Sorry, have to differ with you there. I don't want a tac nuke in private hands, because I don't believe you're capable of only hitting those who are actually posing a threat to you personally. I also wouldn't let you have land mines, pursuant to the common law principle of prohibiting reckless endangerment.
Although I understand and respect your opinion, that cow's already out of the barn, man.
If you can't build a landmine out of grocery store materials you must have had sheltered teen years. Hell, many of us here on slashdot are quite capable of building our own nukes, and some of us could even do it safely without alerting any authorities (in my case, it's because I used to be in the industry, but this kid came pretty close to building a fast breeder reactor, essentially from scratch, before the authorities stumbled on his activities by pure chance).
A better approach might be to try to build a society where people aren't actively encouraged to become religious zealots or violent nihilists. But regardless, it's too late to try to stop normal citizens from having weapons of mass destruction. That battle was lost long ago.
OK, I finally got some time, so here we go. I can't address every single issue you've raised without a 12-page e-pistle, but I'll try to get the important stuff, and I apologize in advance for the disorganized narration.
I do not believe that "regulation" is a loaded word, and I mean it in the purely technical sense. Libertarians usually want government regulation of the armed forces, so that soldiers all have recognizable uniforms and use the same communications frequencies, for example. "Interference" has no non-judgemental meanings, interference is always presumed bad. I believe regulation is semantically neutral (at least by comparison). I do not assume that all regulations are good, nor that all regulatory bodies can or should hold sway over all situations.
You said "Obviously, you think that government's interference in the actions of free indivduals who are doing no harm is sometimes good. Obviously, I strongly disagree. I never said that and I also strongly disagree. What we're disagreeing about is what is harm and what is good. I see pollution as harmful, many libertarians are deeply in love with it (don't know what your view on that is). My neighbor just clear-cut the slope above my house; he will now lose hundreds of cubic yards of dirt, and what doesn't end up in my yard will end up in the drinking water of 40,000 people. I see that as harmful, libertarians say he's exercising his property rights. If I shoot the neighbor, or dump equivalent amounts of crap in his yard, I will be arrested, but he will never be effectively prosecuted in any way for the way he's damaged my property values and increasing the cost of water treatment for the local municipality. Note also in this case he's also destroying his own property - he believes he can establish a 1950s style lawn on a heavily shaded, sixty degree plus slope, which is unlikely.
When I talk about "regulated capitalism" in contrast to "lassez faire capitalism" I mean a system where a regulatory body imposes a common set of rules on all participants. When I say "a WELL regulated capitalism" I mean one where the rules are designed to protect natural commons (such as breathable air), to enforce social values (such as prohibitions against murder for hire and baby farming by pimps) and to provide a consistent environment for trade (so, for example, if the government forces private land owners to provide right-of-ways for power and phone companies, then all power and phone vendors should have equal access to those right-of-ways).
I do not know of any historical example, EVER, of an unregulated capitalism I'd want to live in. Somalia, or something like it, is always the result because Murder Inc. profits from restriction of fair trade. Now that I've more rigorously defined "regulated" you may agree. If not, feel free to post any example of successful unregulated capitalism if you wish, but I must warn you I enjoy studying history so I will have no hesitation about checking any such claims.;) Hong Kong doesn't fly, it was and remains extremely heavily regulated. The Roman Republic doesn't fly, nor does any society that permits human slavery - they are "shitholes" as you say.
Incidentally, I commend to you the books of George Orwell in this regard. Orwell fought for the POUM during the Spanish Civil War and has a lot to say about anarchism, communism, and facism. But a biography of William Walker ("the grey-eyed man of manifest destiny") or the movie "Kingdom of Heaven" would be more pertinent to our discussions.
Because I am a pantheist, I find atheism to be empirically false. God is everything, I think therefore I exist, therefore something exists, therefore everything is not nothing, therefore God exists. Any nihilist who attempts to deny the existence of himself is expected to vanish in a puff of logic and trouble us no more.:) We are quite literally embedded in and composed of the living flesh of God.
I probably won't be able to post again today (perhaps this evening, we'll see). My employment takes priority because like you I have a child (children, actually, in my case) to support.
My knowledge of eudamonia is weak, based on reading Plato and studying the Nichomachean Ethics decades ago. But I'm sure you'll correct me if I make any major blunders.
As for the friendly tone, well, I'm a pantheist myself (essential monist variety, though I have disagreements with Spinoza) so it's normal for me to apply a (usually gentle) mockery to everyone, including myself. Some people can't take it with equanamity, apparently you can. It's good to be tough-skinned!
Fanatic Ayn Rand acolytes, on the other claw, usually can't handle any criticism at all, so I'm sometimes pretty rough with them - they never listen to anyone who disagrees with them anyway.
Your own tone is usually pretty confrontational, but I assume that's either because you're a troll, or because you are arguing positions that you feel strongly about.
Me: Maybe you don't realize it, but those old private roads were often closed to minorities such as blacks, irish, chinese, and unaccompanied women
Rene: So. What part of "private" don't you understand?
Me again: Uh, dude, I just demonstrated that I understand "private" quite well, and furthermore I've shown why I think private ownership of the roads can be a bad thing. Ever read "The Wealth of Nations"? Adam Smith proposes that increasing the number of interconnections between people and places increases opportunities to create wealth (oversimplification, look it up if you want more). Restricting travel to the privileged classes pretty clearly restricts trade and thus decreases the opportunities for people to better themselves.
But I'm not going to debate you if you are going to defend racism. That battle's just about over where I live, thank god, and I can quite cheerfully blow the fucking head off anybody that tries to burn a cross in my yard.
Hi Loundry! I mighta known you'd be a Randite Libertarian (I assume you won't take that as an insult).
Since I've been voting libertarian for at least a decade, it amuses me that you'd call my reasoning "anti-libertarian". But that's neither here nor there. Anyway, to take a stab at your points:
* I didn't state that Somalia is the only alternative to "government interference". In fact I never mentioned "government interference" I said "regulation" which is a less rhetorically loaded word. But in any case your accusation of logical fallacy is at least as well directed at your straw man here. It is impossible for me to list all possible outcomes of a nearly infinite spectrum of activities so providing a single illustrative example of one possible outcome is perfectly valid logically. You are welcome to submit counter-examples, as you have with pre-communist Hong Kong. In turn I can dispute your counter-example, for instance by pointing out that British Crown Colonies had *lots* of regulations governing trade and property.
* Government is not always bad. It keeps Elohim City terrorists from murdering you in your sleep, for example. Your "all government bad, no government good" absolutism is as overly simplistic as your anti-Islam nonsense.
* The destruction of the railways was wrought by men like Cornelius Vanderbilt who looted the companies' assets while sucking up government subsidies. Look up the Credit Mobilier scandal for an example of the kind of behaviours that I'm talking about (although I don't remember if Vanderbilt was actually involved in that; I think he did his damage much later). It wasn't government interference that made them unprofitable and I did not claim that it was. Your proposal that "they couldn't have gotten as far" without "government interference" is just another instance of you trotting out the "government interference" meme at the slightest opportunity.
You said "show me these evil men you call Robber Barons". Actually everybody calls them that, but let's take Cornelius Vanderbilt as an example. Have you ever heard of the Walker Expedition? Does paying mercenaries to take over another country as a business gambit (perhaps you've heard Vanderbilt's "I shall destroy you" quote, but you don't know how that relates to murder, rapine, and betrayal in South America?). I think that covers the "show me what they did that infringed on other individuals' rights to life liberty and property" pretty well, too, so I'll skip that one. Seriously, read a biography of Walker.
You also said "Show me how what they [Robber Barons] did is consistent with objectivist ethics". Well, I've only read The Fountainhead, We the Living, and Atlas Shrugged - that was enough for me - but as far as I can tell "objectivism" is a schlock excuse for a philosophy that was fundamentally created as a marketing vehicle when Ayn Rand's fantasy of being raped by Frank Lloyd Wright (Fountainhead) sold a lot of copies. Perhaps you can tell me why that's wrong? It seems to me that her winner-take-all-blame-the-victim attitude was mostly just playing up to the anti-communist fanatics (not that she didn't have reason to hate communism, I admit) so she wouldn't have to dig ditches for a living. And in case you weren't aware of it, Rand models some of her heroes (particularly in Atlas) on people who were called "Robber Barons". Hank Riordan is pretty obviously Andrew Carnegie, don't you think? The bleeding heart who has to be persuaded by his peers (Barons Gould, Vanderbilt, Morgan, etc.) that his desire to help others is evil, and that all altruism is bad? Well, maybe not. Carnegie did let Frick and the Pinkertons murder striking steel workers, hiding out in Scotland while all the dirty work was done.
Hmmm. That paragraph probably qualifies as flamebait, but I believe it to be true (and you asked, after all) so I'll take my lumps.
And y'know, I've read a lot of your posts and I've never seen you deviate from your party line - none of which is at all original - so accusing me of "parroting rhetoric" is also pretty funny.
Hey, that wasn't a particularly bad analogy. Or at least not up to your usual standards... you're slipping, my man!!
Blocking specific packets is not the role of the road owner, and if it ends up that such is the case, then that owner should be put out of business.
The market would put comcast out of business, or force them to behave, if it weren't for their government-sponsored geographic monopoly.
If all for-profit infrastructure systems that run through publically funded right-of-ways were legally common carriers, the market would eventually (somewhat painfully) sort it all out, I bet.
True. It's an excellent deal for the developers (unsuprising; they are the ones that came up with it) because they get to dispose of a legal liability (if they build to code, they can't be sued when somebody gets killed by a sinkhole) and push ongoing maintenance costs onto a larger fund source than the local community association.
Not always a good deal for the taxpayers, though; they often get stuck paying maintenance for roads that only serve a few wealthy people living in a cul-de-sac that would've served the public interest better as a through road.
Tax dollars paid for the right-of-way development that allows Comcast to reach their customers, and continue to pay for the (expensive) maintenance of the infrastructure that allows access to that right-of-way.
I believe this is the argument for the creation of "Common Carrier" status, which the Supreme Court has ruled does not apply to Internet delivery systems (one assumes the Justices are controlled by radio signals from Pluto nowadays, since their decisions don't seem to have much to do with mere human concerns).
Taxation to fund private, profitmaking industries is coercion, right? So I'm coerced to pay for Comcast's monopoly, even if I'm not a customer.
Comcast's monopoly on cable access to my area probably could not exist in a truly free market. Only government sponsorship prevents local entrepreneurs from being able to compete on a fair basis.
Where there is economic pressure for large amounts of traffic, road operators will indeed purchase private rights of way and build toll roads.
In libertarian fairyland, yes. How well is that working in tax-free Somalia? Here in the real world the existing powerbrokers always act to keep things the way they are, and prevent free movement of competitors, unless a bunch of fanatics motivated by hate or religion gang up to impose their own vision. Maybe you don't realize it, but those old private roads were often closed to minorities such as blacks, irish, chinese, and unaccompanied women. Such folk would consider themselves lucky to escape with their lives if they mistakenly entered the wrong road.
A well-regulated capitalism is great. In an unregulated capitalism (such as Somalia) things don't work the way Penn Jillette seems to think they will.
At the end of the last century a similar thing happened with rail roads -- they weren't built by government, they were built by private industry.
That is false, or at least a gross oversimplification, to the point of misrepresentation. Even Hill's Great Northern Railway had significant investment from local governments, and most railways in the USA recieved titanic subsidies directly from Washington. The US federal government has given unbelievable amounts of tax money, public land, and land seized from private owners to railway profiteers from at least 1862 (look that up) to the present day (all aboard, Amtrak!).
Eventually private industry destroyed the US rail business, in order to reap profit at the expense of the very people who paid tax dollars to create it, by creating a gasoline and rubber based transit system dominated by Standard Oil. Look it up. The men who did it were popularly known as the "Robber Barons" and they are idolized by the Ayn Rand gang.
Neither private industry (with the exception of the aforementioned James Hill, a great man) nor the US government has anything to be proud of where railroads are concerned. US railroad history does not serve as an example of the right way to do anything.
another deluded psychotic who thought he heard voices from god, just like loads of other religious founders and followers who , if they were around today , would be locked up in a nice warm room with padded walls.
Last time I checked, the oval office didn't have a lot of padding on the walls. Have you not been following the news for the last six years?
SenderID is an attempt by Microsoft to hijack a working open standard called SPF. At this point it is effectively dead because of Microsoft's cynical manipulation of Meng Wong's altruistic attempt to help everyone.
You will note I'm not normally a MS-basher, but in this case it's well deserved. SPF was ramping up into a system that would make email forgery impractical for spammers and virii, but Microsoft (with help from Yahoo and AOL, I guess) muddied the waters to the point where the anti-forgery community couldn't get a clear message out. Now SPF is still going, but very slowly, which is a shame since it is a practical thing you can do today that makes a real difference. If comcast (for one example) took the five freakin' minutes that would be required to publish SPF in their DNS, the world would be a better place for it.
I doubt we'll ever come to an agreement on how to use an inherently faulty metaphor.
But, let me point out that just because Greece does something (or Germany for that matter) doesn't make that thing "western". And I doubt the criteria for "right of return" to Israel - where the people in question usually have dubious or completely fantastical claims to descent from a magical homeland - are likely to correspond much with the criteria used by Germany or Greece.
Remember that history and archeology alike agree that the ancient hebrews conquered Israel - they didn't spontaneously generate from the rocks and soil, and they weren't indigenous to Jerusalem. And DNA studies have shown that many jews have no semitic ancestry whatsoever, so their forefathers didn't even live in Israel to begin with - how can they "return?"
I suspect that the proposed "Arab right of return" - that would allow palestinians who were foolish enough to trust Nasser to return to the lands they rightfully owned under British and Turkish law - is more similar to Greek and German laws.
Further, in the USA (the prototypical "western" country perhaps?) the National Cathedral was and is privately funded. State sponsorship of religion is not normally considered a "western" value regardless of what countries like England and France do. This may change now that Nehemiah Scudder is in charge of the USA, and state's rights are in sharp decline.
Is Cuba more or less "western" than Israel? Your primary criterion seems to be literacy, which is higher in Cuba and Japan than it is in Israel, according to the CIA factbook. Is Japan "western"? The Land of the Rising Sun? Now we've really practicing irony!
I think when you say "western" you equate that with "good" and you are concerned that Israel be considered "good".
I know you've seen the racist posts against blacks, indians and arabs, as well as the religious intolerance towards Islam, that pops up every day on Slashdot.
I'm sure you are intelligent enough to know that at least half of these are trolls posted by people with no real opinions of their own, but what about the rest?
My own solution involves alcohol, but that may not be an option for you;)
Mods: This is an honest question, and I haven't said anything bad about Zionism or Ayn Rand (this time around anyway) so can you lay off the "flamebait" modifier please?
Israel, which happens to be the only western country in the Middle East
Ya gotta wonder about these people.
If by "western" you mean "like the USA" I'll point out that the Israeli government specifically sponsors Judaism - for example, the so-called "right of return", and the public works tax dollars spent on building special roads for observant Cohens (who are religiously prohibited from passing through graveyards).
So, while saying "the USA is becoming more eastern with the Bush governments attempts to divert tax dollars to religious institutions (faith-based charities and the like)" is merely hyperbole with some basis in truth, saying "Israel is the only western country in the Middle East" is either ignorant posturing or a cynical attempt to downplay the modernity of Jordan and pre-invasion Iraq.
The most common reason to smash up cast iron (that I know of) is to salvage lead from large diameter cast iron bell & spigot plumbing. You can get 2 to 5 pounds of lead per joint from old sewer lines with no tools other than a heavy hammer (or big rock, if you are patient enough). This can be a significant source of income for some people.
Incidentally, an expert with a torch can melt a steel stud out of a cast iron engine block without damaging the threads in the block. It's an impressive trick - you need skills to pull it off!
It doesn't matter which version of Windows you run (okay, not necessarily with '95, '98 or something even more ancient) you can install the same.exe file and run it.
OK, while on the one hand I agree with you that Linux is not ready for the desktop of the average user, I have to ask: how old are you?
You're calling Windows98 "ancient"? Microsoft is still issuing security patches for it!
FYI: most unix systems run code that's 30 years old. For example, Berkeley LPD, sendmail, UUCP, many others. That's one of the virtues of OSS - you don't have to constantly flush investment down the toilet like you must with Windows. You choose what you run instead of being forced to abandon working solutions due to lack of OS support from the vendor.
I love your "log cabin republican" type posts. I show them to my conservative christian relatives and they become enlightened.
I don't suppose you've ever considered actually getting to know some Muslims - y'know, like having them over to dinner or something? Maybe have a little jew-bashing session with the local Farrakhan supporters? Please don't, you might be unable to form any more argumentum ad metum (gee, I can use fancy latin too!) once you've actually met some of the people you are so anxious to demonize.
I can invent up some threats to life, liberty and property to attribute to homosexuals if you really want me too. Or I can just parrot other people's hatemongering propaganda the way you keep doing - which do you prefer?
Knowing this, if I saw an empty glass falling, I knew I had one bounce to try and save it but the bounces weren't always too high. [...] I always wondered if those saved glasses would ever get another bounce if they dropped again.
No, they get one bounce each. According to my spouse and close friends in the chemistry trade, glassware bruises on the first shock and shatters on the second (unless the force is so extreme that it gets pulverized in one shot or so trivial that it is completely unharmed). My own kitchen experience bears this out.
I'll bet that if you have a really good ear (I don't) you can tell if the glass got bruised from the sound it makes. If you're breaking up cast iron (real cast iron, which many of you youngsters have never seen) with a 16lb hammer you just flail away at it with an earsplitting BONG BONG BONG BONG until it finally goes thud. Then you just barely smack it and it shatters - don't hit it full force after the thud or it's likely to go off like a grenade! This seems like a similar phenomena to me.
Throw away bruised glassware. It can be incredibly fragile and might shatter from the slightest shock.
Jesus isn't going to put a knife to my neck and tell to convert or live the way he does
Nulla salus extra ecclesium. Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoset!
Look up the taking of Jerusalem by Godfrey and Tancred in 1099. Men, women, children of all faiths indiscriminately slaughtered in the name of Christ the Conqueror. You might also contrast the historical record of Islam in this regard (Sal-al-din being the most famous example of medieval chivalry, after all).
You might also want to read up on Charlemagne and the doctrine of "conversion by the sword". Or a personal favorite, Father de la Casas' Short Account of the Destruction of the West Indies.
How, exactly, did you think Europe and the Americas got to be christian? 2 big hints: Knives. Necks.
I'll remember that wood-over-steel technique if I have to replace any major members in the house. I'm using Eastern Red Cedar to replace some posts in the barn, due to insect woes.
Slashdot Mirror
If you can't build a landmine out of grocery store materials you must have had sheltered teen years. Hell, many of us here on slashdot are quite capable of building our own nukes, and some of us could even do it safely without alerting any authorities (in my case, it's because I used to be in the industry, but this kid came pretty close to building a fast breeder reactor, essentially from scratch, before the authorities stumbled on his activities by pure chance).
A better approach might be to try to build a society where people aren't actively encouraged to become religious zealots or violent nihilists. But regardless, it's too late to try to stop normal citizens from having weapons of mass destruction. That battle was lost long ago.
It's funny because it's true. --Homer Simpson
OK, I finally got some time, so here we go. I can't address every single issue you've raised without a 12-page e-pistle, but I'll try to get the important stuff, and I apologize in advance for the disorganized narration.
;) Hong Kong doesn't fly, it was and remains extremely heavily regulated. The Roman Republic doesn't fly, nor does any society that permits human slavery - they are "shitholes" as you say.
:) We are quite literally embedded in and composed of the living flesh of God.
I do not believe that "regulation" is a loaded word, and I mean it in the purely technical sense. Libertarians usually want government regulation of the armed forces, so that soldiers all have recognizable uniforms and use the same communications frequencies, for example. "Interference" has no non-judgemental meanings, interference is always presumed bad. I believe regulation is semantically neutral (at least by comparison). I do not assume that all regulations are good, nor that all regulatory bodies can or should hold sway over all situations.
You said "Obviously, you think that government's interference in the actions of free indivduals who are doing no harm is sometimes good. Obviously, I strongly disagree. I never said that and I also strongly disagree. What we're disagreeing about is what is harm and what is good. I see pollution as harmful, many libertarians are deeply in love with it (don't know what your view on that is). My neighbor just clear-cut the slope above my house; he will now lose hundreds of cubic yards of dirt, and what doesn't end up in my yard will end up in the drinking water of 40,000 people. I see that as harmful, libertarians say he's exercising his property rights. If I shoot the neighbor, or dump equivalent amounts of crap in his yard, I will be arrested, but he will never be effectively prosecuted in any way for the way he's damaged my property values and increasing the cost of water treatment for the local municipality. Note also in this case he's also destroying his own property - he believes he can establish a 1950s style lawn on a heavily shaded, sixty degree plus slope, which is unlikely.
When I talk about "regulated capitalism" in contrast to "lassez faire capitalism" I mean a system where a regulatory body imposes a common set of rules on all participants. When I say "a WELL regulated capitalism" I mean one where the rules are designed to protect natural commons (such as breathable air), to enforce social values (such as prohibitions against murder for hire and baby farming by pimps) and to provide a consistent environment for trade (so, for example, if the government forces private land owners to provide right-of-ways for power and phone companies, then all power and phone vendors should have equal access to those right-of-ways).
I do not know of any historical example, EVER, of an unregulated capitalism I'd want to live in. Somalia, or something like it, is always the result because Murder Inc. profits from restriction of fair trade. Now that I've more rigorously defined "regulated" you may agree. If not, feel free to post any example of successful unregulated capitalism if you wish, but I must warn you I enjoy studying history so I will have no hesitation about checking any such claims.
Incidentally, I commend to you the books of George Orwell in this regard. Orwell fought for the POUM during the Spanish Civil War and has a lot to say about anarchism, communism, and facism. But a biography of William Walker ("the grey-eyed man of manifest destiny") or the movie "Kingdom of Heaven" would be more pertinent to our discussions.
Because I am a pantheist, I find atheism to be empirically false. God is everything, I think therefore I exist, therefore something exists, therefore everything is not nothing, therefore God exists. Any nihilist who attempts to deny the existence of himself is expected to vanish in a puff of logic and trouble us no more.
Because I am a pantheist, I count
I probably won't be able to post again today (perhaps this evening, we'll see). My employment takes priority because like you I have a child (children, actually, in my case) to support.
My knowledge of eudamonia is weak, based on reading Plato and studying the Nichomachean Ethics decades ago. But I'm sure you'll correct me if I make any major blunders.
As for the friendly tone, well, I'm a pantheist myself (essential monist variety, though I have disagreements with Spinoza) so it's normal for me to apply a (usually gentle) mockery to everyone, including myself. Some people can't take it with equanamity, apparently you can. It's good to be tough-skinned!
Fanatic Ayn Rand acolytes, on the other claw, usually can't handle any criticism at all, so I'm sometimes pretty rough with them - they never listen to anyone who disagrees with them anyway.
Your own tone is usually pretty confrontational, but I assume that's either because you're a troll, or because you are arguing positions that you feel strongly about.
Me: Maybe you don't realize it, but those old private roads were often closed to minorities such as blacks, irish, chinese, and unaccompanied women
Rene: So. What part of "private" don't you understand?
Me again: Uh, dude, I just demonstrated that I understand "private" quite well, and furthermore I've shown why I think private ownership of the roads can be a bad thing. Ever read "The Wealth of Nations"? Adam Smith proposes that increasing the number of interconnections between people and places increases opportunities to create wealth (oversimplification, look it up if you want more). Restricting travel to the privileged classes pretty clearly restricts trade and thus decreases the opportunities for people to better themselves.
But I'm not going to debate you if you are going to defend racism. That battle's just about over where I live, thank god, and I can quite cheerfully blow the fucking head off anybody that tries to burn a cross in my yard.
Hi Loundry! I mighta known you'd be a Randite Libertarian (I assume you won't take that as an insult).
Since I've been voting libertarian for at least a decade, it amuses me that you'd call my reasoning "anti-libertarian". But that's neither here nor there. Anyway, to take a stab at your points:
* I didn't state that Somalia is the only alternative to "government interference". In fact I never mentioned "government interference" I said "regulation" which is a less rhetorically loaded word. But in any case your accusation of logical fallacy is at least as well directed at your straw man here. It is impossible for me to list all possible outcomes of a nearly infinite spectrum of activities so providing a single illustrative example of one possible outcome is perfectly valid logically. You are welcome to submit counter-examples, as you have with pre-communist Hong Kong. In turn I can dispute your counter-example, for instance by pointing out that British Crown Colonies had *lots* of regulations governing trade and property.
* Government is not always bad. It keeps Elohim City terrorists from murdering you in your sleep, for example. Your "all government bad, no government good" absolutism is as overly simplistic as your anti-Islam nonsense.
* The destruction of the railways was wrought by men like Cornelius Vanderbilt who looted the companies' assets while sucking up government subsidies. Look up the Credit Mobilier scandal for an example of the kind of behaviours that I'm talking about (although I don't remember if Vanderbilt was actually involved in that; I think he did his damage much later). It wasn't government interference that made them unprofitable and I did not claim that it was. Your proposal that "they couldn't have gotten as far" without "government interference" is just another instance of you trotting out the "government interference" meme at the slightest opportunity.
You said "show me these evil men you call Robber Barons". Actually everybody calls them that, but let's take Cornelius Vanderbilt as an example. Have you ever heard of the Walker Expedition? Does paying mercenaries to take over another country as a business gambit (perhaps you've heard Vanderbilt's "I shall destroy you" quote, but you don't know how that relates to murder, rapine, and betrayal in South America?). I think that covers the "show me what they did that infringed on other individuals' rights to life liberty and property" pretty well, too, so I'll skip that one. Seriously, read a biography of Walker.
You also said "Show me how what they [Robber Barons] did is consistent with objectivist ethics". Well, I've only read The Fountainhead, We the Living, and Atlas Shrugged - that was enough for me - but as far as I can tell "objectivism" is a schlock excuse for a philosophy that was fundamentally created as a marketing vehicle when Ayn Rand's fantasy of being raped by Frank Lloyd Wright (Fountainhead) sold a lot of copies. Perhaps you can tell me why that's wrong? It seems to me that her winner-take-all-blame-the-victim attitude was mostly just playing up to the anti-communist fanatics (not that she didn't have reason to hate communism, I admit) so she wouldn't have to dig ditches for a living. And in case you weren't aware of it, Rand models some of her heroes (particularly in Atlas) on people who were called "Robber Barons". Hank Riordan is pretty obviously Andrew Carnegie, don't you think? The bleeding heart who has to be persuaded by his peers (Barons Gould, Vanderbilt, Morgan, etc.) that his desire to help others is evil, and that all altruism is bad? Well, maybe not. Carnegie did let Frick and the Pinkertons murder striking steel workers, hiding out in Scotland while all the dirty work was done.
Hmmm. That paragraph probably qualifies as flamebait, but I believe it to be true (and you asked, after all) so I'll take my lumps.
And y'know, I've read a lot of your posts and I've never seen you deviate from your party line - none of which is at all original - so accusing me of "parroting rhetoric" is also pretty funny.
The market would put comcast out of business, or force them to behave, if it weren't for their government-sponsored geographic monopoly.
If all for-profit infrastructure systems that run through publically funded right-of-ways were legally common carriers, the market would eventually (somewhat painfully) sort it all out, I bet.
True. It's an excellent deal for the developers (unsuprising; they are the ones that came up with it) because they get to dispose of a legal liability (if they build to code, they can't be sued when somebody gets killed by a sinkhole) and push ongoing maintenance costs onto a larger fund source than the local community association.
Not always a good deal for the taxpayers, though; they often get stuck paying maintenance for roads that only serve a few wealthy people living in a cul-de-sac that would've served the public interest better as a through road.
Tax dollars paid for the right-of-way development that allows Comcast to reach their customers, and continue to pay for the (expensive) maintenance of the infrastructure that allows access to that right-of-way.
I believe this is the argument for the creation of "Common Carrier" status, which the Supreme Court has ruled does not apply to Internet delivery systems (one assumes the Justices are controlled by radio signals from Pluto nowadays, since their decisions don't seem to have much to do with mere human concerns).
Taxation to fund private, profitmaking industries is coercion, right? So I'm coerced to pay for Comcast's monopoly, even if I'm not a customer.
Comcast's monopoly on cable access to my area probably could not exist in a truly free market. Only government sponsorship prevents local entrepreneurs from being able to compete on a fair basis.
A well-regulated capitalism is great. In an unregulated capitalism (such as Somalia) things don't work the way Penn Jillette seems to think they will. That is false, or at least a gross oversimplification, to the point of misrepresentation. Even Hill's Great Northern Railway had significant investment from local governments, and most railways in the USA recieved titanic subsidies directly from Washington. The US federal government has given unbelievable amounts of tax money, public land, and land seized from private owners to railway profiteers from at least 1862 (look that up) to the present day (all aboard, Amtrak!).
Eventually private industry destroyed the US rail business, in order to reap profit at the expense of the very people who paid tax dollars to create it, by creating a gasoline and rubber based transit system dominated by Standard Oil. Look it up. The men who did it were popularly known as the "Robber Barons" and they are idolized by the Ayn Rand gang.
Neither private industry (with the exception of the aforementioned James Hill, a great man) nor the US government has anything to be proud of where railroads are concerned. US railroad history does not serve as an example of the right way to do anything.
SenderID is an attempt by Microsoft to hijack a working open standard called SPF. At this point it is effectively dead because of Microsoft's cynical manipulation of Meng Wong's altruistic attempt to help everyone.
You will note I'm not normally a MS-basher, but in this case it's well deserved. SPF was ramping up into a system that would make email forgery impractical for spammers and virii, but Microsoft (with help from Yahoo and AOL, I guess) muddied the waters to the point where the anti-forgery community couldn't get a clear message out. Now SPF is still going, but very slowly, which is a shame since it is a practical thing you can do today that makes a real difference. If comcast (for one example) took the five freakin' minutes that would be required to publish SPF in their DNS, the world would be a better place for it.
Implement SPF. Laugh at the rotting corpse of SenderID.
It's a reed that grows in Egypt. It's where the English word "paper" comes from. I read a lot of history books (not suprising I guess) and I've never seen China credited with either one.
I doubt we'll ever come to an agreement on how to use an inherently faulty metaphor.
But, let me point out that just because Greece does something (or Germany for that matter) doesn't make that thing "western". And I doubt the criteria for "right of return" to Israel - where the people in question usually have dubious or completely fantastical claims to descent from a magical homeland - are likely to correspond much with the criteria used by Germany or Greece.
Remember that history and archeology alike agree that the ancient hebrews conquered Israel - they didn't spontaneously generate from the rocks and soil, and they weren't indigenous to Jerusalem. And DNA studies have shown that many jews have no semitic ancestry whatsoever, so their forefathers didn't even live in Israel to begin with - how can they "return?"
I suspect that the proposed "Arab right of return" - that would allow palestinians who were foolish enough to trust Nasser to return to the lands they rightfully owned under British and Turkish law - is more similar to Greek and German laws.
Further, in the USA (the prototypical "western" country perhaps?) the National Cathedral was and is privately funded. State sponsorship of religion is not normally considered a "western" value regardless of what countries like England and France do. This may change now that Nehemiah Scudder is in charge of the USA, and state's rights are in sharp decline.
Is Cuba more or less "western" than Israel? Your primary criterion seems to be literacy, which is higher in Cuba and Japan than it is in Israel, according to the CIA factbook. Is Japan "western"? The Land of the Rising Sun? Now we've really practicing irony!
I think when you say "western" you equate that with "good" and you are concerned that Israel be considered "good".
I know you've seen the racist posts against blacks, indians and arabs, as well as the religious intolerance towards Islam, that pops up every day on Slashdot.
;)
I'm sure you are intelligent enough to know that at least half of these are trolls posted by people with no real opinions of their own, but what about the rest?
My own solution involves alcohol, but that may not be an option for you
Mods: This is an honest question, and I haven't said anything bad about Zionism or Ayn Rand (this time around anyway) so can you lay off the "flamebait" modifier please?
If by "western" you mean "like the USA" I'll point out that the Israeli government specifically sponsors Judaism - for example, the so-called "right of return", and the public works tax dollars spent on building special roads for observant Cohens (who are religiously prohibited from passing through graveyards).
So, while saying "the USA is becoming more eastern with the Bush governments attempts to divert tax dollars to religious institutions (faith-based charities and the like)" is merely hyperbole with some basis in truth, saying "Israel is the only western country in the Middle East" is either ignorant posturing or a cynical attempt to downplay the modernity of Jordan and pre-invasion Iraq.
Melting requires more equipment.
The most common reason to smash up cast iron (that I know of) is to salvage lead from large diameter cast iron bell & spigot plumbing. You can get 2 to 5 pounds of lead per joint from old sewer lines with no tools other than a heavy hammer (or big rock, if you are patient enough). This can be a significant source of income for some people.
Incidentally, an expert with a torch can melt a steel stud out of a cast iron engine block without damaging the threads in the block. It's an impressive trick - you need skills to pull it off!
RHES has iptables turned on by default. Are you saying you turn it off?
You're calling Windows98 "ancient"? Microsoft is still issuing security patches for it!
FYI: most unix systems run code that's 30 years old. For example, Berkeley LPD, sendmail, UUCP, many others. That's one of the virtues of OSS - you don't have to constantly flush investment down the toilet like you must with Windows. You choose what you run instead of being forced to abandon working solutions due to lack of OS support from the vendor.
I love your "log cabin republican" type posts. I show them to my conservative christian relatives and they become enlightened.
I don't suppose you've ever considered actually getting to know some Muslims - y'know, like having them over to dinner or something? Maybe have a little jew-bashing session with the local Farrakhan supporters? Please don't, you might be unable to form any more argumentum ad metum (gee, I can use fancy latin too!) once you've actually met some of the people you are so anxious to demonize.
I can invent up some threats to life, liberty and property to attribute to homosexuals if you really want me too. Or I can just parrot other people's hatemongering propaganda the way you keep doing - which do you prefer?
I'll bet that if you have a really good ear (I don't) you can tell if the glass got bruised from the sound it makes. If you're breaking up cast iron (real cast iron, which many of you youngsters have never seen) with a 16lb hammer you just flail away at it with an earsplitting BONG BONG BONG BONG until it finally goes thud. Then you just barely smack it and it shatters - don't hit it full force after the thud or it's likely to go off like a grenade! This seems like a similar phenomena to me.
Throw away bruised glassware. It can be incredibly fragile and might shatter from the slightest shock.
Look up the taking of Jerusalem by Godfrey and Tancred in 1099. Men, women, children of all faiths indiscriminately slaughtered in the name of Christ the Conqueror. You might also contrast the historical record of Islam in this regard (Sal-al-din being the most famous example of medieval chivalry, after all).
You might also want to read up on Charlemagne and the doctrine of "conversion by the sword". Or a personal favorite, Father de la Casas' Short Account of the Destruction of the West Indies.
How, exactly, did you think Europe and the Americas got to be christian?
2 big hints: Knives. Necks.
Nice job! I like the arched bracing.
I'll remember that wood-over-steel technique if I have to replace any major members in the house. I'm using Eastern Red Cedar to replace some posts in the barn, due to insect woes.
You think that attacking other people's ships, stealing their cargo, and making people walk the plank is legal?
Well, OK, maybe if you are in the tax-free wonderland of Somalia. But not around here. Around here PIRACY IS NOT LEGAL!
So stop saying "Piracy!=illegal activity", or I'll have to send Mr. Woodes Rogers of the Department of Homeland Security down to see you.