1) A company is so good at satisfying it's customers that it eliminates it's competition by providing value in the marketplace.
2) A company gets special privileges and favours from the government, including increased regulations of it's own industry. Because when you're a huge corporation with billions in annual revenue and a team of lawyers and lobbyists on staff full-time, complying with regulations that cost mere millions per year is a small tax in exchange for an environment in which it's impossible for start-ups - who only have mere millions in start-up capital to begin with - to enter the market and compete with you. Best part, your team of lawyers and lobbyists can actually be the ones to suggest specific regulations to the politicians who are in your pocket, so you get rules that are cheap for you to follow but prohibitively expensive for others. And those regulations are extremely easy to pass because as well all know, corporations aren't regulated enough!
I'd love to seem my neighbours clean up all the rat infested rubbish they keep dumping, but it's their yard.
I'd love to see criminals not stabbing people, but it's their knife.
Poor analogies. It would be more akin to wanting your neighbour to spend his money to buy you a TV instead of one for himself.
I think we will find that we regulate people's behaviour for everyone's benefit all the time,
Well, I certainly agree that we do "regular people's behaviour" all the time but I do not consider enforcing rights to be "regulating" and what we do makes no statement regarding what we should do. And it occurs to me that we're headed straight towards a semantic argument, and so "regulate" isn't really a good word. When you hear the word obviously that includes preventing people from harming others. When I hear the word I think of dictating to people what to do with their property and/or thoughts. I'm going to stop using that word since it makes communication more difficult.
If you're concerned about "everyone's benefit" then really consider the meaning of "everyone." Society is a group of individuals who choose to coexist, form interpersonal relationships and trade with one another. Given that definition, the "good of society" must include every single individual that comprises that society. Would you then agree that if an act hurts one single individual then it cannot be said to be "good for society" ("everyone's benefit") ?
The only way, therefore, to protect "society" is to protect the individual and that means protecting individual rights and liberty. For the sake of clarity I define "liberty" as "an environment in which all relationships are consensual."
Business operates with license from us. We make the rules.
If "we make the rules" then that puts anyone who gets to claim to represent "we" in a position of great power. If it's up to certain individuals or groups to sacrifice or make concessions for the sake of "society" then everyone is placed immediately into an arena where each group battles it out to get the privileged position of claiming to "be society."
I know there's an awful, face-palm-inducing quote by Mitt Romney saying that "corporations are people too." I am not a Romney supporter, nor a republican, nor do I want to get into a discussion about corporate law and how corporations should be treated (since they are a special case of business and subject to special laws). But when it comes to businesses keep in mind that businesses are created by individuals using their money and their ideas to produce something for the purposes of trade. A business is property. Therefore you're saying that "society" gives a license to everyone else to own property and use it how they see fit. That's a dictatorship, by definition. If the government is "we" and "we" give a license to own and use property how "we" see fit then the government has the authority to take your house, your food, your clothes, your car and anything it wants because you only hold that property with a license from "us."
Since human beings, by our nature, are both a body and a mind; both material and non-material, it means that our nature dictates that we have to satisfy two kinds of "needs." We've acknowledged that people do not think with a license but there's a huge push in the direction of claiming that we breathe (or digest food etc.) with a license, which is essentially the argument that you just made.
"We" can either protect an individual's right to own property or "we" can dictate what a person is to do with their material possessions (and by extension their bodies), which out principle would make it "our" property, making "us" a dictatorship since we would be dictating how people live their lives.
"I'd love to see the money oil companies spent on defending their dirty businesses go to research and development of cleaner technologies."
I'd love to see their money go to paying my mortgage and buying me a corvette, but it's their money.
You did mention subsidies and I agree with you completely. In the case of subsidies it's not their money. But instead of giving that money to some other business venture I'd rather give it back to the tax payers and let them decide who deserves to get it. Government and business need to be kept separate for the exact same reason that government and church do. When state and church lay in bed they tell us what to do with our minds, when state and business lay in bed they tell us what to do with our bodies. It amazes me that so many who are opposed to religion making its way into politics don't see the problem with government and business mingling; or maybe they do, they just don't see the similarities between regulating thoughts and regulating trade.
I don't really care too much about "viable alternatives." I'm more worried about legal alternatives. As with all scarce resources, prices will rise as supply diminishes. When people are hungry for energy there will be a lot of money to be made in providing it. I'm not so worried about running out of fossil fuel as I am about legal barriers in place preventing new startups with mere millions from competing with the big boys who have the courts and police and politicians in their pockets.
Sorry for the double post but in hindsight I really wish I had elaborated more on this one part of yours:
"If a woman was going around bragging about her conquests she'd be labelled a slut and people would talk shit on her, while the dude, after being called a pig, is applauded."
Firstly, you brought up the word "conquest." And that's something, not just the word but the entire sentiment, that I hear way more from women than from men, and it's also a very derogatory way of regarding men and male sexuality.
Obviously I'm not a woman, I don't have the female perspective, but I do believe that all relationships not only between men and women but all people in general have to be earned. And I see something extremely romantic in the idea of one person, be it a man or a woman, pursuing another and winning them over. And when someone achieves a value the natural human response to that success is pride.
Now there are frauds out there in all walks of life. I have no doubt there are guys who lie to women and tell them they love her in order to get in her pants and then prove themselves liars by never calling etc. but that's not what I'm talking about; I don't recognize achieving a value by means of fraud as being worthy of experiencing pride and someone who brags about it is akin to someone who brags about robbing a bank. And I bring this up to say that one could point out that there are women who lie about being on birth control or fake pregnancies to get married but it would be unfair to assume that all women are like that, right? Just as it's unfair to assume that all men are liars and cheats. Though it seems to be the cliche. There's a gender stereotype there, which is what "feminists" are supposed to be against.
So back to this idea of "conquest." When I said "express their sexuality" I wasn't talking about getting laid. I was talking about being open about being a sexual creature who is attracted to other humans. That's it. So a guy who says "big boobies" is sexist while a girl who makes a comment about a guy's butt being cute is encouraged.
And realize that you chose to interpret that as "getting into someone's pants and then bragging about it" which says a lot about your own biases and stereotypes. And I will end by saying that if a girl were to "earn" the title of "slut" from a man or a woman, it would not be because of a "conquest" it would be because of a lack of conquest; i.e: no chase, no pursuit, no earning... just giving it away to anyone in exchange for nothing. The trade of a value for a null or disvalue.
"If a woman was going around bragging about her conquests she'd be labelled a slut and people would talk shit on her, while the dude, after being called a pig, is applauded."
By women. The men I know would be asking for her phone number.
"You don't see the impact of patriarchal society because you don't experience the effects. The same way that many white people feel that there is no such thing as institutionalized racism in North America because they don't experience it."
I find that interesting because as I hinted to, I've experienced the same thing from a male's perspective, from my own family. I experience gender bias all the time from people who proudly label themselves "feminists." They make generalizations about men, they side with my wife every time the two of us have a dispute and we seek support from family, they speak for me as if they know what I'm going to do and the false assumptions they make are based on the fact that I have a penis. Women think they know what I'm thinking and what my intentions are just because I'm a man. So I know exactly how it feels and I do experience it, only I experience it from the same people who complaining about it most vocally.
That's what I was alluding to when I said "... I don't see it. In fact, I see the trend going in the opposite direction." and "the complete double-standard backwardness that has been instituted in the name of 'feminism.'"
I remember a time when I was working along side a female sysadmin. The two of us always got along and worked very well together. One day we had a dispute, I wish I could remember what it was about but it's not that important, she got extremely upset and accused me of being sexist and hating women etc. I would have been very open to the possibility that I said something which was perceived as sexist completely unintentionally, but fortunately for me the argument was made in front of several witnesses, some of them women, and they didn't understand where she was coming from. Now that may be her past experiences causing biases which were transferred to me, perhaps she worked with a lot of chauvinists and/or misogynists and something about our argument worked as a trigger, but I submit that as one small piece of anecdotal evidence that men are being thrown under the bus in a huge way and the "movement" is becoming quite hypocritical without even realizing it. Publicly accusing someone of gender bias in the workplace is a very big deal.
"but honestly I can't imagine very many of us are actually truly completely comfortable with the idea of people we aren't reasonably intimate with commenting on our chests."
No one has said anything about commenting on the size of a specific individual's chest. If it were personal I could understand how it would make someone feel uncomfortable, but I still wouldn't consider it "sexist" because it would also make me feel uncomfortable if someone were to comment on the size of my nose or my waist line.
"Professionalism dictates keeping this sort of thing out of the workplace."
I disagree with that profoundly. The most productive professional environment is one in which everyone gets along, has a good time and enjoys what they're doing. If certain individuals feel uncomfortable it is either because they are being singled out or bullied unfairly (in which case there is something wrong with the environment) or they have a personal problem with the way the business is run (which does not necessarily mean there's something wrong with the individual, just that it's not a good fit).
Femminism is supposed to be about equality and social change, right ? Then here's a social "problem" I would like the change: the complete double-standard backwardness that has been instituted in the name of "feminism." For example: if a guy expresses his sexuality or his sexual nature in any way he is labeled a "pig" but if a woman does it it's applauded as "liberating."
I was raised by a single mom with a tremendous amount of support from her single mom. Both describe themselves as "feminists." Both also talk about "patriarchy" but as a male who was born after 1980 I gotta say... I don't see it. In fact, I see the trend going in the opposite direction.
The people who I find to be most "sexist" are self-proclaimed "feminists." They constantly draw attention to the differences between the sexes, and by appropriating a title such as "feminism" (emphasis on the root "fem") they are taking a position that there is an inherent conflict between the two sexes, that sides must be chosen and they have chosen the side of women. The foundation of the philosophy is not unifying but polarizing. If they had any pretense of "equality" they would identify themselves as "egalitarian." If they had a pretense about equal rights under the law whilst respecting (or celebrating) natural differences that exist between all individuals they would identify themselves as individualist. Instead they keep dragging the issue of gender through the mud and make everyone, male and female alike, uncomfortable.
I'm sure I could answer my own question with 2 seconds of googling, but for the sake of discussion: What are the differences between Unity and Gnome 3 besides performance ?
I've been using Ubuntu for quite a few years now and have never considered switching desktops, particularly to Gnome (and isn't Unity just Gnome with some changes or am I *way* behind the times ?) xfce is just too ugly for me. I'm one of those rare tech people who actually doesn't mind sparing a few CPU cycles to have something nice to look at, as long as it doesn't cause performance problems (I would even argue that for a lot of people a nice aesthetic UI can boost productivity as long as it's done properly - i.e: to create a more pleasant and intuitive user experience).
So, would I have any reason to want to switch from Unity to Gnome 3 ?
And then I really missed, not the people / friends (the important of whom I speak to outside of Facebook) but the updates from pages that I "liked." I realized that I used Facebook more as a homepage / portal / news feed than anything else. And some of the stuff I couldn't get outside of Facebook. I wanted to create a new account that would have zero friends (except for maybe my wife & kids), but the registration insisted on providing them my cell phone number to "verify" the account. No thanks.
Ironically, I've since "hi-jacked" a fake account that my wife set up with our daughters for games (that never required verification, go figure), which I used to re-like the things I missed. Now I have all of the updates Facebook was actually useful for without the social network element that I never cared much about. And the best part about it, it's anonymous. No more getting tagged in people's photos. No more concerning myself with privacy issues etc. That's why they want to verify new accounts these days (not an assumption, the verification page stated it outright).
Let me give your analogy everything and say unequivocally "YES we're 'lettuce'"... it does not invalidate my point.
Can the grocery store benefit by selling rotten lettuce ? Can it benefit by stocking less of it despite their "customers" demanding more ? And can it benefit from an attitude of "fuck the farmers who make the lettuce, we're going to spit on them and kick them to the ground because we 'only care about our customers!'" ?
Honestly who cares if we're the product ? Why is that a bad thing ? When we sell our services to an employer we're "the product" (to the same extent that we're "the product" to advertisers. Obviously we're not talking about trading or selling us as human beings in a literal sense). The point is, we choose to use Google for a reason. If they remove that reason or start slacking then we'll be itching for an alternative and a new market opportunity opens up to compete with them. For what it's worth I've already heard of some people who have stopped using Google search, going directly to Wikipedia instead. It might not be a great example but it is an example of choosing "not Google." In fine dining the Filet Mingon might be the product but you better bet your sweet ass the Chef holds that cut of beef on an insanely high pedestal and treats it with ridiculous amounts of respect because doing so is crucial to the restaurant's bottom line.
There is a distinction that can be drawn between "customer" and "consumer." The average Joe might not be Google's primary "customer" but he is their primary "consumer"... and without consumers Google is out of business.
It's a total logical fallacy to assume that Google doesn't need to treat their consumers right, and only needs to pander to the people who buy their advertising services. Their advertising services are worth nothing without the consumers, and that makes "us" important (no, essential) to Google's bottom line.
"My other beef is that SQL is not that hard. Its easier than coding."
Right. As you said:
"SQL is just a programming language."
It's not SQL that can trip a developer up, it's understanding how the RDBMS stores and fetches data, builds indexes and optimizes queries. It's a little like understanding how the compiler will optimize your code, but then it goes even further.
For example, it would be easy for a developer to be tempted to store a UUID as a primary key in an InnoDB database for a user session table, since to do otherwise would be adding a redundant ID field, not knowing that InnoDB stores it's rows with the primary key index and thus orders all inserts by primary key.
It's also not always clear how to make full use of indexes... especially when you need to optimize ORDER BY's (which as you would know can't always be done, and thus need to rely on narrowing the result set as much as possible before the sort), and it's not always obvious how adding a second column in your WHERE or by using aggregates on your indexed columns can make using the index impossible. Those aren't really SQL issues, they're DB issues. Heck, the entire concept of an index has nothing at all to do with SQL (unless you're doing something directly with the index on the schema, but then developers rarely touch the schema when there's a DBA involved) .
You're absolutely right, though, that a competent developer would take the time to learn as much of this as possible. DBAs are in an unfortunate situation because it's tempting for the developer to adopt an attitude of "That's why we have a DBA." I definitely sympathize with you.
"The security flaw was the storage of the passwords rather than passwords hash."
It was a security flaw. Ideally the passwords would be stored hashed (and salted) and their software would not have made them vulnerable to an SQL injection. I mean seriously, an SQL injection?! The software should be using a database abstraction layer or an ORM that takes care of normalizing SQL automatically. These days there's really no excuse for that one.... but then, storing passwords as plain text too... I had WAY higher expectations of Yahoo for some reason. Silly me.
If the court proceeding is a matter of public record, and you were found innocent, it's the employer's problem if they want to lose out on your services because of irrational biases and fear. Besides, do you really want to work at such a place ?
Not to mention, with that kind of stain associated with someone who was simply accused of a crime, it's more incentive for the public to hold their government accountable, and provide severe repercussions for falsely convicting and accusing someone.
How to go about "fixing" the system would take us into a huge debate. I just don't see the point you bring up as a valid point against having open trials. Government is supposed to be by and for the people. Thus everything government does, and everything people do involving government, needs to be open since it affects every individual citizen.
For what it's worth, I do think people who are falsely accused, tried and found innocent or convicted and later exonerated ought to be taken care of for their trouble. You can't get a piece of your life back once it's been lost, and if government is "by the people" then the people should pay a price when they take an innocent person's freedom and wealth. The purely social implications, though ? It's individuals who make and form a society, not government. So if you want to change something there (like ending unfair discrimination) then your battle is on a totally different front. It's not fair to point the finger at government or look to government as a tool to solve that problem, and doing so will create all sorts of other injustices (I could name countless examples but I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader to avoid being flamebait).
Be careful here. If, say, you are in a divorce with your wife, do you want the world to know the gory details?
You're missing the difference between a civil suit and a criminal one.
In a civil suit, two civilian (hence "civil") parties are in dispute and require the court's assistance in reaching a resolution. A divorce is a good example. (I will add as a footnote that, at least here in Canada, ALL court proceedings are a matter of public record, divorces included. Therefore if you seek the court's assistance in resolving your divorce it will become a matter of public record. Whether or not that ought to be the case is something I won't get into since it would take me into a long editorializing rant full of my personal opinions and that's quite OT).
In a criminal suit it's the government (presumably the "public") against a citizen who has committed a crime.
In a free and open society all criminal suits ought to be a matter of public record and be open because it's one of the best tools we have for keeping the government honest and fair. That's why we have jury trials and public records and transcriptions etc. It's also a powerful tool to aid in proving someone's innocence after they were falsely convicted (by proving mistrials etc.)
"In modern Western societies, that's not true, even the poorest aren't allowed to just die."
Allowed by whom ? By nature ? By the government ? By charity ?
"Modern Western societies" are one in which the division of labour and free trade have been going on long enough to create abundance. We have cheap food, cheap housing, cheap clothing. Those who are unable to work due to illness or disability either rely on voluntary charity, which is only possible in a system of abundance, or through government social programs which are involuntary (i.e: they're funded by first taking resources from others whether they agree to it or not) and are also only possible in a system of abundance, though they tend to drain that system.
Go back to the island scenario. If everyone consumes and no one produces it's pretty easy to see what happens. Why do you assume it's any different in a "modern western society" ? The underlying principles are the same. Production must precede consumption.
"It isn't slavery because you are not considered property and there is no legal requirement to obey a master or suffer punishment or death."
The principle behind the tax code, as it is written, is such that the government has unlimited power to tax any amount it wishes. It can raise taxes to 100% if it wants to. There is nothing in the legal code preventing them from doing so. That means the the government, in principle, owns 100% of your productive efforts, and allows you to keep a certain amount of it.
Now I submit that no human being can actually own another human being, as a law of nature. The reason is because by our nature our minds are sovereign and our actions volitional. No one can read or alter our thoughts and no one can make decisions for us. A slave, as much a victim as he/she is, still chooses life as a slave over death, fighting, attempting escape or enduring punishment etc.
This is an important point because despite the fact that a slave-master claims to own slaves, slavery does not mean that the master actually has unlimited access to all the faculties of his slave. It only means that he lays claim to 100% of the slave's productive efforts. The only thing that distinguishes a slave from a worker is that if the slave quits the master will punish him via pain or death (in that sense we are all slaves to our nature - we can either exist as human beings or not exist at all).
If we don't produce we don't eat. If we produce the government lays claim to the results. If we don't pony-up we are punished.
"Say I work for someone. He gains more by employing me than he pays me, otherwise he wouldn't find it profitable to do so. Therefore, he's taking a slice of my efforts. By the same argument, surely that is slavery?"
It is not your labour alone that generates profit. And he is certainly not taking a slice of your productive efforts.
When you go to work for someone you are offering a service in exchange for something (usually money). What your employer does with that service is entirely his. Not yours. If it were true that he were taking a slice of your productive efforts then when a business purchases raw materials and uses them to produce a good they are "taking a slice" of the productive efforts of the miners who dug up those materials. Every time a programmer gets paid for writing code he is "taking a slice" of the productive efforts of his college professors who taught him how to program and the computer manufacturers who made the computers that he codes on and so on and so on...
Production is the combination of labour and natural resources to produce a good or service that is of value to someone. It is not your labour, by itself, that produces the good or determines it's value.
What you are paid is the value that is attached to your service and is negotiated before you produce. While you need to produce your sustenance you have unlimited choice in how you go about it. You can produce your own food, and clo
If you don't work you die. I mean that in the most fundamental way possible. Assume you and your family are stranded on a desert island. How do you survive ? By our nature we are given life but we must engage in certain actions in order to sustain it. That action is productive labour, or "work."
If you don't work, but you are able to sustain your life, it can only be through the productive efforts of others. Someone has to produce your food, your clothing, your shelter etc. So while another human being may not be coercing you into working, that reduces down to: no one forces you to live.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everyone should be making their own food and clothing. That's the beauty of trade. Each person specializes and produces what they are the best at, and then exchanges those goods or services with others who produce what they need to survive. It's not only fair but it has lead to the development and distribution of countless comforts that we enjoy today, not to mention cheap food, clothing, housing, clean water etc.
Anyway, I know that when I spend the day working I don't do it so that you may have the benefit of eating. When the results of my work are taken from me then it is slavery. If I don't work, I die. So I work, and then part of those efforts are taken from me. How is that not slavery ?
Your confusion stems from the belief that one person's gain is another's loss. That people cooperate altruistically for the selfish benefit of others. Which may be true for some misguided individuals who believe that such an existence of self-sacrifice is moral, but I do not subscribe to such a belief because 1) I do not recognize such a system as being compatible with human nature and 2) As a consequence of #1 such a philosophy is evil. Altruism is a system that constantly demands the surrendering of a value for a lesser one or nothing (the very definition of "sacrifice"). Such a system is incompatible with life itself.
In a free (and moral) society people must deal with each other through voluntary exchange. Value for value. The contract does not negate what I said, it only reinforces it. Such a society is a "contract society".
As humans we employ logic and reason to perceive the objective world around us and act accordingly to promote our survival. Historically speaking, coexisting with other humans increased each individual's odds for surviving in a hostile environment. Once the concepts of "time" and "saving" were well-formed the development of agriculture became possible and soon after goods were routinely exchanged for the mutual benefit of the exchangers. Soon people began specializing in producing only what they were good at, and exchanging their surplus for the rest of their needs rather than producing everything themselves. Consequently (but secondary), such a system maximized the benefits for everyone, because more production was possible. Economically speaking, maximizing production increases abundance which lowers costs which maximizes distribution. It is not a consequence of people "giving back to society". It is a consequence of acting to promote one's own selfish interests (i.e: maximizing personal profit by producing the largest possible quantity of what is in demand at the lowest cost possible).
The fact that people operate this way does not impose any obligations of any sort on any individual. It means that if you want something from another person the only way to go about it, morally, is to exchange. Thus all "moral obligations" are cleared at the time of the exchange. So I can agree with part of what you said, if you take from others you owe them something. But your confusion rests with the belief that everything that you have is a gift. This is simply false. If you have a job you are producing value to exchange for everything that you acquire and consume. Morally speaking your balance is clear.
If anything, you may try and claim that we owe our parents something. But that's the extent that you can take it. They produced goods and services to exchange (or provide directly) for the means to sustain our survival. So "society" is well-paid. However, dead-beat parents and extremely problematic children aside, most parents that I know were more than repaid for their voluntary service by the fact that they gained loved ones to share their world with. I've often joked about providing my children with a bill once they turn 18, but I won't. Because my kids were a joy and the means employed to help them grow into adults is a debt that is more than repaid by the wonderful relationship that I will have with them until the day that I die, and the experience of parenting which is an experience that I felt worth having. They don't owe me anything.
Free will is almost synonymous with "resisting temptation". Which is why addiction advocates tend to argue so much in favour of the "disease" concept, and why their arguments tend to reduce to the notion that free will is an illusion.
I actually have a mild form of OCD. I'll check to make sure that I have my driver's license before getting in my car and then 10 seconds after leaving the driveway I feel the need to double-check and then triple-check etc. I even do the cliche checking that my front door is locked 20 times every night. But those are desires and whims. I can (and often do) choose to think back on when I first checked to make sure that I had my license and then reassure myself "Garett man, you're being paranoid. You already made sure you had your license. Chill out." Yes, it's all choices. I have the desire to eat a whole cheesecake to myself right now, but I choose not to because I recognize the negative consequences of doing so. Desire vs. action.
"Society" simply refers to all of the actions and choices of individuals. There can be no "we" without the "I". Just because the benefits of social participation are obvious to anyone does not mean that the needs of "society" (which is an abstract concept) trump the needs of the individual (which is a concrete).
Society does not threaten the freedoms of the individual. Other individuals who violate the non-aggression-principle do.
Furthermore, I never claimed, or even implied that addicts were happy. I specifically claimed that psychological addictions are an evasion of personal responsibility. A choice to engage in harmful activity. And that freedom means the ability to make choices concerning your own person. Every single addict knows that he is harming himself. Yet he values his destructive behaviour over the alternatives. There are many possible reasons that he may do so, but none of them impose any sort of duty on other individuals to offer help. I also specifically pointed out that any attempts to offer help are doomed to fail unless requested, because the "addictive" behaviour is a choice. The addict claiming that it isn't (a choice) is a further evasion; a way to escape his personal responsibility.
No one can have a "right" to the productive efforts of others. That is slavery. If you feel that anyone "owes" society anything then you are admitting that every person is a slave to everyone else. I see no evidence of that, and overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The body is only one part of the human. No one can read or control another's thoughts. No one can make decisions for the individual. You even chose the word "influence" in the context of decision making, acknowledging this fact. Coercion may influence my decisions, but ultimately only I can make those decisions. I can choose death over submission to any oppression and for that reason it is a law of nature that I cannot be owned by another individual, let alone "society".
More importantly, stocks are a claim to partial ownership of a company. Thus buying stocks is an investment in a business venture. There is always risk in business, but successful entrepreneurs minimize their risk by researching their markets and filling an unfilled need, or filling a need better than anyone else.
While a stock-owner does not make all of the same decisions that an entrepreneur does, they do play a vital role in the economy by funding ventures that are producing goods and services that are in demand.
Most people think of the stock market as gambling because they confuse investing with speculating. Many stock-traders do speculate by purchasing stocks that they believe will go up in price (with the intention of selling them when they do), or short-selling stocks that they believe are about to go down*. However, the VAST majority of stock-holders are investors who put their money into carefully researched companies with the intention of earning dividend yields. Here the risk is minimal and while the returns are not as high, the investor stays liquid and acts more as a lender. Lending only to those companies that have a good track record and operate in "safe" markets (traditional examples of "safe" markets are commodities, raw materials, natural resources, public utilities etc.)
* Short selling means borrowing a stock from a broker, selling it at it's current price and then buying it back at a lower price. Since you only owe the broker the stock, not it's original value, you return the stock to the broker and pocket the difference between the original price you sold it at, and the lower price you bought it back at.
Humans are volitional beings. Our very definition is "rational animal". We have free will and choose every one of our actions. We own our own bodies and our minds and thus we are "free" by nature.
Therefore, if we develop an addiction to a substance or to a behaviour we have only ourselves to blame. The notion that fully grown adult human beings need a babysitter to make sure they don't hurt themselves is the most offensive concept ever known to man. And the most dangerous threat to freedom and liberty, which means the most dangerous threat to life itself. Freedom is a requirement of life. We are given our lives as a "gift of nature" but we are not given the means to sustain it. In order to sustain our lives we need to engage in certain actions. This is the concept of freedom and "rights". Rights are any behaviour that one might engage in to promote his survival and happiness. That means that no one has the ability to interfere with any action that I may choose to engage in, so long as I'm not interfering with another's ability to do the same. If that means doing something silly like excessive gambling then that's my own business.
Psychological addiction to any behaviour or chemical is an evasion of personal responsibility, and ultimately a choice. Furthermore, it is not the "responsibility" or "duty" of anyone else to support, babysit or treat the person. All attempts to do so are ultimately doomed to fail anyway. Being a result of personal choices to begin with, the only successful "treatment" for addiction is the individual making a personal choice to make alternative choices. This is why a person who is addicted is not a "victim", and why treating him/her as such is a gross breach of the concept of self-ownership, and thus freedom.
Public broadband would amount to government monopoly. It would be like health care and education in Canada. I'm Canadian so I know first-hand. There are no laws against private schools and hospitals, but they're almost completely unheard of because you can't compete with "free". Not to mention government intervention in those industries comes with so much regulation that opening a private school or private hospital is so expensive that it becomes not worth the investment.
I'm an amateur economist and I can tell you that almost all monopoly is due to government regulations. Regulations create monopoly by making it more expensive to do business. Thus the giant megacorps who are able to devote entire teams to compliance with regulations become more secure in their markets against new competitors who can't afford to comply. The pharmaceutical industry is an excellent example of that in action.
With regards to telecos, almost all infrastructure is laid under "public" property. Building codes, permits and bidding wars for government contracts (a government contract is always a contract for a monopoly) all make it extremely expensive to build new infrastructure. There's no easy solution here because privatizing all roads and sewers is not an option worth debating unless we want to debate political philosophy. Assuming that public roads and sewers are a necessary evil, government will always be there deciding who gets to lay what infrastructure, when and for how much. This is a huge reason that we don't see broadband in rural areas. Yes, it is all about money. But the question we need to ask is "WHY is it not worth the one-time investment ?" The telecos could always charge more to recoup their investments and it's reasonable to think that more people would move to those areas if broadband were available (I hate living in the city but I work from home and so I absolutely need broadband).
It's not fair to say "they have the money, they're just evil". I have some money too but it doesn't mean I want to spend it on you. For any business it's about profit margins. If there's profit to be had the investment will be made one way or another. So the question becomes "why is it unprofitable for the telecos to expand into rural areas?" and the answer must be that either the customers don't exist or laying the lines will cost the telecos more money than they can expect to make in returns. If it's the latter then I guarantee the reason will involve the government one way or another.
You wouldn't want a teacher strip searching your kid but a cop would be ok ?
The school should call the parents. A police call would be warranted if people's lives were in immediate danger (kid brings a gun to school etc.), but for a strip search the parents should be the only ones able to make that call. If the school (or the parents) want to get the police involved to press charges after illegal drugs are discovered by the parents then that's fine too, though I think good policy would be to let the parents make the call, and if the parents are dead beats who won't discipline a consistently problematic child then expel the kid and call social services.
I don't recognize the state's authority to strip search me or my kids.
I'd say if people's life are in jeopardy then a police call is warranted. Like if a kid brings a gun to school. Seems like common sense.
As for drugs or anything else, call the fucking parents! I mean, if you have good reason to suspect they're stashing drugs in their underwear then detain them in the principal's office and call the parents, then wait for them to get there before proceeding. Again, seems like common sense.
In fact, a call to the parents is pretty much a given whether the police are involved or not. Teachers are not police officers. They should have no power to discipline the kids what-so-ever outside of suspension or expulsion... and in those cases it's not discipline it's "you won't respect the rules that we set for our property then please leave."
You completely missed my point. And I'm not sure what yours is, because you're using the word "dichotomy" as an equivocation. I cannot tell if it is intentional, but it makes your first paragraph nonsensical.
A dichotomy is a division of a whole into two non-overlapping parts. I was not dealing with dichotomies. I was not trying to say that there are two choices (although fundamentally we do have to chose between life or death, but that's irrelevant to my point). My point was that concepts are mental integrations of percepts, treated as units distinguished by their essential characteristics, omitting specific measurements. Percepts form the basis of all human knowledge. Thus concepts always have to link back to percepts. That's all I was saying. You seem to have interpreted me as claiming that "we either chose to link concepts back to percepts, or we chose not to and, most importantly, those are the only two options we have." What I was saying is that concepts are mental integrations of percepts, and that some people don't understand that, and try to evade dealing in terms of fundamentals as a consequence.
"Choice" implies alternatives. "Alternatives" does not imply any fixed quantity. Which alternative one chooses depends on one's values. Values are hierarchical and the values one adopts will depend on one's philosophy of choice. So of course choices do not always reduce to two options (outside of the choice to live or die).
If your mother's choices did not reduce the decisions to their essences then she did not comprehend the appropriate concepts. A computer's user interface is an abstraction on top of it's hardware. Many people new to computers do not grasp that the concepts within the interface reduce back to the physical hardware and correspond to it's various states. In the end I think we might be saying the same thing. "A:" is a concept that reduces to a physical disk drive within the computer. "A:" is not a glass of water.
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There are two types of monopolies:
1) A company is so good at satisfying it's customers that it eliminates it's competition by providing value in the marketplace.
2) A company gets special privileges and favours from the government, including increased regulations of it's own industry. Because when you're a huge corporation with billions in annual revenue and a team of lawyers and lobbyists on staff full-time, complying with regulations that cost mere millions per year is a small tax in exchange for an environment in which it's impossible for start-ups - who only have mere millions in start-up capital to begin with - to enter the market and compete with you. Best part, your team of lawyers and lobbyists can actually be the ones to suggest specific regulations to the politicians who are in your pocket, so you get rules that are cheap for you to follow but prohibitively expensive for others. And those regulations are extremely easy to pass because as well all know, corporations aren't regulated enough!
What a bizarre attitude.
I'd love to seem my neighbours clean up all the rat infested rubbish they keep dumping, but it's their yard.
I'd love to see criminals not stabbing people, but it's their knife.
Poor analogies. It would be more akin to wanting your neighbour to spend his money to buy you a TV instead of one for himself.
I think we will find that we regulate people's behaviour for everyone's benefit all the time,
Well, I certainly agree that we do "regular people's behaviour" all the time but I do not consider enforcing rights to be "regulating" and what we do makes no statement regarding what we should do. And it occurs to me that we're headed straight towards a semantic argument, and so "regulate" isn't really a good word. When you hear the word obviously that includes preventing people from harming others. When I hear the word I think of dictating to people what to do with their property and/or thoughts. I'm going to stop using that word since it makes communication more difficult.
If you're concerned about "everyone's benefit" then really consider the meaning of "everyone." Society is a group of individuals who choose to coexist, form interpersonal relationships and trade with one another. Given that definition, the "good of society" must include every single individual that comprises that society. Would you then agree that if an act hurts one single individual then it cannot be said to be "good for society" ("everyone's benefit") ?
The only way, therefore, to protect "society" is to protect the individual and that means protecting individual rights and liberty. For the sake of clarity I define "liberty" as "an environment in which all relationships are consensual."
Business operates with license from us. We make the rules.
If "we make the rules" then that puts anyone who gets to claim to represent "we" in a position of great power. If it's up to certain individuals or groups to sacrifice or make concessions for the sake of "society" then everyone is placed immediately into an arena where each group battles it out to get the privileged position of claiming to "be society."
I know there's an awful, face-palm-inducing quote by Mitt Romney saying that "corporations are people too." I am not a Romney supporter, nor a republican, nor do I want to get into a discussion about corporate law and how corporations should be treated (since they are a special case of business and subject to special laws). But when it comes to businesses keep in mind that businesses are created by individuals using their money and their ideas to produce something for the purposes of trade. A business is property. Therefore you're saying that "society" gives a license to everyone else to own property and use it how they see fit. That's a dictatorship, by definition. If the government is "we" and "we" give a license to own and use property how "we" see fit then the government has the authority to take your house, your food, your clothes, your car and anything it wants because you only hold that property with a license from "us."
Since human beings, by our nature, are both a body and a mind; both material and non-material, it means that our nature dictates that we have to satisfy two kinds of "needs." We've acknowledged that people do not think with a license but there's a huge push in the direction of claiming that we breathe (or digest food etc.) with a license, which is essentially the argument that you just made.
"We" can either protect an individual's right to own property or "we" can dictate what a person is to do with their material possessions (and by extension their bodies), which out principle would make it "our" property, making "us" a dictatorship since we would be dictating how people live their lives.
"I'd love to see the money oil companies spent on defending their dirty businesses go to research and development of cleaner technologies."
I'd love to see their money go to paying my mortgage and buying me a corvette, but it's their money.
You did mention subsidies and I agree with you completely. In the case of subsidies it's not their money. But instead of giving that money to some other business venture I'd rather give it back to the tax payers and let them decide who deserves to get it. Government and business need to be kept separate for the exact same reason that government and church do. When state and church lay in bed they tell us what to do with our minds, when state and business lay in bed they tell us what to do with our bodies. It amazes me that so many who are opposed to religion making its way into politics don't see the problem with government and business mingling; or maybe they do, they just don't see the similarities between regulating thoughts and regulating trade.
I don't really care too much about "viable alternatives." I'm more worried about legal alternatives. As with all scarce resources, prices will rise as supply diminishes. When people are hungry for energy there will be a lot of money to be made in providing it. I'm not so worried about running out of fossil fuel as I am about legal barriers in place preventing new startups with mere millions from competing with the big boys who have the courts and police and politicians in their pockets.
Sorry for the double post but in hindsight I really wish I had elaborated more on this one part of yours:
"If a woman was going around bragging about her conquests she'd be labelled a slut and people would talk shit on her, while the dude, after being called a pig, is applauded."
Firstly, you brought up the word "conquest." And that's something, not just the word but the entire sentiment, that I hear way more from women than from men, and it's also a very derogatory way of regarding men and male sexuality.
Obviously I'm not a woman, I don't have the female perspective, but I do believe that all relationships not only between men and women but all people in general have to be earned. And I see something extremely romantic in the idea of one person, be it a man or a woman, pursuing another and winning them over. And when someone achieves a value the natural human response to that success is pride.
Now there are frauds out there in all walks of life. I have no doubt there are guys who lie to women and tell them they love her in order to get in her pants and then prove themselves liars by never calling etc. but that's not what I'm talking about; I don't recognize achieving a value by means of fraud as being worthy of experiencing pride and someone who brags about it is akin to someone who brags about robbing a bank. And I bring this up to say that one could point out that there are women who lie about being on birth control or fake pregnancies to get married but it would be unfair to assume that all women are like that, right? Just as it's unfair to assume that all men are liars and cheats. Though it seems to be the cliche. There's a gender stereotype there, which is what "feminists" are supposed to be against.
So back to this idea of "conquest." When I said "express their sexuality" I wasn't talking about getting laid. I was talking about being open about being a sexual creature who is attracted to other humans. That's it. So a guy who says "big boobies" is sexist while a girl who makes a comment about a guy's butt being cute is encouraged.
And realize that you chose to interpret that as "getting into someone's pants and then bragging about it" which says a lot about your own biases and stereotypes. And I will end by saying that if a girl were to "earn" the title of "slut" from a man or a woman, it would not be because of a "conquest" it would be because of a lack of conquest; i.e: no chase, no pursuit, no earning ... just giving it away to anyone in exchange for nothing. The trade of a value for a null or disvalue.
"If a woman was going around bragging about her conquests she'd be labelled a slut and people would talk shit on her, while the dude, after being called a pig, is applauded."
By women. The men I know would be asking for her phone number.
"You don't see the impact of patriarchal society because you don't experience the effects. The same way that many white people feel that there is no such thing as institutionalized racism in North America because they don't experience it."
I find that interesting because as I hinted to, I've experienced the same thing from a male's perspective, from my own family. I experience gender bias all the time from people who proudly label themselves "feminists." They make generalizations about men, they side with my wife every time the two of us have a dispute and we seek support from family, they speak for me as if they know what I'm going to do and the false assumptions they make are based on the fact that I have a penis. Women think they know what I'm thinking and what my intentions are just because I'm a man. So I know exactly how it feels and I do experience it, only I experience it from the same people who complaining about it most vocally.
That's what I was alluding to when I said "... I don't see it. In fact, I see the trend going in the opposite direction." and "the complete double-standard backwardness that has been instituted in the name of 'feminism.'"
I remember a time when I was working along side a female sysadmin. The two of us always got along and worked very well together. One day we had a dispute, I wish I could remember what it was about but it's not that important, she got extremely upset and accused me of being sexist and hating women etc. I would have been very open to the possibility that I said something which was perceived as sexist completely unintentionally, but fortunately for me the argument was made in front of several witnesses, some of them women, and they didn't understand where she was coming from. Now that may be her past experiences causing biases which were transferred to me, perhaps she worked with a lot of chauvinists and/or misogynists and something about our argument worked as a trigger, but I submit that as one small piece of anecdotal evidence that men are being thrown under the bus in a huge way and the "movement" is becoming quite hypocritical without even realizing it. Publicly accusing someone of gender bias in the workplace is a very big deal.
"but honestly I can't imagine very many of us are actually truly completely comfortable with the idea of people we aren't reasonably intimate with commenting on our chests."
No one has said anything about commenting on the size of a specific individual's chest. If it were personal I could understand how it would make someone feel uncomfortable, but I still wouldn't consider it "sexist" because it would also make me feel uncomfortable if someone were to comment on the size of my nose or my waist line.
"Professionalism dictates keeping this sort of thing out of the workplace."
I disagree with that profoundly. The most productive professional environment is one in which everyone gets along, has a good time and enjoys what they're doing. If certain individuals feel uncomfortable it is either because they are being singled out or bullied unfairly (in which case there is something wrong with the environment) or they have a personal problem with the way the business is run (which does not necessarily mean there's something wrong with the individual, just that it's not a good fit).
Femminism is supposed to be about equality and social change, right ? Then here's a social "problem" I would like the change: the complete double-standard backwardness that has been instituted in the name of "feminism." For example: if a guy expresses his sexuality or his sexual nature in any way he is labeled a "pig" but if a woman does it it's applauded as "liberating."
I was raised by a single mom with a tremendous amount of support from her single mom. Both describe themselves as "feminists." Both also talk about "patriarchy" but as a male who was born after 1980 I gotta say ... I don't see it. In fact, I see the trend going in the opposite direction.
The people who I find to be most "sexist" are self-proclaimed "feminists." They constantly draw attention to the differences between the sexes, and by appropriating a title such as "feminism" (emphasis on the root "fem") they are taking a position that there is an inherent conflict between the two sexes, that sides must be chosen and they have chosen the side of women. The foundation of the philosophy is not unifying but polarizing. If they had any pretense of "equality" they would identify themselves as "egalitarian." If they had a pretense about equal rights under the law whilst respecting (or celebrating) natural differences that exist between all individuals they would identify themselves as individualist. Instead they keep dragging the issue of gender through the mud and make everyone, male and female alike, uncomfortable.
I'm sure I could answer my own question with 2 seconds of googling, but for the sake of discussion: What are the differences between Unity and Gnome 3 besides performance ?
I've been using Ubuntu for quite a few years now and have never considered switching desktops, particularly to Gnome (and isn't Unity just Gnome with some changes or am I *way* behind the times ?) xfce is just too ugly for me. I'm one of those rare tech people who actually doesn't mind sparing a few CPU cycles to have something nice to look at, as long as it doesn't cause performance problems (I would even argue that for a lot of people a nice aesthetic UI can boost productivity as long as it's done properly - i.e: to create a more pleasant and intuitive user experience).
So, would I have any reason to want to switch from Unity to Gnome 3 ?
I deleted my Facebook account about 2 months ago.
And then I really missed, not the people / friends (the important of whom I speak to outside of Facebook) but the updates from pages that I "liked." I realized that I used Facebook more as a homepage / portal / news feed than anything else. And some of the stuff I couldn't get outside of Facebook. I wanted to create a new account that would have zero friends (except for maybe my wife & kids), but the registration insisted on providing them my cell phone number to "verify" the account. No thanks.
Ironically, I've since "hi-jacked" a fake account that my wife set up with our daughters for games (that never required verification, go figure), which I used to re-like the things I missed. Now I have all of the updates Facebook was actually useful for without the social network element that I never cared much about. And the best part about it, it's anonymous. No more getting tagged in people's photos. No more concerning myself with privacy issues etc. That's why they want to verify new accounts these days (not an assumption, the verification page stated it outright).
Let me give your analogy everything and say unequivocally "YES we're 'lettuce'" ... it does not invalidate my point.
Can the grocery store benefit by selling rotten lettuce ? Can it benefit by stocking less of it despite their "customers" demanding more ? And can it benefit from an attitude of "fuck the farmers who make the lettuce, we're going to spit on them and kick them to the ground because we 'only care about our customers!'" ?
Honestly who cares if we're the product ? Why is that a bad thing ? When we sell our services to an employer we're "the product" (to the same extent that we're "the product" to advertisers. Obviously we're not talking about trading or selling us as human beings in a literal sense). The point is, we choose to use Google for a reason. If they remove that reason or start slacking then we'll be itching for an alternative and a new market opportunity opens up to compete with them. For what it's worth I've already heard of some people who have stopped using Google search, going directly to Wikipedia instead. It might not be a great example but it is an example of choosing "not Google." In fine dining the Filet Mingon might be the product but you better bet your sweet ass the Chef holds that cut of beef on an insanely high pedestal and treats it with ridiculous amounts of respect because doing so is crucial to the restaurant's bottom line.
Without users Google has no "product" to sell.
There is a distinction that can be drawn between "customer" and "consumer." The average Joe might not be Google's primary "customer" but he is their primary "consumer" ... and without consumers Google is out of business.
It's a total logical fallacy to assume that Google doesn't need to treat their consumers right, and only needs to pander to the people who buy their advertising services. Their advertising services are worth nothing without the consumers, and that makes "us" important (no, essential) to Google's bottom line.
"My other beef is that SQL is not that hard. Its easier than coding."
Right. As you said:
"SQL is just a programming language."
It's not SQL that can trip a developer up, it's understanding how the RDBMS stores and fetches data, builds indexes and optimizes queries. It's a little like understanding how the compiler will optimize your code, but then it goes even further.
For example, it would be easy for a developer to be tempted to store a UUID as a primary key in an InnoDB database for a user session table, since to do otherwise would be adding a redundant ID field, not knowing that InnoDB stores it's rows with the primary key index and thus orders all inserts by primary key.
It's also not always clear how to make full use of indexes ... especially when you need to optimize ORDER BY's (which as you would know can't always be done, and thus need to rely on narrowing the result set as much as possible before the sort), and it's not always obvious how adding a second column in your WHERE or by using aggregates on your indexed columns can make using the index impossible. Those aren't really SQL issues, they're DB issues. Heck, the entire concept of an index has nothing at all to do with SQL (unless you're doing something directly with the index on the schema, but then developers rarely touch the schema when there's a DBA involved) .
You're absolutely right, though, that a competent developer would take the time to learn as much of this as possible. DBAs are in an unfortunate situation because it's tempting for the developer to adopt an attitude of "That's why we have a DBA." I definitely sympathize with you.
"The security flaw was the storage of the passwords rather than passwords hash."
It was a security flaw. Ideally the passwords would be stored hashed (and salted) and their software would not have made them vulnerable to an SQL injection. I mean seriously, an SQL injection?! The software should be using a database abstraction layer or an ORM that takes care of normalizing SQL automatically. These days there's really no excuse for that one. ... but then, storing passwords as plain text too ... I had WAY higher expectations of Yahoo for some reason. Silly me.
If the court proceeding is a matter of public record, and you were found innocent, it's the employer's problem if they want to lose out on your services because of irrational biases and fear. Besides, do you really want to work at such a place ?
Not to mention, with that kind of stain associated with someone who was simply accused of a crime, it's more incentive for the public to hold their government accountable, and provide severe repercussions for falsely convicting and accusing someone.
How to go about "fixing" the system would take us into a huge debate. I just don't see the point you bring up as a valid point against having open trials. Government is supposed to be by and for the people. Thus everything government does, and everything people do involving government, needs to be open since it affects every individual citizen.
For what it's worth, I do think people who are falsely accused, tried and found innocent or convicted and later exonerated ought to be taken care of for their trouble. You can't get a piece of your life back once it's been lost, and if government is "by the people" then the people should pay a price when they take an innocent person's freedom and wealth. The purely social implications, though ? It's individuals who make and form a society, not government. So if you want to change something there (like ending unfair discrimination) then your battle is on a totally different front. It's not fair to point the finger at government or look to government as a tool to solve that problem, and doing so will create all sorts of other injustices (I could name countless examples but I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader to avoid being flamebait).
Be careful here. If, say, you are in a divorce with your wife, do you want the world to know the gory details?
You're missing the difference between a civil suit and a criminal one.
In a civil suit, two civilian (hence "civil") parties are in dispute and require the court's assistance in reaching a resolution. A divorce is a good example. (I will add as a footnote that, at least here in Canada, ALL court proceedings are a matter of public record, divorces included. Therefore if you seek the court's assistance in resolving your divorce it will become a matter of public record. Whether or not that ought to be the case is something I won't get into since it would take me into a long editorializing rant full of my personal opinions and that's quite OT).
In a criminal suit it's the government (presumably the "public") against a citizen who has committed a crime.
In a free and open society all criminal suits ought to be a matter of public record and be open because it's one of the best tools we have for keeping the government honest and fair. That's why we have jury trials and public records and transcriptions etc. It's also a powerful tool to aid in proving someone's innocence after they were falsely convicted (by proving mistrials etc.)
"In modern Western societies, that's not true, even the poorest aren't allowed to just die."
Allowed by whom ? By nature ? By the government ? By charity ?
"Modern Western societies" are one in which the division of labour and free trade have been going on long enough to create abundance. We have cheap food, cheap housing, cheap clothing. Those who are unable to work due to illness or disability either rely on voluntary charity, which is only possible in a system of abundance, or through government social programs which are involuntary (i.e: they're funded by first taking resources from others whether they agree to it or not) and are also only possible in a system of abundance, though they tend to drain that system.
Go back to the island scenario. If everyone consumes and no one produces it's pretty easy to see what happens. Why do you assume it's any different in a "modern western society" ? The underlying principles are the same. Production must precede consumption.
"It isn't slavery because you are not considered property and there is no legal requirement to obey a master or suffer punishment or death."
The principle behind the tax code, as it is written, is such that the government has unlimited power to tax any amount it wishes. It can raise taxes to 100% if it wants to. There is nothing in the legal code preventing them from doing so. That means the the government, in principle, owns 100% of your productive efforts, and allows you to keep a certain amount of it.
Now I submit that no human being can actually own another human being, as a law of nature. The reason is because by our nature our minds are sovereign and our actions volitional. No one can read or alter our thoughts and no one can make decisions for us. A slave, as much a victim as he/she is, still chooses life as a slave over death, fighting, attempting escape or enduring punishment etc.
This is an important point because despite the fact that a slave-master claims to own slaves, slavery does not mean that the master actually has unlimited access to all the faculties of his slave. It only means that he lays claim to 100% of the slave's productive efforts. The only thing that distinguishes a slave from a worker is that if the slave quits the master will punish him via pain or death (in that sense we are all slaves to our nature - we can either exist as human beings or not exist at all).
If we don't produce we don't eat. If we produce the government lays claim to the results. If we don't pony-up we are punished.
"Say I work for someone. He gains more by employing me than he pays me, otherwise he wouldn't find it profitable to do so. Therefore, he's taking a slice of my efforts. By the same argument, surely that is slavery?"
It is not your labour alone that generates profit. And he is certainly not taking a slice of your productive efforts.
When you go to work for someone you are offering a service in exchange for something (usually money). What your employer does with that service is entirely his. Not yours. If it were true that he were taking a slice of your productive efforts then when a business purchases raw materials and uses them to produce a good they are "taking a slice" of the productive efforts of the miners who dug up those materials. Every time a programmer gets paid for writing code he is "taking a slice" of the productive efforts of his college professors who taught him how to program and the computer manufacturers who made the computers that he codes on and so on and so on ...
Production is the combination of labour and natural resources to produce a good or service that is of value to someone. It is not your labour, by itself, that produces the good or determines it's value.
What you are paid is the value that is attached to your service and is negotiated before you produce. While you need to produce your sustenance you have unlimited choice in how you go about it. You can produce your own food, and clo
"Nobody is forced to work"
If you don't work you die. I mean that in the most fundamental way possible. Assume you and your family are stranded on a desert island. How do you survive ? By our nature we are given life but we must engage in certain actions in order to sustain it. That action is productive labour, or "work."
If you don't work, but you are able to sustain your life, it can only be through the productive efforts of others. Someone has to produce your food, your clothing, your shelter etc. So while another human being may not be coercing you into working, that reduces down to: no one forces you to live.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everyone should be making their own food and clothing. That's the beauty of trade. Each person specializes and produces what they are the best at, and then exchanges those goods or services with others who produce what they need to survive. It's not only fair but it has lead to the development and distribution of countless comforts that we enjoy today, not to mention cheap food, clothing, housing, clean water etc.
Anyway, I know that when I spend the day working I don't do it so that you may have the benefit of eating. When the results of my work are taken from me then it is slavery. If I don't work, I die. So I work, and then part of those efforts are taken from me. How is that not slavery ?
Your confusion stems from the belief that one person's gain is another's loss. That people cooperate altruistically for the selfish benefit of others. Which may be true for some misguided individuals who believe that such an existence of self-sacrifice is moral, but I do not subscribe to such a belief because 1) I do not recognize such a system as being compatible with human nature and 2) As a consequence of #1 such a philosophy is evil. Altruism is a system that constantly demands the surrendering of a value for a lesser one or nothing (the very definition of "sacrifice"). Such a system is incompatible with life itself.
In a free (and moral) society people must deal with each other through voluntary exchange. Value for value. The contract does not negate what I said, it only reinforces it. Such a society is a "contract society".
As humans we employ logic and reason to perceive the objective world around us and act accordingly to promote our survival. Historically speaking, coexisting with other humans increased each individual's odds for surviving in a hostile environment. Once the concepts of "time" and "saving" were well-formed the development of agriculture became possible and soon after goods were routinely exchanged for the mutual benefit of the exchangers. Soon people began specializing in producing only what they were good at, and exchanging their surplus for the rest of their needs rather than producing everything themselves. Consequently (but secondary), such a system maximized the benefits for everyone, because more production was possible. Economically speaking, maximizing production increases abundance which lowers costs which maximizes distribution. It is not a consequence of people "giving back to society". It is a consequence of acting to promote one's own selfish interests (i.e: maximizing personal profit by producing the largest possible quantity of what is in demand at the lowest cost possible).
The fact that people operate this way does not impose any obligations of any sort on any individual. It means that if you want something from another person the only way to go about it, morally, is to exchange. Thus all "moral obligations" are cleared at the time of the exchange. So I can agree with part of what you said, if you take from others you owe them something. But your confusion rests with the belief that everything that you have is a gift. This is simply false. If you have a job you are producing value to exchange for everything that you acquire and consume. Morally speaking your balance is clear.
If anything, you may try and claim that we owe our parents something. But that's the extent that you can take it. They produced goods and services to exchange (or provide directly) for the means to sustain our survival. So "society" is well-paid. However, dead-beat parents and extremely problematic children aside, most parents that I know were more than repaid for their voluntary service by the fact that they gained loved ones to share their world with. I've often joked about providing my children with a bill once they turn 18, but I won't. Because my kids were a joy and the means employed to help them grow into adults is a debt that is more than repaid by the wonderful relationship that I will have with them until the day that I die, and the experience of parenting which is an experience that I felt worth having. They don't owe me anything.
You're confusing desires with action.
Free will is almost synonymous with "resisting temptation". Which is why addiction advocates tend to argue so much in favour of the "disease" concept, and why their arguments tend to reduce to the notion that free will is an illusion.
I actually have a mild form of OCD. I'll check to make sure that I have my driver's license before getting in my car and then 10 seconds after leaving the driveway I feel the need to double-check and then triple-check etc. I even do the cliche checking that my front door is locked 20 times every night. But those are desires and whims. I can (and often do) choose to think back on when I first checked to make sure that I had my license and then reassure myself "Garett man, you're being paranoid. You already made sure you had your license. Chill out." Yes, it's all choices. I have the desire to eat a whole cheesecake to myself right now, but I choose not to because I recognize the negative consequences of doing so. Desire vs. action.
"Society" simply refers to all of the actions and choices of individuals. There can be no "we" without the "I". Just because the benefits of social participation are obvious to anyone does not mean that the needs of "society" (which is an abstract concept) trump the needs of the individual (which is a concrete).
Society does not threaten the freedoms of the individual. Other individuals who violate the non-aggression-principle do.
Furthermore, I never claimed, or even implied that addicts were happy. I specifically claimed that psychological addictions are an evasion of personal responsibility. A choice to engage in harmful activity. And that freedom means the ability to make choices concerning your own person. Every single addict knows that he is harming himself. Yet he values his destructive behaviour over the alternatives. There are many possible reasons that he may do so, but none of them impose any sort of duty on other individuals to offer help. I also specifically pointed out that any attempts to offer help are doomed to fail unless requested, because the "addictive" behaviour is a choice. The addict claiming that it isn't (a choice) is a further evasion; a way to escape his personal responsibility.
No one can have a "right" to the productive efforts of others. That is slavery. If you feel that anyone "owes" society anything then you are admitting that every person is a slave to everyone else. I see no evidence of that, and overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The body is only one part of the human. No one can read or control another's thoughts. No one can make decisions for the individual. You even chose the word "influence" in the context of decision making, acknowledging this fact. Coercion may influence my decisions, but ultimately only I can make those decisions. I can choose death over submission to any oppression and for that reason it is a law of nature that I cannot be owned by another individual, let alone "society".
More importantly, stocks are a claim to partial ownership of a company. Thus buying stocks is an investment in a business venture. There is always risk in business, but successful entrepreneurs minimize their risk by researching their markets and filling an unfilled need, or filling a need better than anyone else.
While a stock-owner does not make all of the same decisions that an entrepreneur does, they do play a vital role in the economy by funding ventures that are producing goods and services that are in demand.
Most people think of the stock market as gambling because they confuse investing with speculating. Many stock-traders do speculate by purchasing stocks that they believe will go up in price (with the intention of selling them when they do), or short-selling stocks that they believe are about to go down*. However, the VAST majority of stock-holders are investors who put their money into carefully researched companies with the intention of earning dividend yields. Here the risk is minimal and while the returns are not as high, the investor stays liquid and acts more as a lender. Lending only to those companies that have a good track record and operate in "safe" markets (traditional examples of "safe" markets are commodities, raw materials, natural resources, public utilities etc.)
* Short selling means borrowing a stock from a broker, selling it at it's current price and then buying it back at a lower price. Since you only owe the broker the stock, not it's original value, you return the stock to the broker and pocket the difference between the original price you sold it at, and the lower price you bought it back at.
Humans are volitional beings. Our very definition is "rational animal". We have free will and choose every one of our actions. We own our own bodies and our minds and thus we are "free" by nature.
Therefore, if we develop an addiction to a substance or to a behaviour we have only ourselves to blame. The notion that fully grown adult human beings need a babysitter to make sure they don't hurt themselves is the most offensive concept ever known to man. And the most dangerous threat to freedom and liberty, which means the most dangerous threat to life itself. Freedom is a requirement of life. We are given our lives as a "gift of nature" but we are not given the means to sustain it. In order to sustain our lives we need to engage in certain actions. This is the concept of freedom and "rights". Rights are any behaviour that one might engage in to promote his survival and happiness. That means that no one has the ability to interfere with any action that I may choose to engage in, so long as I'm not interfering with another's ability to do the same. If that means doing something silly like excessive gambling then that's my own business.
Psychological addiction to any behaviour or chemical is an evasion of personal responsibility, and ultimately a choice. Furthermore, it is not the "responsibility" or "duty" of anyone else to support, babysit or treat the person. All attempts to do so are ultimately doomed to fail anyway. Being a result of personal choices to begin with, the only successful "treatment" for addiction is the individual making a personal choice to make alternative choices. This is why a person who is addicted is not a "victim", and why treating him/her as such is a gross breach of the concept of self-ownership, and thus freedom.
Public broadband would amount to government monopoly. It would be like health care and education in Canada. I'm Canadian so I know first-hand. There are no laws against private schools and hospitals, but they're almost completely unheard of because you can't compete with "free". Not to mention government intervention in those industries comes with so much regulation that opening a private school or private hospital is so expensive that it becomes not worth the investment.
I'm an amateur economist and I can tell you that almost all monopoly is due to government regulations. Regulations create monopoly by making it more expensive to do business. Thus the giant megacorps who are able to devote entire teams to compliance with regulations become more secure in their markets against new competitors who can't afford to comply. The pharmaceutical industry is an excellent example of that in action.
With regards to telecos, almost all infrastructure is laid under "public" property. Building codes, permits and bidding wars for government contracts (a government contract is always a contract for a monopoly) all make it extremely expensive to build new infrastructure. There's no easy solution here because privatizing all roads and sewers is not an option worth debating unless we want to debate political philosophy. Assuming that public roads and sewers are a necessary evil, government will always be there deciding who gets to lay what infrastructure, when and for how much. This is a huge reason that we don't see broadband in rural areas. Yes, it is all about money. But the question we need to ask is "WHY is it not worth the one-time investment ?" The telecos could always charge more to recoup their investments and it's reasonable to think that more people would move to those areas if broadband were available (I hate living in the city but I work from home and so I absolutely need broadband).
It's not fair to say "they have the money, they're just evil". I have some money too but it doesn't mean I want to spend it on you. For any business it's about profit margins. If there's profit to be had the investment will be made one way or another. So the question becomes "why is it unprofitable for the telecos to expand into rural areas?" and the answer must be that either the customers don't exist or laying the lines will cost the telecos more money than they can expect to make in returns. If it's the latter then I guarantee the reason will involve the government one way or another.
You wouldn't want a teacher strip searching your kid but a cop would be ok ?
The school should call the parents. A police call would be warranted if people's lives were in immediate danger (kid brings a gun to school etc.), but for a strip search the parents should be the only ones able to make that call. If the school (or the parents) want to get the police involved to press charges after illegal drugs are discovered by the parents then that's fine too, though I think good policy would be to let the parents make the call, and if the parents are dead beats who won't discipline a consistently problematic child then expel the kid and call social services.
I don't recognize the state's authority to strip search me or my kids.
I'd say if people's life are in jeopardy then a police call is warranted. Like if a kid brings a gun to school. Seems like common sense.
As for drugs or anything else, call the fucking parents! I mean, if you have good reason to suspect they're stashing drugs in their underwear then detain them in the principal's office and call the parents, then wait for them to get there before proceeding. Again, seems like common sense.
In fact, a call to the parents is pretty much a given whether the police are involved or not. Teachers are not police officers. They should have no power to discipline the kids what-so-ever outside of suspension or expulsion ... and in those cases it's not discipline it's "you won't respect the rules that we set for our property then please leave."
You completely missed my point. And I'm not sure what yours is, because you're using the word "dichotomy" as an equivocation. I cannot tell if it is intentional, but it makes your first paragraph nonsensical.
A dichotomy is a division of a whole into two non-overlapping parts. I was not dealing with dichotomies. I was not trying to say that there are two choices (although fundamentally we do have to chose between life or death, but that's irrelevant to my point). My point was that concepts are mental integrations of percepts, treated as units distinguished by their essential characteristics, omitting specific measurements. Percepts form the basis of all human knowledge. Thus concepts always have to link back to percepts. That's all I was saying. You seem to have interpreted me as claiming that "we either chose to link concepts back to percepts, or we chose not to and, most importantly, those are the only two options we have." What I was saying is that concepts are mental integrations of percepts, and that some people don't understand that, and try to evade dealing in terms of fundamentals as a consequence.
"Choice" implies alternatives. "Alternatives" does not imply any fixed quantity. Which alternative one chooses depends on one's values. Values are hierarchical and the values one adopts will depend on one's philosophy of choice. So of course choices do not always reduce to two options (outside of the choice to live or die).
If your mother's choices did not reduce the decisions to their essences then she did not comprehend the appropriate concepts. A computer's user interface is an abstraction on top of it's hardware. Many people new to computers do not grasp that the concepts within the interface reduce back to the physical hardware and correspond to it's various states. In the end I think we might be saying the same thing. "A:" is a concept that reduces to a physical disk drive within the computer. "A:" is not a glass of water.