But you could say the same for most workplace requirements. I imagine nurses not washing hands wouldn't have much of an impact on the rate of infection either. So why should a hospital be able to fire a nurse that refuses to wash her hands for religious reasons?
But then why work as a nurse? 90% of the things she does can be interpreted by not trusting God. Washing your hands - not trusting God to decide if the germs get you or not. Dressing a wound - not trusting God to protect against infection.
You have to remember that Yugoslavia (which Slovenia used to be a part of) didn't use the Soviet style of communism. Companies were fairly self-managed (although managers were often appointed for political reasons or for their connections). While the economy was less efficient then it is now, people were able to get jobs, keep them if they were competent and get paid for doing them. And while there was corruption, it was relatively low level. People would steal some money, but companies would survive. After the switch things went well for a while. Some companies went bust of course (textile industry and similar), since they could simply not compete with the price if imports. But in general the economy was growing and everyone was excited since we were now free and going to be rich if we worked well. But then over the years more and more companies were bought by their management (often using loans they authorized themselves). Those managers then drained the resources of the companies they bought, and used the money (together with bank loans) to buy more companies and so on. Alone that wasn't too bad. But the problems started when their companies found themselves short on cash - they had given everything they had to their owners - combined with the global banking crisis. So companies started going bankrupt, dragging other companies with them. Their workers were not just out of a job, but they were often owed months of pay by their former employers. At the same time the laws about economic crimes are extremely loosely enforced, so most of the money collected by the managers simply disappeared - their assets bought by 'mysterious' offshore corporations. And even when a person is prosecuted, the case often takes so long that statute of limitations runs out, so they go free to enjoy their spoils.
At the same time we have a Tea-party-ish government, which is doing everything it can to privatize as many government services as it can (education, healthcare), using the economic crisis to suppress the opposition.
So I have to say that yes, communism was better for most people. While it was harder to get on top, the bottom was much more comfortable.
No, the government actually controls very little. What happened is that there was a period of 'wild' privatization of the economy, which resulted in a situation similar to Russia (just without the strong government) - a small number of rich people controlling large portions of the economy. Unfortunately they were also mostly incompetent at running the companies they 'acquired', managing to wreck them by putting them into crippling debt in a bid to buy up the rest of the country. So in a way we were the example of what can happen in laissez faire capitalism.
The problem is that different input devices need different interfaces. Imagine if you had a GUI that forced you to move the cursor using the keyboard, instead of allowing shortcuts. The keyboard would become nearly useless. And that's kind of what MS is trying to do with Windows 8. Make using the mouse so annoying that people switch to touchscreen.
Well how do you define an animal? The meat will have to be alive to be grown in a lab, so you'd still be killing it before consumption (well most of us will).
I also grew up under communism. And there isn't that much of a difference between it and capitalism. In both systems those with connections at the top got wealth and power, while the workers got to listen to their leaders about how great the future is going to be. Well except that under communism the workers were paid better and more likely to be able to find work.
Why not compare Israel and the Nazis? There are many similarities between their actions - feeling of superiority, ethnic cleansing, 'Lebensraum'. The Nazis were more efficient at achieving their goals, but the goals seem to be the same as those of the Israeli government.
While commenting on the quality of the food, you forgot to mention the Gaza strip, the largest concentration camp in the world.
On the subject of checkpoints, I would like to know how many Canadian checkpoints there are inside the US. The problem with the checkpoints is not that they exist, but where they exist - outside the borders of Israel.
And why should ancient history be given such weight in the region? Nearly every place on the Planet has been occupied by many different cultures and nations throughout history. Even the land where Israel now exists was occupied before the Jews settled there (after exterminating the previous inhabitants). Should every nation in the world move back to the land they occupied in 1AD? 1000BC? 1000 AD? Why should one culture be allowed to demand land they lost thousands of years ago, just because they were lucky enough not to be forced to abandon their culture when they lost their land?
Palestine and Israel are both states born out of terrorism. So why should they be treated any differently? Just because one uses tanks while the other one uses home-made rockets does not make much of a difference. They should both be forced to come to an agreement regarding their borders.
Exactly. Changing charges based on a plea should be illegal. The most a plea should be able to achieve is a reduced sentence from the judge - for accepting responsibility.
Are you testing IQ or evolutionary potential? From the point of view of a single fish, eating the young has many advantages. Less competition for food, space, oxygen and they may taste better then the crap the fish usually get. So why not eat them? It's not like they're going to take care of their parents in their old age (other then cleaning up their bones once they die).
And his customers are shipping them right back, or at least selling their alcohol back in his country. I can definitely see why law enforcement is pissed off at him. But I'm not a lawyer so can't say if what he's doing is against the law or not.
I imagine a gun maker based in the UK would be in quite a bit of trouble if their guns started showing up in crimes, even if all their customers were abroad. Why make a product that is illegal in the country where you are making it.
In this case I can actually see some point in charging him. To use your analogy, he was running a brewery in a country where alcohol consumption is forbidden. Is there any use for his software in the US that is not against the law? If there isn't, then the guy is guilty of at least stupidity.
Unless you can get some critical employees to join the union. If you do, you end up being able to shut down what remains of the company if the union decides to strike.
I agree with everything you wrote. You'll notice I didn't suggest they should invest more in defense, but that suddenly stopping spending could lead do problems.
Unlike many products, things like aircraft carriers and fighters don't really have any other buyers except the government. So if the government suddenly decides that they aren't going to buy any more, the companies will go out of business. There won't be any kind of a slow reduction of operation - why make things when you know you won't be allowed to sell them. So what is needed is gradual reduction of defense spending - a few % each year. And just stopping the constant growth of the military budget would do wonders for the bottom line.
Well 3. is out without 3.2 a full local backup. Your host could be raided by the police at any time (since some of their other customers may be doing things that someone thinks may be illegal).
But why count the entire cost of the TV? The family will also be watching other things (news, cartoons, p0rn). So that cost will need to be paid anyway.
Oh yeah, kotor was funny. 90% of the last planet was missing, with just some random scenes left in the game to make you wonder what the hell they were thinking of doing. Completely ruined the game, since all that buildup just went to waste on a couple of easy boss fights.
Dragon Age 2 had some funny moments. Like when you found a random skeleton in a random dungeon and got a quest to take it to a random person. You gave him the bones and he thanked you and gave you some gold. And that's what 50% of the quests in the game were like. Was it done just to inflate the 'quest count'? They could have just given the gold to a random monster, but instead they created a pointless 'quest' just to show off how generic their game is.
So why not just quit the church if you decide their beliefs aren't something you agree with. Why care about being baptized if you no longer wish to be a member of the organization?
But Madoff didn't have as many assets as the US government has (well at least he hid them well enough if he did). I'm guessing you could sell the White House for quite a bit, and the Capitol building would also probably be worth something.
Slashdot Mirror
But you could say the same for most workplace requirements. I imagine nurses not washing hands wouldn't have much of an impact on the rate of infection either. So why should a hospital be able to fire a nurse that refuses to wash her hands for religious reasons?
But then why work as a nurse? 90% of the things she does can be interpreted by not trusting God. Washing your hands - not trusting God to decide if the germs get you or not. Dressing a wound - not trusting God to protect against infection.
You have to remember that Yugoslavia (which Slovenia used to be a part of) didn't use the Soviet style of communism. Companies were fairly self-managed (although managers were often appointed for political reasons or for their connections). While the economy was less efficient then it is now, people were able to get jobs, keep them if they were competent and get paid for doing them. And while there was corruption, it was relatively low level. People would steal some money, but companies would survive.
After the switch things went well for a while. Some companies went bust of course (textile industry and similar), since they could simply not compete with the price if imports. But in general the economy was growing and everyone was excited since we were now free and going to be rich if we worked well.
But then over the years more and more companies were bought by their management (often using loans they authorized themselves). Those managers then drained the resources of the companies they bought, and used the money (together with bank loans) to buy more companies and so on. Alone that wasn't too bad. But the problems started when their companies found themselves short on cash - they had given everything they had to their owners - combined with the global banking crisis. So companies started going bankrupt, dragging other companies with them. Their workers were not just out of a job, but they were often owed months of pay by their former employers. At the same time the laws about economic crimes are extremely loosely enforced, so most of the money collected by the managers simply disappeared - their assets bought by 'mysterious' offshore corporations. And even when a person is prosecuted, the case often takes so long that statute of limitations runs out, so they go free to enjoy their spoils.
At the same time we have a Tea-party-ish government, which is doing everything it can to privatize as many government services as it can (education, healthcare), using the economic crisis to suppress the opposition.
So I have to say that yes, communism was better for most people. While it was harder to get on top, the bottom was much more comfortable.
Slovenia
No, the government actually controls very little. What happened is that there was a period of 'wild' privatization of the economy, which resulted in a situation similar to Russia (just without the strong government) - a small number of rich people controlling large portions of the economy. Unfortunately they were also mostly incompetent at running the companies they 'acquired', managing to wreck them by putting them into crippling debt in a bid to buy up the rest of the country. So in a way we were the example of what can happen in laissez faire capitalism.
And the same wave might also close the document you're working on, email your recent photos to your boss and format your hard drive. I can't wait.
The problem is that different input devices need different interfaces. Imagine if you had a GUI that forced you to move the cursor using the keyboard, instead of allowing shortcuts. The keyboard would become nearly useless. And that's kind of what MS is trying to do with Windows 8. Make using the mouse so annoying that people switch to touchscreen.
Well how do you define an animal? The meat will have to be alive to be grown in a lab, so you'd still be killing it before consumption (well most of us will).
I also grew up under communism. And there isn't that much of a difference between it and capitalism. In both systems those with connections at the top got wealth and power, while the workers got to listen to their leaders about how great the future is going to be. Well except that under communism the workers were paid better and more likely to be able to find work.
Why not compare Israel and the Nazis? There are many similarities between their actions - feeling of superiority, ethnic cleansing, 'Lebensraum'. The Nazis were more efficient at achieving their goals, but the goals seem to be the same as those of the Israeli government.
While commenting on the quality of the food, you forgot to mention the Gaza strip, the largest concentration camp in the world.
On the subject of checkpoints, I would like to know how many Canadian checkpoints there are inside the US. The problem with the checkpoints is not that they exist, but where they exist - outside the borders of Israel.
And why should ancient history be given such weight in the region? Nearly every place on the Planet has been occupied by many different cultures and nations throughout history. Even the land where Israel now exists was occupied before the Jews settled there (after exterminating the previous inhabitants). Should every nation in the world move back to the land they occupied in 1AD? 1000BC? 1000 AD? Why should one culture be allowed to demand land they lost thousands of years ago, just because they were lucky enough not to be forced to abandon their culture when they lost their land?
Palestine and Israel are both states born out of terrorism. So why should they be treated any differently? Just because one uses tanks while the other one uses home-made rockets does not make much of a difference. They should both be forced to come to an agreement regarding their borders.
Exactly. Changing charges based on a plea should be illegal. The most a plea should be able to achieve is a reduced sentence from the judge - for accepting responsibility.
Are you testing IQ or evolutionary potential?
From the point of view of a single fish, eating the young has many advantages. Less competition for food, space, oxygen and they may taste better then the crap the fish usually get.
So why not eat them? It's not like they're going to take care of their parents in their old age (other then cleaning up their bones once they die).
And his customers are shipping them right back, or at least selling their alcohol back in his country. I can definitely see why law enforcement is pissed off at him. But I'm not a lawyer so can't say if what he's doing is against the law or not.
I imagine a gun maker based in the UK would be in quite a bit of trouble if their guns started showing up in crimes, even if all their customers were abroad. Why make a product that is illegal in the country where you are making it.
Well if he writes it in a country where FTP servers are illegal, then why not charge him?
In this case I can actually see some point in charging him. To use your analogy, he was running a brewery in a country where alcohol consumption is forbidden.
Is there any use for his software in the US that is not against the law? If there isn't, then the guy is guilty of at least stupidity.
Unless you can get some critical employees to join the union. If you do, you end up being able to shut down what remains of the company if the union decides to strike.
But the commoners are supposed to stay for loyalty! It's only the owners and CEOs that are supposed to care about money.
I agree with everything you wrote. You'll notice I didn't suggest they should invest more in defense, but that suddenly stopping spending could lead do problems.
Unlike many products, things like aircraft carriers and fighters don't really have any other buyers except the government. So if the government suddenly decides that they aren't going to buy any more, the companies will go out of business. There won't be any kind of a slow reduction of operation - why make things when you know you won't be allowed to sell them. So what is needed is gradual reduction of defense spending - a few % each year. And just stopping the constant growth of the military budget would do wonders for the bottom line.
Well 3. is out without 3.2 a full local backup.
Your host could be raided by the police at any time (since some of their other customers may be doing things that someone thinks may be illegal).
But why count the entire cost of the TV? The family will also be watching other things (news, cartoons, p0rn). So that cost will need to be paid anyway.
Oh yeah, kotor was funny. 90% of the last planet was missing, with just some random scenes left in the game to make you wonder what the hell they were thinking of doing. Completely ruined the game, since all that buildup just went to waste on a couple of easy boss fights.
Dragon Age 2 had some funny moments. Like when you found a random skeleton in a random dungeon and got a quest to take it to a random person. You gave him the bones and he thanked you and gave you some gold. And that's what 50% of the quests in the game were like. Was it done just to inflate the 'quest count'? They could have just given the gold to a random monster, but instead they created a pointless 'quest' just to show off how generic their game is.
So why not just quit the church if you decide their beliefs aren't something you agree with. Why care about being baptized if you no longer wish to be a member of the organization?
But Madoff didn't have as many assets as the US government has (well at least he hid them well enough if he did). I'm guessing you could sell the White House for quite a bit, and the Capitol building would also probably be worth something.