>>>You just changed the definition of "libertarian" and then postulated what might happen if (your definition of) "libertarians"
No I didn't. I very clearly said, "Many libertarians are actually anarchists," and NEVER said all libertarians are anarchists. I did not redefine libertarianism but instead made an observation of the people that exist within my own Maryland Libertarian Party.
Although in retrospect I probably should replaced "many" with "some". It's only a few that are anarchists, while most Libertarians are like Ron Paul, supporting the idea of a small but limited government.
. >>>a technological superpower society that basically invented almost every useful bit of technology
False. A lot of the inventions we think of as "American" are actually European imports. Like the printing press, the lightbulb, the camera, and so on. Even the very idea of libertarianism originated from Europe (from Scottish politics of the 1600s and Australian economists of the late 1800s/early 1900s). That's not to say Americans have not contributed, but I'd only give them half credit while reserving the other half to Europeans.
That's because we Americans and Europeans have "time" on our side. It sounds like those poor persons are spending literally hours searching through trash just to find a few bottles and other knick-knacks.
In contrast, we in America and Europe only need a few minutes to earn the money and just BUY the bottle. For us it is not logical to spend hours to get these items.
>>> the more things change, the more they stay the same.
No not really. They wanted to control the population because it was a burden on the State Treasury, and their solution was often as simple as saying, "Leave the city... go into the countryside." That's not the same as our goal, which is literally to stop poisoning ourselves because the planet is becoming overburdened. The Roman solution of "leave the city" is no longer a workable solution.
Just think - if our population were 1/2 billion rather than 6 billion, global warming from CO2 emissions wouldn't even be an issue.
How about the Amish-American model that I live next to? They plant seeds, harvest the final product, and eat it. They make their own clothes. They don't burn gasoline. Or coal electricity. Their homes are heated with renewable energy from trees (wood).
It isn't a perfect lifestyle, but I imagine their carbon footprint is near-zero, and certainly better than living in slums.
>>>a reversal into the medieval dark ages, into a world of filth and disease is not where I thought progress would take me.
I did. For years now I've realized that if Oil & Coal becomes so scarce that its costs $1000 a barrel and gasoline is $50 a gallon, and electricity costs $2 per kilowatt-hour, we can no longer live like we live. We must revert to living in a pre-oil and pre-coal type of society, like our ancestors did in the 1700s.
Oh and no I don't think there's any viable replacement for oil and coal. Solar/nuclear/wind will help cushion the fall, but they won't be able to replace the billions of barrels we use every year.
Maybe you should consider some Libertarian benefits of the slums: - Dynamic and growing economy with practically no oversight, regulation or taxation by government - High density living means services can be provided cheaply and new revenue streams become possible - No effective local government means that people self-organise between themselves to get things done
I like your point about Libertarians. Many Ls are actually anarchists, saying that human society would actually be better-off with no government (other than self-rule). If Libertarian ideals took-over would we eventually end-up living in compact, filthy cities like our 1700s/1800s ancestors did? Thomas Jefferson called his century's cities "the dungheaps of humanity where the people live in their own filth".
I was immediately reminded of Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel. In that novel the humans live in very, very compact fashion..... basically like dorms. One dorm per family. Shared bathrooms/toilets. They have to because there's not enough energy to live like we live, and support 20 billion people, so the humans must live in the most "green" way possible - minimally.
>>>who says just because you're a geek you don't know how to binge drink, score good drugs, and hit on chicks?
Age helps.
Hitting on chicks is a lot easier after you pass 30. I think there's some kind of daddy issue going on there, that makes college-aged women and 20-somethings unable to restrain themselves. I don't know? Whatever it is, I like it.;-)
While I was visiting my classmate's dorm room, to borrow her Quantum Chemistry book and notes, her roommate walked in wearing nothing but a towel and water dripping from her long hair. I said, "Excuse me I'll leave," and she said "No need" and then dropped her towel. It was the first woman I'd ever seen nude, and I admit I enjoyed it.
Your honor: Since I was still holding a Chemistry book, I argue I should still be allowed to keep my geek card.
>>>That doesn't make a lot of sense. If you're working for Lockheed, you're hardly an "independent programmer," are you? The term usually refers to people who are creating their own products and running their own business - not just to somebody working on a contract as opposed to regular employment. >>>
Missing the point.
As a hardware engineer and can be BOTH an employee of Lockheed AND have my own independent business on the side designing handheld radios or whatever.
As a programmer I must choose one or the other. I cannot do both, due to the IRS penalties imposed by Congress on both me & my employer (Lockheed).
>>>I don't know about that. Corporations are not just things, they are collections of people
Yes, but even if the Corporations lose their right to free speech (no donations/lobbyists), the people inside the corporation still retain their rights. While Comcast might be silenced from lobbying, if the Comcast employees want to speak-out and say "Comcast is great" they still can.
And as for assembling, the Right refers to *voluntary* assembling. There's nothing voluntary about a job, since you either have the right to show up, or the right to be fired and possibly go years without finding another job. (Like I'm doing right now.) Working for a corporation is very similar to working for a Lord of a manor - you exercise your rights; you get kicked out. Or you keep silent and keep your position. It's not true freedom.
Anyway taking away Comcast's right to lobby doesn't affect the rights of the People inside the organization. They can still lobby if they so desire.
>>>he CEO of a major corporation could just as easily donate funds under his own name with a little post-it note asking for laws that help his corporation.
Yes he could, but he'd only be donating his own money, not raiding his emmployees' paychecks for cash and giving it away. Also we have laws that limit how much a person can give ($4000 last I checked) whereas no such law exists for a corporation. So the CEO really wouldn't have much power overall.
And most importantly, corporations would be blocked from hiring lobbyists, due to not having free speech rights. They wouldn't be able to hijack our healthcare like they are doing now with the Obamacare bill.
>>>Where did this originate? Fox News?
Hardly - they are probusiness. Try the Progressive Party and Greens. Also Thomas Jefferson said corporations threatened to destroy democracy by becoming more powerful than the People's government. Any power concentrated in the hands of a few, whether its a government or a board of directors, is dangerous to human liberty.
>>>if you are a fugitive..... It is perfectly OK for law enforcement to track people by using public/private resources. As long as they have proper reason/warrants. >>>
That was my point. Microsoft is providing this information *without* a warrant, and enabling the trampling of our "secure in our papers and effects" right. They need to be stopped from doing these warrantless searches/tracking.
>>>Ok, as I understood California or some other state had it legalized for medical use. Guess US federal law goes over that.
And Constitutional Law supersedes all of them: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." - The government of California (and New Jersey and New Hampshire and so on) has given its citizens the Right to ask a doctor for a medical marijuana prescription. The Federal government has no authority to take that right away. (see the paragraph below)
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." i.e. The Feds were never given power to ban a naturally-growing plant. That power still belongs to California and the other States, so the Federal law is null-and-void.
>>>police say "this X-Box, SN#ABC, was stolen on this date", Microsoft will return the subsequent connection history for that xbox!
Yes well that sounds good, but such a system could also be abused if, for example, you're a medical marijuana user trying to relieve your arthritis, and the Feds are after you. The last thing you want it Microsoft saying, "Our records show he logged in at L.A. and then San Francisco and then Sacramento in hotel X room Y."
Please note I consider the outlawing of marijuana (or any other plant) to be a violation of the Tenth Amendment in our Bill of Rights. Therefore I don't consider users to be criminals because I consider the U.S. Prohibition Law to be null.
Sorry. I guess I should have said "Windows 95 [with upgrades to make it work with a modern Atom CPU]" in my previous post. Obviously I would not use the stock Win95
Anyway...
I use Windows 98 on my laptop with only 64 megabytes. It works just fine. I'm not sure why people say these older OSes are "no good" since it runs web browsing & word processing software a-okay and without needing a lot of power to do it (4 hours on a NiMH battery). Just replace the inefficient AMD K5 with an efficient Atom.
Oh and as for the Linux suggestion, I have used things like Puppy Linux on this laptop and enjoyed the speed of its RAM-based operation, but it failed to see the modem or the sound card. I like OSes that work, and it didn't seem to function properly.
>>>You have a multi-hundred-horsepower engine that has clearly demonstrated the ability to overcome the power of four brake pads.
When a Toyota experiences this "accelerator open" condition, the brakes are not engaging because the signal is not transmitted from the pedal to the pads.
As for rear-ending the other car, it would be hope that the sudden jarring would damage my engine, or otherwise knock it out of the electronic "100% throttle" mode it is stuck in. Perhaps it would not work, but still better than the alternative of doing nothing and then running into a concrete pillar or off a cliff.
. >>>Now, if you could find a very large truck moving at about 80
Yeah unfortunately when a car hits a truck, it usually just slides underneath the high rear end, and the driver gets crushed or sliced in half.
>>>>>"Officer, I was clearly standing on the street with my camera. It's not my fault that the girl was naked in her bedroom. She shouldn't have left the curtains open." >> >>There's Peeping Tom laws in many places, for one thing,
Here in the U.S. laws operate backwards. A Virginia woman was walking her kid to school, she looked through a front window where she saw a naked man, and she was offended for her self and her child. Reasonable people would either charge the woman with peeping, or else just say "it's a human body; don't be such a prude" and drop the case.
Instead the Virginia government arrested the naked man for indecent exposure even though he was *inside* his own house, and merely getting dressed for work.
>>>Technical incapability isn't an excuse to break laws.
No it isn't, but what laws are being broken? Google is taking photos of *public* streets and the nearby view. This is no different than when painters used to sit with their paintings and draw what they saw, or when tourists captured images with their disposable cameras.
You have never had "privacy" outside the walls of your house.
>>>You see as the EU is NOT a federal government, the individual nations still have sovereignty and national constitutions.
I guess I don't see the distinction. After all we have 50 constitutions are well, with sovereign governments, but that didn't stop the US from passing law contrary to those 50 constitutions' protected rights.
>>> *non-EU* European Court of Human Rights]
This is what we need. Our Court is part of the U.S. government and therefore often just a puppet of the Congress and/or President, especially since 1935 when the president threatened the justices with losing their jobs. Suddenly they did whatever the president and congress wanted them to do.
We need a court that stands separately from the U.S. government.
I wish I coudl work from home. I've asked because it's a more comfortable working environment - kinda like doing homework back in my college days- but no company wants to allow it.
Anonymous_Coward wrote: You were lucky. Consider what it *could* have been! And I bet you surf from work, so that would have been your job right there...
www.freepussy.com - Your source for the New Pussy Linux OS! Download it and give it a ride.
>>>This is more what I see here on slashdot. Somewhere in the middle is the common ground.
Yes middle ground is better. I like to use the commercial Windows OS because it is the "default" OS that everyone uses and very well-supported (I'm still using Windows 98!). But I use open-source for everything else because I'm too cheap to open my wallet, and don't see the need to buy software when OSS alternatives are "good enough" for web browsing, word processing, movie watching, and so on.
trivia -
My first word processor was RUNscript typed out of a magazine. It wasn't pretty but it was good enough for book reports. I later upgraded to GEOSwrite and all my teachers were amazed by the pretty fonts. "Is this from a Macintosh?" "No Mrs. Johns... it's from a $500 computer* called a Commodore 64." "Wow that's a lot cheaper than the $4000 I spent on my Mac." Ahhhh... nostalgia.:-)
* * $200 for the computer plus $300 for the floppy drive
Slashdot Mirror
>>>You just changed the definition of "libertarian" and then postulated what might happen if (your definition of) "libertarians"
No I didn't. I very clearly said, "Many libertarians are actually anarchists," and NEVER said all libertarians are anarchists. I did not redefine libertarianism but instead made an observation of the people that exist within my own Maryland Libertarian Party.
Although in retrospect I probably should replaced "many" with "some". It's only a few that are anarchists, while most Libertarians are like Ron Paul, supporting the idea of a small but limited government.
.
>>>a technological superpower society that basically invented almost every useful bit of technology
False. A lot of the inventions we think of as "American" are actually European imports. Like the printing press, the lightbulb, the camera, and so on. Even the very idea of libertarianism originated from Europe (from Scottish politics of the 1600s and Australian economists of the late 1800s/early 1900s). That's not to say Americans have not contributed, but I'd only give them half credit while reserving the other half to Europeans.
That's because we Americans and Europeans have "time" on our side. It sounds like those poor persons are spending literally hours searching through trash just to find a few bottles and other knick-knacks.
In contrast, we in America and Europe only need a few minutes to earn the money and just BUY the bottle. For us it is not logical to spend hours to get these items.
>>> the more things change, the more they stay the same.
No not really. They wanted to control the population because it was a burden on the State Treasury, and their solution was often as simple as saying, "Leave the city... go into the countryside." That's not the same as our goal, which is literally to stop poisoning ourselves because the planet is becoming overburdened. The Roman solution of "leave the city" is no longer a workable solution.
Just think - if our population were 1/2 billion rather than 6 billion, global warming from CO2 emissions wouldn't even be an issue.
How about the Amish-American model that I live next to? They plant seeds, harvest the final product, and eat it. They make their own clothes. They don't burn gasoline. Or coal electricity. Their homes are heated with renewable energy from trees (wood).
It isn't a perfect lifestyle, but I imagine their carbon footprint is near-zero, and certainly better than living in slums.
>>>a reversal into the medieval dark ages, into a world of filth and disease is not where I thought progress would take me.
I did. For years now I've realized that if Oil & Coal becomes so scarce that its costs $1000 a barrel and gasoline is $50 a gallon, and electricity costs $2 per kilowatt-hour, we can no longer live like we live. We must revert to living in a pre-oil and pre-coal type of society, like our ancestors did in the 1700s.
Oh and no I don't think there's any viable replacement for oil and coal. Solar/nuclear/wind will help cushion the fall, but they won't be able to replace the billions of barrels we use every year.
Maybe you should consider some Libertarian benefits of the slums:
- Dynamic and growing economy with practically no oversight, regulation or taxation by government
- High density living means services can be provided cheaply and new revenue streams become possible
- No effective local government means that people self-organise between themselves to get things done
I like your point about Libertarians. Many Ls are actually anarchists, saying that human society would actually be better-off with no government (other than self-rule). If Libertarian ideals took-over would we eventually end-up living in compact, filthy cities like our 1700s/1800s ancestors did? Thomas Jefferson called his century's cities "the dungheaps of humanity where the people live in their own filth".
I was immediately reminded of Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel. In that novel the humans live in very, very compact fashion..... basically like dorms. One dorm per family. Shared bathrooms/toilets. They have to because there's not enough energy to live like we live, and support 20 billion people, so the humans must live in the most "green" way possible - minimally.
>>>who says just because you're a geek you don't know how to binge drink, score good drugs, and hit on chicks?
Age helps.
Hitting on chicks is a lot easier after you pass 30. I think there's some kind of daddy issue going on there, that makes college-aged women and 20-somethings unable to restrain themselves. I don't know? Whatever it is, I like it. ;-)
>>>Parties? Please surrender your Geek card....
While I was visiting my classmate's dorm room, to borrow her Quantum Chemistry book and notes, her roommate walked in wearing nothing but a towel and water dripping from her long hair. I said, "Excuse me I'll leave," and she said "No need" and then dropped her towel. It was the first woman I'd ever seen nude, and I admit I enjoyed it.
Your honor: Since I was still holding a Chemistry book, I argue I should still be allowed to keep my geek card.
;-)
>>>That doesn't make a lot of sense. If you're working for Lockheed, you're hardly an "independent programmer," are you? The term usually refers to people who are creating their own products and running their own business - not just to somebody working on a contract as opposed to regular employment.
>>>
Missing the point.
As a hardware engineer and can be BOTH an employee of Lockheed AND have my own independent business on the side designing handheld radios or whatever.
As a programmer I must choose one or the other. I cannot do both, due to the IRS penalties imposed by Congress on both me & my employer (Lockheed).
>>>I don't know about that. Corporations are not just things, they are collections of people
Yes, but even if the Corporations lose their right to free speech (no donations/lobbyists), the people inside the corporation still retain their rights. While Comcast might be silenced from lobbying, if the Comcast employees want to speak-out and say "Comcast is great" they still can.
And as for assembling, the Right refers to *voluntary* assembling. There's nothing voluntary about a job, since you either have the right to show up, or the right to be fired and possibly go years without finding another job. (Like I'm doing right now.) Working for a corporation is very similar to working for a Lord of a manor - you exercise your rights; you get kicked out. Or you keep silent and keep your position. It's not true freedom.
Anyway taking away Comcast's right to lobby doesn't affect the rights of the People inside the organization. They can still lobby if they so desire.
>>>he CEO of a major corporation could just as easily donate funds under his own name with a little post-it note asking for laws that help his corporation.
Yes he could, but he'd only be donating his own money, not raiding his emmployees' paychecks for cash and giving it away. Also we have laws that limit how much a person can give ($4000 last I checked) whereas no such law exists for a corporation. So the CEO really wouldn't have much power overall.
And most importantly, corporations would be blocked from hiring lobbyists, due to not having free speech rights. They wouldn't be able to hijack our healthcare like they are doing now with the Obamacare bill.
>>>Where did this originate? Fox News?
Hardly - they are probusiness. Try the Progressive Party and Greens. Also Thomas Jefferson said corporations threatened to destroy democracy by becoming more powerful than the People's government. Any power concentrated in the hands of a few, whether its a government or a board of directors, is dangerous to human liberty.
>>>if you are a fugitive..... It is perfectly OK for law enforcement to track people by using public/private resources. As long as they have proper reason/warrants.
>>>
That was my point. Microsoft is providing this information *without* a warrant, and enabling the trampling of our "secure in our papers and effects" right. They need to be stopped from doing these warrantless searches/tracking.
>>>Ok, as I understood California or some other state had it legalized for medical use. Guess US federal law goes over that.
And Constitutional Law supersedes all of them: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." - The government of California (and New Jersey and New Hampshire and so on) has given its citizens the Right to ask a doctor for a medical marijuana prescription. The Federal government has no authority to take that right away. (see the paragraph below)
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." i.e. The Feds were never given power to ban a naturally-growing plant. That power still belongs to California and the other States, so the Federal law is null-and-void.
>>>police say "this X-Box, SN#ABC, was stolen on this date", Microsoft will return the subsequent connection history for that xbox!
Yes well that sounds good, but such a system could also be abused if, for example, you're a medical marijuana user trying to relieve your arthritis, and the Feds are after you. The last thing you want it Microsoft saying, "Our records show he logged in at L.A. and then San Francisco and then Sacramento in hotel X room Y."
Please note I consider the outlawing of marijuana (or any other plant) to be a violation of the Tenth Amendment in our Bill of Rights. Therefore I don't consider users to be criminals because I consider the U.S. Prohibition Law to be null.
Sorry. I guess I should have said "Windows 95 [with upgrades to make it work with a modern Atom CPU]" in my previous post. Obviously I would not use the stock Win95
Anyway...
I use Windows 98 on my laptop with only 64 megabytes. It works just fine. I'm not sure why people say these older OSes are "no good" since it runs web browsing & word processing software a-okay and without needing a lot of power to do it (4 hours on a NiMH battery). Just replace the inefficient AMD K5 with an efficient Atom.
Oh and as for the Linux suggestion, I have used things like Puppy Linux on this laptop and enjoyed the speed of its RAM-based operation, but it failed to see the modem or the sound card. I like OSes that work, and it didn't seem to function properly.
>>>Cue a bunch of silly /. responses about hypothetical situation #2...
If we were all naked like our animal brethern, none of this would matter. We'd get so used to seeing human bodies we'd think nothing of it.
How's that?
>>>You have a multi-hundred-horsepower engine that has clearly demonstrated the ability to overcome the power of four brake pads.
When a Toyota experiences this "accelerator open" condition, the brakes are not engaging because the signal is not transmitted from the pedal to the pads.
As for rear-ending the other car, it would be hope that the sudden jarring would damage my engine, or otherwise knock it out of the electronic "100% throttle" mode it is stuck in. Perhaps it would not work, but still better than the alternative of doing nothing and then running into a concrete pillar or off a cliff.
.
>>>Now, if you could find a very large truck moving at about 80
Yeah unfortunately when a car hits a truck, it usually just slides underneath the high rear end, and the driver gets crushed or sliced in half.
>>>>>"Officer, I was clearly standing on the street with my camera. It's not my fault that the girl was naked in her bedroom. She shouldn't have left the curtains open."
>>
>>There's Peeping Tom laws in many places, for one thing,
Here in the U.S. laws operate backwards. A Virginia woman was walking her kid to school, she looked through a front window where she saw a naked man, and she was offended for her self and her child. Reasonable people would either charge the woman with peeping, or else just say "it's a human body; don't be such a prude" and drop the case.
Instead the Virginia government arrested the naked man for indecent exposure even though he was *inside* his own house, and merely getting dressed for work.
Also forcing you to give-up your encryption key, or else be placed in jail.
It doesn't matter if you're innocent - guilt is assumed.
>>>Technical incapability isn't an excuse to break laws.
No it isn't, but what laws are being broken? Google is taking photos of *public* streets and the nearby view. This is no different than when painters used to sit with their paintings and draw what they saw, or when tourists captured images with their disposable cameras.
You have never had "privacy" outside the walls of your house.
>>>You see as the EU is NOT a federal government, the individual nations still have sovereignty and national constitutions.
I guess I don't see the distinction. After all we have 50 constitutions are well, with sovereign governments, but that didn't stop the US from passing law contrary to those 50 constitutions' protected rights.
>>> *non-EU* European Court of Human Rights]
This is what we need. Our Court is part of the U.S. government and therefore often just a puppet of the Congress and/or President, especially since 1935 when the president threatened the justices with losing their jobs. Suddenly they did whatever the president and congress wanted them to do.
We need a court that stands separately from the U.S. government.
I wish I coudl work from home. I've asked because it's a more comfortable working environment - kinda like doing homework back in my college days- but no company wants to allow it.
Anonymous_Coward wrote: You were lucky. Consider what it *could* have been! And I bet you surf from work, so that would have been your job right there...
www.freepussy.com - Your source for the New Pussy Linux OS! Download it and give it a ride.
>>>Mythical man month, the average programmer can write 1000 lines of code a year.
That's it?
>>>This is more what I see here on slashdot. Somewhere in the middle is the common ground.
Yes middle ground is better. I like to use the commercial Windows OS because it is the "default" OS that everyone uses and very well-supported (I'm still using Windows 98!). But I use open-source for everything else because I'm too cheap to open my wallet, and don't see the need to buy software when OSS alternatives are "good enough" for web browsing, word processing, movie watching, and so on.
trivia -
My first word processor was RUNscript typed out of a magazine. It wasn't pretty but it was good enough for book reports. I later upgraded to GEOSwrite and all my teachers were amazed by the pretty fonts. "Is this from a Macintosh?" "No Mrs. Johns... it's from a $500 computer* called a Commodore 64." "Wow that's a lot cheaper than the $4000 I spent on my Mac." Ahhhh... nostalgia. :-)
*
* $200 for the computer plus $300 for the floppy drive