5. The U.S. is going into debt at the rate of 1.3 billion dollars a day. We're spending ourselves utterly broke while cutting taxes.
9. If the story is true, why do I sense that the speculative capitalists that are now in charge of the guvmint (as opposed to businessmen -- the difference between Enronomics and the local Chamber of Commerce) would be trying to wring even more tax money out of us all?
Which are you upset about - that taxes are being levied or that they are being cut?
8. As an old space junkie, I wish the story was true 3. Nook-you-ler rockets are illegal under current treaties -- I think. Not that that would stop Bush
So you wish that the US was developing nuclear-powered spacecraft, so long as President Bush had nothing to do with it.
Yay! Fashionable anti-Bush flames for no particular reason!
You say it is because expectations are growing faster than wages. But wages aren't growing, they're falling.
You've confused yourself. Wages are growing. For instance, the minimum wage has increased by about three dollars over the past thirty years. But they're not growing as fast as inflation, or as fast as expectations.
when the reality is things are economically worse for workers and that their expectations have remained constant while the underlying reality, eg. their actual wages, has fallen.
Their expectations have *not* remained constant.
Expectations (1973): I want a nice place for my family to live, food for them to eat, an automobile, and a television set to amuse myself with.
Expectations (2003): I want a nice place for my family to live, food for them to eat, air conditioning, two automobiles, a television set, cable, and maybe a personal computer.
Well over the past thirty years rents have skyrocketed in relation to the rest of inflation, so the cost of living is a much larger expense in blue collar workers budget than thirty years ago
... and more people own their homes than ever before.
With declining wages and higher rents, the majority of Americans have less to spend on the newly invented electronic goodies than they did a generation ago.
And the price of those electronic goodies has fallen a lot faster than the proportion of disposable income. How many hours' labor at minimum wage did a portable cassette player cost at the time of its invention in 1979? About 66. How many hours at minimum wage does it cost today? About one and a half.
To maintain the living standards of a generation ago with lower pay
Nobody is trying to maintain the living standards of a generation ago. That is because they would be forgoing personal computers, DVD players, compact discs, microwave ovens, cellular telephones, contact lenses, modern automobiles, FM radios, VCRs, video games, cable television, and cheap long-distance phone calls. Everybody wants a higher standard of living than a generation ago.
Face it - the poor are getting richer. Less buys more. Consumer debt comes from the fact that expectations are growing faster than wages, not that purchasing power is lower.
The average inflation-adjusted wage is lower than it was thirty years ago, but the standard of living has risen, even for the poorest.
This is just California power-grabbing. In the last couple years, CA judges have, for the most part, being taking every opportunity to try to expand their jurisdiction, whether it's legal, logical, or even feasible.
RTA. Judge Wilson is a United States District Judge in Los Angeles, not a California judge.
If I owned a company and got a summons from a US court I would RSVP that I am declining the invitation (and contact a lawyer to prepare for any possible extradition hearing).
It's not a criminal matter. Nobody would be extradited for anything.
It's a civil matter. If you're a New Zealander and your company does business in the US, it's only fair that your company could be sued as a result of those actions. (And vice versa. If an American company did something in New Zealand, New Zealanders should be able to sue them in New Zealand courts.)
If your company doesn't do business in the United States, and somebody tries to sue you there, screw 'em. Your best bet would be to not even bother to RSVP. The guy would win by default, but since you don't own anything in the US, then there's nothing he could do to you.
Sheesh. It's easy to be paranoid about the US when you invent your own fears.
This shouldn't be that surprising. These are american shows. If you watch Gallipoli or the light horsemen they glorify Australians becasue they are australian movies. Probably the same goes for german and russian movies each highlighting their culture and ideals.
No kidding. Science fiction anime isn't exactly populated with Nebraskan mech pilots.
Why did the Cybermen and Sea-Devils always attack Britain? Because the show was made by the BBC.
The difference is that Texas is a state in the United States and was considered to have stronger claim of jurisdiction on the case than California did(Texas or the other state which I no longer remember where the man initially put up the web site), but kazaa is based in another country and who has jurisdiction in the matter is bit trickier.
No. The court is not attempting to determine "who has jurisdiction". The court is attempting to determine whether the suit can be brought in that particular court. The question of where would be the best place to bring it has not arisen.
Why don't you americans realise that the way things work over there is a mockary of justice and democacy and sort it out.
Why not work out a consitituion V2.0, sure there were some great ideas in the first one but something has got really messed up along the way.
Do you know anything about "the way things work over there"?
Do you know which "great ideas" from the U. S. Constitution you approve of, or indeed how the Constitution works or what its purpose is?
Do you know which deviations from the original purpose of the Constitution you disapprove of?
To be more precise: do you have any rational basis for commenting upon this matter, or complaining about the workings of the US federal court system?
But I do appreciate your response which clarified a few points which I wasn't aware of.
Personally, I find it disgusting the way the american justice system forces their laws on other nations haphazardly (Look at Dmitri for example). But I do understand what you are saying, and that your "Question A" has a lot of merit.
Naturally though, you should be able to understand my frustration (as a non-American) with the way the Americans do things. Sometimes it is aggravating.
I do appreciate you taking the time to explain the finer details of the judicial system to me, though, and although I agree that the Americans can sue KaZaa (by what you said), I believe that they have no right to since KaZaa is not an American company and doesn't have substantial contacts in California. (It's only on the internet.)
I hope now, you understand where my initial rant came from.:-)
I don't think that the Kazaa downloads are sufficient contacts to frame the basis for jurisdiction in California either, and I suspect that Kazaa could prevail on appeal.
Note again that you've said "I find it disgusting the way the american justice system forces their laws on other nations haphazardly". The process isn't very haphazard - the court attempts to determine whether contacts exist through relatively straightforward reasoning. And it's not "America" which is trying to force anything on any other nation. The RIAA is trying to get the United States to enforce its laws on Kazaa's activities or property in the United States.
And all the judge here has decided is that the law permits him to consider the RIAA's request.
U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson said a lawsuit against Sharman Networks (the makers of Kazaa) could proceed.
(The Australia-/Vanuatu-based company had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing it was not bound by U.S. laws since it did not have substantial contacts with California.)"
Wow... Why isn't this a surprise. The Americans decide that people outside their own country are bound by their laws.
If the RIAA wants to take on Kazaa, take them on in Australia. Oh wait, no that wouldn't work, because the Australian justice system wouldn't waste their time on this.
Someone need to go let the states know that they don't own the world, yet, and until they do, companies from other countries do not lie under their jurisdiction.
Your disgust is founded in ignorance.
Anyone in a common law system (USA, Australia, UK, etc.) can sue anyone else. There are only two considerations: a) whether it can be heard in a particular court and b) whether there is anything practical to be gained by it.
Question B is not so much a question of law as a question of strategy. A court which would issue a decision can enforce its will only so far as the person losing is present within their jurisdiction (either they live there, or have assets there). People have sued the government of Iran in US federal court, and have won, and have collected their judgments out of funds belonging to Iran which are present in US banks. But if you were to sue North Korea and win (probably because nobody showed up to represent North Korea), there'd be little you could do to collect your judgment, because there wouldn't be any assets of North Korea within the jurisdiction of the court.
So, setting aside question A for a moment, the RIAA can sue Kazaa in federal court in California. The question is whether they have anything to gain by winning. As a previous poster pointed out, Kazaa could just ignore the whole thing and take a loss, if they don't have anything *in* the US that a judgment could seize. (The RIAA probably wants an injunction of some kind, but even still it's questionable how useful it would be for the US to order Kazaa not to do business here anymore.)
Question A has a lot more to do with the law, and jurisdictional questions are quite complicated. The basic idea is that you can only bring suit against someone in a place if that someone has had something substantial to do with the place. (Lives there, does business there, has assets located there, committed an act there, etc.)
The decision referred to in the headline is that the judge decided that the fact that many people had downloaded Kazaa software in California was a sufficient contact with California that Kazaa could be sued there. He reached this decision after examining the law of California. If Kazaa appeals, the court of appeals will either confirm that this is the law, or will overturn the judge and not permit him to hear the case.
In light of the above, your rant is more than a little silly. Every nation is willing to submit every person to their own laws - the only question is whether it will do the plaintiff any good, and whether the courts of that nation will let such a lawsuit go forwards. The US is no different from anyone else in this respect. "Companies from other countries" do lie under US jurisdiction, insofar as they have ever had anything to do with the United States.
There wasn't a heckuva lot of overlap between the Marius/Sylla conflict and the Caesar/Pompey conflict, right? Maybe a few years? Certainly less than a decade. I'd have to look it up.
Marius died in 86 BC, but Sulla's final victory came in 82. Caesar was eighteen years old at the time (and narrowly missed execution for being Marius' nephew).
The war between Pompey and Caesar broke out in 49 BC.
Caesar believed in Roman gods, and his political scheme included murdering his enemies and their families to become Emporer of the World.
While your point about the historicity of Clement and Gregory is well taken, I should point out that I would be interested to hear of any examples from history where Caesar had his enemies and their families murdered. Perhaps you're thinking of Sulla.
In addition, the title of "emperor" was created long after his death; Julius Caesar was not the first Roman emperor, as the ignorant sometimes like to profess. Caesar attained the position of dictator for life, which was not the same thing.
It is also not clear that Caesar's long-term political ambitions originally centered around the dictatorship. Caesar, in his Civil Wars, argues that civil war was forced upon him by Pompey's paranoia, and that he became dictator in the end because of a political vacuum (the resulting civil war having destroyed Pompey's faction, and the power balance that went with it).
Again, we are fast approaching the point where a reasonable and prudent person would conclude that an open node in a public place is OK to use.
I would note that despite your obfuscation, two things remain:
The first is that you know that these people don't want you using their networks. All this rhetoric about how someday wireless networks will be universal doesn't conceal the fact that you know that you are intruding upon them.
The second is that, when you strip away all the redundancies, what you have said is this: it's their fault that they haven't kept me out. And that is the age-old self-rationalization of the thief.
Point is, one can pontificate about absolute morality (picking a dime up off the sidewalk is theft!), or take the Common Law/rational approach to such things (would a reasonable and prudent person assume that a drinking fountain by the sidewalk is for public use?). Free WiFi 'net access is common enough that if a reasonable and prudent person with an 802.11b equipped laptop found himself able to access his webmail at Denny's, he'd assume it was intended for public use.
Yeah, right. I'm driving past a building and I happen to see that I can, for a few feet, access BOBS_NETWORK. Doubtless that means that Bob is delighted to let any passerby use the access which he has paid for.
By your analogy, if he left his door unlocked I could come in and make a couple calls on his home phone. Hey! It's not like he's getting charged by the call! Wait, a reasonable and prudent person wouldn't think that one could enter another person's home... and a reasonable and prudent person wouldn't think that one could get unauthorized access to another person's network.
Your comparison between metered and unmetered services is completely idiotic. The point is, Bob paid for his Internet access, and it's his. It isn't yours. And it's his to decide who gets to use it, even if it wouldn't cost him any more to let you use it also. Just because you contrived a clever way to use it without his knowledge or permission doesn't mean it's yours.
I can see here the age-old argument that the clever have the natural right to steal from the foolish.
The shops and restaurants there don't hesitate to stay open all night if there are enough customers (so they can ear more money). I don't see West-European shops or restaurants do that, they close after 10 PM no matter how many customers.
24-hour businesses are quite common in America.
Re:Researching more efficient ways to kill people.
on
Electric Armor
·
· Score: 3, Funny
And as for `non-violent' solutions, may I ask you to explain what solution you think would resolve our current situation, where a multi-national group armed and sheltered by hostile national powers is working to gain access to weapons of mass destruction to use against us?
Don't waste your effort, neocon. The people with whom you're arguing don't believe in evil. To them, Al Qaeda is attempting to exterminate millions of Americans because of a failure to implement the Kyoto treaty.
We spend more money on defense then all the other countries in the world combined. There is something really wrong with that. We dont need 10000 nuclear missiles or 10 billion rounds of ammunition (there arent that many people on the planet) or 1 million artillary pieces (how will you move them all?) its stupid. We could be safe with 1/4 of all that. Cold War stockpiles alone will last for the next 200 years. The Russians have been fighting in Chechnya with nothing but Cold War stockpiles and they are okay. Nobody is bombing Moscow or killing Russians by the thousands.
Here are some words for you to contemplate while considering your "200 year stockpile" idea:
rust decay corrosion half-life
And World War III never happened... because the US spends more money on defense than all the other countries in the world combined. Have a nice day.
I've never seen any big city where everyone can drive downtown, park their car, go to work and drive home.
Columbus has a metropolitan area essentially equal to Portland, and the city proper is about a fifth larger. Essentially everyone drives downtown, parks their car, goes to work, and drives home.
People complain about traffic and parking here, but an abundance of downtown parking, plus admittedly laudable highway planning, has made Columbus an automobile city that actually works.
Slashdot Mirror
5. The U.S. is going into debt at the rate of 1.3 billion dollars a day. We're spending ourselves utterly broke while cutting taxes.
9. If the story is true, why do I sense that the speculative capitalists that are now in charge of the guvmint (as opposed to businessmen -- the difference between Enronomics and the local Chamber of Commerce) would be trying to wring even more tax money out of us all?
Which are you upset about - that taxes are being levied or that they are being cut?
8. As an old space junkie, I wish the story was true
3. Nook-you-ler rockets are illegal under current treaties -- I think. Not that that would stop Bush
So you wish that the US was developing nuclear-powered spacecraft, so long as President Bush had nothing to do with it.
Yay! Fashionable anti-Bush flames for no particular reason!
You've confused yourself. Wages are growing. For instance, the minimum wage has increased by about three dollars over the past thirty years. But they're not growing as fast as inflation, or as fast as expectations.
when the reality is things are economically worse for workers and that their expectations have remained constant while the underlying reality, eg. their actual wages, has fallen.
Their expectations have *not* remained constant.
Expectations (1973): I want a nice place for my family to live, food for them to eat, an automobile, and a television set to amuse myself with.
Expectations (2003): I want a nice place for my family to live, food for them to eat, air conditioning, two automobiles, a television set, cable, and maybe a personal computer.
Well over the past thirty years rents have skyrocketed in relation to the rest of inflation, so the cost of living is a much larger expense in blue collar workers budget than thirty years ago
With declining wages and higher rents, the majority of Americans have less to spend on the newly invented electronic goodies than they did a generation ago.
And the price of those electronic goodies has fallen a lot faster than the proportion of disposable income. How many hours' labor at minimum wage did a portable cassette player cost at the time of its invention in 1979? About 66. How many hours at minimum wage does it cost today? About one and a half.
To maintain the living standards of a generation ago with lower pay
Nobody is trying to maintain the living standards of a generation ago. That is because they would be forgoing personal computers, DVD players, compact discs, microwave ovens, cellular telephones, contact lenses, modern automobiles, FM radios, VCRs, video games, cable television, and cheap long-distance phone calls. Everybody wants a higher standard of living than a generation ago.
Face it - the poor are getting richer. Less buys more. Consumer debt comes from the fact that expectations are growing faster than wages, not that purchasing power is lower.
The average inflation-adjusted wage is lower than it was thirty years ago, but the standard of living has risen, even for the poorest.
This is just California power-grabbing. In the last couple years, CA judges have, for the most part, being taking every opportunity to try to expand their jurisdiction, whether it's legal, logical, or even feasible.
RTA. Judge Wilson is a United States District Judge in Los Angeles, not a California judge.
If I owned a company and got a summons from a US court I would RSVP that I am declining the invitation (and contact a lawyer to prepare for any possible extradition hearing).
It's not a criminal matter. Nobody would be extradited for anything.
It's a civil matter. If you're a New Zealander and your company does business in the US, it's only fair that your company could be sued as a result of those actions. (And vice versa. If an American company did something in New Zealand, New Zealanders should be able to sue them in New Zealand courts.)
If your company doesn't do business in the United States, and somebody tries to sue you there, screw 'em. Your best bet would be to not even bother to RSVP. The guy would win by default, but since you don't own anything in the US, then there's nothing he could do to you.
Sheesh. It's easy to be paranoid about the US when you invent your own fears.
This shouldn't be that surprising. These are american shows. If you watch Gallipoli or the light horsemen they glorify Australians becasue they are australian movies. Probably the same goes for german and russian movies each highlighting their culture and ideals.
No kidding. Science fiction anime isn't exactly populated with Nebraskan mech pilots.
Why did the Cybermen and Sea-Devils always attack Britain? Because the show was made by the BBC.
The difference is that Texas is a state in the United States and was considered to have stronger claim of jurisdiction on the case than California did(Texas or the other state which I no longer remember where the man initially put up the web site), but kazaa is based in another country and who has jurisdiction in the matter is bit trickier.
No. The court is not attempting to determine "who has jurisdiction". The court is attempting to determine whether the suit can be brought in that particular court. The question of where would be the best place to bring it has not arisen.
Why don't you americans realise that the way things work over there is a mockary of justice and democacy and sort it out.
Why not work out a consitituion V2.0, sure there were some great ideas in the first one but something has got really messed up along the way.
Do you know anything about "the way things work over there"?
Do you know which "great ideas" from the U. S. Constitution you approve of, or indeed how the Constitution works or what its purpose is?
Do you know which deviations from the original purpose of the Constitution you disapprove of?
To be more precise: do you have any rational basis for commenting upon this matter, or complaining about the workings of the US federal court system?
IANAL, as is obvious from my profile...
:-)
But I do appreciate your response which clarified a few points which I wasn't aware of.
Personally, I find it disgusting the way the american justice system forces their laws on other nations haphazardly (Look at Dmitri for example). But I do understand what you are saying, and that your "Question A" has a lot of merit.
Naturally though, you should be able to understand my frustration (as a non-American) with the way the Americans do things. Sometimes it is aggravating.
I do appreciate you taking the time to explain the finer details of the judicial system to me, though, and although I agree that the Americans can sue KaZaa (by what you said), I believe that they have no right to since KaZaa is not an American company and doesn't have substantial contacts in California. (It's only on the internet.)
I hope now, you understand where my initial rant came from.
I don't think that the Kazaa downloads are sufficient contacts to frame the basis for jurisdiction in California either, and I suspect that Kazaa could prevail on appeal.
Note again that you've said "I find it disgusting the way the american justice system forces their laws on other nations haphazardly". The process isn't very haphazard - the court attempts to determine whether contacts exist through relatively straightforward reasoning. And it's not "America" which is trying to force anything on any other nation. The RIAA is trying to get the United States to enforce its laws on Kazaa's activities or property in the United States.
And all the judge here has decided is that the law permits him to consider the RIAA's request.
U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson said a lawsuit against Sharman Networks (the makers of Kazaa) could proceed.
(The Australia-/Vanuatu-based company had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing it was not bound by U.S. laws since it did not have substantial contacts with California.)"
Wow... Why isn't this a surprise. The Americans decide that people outside their own country are bound by their laws.
If the RIAA wants to take on Kazaa, take them on in Australia. Oh wait, no that wouldn't work, because the Australian justice system wouldn't waste their time on this.
Someone need to go let the states know that they don't own the world, yet, and until they do, companies from other countries do not lie under their jurisdiction.
Your disgust is founded in ignorance.
Anyone in a common law system (USA, Australia, UK, etc.) can sue anyone else. There are only two considerations: a) whether it can be heard in a particular court and b) whether there is anything practical to be gained by it.
Question B is not so much a question of law as a question of strategy. A court which would issue a decision can enforce its will only so far as the person losing is present within their jurisdiction (either they live there, or have assets there). People have sued the government of Iran in US federal court, and have won, and have collected their judgments out of funds belonging to Iran which are present in US banks. But if you were to sue North Korea and win (probably because nobody showed up to represent North Korea), there'd be little you could do to collect your judgment, because there wouldn't be any assets of North Korea within the jurisdiction of the court.
So, setting aside question A for a moment, the RIAA can sue Kazaa in federal court in California. The question is whether they have anything to gain by winning. As a previous poster pointed out, Kazaa could just ignore the whole thing and take a loss, if they don't have anything *in* the US that a judgment could seize. (The RIAA probably wants an injunction of some kind, but even still it's questionable how useful it would be for the US to order Kazaa not to do business here anymore.)
Question A has a lot more to do with the law, and jurisdictional questions are quite complicated. The basic idea is that you can only bring suit against someone in a place if that someone has had something substantial to do with the place. (Lives there, does business there, has assets located there, committed an act there, etc.)
The decision referred to in the headline is that the judge decided that the fact that many people had downloaded Kazaa software in California was a sufficient contact with California that Kazaa could be sued there. He reached this decision after examining the law of California. If Kazaa appeals, the court of appeals will either confirm that this is the law, or will overturn the judge and not permit him to hear the case.
In light of the above, your rant is more than a little silly. Every nation is willing to submit every person to their own laws - the only question is whether it will do the plaintiff any good, and whether the courts of that nation will let such a lawsuit go forwards. The US is no different from anyone else in this respect. "Companies from other countries" do lie under US jurisdiction, insofar as they have ever had anything to do with the United States.
There wasn't a heckuva lot of overlap between the Marius/Sylla conflict and the Caesar/Pompey conflict, right? Maybe a few years? Certainly less than a decade. I'd have to look it up.
Marius died in 86 BC, but Sulla's final victory came in 82. Caesar was eighteen years old at the time (and narrowly missed execution for being Marius' nephew).
The war between Pompey and Caesar broke out in 49 BC.
Caesar believed in Roman gods, and his political scheme included murdering his enemies and their families to become Emporer of the World.
While your point about the historicity of Clement and Gregory is well taken, I should point out that I would be interested to hear of any examples from history where Caesar had his enemies and their families murdered. Perhaps you're thinking of Sulla.
In addition, the title of "emperor" was created long after his death; Julius Caesar was not the first Roman emperor, as the ignorant sometimes like to profess. Caesar attained the position of dictator for life, which was not the same thing.
It is also not clear that Caesar's long-term political ambitions originally centered around the dictatorship. Caesar, in his Civil Wars, argues that civil war was forced upon him by Pompey's paranoia, and that he became dictator in the end because of a political vacuum (the resulting civil war having destroyed Pompey's faction, and the power balance that went with it).
Again, we are fast approaching the point where a reasonable and prudent person would conclude that an open node in a public place is OK to use.
I would note that despite your obfuscation, two things remain:
The first is that you know that these people don't want you using their networks. All this rhetoric about how someday wireless networks will be universal doesn't conceal the fact that you know that you are intruding upon them.
The second is that, when you strip away all the redundancies, what you have said is this: it's their fault that they haven't kept me out. And that is the age-old self-rationalization of the thief.
Point is, one can pontificate about absolute morality (picking a dime up off the sidewalk is theft!), or take the Common Law/rational approach to such things (would a reasonable and prudent person assume that a drinking fountain by the sidewalk is for public use?). Free WiFi 'net access is common enough that if a reasonable and prudent person with an 802.11b equipped laptop found himself able to access his webmail at Denny's, he'd assume it was intended for public use.
Yeah, right. I'm driving past a building and I happen to see that I can, for a few feet, access BOBS_NETWORK. Doubtless that means that Bob is delighted to let any passerby use the access which he has paid for.
By your analogy, if he left his door unlocked I could come in and make a couple calls on his home phone. Hey! It's not like he's getting charged by the call! Wait, a reasonable and prudent person wouldn't think that one could enter another person's home... and a reasonable and prudent person wouldn't think that one could get unauthorized access to another person's network.
Your comparison between metered and unmetered services is completely idiotic. The point is, Bob paid for his Internet access, and it's his. It isn't yours. And it's his to decide who gets to use it, even if it wouldn't cost him any more to let you use it also. Just because you contrived a clever way to use it without his knowledge or permission doesn't mean it's yours.
I can see here the age-old argument that the clever have the natural right to steal from the foolish.
In my opinion, resources that are on public property are free by implied consent.
Your opinion is silly. Can I have your car next time you park on a street?
The Netherlands, Germany and France are 100% capitalist in case you didn't know...
Ha. 100%? Aside from mandated short work weeks and the inability to fire workers, I suppose.
But not in the capitalist Europe.
Didn't know there was one, these days. Maybe Hungary or someplace.
The shops and restaurants there don't hesitate to stay open all night if there are enough customers (so they can ear more money). I don't see West-European shops or restaurants do that, they close after 10 PM no matter how many customers.
24-hour businesses are quite common in America.
And as for `non-violent' solutions, may I ask you to explain what solution you think would resolve our current situation, where a multi-national group armed and sheltered by hostile national powers is working to gain access to weapons of mass destruction to use against us?
Don't waste your effort, neocon. The people with whom you're arguing don't believe in evil. To them, Al Qaeda is attempting to exterminate millions of Americans because of a failure to implement the Kyoto treaty.
Well, there are a lot of areas where peacekeepers would probably love to have this sort of tech.
Doesn't sound like much of a peace, really.
We spend more money on defense then all the other countries in the world combined. There is something really wrong with that. We dont need 10000 nuclear missiles or 10 billion rounds of ammunition (there arent that many people on the planet) or 1 million artillary pieces (how will you move them all?) its stupid. We could be safe with 1/4 of all that. Cold War stockpiles alone will last for the next 200 years. The Russians have been fighting in Chechnya with nothing but Cold War stockpiles and they are okay. Nobody is bombing Moscow or killing Russians by the thousands.
Here are some words for you to contemplate while considering your "200 year stockpile" idea:
rust
decay
corrosion
half-life
And World War III never happened... because the US spends more money on defense than all the other countries in the world combined. Have a nice day.
Kind of like "imagine what the world would be like if schools got all the money they needed, and then the Wahabis came and killed you.".
... and everybody uses their car, and everybody gets to where they want to go, as I said.
Do you seriously think that they will then extend the rail network to provide service to Okechoobie, Fla.?
Face it, there'll be coverage to the three largest cities, and maybe a line to the capital.
I've never seen any big city where everyone can drive downtown, park their car, go to work and drive home.
Columbus has a metropolitan area essentially equal to Portland, and the city proper is about a fifth larger. Essentially everyone drives downtown, parks their car, goes to work, and drives home.
People complain about traffic and parking here, but an abundance of downtown parking, plus admittedly laudable highway planning, has made Columbus an automobile city that actually works.