Many of those "poverty-stricken urban areas" are created because people become dependant on social programs, don't get an education to improve themselves, and don't end up with a better job.
The situation is obviously more complex than this.
move out of your house, and into an apartment, take the difference in rent against your mortgage and buy a HUD for a homeless person. Are you going to do it? Skip your next family vacation so you can pay for someone else's college tuition. Are you going to do it?
This is not the case. The people who are paying 40% of their taxes are NOT going to miss out on their next vacation because of it. My dad pays 40% of his income to taxes, he still lives better than 99% of the people in the world. And he still bitches about it. I think the system is pretty fair the way it is, personally.
Do you want to have to subsidize almost every lazy 2 bit beer guzzling person in the US because they just don't want to work?
I haven't made up my mind completely on how I feel about welfare. But it is obvious that this statement you have just made is a gross over-generalization.
a) only peripherally responsible for Iran-Contra--it happened under his nose, but (probably) not with his knowledge. The Iran-Contra dealings were motivated by good and appropriate intentions, but ended up trampling all over the Constitution in a most heinous fashion. Lewinskygate was small potatoes by comparison. (Geogrge Bush was definitely instrumental in Iran-Contra, btw.)
b) Admirably competant in his dealings with foreign powers in general and the USSR in particular. He dealt appropriately with Libya. He was not, however, in any significant way responsible for the collapse of said Soviet Union.
c) A failure in the realm of domestic economics. Under his administration the rich literally got richer, the poor literally got poorer, and it is almost unarguable that his voodoo economics (which may or may not have been justified) drove the nation into massive debt.
d) a B-rate actor, a B-plus-rate president. Not bad, but not great either.
Funny how for many Americans this statement is not even questionable.
How exactly do you know that these 2 people are American? I could easily imagine two Canadians or two Europeans having the same debate and saying the exact same things.....
"As the old saying goes, when you mix shit and ice cream, you ruin the ice cream, and you don't improve the taste of the shit much."
The analogy, while witty, doesn't accurately cover the situation. A more correct analogy would have to include the fact that 50% of the population prefers the taste of the shit...or something like that.
I regard myself as a moderate; I am fundamentally against making radical changes to the system unless there is a radical justification for doing so. Unlike most of the population (either Left or Right wing) I am more or less happy with the government(s) the way it/they is/are right now. The majority of us are already living better than any human being in all of history could ever have expected to live. Most of us are living in the Golden Age. Why make sudden, radical changes?
Wow, that is pretty much my objection to social engineering. With the caveat that I would add "you CAN nudge things in a certain direction, you CAN'T redesign the whole system from the ground up."
I haven't read enough of her stuff to be an expert. I buy into some of what I read, I feel she is right about a lot of things. On the other hand, I see people who virtually worship her as the fountainhead (whoops, pun) of all knowledge, and I think that this type of idolatry is anything but "objective." Much of her philosophy seems strongly influenced by her personal psychological quirks, not objective.
The main fallacy I see in her thought is the notion that competition and selfishness are always desirable traits, whereas Nature provides evidence to the contrary. The most succesful species exhibit interspecies cooperation, we humans did not get to where we are on the food chain by stabbing each other in the back.
In short, Randianism (I refuse to call it "objectivism") represents an extremist viewpoint. In my experience, the Truth usually lies somewhere between the two extremes.
Lastly, a key point arising from all of this is the concerted effort by the police (and the media) to make the protesters appear a lot more violent than they are
Blockading access to public facilities with your body is "non-violent" in the same sense that forcibly restraining and handcuffing someone to a chair against their will is "non-violent." The majority of the protesters in Seattle were doing just that (deliberately blockading access to public facilities) and they deserved very much to get arrested for doing so.
"that doesn't change the fact that police, especially the riot forces, are used to protect the interests of the powerful"
This isn't really a fact.
and are fairly brutal towards groups they don't like
I trust the average cop to be fair and impartial a more than I trust the "independant media" to be fair and impartial. That's saying a lot, considering that no cop has ever done anything anything for me other than bust me or give me a ticket.
"I was just following orders". It doesn't stand up. Each individual is responsible for his or her own actions. You know, this has been the main point of every trail on war-crimes since WWII, and indeed, you bet top nazis where convicted, while they were "just following orders"
Bad example. I believe that the Nazi privates who actually shoved the victims into the gas chamber and pulled the switch were officially absolved of responsibity. It was the guys near the top of the chain of command who were held responsible.
(such as the Piltdown man turning out to be a human skull & an orangutang (sp?) jaw.
Piltdown man was always pretty sketchy, there weren't a whole lot of opportunities to study the specimen, and once it became accessible it was revealed as a hoax. By a bunch of evolutionists, no less.
why do evolutionists have to revise their theories so much???
Because scientists, unlike creationists, are quite willing to admit they are wrong when the evidence warrants it.
Granted, there are sheep on the creation side too, but it goes both ways.
Yeah, this is true. Most of the Christians I know are sophisticated enough not to take the Bible as word-for-word literal truth, and I can respect that. It's dogma, not religion, that I hate.
Read past the first page. Quotes from evolutionists.
I did read past the first page. Whoever taught you your probability theory must have gone to a vo-tech school.
Does it matter what the first person's name was?
Given the creationist claim that the Bible is literal, unaltered, untainted truth, I would say that it matters very much. Could you possibly be saying that evidence is more important than the various assorted ancient texts that modern people conveniently lump under the label "Genesis?"
Evolution theory is bloated and 'buggy', but has a good PR dept. (edu. institutions), while creationism just works.
If it works, why do so many Christians believe in evolution???
Keep asking yourself questions like that, and you'll find that somewhere there had to be a first cause, and creator. Evolution or no, Christianity or no.
If you keep asking these questions you are guaranteed to NEVER find a First Cause.
Dude...you could read the book of Genesis without any outside information and see that something ain't right. Just read the book and think about it a little bit. There's 2 totally different creation stories with 2 different orders for creation given, only one of which mentions Adam and Eve. When Abraham is about 90, a pharoah nabs his wife but then God shows up in a dream and the pharoah repents. Later when Abraham is almost 200, a pharoah again grabs his wife but then repents when the Lord shows up. Then the exact same thing happens, with the exact same pharoah in the exact same city, again for a third time to Abraham's son and HIS wife. Sounds kinda fishy to me.
I won't go into the number of holes that get opened up when you consider the non-controversial fact that the Book of Genesis wasn't even written originally as a single document, but is instead a conglomerate pieced together from at least 3 different source texts....
I loved C.S.Lewis as a kid. He's probably my favorite Christian writer and I will always have a soft spot for him. But I remember reading "Mere Christianity" when I was in high school and being astounded at the flimsiness of the arguments--they were exactly the things I had been taught my whole life at church and ended up rejecting by the time I was 14. If you rejected Christianity on a rational basis, "Mere Christianity" probably won't change your mind.
Two of the things I think the evolutionary model has going for it is its ability to predict future events, and the manner in which seperate pieces of evidence are all highly consistent with each other and with the theory. Depth-based dating is pretty consistent with radiocarbon dating. The theory predicts that no fossils of type A will be found less than X million years ago, and this prediction has never been refuted.
You get my drift....
You want to be on MTV, hang out with Britainy Spears, open up for the Who, and snort cocaine in the back of a limo with a leggy supermodel? Sign the contract.
Haven't they terminated users in every case where they were presented with evidence of copyright infringement? What more are they supposed to do?
For one thing, I think I remember reading that they ended up re-instating the banned users. I could be wrong, though. Nevertheless, an ISP who found a website on their server with the title "Prepubescent Sex Acts" has an obligation to audit this website and report to authorities if there's evidence of illegal activity. An ISP who's servers consisted 90% of kiddie porn would probably have some hell to pay if they continually ignored this situation. At least 8 out of 10 file transfers that the Napster service facilitates are unquestionably illegal according to the wording of current copyright law. They have already admitted that they are well aware that this is what the service is used for, and yet they have done nothing about it.
You didn't ramble too much at all. I agree with you completely. I particularly like that you pointed out that music, while it is data, is not really "information." Good point.
Defending the ISPs is not defending kiddie porn - it's defending service providers. Napster is just another service provider, everything I've seen indicates that Napster has been responsive and responsible in locking out users from the system when they are made aware of violations....It's precisely the same principle.
Same principle, but in practice two very different things. The vast majority of the use of a typical ISP is legitimate and kiddie porn freaks are very much the minority. This is not the case with Napster, where illegal usage accounts for the overwhelming majority of its usage. I would not be exaggerating too much if I said that the number of Napster-users who have never transmitted copyrighted music is close to zero. And Napster has done extremely little to change that.
I basically agree with everything you said, I think your appraisal of the situation is pretty good. I have one exception:
(for which Stephen King is to be applauded in showing a very plausible way forward)
There is no way in Hell that Stephen King's "honor system" is going to work. I'm willing to bet that at least half of the people who read the story don't pay up. They might intend to pay up, they may swear to themselves that they'll do it--tomorrow. But if I've already read the story for free, I'm not going to pay you for it. There's simply no reason to.
Farming land in the third world that could be used to produce food for the people is used instead to grow tobacco and other drugs, which are then exported to West
Mass starvation has been around for thousands of years longer than global capitalism, I could blame it on a million other factors that have nothing to do with trade practices.
Natural resources are harvested by large corporations
Yes, and it requires time, equipment, and a means of motivating workers in order to harvest them. Otherwise they sit in the ground and benefit no one.
with a small percentage of the profit ending up in the pockets of the leaders of that country, and nothing adding to the benefit of the people.
It is unarguable that the standard of living for the average human being worldwide has been raised coincidentally with the rise of corporatism, the efficiency with which we exploit resources has increased. Whether the corporations are incidental to this improvement is debatable, I guess.
The resources for material production (clothes, shoes, computers, food...) are limited, they are a pie I believe we were meant to share equally
They don't get turned into material products by themselves, there has to be an incentive to do so. "Everyone gets the same slice regardless of their contribution" is not an incentive.
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The situation is obviously more complex than this.
This is not the case. The people who are paying 40% of their taxes are NOT going to miss out on their next vacation because of it. My dad pays 40% of his income to taxes, he still lives better than 99% of the people in the world. And he still bitches about it. I think the system is pretty fair the way it is, personally.
I haven't made up my mind completely on how I feel about welfare. But it is obvious that this statement you have just made is a gross over-generalization.
a) only peripherally responsible for Iran-Contra--it happened under his nose, but (probably) not with his knowledge. The Iran-Contra dealings were motivated by good and appropriate intentions, but ended up trampling all over the Constitution in a most heinous fashion. Lewinskygate was small potatoes by comparison. (Geogrge Bush was definitely instrumental in Iran-Contra, btw.)
b) Admirably competant in his dealings with foreign powers in general and the USSR in particular. He dealt appropriately with Libya. He was not, however, in any significant way responsible for the collapse of said Soviet Union.
c) A failure in the realm of domestic economics. Under his administration the rich literally got richer, the poor literally got poorer, and it is almost unarguable that his voodoo economics (which may or may not have been justified) drove the nation into massive debt. d) a B-rate actor, a B-plus-rate president. Not bad, but not great either.
How exactly do you know that these 2 people are American? I could easily imagine two Canadians or two Europeans having the same debate and saying the exact same things.....
The analogy, while witty, doesn't accurately cover the situation. A more correct analogy would have to include the fact that 50% of the population prefers the taste of the shit...or something like that.
I regard myself as a moderate; I am fundamentally against making radical changes to the system unless there is a radical justification for doing so. Unlike most of the population (either Left or Right wing) I am more or less happy with the government(s) the way it/they is/are right now. The majority of us are already living better than any human being in all of history could ever have expected to live. Most of us are living in the Golden Age. Why make sudden, radical changes?
Wow, that is pretty much my objection to social engineering. With the caveat that I would add "you CAN nudge things in a certain direction, you CAN'T redesign the whole system from the ground up."
The main fallacy I see in her thought is the notion that competition and selfishness are always desirable traits, whereas Nature provides evidence to the contrary. The most succesful species exhibit interspecies cooperation, we humans did not get to where we are on the food chain by stabbing each other in the back.
In short, Randianism (I refuse to call it "objectivism") represents an extremist viewpoint. In my experience, the Truth usually lies somewhere between the two extremes.
Blockading access to public facilities with your body is "non-violent" in the same sense that forcibly restraining and handcuffing someone to a chair against their will is "non-violent." The majority of the protesters in Seattle were doing just that (deliberately blockading access to public facilities) and they deserved very much to get arrested for doing so.
This isn't really a fact.
and are fairly brutal towards groups they don't like
I trust the average cop to be fair and impartial a more than I trust the "independant media" to be fair and impartial. That's saying a lot, considering that no cop has ever done anything anything for me other than bust me or give me a ticket.
Bad example. I believe that the Nazi privates who actually shoved the victims into the gas chamber and pulled the switch were officially absolved of responsibity. It was the guys near the top of the chain of command who were held responsible.
I realize this. Many Christians realize this. Literal creationists do not realize this.
Piltdown man was always pretty sketchy, there weren't a whole lot of opportunities to study the specimen, and once it became accessible it was revealed as a hoax. By a bunch of evolutionists, no less.
why do evolutionists have to revise their theories so much???
Because scientists, unlike creationists, are quite willing to admit they are wrong when the evidence warrants it.
Granted, there are sheep on the creation side too, but it goes both ways.
Yeah, this is true. Most of the Christians I know are sophisticated enough not to take the Bible as word-for-word literal truth, and I can respect that. It's dogma, not religion, that I hate.
I did read past the first page. Whoever taught you your probability theory must have gone to a vo-tech school.
Does it matter what the first person's name was?
Given the creationist claim that the Bible is literal, unaltered, untainted truth, I would say that it matters very much. Could you possibly be saying that evidence is more important than the various assorted ancient texts that modern people conveniently lump under the label "Genesis?"
Evolution theory is bloated and 'buggy', but has a good PR dept. (edu. institutions), while creationism just works.
If it works, why do so many Christians believe in evolution???
If you keep asking these questions you are guaranteed to NEVER find a First Cause.
I won't go into the number of holes that get opened up when you consider the non-controversial fact that the Book of Genesis wasn't even written originally as a single document, but is instead a conglomerate pieced together from at least 3 different source texts....
I loved C.S.Lewis as a kid. He's probably my favorite Christian writer and I will always have a soft spot for him. But I remember reading "Mere Christianity" when I was in high school and being astounded at the flimsiness of the arguments--they were exactly the things I had been taught my whole life at church and ended up rejecting by the time I was 14. If you rejected Christianity on a rational basis, "Mere Christianity" probably won't change your mind.
Two of the things I think the evolutionary model has going for it is its ability to predict future events, and the manner in which seperate pieces of evidence are all highly consistent with each other and with the theory. Depth-based dating is pretty consistent with radiocarbon dating. The theory predicts that no fossils of type A will be found less than X million years ago, and this prediction has never been refuted. You get my drift....
The phrase "I couldn't have said it better myself" is appropriate here. So: I couldn't have said it better myself.
Where do I sign????
For one thing, I think I remember reading that they ended up re-instating the banned users. I could be wrong, though. Nevertheless, an ISP who found a website on their server with the title "Prepubescent Sex Acts" has an obligation to audit this website and report to authorities if there's evidence of illegal activity. An ISP who's servers consisted 90% of kiddie porn would probably have some hell to pay if they continually ignored this situation. At least 8 out of 10 file transfers that the Napster service facilitates are unquestionably illegal according to the wording of current copyright law. They have already admitted that they are well aware that this is what the service is used for, and yet they have done nothing about it.
You didn't ramble too much at all. I agree with you completely. I particularly like that you pointed out that music, while it is data, is not really "information." Good point.
Same principle, but in practice two very different things. The vast majority of the use of a typical ISP is legitimate and kiddie porn freaks are very much the minority. This is not the case with Napster, where illegal usage accounts for the overwhelming majority of its usage. I would not be exaggerating too much if I said that the number of Napster-users who have never transmitted copyrighted music is close to zero. And Napster has done extremely little to change that.
(for which Stephen King is to be applauded in showing a very plausible way forward)
There is no way in Hell that Stephen King's "honor system" is going to work. I'm willing to bet that at least half of the people who read the story don't pay up. They might intend to pay up, they may swear to themselves that they'll do it--tomorrow. But if I've already read the story for free, I'm not going to pay you for it. There's simply no reason to.
Mass starvation has been around for thousands of years longer than global capitalism, I could blame it on a million other factors that have nothing to do with trade practices.
Natural resources are harvested by large corporations
Yes, and it requires time, equipment, and a means of motivating workers in order to harvest them. Otherwise they sit in the ground and benefit no one.
with a small percentage of the profit ending up in the pockets of the leaders of that country, and nothing adding to the benefit of the people.
It is unarguable that the standard of living for the average human being worldwide has been raised coincidentally with the rise of corporatism, the efficiency with which we exploit resources has increased. Whether the corporations are incidental to this improvement is debatable, I guess.
The resources for material production (clothes, shoes, computers, food...) are limited, they are a pie I believe we were meant to share equally
They don't get turned into material products by themselves, there has to be an incentive to do so. "Everyone gets the same slice regardless of their contribution" is not an incentive.