Because when you sign a contract there's a physical record that you, YOU, not your spouse or child or neighbor or pet or mechanical appliance or random object on a ballistic path, signed it. Furthermore, they're usually either countersigned and/or printed on some sort of self-authenticating paper or what have you. And when done, both parties walk away with a copy.
Clicking an "I agree" button? Alone, at home, and on my own computer? I could come up with a thousand ways to get past it without my ever actually pressing the button. Half the time the EULA text is stored in an editable text file, which I can replace to my heart's content. And if it doesn't, I wrote a little app that lets me edit any text box on any running program (and if the installation proceeds with the altered text, the company must be bound to it as well, no?). And even if I didn't do any of that and just clicked the damn thing, there's utterly no record of it. They are assuming that because it was installed, I must have clicked it, but this is demonstrably untrue.
So no, it's no more a binding contract than my putting an statement on a billboard saying "By reading this you agree to... whatever" and then trying to extract compliance from everone I think passed by it during rush hour.
In that case it gets even better! There's screenshots floating around of flight arrival/departure displays in airports running windows and BSOD-ing, right? Doesn't looking at the screen and extracting useful information from it qualify as using? If not, why not? If so, then wouldn't MS essentially be getting an implicit contract with every single person who walks by and glances at the screen? Does every person who uses an ATM implicitly agree to the same contract that the bank signed with Diebold (or whoever sold it to them)?
This is as bad as that TV exec who claimed that not watching commercials was illegal because by receiving the signals you implicitly agreed to be advertised to.
Lemme get this straight, it's my job to prove that something (proof of support for Al Qaeda by Hussein) doesn't exist? You are aware that barring internal contradictions in the supposition, that is a logical impossibility?
But hey, I'll play that game. Only first you have to show me some documents that aren't forged that prove that, oh, say, Bill Gates wasn't supporting them either. If you can't, then we have to go invade Redmond.
the situation has always been that you either have a dem or rep president
Yeah, that had occurred to me. It's been so long since we had a very minority candidate in the White House there's really no way to say what would happen. My guess would be it would depend on the circumstances regarding the veto (cop out!). The minority pres can't simply veto it and expect his party to back him up. He has to get enough of Congress not to vote for it again. He has to be polite and convincing, but willing to shame them where applicable, otherwise they'll simply gang up on him and double-pass everything like you said. Personally, I think the whole affair would be truly fascinating to watch.
I rather prefer the idea of letting all the nonviolent ones go, all at once. This would be such a humanitarian act
Well hell, I like you already. But politics is the art of the posible, right? There's too many people and reps out there who have either bought into the Reefer Madness propaganda or else have their livelihood tied into the War on Some Drugs. And they would simply _riot_ at the idea of letting all those dangerous drug users out.
Bush started a war that resluted in over 1000 american deaths... damn, I could have sworn that someone else started the war by killing 2948 Americans. Guess I was wrong.
I take it then you get most of your news from Fox? Because they seem to have the highest success rate in turning out people who think Saddam = Osama.
Someone else made the marvelously simple suggestion of: If your name is on enough state ballots that you could theoretically have a majority, then you get to be in the debate.
It doesn't solve the problem of having unnecesarily restrictive state ballot requirements, but it doesn't create new problems either.
Each branch has power over the decisions made by the others, but it's designed to take much greater effort to do so in the 2nd round. So while Congress could theoretically override every Presidential veto, doing so requires a 2/3rds majority, which ixnays the majority of anything Congress wants to pass. Historically, very few things that got vetoed got passed verbatim over it.
And if there was something really atrocious like the PATRIOT or DMCA, which very likely would have been overridden, he wouldn't just veto it. He'd do a fireside chat kind of deal and say, "You won't believe the shit your reps just tried to pull" and explain why it's such a godawful piece of crap. I _seriously_ doubt that our congresscritters would have passed PATRIOT if it had been read to them, with commentary, for the first time with all their constituents as co-audience.
because I think impeachment would follow immediately upon the heels of any such action
True, but the deed would be done nonetheless. Anyways I doubt Badnarik would start with something that massive. He'd begin by gutting the DEA's of their gestapo mandate and putting them in a regulatory position with the FDA, combined with putting pressure on state govs to stop pursuing drug cases. After the world _doesn't_ end, then he'd start by pardoning the oldest and most heinously unjust cases, guys who've been sent up for life because they had a single joint on them, things like that.
Civil disobedience is a very good idea in principle, and with the right enemy it can work wonders. But the WTO arrests, the RNC arrests, the willingness to shut down airplanes and whole airports because someone finds a piece of paper with "BOB" written on it, the mass detention of muslims in LA a few years back, the indisputed fact that the US has _by far_ the highest incarceration rate in the world, it's all indicative of guys in charge not really giving a shit about public perception and being more concerned with CYA and maintaining their own jobs.
The only solution that doesn't involve one of us seizing control of the government and using it against the other is to make the government so weak that no matter who has control it can't be used to stomp all over the rights of everyone else.
Yikes, ouch, no! History is replete with examples of more-or-less benign (sometimes a lot less, but not actively heinous) governments that were weak to the point of being unable to prevent itself from taken over (sometimes from within, sometimes from without) and turned into an evil and twisted version of itself. The Weimar Republic, post-revolutionary France, the original Russian Duma, Italy in 1921, pre-Maoist China, Japan before Tojo, etc, etc.
We want a government that is powerful enough to do it's job and not be ignored or overthrown by some guy with a few corporate backers, but doesn't actively go looking for more places to stick it's nose in, and most importantly is held accountable for what it does.
I mean, what would be the point of some of this "put the heat to the corps" stuff if the gov then didn't have the power to enforce it?
So it's OK if I tell them they are obligated to enhance the value of those shares by any legal means necessary
Sure, go right ahead. But as an owner of the company, shouldn't you be keeping a close eye on it?
Can't you see the slope your sliding down or are you blinded by ideology.
No and no. Fact: corporations often do Very Bad Things, either through malice or sheer apathy. This is not exactly in dispute. Fact: limited liability tends to shield owners and employees of corporations from the effects of their decisions. That's what limited liability means, and these days only the most egrerious behavior puts the fires of legal retribution to anyone's feet but the feet-less corporation. Fact: given freedom from the consequences of one's actions, most people will begin to behave very poorly indeed. One _possible_ solution is to "pierce the corporate veil", as Badnarik put it, and hold the owners and/or employees of the company accountable for things done in the course of enhancing their wealth. But it may ultimately prove to be unusable, for reasons I described in my questions.
If you have any, I am all for hearing about additional ways to keep people from behaving like jackals under the cover of a corporate entity. Because if there's one thing I think we can agree on, it's that the current level of accountability for corporate misbehavior simply doesn't cut it.
You can honestly compare a gift to investing in a company and think it a valid analogy?
The loan one is better, but still doesn't work. Because it's not just a loan. It's a loan with orders on how to use it. "I will give you $X in exchange for Y shares and you are obligated to enhance the value of those shares by any means necessary". If the corporation then breaks the law under your 'orders', how should you _not_ be held responsible?
That said, I'm wondering if there should be a limit on which shareholders can be held accountable. Like only those with >0.1% of the stock or more than $10,000 worth or some such. And I'm also keenly intersted on how this sort of thing would work with ownership at a remove, like mutual funds or stock owned by other corporations.
All very true. It is indeed the most logical explanation of how some desert nomads came to the conclusion that pi = 3. Of course, there's one hitch. It requires that the bible was actually written by people that Americans today would categorize as "smelly, brutal, uncultured, 3rd world savages" (i.e. Gribnik and his friends Grabnok, Grubnek, and Grobnak), a notion the True Believer cannot stomach.
You must have missed the part where it declares the value of pi to be 3, and the bit about earth being flat and there being a mountaintop from which you can see the whole thing, and also the whole physical impossibility of the flood and Noah's ark saving every species on the planet, and so forth and so on. In fact, you must not have actually read the bible because you'll hit unsubstantiated claims and statements with big, gaping, asteroid-sized holes in them on page one, and it doesn't really improve after that.
Do people dislike letting go of ideas they previously held to be true? Sure, even the best scientist, atheist, or general skeptic does. But at least they make a point of _trying_ to only accept as true things which had the pesky qualities of evidence and proof. Virtually no religion has an acceptable amount, and christianity is pretty far down the list.
I think 100% of it is important
Really? Does that include the advice on how to sell your children into slavery? The proper way to commit genocide? The god-given command to execute children for not listening to mom & pop, no exceptions? The ban on eating shellfish, also punishable by death? You consider all that crap to be meaningful and of great importance to Real Life?
Small-town mayors, city councilmen, DA's, undersecretaries of some minor state program, that kind of thing. If the 600 figure is accurate, you can probably safely assume that it's out of twenty or thirty thousand jobs, at least.
I have every intention of voting LP this year, but even I think this stat is both sad and funny. But hey...
Considering that the number of Libertarians in public office are so few even after decades of existence, and your chance of getting elected president are nil, do you see a future for the Libertarian Party?
I, for one, regard that as a self-fulfiling prophecy, especially when it comes from voters. As long as people think a vote for their preferred party is wasted, then they'll waste it themselves by voting for another party.
Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States
It's right there. The authority to apply a uniform tax throughout the land. We needed a 16th Ammendment to make one that wasn't uniform, but a simple sales tax should qualify nicely.
And yet again, you missed the point. It's the same sales tax, the same cost of living estimate, and the same refund, for _everyone_. Contract a few dozen economists across the country to do the calculations.
political spectrum should be at LEAST a grid, if not an n-dimensional hypercube
Agreed, but try pasting that graphic on CNN! The best compromise between personal accuracy and 'ease of use' I've come across so far is a cube, with one's position located on three policy axes: government spending, social freedoms, and corporate-friendliness.
AFAIK, it would work like this.
1) Do away with the IRS and as much of Social Security as possible.
2) Institute a flat federal sales tax, maybe 5-10%(?). The same untaxed exceptions on things like food still apply. This would give an overall sales tax in the same ballpark as Britain's VAT.
3) Estimate how much taxable money was needed for the average Joe to survive each year, and then figure out how much of that he spent in taxes.
4) Refund him some >1 multiple of that amount.
The important thing is that while net prices would increase across the board, most people would not only get back ~20% of their income that they had previously lost to on-income taxes, they'd get paid _another_ 10% or so with employers not having to match social security payments. The net result is less government spending, simpler and more efficient tax collection, more _progressive_ taxation (oh the irony), and greater disposable income.
Throw in the stated Libertarian agendas of reducing military spending and ending the War on Drugs and you've got yourself a hundred-billion dollar decrease in spending right there.
Still some questions left to be sorted out. For instance, does the refund apply if you don't work at all, or only part time, or whatever? And would a federal tax apply to interstate (e.g., Internet) commerce?
They're suing 12-year-old kids for cryin out loud. They're suing researchers for winning a red-team exercise that they sponsored. You have this strange notion that logic, legal & political acumen, or even aversion to bad PR is going to stop them from behaving like a bunch of rabid dogs.
Absolutely correct on all counts. Injustice withers under the light of the minicam. Now, can you identify the utterly critical difference in how those cameras were used and how Chicago's cameras will likely be used?
The audience.
A video only has power if it's publicly accessible. If all the camera feeds go straight to Police HQ where they disappear into vaults forever, they will be, at best, totally worthless and more likely to be abused as others have described.
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Clicking an "I agree" button? Alone, at home, and on my own computer? I could come up with a thousand ways to get past it without my ever actually pressing the button. Half the time the EULA text is stored in an editable text file, which I can replace to my heart's content. And if it doesn't, I wrote a little app that lets me edit any text box on any running program (and if the installation proceeds with the altered text, the company must be bound to it as well, no?). And even if I didn't do any of that and just clicked the damn thing, there's utterly no record of it. They are assuming that because it was installed, I must have clicked it, but this is demonstrably untrue.
So no, it's no more a binding contract than my putting an statement on a billboard saying "By reading this you agree to ... whatever" and then trying to extract compliance from everone I think passed by it during rush hour.
This Star Trek-themed band of yours wouldn't happen to be S.P.O.C.K., would it?
This is as bad as that TV exec who claimed that not watching commercials was illegal because by receiving the signals you implicitly agreed to be advertised to.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master"
But hey, I'll play that game. Only first you have to show me some documents that aren't forged that prove that, oh, say, Bill Gates wasn't supporting them either. If you can't, then we have to go invade Redmond.
Yup! Fox News all the way!
Yeah, that had occurred to me. It's been so long since we had a very minority candidate in the White House there's really no way to say what would happen. My guess would be it would depend on the circumstances regarding the veto (cop out!). The minority pres can't simply veto it and expect his party to back him up. He has to get enough of Congress not to vote for it again. He has to be polite and convincing, but willing to shame them where applicable, otherwise they'll simply gang up on him and double-pass everything like you said. Personally, I think the whole affair would be truly fascinating to watch.
I rather prefer the idea of letting all the nonviolent ones go, all at once. This would be such a humanitarian act
Well hell, I like you already. But politics is the art of the posible, right? There's too many people and reps out there who have either bought into the Reefer Madness propaganda or else have their livelihood tied into the War on Some Drugs. And they would simply _riot_ at the idea of letting all those dangerous drug users out.
Kerry could debate himself and probably pull it off. Bush could debate himself and still lose.
I take it then you get most of your news from Fox? Because they seem to have the highest success rate in turning out people who think Saddam = Osama.
It doesn't solve the problem of having unnecesarily restrictive state ballot requirements, but it doesn't create new problems either.
And if there was something really atrocious like the PATRIOT or DMCA, which very likely would have been overridden, he wouldn't just veto it. He'd do a fireside chat kind of deal and say, "You won't believe the shit your reps just tried to pull" and explain why it's such a godawful piece of crap. I _seriously_ doubt that our congresscritters would have passed PATRIOT if it had been read to them, with commentary, for the first time with all their constituents as co-audience.
because I think impeachment would follow immediately upon the heels of any such action
True, but the deed would be done nonetheless. Anyways I doubt Badnarik would start with something that massive. He'd begin by gutting the DEA's of their gestapo mandate and putting them in a regulatory position with the FDA, combined with putting pressure on state govs to stop pursuing drug cases. After the world _doesn't_ end, then he'd start by pardoning the oldest and most heinously unjust cases, guys who've been sent up for life because they had a single joint on them, things like that.
Civil disobedience is a very good idea in principle, and with the right enemy it can work wonders. But the WTO arrests, the RNC arrests, the willingness to shut down airplanes and whole airports because someone finds a piece of paper with "BOB" written on it, the mass detention of muslims in LA a few years back, the indisputed fact that the US has _by far_ the highest incarceration rate in the world, it's all indicative of guys in charge not really giving a shit about public perception and being more concerned with CYA and maintaining their own jobs.
Which immediately calls to mind the War on (Some) Drugs. In that conflict, a good 80 million Americans are or have at one time been the enemy.
Yikes, ouch, no! History is replete with examples of more-or-less benign (sometimes a lot less, but not actively heinous) governments that were weak to the point of being unable to prevent itself from taken over (sometimes from within, sometimes from without) and turned into an evil and twisted version of itself. The Weimar Republic, post-revolutionary France, the original Russian Duma, Italy in 1921, pre-Maoist China, Japan before Tojo, etc, etc.
We want a government that is powerful enough to do it's job and not be ignored or overthrown by some guy with a few corporate backers, but doesn't actively go looking for more places to stick it's nose in, and most importantly is held accountable for what it does.
I mean, what would be the point of some of this "put the heat to the corps" stuff if the gov then didn't have the power to enforce it?
Sure, go right ahead. But as an owner of the company, shouldn't you be keeping a close eye on it?
Can't you see the slope your sliding down or are you blinded by ideology.
No and no. Fact: corporations often do Very Bad Things, either through malice or sheer apathy. This is not exactly in dispute. Fact: limited liability tends to shield owners and employees of corporations from the effects of their decisions. That's what limited liability means, and these days only the most egrerious behavior puts the fires of legal retribution to anyone's feet but the feet-less corporation. Fact: given freedom from the consequences of one's actions, most people will begin to behave very poorly indeed. One _possible_ solution is to "pierce the corporate veil", as Badnarik put it, and hold the owners and/or employees of the company accountable for things done in the course of enhancing their wealth. But it may ultimately prove to be unusable, for reasons I described in my questions.
If you have any, I am all for hearing about additional ways to keep people from behaving like jackals under the cover of a corporate entity. Because if there's one thing I think we can agree on, it's that the current level of accountability for corporate misbehavior simply doesn't cut it.
The loan one is better, but still doesn't work. Because it's not just a loan. It's a loan with orders on how to use it. "I will give you $X in exchange for Y shares and you are obligated to enhance the value of those shares by any means necessary". If the corporation then breaks the law under your 'orders', how should you _not_ be held responsible?
That said, I'm wondering if there should be a limit on which shareholders can be held accountable. Like only those with >0.1% of the stock or more than $10,000 worth or some such. And I'm also keenly intersted on how this sort of thing would work with ownership at a remove, like mutual funds or stock owned by other corporations.
I confess curiosity. Just which state is it that is identified with the abbreviation "NB"?
All very true. It is indeed the most logical explanation of how some desert nomads came to the conclusion that pi = 3. Of course, there's one hitch. It requires that the bible was actually written by people that Americans today would categorize as "smelly, brutal, uncultured, 3rd world savages" (i.e. Gribnik and his friends Grabnok, Grubnek, and Grobnak), a notion the True Believer cannot stomach.
You must have missed the part where it declares the value of pi to be 3, and the bit about earth being flat and there being a mountaintop from which you can see the whole thing, and also the whole physical impossibility of the flood and Noah's ark saving every species on the planet, and so forth and so on. In fact, you must not have actually read the bible because you'll hit unsubstantiated claims and statements with big, gaping, asteroid-sized holes in them on page one, and it doesn't really improve after that.
Do people dislike letting go of ideas they previously held to be true? Sure, even the best scientist, atheist, or general skeptic does. But at least they make a point of _trying_ to only accept as true things which had the pesky qualities of evidence and proof. Virtually no religion has an acceptable amount, and christianity is pretty far down the list.
I think 100% of it is important
Really? Does that include the advice on how to sell your children into slavery? The proper way to commit genocide? The god-given command to execute children for not listening to mom & pop, no exceptions? The ban on eating shellfish, also punishable by death? You consider all that crap to be meaningful and of great importance to Real Life?
I have every intention of voting LP this year, but even I think this stat is both sad and funny. But hey...
Considering that the number of Libertarians in public office are so few even after decades of existence, and your chance of getting elected president are nil, do you see a future for the Libertarian Party?
I, for one, regard that as a self-fulfiling prophecy, especially when it comes from voters. As long as people think a vote for their preferred party is wasted, then they'll waste it themselves by voting for another party.
Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States
It's right there. The authority to apply a uniform tax throughout the land. We needed a 16th Ammendment to make one that wasn't uniform, but a simple sales tax should qualify nicely.
And yet again, you missed the point. It's the same sales tax, the same cost of living estimate, and the same refund, for _everyone_. Contract a few dozen economists across the country to do the calculations.
Agreed, but try pasting that graphic on CNN! The best compromise between personal accuracy and 'ease of use' I've come across so far is a cube, with one's position located on three policy axes: government spending, social freedoms, and corporate-friendliness.
Described in more detail here.
AFAIK, it would work like this.
1) Do away with the IRS and as much of Social Security as possible.
2) Institute a flat federal sales tax, maybe 5-10%(?). The same untaxed exceptions on things like food still apply. This would give an overall sales tax in the same ballpark as Britain's VAT. 3) Estimate how much taxable money was needed for the average Joe to survive each year, and then figure out how much of that he spent in taxes.
4) Refund him some >1 multiple of that amount.
The important thing is that while net prices would increase across the board, most people would not only get back ~20% of their income that they had previously lost to on-income taxes, they'd get paid _another_ 10% or so with employers not having to match social security payments. The net result is less government spending, simpler and more efficient tax collection, more _progressive_ taxation (oh the irony), and greater disposable income.
Throw in the stated Libertarian agendas of reducing military spending and ending the War on Drugs and you've got yourself a hundred-billion dollar decrease in spending right there.
Still some questions left to be sorted out. For instance, does the refund apply if you don't work at all, or only part time, or whatever? And would a federal tax apply to interstate (e.g., Internet) commerce?
They're suing 12-year-old kids for cryin out loud. They're suing researchers for winning a red-team exercise that they sponsored. You have this strange notion that logic, legal & political acumen, or even aversion to bad PR is going to stop them from behaving like a bunch of rabid dogs.
The audience.
A video only has power if it's publicly accessible. If all the camera feeds go straight to Police HQ where they disappear into vaults forever, they will be, at best, totally worthless and more likely to be abused as others have described.