threat to America and the known universe, second only to waxy buildup and auto erotic asphyxiation. (dcheney 5/4/08)
Iran continues to refine uranium as they see it as their only diplomatic leverage and hope to prevent the United States from invading. (gathered from the AP 5/29/08)
IRAN HAS NUKES. [citation needed] JESUS TOLD ME TO ATTACK AT DAWN!!!!!!!!1111 [citation needed] (gwbush 8/5/08)
Mer mer mer attack at dawn, mer mer mer. (dcheney 8/5/08)
I'm not sure if it was from the Pentagon papers, but Chomsky gave a talk where he discussed the CIA's incompetence and outright idiocy while they were trying to figure out if China or Russia was sending Ho Chi Minh orders in the 60s.
They chased down every lead, and the most they ever found was a Russian newspaper in a Vietnamese embassy. Their conclusion? Ho Chi Minh was such a dedicated communist client that they didn't even need to send orders. Ho Chi Minh just "knew what to do."
I also recently finished watching "RFK Must Die," and at this point, we just need to wipe the whole intelligence community out the door and start over again.