If you truly and honestly believe that the winner of these contests are not then promptly offered jobs, you are missing the point fo the contests. These contests are generally more glorified job interviews then anything else. I doubt they even expect anyone to win. What they DO expect is for people to send in some innovative solutions. They will then go out and try like hell to hire the people with the best submissions.
If you are looking for a job, I wouldn't view this as a competition to make you obsolete. This is a competition to find a new employee and offer him a sweet sign on bonus.
The AOL search was an issue because you could look at search requests for places and figure out where someone was very quickly. If I use Google to plot the rout to the nearest IKEA or porn store, it is a pretty simple matter to trace back who someone is. Short of some serious stupidity, I couldn't imagine Netflix giving away any valuable information in identity theft. A list of movies is highly unlikely to lead to anyone's address or identity.
Nothing will be an "iPod killer" until it's as simple to use and straightforward as the iPod is.
I don't believe this for a second. The iPod is not trashing everyone else in the market just because the iPod has a slick simple to use interface. Other Mp3 players have great interfaces too. The Creative Zen for instance has an interface that (in my opinion) trashes the iPods. I am certain that other MP3 players out there are also likewise good. At this point it doesn't matter how good the interface in your MP3 player is, the iPod is going to thrash your product. The iPod already created a 'perfect marketing storm' and is currently sailing high on its success from a few years ago.
The MP3 market was very immature when Apple stepped in. Apple stepped into an immature market with an product bundle (both the slick iPod AND iTunes) and marketing and PR power that other MP3 players couldn't even begin to compete with. Apple pretty quickly hit critical mass and snatched up the entire immature market before anyone had a chance to defend themselves from the Apple takeover.
Apple is now just riding out its earlier success. The iPod is almost synonymous with MP3 player. Hell, when my mother went to buy my little brother an MP3 player for his birthday she got an iPod. She didn't get it because it was the "best", she got it because she didn't even realize that there were other options. She knew an iPod was "cool" and played music. It didn't even cross her non-techie mind that there might be better MP3 players out there for less.
At this point in the game, it doesn't matter how good your product is; you stand absolutely no chance against the critical mass and the marketing machine that is the iPod. Not only do you need to offer a superior and better looking product at a competitive price to beat Apple, but you also need to at least compete with them in terms of marketing. When I say marketing, I don't simply mean commercials black and white dancing Bono's and what not, but also from the pop culture marketing that Apple has managed to tap into. People buy iPods not just because of TV commercials, but also because their friends have one.
All of this said, I do think that Apple is eventually going to have a real battle on its hands. As Apple competes, it teaches. People now realize that their MP3 player not only has to be functional, but slick looking. The interface now has to not only be functional, but at least as slick as the iPod's. Apple has even taught its competitors how to market their products. I would be money that future iPod competitors launch advertisements implying that iPods are not cool because everyone else has them. iPod competitors are going to wade into the pop culture wars in an attempt to dethrone Apple.
Granted, I know nothing of the Zune and how effective Microsoft is at marketing, but if anyone has the money and the drive to battle Apple, Microsoft is probably it. Throw in that Microsoft has one hook already in by controlling the OS (think Netscape Vs IE), and I think that Microsoft is a contender if they don't much up on having a functional product.
Well, it depends. If it is a Shiite group that hits the US, then pinning it on Iran is a pretty damn safe thing to do. Iran actively and openly funds multiple Shiite terrorist groups. It isn't like they are even hiding it, so pinning Iran down is pretty easy, and probably the correct thing to do.
If it is a Sunni terrorist group (like Al-Qaeda), things get more interesting. Sunni terrorist groups have no active government backers these days. After 9/11 the US wiped one supporting nation off of the map (Afghanistan) and made it damn clear that it fully intended a repeat performance for anyone who would continue to support such groups. The US effectively cut all nation-state support to Sunni terrorist groups. Even Iran these days puts on a show of going after Al-Qaeda just to keep a US footprint off of their back... though the fact that Iranian Shiites are not terribly friendly to Sunnis doesn't hurt in motivating them.
So, I would guess that it depends on the type of attack. If it is a conventional attack, the US probably will not tear down any nations unless it is clear that someone was helping them. The US is not particularly eager to pick a random without a good reason because Iraq has left the Americans pretty war weary.
On the other hand, if it is a non-conventional attack, especially a nuclear attack, things get interesting. Al-Qaeda can't launch a nuclear attack by itself. It NEEDS to get a nuclear bomb from somewhere else. If the Americans can trace the bomb back to a country of origin (and I believe that they could) then the US has a target... but whatever target it is is clearly a nuclear armed target. If the bomb is traced back to an unwilling partner - namely Russia or Pakistan, the US will throw a fit (rightfully so) and relations will sour unless Russia takes some serious actions to convince the US that it is doing everything in its power to prevent a repeat performance.
If the bomb is traced back to North Korea, there is nothing the US can do. As much as the US would love to level North Korea with nuclear strikes, no matter how pissed off the US is, the US would never hit North Korea. Hitting North Korea means provoking North Korea into destroying all of northern South Korea with chemical and nuclear weapons... I mean hell, Seoul is in artillery range of North Korea and pre-targeted with chemical artillery shells. The most the US could do is isolate North Korea even more then it already is and set up a more aggressive blockade of the nations.
Finally, if a nuclear bomb was found to of come from Iran... well, Iranians would be wise to "duck and cover" as the old nuclear war safety films describe, because the US wouldn't hold back. At least half a dozen Iranian cities would become radioactive glass plates.
The one nice thing about terrorist nukes (for the US at least) is that Tel Aviv probably sits above New York on the target list. Of course, hitting New York is probably much easier then Tel Aviv so while Tel Aviv might be #1 on the list, New York is probably the easier of the two targets to sneak a bomb into.
As far as nuking goes, if the US uses nukes it will be as a symbol, not as an attempt to do any real damage. If the US wants to level a city, it can already do that with conventional attacks. A couple of MOABs are far cheaper then a nuke, don't carry the same political repercussions, and are just as effective. If the US was to use a nuke on a civilian target, it would only be in response to a similar attack on a US city.
The whole idea behind nuclear deterrence is to convince the other side that you are completely willing to respond nuclear atrocity with nuclear atrocity. In order for nuclear deterrence to work you need to truly believe that you are willing to respond with nuclear weapons to a nuclear attack. Further, if a nuclear attack does happen, you MUST show that you were never bluffing and respond with nuclear weapons. To make things even uglier, your nuclear attack must be so devastating that no nation would consider it a worthy exchange.
So, if for a completely hypothetical situation Iran nukes New York (not likely, but play along), the US can't just respond by nuking Tehran. Trading New York for Tehran isn't an equal trade. Iran would clearly feel itself the winner and might feel that in the future trading one American city for one Iranian city is a worthy trade. As a result, the US would not only have to respond, but respond overwhelmingly. They wouldn't just destroy Tehran, but might take out another dozen cities in the process. They wouldn't just drop one bomb per city, but would instead blanket the cities. The only thing that would moderate a response would be the fact that India and China would be pissed if too much fallout floated their way.
The logic behind nuclear war is terrible. The weapons are so horrific that you must convince the other side that the consequence of using them are so disproportionate to any gain that their use is unthinkable. Worst still, if someone tries to call your bluff, you need to prove to them that you were not bluffing.
Finally, I highly doubt that the US will be the first to use nuclear weapons again. There is nothing a nuclear weapon can do that conventional weapons can't. Even super hardened military bunkers untouchable with conventional bombs do not demand the use of a nuke. It is far better for political reasons to remove a mountain the old fashion (man power and explosives) then to suffer the political consequences of using a nuke. The US likes the idea of having bunker busting nukes, but only for after a nuclear war has been started. No sane president would use nukes preemptively... and yes, I include Bush as a sane president.
As does alot of the world not in the united states but still grounded under it's definition of right and wrong is why can't a foreign self governing nation control its own airspace and space space. If I built a spy satellite and orbitted it over the united states I would be a terrorist and bombed in seconds. Why the difference for china?
Three points.
1) You are an idiot if you believe the crap you just spewed in your post. Go get yourself a basic science education. 2) Spy satellites of non-US origin are whizzing above your head right now and no one is bombing anyone for it. Russia in particular has piles of them swirling overhead, as does to a smaller extent China. 3) The way orbits work you all but can't help stuff passing over other nations. If nations threw a hissy fit each time another nations spacecraft or satellites flew overhead, no one would be using space. The only orbit that doesn't involve fly over other nations is a geosynchronous orbit, and that orbit takes a pile of power to get into and has limited uses.
I don't understand MMORPGs. Oh, I certainly get the appeal behind them. Get a few thousand people together and make a living and breathing world to play in, but there is not a single MMORPG that has even come close to doing that with perhaps the singular exception of UO (and that lasted roughly a month). Personally, I envision a Marvel MMORPG to look roughly exactly the same as City of Heroes. You will pick some powers, start at level 1, and then kill roughly a quadrillion mindless NPCs to get more levels. Woo-fucking-hooo.
Personally, I can't wait for the day when an MMORPG maker grows a pair and makes something more interesting then a leveling treadmill. Many have tried, but in the end they have all failed and just rebuilt the same tired leveling treadmill.
They are NOT called "criminal combatants", they are called "enemy combatants". They get that title because they blatantly violate the Geneva Convention. In order to get Geneva Convention protection, you basically need to be either wearing a uniform and clearly marked as a combatant or you need to be a civilian. The Geneva Convention was created to give rules to warfare between two states with conventional armies. The idea behind the Geneva Convention was to try and minimize the loss of civilian life and to set up rules that allow for a smooth transition back to civilian government after the war is over. You can basically boil the rules down the rules of the Geneva Convention to the following:
1) No intentionally killing civilians. 2) Always mark yourself as a combatant (wear a uniform) so that civilians are not confused as combatants. 3) You must accept the surrender of uniformed combatants and you can't just execute them. 4) When the war is over you need to free the uniformed combatants.
The implication of these rules is that enemy spies do NOT receive Geneva Convention protection. During the Cold War when either side caught an enemy spy, they did NOT receive Geneva Convention protections. If an American spy was caught in Soviet Russia, we didn't make a stink about it if the Soviets tortured the spy, held the spy forever, or simply killed the spy. All sides agreed that spies do not get Geneva Convention status and so were not privy to receiving its benefits.
Now, we are in a new type of war. The US doesn't fight uniformed combatants. The US fights people that fight among civilians wearing civilian clothing. Clearly, these people, like spies, are blatantly violating the Geneva Convention. They can't be identified as combatants and intentionally try and pass themselves off as civilians. Hence, they get a new title called an "enemy combatant", which means that they roughly get treated like spies.
They don't get bill of rights protection because it is absolutely insane to even imply that in a war zone you need to read people their Miranda rights or get search warrants. Soldiers are not crime scene investigators, and crime scene investigators who can take proper evidence for a fair trial are not going to be doing their work in a war zone.
Enemy combatants (i.e. people fighting out of uniform) occupy a gray area that there are no rules for. There is no Geneva Convention rules that describe how to treat these people. There are no rules in general with how to deal with people who fight wearing civilian clothing in general. If the UN wanted to do something useful (god forbid), they would write up a code to deal with people who fight among civilians disguised as civilians.
If you were fighting to overthrow a foriegn government, yeah, it puts things into perspective. A revolution in the US against the currently elected government would be a civil war. You don't need to throw out a handful of easily identifiable foreign troops, you need to overthrow all levels of a local government. You would either need to coop the army and police or have a public sympathetic to your cause that would be willing to hide you. You might not need a majority of the people to fight, but you would need a large portion of the population to at least support you over government forces or else you would simply be ratted out.
There is not tactics in the world that the American public would accept that would make a revolution acceptable so long as the democracy was still perceived as mostly functional. If a candidate with support of 70% of the population lost due to massive fraud, you might upset the public enough to support a revolution. That sort of fraud is almost inconceivable as it would have to effect the legislative branch, judicial branch, the piles of civil institutions, and the military. Most people don't realize it, but the military doesn't swear allegiance to the president; they swear allegiance to the constitution and take that oath very seriously. The US army wouldn't even ENTER New Orleans after Katrina despite the pleas of the mayor because they didn't want to violate prohibitions against using the army on the populace during times of peace. Eventually they entered, but they flatly refused to perform any sort of policing action or to restore any order and served only a humanitarian aid role.
Finally, what tactics would such a revolution be able to use? I certainly hope it isn't violence, because who exactly would you target? Civil servants? Police? The military? People who vote the wrong way? There isn't even a conceivable target that wouldn't immediately invoke the wrath of the general populace against any 'revolutionary' group. Once the populace at large is out to get you, you are screwed.
No, a revolution in the US is pretty much doomed so long as a majority of people can vote and remove the government at will. I would advise against using the ammo box and stick to the soap box. If you can't get a small fraction of the population to vote your way, you are not going to be holding any violent revolutions any time soon.
You kind of miss the bigger point. It isn't about getting more people to vote. It is about people educating themselves.
Fuck money.
To get me to vote for you it takes just enough money to put up a website and make a few appearances. The Greens and Libertarians are both examples of parties that have "enough" money to put their message out to anyone listening, and they sure as hell are not "greasing" any palms. Anyone who spends even an ounce of effort understanding politics knows that the Greens and Libertarians exist. As soon as you know that they exist, it is a simple and cheap process to gather information on them and make an informed decision about how their politics align with your own. The problem is that people are not actively listening. If you are hunting down information, you will find it and make informed decisions. If you only vote for people that have 30 second ads during the football game, then yes, you will only make stupid and uninformed decisions.
This is the core of the problem. It takes money to win because people are lazy. If 30 second TV ads can sway you and spend so little time researching politics that you don't even know that there exist parties outside of the big two, then you are apart of the broken system.
The problem isn't that 3v1L corporations and labor unions pour money into political candidates. The problem is that all that money pouring into these candidates actually results in winning elections. The problem is that people are too lazy to do an ounce of research into who they vote for and so are easily swayed by piles of advertisement. The whole money and advertisement thing ISN'T the problem; it is just a symptom of a lazy and apathetic public. If the public did just a little research, this entire discussion would be rendered moot as all the money and TV time in the world wouldn't convince an educated public to vote for people offering bad policies.
Think of it like this. You need to hire a baby sitter. If you hire the baby sitter based upon advertisements, you might be easily swayed by the outward image carefully constructed in the advertisement. The marketing schemes and money of the baby sitter would work and you would pick not the most qualified baby sitter, but the one that had the best marketers.
Now, imagine that you do your research into baby sitters and find that of the two baby sitters available in your neighborhood, one is a repeat offender child rapist that was just released from prison on a technicality and the other is a highly recommended that has a PhD in baby sitting. At that point would it matter who had the best advertising campaign? The rapist could spend a trillion dollars and the PhD could spend 1 dollar and you still would happily take the PhD each and every time.
Advertising and marketing only works on those you are ignorant. The cure to ignorance in politics is to cast aside apathy and laziness and do a little bit of research. If even a sizable minority of Americans (say 10%) bothered to do this and came to the conclusion that there is a better alternative then the current two parties, there would be sweeping change in this nation. I don't expect this to happen any time soon... as I said before, the problem is not the system. The problem is the electorate that has been entrusted to run the system. The electorate have shirked its reasonability and hand control over to corporations, lobbyist, and whatever villains you feel like naming. They didn't "take" the power and deny it to the people. The people denied the power to themselves. It shouldn't come as any great revelation that when the people refuse to act responsibly and govern that some other self interested person or group is going to happily take up the reigns of power.
We spend more money on defense, both total and per capita, than any other nation in the world, including China and North Korea.
Not to nit pick, but no shit, I would hope we do. The per capita GDP of the US is $41,800, for China it is $6,800, and for North Korea it is $1,700(*1). If we were to spend just 4% of our per capita GDP we would be matching North Korea's attempt to spend 100% of its per capita GDP. I certainly hope that we are spending North Korea into the ground as a raw per capita dollar value or else we would be lucky to have armed police, much less an effective military.
What is a far more interesting figure is to compare the percentage of the GDP spent on the military from nation to nation. For shits and giggles I pulled the data from the CIA Factbook and did the numbers(*2). North Korea tops out at number 1, spending a massive 12.5% of their GDP on the military. Israel comes in at number 3 with 6.1%. Positions 4 to 10 are taken by various Middle Eastern and African nations. The US comes in at number 11 with 4.2% of their GDP spent on the military. France comes in at number 20 with 2.5% spending China sits down at number 68 with 0.9% spending on GDP, though this number might be much higher then reported. I know that there have been rumblings that China is massively under reporting their military expenditures. That said, I doubt that they come anywhere near the US.
So there you have it, the numbers... what was this post on again?
*2 Some countries were missing military spending estimates. Most were not nations of much consequence or had no spending. That said, at least one biggie was missing. The military spending of Russia was not reported.
I am an American who studies his candidates and votes. I have never once voted for a Republican or Democrat in a presidential race. I some times vote Democrat or Republican in local elections if I believe that they fit my views. More often then not though, if I feel I am picking between two people that absolutely do not represent my interests, I hand in a blank ballot.
If Americans really believe that their voice counts for nothing and that the elections are rigged, they could at least lodge a real protest. Instead of sitting on their ass on election day watching football, they could go hand in a blank ballot. If it is reported in the news that 250 million Americans voted, but the candidates only received 50 million votes each, THAT would send a message clear as day. New candidates can fight for that extra 150 million dissatisfied protest votes. No one is going to bother fighting for the guy who voted by sitting on his ass to watching football on election day.
I personally don't buy this whole "noble non-voter" concept that people put forward. Americans don't fail to vote as a protest. If they wanted to protest, they would hand in blank ballots and send a clear signal. They don't vote because they are either stupid, lazy, or apathetic. The people still hold the power. We can retake the reigns of government at any times; we simply choose not to.
The American system is a two party system. Now, the good and bad of that can be argued. On one hand, it is good in that it keeps extremist out of power much more effectively then a European parliamentary system. Not only does the American system make it damn near impossible for an extremist to win with its winner take all style, but even if a few extremist do win, there isn't a reason in the world to work with them because you don't need to form coalitions. Because the legislative and executive branches are rarely all ruled by one party (as it is the case now), there is also a drive to the center because a minority veto is so easy. Even when all branches are controlled by a single party (as it is the case now), there is almost no reason for the party to work together. This is exemplified by the current US government. Republicans control everything, yet they have consistently failed to pass any sweeping legislation because they are simply not all that united.
Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages. I personally like what a two party system does, but not how it does it. I like a divided an inefficient government that needs a super majority to get anything done. I like that it is easy to break party ranks. I like that it pushes everyone to the center. I don't like that it results in dividing the nation down the two. I don't believe that everyone is either socially conservative and free-market leaning or socially liberal and more socialist leaning. I don't believe that political beliefs have Nazi's on one side and Maoist on the other and the only thing we do is pick a point in the center.
All of that said, as it has happened in American history, the two parties are not permanent fixtures. Public discontent can and has wiped them out. While it is certainly an uphill battle to wipe out a party, it is not an impossibility. It isn't even all that hard. Further, you don't even need to wipe out a party. Parties are very fluid in their ideology. There is no "democrat" or "republican" ideology set in stone. The two parties swing and slide all over the place. The democrats were the ones that held up the civilian rights movement and used to be the party of the south, yet I would hardly make the claim that they still hold those beliefs.
If the electorate really wants change, it can get the change it wants. It can either remake an old party anew or simply replace an old party. Either way, the vote still works. The majority of people who vote make the rules. If the rules need changing, the people have the power to do it. The two party system makes it harder then it does in Europe, the idea that the electorate is helpless is simply wrong. The people can change the government. With so few people currently voting, they don't even need to a majority to do it.
Anything I post on Slashdot I consider to have been put in the public domain. Go nuts and use it however you want. Maybe I should put a CC in my sig...
Europeans often confuse the American right with the European right. The European right, especially some of the smaller parties, often truly really do deserve to be called fascist. The American right on the other hand tends to hold very different ideals then the European right. The American right has a wide range of views on immigration. Even when individuals in the American right hold extreme views on immigration, it NEVER is the centerpiece of their campaign. In Europe on the other hand, there are entire parties whose major campaign issue is that they are going to keep immigrants out.
I have a feeling that when Europeans see an American candidate or party describe as "ultra right wing", they assume it means the same as it does in Europe. In the US, ultra right wing ONLY means that that the candidate is far to the right on social issues (abortion, homosexual marriage, prayer in school, exc) or far to the right on economic issues (pro-freemarket, anti-regulation, wants to cut government size at the expense of social programs, pro-tax cuts, exc).
That whole "lets throw out all the immigrants and preserve our culture" thing really gets no leverage in the US. Hell, Bush proposed an immigration bill that would let anyone who had been in the nation illegally for 6 years receive a guest worker permit and be put on track towards citizenship. That isn't the kind of policy you expect from a neo-Nazi nut (he is a nut for other reasons). Ross Perot was much the same. He was "right wing" in that he wanted government reform, but calling him anything close to a neo-Nazi is a fallacy that comes from assuming that the American right and the European right look anything alike (they don't).
So this is why 2 american presidential candidates were arrested trying to gain entry to the 2004 debates?
The green and Badnark got arrested for trespassing. You can get yourself arrested too without much trouble; that doesn't make this Soviet America. You can't even put the US and a solid half of the world nations on the same scale when it comes to political freedom. Suggesting that you can simply shows deep ignorance about the state of the rest of the world.
oh please!.. the 2 reigning parties have essentially made it impossible for new parties to form.
I don't disagree in the slightest. You miss the larger point though which we shall get to in just a moment.
ross perot had 2 billion dollars at his disposal. Unless everyone else has that kind of money no.. the system does not work, and how dare you try to pretend otherwise
Ahh, now we are getting closer to the "problem" with American politics...
And this is why the majority of americans dont vote.. they know it's essentially communist china here with a little potpurri on the grungier and more totalitarian aspects.
And this is where the point flies right over your head. The Americans could have made Ross Perot president if they wanted to. Nazi storm troopers didn't drag Perot off in handcuffs. No evil corporate death squads showed up to prevent people from voting. Americans just didn't vote for him. They could have and they didn't. End of story.
Ask yourself why Ross Perot did so well. To give you a little history, this man for a brief time actually was LEADING in the polls. He only started to get trounced after his somewhat defective personality was brought to light by his public appearances. Ross Perot almost won because of marketing. Don't get me wrong, he had a message too, but what made him different from the Greens and Libertarians that loose each year is that not only was his message centrist enough to appeal (lets face it, the Greens and the Libertarians are extremist), but he had enough money drive his message like a spike through every single American's head.
This is the heart and the root of the problem with American democracy. Americans are too fucking lazy to learn about politics. You need to practically beat the American public in voting. You need to blast the airwaves and the TVs. You need to shove your message down their throat and send out armies of volunteers. The problem isn't that the poor oppressed masses of Americans don't have an alternative. They do have an alternative; they just either don't know about it because they don't bother to look. Even when they do have the alternative (as was the case with Perot), they further fail to not just vote for the alternative, but the majority simply fail to vote. The Americans are not the poor oppressed people whose will have been broken as you make them out to be. They are just flat out lazy and/or stupid. America's lack of choice is American's fault. Pure and simple.
If Americans were not so complicate and easily swayed by corporate sponsored political marketing campaigns, corporations would have no power. If Americans spent 5 minutes on the Internet, found an alternative, then voted for the alternative, the democins and republicrats would be out within a week. The Gestapo isn't going to stop them from voting or rig the election. No one is going to be sent to the Gulag for failing to vote for one of the two established parties. If they simply voted differently, the established parties would vanish.
Any political failures in the American political system are not the fault of evil corporations and politicians. The blame lies completely and ONLY on the shoulders of the voting (and more importantly) non-voting public. The failures of our political system stem directly from a failure to exercise the political power that all Americans over the age of 18 have.
So can it with the inane talk of revolutions and evil corporations. If you think the system is so corrupt, do this
Yeah man... the like revolution is like on its way man. You just wait dude, Americans of all types are going to put down their sushi, SUVs, and Bed Bath and Beyond discount cards like fight the man... man.
Please. If Americans (and I say this as an American) can't be bothered to go vote in numbers greater than 50%, I am pretty damn sure that the revolution over fucking music copyright infringement is probably not on its way. You can't even get Americans to vote yet you think that they are going to go into the streets or pick up weapons? Ahaha. Please.
The US already has a perfectly effective way of changing the rules that makes the notion of a revolution laughable. Just because Americans don't bother to use their democracy doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Hell if anyone can remember past 6 years ago, Ross Periot of all people came damn close to becoming president. The system works. We just don't use it. If there is anything wrong with the system is that it requires American citizens in order for it to run properly.
I think you are confusing "libertarian" with anarcho-capitalist from some sci-fi book. Libertarians hold private property rights in very high regard and expect the government to liberally defend them. If someone enters your property you don't sue them, you call the police or defend the property yourself. Granted, I don't think anyone, not even the libertarian party, advocates taking libertarian ideals to their full extreme of allowing the police to arrest anyone who expels any polution into the air. In the same way, you don't see even the most radical communist advocating abolishing money. Far more likely for a libertarian to advocate is would be something like I describe in my previous post.
My point is that the car companies are the wrong ones to go after. The sad reality is that the car companies are slaves to the state and the consumer. The state sets up the regulatory framework that the car companies are allowed to operate in. The consumers provide the car companies with the funding to operate. The car companies do nothing more then operate by the rules of the State such that they maximize the profit reaped from the consumer. They can be squeezed on either side. If the state says it is okay to sell SUVs that run on 10 mpg and the consumer happily buys them, the auto companies will unthinkingly sell them.
The real failure is of the state to properly regulate emissions and the consumers to hold themselves accountable for polluting the commons (hence we call it a tragedy of the commons). Blaming the auto-companies is like blaming a knife for killing someone rather then the person wielding the knife.
The solution is simple. Don't sue the auto companies for blindly following down the path set by the consumer and the State. The solution is to make the consumer pay for the pollution he spews into the atmosphere. If consumers had to pay the price of dumping their CO2 into the air, then perhaps they would think twice before picking a SUV over a Civic.
I think the solution is simple. Set up a cap on total US CO2 dumping then bid off the rights to dump. Anyone who wants to dump CO2 has to bid for the right to do so, including auto users. This would be easily accomplished by demanding that all gas be sold with the accompanying rights to dump CO2 contained within the gas. So, if Exxon wants to sell you gas, they also need to sell you the rights to dump the CO2 contained in the gas while they are at it. If consumers has to directly pay for the right to dump CO2, they might think twice before doing it. They also might start looking to alternative energies when they notice that their energy bill costs from coal plants skyrockets because coal plants need to buy CO2 dumping rights too.
Simply put, make the polluters responsible for their pollution. This legal bullshit is just another spineless way to pass the buck. It isn't the State's failure to regulate nor the consumers failure to take responsibility for their polluting, it is evil auto companies fault... Bullshit .
We need to stand up and take responsibility for our own actions, not always seek out some "evil" corporation to blame.
The car companies should have taken the cost of the emissions of their vehicles into account before they sold them.
They did. The air is owned by the government. The government set the price at zero. If the government wanted air to have value they should have (and now slowly are) created a market for polluting rights. Even better then blaming the auto companies; they should be making consumers directly pay for their emissions. Consumers are the ones at fault here. The consumers could demand more environmentally friendly cars. Instead, when given the choice between a SUV monstrosity or a Honda Civic, they have picked the SUV.
Make the consumer pay for his pollution of the commons. Institute a nation wide CO2 market. Cap the amount CO2 that can be dumped, then sell of the rights to the highest bidders. If you want to burn gas in your car, not only do you need to buy the gas, but you also need to buy the CO2 dumping rights. Just tack on the CO2 dumping rights cost onto the price of gas by making it so that in order to sell gas, you need to sell the CO2 dumping rights with it.
Blaming the car companies is simply scapgoating. The car companies are slaves to the State the regulates them and the consumers that fund them. The state has failed to institute a cost that the consumers must pay in order to dump into the atmosphere. Blaming the car companies is like blaming the knife for a killing instead of murderer wielding the knife.
In a libertarian utopia, air pollution would be illegal. In the same way you would be in trouble in a libertarian society if I walked over to your house and dumped trash on your lawn, dumping CO2 that floats on over to me would be a violation of my property. That said, it takes a very libertarian libertarian to suggest that all forms of air pollution be banned. More in line for libertarians would be to set up a quasi-market for air pollution.
A quasi-libertarian solution would be to collectively as a democratic society decide what level of tolerance you have for air pollution, then auction off the rights to pollute. The idea behind this would be that you need to pay to pollute the more the demand for pollution, the more expensive it is. People who don't pollute receive a nod from the market by paying out less in buying up pollution rights. The more people who want to pollute, the more expensive it becomes.
So, let's say we live under this system and there are only a dozen coal power plants in the country, all of which are messy and dump lots of CO2 into the air. There however is not enough CO2 rights for all of the plants to run at full capacity because the finite amount of CO2 dumping rights for sale is less then what they would need for them to all run at full power. The coal plants will bid against each other for the pool of CO2 dumping rights. They would bid up the price until it become too expensive to operate, then stop buying up dumping rights. So, it might end up that all of the plants run at only half capacity and just barely make profit. One of the coal plants gets the bright idea to install CO2 scrubbers to dramatically reduce their CO2 output. Suddenly, this coal plant can now run at full capacity AND they don't need to buy as much CO2 dumping rights. They get a competitive advantage over everyone else and make a larger profit. The idea is that by making polluting rights a finite resource, corporations battle in an attempt to reduce consuming that resource. In the same way Ford is always on the lookout to less and cheaper material and computer chip makers are always looking for ways to ease cheaper chemicals, corporations would seek to pollute less.
This system of bidding is actually a pretty solid system, but does have two draw backs.
First, it only works well with pollutants that are not local pollutants. It doesn't matter if CO2 is dumped in Maine, California, or split up between the two states, the net effect on the earth is roughly the same. On the other hand, it does matter for other pollutants. You might not care where the CO2 from coal plants is dumped, but you certainly wouldn't want all the other ugly things that come out of a coal plant dumped in a single location just because they bought up the entire nation's polluting rights. You can of course get around this by setting up regional dumping rights. Instead of having a nation wide pool for Sox dumping, it might only be a state wide or county wide pool. That way, you can cap off the amount of pollution in any one region. You can even set up pools within pools. So, states might dip into a national pool which they then might go and redistribute into smaller regional dumping pools. This way, California couldn't simply set up smokestacks on their eastern border and dump their pollution on the rest of the nation. California would need to pay to dip into the national pool.
Second, this requires a closer monitoring of polluters. It is easy to tell all coal plants that they need a certain CO2 scrubber or else a large fine is coming their way. It is easy to check their compliance. It is much harder to constantly measure how much pollutants they are dumping into the air and to make sure that they do not go over their limit. With newer technology it is becoming easier to implement such a system, but it is still very much a challenge.
This is a good initial first step, but I think that what they really need to do is go after the REAL culprits. Cut the middlemen of the car and energy companies and go right for the villains. I think that they should simply sue everyone with a car. Hell, just sue every single human that uses energy that might have come from a coal plant too. This way, not only are they going after the real villains, but the lawyers have that many more targets to go after... and in the end, isn't targets for lawyers, err the environment, what this is really all about?
This is stupid. We live in a free market democracy. If you don't like what the car makers are doing either A) don't buy from them or B) use the power of democracy to force them to change. There isn't even the semblance of an excuse for this sort of bullshit. We have two completely effective ways of dealing with the problem.
Nothing is more sad and pathetic then when lunatic fringe groups and lawyers team up. I am all for tougher regulation and applying a higher price to people dumping CO2 into the communal air, but this is NOT the way. This is just stupid.
This is a stupid argument. I think it is pretty clear that bigger and better always wins over something "new". I can't think of a single instance in the past few years when a more expensive and powerful gaming machine lost to one that simply had an innovative interface and games to take advantage of it. Nope. I can't think of a single instance of this happening. *cough*Nintendo DS Vs PSP*cough*
The battle has already been played out. Round 1 has already been fought. Simply put, Nintendo won. The Nintendo DS absolutely trashed the technologically superior PSP. The PSP was clearly the more powerful and pretty of the two machines, but that didn't save them. The question is "can Nintendo win". The only question that needs to be asked, "will Nintedo win AGAIN".
Nintendo has already proven their concept. The only thing they need to do is repeat the victory they already have achieved once.
See, this is what happens when I have too many Slashdot windows up. I post about online dating where I meant to post about aging, and I post about aging in the online dating one.
Slashdot Mirror
If you truly and honestly believe that the winner of these contests are not then promptly offered jobs, you are missing the point fo the contests. These contests are generally more glorified job interviews then anything else. I doubt they even expect anyone to win. What they DO expect is for people to send in some innovative solutions. They will then go out and try like hell to hire the people with the best submissions.
If you are looking for a job, I wouldn't view this as a competition to make you obsolete. This is a competition to find a new employee and offer him a sweet sign on bonus.
The AOL search was an issue because you could look at search requests for places and figure out where someone was very quickly. If I use Google to plot the rout to the nearest IKEA or porn store, it is a pretty simple matter to trace back who someone is. Short of some serious stupidity, I couldn't imagine Netflix giving away any valuable information in identity theft. A list of movies is highly unlikely to lead to anyone's address or identity.
Nothing will be an "iPod killer" until it's as simple to use and straightforward as the iPod is.
I don't believe this for a second. The iPod is not trashing everyone else in the market just because the iPod has a slick simple to use interface. Other Mp3 players have great interfaces too. The Creative Zen for instance has an interface that (in my opinion) trashes the iPods. I am certain that other MP3 players out there are also likewise good. At this point it doesn't matter how good the interface in your MP3 player is, the iPod is going to thrash your product. The iPod already created a 'perfect marketing storm' and is currently sailing high on its success from a few years ago.
The MP3 market was very immature when Apple stepped in. Apple stepped into an immature market with an product bundle (both the slick iPod AND iTunes) and marketing and PR power that other MP3 players couldn't even begin to compete with. Apple pretty quickly hit critical mass and snatched up the entire immature market before anyone had a chance to defend themselves from the Apple takeover.
Apple is now just riding out its earlier success. The iPod is almost synonymous with MP3 player. Hell, when my mother went to buy my little brother an MP3 player for his birthday she got an iPod. She didn't get it because it was the "best", she got it because she didn't even realize that there were other options. She knew an iPod was "cool" and played music. It didn't even cross her non-techie mind that there might be better MP3 players out there for less.
At this point in the game, it doesn't matter how good your product is; you stand absolutely no chance against the critical mass and the marketing machine that is the iPod. Not only do you need to offer a superior and better looking product at a competitive price to beat Apple, but you also need to at least compete with them in terms of marketing. When I say marketing, I don't simply mean commercials black and white dancing Bono's and what not, but also from the pop culture marketing that Apple has managed to tap into. People buy iPods not just because of TV commercials, but also because their friends have one.
All of this said, I do think that Apple is eventually going to have a real battle on its hands. As Apple competes, it teaches. People now realize that their MP3 player not only has to be functional, but slick looking. The interface now has to not only be functional, but at least as slick as the iPod's. Apple has even taught its competitors how to market their products. I would be money that future iPod competitors launch advertisements implying that iPods are not cool because everyone else has them. iPod competitors are going to wade into the pop culture wars in an attempt to dethrone Apple.
Granted, I know nothing of the Zune and how effective Microsoft is at marketing, but if anyone has the money and the drive to battle Apple, Microsoft is probably it. Throw in that Microsoft has one hook already in by controlling the OS (think Netscape Vs IE), and I think that Microsoft is a contender if they don't much up on having a functional product.
Well, it depends. If it is a Shiite group that hits the US, then pinning it on Iran is a pretty damn safe thing to do. Iran actively and openly funds multiple Shiite terrorist groups. It isn't like they are even hiding it, so pinning Iran down is pretty easy, and probably the correct thing to do.
If it is a Sunni terrorist group (like Al-Qaeda), things get more interesting. Sunni terrorist groups have no active government backers these days. After 9/11 the US wiped one supporting nation off of the map (Afghanistan) and made it damn clear that it fully intended a repeat performance for anyone who would continue to support such groups. The US effectively cut all nation-state support to Sunni terrorist groups. Even Iran these days puts on a show of going after Al-Qaeda just to keep a US footprint off of their back... though the fact that Iranian Shiites are not terribly friendly to Sunnis doesn't hurt in motivating them.
So, I would guess that it depends on the type of attack. If it is a conventional attack, the US probably will not tear down any nations unless it is clear that someone was helping them. The US is not particularly eager to pick a random without a good reason because Iraq has left the Americans pretty war weary.
On the other hand, if it is a non-conventional attack, especially a nuclear attack, things get interesting. Al-Qaeda can't launch a nuclear attack by itself. It NEEDS to get a nuclear bomb from somewhere else. If the Americans can trace the bomb back to a country of origin (and I believe that they could) then the US has a target... but whatever target it is is clearly a nuclear armed target. If the bomb is traced back to an unwilling partner - namely Russia or Pakistan, the US will throw a fit (rightfully so) and relations will sour unless Russia takes some serious actions to convince the US that it is doing everything in its power to prevent a repeat performance.
If the bomb is traced back to North Korea, there is nothing the US can do. As much as the US would love to level North Korea with nuclear strikes, no matter how pissed off the US is, the US would never hit North Korea. Hitting North Korea means provoking North Korea into destroying all of northern South Korea with chemical and nuclear weapons... I mean hell, Seoul is in artillery range of North Korea and pre-targeted with chemical artillery shells. The most the US could do is isolate North Korea even more then it already is and set up a more aggressive blockade of the nations.
Finally, if a nuclear bomb was found to of come from Iran... well, Iranians would be wise to "duck and cover" as the old nuclear war safety films describe, because the US wouldn't hold back. At least half a dozen Iranian cities would become radioactive glass plates.
The one nice thing about terrorist nukes (for the US at least) is that Tel Aviv probably sits above New York on the target list. Of course, hitting New York is probably much easier then Tel Aviv so while Tel Aviv might be #1 on the list, New York is probably the easier of the two targets to sneak a bomb into.
As far as nuking goes, if the US uses nukes it will be as a symbol, not as an attempt to do any real damage. If the US wants to level a city, it can already do that with conventional attacks. A couple of MOABs are far cheaper then a nuke, don't carry the same political repercussions, and are just as effective. If the US was to use a nuke on a civilian target, it would only be in response to a similar attack on a US city.
The whole idea behind nuclear deterrence is to convince the other side that you are completely willing to respond nuclear atrocity with nuclear atrocity. In order for nuclear deterrence to work you need to truly believe that you are willing to respond with nuclear weapons to a nuclear attack. Further, if a nuclear attack does happen, you MUST show that you were never bluffing and respond with nuclear weapons. To make things even uglier, your nuclear attack must be so devastating that no nation would consider it a worthy exchange.
So, if for a completely hypothetical situation Iran nukes New York (not likely, but play along), the US can't just respond by nuking Tehran. Trading New York for Tehran isn't an equal trade. Iran would clearly feel itself the winner and might feel that in the future trading one American city for one Iranian city is a worthy trade. As a result, the US would not only have to respond, but respond overwhelmingly. They wouldn't just destroy Tehran, but might take out another dozen cities in the process. They wouldn't just drop one bomb per city, but would instead blanket the cities. The only thing that would moderate a response would be the fact that India and China would be pissed if too much fallout floated their way.
The logic behind nuclear war is terrible. The weapons are so horrific that you must convince the other side that the consequence of using them are so disproportionate to any gain that their use is unthinkable. Worst still, if someone tries to call your bluff, you need to prove to them that you were not bluffing.
Finally, I highly doubt that the US will be the first to use nuclear weapons again. There is nothing a nuclear weapon can do that conventional weapons can't. Even super hardened military bunkers untouchable with conventional bombs do not demand the use of a nuke. It is far better for political reasons to remove a mountain the old fashion (man power and explosives) then to suffer the political consequences of using a nuke. The US likes the idea of having bunker busting nukes, but only for after a nuclear war has been started. No sane president would use nukes preemptively... and yes, I include Bush as a sane president.
As does alot of the world not in the united states but still grounded under it's definition of right and wrong is why can't a foreign self governing nation control its own airspace and space space. If I built a spy satellite and orbitted it over the united states I would be a terrorist and bombed in seconds. Why the difference for china?
Three points.
1) You are an idiot if you believe the crap you just spewed in your post. Go get yourself a basic science education.
2) Spy satellites of non-US origin are whizzing above your head right now and no one is bombing anyone for it. Russia in particular has piles of them swirling overhead, as does to a smaller extent China.
3) The way orbits work you all but can't help stuff passing over other nations. If nations threw a hissy fit each time another nations spacecraft or satellites flew overhead, no one would be using space. The only orbit that doesn't involve fly over other nations is a geosynchronous orbit, and that orbit takes a pile of power to get into and has limited uses.
I don't understand MMORPGs. Oh, I certainly get the appeal behind them. Get a few thousand people together and make a living and breathing world to play in, but there is not a single MMORPG that has even come close to doing that with perhaps the singular exception of UO (and that lasted roughly a month). Personally, I envision a Marvel MMORPG to look roughly exactly the same as City of Heroes. You will pick some powers, start at level 1, and then kill roughly a quadrillion mindless NPCs to get more levels. Woo-fucking-hooo.
Personally, I can't wait for the day when an MMORPG maker grows a pair and makes something more interesting then a leveling treadmill. Many have tried, but in the end they have all failed and just rebuilt the same tired leveling treadmill.
They are NOT called "criminal combatants", they are called "enemy combatants". They get that title because they blatantly violate the Geneva Convention. In order to get Geneva Convention protection, you basically need to be either wearing a uniform and clearly marked as a combatant or you need to be a civilian. The Geneva Convention was created to give rules to warfare between two states with conventional armies. The idea behind the Geneva Convention was to try and minimize the loss of civilian life and to set up rules that allow for a smooth transition back to civilian government after the war is over. You can basically boil the rules down the rules of the Geneva Convention to the following:
1) No intentionally killing civilians.
2) Always mark yourself as a combatant (wear a uniform) so that civilians are not confused as combatants.
3) You must accept the surrender of uniformed combatants and you can't just execute them.
4) When the war is over you need to free the uniformed combatants.
The implication of these rules is that enemy spies do NOT receive Geneva Convention protection. During the Cold War when either side caught an enemy spy, they did NOT receive Geneva Convention protections. If an American spy was caught in Soviet Russia, we didn't make a stink about it if the Soviets tortured the spy, held the spy forever, or simply killed the spy. All sides agreed that spies do not get Geneva Convention status and so were not privy to receiving its benefits.
Now, we are in a new type of war. The US doesn't fight uniformed combatants. The US fights people that fight among civilians wearing civilian clothing. Clearly, these people, like spies, are blatantly violating the Geneva Convention. They can't be identified as combatants and intentionally try and pass themselves off as civilians. Hence, they get a new title called an "enemy combatant", which means that they roughly get treated like spies.
They don't get bill of rights protection because it is absolutely insane to even imply that in a war zone you need to read people their Miranda rights or get search warrants. Soldiers are not crime scene investigators, and crime scene investigators who can take proper evidence for a fair trial are not going to be doing their work in a war zone.
Enemy combatants (i.e. people fighting out of uniform) occupy a gray area that there are no rules for. There is no Geneva Convention rules that describe how to treat these people. There are no rules in general with how to deal with people who fight wearing civilian clothing in general. If the UN wanted to do something useful (god forbid), they would write up a code to deal with people who fight among civilians disguised as civilians.
If you were fighting to overthrow a foriegn government, yeah, it puts things into perspective. A revolution in the US against the currently elected government would be a civil war. You don't need to throw out a handful of easily identifiable foreign troops, you need to overthrow all levels of a local government. You would either need to coop the army and police or have a public sympathetic to your cause that would be willing to hide you. You might not need a majority of the people to fight, but you would need a large portion of the population to at least support you over government forces or else you would simply be ratted out.
There is not tactics in the world that the American public would accept that would make a revolution acceptable so long as the democracy was still perceived as mostly functional. If a candidate with support of 70% of the population lost due to massive fraud, you might upset the public enough to support a revolution. That sort of fraud is almost inconceivable as it would have to effect the legislative branch, judicial branch, the piles of civil institutions, and the military. Most people don't realize it, but the military doesn't swear allegiance to the president; they swear allegiance to the constitution and take that oath very seriously. The US army wouldn't even ENTER New Orleans after Katrina despite the pleas of the mayor because they didn't want to violate prohibitions against using the army on the populace during times of peace. Eventually they entered, but they flatly refused to perform any sort of policing action or to restore any order and served only a humanitarian aid role.
Finally, what tactics would such a revolution be able to use? I certainly hope it isn't violence, because who exactly would you target? Civil servants? Police? The military? People who vote the wrong way? There isn't even a conceivable target that wouldn't immediately invoke the wrath of the general populace against any 'revolutionary' group. Once the populace at large is out to get you, you are screwed.
No, a revolution in the US is pretty much doomed so long as a majority of people can vote and remove the government at will. I would advise against using the ammo box and stick to the soap box. If you can't get a small fraction of the population to vote your way, you are not going to be holding any violent revolutions any time soon.
You kind of miss the bigger point. It isn't about getting more people to vote. It is about people educating themselves.
Fuck money.
To get me to vote for you it takes just enough money to put up a website and make a few appearances. The Greens and Libertarians are both examples of parties that have "enough" money to put their message out to anyone listening, and they sure as hell are not "greasing" any palms. Anyone who spends even an ounce of effort understanding politics knows that the Greens and Libertarians exist. As soon as you know that they exist, it is a simple and cheap process to gather information on them and make an informed decision about how their politics align with your own. The problem is that people are not actively listening. If you are hunting down information, you will find it and make informed decisions. If you only vote for people that have 30 second ads during the football game, then yes, you will only make stupid and uninformed decisions.
This is the core of the problem. It takes money to win because people are lazy. If 30 second TV ads can sway you and spend so little time researching politics that you don't even know that there exist parties outside of the big two, then you are apart of the broken system.
The problem isn't that 3v1L corporations and labor unions pour money into political candidates. The problem is that all that money pouring into these candidates actually results in winning elections. The problem is that people are too lazy to do an ounce of research into who they vote for and so are easily swayed by piles of advertisement. The whole money and advertisement thing ISN'T the problem; it is just a symptom of a lazy and apathetic public. If the public did just a little research, this entire discussion would be rendered moot as all the money and TV time in the world wouldn't convince an educated public to vote for people offering bad policies.
Think of it like this. You need to hire a baby sitter. If you hire the baby sitter based upon advertisements, you might be easily swayed by the outward image carefully constructed in the advertisement. The marketing schemes and money of the baby sitter would work and you would pick not the most qualified baby sitter, but the one that had the best marketers.
Now, imagine that you do your research into baby sitters and find that of the two baby sitters available in your neighborhood, one is a repeat offender child rapist that was just released from prison on a technicality and the other is a highly recommended that has a PhD in baby sitting. At that point would it matter who had the best advertising campaign? The rapist could spend a trillion dollars and the PhD could spend 1 dollar and you still would happily take the PhD each and every time.
Advertising and marketing only works on those you are ignorant. The cure to ignorance in politics is to cast aside apathy and laziness and do a little bit of research. If even a sizable minority of Americans (say 10%) bothered to do this and came to the conclusion that there is a better alternative then the current two parties, there would be sweeping change in this nation. I don't expect this to happen any time soon... as I said before, the problem is not the system. The problem is the electorate that has been entrusted to run the system. The electorate have shirked its reasonability and hand control over to corporations, lobbyist, and whatever villains you feel like naming. They didn't "take" the power and deny it to the people. The people denied the power to themselves. It shouldn't come as any great revelation that when the people refuse to act responsibly and govern that some other self interested person or group is going to happily take up the reigns of power.
We spend more money on defense, both total and per capita, than any other nation in the world, including China and North Korea.
k order/2004rank.html
Not to nit pick, but no shit, I would hope we do. The per capita GDP of the US is $41,800, for China it is $6,800, and for North Korea it is $1,700(*1). If we were to spend just 4% of our per capita GDP we would be matching North Korea's attempt to spend 100% of its per capita GDP. I certainly hope that we are spending North Korea into the ground as a raw per capita dollar value or else we would be lucky to have armed police, much less an effective military.
What is a far more interesting figure is to compare the percentage of the GDP spent on the military from nation to nation. For shits and giggles I pulled the data from the CIA Factbook and did the numbers(*2). North Korea tops out at number 1, spending a massive 12.5% of their GDP on the military. Israel comes in at number 3 with 6.1%. Positions 4 to 10 are taken by various Middle Eastern and African nations. The US comes in at number 11 with 4.2% of their GDP spent on the military. France comes in at number 20 with 2.5% spending China sits down at number 68 with 0.9% spending on GDP, though this number might be much higher then reported. I know that there have been rumblings that China is massively under reporting their military expenditures. That said, I doubt that they come anywhere near the US.
So there you have it, the numbers... what was this post on again?
*1 Source: CIA factbook https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ran
*2 Some countries were missing military spending estimates. Most were not nations of much consequence or had no spending. That said, at least one biggie was missing. The military spending of Russia was not reported.
I am an American who studies his candidates and votes. I have never once voted for a Republican or Democrat in a presidential race. I some times vote Democrat or Republican in local elections if I believe that they fit my views. More often then not though, if I feel I am picking between two people that absolutely do not represent my interests, I hand in a blank ballot.
If Americans really believe that their voice counts for nothing and that the elections are rigged, they could at least lodge a real protest. Instead of sitting on their ass on election day watching football, they could go hand in a blank ballot. If it is reported in the news that 250 million Americans voted, but the candidates only received 50 million votes each, THAT would send a message clear as day. New candidates can fight for that extra 150 million dissatisfied protest votes. No one is going to bother fighting for the guy who voted by sitting on his ass to watching football on election day.
I personally don't buy this whole "noble non-voter" concept that people put forward. Americans don't fail to vote as a protest. If they wanted to protest, they would hand in blank ballots and send a clear signal. They don't vote because they are either stupid, lazy, or apathetic. The people still hold the power. We can retake the reigns of government at any times; we simply choose not to.
The American system is a two party system. Now, the good and bad of that can be argued. On one hand, it is good in that it keeps extremist out of power much more effectively then a European parliamentary system. Not only does the American system make it damn near impossible for an extremist to win with its winner take all style, but even if a few extremist do win, there isn't a reason in the world to work with them because you don't need to form coalitions. Because the legislative and executive branches are rarely all ruled by one party (as it is the case now), there is also a drive to the center because a minority veto is so easy. Even when all branches are controlled by a single party (as it is the case now), there is almost no reason for the party to work together. This is exemplified by the current US government. Republicans control everything, yet they have consistently failed to pass any sweeping legislation because they are simply not all that united.
Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages. I personally like what a two party system does, but not how it does it. I like a divided an inefficient government that needs a super majority to get anything done. I like that it is easy to break party ranks. I like that it pushes everyone to the center. I don't like that it results in dividing the nation down the two. I don't believe that everyone is either socially conservative and free-market leaning or socially liberal and more socialist leaning. I don't believe that political beliefs have Nazi's on one side and Maoist on the other and the only thing we do is pick a point in the center.
All of that said, as it has happened in American history, the two parties are not permanent fixtures. Public discontent can and has wiped them out. While it is certainly an uphill battle to wipe out a party, it is not an impossibility. It isn't even all that hard. Further, you don't even need to wipe out a party. Parties are very fluid in their ideology. There is no "democrat" or "republican" ideology set in stone. The two parties swing and slide all over the place. The democrats were the ones that held up the civilian rights movement and used to be the party of the south, yet I would hardly make the claim that they still hold those beliefs.
If the electorate really wants change, it can get the change it wants. It can either remake an old party anew or simply replace an old party. Either way, the vote still works. The majority of people who vote make the rules. If the rules need changing, the people have the power to do it. The two party system makes it harder then it does in Europe, the idea that the electorate is helpless is simply wrong. The people can change the government. With so few people currently voting, they don't even need to a majority to do it.
Anything I post on Slashdot I consider to have been put in the public domain. Go nuts and use it however you want. Maybe I should put a CC in my sig...
Europeans often confuse the American right with the European right. The European right, especially some of the smaller parties, often truly really do deserve to be called fascist. The American right on the other hand tends to hold very different ideals then the European right. The American right has a wide range of views on immigration. Even when individuals in the American right hold extreme views on immigration, it NEVER is the centerpiece of their campaign. In Europe on the other hand, there are entire parties whose major campaign issue is that they are going to keep immigrants out.
I have a feeling that when Europeans see an American candidate or party describe as "ultra right wing", they assume it means the same as it does in Europe. In the US, ultra right wing ONLY means that that the candidate is far to the right on social issues (abortion, homosexual marriage, prayer in school, exc) or far to the right on economic issues (pro-freemarket, anti-regulation, wants to cut government size at the expense of social programs, pro-tax cuts, exc).
That whole "lets throw out all the immigrants and preserve our culture" thing really gets no leverage in the US. Hell, Bush proposed an immigration bill that would let anyone who had been in the nation illegally for 6 years receive a guest worker permit and be put on track towards citizenship. That isn't the kind of policy you expect from a neo-Nazi nut (he is a nut for other reasons). Ross Perot was much the same. He was "right wing" in that he wanted government reform, but calling him anything close to a neo-Nazi is a fallacy that comes from assuming that the American right and the European right look anything alike (they don't).
So this is why 2 american presidential candidates were arrested trying to gain entry to the 2004 debates?
The green and Badnark got arrested for trespassing. You can get yourself arrested too without much trouble; that doesn't make this Soviet America. You can't even put the US and a solid half of the world nations on the same scale when it comes to political freedom. Suggesting that you can simply shows deep ignorance about the state of the rest of the world.
oh please!.. the 2 reigning parties have essentially made it impossible for new parties to form.
I don't disagree in the slightest. You miss the larger point though which we shall get to in just a moment.
ross perot had 2 billion dollars at his disposal. Unless everyone else has that kind of money no.. the system does not work, and how dare you try to pretend otherwise
Ahh, now we are getting closer to the "problem" with American politics...
And this is why the majority of americans dont vote.. they know it's essentially communist china here with a little potpurri on the grungier and more totalitarian aspects.
And this is where the point flies right over your head. The Americans could have made Ross Perot president if they wanted to. Nazi storm troopers didn't drag Perot off in handcuffs. No evil corporate death squads showed up to prevent people from voting. Americans just didn't vote for him. They could have and they didn't. End of story.
Ask yourself why Ross Perot did so well. To give you a little history, this man for a brief time actually was LEADING in the polls. He only started to get trounced after his somewhat defective personality was brought to light by his public appearances. Ross Perot almost won because of marketing. Don't get me wrong, he had a message too, but what made him different from the Greens and Libertarians that loose each year is that not only was his message centrist enough to appeal (lets face it, the Greens and the Libertarians are extremist), but he had enough money drive his message like a spike through every single American's head.
This is the heart and the root of the problem with American democracy. Americans are too fucking lazy to learn about politics. You need to practically beat the American public in voting. You need to blast the airwaves and the TVs. You need to shove your message down their throat and send out armies of volunteers. The problem isn't that the poor oppressed masses of Americans don't have an alternative. They do have an alternative; they just either don't know about it because they don't bother to look. Even when they do have the alternative (as was the case with Perot), they further fail to not just vote for the alternative, but the majority simply fail to vote. The Americans are not the poor oppressed people whose will have been broken as you make them out to be. They are just flat out lazy and/or stupid. America's lack of choice is American's fault. Pure and simple.
If Americans were not so complicate and easily swayed by corporate sponsored political marketing campaigns, corporations would have no power. If Americans spent 5 minutes on the Internet, found an alternative, then voted for the alternative, the democins and republicrats would be out within a week. The Gestapo isn't going to stop them from voting or rig the election. No one is going to be sent to the Gulag for failing to vote for one of the two established parties. If they simply voted differently, the established parties would vanish.
Any political failures in the American political system are not the fault of evil corporations and politicians. The blame lies completely and ONLY on the shoulders of the voting (and more importantly) non-voting public. The failures of our political system stem directly from a failure to exercise the political power that all Americans over the age of 18 have.
So can it with the inane talk of revolutions and evil corporations. If you think the system is so corrupt, do this
Yeah man... the like revolution is like on its way man. You just wait dude, Americans of all types are going to put down their sushi, SUVs, and Bed Bath and Beyond discount cards like fight the man... man.
Please. If Americans (and I say this as an American) can't be bothered to go vote in numbers greater than 50%, I am pretty damn sure that the revolution over fucking music copyright infringement is probably not on its way. You can't even get Americans to vote yet you think that they are going to go into the streets or pick up weapons? Ahaha. Please.
The US already has a perfectly effective way of changing the rules that makes the notion of a revolution laughable. Just because Americans don't bother to use their democracy doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Hell if anyone can remember past 6 years ago, Ross Periot of all people came damn close to becoming president. The system works. We just don't use it. If there is anything wrong with the system is that it requires American citizens in order for it to run properly.
I think you are confusing "libertarian" with anarcho-capitalist from some sci-fi book. Libertarians hold private property rights in very high regard and expect the government to liberally defend them. If someone enters your property you don't sue them, you call the police or defend the property yourself. Granted, I don't think anyone, not even the libertarian party, advocates taking libertarian ideals to their full extreme of allowing the police to arrest anyone who expels any polution into the air. In the same way, you don't see even the most radical communist advocating abolishing money. Far more likely for a libertarian to advocate is would be something like I describe in my previous post.
My point is that the car companies are the wrong ones to go after. The sad reality is that the car companies are slaves to the state and the consumer. The state sets up the regulatory framework that the car companies are allowed to operate in. The consumers provide the car companies with the funding to operate. The car companies do nothing more then operate by the rules of the State such that they maximize the profit reaped from the consumer. They can be squeezed on either side. If the state says it is okay to sell SUVs that run on 10 mpg and the consumer happily buys them, the auto companies will unthinkingly sell them.
The real failure is of the state to properly regulate emissions and the consumers to hold themselves accountable for polluting the commons (hence we call it a tragedy of the commons). Blaming the auto-companies is like blaming a knife for killing someone rather then the person wielding the knife.
The solution is simple. Don't sue the auto companies for blindly following down the path set by the consumer and the State. The solution is to make the consumer pay for the pollution he spews into the atmosphere. If consumers had to pay the price of dumping their CO2 into the air, then perhaps they would think twice before picking a SUV over a Civic.
I think the solution is simple. Set up a cap on total US CO2 dumping then bid off the rights to dump. Anyone who wants to dump CO2 has to bid for the right to do so, including auto users. This would be easily accomplished by demanding that all gas be sold with the accompanying rights to dump CO2 contained within the gas. So, if Exxon wants to sell you gas, they also need to sell you the rights to dump the CO2 contained in the gas while they are at it. If consumers has to directly pay for the right to dump CO2, they might think twice before doing it. They also might start looking to alternative energies when they notice that their energy bill costs from coal plants skyrockets because coal plants need to buy CO2 dumping rights too.
Simply put, make the polluters responsible for their pollution. This legal bullshit is just another spineless way to pass the buck. It isn't the State's failure to regulate nor the consumers failure to take responsibility for their polluting, it is evil auto companies fault... Bullshit .
We need to stand up and take responsibility for our own actions, not always seek out some "evil" corporation to blame.
The car companies should have taken the cost of the emissions of their vehicles into account before they sold them.
They did. The air is owned by the government. The government set the price at zero. If the government wanted air to have value they should have (and now slowly are) created a market for polluting rights. Even better then blaming the auto companies; they should be making consumers directly pay for their emissions. Consumers are the ones at fault here. The consumers could demand more environmentally friendly cars. Instead, when given the choice between a SUV monstrosity or a Honda Civic, they have picked the SUV.
Make the consumer pay for his pollution of the commons. Institute a nation wide CO2 market. Cap the amount CO2 that can be dumped, then sell of the rights to the highest bidders. If you want to burn gas in your car, not only do you need to buy the gas, but you also need to buy the CO2 dumping rights. Just tack on the CO2 dumping rights cost onto the price of gas by making it so that in order to sell gas, you need to sell the CO2 dumping rights with it.
Blaming the car companies is simply scapgoating. The car companies are slaves to the State the regulates them and the consumers that fund them. The state has failed to institute a cost that the consumers must pay in order to dump into the atmosphere. Blaming the car companies is like blaming the knife for a killing instead of murderer wielding the knife.
In a libertarian utopia, air pollution would be illegal. In the same way you would be in trouble in a libertarian society if I walked over to your house and dumped trash on your lawn, dumping CO2 that floats on over to me would be a violation of my property. That said, it takes a very libertarian libertarian to suggest that all forms of air pollution be banned. More in line for libertarians would be to set up a quasi-market for air pollution.
A quasi-libertarian solution would be to collectively as a democratic society decide what level of tolerance you have for air pollution, then auction off the rights to pollute. The idea behind this would be that you need to pay to pollute the more the demand for pollution, the more expensive it is. People who don't pollute receive a nod from the market by paying out less in buying up pollution rights. The more people who want to pollute, the more expensive it becomes.
So, let's say we live under this system and there are only a dozen coal power plants in the country, all of which are messy and dump lots of CO2 into the air. There however is not enough CO2 rights for all of the plants to run at full capacity because the finite amount of CO2 dumping rights for sale is less then what they would need for them to all run at full power. The coal plants will bid against each other for the pool of CO2 dumping rights. They would bid up the price until it become too expensive to operate, then stop buying up dumping rights. So, it might end up that all of the plants run at only half capacity and just barely make profit. One of the coal plants gets the bright idea to install CO2 scrubbers to dramatically reduce their CO2 output. Suddenly, this coal plant can now run at full capacity AND they don't need to buy as much CO2 dumping rights. They get a competitive advantage over everyone else and make a larger profit. The idea is that by making polluting rights a finite resource, corporations battle in an attempt to reduce consuming that resource. In the same way Ford is always on the lookout to less and cheaper material and computer chip makers are always looking for ways to ease cheaper chemicals, corporations would seek to pollute less.
This system of bidding is actually a pretty solid system, but does have two draw backs.
First, it only works well with pollutants that are not local pollutants. It doesn't matter if CO2 is dumped in Maine, California, or split up between the two states, the net effect on the earth is roughly the same. On the other hand, it does matter for other pollutants. You might not care where the CO2 from coal plants is dumped, but you certainly wouldn't want all the other ugly things that come out of a coal plant dumped in a single location just because they bought up the entire nation's polluting rights. You can of course get around this by setting up regional dumping rights. Instead of having a nation wide pool for Sox dumping, it might only be a state wide or county wide pool. That way, you can cap off the amount of pollution in any one region. You can even set up pools within pools. So, states might dip into a national pool which they then might go and redistribute into smaller regional dumping pools. This way, California couldn't simply set up smokestacks on their eastern border and dump their pollution on the rest of the nation. California would need to pay to dip into the national pool.
Second, this requires a closer monitoring of polluters. It is easy to tell all coal plants that they need a certain CO2 scrubber or else a large fine is coming their way. It is easy to check their compliance. It is much harder to constantly measure how much pollutants they are dumping into the air and to make sure that they do not go over their limit. With newer technology it is becoming easier to implement such a system, but it is still very much a challenge.
In Soviet Californiastan you don't sue the government for failure to implement pollution controls, the government sues you!
This is a good initial first step, but I think that what they really need to do is go after the REAL culprits. Cut the middlemen of the car and energy companies and go right for the villains. I think that they should simply sue everyone with a car. Hell, just sue every single human that uses energy that might have come from a coal plant too. This way, not only are they going after the real villains, but the lawyers have that many more targets to go after... and in the end, isn't targets for lawyers, err the environment, what this is really all about?
This is stupid. We live in a free market democracy. If you don't like what the car makers are doing either A) don't buy from them or B) use the power of democracy to force them to change. There isn't even the semblance of an excuse for this sort of bullshit. We have two completely effective ways of dealing with the problem.
Nothing is more sad and pathetic then when lunatic fringe groups and lawyers team up. I am all for tougher regulation and applying a higher price to people dumping CO2 into the communal air, but this is NOT the way. This is just stupid.
This is a stupid argument. I think it is pretty clear that bigger and better always wins over something "new". I can't think of a single instance in the past few years when a more expensive and powerful gaming machine lost to one that simply had an innovative interface and games to take advantage of it. Nope. I can't think of a single instance of this happening. *cough*Nintendo DS Vs PSP*cough*
The battle has already been played out. Round 1 has already been fought. Simply put, Nintendo won. The Nintendo DS absolutely trashed the technologically superior PSP. The PSP was clearly the more powerful and pretty of the two machines, but that didn't save them. The question is "can Nintendo win". The only question that needs to be asked, "will Nintedo win AGAIN".
Nintendo has already proven their concept. The only thing they need to do is repeat the victory they already have achieved once.
See, this is what happens when I have too many Slashdot windows up. I post about online dating where I meant to post about aging, and I post about aging in the online dating one.