Post above mine it completely valid but even if it weren't, do you have evidence supporting a claim that the majority of society wants the speed limit increased? Or by 'the majority' do you mean 'me and a couple of my friends'
But it's not about what people are "Willing" to drive or what they "want" to drive. It's about what, accounting for occasional bad weather and the fact that it is dark out for a good portion of the day is "safe" for them to drive. And is low enough that people who are old, or inexperienced can keep up with everyone else (remember, it's not about everyone driving below the limit. It's about everyone driving approximately the same speed. Someone going way slower than the crowd is almost as likely to cause an accident as someone going way faster)
I agree entirely that it should be engineers (in conjunction with behavioural psychologists and a set of statistics on what works based on prior observed data) who set the limits. But I assume the State Traffic Commission (the people who usually set the limit) have people on board with at least some training in what they're doing. It's not like the mayor of the town is just randomly picking numbers out of his hat.
"Except that the "crime" can be eliminated simply by increasing the allowable blood alcohol limits.
The fact is, the law should conform to the will of the people, not the people to the will of the law. Such is democracy, such is liberty, such is freedom. If enough people are "drunk driving" on a road to "need" a police check program, either do improvements on the road to make people be able to drive how they want to on there safely, or consider just raising the blood alcohol limit."
The law should conform to the NEED of the people, not the WILL of the people. People are stupid and want to be allowed to do whatever they want. But since I don't want to die while I'm driving I'd appreciate it if you'd follow the damn speed limit.
The issue is that they AREN'T linking the articles though. They're just copying and pasting them and then putting them on their blog in full, and even if they do link, if the whole article is on their site why would anyone click through to read the exact same thing on the original page?
Isn't that like saying that we can't have a seat based system (like we have here in Canada) because whoever has the most seats will makes laws to take the other seats out of power and remove their opponents (like what happened in Nazi Germany)(sorry, had to Godwin's law it. It was actually the first relevant example I could think of)
Just because a system can be abused by an insane leader doesn't make it bad. An insane leader can abuse anything.
Also, what are these "parties" you keep talking about? I'm talking about replacing political parties with a decentralized set of interlrelated groups of experts. There would be no "ruling party" and even if there was they could only do so much, just like they can only do so much now. it doesn't matter if the Liberals or Conservatives are in power, gov't funding for universities is static here in Canada. You can't just cut funding to one university you don't like.
No, it would be murder.
I'm not sure how important you have to be to get 'assassinated' instead of just 'killed' but the line seems to be somewhere around viscount.
you have no 'right' to profit from having an idea.
But if I write an essay espousing that idea I have a right to the contents of that essay and protection from someone else taking that essay, selling it behind my back and profiting from my work without my permission. I have a very specific right to that in fact the "copy" right.
If Dane Cook copies, word for word, a joke Dimitri Martin wrote. He stole Dimitri's joke. Because the nature of jokes involves subverting expectations, every time a joke is told, the less funny it becomes because more and more people now expect the previously twist ending. That's why nobody tells jokes about airline food anymore. It's been done to death.
Comedians don't get get paid because they tell jokes. Any idiot can take a list of jokes and tell them. If that was all you had to do I would be out there doing Mitch Hedbergs set every night and raking it in. What comedians get paid for is WRITING and telling them. Their bread and butter is the creative process, the writing, and the coming up with the jokes. Same with reporting. It's not the facts that you're paying for. Nobody is saying facts shouldn't be free here. But the people who go out and spend money to uncover those facts, photograph them, write them into an article and edit them for easy reading deserve to be reimbursed for the time and effort they spend doing those things.
And by the way, observational humour is not based on other jokes. It's based on observation. I see something, I think of something clever to say about it and then I work that clever thing into a full joke with proper setup, timing, wording and punchline. Stand up comedians don't go up and tell various permutations on why the chicken crossed the road.
cease and desist letters are no good. This is the internet. news is only worth reading for what? 5 hours? 6? before it's obsolete. By the time the cease and desist gets to the blogger and they finally comply to it the potential ad revenue is already lost. If they want people to not steal, sorry, "pirate" (I hate it when people "pirate" jokes from other sites) their intellectual property is to make it painfully unprofitable and dangerous for them to do so.
Who chooses who the "smart" people are? In practice, that always produces more corruption and waste than democracy.
Democracy does nothing at all to choose the person most fit to lead, but it does a great job of ejecting people who have become completely out of touch with reality (as percieved by the voters). You can arrogantly say "but the voter are stoooopid, don't you see, half of em disagree with me!", and you mey even be right, but still trying to choose "smart" people to make decisions fails far more often and more profoundly.
How do you choose what the right thing to do about global warming is? Think a bit about this - someone will get to choose which scientists are "smart". That selection will completely control policy. So in the end, the scientists' views don't really matter, they're chosen ahead of time to produce the views desired by the chooser - you just moved the corruption to somewhere less transparent, you havent fixed anything. This is exactly the current problem with the SCOTUS right now.
Everyone with a degree related to climate science from an accredited university gets a vote on issues relted to climate change. Everyone with a degree related to finance gets a vote on financial issues etc.
Anyone who can prove they spent 4+ years studying the issue is considered well informed enough to have a say in it.
Boom, valid and fair system for deciding who the "smart" people are.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh. Hmmm... I'm sorry your country is terrible.
Would some softwood lumber make you feel better? Maple syrup perhaps? A heterosexual man hug?
Post above mine it completely valid but even if it weren't, do you have evidence supporting a claim that the majority of society wants the speed limit increased? Or by 'the majority' do you mean 'me and a couple of my friends'
But it's not about what people are "Willing" to drive or what they "want" to drive. It's about what, accounting for occasional bad weather and the fact that it is dark out for a good portion of the day is "safe" for them to drive. And is low enough that people who are old, or inexperienced can keep up with everyone else (remember, it's not about everyone driving below the limit. It's about everyone driving approximately the same speed. Someone going way slower than the crowd is almost as likely to cause an accident as someone going way faster)
I agree entirely that it should be engineers (in conjunction with behavioural psychologists and a set of statistics on what works based on prior observed data) who set the limits. But I assume the State Traffic Commission (the people who usually set the limit) have people on board with at least some training in what they're doing. It's not like the mayor of the town is just randomly picking numbers out of his hat.
except driving over the speed limit, endangering people's lives and breaking the law.
Exactly the same argument:
"Except that the "crime" can be eliminated simply by increasing the allowable blood alcohol limits.
The fact is, the law should conform to the will of the people, not the people to the will of the law. Such is democracy, such is liberty, such is freedom. If enough people are "drunk driving" on a road to "need" a police check program, either do improvements on the road to make people be able to drive how they want to on there safely, or consider just raising the blood alcohol limit."
The law should conform to the NEED of the people, not the WILL of the people. People are stupid and want to be allowed to do whatever they want. But since I don't want to die while I'm driving I'd appreciate it if you'd follow the damn speed limit.
The issue is that they AREN'T linking the articles though. They're just copying and pasting them and then putting them on their blog in full, and even if they do link, if the whole article is on their site why would anyone click through to read the exact same thing on the original page?
Isn't that like saying that we can't have a seat based system (like we have here in Canada) because whoever has the most seats will makes laws to take the other seats out of power and remove their opponents (like what happened in Nazi Germany)(sorry, had to Godwin's law it. It was actually the first relevant example I could think of)
Just because a system can be abused by an insane leader doesn't make it bad. An insane leader can abuse anything.
Also, what are these "parties" you keep talking about? I'm talking about replacing political parties with a decentralized set of interlrelated groups of experts. There would be no "ruling party" and even if there was they could only do so much, just like they can only do so much now. it doesn't matter if the Liberals or Conservatives are in power, gov't funding for universities is static here in Canada. You can't just cut funding to one university you don't like.
No, it would be murder. I'm not sure how important you have to be to get 'assassinated' instead of just 'killed' but the line seems to be somewhere around viscount.
you have no 'right' to profit from having an idea.
But if I write an essay espousing that idea I have a right to the contents of that essay and protection from someone else taking that essay, selling it behind my back and profiting from my work without my permission. I have a very specific right to that in fact the "copy" right.
If Dane Cook copies, word for word, a joke Dimitri Martin wrote. He stole Dimitri's joke. Because the nature of jokes involves subverting expectations, every time a joke is told, the less funny it becomes because more and more people now expect the previously twist ending. That's why nobody tells jokes about airline food anymore. It's been done to death.
Comedians don't get get paid because they tell jokes. Any idiot can take a list of jokes and tell them. If that was all you had to do I would be out there doing Mitch Hedbergs set every night and raking it in. What comedians get paid for is WRITING and telling them. Their bread and butter is the creative process, the writing, and the coming up with the jokes. Same with reporting. It's not the facts that you're paying for. Nobody is saying facts shouldn't be free here. But the people who go out and spend money to uncover those facts, photograph them, write them into an article and edit them for easy reading deserve to be reimbursed for the time and effort they spend doing those things.
And by the way, observational humour is not based on other jokes. It's based on observation. I see something, I think of something clever to say about it and then I work that clever thing into a full joke with proper setup, timing, wording and punchline. Stand up comedians don't go up and tell various permutations on why the chicken crossed the road.
cease and desist letters are no good. This is the internet. news is only worth reading for what? 5 hours? 6? before it's obsolete. By the time the cease and desist gets to the blogger and they finally comply to it the potential ad revenue is already lost. If they want people to not steal, sorry, "pirate" (I hate it when people "pirate" jokes from other sites) their intellectual property is to make it painfully unprofitable and dangerous for them to do so.
Who chooses who the "smart" people are? In practice, that always produces more corruption and waste than democracy.
Democracy does nothing at all to choose the person most fit to lead, but it does a great job of ejecting people who have become completely out of touch with reality (as percieved by the voters). You can arrogantly say "but the voter are stoooopid, don't you see, half of em disagree with me!", and you mey even be right, but still trying to choose "smart" people to make decisions fails far more often and more profoundly.
How do you choose what the right thing to do about global warming is? Think a bit about this - someone will get to choose which scientists are "smart". That selection will completely control policy. So in the end, the scientists' views don't really matter, they're chosen ahead of time to produce the views desired by the chooser - you just moved the corruption to somewhere less transparent, you havent fixed anything. This is exactly the current problem with the SCOTUS right now.
Everyone with a degree related to climate science from an accredited university gets a vote on issues relted to climate change. Everyone with a degree related to finance gets a vote on financial issues etc. Anyone who can prove they spent 4+ years studying the issue is considered well informed enough to have a say in it. Boom, valid and fair system for deciding who the "smart" people are.