You're incredibly deluded if you think that.
Why is it that in white families there is a 10% non-paternal rate (percentage of children in families born to men other than the husband... unbeknownst to the husband)
Why is it that in Asian countries that are infinitely more male-oriented women are infinitely more faithful? Indians for example have the least number of sexual partners over the course of their lives, while Britain is the most promiscuous developed country in the world. It also has significantly higher divorce rates.
Also black people... ugh I'm not even gonna talk about them. Their social patterns are just whack.
I'm going to quote someone from another forum, so forgive the references to his opponent's messages that don't specifically match your own.
We all know you don't get something for nothing. There was a reason for criminalizing lessor (yet world class) standards in the interest of producing "the best healthcare in the world." Why? Because a significant number of people were willing to buy and sell those lessor goods and services.
You can't criminalize those goods and services without "denying" something to someone. Those who can afford the resulting socialized market (with standards set higher by public law than willing buyers and sellers would negotiate consensually) pay more. That's money they could have used for something else.
The further down the wealth scale you go, it's logical that individuals will make choices to buy food, clothing and housing before the above-described inflated healthcare.
If you want to say that the above doesn't "deny" anyone anything, then we can also say that Republican scare-tactics that individuals will be delayed care (under universal healthcare) won't deny them anything either.
The problem we have today, as I see it, is that we've used Public Law to set healthcare standards higher than willing buyers and sellers would negotiate consensually. (And, higher than the rest of the world, as evidenced by Republicans constantly telling us we have "the best healthcare system in the world.").
This creates a social responsibility to take care of those who can't afford our socialized "market." But, as soon as that discussion arises Republicans (primarily) object that this would be "socialism." What they really mean is: "coercion." Taking from one and giving to another. An "entitlement."
But, that's what we essentially did when we criminalized healthcare goods and services in the interest of creating a higher standard of living (a collective goal). I.e., a more predictable "market," (reducing the personal responsibility of some Americans to properly investigate their choice of goods and services) at the expense of others, who go without.
If Republicans don't like coercion, they shouldn't like the coercion we have now (and leading to growing demands for universalization of our already socialized "market"). But, as we've regularly seen in the Friday-Night threads, they're selective in their opposition to coercion. Using principle-based rhetoric against others which they aren't willing to apply to themselves.
Personally, I could support greater disparity of choices in the market. Not a truly Darwinian market (as many squeamish Republicans argue against in their parade of horribles).
But, absent that, I think there's no other choice than to make the existing socialized market more equally beneficial to all society.
So basically...in your eyes because *you* made it, everyone else should be able to too, *screw the evidence*! YARRR!!!
Do you realize how selfish, conceited, and ignorant you are? What a gigantic bubble you live in. I doubt you'll ever realize your disdain for socialism is motivated by greed. You don't want anyone, regardless of how difficult their situation is or how bad their luck is, to have any of your money. You want to hoard it all.
Greed has been and always will be the most powerful motivator of mankind. You offer direct proof of that.
Really? Could you cite a Democratic-related story akin to Sarah Palin e-mailing and lying to everyone about the "death panels" the government is trying to setup, for the sole purpose of scaring the populace? Or perhaps the House Minority leader telling his constituents the government is going to kill their grandmothers? I'd really love to see Democrats working with corporations to pay people to scream and argue at townhouse healthcare debates for the sole purpose of disrupting the debate.
I'll simply copy and paste from another post:
THE POLL: 45 percent said it's likely the government will decide when to stop care for the elderly; 50 percent said it's not likely.
THE FACTS: Nothing being debated in Washington would give the government such authority. Critics have twisted a provision in a House bill that would direct Medicare to pay for counseling sessions about end-of-life care, living wills, hospices and the like if a patient wants such consultations with a doctor. They have said, incorrectly, that the elderly would be required to have these sessions.
House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio said such counseling "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia."
The bill would prohibit coverage of counseling that presents suicide or assisted suicide as an option.
Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who has been a proponent of coverage for end-of-life counseling under Medicare, said such sessions are a voluntary benefit, strictly between doctor and patient, and it was "nuts" to think death panels are looming or euthanasia is part of the equation.
But as fellow conservatives stepped up criticism of the provision, he backed away from his defense of it.
I acknowledge there are corrupt Democrats, but there are far more corrupt Republicans whose only interest is in satisfying the needs of big business rather than the American people.
And seriously, death panels? Why is Sarah Palin not in jail for that?
regardless how often MTV culture tries to tell ya knowledge is for suckers
The irony of course is that all these people replying to you have been criticizing you for living in a self-centered bubble, not acknowledging the reality that the majority of poor people face.
They have been providing you with first-hand experiences, *real* "knowledge".
cynical enough and libertarian enough to hold people just a little bit accountable for their own situation
And yet no one criticizing you has said anything about people not being held accountable. They're saying they already *are*, and then some. Their children are held accountable for actions their parents took. In general the poor are held accountable for early mistakes.
Yes if you can work 16 hours a day and dedicate yourself tirelessly you might be able to pull yourself up, but again people have pointed out it's extremely difficult to get a job when you're uneducated, let alone pay for your children's schooling and healthcare.
And even moreso, not everyone is a workaholic or enjoy suffering for their future betterment.
People's ability to handle long-term vs. short-term gain and pleasure is a mostly genetic determination (ever heard of the marshmallow experiments?). It's hardly fair to expect them to work twice as hard as say...former President Bush to bring themselves to lower middle class status.
Umm...wouldn't a national healthcare system that focused on preventative care, such as recommending and encouraging (ie providing incentives) to people to exercise be a great way to treat obesity?
Duh?
Perhaps there is a pattern but our minds are not advanced enough to discern one?
We might be able to develop computer algorithms to search for patterns as well, but those are ultimately limited by our capacity to program intelligent software.
You don't need billions of dollars in capital to start a cable provider. Before Time Warner bought them all out most of the cable providers in my area where small businesses that served an individual town or two. They didn't spend billions of dollars to roll out their networks. How do you think the industry got going in the first place?
As someone specifically pointed out to you in an earlier post, if you try to enter into an incumbent's territory they will bankrupt you with below cost pricing, advertised as " introductory specials" so as to avoid federal scrutiny. Time Warner built their cables when there was literally no competition and no cable available to anyone.
So on one hand you claim that it takes billions of dollars to deploy a cable network but on the other hand you presumably want to use the government to take that network away from them and lease it out to their competitors?
How are those two irreconcilable? Laying down lines is prohibitively expensive, to the point that it's impossible to compete. We've already seen what happens when "line sharing" regulation is entrusted to the FCC. Seizing the lines and allowing companies to compete over the services they offer would be to the benefit of society.
I think his point was that cable isn't a life essential service in the same category as electricity or running water. You can live without it.
The comment about cable not being essential is meaningless and stupid. As a modern country and supposedly the most powerful and affluent one in the world, I would hope that we would aspire to more than just meeting the bare essentials of life.
Besides, abusing your power as a monopoly is abusing your power as a monopoly, regardless of what product you are offering. We shouldn't have to do without modern amenities just so gigantic and hugely profitable companies can continue to take advantage of a market failure.
Personally I think people are too irrational for democracy to ever be "good" or truly "effective". Who was it that said it's simply the lesser or two evils?
Socialism is an *economic* theory, not a political one. It doesn't emphasize the concentration of power- that would be communism, which is (at least in modern times) a mostly *political* concept. Thus we have communist China with the most capitalistic market in the world.
What the frick? Why were you labeled troll?
Wow, just wow. Slashdot mods are seriously idiots.
Let's just ignore the reality of scientific studies demonstrating the prolific buying habits of "cheap pirates" and the effectiveness of advertising through "free" distribution of material. Let's instead just label a logical, well-thought out argument illuminating the fallacies in the RIAA's arguments as a "troll".
BRILLIANT!
Well, this is offtopic, but most Western practitioners of Tai Chi engage in what amounts to a rip off of the real thing.
I practiced proper Tai Chi (Wu style; teacher of my teacher was an old dude from China who originally learned for decades at the temples there), and it's extremely different than what they teach most people here.
They often don't practice the martial aspect of the movements, and often mutate or altogether change many of the health-related movements. It's kind of sad really.
Actually becoming adept at Tai Chi and properly learning how to control your "Qi" requires decades. It's amazing what you can do once you actually figure it all out, as my teacher demonstrated over and over again (*on* me for the other students unfortunately). I never met his teacher (he died in a car accident at the age of 80 something a few years previous... was the other guy's fault), but from what I was told by other students he was far more skilled than my teacher, who was amazing in his own right.
So because in your opinion these luxuries aren't important we should continue to allow companies to engage in anti-competitive, illegal behavior that nets billions in profit for them while decreasing the amount of disposable income the average American has and lowering their standard of living? Brilliant conclusion on your part. Just brilliant.
Sure, let it happen and send us into another global depression that lasts for a decade or so, until a global war breaks out as countless populations living in utter poverty decide killing their neighbors and stealing their money is better than sitting at home and starving to death.
Or...let's just do what we did and be better off for it.
The national debt is merely the result of Keynesian economics at work (and might I add it's actually working). If it wasn't for the rampant deregulation of the financial industry over the last 30 years (starting with Reagen), we wouldn't have required such an immense investment to get us out of this mess. As it is, we can now police the banks and financial industry to prevent such a near-meltdown from occurring ever again.
Giving money to people does nothing for the economy. They'll simply hide it under the mattress, afraid the world is coming to an end soon, and unwittingly causing the financial meltdown to take place.
An economy runs on the exchange of money, and falls when people start hoarding.
That's why Bush's tax cuts did almost nothing to help stimulate the economy. People, rather than spending it, would just pay off their debt or hide it under their mattress (so to speak).
There was actually an article on DSLPrime a little while ago about a national convention that many of the cablecos and content providers attended. The reporter who hosts the site noticed that many of these content providers were shopping their programs around to find ISPs who would be interested in paying them to set up an online VOD service (naturally available only to that company's customers). The point is that it's not just the ISPs who are doing this, but the visionless content providers who can't see the benefit of providing the content *themselves*.
You're exaggerating a bit, but you have a point about the difficulty of life there. However, not all cities are like that, and certainly not everyone lives in the densest cities.
As for cost, you can get 1 gbps symmetrical in Japan for $50/month.
There are similar projects in Sweden, where companies give the option to customers to bury their own fiber (with periodic oversight of course). This eliminates the initial expense of FTTH installation for the cash-strapped small ISP, and as a by-product apparently significantly reduces churn, as people become emotionally attached to the fiber they dug into the ground.
It's a win-win for everyone. Of course in America the incumbents don't actually want everyone to have fiber, as they prefer to charge hugely inflated prices for substandard internet connections that require little to no provisioning of bandwidth.
The humans in BSG 2004 were PSYCHOTIC. Human nature was NOT EXPLORED. People do not act like that. Those people were absolutely nuts. The littlest things set them off, and they all seemed to want to kill each other. It was retarded.
If you don't think Republicans use the media far more efficiently and insidiously to propagate lies and misinformation, I HIGHLY recommend you visit outfoxed.org and download (there's a torrent of it) and watch the program. It's extremely enlightening. Seriously, you have *no idea* how single-minded and biased Republican channels are.
Democrats aren't perfect, but they do a significantly better (or perhaps less worse) job than Republicans.
Oh God, I'm sure you all think this is bad, but since this is being conducted by Asians you need to multiply that stress by a factor of 3.
I'm Asian myself, and I *can* speak for the majority of Asians actually born in Asia that parents who force their children down a specific path for the benefit of the family is an incredibly common theme. It's not just the parents, it's the culture, the schools, the businesses, *everyone*. It's crazy, and to be fair it's a problem that receives a lot of criticism from Asians who don't like watching their children shackled to a specific lifestyle from such an incredibly early age.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL. I'm thinking in-game MMORPG unions. Ya baby, let's stick it to the elite!
You're incredibly deluded if you think that. Why is it that in white families there is a 10% non-paternal rate (percentage of children in families born to men other than the husband... unbeknownst to the husband) Why is it that in Asian countries that are infinitely more male-oriented women are infinitely more faithful? Indians for example have the least number of sexual partners over the course of their lives, while Britain is the most promiscuous developed country in the world. It also has significantly higher divorce rates. Also black people... ugh I'm not even gonna talk about them. Their social patterns are just whack.
We all know you don't get something for nothing. There was a reason for criminalizing lessor (yet world class) standards in the interest of producing "the best healthcare in the world." Why? Because a significant number of people were willing to buy and sell those lessor goods and services.
You can't criminalize those goods and services without "denying" something to someone. Those who can afford the resulting socialized market (with standards set higher by public law than willing buyers and sellers would negotiate consensually) pay more. That's money they could have used for something else.
The further down the wealth scale you go, it's logical that individuals will make choices to buy food, clothing and housing before the above-described inflated healthcare.
If you want to say that the above doesn't "deny" anyone anything, then we can also say that Republican scare-tactics that individuals will be delayed care (under universal healthcare) won't deny them anything either.
The problem we have today, as I see it, is that we've used Public Law to set healthcare standards higher than willing buyers and sellers would negotiate consensually. (And, higher than the rest of the world, as evidenced by Republicans constantly telling us we have "the best healthcare system in the world.").
This creates a social responsibility to take care of those who can't afford our socialized "market." But, as soon as that discussion arises Republicans (primarily) object that this would be "socialism." What they really mean is: "coercion." Taking from one and giving to another. An "entitlement."
But, that's what we essentially did when we criminalized healthcare goods and services in the interest of creating a higher standard of living (a collective goal). I.e., a more predictable "market," (reducing the personal responsibility of some Americans to properly investigate their choice of goods and services) at the expense of others, who go without.
If Republicans don't like coercion, they shouldn't like the coercion we have now (and leading to growing demands for universalization of our already socialized "market"). But, as we've regularly seen in the Friday-Night threads, they're selective in their opposition to coercion. Using principle-based rhetoric against others which they aren't willing to apply to themselves.
Personally, I could support greater disparity of choices in the market. Not a truly Darwinian market (as many squeamish Republicans argue against in their parade of horribles).
But, absent that, I think there's no other choice than to make the existing socialized market more equally beneficial to all society.
They are. You're just not looking hard enough. Not to mention, the system has been demonstrated to work in a myriad of other countries.
So basically...in your eyes because *you* made it, everyone else should be able to too, *screw the evidence*! YARRR!!! Do you realize how selfish, conceited, and ignorant you are? What a gigantic bubble you live in. I doubt you'll ever realize your disdain for socialism is motivated by greed. You don't want anyone, regardless of how difficult their situation is or how bad their luck is, to have any of your money. You want to hoard it all. Greed has been and always will be the most powerful motivator of mankind. You offer direct proof of that.
I'll simply copy and paste from another post:
THE POLL: 45 percent said it's likely the government will decide when to stop care for the elderly; 50 percent said it's not likely.
THE FACTS: Nothing being debated in Washington would give the government such authority. Critics have twisted a provision in a House bill that would direct Medicare to pay for counseling sessions about end-of-life care, living wills, hospices and the like if a patient wants such consultations with a doctor. They have said, incorrectly, that the elderly would be required to have these sessions.
House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio said such counseling "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia."
The bill would prohibit coverage of counseling that presents suicide or assisted suicide as an option.
Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who has been a proponent of coverage for end-of-life counseling under Medicare, said such sessions are a voluntary benefit, strictly between doctor and patient, and it was "nuts" to think death panels are looming or euthanasia is part of the equation.
But as fellow conservatives stepped up criticism of the provision, he backed away from his defense of it.
I acknowledge there are corrupt Democrats, but there are far more corrupt Republicans whose only interest is in satisfying the needs of big business rather than the American people.
And seriously, death panels? Why is Sarah Palin not in jail for that?
regardless how often MTV culture tries to tell ya knowledge is for suckers
The irony of course is that all these people replying to you have been criticizing you for living in a self-centered bubble, not acknowledging the reality that the majority of poor people face. They have been providing you with first-hand experiences, *real* "knowledge".
cynical enough and libertarian enough to hold people just a little bit accountable for their own situation
And yet no one criticizing you has said anything about people not being held accountable. They're saying they already *are*, and then some. Their children are held accountable for actions their parents took. In general the poor are held accountable for early mistakes.
Yes if you can work 16 hours a day and dedicate yourself tirelessly you might be able to pull yourself up, but again people have pointed out it's extremely difficult to get a job when you're uneducated, let alone pay for your children's schooling and healthcare.
And even moreso, not everyone is a workaholic or enjoy suffering for their future betterment.
People's ability to handle long-term vs. short-term gain and pleasure is a mostly genetic determination (ever heard of the marshmallow experiments?). It's hardly fair to expect them to work twice as hard as say...former President Bush to bring themselves to lower middle class status.
Umm...wouldn't a national healthcare system that focused on preventative care, such as recommending and encouraging (ie providing incentives) to people to exercise be a great way to treat obesity? Duh?
Perhaps there is a pattern but our minds are not advanced enough to discern one? We might be able to develop computer algorithms to search for patterns as well, but those are ultimately limited by our capacity to program intelligent software.
You don't need billions of dollars in capital to start a cable provider. Before Time Warner bought them all out most of the cable providers in my area where small businesses that served an individual town or two. They didn't spend billions of dollars to roll out their networks. How do you think the industry got going in the first place?
As someone specifically pointed out to you in an earlier post, if you try to enter into an incumbent's territory they will bankrupt you with below cost pricing, advertised as " introductory specials" so as to avoid federal scrutiny. Time Warner built their cables when there was literally no competition and no cable available to anyone.
So on one hand you claim that it takes billions of dollars to deploy a cable network but on the other hand you presumably want to use the government to take that network away from them and lease it out to their competitors?
How are those two irreconcilable? Laying down lines is prohibitively expensive, to the point that it's impossible to compete. We've already seen what happens when "line sharing" regulation is entrusted to the FCC. Seizing the lines and allowing companies to compete over the services they offer would be to the benefit of society.
I think his point was that cable isn't a life essential service in the same category as electricity or running water. You can live without it.
The comment about cable not being essential is meaningless and stupid. As a modern country and supposedly the most powerful and affluent one in the world, I would hope that we would aspire to more than just meeting the bare essentials of life. Besides, abusing your power as a monopoly is abusing your power as a monopoly, regardless of what product you are offering. We shouldn't have to do without modern amenities just so gigantic and hugely profitable companies can continue to take advantage of a market failure.
Personally I think people are too irrational for democracy to ever be "good" or truly "effective". Who was it that said it's simply the lesser or two evils? Socialism is an *economic* theory, not a political one. It doesn't emphasize the concentration of power- that would be communism, which is (at least in modern times) a mostly *political* concept. Thus we have communist China with the most capitalistic market in the world.
What the frick? Why were you labeled troll? Wow, just wow. Slashdot mods are seriously idiots. Let's just ignore the reality of scientific studies demonstrating the prolific buying habits of "cheap pirates" and the effectiveness of advertising through "free" distribution of material. Let's instead just label a logical, well-thought out argument illuminating the fallacies in the RIAA's arguments as a "troll". BRILLIANT!
Ah...let me join you in that dream world. It's as warming as a hot fire inside a cozy house in the middle of winter.
Bandwidth caps are not justified. There has never been any real evidence presented as to the presence of unavoidable, costly network congestion.
Well, this is offtopic, but most Western practitioners of Tai Chi engage in what amounts to a rip off of the real thing. I practiced proper Tai Chi (Wu style; teacher of my teacher was an old dude from China who originally learned for decades at the temples there), and it's extremely different than what they teach most people here. They often don't practice the martial aspect of the movements, and often mutate or altogether change many of the health-related movements. It's kind of sad really. Actually becoming adept at Tai Chi and properly learning how to control your "Qi" requires decades. It's amazing what you can do once you actually figure it all out, as my teacher demonstrated over and over again (*on* me for the other students unfortunately). I never met his teacher (he died in a car accident at the age of 80 something a few years previous... was the other guy's fault), but from what I was told by other students he was far more skilled than my teacher, who was amazing in his own right.
So because in your opinion these luxuries aren't important we should continue to allow companies to engage in anti-competitive, illegal behavior that nets billions in profit for them while decreasing the amount of disposable income the average American has and lowering their standard of living? Brilliant conclusion on your part. Just brilliant.
Sure, let it happen and send us into another global depression that lasts for a decade or so, until a global war breaks out as countless populations living in utter poverty decide killing their neighbors and stealing their money is better than sitting at home and starving to death. Or...let's just do what we did and be better off for it. The national debt is merely the result of Keynesian economics at work (and might I add it's actually working). If it wasn't for the rampant deregulation of the financial industry over the last 30 years (starting with Reagen), we wouldn't have required such an immense investment to get us out of this mess. As it is, we can now police the banks and financial industry to prevent such a near-meltdown from occurring ever again. Giving money to people does nothing for the economy. They'll simply hide it under the mattress, afraid the world is coming to an end soon, and unwittingly causing the financial meltdown to take place. An economy runs on the exchange of money, and falls when people start hoarding. That's why Bush's tax cuts did almost nothing to help stimulate the economy. People, rather than spending it, would just pay off their debt or hide it under their mattress (so to speak).
There was actually an article on DSLPrime a little while ago about a national convention that many of the cablecos and content providers attended. The reporter who hosts the site noticed that many of these content providers were shopping their programs around to find ISPs who would be interested in paying them to set up an online VOD service (naturally available only to that company's customers). The point is that it's not just the ISPs who are doing this, but the visionless content providers who can't see the benefit of providing the content *themselves*.
You're exaggerating a bit, but you have a point about the difficulty of life there. However, not all cities are like that, and certainly not everyone lives in the densest cities. As for cost, you can get 1 gbps symmetrical in Japan for $50/month.
There are similar projects in Sweden, where companies give the option to customers to bury their own fiber (with periodic oversight of course). This eliminates the initial expense of FTTH installation for the cash-strapped small ISP, and as a by-product apparently significantly reduces churn, as people become emotionally attached to the fiber they dug into the ground. It's a win-win for everyone. Of course in America the incumbents don't actually want everyone to have fiber, as they prefer to charge hugely inflated prices for substandard internet connections that require little to no provisioning of bandwidth.
Am I the only one who has no idea what Google Wave does?
The humans in BSG 2004 were PSYCHOTIC. Human nature was NOT EXPLORED. People do not act like that. Those people were absolutely nuts. The littlest things set them off, and they all seemed to want to kill each other. It was retarded.
If you don't think Republicans use the media far more efficiently and insidiously to propagate lies and misinformation, I HIGHLY recommend you visit outfoxed.org and download (there's a torrent of it) and watch the program. It's extremely enlightening. Seriously, you have *no idea* how single-minded and biased Republican channels are. Democrats aren't perfect, but they do a significantly better (or perhaps less worse) job than Republicans.
Oh God, I'm sure you all think this is bad, but since this is being conducted by Asians you need to multiply that stress by a factor of 3. I'm Asian myself, and I *can* speak for the majority of Asians actually born in Asia that parents who force their children down a specific path for the benefit of the family is an incredibly common theme. It's not just the parents, it's the culture, the schools, the businesses, *everyone*. It's crazy, and to be fair it's a problem that receives a lot of criticism from Asians who don't like watching their children shackled to a specific lifestyle from such an incredibly early age.
Yes, and allow America and subsequently the rest of the world undergo financial meltdown. Brilliant.