I don't see how you could possibly entertain that idea.
I said that Bell could be considered culturally a product of the 'Anglosphere' - a concept that by all accounts would certainly include Scotland. It is part of the United Kingdom, after all, and Scottish culture is a large factor of North American culture. Americans generally would not consider Adam Smith's or David Hume's ideas 'foreign' as they might for, say, Rosseau, or Hegel, etc.
America, Britain, Canada, etc. might all be politically autonomous, but to consider each a distinct culture is a bit silly. We refer to the ancient Greeks as one culture despite the fact that they never had any sort of political unity.
Inventions can be the product of a country or civilisation, which has been the case for thousands of years.
I don't disagree, but there's a distinction between a technology or process that's evolved and been developed indirectly over a long period of time -- essentially a product of the culture at large -- and a technology that a specific individual or group deliberately researched and created.
"Remember, this is completely different than Iraq or any other "war of occupation". In this case, the government's very survival will be at stake, so it will have no reservations about making use of its most advanced and deadly weaponry on the civilian population, if that's what it takes to remain in control.
History doesn't bear this out. Tyrannical governments want to rule over society, not destroy it. Their goal isn't to wipe out the country as invading army might, but to establish and maintain control over it.
Even back in the 18th century, the British military was far more technologically advanced than the rebel colonists -- they could have levelled the coastal towns with artillery fire from an offshore fleet, the equivalent of modern airborne bombing. But they didn't, because their purpose was to assert control, not to destroy.
And to maintain control over people, you need to have your people on the ground there with them. In that situation, rebels with guns can indeed manage to fight you off.
Yes, Alexander Graham Bell lived, studied, and worked, in Britain, America, and Canada. You might get away with calling the man himself culturally a product of the 'Anglosphere', but to credit any of the above countries -- conceptual abastractions -- with his invention is collectivist nonsense.
Neither America, Canada, or Britain, nor Russia or Germany, nor any other country, has ever invented anything.
We have politicians who are motivated by ideology and beleive that the pursuit of their vision takes precedent over all other concerns. If we get the visionaries out of office and replace them with people who simply perform their duties under the law without trying to reform the basis of civil society, we'll all be better off.
Our economy is adaptable and dynamic precisely because it's not centralised and homogeneous, and entrepreneurs make independent, autonomous decisions.
The surest way to cause the economy to stagnate and inhibit the advancement of technology is to change the purpose of private enterprise from "earning a profit by selling products and services to customers" to "keeping people employed."
Creative, innovative people will always find a way to make a living. If you try to protect people who put all of their eggs into one basket and grow dependent on a single employer for their livelihood, you just wind up stilfing free enterprise, and we'll all suffer.
The best way to maximise efficiency is to keep both the AC off and the windows closed. Just wear an oxygen mask and some copper clothes with a heat pipe going to the roof of the car and you should be all set.
They aren't voluntary to the individuals forced to abide by them.
This is a tautology. In any even no one is forced to abide by the restrictions; theatre owners can admit whomever they please to an R-rated movie and the government has no power to day otherwise.
Unless you're referring to teenagers not being admitted to theatres whose owners have chosen to implement age restrictions. If that's the case, the theatre owners' right to decide who may and may not enter their private property takes precedent over their customer's non-existant "right" to view movies in someone else's theatre.
How are two forms of forcibly-imposed collectivist statism "on totally opposite ends of the political spectrum"?
Granted, their methods did differ a bit: Communists attempted to eliminate private business and put everything under the direct control of the state while Fascists just usurped private enteprise and turned it into a de facto agency of the state, but the underlying goal -- establishing a centralised, totalitarian society -- was the same.
The ideological differences can largely be seen as methodological accomodations needed to implement totalitarianism in different cultures. In countries like Germany and Italy, with well-developed civil societies, it would have been impossible to simply destroy the traditional institutions, so they were usurped and their symbols applied toward the totalitarian agenda instead. In Russia and other impoverished feudal cultures, where there was already little in the way of a civil society outside of the state, the totalitarians advanced an agenda of material advancement to be obtained by overthrowing the existing state's power.
The ultimate result was the same -- Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were ruled very similarly. In fact, Hitler and Stalin's original non-aggression pact made explicit note of the similarity of their worldviews.
There were some minor differences, of course, but to claim that they're polar opposites is ridiculous.
Current Capitalist societies lean no more prevalently to Freedom than do communist ones.
Chis is because current "capitalist" societies have strayed drastically away from capitalism over the past century and a half, and have essentially returned to mercantilism.
This does not mean a 'dictatorship' in the sense of a small group of people telling everyone what to do; it comes from Marxist theory of the state, and is counterposed to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and before that the dictatorship of the aristocracy (in feudalism) and before that the dictatorship of the slave-owners (in ancient society).
I suppose that's true; after all, Communists never attempted to construe themselves as a ruling class within society. Instead, they tried to wipe out all the other classes and factions, so that theirs would be the totality of society. Thankfully, they failed.
19th Century Britain actually had quite a bit more influence and power than the US does today. The British Empire directly ruled about a third of the world back then.
The problems that we're having with various terrorists and tin-pot dictators around the world today are the result of Britain's decline leaving a power vacuum in its wake.
You're right. We seem to agree that the length of a human arm is a very practical measure; and since most adult human arms vary within a useful tolerance of practicality, we can standardise a unit on the length of a specific arm without breaking the usefulness of having a "human arm" unit.
I suppose we should just choose someone and standardise on the length of their arm. Perhaps someone who occupes an important symbolic position in society would be a good choice?
The phrase "United States of America" implies that "United States" and "America" are distinct, and that one ("United States") exists within the other ("America").
"America" was originally a geographical term, but has come to be a cultural descriptor, referring to a specific civil society made up of the English-speaking inhabitants of North America.
The "United States" is a political federation that was founded by some of those Americans; it's a well-defined organization that exists within the civil society described above.
And although America, on the whole, is the most economically prosperous society in the world, the United States is in debt up to its eyeballs.
There is none, of course. But there's no exact decimal representation, either, because it's an irrational number.
Decimal representation is just a specific subset of fractions anyway..456 = 4/10 + 5/100 + 6/1000, etc. And although I'm not disparaging the utility of decimals, other denominators are often very useful and can provide a much more clear, consice representation of a given ratio than the decimal equivalent.
Also, if you are a programmer, do you use a language that encourages you to use real numbers or a language that allows you to use fractions seamlessly?
I'd prefer both, actually. Decimal representation is itself a kludge; computers aren't capable of working with the full set of real numbers. Look at the way floating point numbers are usually stored: base-2 scientific notation with the exponent, mantissa and sign stored in separate sets of bits. How hard would it be to implement a "fraction" type with the numerator and denominator stored as integers?
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America, Britain, Canada, etc. might all be politically autonomous, but to consider each a distinct culture is a bit silly. We refer to the ancient Greeks as one culture despite the fact that they never had any sort of political unity.
I don't disagree, but there's a distinction between a technology or process that's evolved and been developed indirectly over a long period of time -- essentially a product of the culture at large -- and a technology that a specific individual or group deliberately researched and created.
Even back in the 18th century, the British military was far more technologically advanced than the rebel colonists -- they could have levelled the coastal towns with artillery fire from an offshore fleet, the equivalent of modern airborne bombing. But they didn't, because their purpose was to assert control, not to destroy.
And to maintain control over people, you need to have your people on the ground there with them. In that situation, rebels with guns can indeed manage to fight you off.
Yes, Alexander Graham Bell lived, studied, and worked, in Britain, America, and Canada. You might get away with calling the man himself culturally a product of the 'Anglosphere', but to credit any of the above countries -- conceptual abastractions -- with his invention is collectivist nonsense.
Neither America, Canada, or Britain, nor Russia or Germany, nor any other country, has ever invented anything.
We have politicians who are motivated by ideology and beleive that the pursuit of their vision takes precedent over all other concerns. If we get the visionaries out of office and replace them with people who simply perform their duties under the law without trying to reform the basis of civil society, we'll all be better off.
Yes, to make way for even newer industries.
Our economy is adaptable and dynamic precisely because it's not centralised and homogeneous, and entrepreneurs make independent, autonomous decisions.
The surest way to cause the economy to stagnate and inhibit the advancement of technology is to change the purpose of private enterprise from "earning a profit by selling products and services to customers" to "keeping people employed."
Creative, innovative people will always find a way to make a living. If you try to protect people who put all of their eggs into one basket and grow dependent on a single employer for their livelihood, you just wind up stilfing free enterprise, and we'll all suffer.
Actually, the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, not by Canada.
The best way to maximise efficiency is to keep both the AC off and the windows closed. Just wear an oxygen mask and some copper clothes with a heat pipe going to the roof of the car and you should be all set.
Unless you're referring to teenagers not being admitted to theatres whose owners have chosen to implement age restrictions. If that's the case, the theatre owners' right to decide who may and may not enter their private property takes precedent over their customer's non-existant "right" to view movies in someone else's theatre.
And really, what better way is there to protest against the Chinese government than to launch DoS attacks against Swiss servers?
How are two forms of forcibly-imposed collectivist statism "on totally opposite ends of the political spectrum"?
Granted, their methods did differ a bit: Communists attempted to eliminate private business and put everything under the direct control of the state while Fascists just usurped private enteprise and turned it into a de facto agency of the state, but the underlying goal -- establishing a centralised, totalitarian society -- was the same.
The ideological differences can largely be seen as methodological accomodations needed to implement totalitarianism in different cultures. In countries like Germany and Italy, with well-developed civil societies, it would have been impossible to simply destroy the traditional institutions, so they were usurped and their symbols applied toward the totalitarian agenda instead. In Russia and other impoverished feudal cultures, where there was already little in the way of a civil society outside of the state, the totalitarians advanced an agenda of material advancement to be obtained by overthrowing the existing state's power.
The ultimate result was the same -- Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were ruled very similarly. In fact, Hitler and Stalin's original non-aggression pact made explicit note of the similarity of their worldviews.
There were some minor differences, of course, but to claim that they're polar opposites is ridiculous.
In order for something to work, it must first exist. If Communism does not exist, as you claim, then it does not work. Q.E.D.
How can you have a 'dictatorship' while simultaneously disavowing the concept of 'the state' anyway?
19th Century Britain actually had quite a bit more influence and power than the US does today. The British Empire directly ruled about a third of the world back then.
The problems that we're having with various terrorists and tin-pot dictators around the world today are the result of Britain's decline leaving a power vacuum in its wake.
You're right. We seem to agree that the length of a human arm is a very practical measure; and since most adult human arms vary within a useful tolerance of practicality, we can standardise a unit on the length of a specific arm without breaking the usefulness of having a "human arm" unit.
I suppose we should just choose someone and standardise on the length of their arm. Perhaps someone who occupes an important symbolic position in society would be a good choice?
There was no error.
The phrase "United States of America" implies that "United States" and "America" are distinct, and that one ("United States") exists within the other ("America").
"America" was originally a geographical term, but has come to be a cultural descriptor, referring to a specific civil society made up of the English-speaking inhabitants of North America.
The "United States" is a political federation that was founded by some of those Americans; it's a well-defined organization that exists within the civil society described above.
And although America, on the whole, is the most economically prosperous society in the world, the United States is in debt up to its eyeballs.
No, "America" is a civil society comprised of about 250 million individuals.
"The US" is a political organisation comprising fifty states.
The US is not a great economic power, but America is. In fact, most of the US's debt is owed to Americans.
All sarcasm aside, the length of a human arm is indeed far more practical than some obscure fraction of the speed of light in a vacuum.
Well, I can imagine that physically moving the decimal point would be quite a chore.
Decimal representation is just a specific subset of fractions anyway.
I'd prefer both, actually. Decimal representation is itself a kludge; computers aren't capable of working with the full set of real numbers. Look at the way floating point numbers are usually stored: base-2 scientific notation with the exponent, mantissa and sign stored in separate sets of bits. How hard would it be to implement a "fraction" type with the numerator and denominator stored as integers?