Always interesting to hear some history from an antitax hobbyist, like the ones I knew in Northern California. And refreshing to hear one who favors taxation, just not the IRS/income tax.
I wonder what you mean by "all those dam socialist projects". FDR's government certainly did build a lot of dams with the money raised in 1930s taxes. But it wasn't so much socialism as corporate welfare (ask Boeing and every realestate "developer" West of the Mississippi), and an unsustainable investment in overpopulating arid areas with giant cities in sprawling suburbs.
And I suppose when you say "Proponents of the fair tax are often misguided", when you mean "opponents".
There is a cynical realism to believing that any new tax system will only make taxes higher, without any commensurate (or necessary) benefit to citizens. Because they always have. But I've noticed that the last tax reform proposal from the outgoing Republican majority was a version of the sales tax, though sometimes cast as a regressive "flat tax" to exclude the wealthy from paying their way. I just hope the radioactivity Republicans have now slimed on everything they touch won't make a "Fair Tax" like the one on which you and I agree too hot to handle. Because there'd be bipartisan support for ripping out the tyrannical, inadequate IRS, "buzzword compliant" with the Republican media, and consistent with the stated Democratic agenda to "pay as we go", and to "protect the poor while freeing the rest".
The US government system prohibits total replacement of the entire government, except in impracticably extreme cases. At the very least, 2/3 of the Senate remain in office through any election. Though a presidential election can also replace the entire House (as is on offer every 2 years), which could be preceded by a theoretcially possibly mass impeachment (or death, I suppose) of the other Senate 2/3. In reality, 95-98% of incumbents are reelected every 2 years. So the tax codes are going to be written by incumbents. That's one reason why I favor such a simple code, that could probably be specified tightly in under 100 pages, and possibly even less than 10. While income tax codes are typically many thousands of pages, even if just incremental, and often qualify as the largest laws ever written. Which means that no one but the teams of lobbyists who write them ever read them, until they're used against us.
"There is already tax revenue being generated for the government by playing an MMO."
Yes, but nearly my entire post was about how to replace the income tax with sales tax. So I specified how virtual goods would be covered: not at all, except sales tax on the fees paid to play, or prices paid in real money to actually sell virtual property.
Taxes pay for the services we consume that the government provides. They of course pay for lots more services we don't consume, and lots of people consume services they underpay in taxes. But most of us consume lots of services, including military/security/justice services, infrastructure investment, education, that might directly serve our neighbors, but thereby serve us by stabilizing and improving the society in which we live.
So taxes on virtual goods are a way for the government to fund its operations that enable real players to spend time inline. While in the virtual world it might seem like we're not consuming the real world services, but of course we are, though we don't notice. Those have to be paid for.
Though taxing income is a terrible way to pay, compared to others. I prefer a sales tax on all sales transaction. Somewhat lower rates for wholesale (goods resold), to keep transaction costs low and the economy less frictiony. Total exemption for some subsidized goods to protect the poor (and ensure people aren't penalized for not being poor). Like no taxes on raw food, raw cloth, the lowest percentile expenses on public transportation, primary shelter and energy consumed there, and essential healthcare including nutrition and prevention. And a very low rate on pure minority equity transfers, like 1 or 0.01% the full rate on stock trades, unless transferring control of the corporation. That would encourage people to save rather than consume unnecessarily. Which offers more money for investment, by them or by their banks. And actually correlates taxation amounts to the amount of benefit people derive from the country, beyond the crudest basic protections that everyone should have. While making the tax collectable from a much smaller population of vendors, who already keep transaction records without increasing the costs of reporting, and who are much more controllable with the threat of interfering with their business than are the hundreds of millions of humans, many of whom cheat on income taxes. And without invading the privacy of every American, collecting from the aggregate without tying transactions to identites without a court order.
I'd say that since our $12T GDP currently spends about $4T annually on Federal, state and various local scopes of taxation, we could collect about 33% total tax, probably 25% Federal and 8% state/local. States/localities could of course change their own rates. The increased efficiency of the system, including shrinking the leviathan IRS while collecting more of what's due (on a monthly/quarterly basis, rather than annually), would probably afford lowered rates, maybe down to 15-20% Federal. Which extra money would be available for investment. While welfare and other social subsidy expenses could be shrunk, at least the administration which currently processes their income tax as a noncollectable exception, rather than just not bothering with them at all. And those rates balance the budget, without debt, while paying off the huge outstanding debt we've created the past 230 years. Though the vast majority of that debt has been spent the past 6 years, while (not ironically) cutting taxes on those most able to pay them, who benefit the most from our country's expenses.
Note that I'm talking about ripping out the income tax by its roots, and totally replacing it with a simple sales tax.
In virtual worlds, the taxes would be collected only on real money taken in exchange for services. The arbitrary (and impossibly complicated) basis for taxation today, "pay what we say approximates what we spend, or go to jail and/or surrender your property", cannot deal with anything like our modern economy. After military spending, we spend more on debt service than on any other government service, clear demonstration that our revenue system is totally disconnected from our economy and government, while remaining its most essential core.
The US economy has now changed to one unrecognizable to the economists who institued the income tax less than a century ago. It's time to revolutionize the government's income to free the rest of the economy to exploit the opportunities while solving the problems of this new age.
No, moderators are not required to read the definition of, say, "Troll", when they apply it. When do you think they are?
Nor are they required to read the comment they're metamoderating, though it is offered.
I have discussed very politely with the editors some extreme cases of bad moderation, like modbombs across all of my unrelated posts for several days. That part of the system kicked back a personal response with "well, I see that you've been mod'ed down X times in Y hours, so you must deserve it". After the second time the same circular trust of their broken system was confirmed, so I lowered my expectations of that "appeal" channel to zero.
The editors have been very helpful in swiftly addressing my reports of bugs, including some that were my own user error. So I know that the way I'm using the appeal emails is appropriate. It is perfectly clear that they place improving the moderation system very low, probably below updating the list of "Topics" here that reflects the last days of the previous century.
I just want to make downmods, which have a higher cost to the poster, have a higher cost to the moderator. The metamod system shows no sign of being any more effective than are those fake crosswalk buttons that say they're requesting the traffic signal to change, but merely eat up a few more seconds distracting you while you wait. Or at least it's largely inadequate to disciplining the "TrollMods" who abuse moderation. Which is why I prefer making people interact with the content they're mod'ding down. Because I also post replies to bad moderations, which gives metamod'ders more content with which to interact, which often has a good effect on later "countermods". And possibly more effect on those metamod'ders.
I dig the meta discussions. I make networked conf systems, social networks, and Slashdot is a great lab. Like a safari. It's dangerous, but the wild has surprising lessons.
Your certainty that the moderation system is very good, in disagreement with my statement to the contrary, conflicts with your disclaimer that you might not know what you're talking about.
And in fact I have not claimed that you have lowered the quality of discourse on Slashdot. I claimed that the quality of the logic in your post is consistent with the low quality of discoure on Slashdot. Though your question is not necessarily a strawman, because I suppose that your post does lower the quality, though no more than the other typically low quality posts. But that point connects directly to both the popularity here of blatant strawman arguments (and bad statitistics), and their usual origin in projecting the poster's inner conflicts, usually a suppressed fear of their own weaknesses. So I've backed up my claims, which is rare sport here on Slashdot.
You want to learn about the limits of moderation, test it. Try posting something with some unpopular (though sincere and reasonable) facts or conclusions, then getting modbombed. Anonymously mod'ed down with obviously inappropriate mods like "Redundant" or "Offtopic", when the post is objectively neither. In addition to the extremely popular "Troll", which is abused to mean "I don't like it" when it has a much different, and more specific (though still fairly subjective) meaning. Or "Flamebait", which is applied to flames, not flamebaits, which flamebaits are nearly entirely in the attitude of the reader, not the poster. All anonymous. Then try getting modbombed in lots of other, unrelated posts. Or by what must be a gang of modbombers, who mod down so many of your unrelated posts (indiscriminately, regardless of their content) across many threads with obvious insincere moderation, until you're prevented from posting for days. This tends to happen right when college breaks really kick in, so we can see which population probably feeds the "TrollMod" armies. There are even countersites to Slashdot for discussing which posts and posters to gang up on, pooling mod points for attacks. And there are "Slashstalkers", with whom I've dealt several times, who live to mod down specific people against whom they have a vendetta.
"Abuse" does not at all necessarily indicate a "malevolent purpose". I can abuse cough syrup with the purpose of getting to sleep during insomnia though I don't have a cough, but become addicted and addled. Slashdot's interface is so opaque that there's often no way to detect the "purpose", except to disagree, often anonymously through moderation (and its even more secret metamoderation). Abuse just means people are using it wrong, either in effect or contrary to its designed expectations. Mod'ing a controversial post "Troll" when it was never designed to produce nothing but a reflex post adding nothing to the discussion is abuse. Whether because the mod'er doesn't know what "Troll" really means, or because mod'ing "Troll" is their way of disagreeing (anonymously, towards suppressing the post from being seen by anyone at all). TrollMods are people who habitually attack posts with anonymous abused of the moderation system rather than disagree with a counterpost. The ease with which moderation is used wrong, "abused", demonstrates the problems with the system.
Everyone has a right to an opinion. Even to be wrong - baseless opinions are as real as wrong facts. But being wrong in public can be expected to be corrected, or just criticized, by people like me who will argue with you. On Slashdot, being right in public can be expected to be anonymously attacked with crude, yet sometimes effective (in destruction) tools. The fixes I suggested would go a long way to keeping the meta/moderation system more interactive, and thereby more accountable.
Slashdot is kinda fun. Its population includes many people with whom it is a pleasure and an education to converse. I've learned a lot here. Those people are diluted by a larger number of bad people, who have nothing to teach but how to do it wrong. And then there's the much larger populati
Er, you've posted 23 times. You don't have anywhere near enough experience to make the kinds of claims (and dismissals) that you're making.
Which is reflective of the quality of discourse on Slashdot. Kinda fun, but far from rigorous enough to be taken seriously. The shabby meta/moderation system reinforces that low quality.
No, I'm saying that you're a braying jackass who's calling 3000 people killed, millions terrorized and breathing toxic smoke, and other mayhem "a day off from work".
And you're dragging out any number of other scenes of mayhem to justify your total inaction except to downplay that disaster.
Don't call me "sir", you hypocritical cunt. You have done nothing to help anyone with anything, and have said the kinds of stupid shit that get people beat to a pulp here in NYC, if they're insane enough to try saying it. But you will do it again, safely removed at the end of your Internet wire from any consequences.
I'll call you out again on my question of what the hell you have ever done to help any of those disasters, that makes you think you can rattle them off to minimize the damage of one of them. What have you done, other than type bullshit at me?
Before you reply with more asinine trash, go do something useful for at least one of the catastrophes you're invoking as if you have any right to their pain. While I have lived through several of those disasters personally, as have my friends and family, and done other personal actions to help mitigate most of the others you think you can itemize as if you have anything to do with them.
Then don't bother replying. You have nothing to teach anyone about selfrighteousness except a bad example of it.
Vile scumbag. You're beneath contempt. You won't even get any more of that from me. Abandonment to your own corrosive delusion is all you deserve.
You think this is a competition? You want to turn this into some kind of intramural sport, or think that this is some kind of whining?
FYI, I lived in New Orleans until 2003, and personally handled the evacuation of an entire family from the Katrina Flood. I was back in NO before even a fraction had moved back, working on reconstruction. And have been back several times.
What the hell have you done to help? Where were you during the various catastrophes in LA/NO/NYC/DC? What the hell makes you think you have anything to say about mayhem? You saw something on TV, and think you know what you're talking about?
You obviously don't. Keep your gibberish to yourself when there are serious issues for people with some actual perspective to discuss. Or try telling your crap to my neighbors in NYC, like the firehouse in my block. This is like some kind of videogame to you, isn't it?
My post does not duplicate the points made in any other post in this thread. TrollMods stagger around Slashdot overdosed on stupidity, pushing their poison on everyone.
Slashdot's moderation and meta-moderation offer one example of getting useful metadata in a non-trusted environment.
An example of unaccountable, gameable metadata that generates untrustworthy info that is almost as useless, through abuse, as it is useful.
Slashdot's moderation could:
Require moderators to read the description of their mod before applying it
Require a moderator to include a comment whenever downmod'ing
Require metamoderators to read the comments whenever metamoderating
Allow readers to specify (even anonymous) moderations as unfair, weighting those moderators' mods to zero
Those few improvements could introduce some accountability and feedback into the now mostly abused meta/moderation system. Until then, Slashdot has little to teach the world about the right way to accumulate useful metadata in an untrustworthy environment.
I too have traveled widely in the world (though I'm just getting started). I'm from New York, though I've lived in some of the most international places, like New Orleans, Northern California, and even outside the US, in Canada. I never get any anti-"American"-ism directed at me, because I'm a real person, not an instance of the country in which I was lucky to be born. And because the people I've met all seemed to have good expectations of NYC as someplace they'd like to have a friend, and someplace that's not quite "the USA".
BTW, I've noticed that many still existing tribal peoples use their word for "the people" as the name for their own people, which is an even more self-absorbed perspective than Americans like me, yet I've never heard anyone begrudging their exclusive claim to be "the people". I suppose that these differential semantics reflect the asymmetric power relationships, like the difference many Black people hear depending on the color and status of a person calling them "nigger".
I haven't compared the planebombings to any other. All I've said, in response to people saying it was a negligible event, not worth broadcasting to the public on the EBS, is that it was a terrible event, and a national emergency all day long (and for longer in less stark ways). It's not a competition between those planebombings and, say, a given day in a Nazi deathcamp, or a Soviet deathcamp, or a Maoist deathcamp, or a US deathcamp for Apaches/etc, or in Rwanda. Or the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed by Americans in the past couple of decades, or Israelis or Palestinians killed by each other.
None of those "inhuman" events are acceptable. And I have strong feelings about them all, which I'm ready to bring to anyone who would accept them. But I am an American (for want of a better word), among my other identities of North American, Westerner, Northerner, English speaker, my ethnic/gender/species identities. As an American, it is my personal and formal obligation to actively defend my country from abuse. From enemies both foreign and domestic. For my conscience, and for my own self interest in collective survival.
Which is why I asked "Why do they hate America?" when trollMods and "hicks" try to suppress the importance of the attacks on my city, our city. I know why many people hate "America" around the world. I even have some idea why some Americans hate the America that NYC represents. But I still want to ask them why. Because I'm interested in hearing what they might say. I'm interested in making sure someone asks these people that question, when their fellow travelers have been asking that insinuating question without any cause, whenever they've heard Americans with a conscience either oppose or merely question the catastrophe in justice and freedom masquerading as patriotism the past 5 years.
Margaret Mead traveled more widely in deeper terms than mere geography than probably anyone else I know of - a real "people person". She famously replied to the question "can a small group of determined people change the world?" with the inspiring truth: "they're the only ones who ever have". I am a determined person with no specific agenda except freeing minds of anyone I can without too much pain, depending on how close to me they might be. So I am enthusiastic about continuing to move through our world dealing with these people. They're often disappointing, but they're all we've got.
TrollMod calls my offer to explain reality to some hick "Flamebait", but apparently loves the hick's insistence that the 9/11/2001 planebombings were no big deal in NYC and DC.
OK, I'll come out to your godforsaken neck of the woods. Where are you exactly, so I can explain narcissism to you in person, since you're too much the coward to come here?
Three thousand people dead. Toxic smoke inhaled by tens of millions for weeks. Hundreds of people jumping from the top of the burning towers to die in the fall rather than burn to death. While their families and everyone else watched in horror.
"Take the WTC buildings out of the equation"? What could possibly justify that derangement of reality?
You should come here to NYC some time and I'll explain it to you much more persuasively than your demented insensitivity allows you safely across the Internet. I'm sure the fear that is the only way a human could dismiss the horror of the actual 9/11/2001 attacks will also keep you safely in your bubble, far away from the reality of NYC.
What kind of "news" story makes such a big deal out of such a fundamentally important claim - "organic matter older than the Sun found in Canadian meteorites", but doesn't say exactly what makes these "globules" qualify as "organic"? The only details about the claimed "organic" matter are that they "resemble minute hollow balls with carbon-rich shells", where "minute" is vaguely implied to be smaller than 10 um^3. (a billionth the volume of a grape).
There's more info detailing that the Yukon is cold and unpopulated than any info about how this carbon is "organic".
In fact, practically all carbon on the Earth is older than the Sun. Carbon is produced in the cores of unusually massive stars, then distributed across the Universe after the star explodes in supernova or similarly huge cataclysm. Just composition of carbon, and the other "organic" elements (nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen) essential to Earth organic chemistry, doesn't make these tiny grains accurately called "organic globules".
Maybe actual science, written by an actual journalist, could report the more important facts behind this sensational headline.
The emergency wasn't over just because the planes hit.
Evacuating the WTC wasn't the only possible function for the EBS after the attacks had (apparently) subsided. It's not just the "Emergency Warning System".
Just alerting the panicked people would have helped a lot.
Just the announcement that the government was dealing with the emergency would have helped keep calm and order. After watching Katrina so safely from your same TV, you probably noticed that it's far from a given that Bush or his keystone kops would even know that thousands of refugees would be trapped in a Superdome days after their city flooded. And comfortably watching Bush's 7 minutes pretending to read _My Pet Goat_ while planes trashed the WTC and Pentagon should tell you that in fact the government didn't really know what was happening. Though even a bogus, prerecorded "we're still in control, everything's going to be OK" message would have helped keep the huge NYC crowds more safely calm.
An actual instructional message would have been "please walk northwards to Central Park", or just the standard "please return to your homes and offices". Instead, millions breathed toxic smoke. Which, as long as we're talking about Bush's criminal failure to protect Americans with info, I'll point out his EPA chief, Whitman (R-NJ), lied about the test results she announced the following day, saying there were no toxics exceeding unhealthy levels, though she had ample reports that people were being poisoned.
It was far from clear the attacks were almost certainly over. The WTC had been attacked 8 years earlier with a truck bomb that failed. There was absolutely no reason to believe the planebombs wouldn't be followed by truck bombs.
And in your insane denial fantasy, grounding all the planes around the country doesn't reflect a nationwide emergency. Have you noticed the past 5 years that the same government that didn't broadcast any instructions where the attacks were perpetrated has used the attacks to justify a nationwide emergency the past 5 years?
Ohio. It must be pretty comfortable being out of range.
Yeah, you were in Columbus. We were in NYC, with planes roaring out of the sky into our buildings, millions of us engulfed in clouds of toxic smoke, hundreds of thousands fleeing on foot over bridges. After the same building had almost been knocked down only 8 years earlier. With the biggest TV/radio towers blown up, the main telephone centers smoking ruins, the mobile phone system swamped. The rumors running through the panicked crowd - that's bigger than your entire city - especially some that a plane had already smashed into the Pentagon, and then that another was headed for the White House (perhaps already hitting it or Congress). That could have been mitigated by the remaining radio/TV broadcasts carrying at least a message that the authorities were in control, so the millions of people who need that reassurance didn't lose their minds in terror. A little bit of incomplete info, with a massively lethal threat already killing thousands right in your face, is the recipe for terror. That's why they do it, and exactly what the government, including its EBS, is employed to protect against.
So you were "concerned" in Columbus. Millions of New Yorkers were terrorized in an aerial attack causing mayhem that lasted all day.
'Nuff said. Except the huge amount of "Homeland Security" money you and your matchlessly corrupt state collected the past 5 years, without being a "target". Where did you get that idea from, anyway? That's not even paranoid, just selfserving fearmongering combined with complacency. While you call New Yorkers, already the damaged targets of these attacks twice, "paranoid".
The purpose of the 9/11/2001 attacks was to create terror. It worked. A broadcast over the EBS, or EAS, or whatever it's currently called, would have worked against the total terror. Instead, New Yorkers saw authority only in the form of firefighters racing downtown, and later tanks driving through the streets of Manhattan. An emergency alert, amid the familiar klaxon we were all trained to recognize as the voice of authority continuing through an emergency to protect and organize us, would have helped calm the fear.
Regardless of whatever obscure technical mission statement might lie in some file cabinet somewhere, Americans expect that the broadcasts will kick in to tell us what to do, where to go, what's happening, or at least that the people whose job is emergencies are on the job. People like you who think the system will not kick in are in the extreme minority. The limited scope of the system combined with its much broader expected service is yet another obvious flaw in the system.
What really bothers me about coincidence theorists like you insane denial propagandists is that you're anarchists. We pay over a million people over $3 TRILLION a year to "drive the bus". They're supposed to protect us on days like 9/11/2001, but they did not. That does not mean my expectations are too high, but that yours are too low. I hope you're satisfied.
Slashdot Mirror
Always interesting to hear some history from an antitax hobbyist, like the ones I knew in Northern California. And refreshing to hear one who favors taxation, just not the IRS/income tax.
I wonder what you mean by "all those dam socialist projects". FDR's government certainly did build a lot of dams with the money raised in 1930s taxes. But it wasn't so much socialism as corporate welfare (ask Boeing and every realestate "developer" West of the Mississippi), and an unsustainable investment in overpopulating arid areas with giant cities in sprawling suburbs.
And I suppose when you say "Proponents of the fair tax are often misguided", when you mean "opponents".
There is a cynical realism to believing that any new tax system will only make taxes higher, without any commensurate (or necessary) benefit to citizens. Because they always have. But I've noticed that the last tax reform proposal from the outgoing Republican majority was a version of the sales tax, though sometimes cast as a regressive "flat tax" to exclude the wealthy from paying their way. I just hope the radioactivity Republicans have now slimed on everything they touch won't make a "Fair Tax" like the one on which you and I agree too hot to handle. Because there'd be bipartisan support for ripping out the tyrannical, inadequate IRS, "buzzword compliant" with the Republican media, and consistent with the stated Democratic agenda to "pay as we go", and to "protect the poor while freeing the rest".
The US government system prohibits total replacement of the entire government, except in impracticably extreme cases. At the very least, 2/3 of the Senate remain in office through any election. Though a presidential election can also replace the entire House (as is on offer every 2 years), which could be preceded by a theoretcially possibly mass impeachment (or death, I suppose) of the other Senate 2/3. In reality, 95-98% of incumbents are reelected every 2 years. So the tax codes are going to be written by incumbents. That's one reason why I favor such a simple code, that could probably be specified tightly in under 100 pages, and possibly even less than 10. While income tax codes are typically many thousands of pages, even if just incremental, and often qualify as the largest laws ever written. Which means that no one but the teams of lobbyists who write them ever read them, until they're used against us.
"There is already tax revenue being generated for the government by playing an MMO."
Yes, but nearly my entire post was about how to replace the income tax with sales tax. So I specified how virtual goods would be covered: not at all, except sales tax on the fees paid to play, or prices paid in real money to actually sell virtual property.
Taxes pay for the services we consume that the government provides. They of course pay for lots more services we don't consume, and lots of people consume services they underpay in taxes. But most of us consume lots of services, including military/security/justice services, infrastructure investment, education, that might directly serve our neighbors, but thereby serve us by stabilizing and improving the society in which we live.
So taxes on virtual goods are a way for the government to fund its operations that enable real players to spend time inline. While in the virtual world it might seem like we're not consuming the real world services, but of course we are, though we don't notice. Those have to be paid for.
Though taxing income is a terrible way to pay, compared to others. I prefer a sales tax on all sales transaction. Somewhat lower rates for wholesale (goods resold), to keep transaction costs low and the economy less frictiony. Total exemption for some subsidized goods to protect the poor (and ensure people aren't penalized for not being poor). Like no taxes on raw food, raw cloth, the lowest percentile expenses on public transportation, primary shelter and energy consumed there, and essential healthcare including nutrition and prevention. And a very low rate on pure minority equity transfers, like 1 or 0.01% the full rate on stock trades, unless transferring control of the corporation. That would encourage people to save rather than consume unnecessarily. Which offers more money for investment, by them or by their banks. And actually correlates taxation amounts to the amount of benefit people derive from the country, beyond the crudest basic protections that everyone should have. While making the tax collectable from a much smaller population of vendors, who already keep transaction records without increasing the costs of reporting, and who are much more controllable with the threat of interfering with their business than are the hundreds of millions of humans, many of whom cheat on income taxes. And without invading the privacy of every American, collecting from the aggregate without tying transactions to identites without a court order.
I'd say that since our $12T GDP currently spends about $4T annually on Federal, state and various local scopes of taxation, we could collect about 33% total tax, probably 25% Federal and 8% state/local. States/localities could of course change their own rates. The increased efficiency of the system, including shrinking the leviathan IRS while collecting more of what's due (on a monthly/quarterly basis, rather than annually), would probably afford lowered rates, maybe down to 15-20% Federal. Which extra money would be available for investment. While welfare and other social subsidy expenses could be shrunk, at least the administration which currently processes their income tax as a noncollectable exception, rather than just not bothering with them at all. And those rates balance the budget, without debt, while paying off the huge outstanding debt we've created the past 230 years. Though the vast majority of that debt has been spent the past 6 years, while (not ironically) cutting taxes on those most able to pay them, who benefit the most from our country's expenses.
Note that I'm talking about ripping out the income tax by its roots, and totally replacing it with a simple sales tax.
In virtual worlds, the taxes would be collected only on real money taken in exchange for services. The arbitrary (and impossibly complicated) basis for taxation today, "pay what we say approximates what we spend, or go to jail and/or surrender your property", cannot deal with anything like our modern economy. After military spending, we spend more on debt service than on any other government service, clear demonstration that our revenue system is totally disconnected from our economy and government, while remaining its most essential core.
The US economy has now changed to one unrecognizable to the economists who institued the income tax less than a century ago. It's time to revolutionize the government's income to free the rest of the economy to exploit the opportunities while solving the problems of this new age.
No, moderators are not required to read the definition of, say, "Troll", when they apply it. When do you think they are?
Nor are they required to read the comment they're metamoderating, though it is offered.
I have discussed very politely with the editors some extreme cases of bad moderation, like modbombs across all of my unrelated posts for several days. That part of the system kicked back a personal response with "well, I see that you've been mod'ed down X times in Y hours, so you must deserve it". After the second time the same circular trust of their broken system was confirmed, so I lowered my expectations of that "appeal" channel to zero.
The editors have been very helpful in swiftly addressing my reports of bugs, including some that were my own user error. So I know that the way I'm using the appeal emails is appropriate. It is perfectly clear that they place improving the moderation system very low, probably below updating the list of "Topics" here that reflects the last days of the previous century.
I just want to make downmods, which have a higher cost to the poster, have a higher cost to the moderator. The metamod system shows no sign of being any more effective than are those fake crosswalk buttons that say they're requesting the traffic signal to change, but merely eat up a few more seconds distracting you while you wait. Or at least it's largely inadequate to disciplining the "TrollMods" who abuse moderation. Which is why I prefer making people interact with the content they're mod'ding down. Because I also post replies to bad moderations, which gives metamod'ders more content with which to interact, which often has a good effect on later "countermods". And possibly more effect on those metamod'ders.
I dig the meta discussions. I make networked conf systems, social networks, and Slashdot is a great lab. Like a safari. It's dangerous, but the wild has surprising lessons.
No, I made it up all by myself. Who pushed that sense of humor on you?
Your certainty that the moderation system is very good, in disagreement with my statement to the contrary, conflicts with your disclaimer that you might not know what you're talking about.
And in fact I have not claimed that you have lowered the quality of discourse on Slashdot. I claimed that the quality of the logic in your post is consistent with the low quality of discoure on Slashdot. Though your question is not necessarily a strawman, because I suppose that your post does lower the quality, though no more than the other typically low quality posts. But that point connects directly to both the popularity here of blatant strawman arguments (and bad statitistics), and their usual origin in projecting the poster's inner conflicts, usually a suppressed fear of their own weaknesses. So I've backed up my claims, which is rare sport here on Slashdot.
You want to learn about the limits of moderation, test it. Try posting something with some unpopular (though sincere and reasonable) facts or conclusions, then getting modbombed. Anonymously mod'ed down with obviously inappropriate mods like "Redundant" or "Offtopic", when the post is objectively neither. In addition to the extremely popular "Troll", which is abused to mean "I don't like it" when it has a much different, and more specific (though still fairly subjective) meaning. Or "Flamebait", which is applied to flames, not flamebaits, which flamebaits are nearly entirely in the attitude of the reader, not the poster. All anonymous. Then try getting modbombed in lots of other, unrelated posts. Or by what must be a gang of modbombers, who mod down so many of your unrelated posts (indiscriminately, regardless of their content) across many threads with obvious insincere moderation, until you're prevented from posting for days. This tends to happen right when college breaks really kick in, so we can see which population probably feeds the "TrollMod" armies. There are even countersites to Slashdot for discussing which posts and posters to gang up on, pooling mod points for attacks. And there are "Slashstalkers", with whom I've dealt several times, who live to mod down specific people against whom they have a vendetta.
"Abuse" does not at all necessarily indicate a "malevolent purpose". I can abuse cough syrup with the purpose of getting to sleep during insomnia though I don't have a cough, but become addicted and addled. Slashdot's interface is so opaque that there's often no way to detect the "purpose", except to disagree, often anonymously through moderation (and its even more secret metamoderation). Abuse just means people are using it wrong, either in effect or contrary to its designed expectations. Mod'ing a controversial post "Troll" when it was never designed to produce nothing but a reflex post adding nothing to the discussion is abuse. Whether because the mod'er doesn't know what "Troll" really means, or because mod'ing "Troll" is their way of disagreeing (anonymously, towards suppressing the post from being seen by anyone at all). TrollMods are people who habitually attack posts with anonymous abused of the moderation system rather than disagree with a counterpost. The ease with which moderation is used wrong, "abused", demonstrates the problems with the system.
Everyone has a right to an opinion. Even to be wrong - baseless opinions are as real as wrong facts. But being wrong in public can be expected to be corrected, or just criticized, by people like me who will argue with you. On Slashdot, being right in public can be expected to be anonymously attacked with crude, yet sometimes effective (in destruction) tools. The fixes I suggested would go a long way to keeping the meta/moderation system more interactive, and thereby more accountable.
Slashdot is kinda fun. Its population includes many people with whom it is a pleasure and an education to converse. I've learned a lot here. Those people are diluted by a larger number of bad people, who have nothing to teach but how to do it wrong. And then there's the much larger populati
Er, you've posted 23 times. You don't have anywhere near enough experience to make the kinds of claims (and dismissals) that you're making.
Which is reflective of the quality of discourse on Slashdot. Kinda fun, but far from rigorous enough to be taken seriously. The shabby meta/moderation system reinforces that low quality.
No, I'm saying that you're a braying jackass who's calling 3000 people killed, millions terrorized and breathing toxic smoke, and other mayhem "a day off from work".
And you're dragging out any number of other scenes of mayhem to justify your total inaction except to downplay that disaster.
Don't call me "sir", you hypocritical cunt. You have done nothing to help anyone with anything, and have said the kinds of stupid shit that get people beat to a pulp here in NYC, if they're insane enough to try saying it. But you will do it again, safely removed at the end of your Internet wire from any consequences.
I'll call you out again on my question of what the hell you have ever done to help any of those disasters, that makes you think you can rattle them off to minimize the damage of one of them. What have you done, other than type bullshit at me?
Before you reply with more asinine trash, go do something useful for at least one of the catastrophes you're invoking as if you have any right to their pain. While I have lived through several of those disasters personally, as have my friends and family, and done other personal actions to help mitigate most of the others you think you can itemize as if you have anything to do with them.
Then don't bother replying. You have nothing to teach anyone about selfrighteousness except a bad example of it.
Vile scumbag. You're beneath contempt. You won't even get any more of that from me. Abandonment to your own corrosive delusion is all you deserve.
You think this is a competition? You want to turn this into some kind of intramural sport, or think that this is some kind of whining?
FYI, I lived in New Orleans until 2003, and personally handled the evacuation of an entire family from the Katrina Flood. I was back in NO before even a fraction had moved back, working on reconstruction. And have been back several times.
What the hell have you done to help? Where were you during the various catastrophes in LA/NO/NYC/DC? What the hell makes you think you have anything to say about mayhem? You saw something on TV, and think you know what you're talking about?
You obviously don't. Keep your gibberish to yourself when there are serious issues for people with some actual perspective to discuss. Or try telling your crap to my neighbors in NYC, like the firehouse in my block. This is like some kind of videogame to you, isn't it?
Moderation -1
100% Redundant
My post does not duplicate the points made in any other post in this thread. TrollMods stagger around Slashdot overdosed on stupidity, pushing their poison on everyone.
An example of unaccountable, gameable metadata that generates untrustworthy info that is almost as useless, through abuse, as it is useful.
Slashdot's moderation could:
Those few improvements could introduce some accountability and feedback into the now mostly abused meta/moderation system. Until then, Slashdot has little to teach the world about the right way to accumulate useful metadata in an untrustworthy environment.
I too have traveled widely in the world (though I'm just getting started). I'm from New York, though I've lived in some of the most international places, like New Orleans, Northern California, and even outside the US, in Canada. I never get any anti-"American"-ism directed at me, because I'm a real person, not an instance of the country in which I was lucky to be born. And because the people I've met all seemed to have good expectations of NYC as someplace they'd like to have a friend, and someplace that's not quite "the USA".
BTW, I've noticed that many still existing tribal peoples use their word for "the people" as the name for their own people, which is an even more self-absorbed perspective than Americans like me, yet I've never heard anyone begrudging their exclusive claim to be "the people". I suppose that these differential semantics reflect the asymmetric power relationships, like the difference many Black people hear depending on the color and status of a person calling them "nigger".
I haven't compared the planebombings to any other. All I've said, in response to people saying it was a negligible event, not worth broadcasting to the public on the EBS, is that it was a terrible event, and a national emergency all day long (and for longer in less stark ways). It's not a competition between those planebombings and, say, a given day in a Nazi deathcamp, or a Soviet deathcamp, or a Maoist deathcamp, or a US deathcamp for Apaches/etc, or in Rwanda. Or the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed by Americans in the past couple of decades, or Israelis or Palestinians killed by each other.
None of those "inhuman" events are acceptable. And I have strong feelings about them all, which I'm ready to bring to anyone who would accept them. But I am an American (for want of a better word), among my other identities of North American, Westerner, Northerner, English speaker, my ethnic/gender/species identities. As an American, it is my personal and formal obligation to actively defend my country from abuse. From enemies both foreign and domestic. For my conscience, and for my own self interest in collective survival.
Which is why I asked "Why do they hate America?" when trollMods and "hicks" try to suppress the importance of the attacks on my city, our city. I know why many people hate "America" around the world. I even have some idea why some Americans hate the America that NYC represents. But I still want to ask them why. Because I'm interested in hearing what they might say. I'm interested in making sure someone asks these people that question, when their fellow travelers have been asking that insinuating question without any cause, whenever they've heard Americans with a conscience either oppose or merely question the catastrophe in justice and freedom masquerading as patriotism the past 5 years.
Margaret Mead traveled more widely in deeper terms than mere geography than probably anyone else I know of - a real "people person". She famously replied to the question "can a small group of determined people change the world?" with the inspiring truth: "they're the only ones who ever have". I am a determined person with no specific agenda except freeing minds of anyone I can without too much pain, depending on how close to me they might be. So I am enthusiastic about continuing to move through our world dealing with these people. They're often disappointing, but they're all we've got.
The mirror is you. Fascist America hater.
But since you're asking to get kicked while you're down, I suggest you get over "November 7, 2006". You disgusting nerd traitor. Republican pedophile.
Moderation -1
100% Flamebait
TrollMod calls my offer to explain reality to some hick "Flamebait", but apparently loves the hick's insistence that the 9/11/2001 planebombings were no big deal in NYC and DC.
Why do they hate America?
Worthless junk? That's what Slashdot and the Uncyclopedia are for.
OK, I'll come out to your godforsaken neck of the woods. Where are you exactly, so I can explain narcissism to you in person, since you're too much the coward to come here?
Three thousand people dead. Toxic smoke inhaled by tens of millions for weeks. Hundreds of people jumping from the top of the burning towers to die in the fall rather than burn to death. While their families and everyone else watched in horror.
"Take the WTC buildings out of the equation"? What could possibly justify that derangement of reality?
You should come here to NYC some time and I'll explain it to you much more persuasively than your demented insensitivity allows you safely across the Internet. I'm sure the fear that is the only way a human could dismiss the horror of the actual 9/11/2001 attacks will also keep you safely in your bubble, far away from the reality of NYC.
What kind of "news" story makes such a big deal out of such a fundamentally important claim - "organic matter older than the Sun found in Canadian meteorites", but doesn't say exactly what makes these "globules" qualify as "organic"? The only details about the claimed "organic" matter are that they "resemble minute hollow balls with carbon-rich shells", where "minute" is vaguely implied to be smaller than 10 um^3. (a billionth the volume of a grape).
There's more info detailing that the Yukon is cold and unpopulated than any info about how this carbon is "organic".
In fact, practically all carbon on the Earth is older than the Sun. Carbon is produced in the cores of unusually massive stars, then distributed across the Universe after the star explodes in supernova or similarly huge cataclysm. Just composition of carbon, and the other "organic" elements (nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen) essential to Earth organic chemistry, doesn't make these tiny grains accurately called "organic globules".
Maybe actual science, written by an actual journalist, could report the more important facts behind this sensational headline.
Yeah, that unreality of New York City. Not the reality of your TV set. How lonely you must be, the only sane one left.
The emergency wasn't over just because the planes hit.
Evacuating the WTC wasn't the only possible function for the EBS after the attacks had (apparently) subsided. It's not just the "Emergency Warning System".
Just alerting the panicked people would have helped a lot.
Just the announcement that the government was dealing with the emergency would have helped keep calm and order. After watching Katrina so safely from your same TV, you probably noticed that it's far from a given that Bush or his keystone kops would even know that thousands of refugees would be trapped in a Superdome days after their city flooded. And comfortably watching Bush's 7 minutes pretending to read _My Pet Goat_ while planes trashed the WTC and Pentagon should tell you that in fact the government didn't really know what was happening. Though even a bogus, prerecorded "we're still in control, everything's going to be OK" message would have helped keep the huge NYC crowds more safely calm.
An actual instructional message would have been "please walk northwards to Central Park", or just the standard "please return to your homes and offices". Instead, millions breathed toxic smoke. Which, as long as we're talking about Bush's criminal failure to protect Americans with info, I'll point out his EPA chief, Whitman (R-NJ), lied about the test results she announced the following day, saying there were no toxics exceeding unhealthy levels, though she had ample reports that people were being poisoned.
It was far from clear the attacks were almost certainly over. The WTC had been attacked 8 years earlier with a truck bomb that failed. There was absolutely no reason to believe the planebombs wouldn't be followed by truck bombs.
And in your insane denial fantasy, grounding all the planes around the country doesn't reflect a nationwide emergency. Have you noticed the past 5 years that the same government that didn't broadcast any instructions where the attacks were perpetrated has used the attacks to justify a nationwide emergency the past 5 years?
Ohio. It must be pretty comfortable being out of range.
Yeah, you were in Columbus. We were in NYC, with planes roaring out of the sky into our buildings, millions of us engulfed in clouds of toxic smoke, hundreds of thousands fleeing on foot over bridges. After the same building had almost been knocked down only 8 years earlier. With the biggest TV/radio towers blown up, the main telephone centers smoking ruins, the mobile phone system swamped. The rumors running through the panicked crowd - that's bigger than your entire city - especially some that a plane had already smashed into the Pentagon, and then that another was headed for the White House (perhaps already hitting it or Congress). That could have been mitigated by the remaining radio/TV broadcasts carrying at least a message that the authorities were in control, so the millions of people who need that reassurance didn't lose their minds in terror. A little bit of incomplete info, with a massively lethal threat already killing thousands right in your face, is the recipe for terror. That's why they do it, and exactly what the government, including its EBS, is employed to protect against.
So you were "concerned" in Columbus. Millions of New Yorkers were terrorized in an aerial attack causing mayhem that lasted all day.
'Nuff said. Except the huge amount of "Homeland Security" money you and your matchlessly corrupt state collected the past 5 years, without being a "target". Where did you get that idea from, anyway? That's not even paranoid, just selfserving fearmongering combined with complacency. While you call New Yorkers, already the damaged targets of these attacks twice, "paranoid".
Except when DC and NYC get planebombed.
If you heard the EBS in NYC or DC on 9/11/2001 you need to keep away from the crack.
But I'm not surprised that we in the Blue States subsidize your dangerous regions with free alert systems that fail us when we need them here.
The purpose of the 9/11/2001 attacks was to create terror. It worked. A broadcast over the EBS, or EAS, or whatever it's currently called, would have worked against the total terror. Instead, New Yorkers saw authority only in the form of firefighters racing downtown, and later tanks driving through the streets of Manhattan. An emergency alert, amid the familiar klaxon we were all trained to recognize as the voice of authority continuing through an emergency to protect and organize us, would have helped calm the fear.
Regardless of whatever obscure technical mission statement might lie in some file cabinet somewhere, Americans expect that the broadcasts will kick in to tell us what to do, where to go, what's happening, or at least that the people whose job is emergencies are on the job. People like you who think the system will not kick in are in the extreme minority. The limited scope of the system combined with its much broader expected service is yet another obvious flaw in the system.
What really bothers me about coincidence theorists like you insane denial propagandists is that you're anarchists. We pay over a million people over $3 TRILLION a year to "drive the bus". They're supposed to protect us on days like 9/11/2001, but they did not. That does not mean my expectations are too high, but that yours are too low. I hope you're satisfied.