First, contradiction is not falsification. If I say "grass is green" and "grass is purple," nothing has been falsified, and the contradiction does not imply that both statements are false. Falsification requires some contradictory observation, not just a contradictory statement. Contradiction might say something about the logical consistency of a set of beliefs, but in itself says nothing about their actual veracity.
No, both statements isn't wrong, but when the two contradict, ATLEAST one of them is wrong. And when you combine the two with a belief that the book containing both statements is absolutely infallible truth, then that belief is plain WRONG.
Really ? Can you show me a source for your claim that *that* is the "official" reason ?
Sounds downrigth ludicruos to me, and I've never seen that particular claim before.
First, it's not true that it's hard to make a can that is sealed well enough that no vapors, certainly not enough to cause visible condensation would escape.
Second, condensation happens on cold surfaces, if the plastic-bag is the same temperature as everything else (I don't see why it wouldn't be) there'd be little condensation even if there *was* a lot of vapor inside the bag.
Third, there's no prohibition that I've seen on having a ventilated plastic-bag, say one that has lots of holes in it, or even one made of some breathing membrane.
Not that being ridicolous is any sort of defence offcourse, lots of downrigth silly things happen anyway.
Indeed. Some of us have the oposite priority even.
I don't particularily care very much if someone gets a glimpse of me naked somehow. I look like an average 32 year old male, if that's someones particular thing, more power to them.
I -DO- however strongly oppose massive registers being maintained about my every movement, with name and address, class I'm flying, how and when I paid for my ticket, if it's a return or single, where I booked it, how many pieces of luggage I checked in, who I'm traveling with, who I phoned the last 2 years and for how long we chatted, and and and and....
Everything stored and collected in massive secret government-databases to be used for screening for "terrorists".
What happened to presumption of innocense ? Since when is it okay to collect data on EVERYONE because SOME may be guilty ?
Actually, that'd not bother me at all. (though it'll be a few years before any of my daugthers enter their teenage-years)
I don't at all get the obsession with body-shape in American culture. Those images give you an idea comparable to what you get on any beach, besides, it's just a human body, most of them are quite similar, there is some minor variations, but really, it's not -that- interesting. People who -do- want to look at nude girls (or boys) have a limitless supply already, and that is perfectly fine.
It bothers me a lot more that the idiots think they need to know every tiny thing you bring with you, be it a can of Coke, a tube of toothpaste or a key. I can live with the metal-detectors, though frankly I don't approve of even those.
As for the "airplane as missile" threat, that is trivially handled: Install a locked, secure, cockpit-door, end of story. It's not as if: "Fly the plane into that building, or I'll kill this passenger" will work. (the pilots would just refuse, it makes no sense to kill everyone, including that passenger to prevent the killing of a passenger)
Besides, I have the same ridicolous restrictions when flying on a 20-seat plane flying say Anda - Bergen, there isn't even a potential target within the RANGE of the airplane. If someone *does* take over the plane, best they could do would be killing everyone aboard, plus a single-digit count of people on the ground if they do their aiming well, frankly, this "threat" does not worry me much.
Frankly, if your goal in life is to manage to somehow kill 20 people, there are easier ways. Defending against them all ain't worth it, because any marginal increase in security is more than counterbalanced by MASSIVE losses of freedom.
I'd rather live free and have a 1:1million chance of dying as the result of a terrorist-attack, rather than live in a cage, checked every step of my travels, and have a 1:2million chance of dying as the result of a terrorist-attack, both risks are negligible anyway. (if the adiminstration cared about real risk they should start the "war on diabetes" or "war on traffic" or "war on obesity", all of which kill more people a month than terrorism does a decade)
Anyone from 100 years ago would consider our society unbearably sexually depraved,
No, that's just factually wrong. It depends very much on *who* from 100 years ago. From which culture, and which aspects of "our" culture. (I suppose you're talking American culture, it's not the same even across first-world countries, not even close)
For example, you people manage to debate for WEEKS and write THOUSANDS of webpages, newspaper-articles, BLOG-entries and whatnot on the topic of showing a single naked female breast on TV for perhaps 5 seconds. Which is just ridicolously prude.
You also have, if I got it correctly, 18 as age of consent in many jurisdictions, an age where many people a hundred years ago would expect to be married already and certainly sexually active.
In general there's a large moral panic in the USA about children and sexuality. Elder Scrolls was rated 13+, a game where you run around and kill beasts and humans, blood squirting. Then it gor re-rated "mature" 17+ because someone made a mod that made female characters run around topless.
I could give more examples like these, but there's no point, I'm sure you can think of them yourself.
Nah, I don't even think we disagree, you just misunderstand me. I never questioned that there where programmers starting from the 40ies forward (earlier than that it gets fuzzy, people have worked on algorithms for MILLENIA, but I don't think that's quite comparable aslong as there existed no machine capable of carrying out a programmed algorithm)
It's just that my focus is different. Yes there was "widespread" programming in the 60ies. But it was still a tiny TINY drop in the bucket compared to current levels. There *was* programmers in the 60ies, but I'm thinking there are a hundred programmers today for every single one back then.
You're probably rigth though, that programming-jobs have risen steadily if we ignore short-term wild fluctuations like the dot.com bubble.
Sure, there's been programmers for perhaps 50 years.
But there was very few until the 80ies. Given that most people have a career that is 35 years long or more, this means that there are very few people who have worked as programmers for their eintire career, and which are now retired.
I never said they don't exist. It's just that they are very very few, compared to what it will look like when the dot-com generation retires. If we assume the typical dot-com programmer is someone who was 25 in year 2000, then he'll be 60 in 2035.
Most patents never make a dime, so $4k to $8k ain't exactly ignorable.
Consider that in USA in 2006 (I've been unable to find 2007-numbers, perhaps they're not available yet) aproximately 470,000 patent-applications was filed, that works out to, if we take $6K to be an average, 2820 million dollars. If we assume an average lawyer needs to charge on the order of $250K to make a living (that's not his salary, there ARE costs, even for lawyers) that means that patent-applications ALONE provides full-time employment for well over 10,000 lawyers.
This estimate is likely way low, as you correctly points out, some types of filings typically cost much more than $6000. My guess would actually be 20,000 lawyers are employed only for this -- the filing of patent-applications. And that's not even getting into what happens afterwards. (which employs more lawyers, offcourse)
If this is "one of the rare examples" of where lawyerhood *DONT* make a killing, I'm kinda wondering how many billion dollars must flow into a single profession before you consider it relevant.
It's true, a single patent "can potentially" make orders of magnitude more money than this, but that doesn't mean that the *average* patent makes orders of magnitude more. There are hundreds of thousands of patents applied for, the large majority of them never make even a single cent. Some aren't even intended to but are filed purely defencively, or because some organizations and institutions use "patents granted" as some sort of indicator of employee-effectiveness.
Then you put _lower_ limits on area-usage. But that would be very strange, I know of no area that does this. *UPPER* limits are common, for example, in my residential district the max ground-usage is 50%, which means that if you've got 1/4 acre of ground (about 1000 square meters) then the buildings you put on it can have no more than 250 square meters of floor-area total. If you do that by putting in a single-level 250square-meter or a 2-level 125square-meter house is up to you.
There is no law, however, against buying -more- land than you need. Buying land for 10 houses, and then putting only one on the middle, with a huge garden around it. It'll cost you dearly if the land is desired, but I don't see any convincing reasons to outlaw it.
Actually, if your house is on a hill, then your first floor will, if it's resting at ground-level on one side be elevated on the other side. The logical and typical way of solving that is to build another stock under it that is under-ground on the uphill side and overground on the downhill side.
EVERY house where I grew up, in a hill, had this kind of cellar. Very practical because the side *with* windows can be used for additional living-space and the side that is underground provides sufficient storage.
All cellars need to be waterproofed, with modern construction-techniques that is really not hard.
If you failed to notice the upwards trend in participation in children-related discussions here on Slashdot, and thus continued to assume that the population here is pretty much all young, sexually frustrated and single, then *THAT* is your loss.
I never said it's any kind of loss to choose to have, or not have, children. Obviously everyone will choose what's rigth for them. The only ones at a loss are those who would like children but can't, and those who'd prefer to be without children but are careless and nevertheless get them.
Not in the least. They're not even clueless, it's just that the population of slashdot, like nerds in general age. For obvious reasons there's not many 60-year-old CompSci nerds. There -will- be a few decades from now though.
Most people on Slashdot are about as likely to live in celibacy as anyone else of similar age. The joke stopped being funny aproximately 5 years ago, did you notice the trend in participation in discussions about stuff like "protecting your children online", "internet in primary schools", "ideal laptops for kids" and so on ?
If you didn't, well, that's your loss.
Actually, a fair part of the population on Slashdot these days live in stable relationships and have kids. Me, i've got 3, but I think that's somewhat over-average.
You're asking two questions, so you get two replies.
Why, in general terms, do we redistribute wealth forcibly ?
The short answer is: Because we live in a democracy and the majority of politicians vote in favor of doing that.
The longer answer is; Because living in a stable, healthy population with a safety-net has benefits, even if you're not among the direct recipients of the welfare.
In South-Africa earning $100.000/year means living in a castle surrounded by 10-feet concrete topped with broken glass and barbed wire, surveiled by video-cameras, in a "gated community", driving your kids wherever they need to go for fear of kidnapping and *still* accepting that your odds of being killed by someone desiring your wealth are non-negligible.
In Norway, earning $100.000/year means living wherever the hell you want, surrounded by a garden with strawberries in it, never even having the thougth "kidnapping" cross your mind in relation with your children, posessing no security-camera and indeed unless you live in a major city you'll probably not bother locking the door. Still, even without the precautions, your odds of being killed by someone desiring your wealth is, essentially zero. (more than 2 orders of magnitude lower)
I don't know what that's worth. But it's worth -something-.
I'm much more skeptical of all the corporate welfare, truth be told. If I could directly change what my tax-dollars are used for, my vote would be to cut drastically on subsidizes to dinosaur-industries that are uncompetitive (it's insane that *tobacco*-farmers and coalminers are the two groups receivin the most subsidies in the EU) and to *UP* support of those people who need it the most. Primarily EDUCATION -- I'm the opinion that that is the most sensible support you can give a weak group. It's the only help that can help them with time becoming independent.
Perhaps. But those "in" aren't the problem. Despite the obesity-epidemic, those "in" in the USA are fairly healthy, and as you say most of the difference to the top can probably be explained with lifestyle. (I'd include religious problems along with obesity, you people have a very high number of teenage pregnancies and non-immunized kids, even in the "in" groups)
The problem with "most are in" approaches, such as the one you're suggesting is that it -always- leads to some people in practice being "out". Despite best intentions. And the costs aren't actually lower than all-in approaches.
Germany has a "most-in" system not very different from the one you suggest, I lived there for 4 years and saw the problems myself. Among them are:
Poor people worrying about earning "too much" because they'll lose the government-funded health-insurance.
People with a disorganized life that -would- qualify, but fail to apply or handle the paperwork. (common with for example alcoholics or other drug-abusers which DO need decent healthcare)
Harm for fully innocent people, such as young children suffering under choices made by their parents.
Problems for young people on poor terms with their parents. (often related to sexuality and health)
Extra paperwork and thus costs for all involved, because someone needs to -decide- these things and maintain the apropriate registers, communicate with doctors, pay the doctors etc etc.
Problems with doctors prioritizing those on those health-insurances that pay the most. So you get "second grade" healthcare.
But most important is that you don't actually -SAVE- anything.
What is the point of maintaining a large system for separating people into distinct groups, when at the end of the day the total cost would be -lower- if you simply lumped everyone in together ? Sure it's "unfair" that the well-off pay for those who can not or will not pay for themselves, but that problem is inherit in ALL taxes.
In Germany there are more than 400 different health-insurances. All with -sligthly- different prices -sligthly- different conditions and -sligthly- different rules for what is covered and how much the doctors are compensated.
The cost is SKY-high. Employers need to deal with it (because they pay healthinsurance). Doctors need to deal with it. Citizens need to deal with it. Bureaucrats need to deal with it. All these people moving papers too and fro costs money and provide no health-benefit whatsoever.
But such a God would have no answers to any of the ethical questions people actually ask themselves. He would not even have an opinion on "Good" or "evil", he would provide no guidance, no rules, no nothing.
Such a God obviously doesn't conflict with anything. But equally obviously he does not explain anything, he is simply pointless. (possibly it gives you personal comfort to imagine "he" exists, but that's it)
I believe in lots of stuff with -zero- proof. As you point out, we really have no choice.
Nobody has a problem with that. The problem arises when certain groups insist that creationism is a scientific theory. Or that taking standard evolution and then adding "because God wanted it so" is anything other than superfluous in the context of a scientific theory.
There is a sligth problem with believing in God in the nonconflicting way though: you're left with a "God of the gaps". Everything you understand is explainable without God, and then you say "because God wants it so" in response to any question where you -dont- know the answer.
Then a decade later we find the answer, so God has to give up another role. Used to be, you know, that ligthning was caused by direct action of a God, today it's just a electrostatic discharge. (and that second explanation is infinitely better because it allows you to make accurate predictions about what ligthning will and will not do, the first one explains nothing and predicts nothing)
A God that -only- answered "why" and NEVER EVER touched the "how" would be unproblematic, but that's not wht most people consider a God.
For example, I believe that it is Good to strive to maximize human happiness. I have no proof whatsoever of this. There -can- be no proof whatsoever of this. Nevertheless I believe it. If you want to say this makes me "religious" then fine, but in that case everyone is and the word loses all meaning.
But "random chance" is a very poor explanation for evolution. Besides, "people" don't seem to have much problems understanding this, unless they've spent decades being indoctrinated by religious nutcases. "People" in the US aren't dumber than say those in Sweden, nevertheless they've got significantly bigger problems "understanding" evolution. I suggest this has to do with science-teaching and religion more than with any shortcoming of the average American.
True, a completely new body-plan is unlikely in an advanced organism. Just out of curiosity, how many unique body-plans do you think exist among say mammals ?
For that matter, how many unique body-plans exist at all with life on earth ? A dozen ? Two ? I don't know, but it's certainly not a high number, and most of the variation will be found in relatively simple organisms.
Only trune under extremely convoluted conditions. (you auction an ordinary rock, of which there are a zillion in your posession, and someone actually is prepared to pay a million for it, simply for a prank.
I suggest this would not, in practice, happen very often. Besides, it's not as if there's a prohibition against using a brain for a judge, or for that matter in the IRS. (put differently, it's doubtful that the IRS would even bother -trying- to collect a billion dollars from you because you possess a million rocks each "worth" a million.)
Furthermore, you're -still- missing the point: if this is such a huge problem, it's equally much a problem with -other- property.
It's more like wanting to have their cake and eat it too; Disney are happy for you to think of Mickey as they -property- in general, and indeed push hard for precisely this. But to also then pay property-taxes based on the fair value of Mickey, that they do emphatically NOT wish. For fairly obvious reasons.
I happen to agree, IP is -not- property. But they can't have it both ways. Either it is, or it isn't.
Sure. But the avalability isn't 10 times as high, so that's the basic reason there comes a point where spending more just simply makes no sense. Consider internet-connectivity to our stavanger-office, it's a smallish office, ~30 people are basically idling (atleast 75% waste) whenever internet is down.
A single fibre-optic cable with assosiated machinery gives us something like 99.9%, which isn't terribly good, furthermore the line is more likely to go down at daytime than say 3am in the weekend, since most outages are because someone somewhere screwed up, figure perhaps 99.5% availability in the worktime.
Our work is spread over aproximately 2500 hours/year. (there are some people working at other times, but say 9pm only a small fraction of the 30 people will be working)
So downtime-related loss is perhaps 15 hours/year. Times 30 people wasting 75% of their time is 350 work-hours.
So, we got ISDN-backup. It's slow, but it works probably 90% of the time when the primary is down. Being slow also costs money, but not to the same degree, when we're on ISDN we may be wasting 20% of our time. This cuts our loss from 350 work-hours year to 50 work-hours year, aproximately.
Any solution for improving on this which costs more than 50 work-hours is a complete non-starter: the solution would cost more than the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
First, contradiction is not falsification. If I say "grass is green" and "grass is purple," nothing has been falsified, and the contradiction does not imply that both statements are false. Falsification requires some contradictory observation, not just a contradictory statement. Contradiction might say something about the logical consistency of a set of beliefs, but in itself says nothing about their actual veracity.
No, both statements isn't wrong, but when the two contradict, ATLEAST one of them is wrong. And when you combine the two with a belief that the book containing both statements is absolutely infallible truth, then that belief is plain WRONG.Really ? Can you show me a source for your claim that *that* is the "official" reason ?
Sounds downrigth ludicruos to me, and I've never seen that particular claim before.
First, it's not true that it's hard to make a can that is sealed well enough that no vapors, certainly not enough to cause visible condensation would escape.
Second, condensation happens on cold surfaces, if the plastic-bag is the same temperature as everything else (I don't see why it wouldn't be) there'd be little condensation even if there *was* a lot of vapor inside the bag.
Third, there's no prohibition that I've seen on having a ventilated plastic-bag, say one that has lots of holes in it, or even one made of some breathing membrane.
Not that being ridicolous is any sort of defence offcourse, lots of downrigth silly things happen anyway.
Indeed. Some of us have the oposite priority even.
I don't particularily care very much if someone gets a glimpse of me naked somehow. I look like an average 32 year old male, if that's someones particular thing, more power to them.
I -DO- however strongly oppose massive registers being maintained about my every movement, with name and address, class I'm flying, how and when I paid for my ticket, if it's a return or single, where I booked it, how many pieces of luggage I checked in, who I'm traveling with, who I phoned the last 2 years and for how long we chatted, and and and and....
Everything stored and collected in massive secret government-databases to be used for screening for "terrorists".
What happened to presumption of innocense ? Since when is it okay to collect data on EVERYONE because SOME may be guilty ?
Actually, that'd not bother me at all. (though it'll be a few years before any of my daugthers enter their teenage-years)
I don't at all get the obsession with body-shape in American culture. Those images give you an idea comparable to what you get on any beach, besides, it's just a human body, most of them are quite similar, there is some minor variations, but really, it's not -that- interesting. People who -do- want to look at nude girls (or boys) have a limitless supply already, and that is perfectly fine.
It bothers me a lot more that the idiots think they need to know every tiny thing you bring with you, be it a can of Coke, a tube of toothpaste or a key. I can live with the metal-detectors, though frankly I don't approve of even those.
As for the "airplane as missile" threat, that is trivially handled: Install a locked, secure, cockpit-door, end of story. It's not as if: "Fly the plane into that building, or I'll kill this passenger" will work. (the pilots would just refuse, it makes no sense to kill everyone, including that passenger to prevent the killing of a passenger)
Besides, I have the same ridicolous restrictions when flying on a 20-seat plane flying say Anda - Bergen, there isn't even a potential target within the RANGE of the airplane. If someone *does* take over the plane, best they could do would be killing everyone aboard, plus a single-digit count of people on the ground if they do their aiming well, frankly, this "threat" does not worry me much.
Frankly, if your goal in life is to manage to somehow kill 20 people, there are easier ways. Defending against them all ain't worth it, because any marginal increase in security is more than counterbalanced by MASSIVE losses of freedom.
I'd rather live free and have a 1:1million chance of dying as the result of a terrorist-attack, rather than live in a cage, checked every step of my travels, and have a 1:2million chance of dying as the result of a terrorist-attack, both risks are negligible anyway. (if the adiminstration cared about real risk they should start the "war on diabetes" or "war on traffic" or "war on obesity", all of which kill more people a month than terrorism does a decade)
Anyone from 100 years ago would consider our society unbearably sexually depraved,
No, that's just factually wrong. It depends very much on *who* from 100 years ago. From which culture, and which aspects of "our" culture. (I suppose you're talking American culture, it's not the same even across first-world countries, not even close)
For example, you people manage to debate for WEEKS and write THOUSANDS of webpages, newspaper-articles, BLOG-entries and whatnot on the topic of showing a single naked female breast on TV for perhaps 5 seconds. Which is just ridicolously prude.
You also have, if I got it correctly, 18 as age of consent in many jurisdictions, an age where many people a hundred years ago would expect to be married already and certainly sexually active.
In general there's a large moral panic in the USA about children and sexuality. Elder Scrolls was rated 13+, a game where you run around and kill beasts and humans, blood squirting. Then it gor re-rated "mature" 17+ because someone made a mod that made female characters run around topless.
I could give more examples like these, but there's no point, I'm sure you can think of them yourself.
Nah, I don't even think we disagree, you just misunderstand me. I never questioned that there where programmers starting from the 40ies forward (earlier than that it gets fuzzy, people have worked on algorithms for MILLENIA, but I don't think that's quite comparable aslong as there existed no machine capable of carrying out a programmed algorithm)
It's just that my focus is different. Yes there was "widespread" programming in the 60ies. But it was still a tiny TINY drop in the bucket compared to current levels. There *was* programmers in the 60ies, but I'm thinking there are a hundred programmers today for every single one back then.
You're probably rigth though, that programming-jobs have risen steadily if we ignore short-term wild fluctuations like the dot.com bubble.
Yeah, true. The constant is sufficient for hitting any -1- point afterall. My mistake.
Sure, there's been programmers for perhaps 50 years.
But there was very few until the 80ies. Given that most people have a career that is 35 years long or more, this means that there are very few people who have worked as programmers for their eintire career, and which are now retired.
I never said they don't exist. It's just that they are very very few, compared to what it will look like when the dot-com generation retires. If we assume the typical dot-com programmer is someone who was 25 in year 2000, then he'll be 60 in 2035.
Most patents never make a dime, so $4k to $8k ain't exactly ignorable.
Consider that in USA in 2006 (I've been unable to find 2007-numbers, perhaps they're not available yet) aproximately 470,000 patent-applications was filed, that works out to, if we take $6K to be an average, 2820 million dollars. If we assume an average lawyer needs to charge on the order of $250K to make a living (that's not his salary, there ARE costs, even for lawyers) that means that patent-applications ALONE provides full-time employment for well over 10,000 lawyers.
This estimate is likely way low, as you correctly points out, some types of filings typically cost much more than $6000. My guess would actually be 20,000 lawyers are employed only for this -- the filing of patent-applications. And that's not even getting into what happens afterwards. (which employs more lawyers, offcourse)
If this is "one of the rare examples" of where lawyerhood *DONT* make a killing, I'm kinda wondering how many billion dollars must flow into a single profession before you consider it relevant.
It's true, a single patent "can potentially" make orders of magnitude more money than this, but that doesn't mean that the *average* patent makes orders of magnitude more. There are hundreds of thousands of patents applied for, the large majority of them never make even a single cent. Some aren't even intended to but are filed purely defencively, or because some organizations and institutions use "patents granted" as some sort of indicator of employee-effectiveness.
Then you put _lower_ limits on area-usage. But that would be very strange, I know of no area that does this. *UPPER* limits are common, for example, in my residential district the max ground-usage is 50%, which means that if you've got 1/4 acre of ground (about 1000 square meters) then the buildings you put on it can have no more than 250 square meters of floor-area total. If you do that by putting in a single-level 250square-meter or a 2-level 125square-meter house is up to you.
There is no law, however, against buying -more- land than you need. Buying land for 10 houses, and then putting only one on the middle, with a huge garden around it. It'll cost you dearly if the land is desired, but I don't see any convincing reasons to outlaw it.
Actually, if your house is on a hill, then your first floor will, if it's resting at ground-level on one side be elevated on the other side. The logical and typical way of solving that is to build another stock under it that is under-ground on the uphill side and overground on the downhill side.
EVERY house where I grew up, in a hill, had this kind of cellar. Very practical because the side *with* windows can be used for additional living-space and the side that is underground provides sufficient storage.
All cellars need to be waterproofed, with modern construction-techniques that is really not hard.
Parse error:
If you failed to notice the upwards trend in participation in children-related discussions here on Slashdot, and thus continued to assume that the population here is pretty much all young, sexually frustrated and single, then *THAT* is your loss.
I never said it's any kind of loss to choose to have, or not have, children. Obviously everyone will choose what's rigth for them. The only ones at a loss are those who would like children but can't, and those who'd prefer to be without children but are careless and nevertheless get them.
Not in the least. They're not even clueless, it's just that the population of slashdot, like nerds in general age. For obvious reasons there's not many 60-year-old CompSci nerds. There -will- be a few decades from now though.
Nah. Only 3l1t3 sex-gods need apply. *grin* Actually, 2 of the kids are twins, so you know, we actually needed to do that sex-thing only twice.
Said the one with UID 667.959 to the one with UID 15.695 ....
I've got much more than 3 relationships. I meant 3 kids, obviously.
Most people on Slashdot are about as likely to live in celibacy as anyone else of similar age. The joke stopped being funny aproximately 5 years ago, did you notice the trend in participation in discussions about stuff like "protecting your children online", "internet in primary schools", "ideal laptops for kids" and so on ?
If you didn't, well, that's your loss.
Actually, a fair part of the population on Slashdot these days live in stable relationships and have kids. Me, i've got 3, but I think that's somewhat over-average.
You're asking two questions, so you get two replies.
Why, in general terms, do we redistribute wealth forcibly ?
The short answer is: Because we live in a democracy and the majority of politicians vote in favor of doing that.
The longer answer is; Because living in a stable, healthy population with a safety-net has benefits, even if you're not among the direct recipients of the welfare.
In South-Africa earning $100.000/year means living in a castle surrounded by 10-feet concrete topped with broken glass and barbed wire, surveiled by video-cameras, in a "gated community", driving your kids wherever they need to go for fear of kidnapping and *still* accepting that your odds of being killed by someone desiring your wealth are non-negligible.
In Norway, earning $100.000/year means living wherever the hell you want, surrounded by a garden with strawberries in it, never even having the thougth "kidnapping" cross your mind in relation with your children, posessing no security-camera and indeed unless you live in a major city you'll probably not bother locking the door. Still, even without the precautions, your odds of being killed by someone desiring your wealth is, essentially zero. (more than 2 orders of magnitude lower)
I don't know what that's worth. But it's worth -something-.
I'm much more skeptical of all the corporate welfare, truth be told. If I could directly change what my tax-dollars are used for, my vote would be to cut drastically on subsidizes to dinosaur-industries that are uncompetitive (it's insane that *tobacco*-farmers and coalminers are the two groups receivin the most subsidies in the EU) and to *UP* support of those people who need it the most. Primarily EDUCATION -- I'm the opinion that that is the most sensible support you can give a weak group. It's the only help that can help them with time becoming independent.
The problem with "most are in" approaches, such as the one you're suggesting is that it -always- leads to some people in practice being "out". Despite best intentions. And the costs aren't actually lower than all-in approaches.
Germany has a "most-in" system not very different from the one you suggest, I lived there for 4 years and saw the problems myself. Among them are:
But most important is that you don't actually -SAVE- anything.
What is the point of maintaining a large system for separating people into distinct groups, when at the end of the day the total cost would be -lower- if you simply lumped everyone in together ? Sure it's "unfair" that the well-off pay for those who can not or will not pay for themselves, but that problem is inherit in ALL taxes.
In Germany there are more than 400 different health-insurances. All with -sligthly- different prices -sligthly- different conditions and -sligthly- different rules for what is covered and how much the doctors are compensated.
The cost is SKY-high. Employers need to deal with it (because they pay healthinsurance). Doctors need to deal with it. Citizens need to deal with it. Bureaucrats need to deal with it. All these people moving papers too and fro costs money and provide no health-benefit whatsoever.
That's all well and fine.
But such a God would have no answers to any of the ethical questions people actually ask themselves. He would not even have an opinion on "Good" or "evil", he would provide no guidance, no rules, no nothing.
Such a God obviously doesn't conflict with anything. But equally obviously he does not explain anything, he is simply pointless. (possibly it gives you personal comfort to imagine "he" exists, but that's it)
I believe in lots of stuff with -zero- proof. As you point out, we really have no choice.
Nobody has a problem with that. The problem arises when certain groups insist that creationism is a scientific theory. Or that taking standard evolution and then adding "because God wanted it so" is anything other than superfluous in the context of a scientific theory.
There is a sligth problem with believing in God in the nonconflicting way though: you're left with a "God of the gaps". Everything you understand is explainable without God, and then you say "because God wants it so" in response to any question where you -dont- know the answer.
Then a decade later we find the answer, so God has to give up another role. Used to be, you know, that ligthning was caused by direct action of a God, today it's just a electrostatic discharge. (and that second explanation is infinitely better because it allows you to make accurate predictions about what ligthning will and will not do, the first one explains nothing and predicts nothing)
A God that -only- answered "why" and NEVER EVER touched the "how" would be unproblematic, but that's not wht most people consider a God.
For example, I believe that it is Good to strive to maximize human happiness. I have no proof whatsoever of this. There -can- be no proof whatsoever of this. Nevertheless I believe it. If you want to say this makes me "religious" then fine, but in that case everyone is and the word loses all meaning.
But "random chance" is a very poor explanation for evolution. Besides, "people" don't seem to have much problems understanding this, unless they've spent decades being indoctrinated by religious nutcases. "People" in the US aren't dumber than say those in Sweden, nevertheless they've got significantly bigger problems "understanding" evolution. I suggest this has to do with science-teaching and religion more than with any shortcoming of the average American.
True, a completely new body-plan is unlikely in an advanced organism. Just out of curiosity, how many unique body-plans do you think exist among say mammals ?
For that matter, how many unique body-plans exist at all with life on earth ? A dozen ? Two ? I don't know, but it's certainly not a high number, and most of the variation will be found in relatively simple organisms.
Only trune under extremely convoluted conditions. (you auction an ordinary rock, of which there are a zillion in your posession, and someone actually is prepared to pay a million for it, simply for a prank.
I suggest this would not, in practice, happen very often. Besides, it's not as if there's a prohibition against using a brain for a judge, or for that matter in the IRS. (put differently, it's doubtful that the IRS would even bother -trying- to collect a billion dollars from you because you possess a million rocks each "worth" a million.)
Furthermore, you're -still- missing the point: if this is such a huge problem, it's equally much a problem with -other- property.
It's more like wanting to have their cake and eat it too; Disney are happy for you to think of Mickey as they -property- in general, and indeed push hard for precisely this. But to also then pay property-taxes based on the fair value of Mickey, that they do emphatically NOT wish. For fairly obvious reasons.
I happen to agree, IP is -not- property. But they can't have it both ways. Either it is, or it isn't.
Sure. But the avalability isn't 10 times as high, so that's the basic reason there comes a point where spending more just simply makes no sense. Consider internet-connectivity to our stavanger-office, it's a smallish office, ~30 people are basically idling (atleast 75% waste) whenever internet is down.
A single fibre-optic cable with assosiated machinery gives us something like 99.9%, which isn't terribly good, furthermore the line is more likely to go down at daytime than say 3am in the weekend, since most outages are because someone somewhere screwed up, figure perhaps 99.5% availability in the worktime.
Our work is spread over aproximately 2500 hours/year. (there are some people working at other times, but say 9pm only a small fraction of the 30 people will be working)
So downtime-related loss is perhaps 15 hours/year. Times 30 people wasting 75% of their time is 350 work-hours.
So, we got ISDN-backup. It's slow, but it works probably 90% of the time when the primary is down. Being slow also costs money, but not to the same degree, when we're on ISDN we may be wasting 20% of our time. This cuts our loss from 350 work-hours year to 50 work-hours year, aproximately.
Any solution for improving on this which costs more than 50 work-hours is a complete non-starter: the solution would cost more than the problem.
So, each improvement costs MORE and brings LESS.