Now, if we say "FU" to Hollings he's just going to throw his hands up and say nevermind and go back to introducing corporate bills.
Your viewpoint here affirms an underlying belief that senators are forever. Sadly, there's an element of truth to that, but I'm doing my one-vote bit to promote accountability, or zero vote in this case, since I'm not his constituent. Hollings has some work to do to win my support. One bill isn't going to cut it. He's shown me that he's either easily bought, or as you claim, put forth a proposed law while having no concept of what its effect will be. In neither case do I want such a person making laws for me. Hit the road, Fritz.
Don't get emotional about it, just play the game.
There's nothing emotional about it, I'm just electing (no pun intended) to play the game as originally intended. We shouldn't elect people to Congress and then coerce them into voting like we want, we should elect people to Congress who vote like we want because they think like we do. Senator Hollings does not think like I do. He doesn't seem to do the job in the manner in which I think it should be done. I don't have to be nice to him, he's got to earn my support. Get enough people thinking like this and we'll have a responsive and responsible legislature. Get enough thinking like you propose and we'll continue to have a ruling elite with little real accountability.
But I do hold a grudge, or more precisely, I judge people on their past actions. Senator Hollings was elected to serve his constituency, not Disney, and not the entertainment industry. If you recall, his reaction to the Intel rep who dared to have a different opinion wasn't exactly congenial. If you are a member of his constituency, vote the bastard out. I'd rather send the message that you only get to screw me over, or try to with reckless disregard for the rights of American citizens, exactly once.
It might well be analagous. Nevertheless, if you go to a strip club, get a lap dance just like you describe (which would be illegal, IIRC, I don't think contact is allowed in the jurisdiction in which I'm sitting), then rape the performer you stand a good chance of being convicted and getting your just deserts from your cellmate, Bubba which might consist of the last, but probably no skirt or strip-tease.
The point here is acting like civilized, responsible people. Lots of people, including me, would see a nice car or something valuable inside and think, "Wow, I wish that were mine!" Society works much better if we suborn the greed to a common agreement to respect each other's property no matter how strong the greed initiated compulsion may be. I should also admit to a strong ethical bias here. I believe theft is just "wrong", as is rape, so I'm not going to do it regardless of the source of the desire to do so, pile of cash or strip-tease notwithstanding.
I'm sure everyone of us could be encouraged to do something illegal if the setup was correct.
Hardly true. To my thinking it doesn't matter if the door was unlocked. When was the last time you went over to some random car and tested the door to see if it was unlocked. I can say I've *never* done that to a car I or someone I was with didn't own. To my way of thinking, you could leave a ferrari, doors open, windows down, keys in the ignition, cash 3 inches deep on the floor and the Hope diamond sitting on the passenger seat and you're *still* a thief if you steal it and it's *still* not entrapment if you do. No one's encouraging you to steal that several million dollar pile of someone else's property. You would have been quite willing to do it on your own. Now if a police officer offered to pay you to steal the car for him, or suggested you should for your own benefit, that's entrapment. If its entirely of your own volition, enjoy the cell.
whitehouse.com could then be used by a non-porn commercial entity, which would be a refreshing change from the domain grabbing days where if you had foo.com, you'd better rush out and get foo.net and foo.org as well. At least if you believed the ads from the domain registrars. Isn't there a White House company that makes apple juice or something?
Personally, I'm torn. I think its a good idea, but that it isn't the U.S. government's place to do it. I'd like an internet where I can type in a web address and know I'm not inadvertently typoing my way to a porn site. Landing on whitehouse.com by mistake at work on a closely monitored net is not fun. Basically, it's bad (unethical) business at work.
How many people get killed each year by guns? How many people get killed each year by cars? Until the number of people being killed by cars drops dramatically, we need to think of cars as lethal objects, if not weapons.
Potentially lethal objects, fine. No car I've ever owned has been a lethal object, unless you want to count bugs who failed the grill test. By all means, I believe cars *can* kill people and drivers should act with necessary safety. I just object ot the reasoning that because something might possibly be used to harm someone, it's a weapon. We should restrict that word to things which have exclusive or primary purpose of killing things, or things which have or the user intends to use to kill something. My putter isn't a weapon, but yours is if you've just been attacked with it.
Back to topic, it's these stretches of logic which make biometric drivers licenses dangerous. Forbidding weapons at school is fine and mostly reasonable. Disciplining, even severely, violators of that policy is not a bad thing. It becomes a bad thing when nitwits get to decide that a weapon is whatever they say it is. The problem isn't licensing drivers, the problem isn't linking biometric data to a drivers license, the problem is the next step. Because of the inevitability of the next step, I have to oppose the linking of biometric data.
It's the inevitable roll downhill that bothers me. Having a social security number annoys me only to the extent that it's an awful parody of a retirement plan. Giving it out wouldn't be a big deal either if it weren't for the fact that it has become the key to your financial identity. That might not be a big deal, either, after all you knowing my credit rating is an invasion of privacy, but not as bad as having to watch Rosie O'Donnell. Maybe. Where it really all goes to hell is that all you need is something close to my name and my SSN to get *credit* and *buy stuff* in my name.
So yes, I get a bit nervous when you say "but all we've done is digitize it". I don't like the idea that if I get pulled over and my physical drivers license doesn't match the almighty database, I'll inevitably be the one who's wrong. Or should I say a dangerous terrorist whose papers don't match because he has something to hide?
The state's aithority essentially derives from its responsibilty to protect its citizens safety and manage the utilization of what is, in all honesty, a lethal weapon that poses a serious danger to the majority.
A car is not a lethal weapon. We need to get *far* from that sort of reasoning. A car is a mode of transportation. A firearm is a weapon. A knife *might* be a weapon. The ones in my kitchen are tools, thank you, as is my axe, straight razor, etc. The logic that something is a weapon just because you can hurt someone with us is what gets good kids kicked dragged out of school through the auspices of zero-thinking^Wtolerance policies.
Funny, I hear that's just what they tell identity theft victims under suspicion of fraud. What's wrong with it is that you very, very, incorrectly assume that large, impersonal bureaucracies don't regularly grind people up and spit them out. What's wrong is that some percentage of the data in these archives will inevitably be incorrect, and it's bloody near impossible to get it fixed if you're lucky enough to even find out about it before being screwed by it. There's the problem that putting all this information on a DRIVER'S license is irrelevant to actually allowing you to drive. Given the opportunity, this stuff *will* be abused, much like bars often, I'm told, scan drivers licenses where they're scannable, ostensibly to validate whether you're old enough to be there. The marketing database and record of your visits that they can do anything they'd like with is just a bonus.
Simply put, avoiding the potential for abuse is always a good idea.
Wow. You're so cool. And deep. Wow. I hope that all Americans can be like you. Oh, wait. They already are.
While I can't exactly blame you for flaming that dolt, you should know your statement is far from the truth. Quite a few Americans donate money to causes outside the United States. A local medical school has students volunteer to hop on a plane and fly thousands of miles to live in conditions worse than they'll ever see in their soon-to-be-priviledged-even-by-American-standards lives to deliver health care absolutely free of charge to people who otherwise wouldn't have it. We have a minor public debate over what we should do about all the people in sub-Saharan Africa who have or soon will have AIDS (minor only because that's just one of the major issues we're trying to figure out what to do about).
Some day I'd like to find a reference to the total aid in money, goods, and services which flows out of the U.S. When you can top it, then perhaps your claim will have merit. Until then you're just another person who thinks its cool to hate Americans. Welcome to the club. Your member ID is 4,252,273,251. Don't lose that number. We'll need it when you ask for food, health care, financial, diplomatic, or military assistance. Again.
How many of us heard that old line, "Eat your ! Don't you know there are starving kids in China?" Much like that long ago liver (ok, perhaps my parents thankfully never served that, but that's not the point), if I ate it there was just about zero chance anyone in China would benefit. Nor would they if I said, "Hey mom, no food for me this week, please!" Pets consume $11 billion a year and have better health care than some people elsewhere. The same applies. If I didn't have a pet, I wouldn't be sending the whopping $100 or so it costs me a year to starving kids in Foobarland. You can argue that I should give $100 (more) than I already do to starving kids in Foobarland, but were I to be swayed by that I'd cut the $100 from something other than maintaining a pet.
You really might consider a career other than micromanaging everyone elses resource use. We're fortunate[0] here in the U.S. to be rich in many things, just like other parts of the world are rich in the same things and others (oil in the Middle East comes to mind). We already give away tons of that (literally) in private and public charities. That some US citizen dares to spend < 1% of their income on something that makes them happy is really absolutely none of your concern. Most slashdotters probably spend more on internet access in a year than I do on my pet. More power to them. I do hope a large portion of your resources go to provide food and health care to those who don't have it.
[0] Possibly not the right word, but "lucky" is certainly not. We're in the position we are only as a result of decisions made by our economic ancestors--those who colonized the states and industrialized them. I'm better off than my grandparents and parents. My kids will be better off because I'll continue the same tradition of working hard to improve their condition.
That must be why Maryland was going to (or did, I don't recall) prosecute Linda Tripp for recording her calls with Monica Lewinski. It absolutely does depend on state law. I don't think I've lived in one yet where you could record calls without consent and notification, although in at least one notification could consist of playing a beep every n seconds and consent the other party not hanging up. As always, accepting legal advice from random people on the net is a horrifically bad idea. As a rule, they don't really know the law and presume too much. Notably, that the law is the way the law should be.
There is of course a redress process called anti-trust law when power is unduly centralized in private hands, and a redress process called elections when power is unduly centralized in government. However, a central government obsessed with social organization and control will tend to disinform its citizens because socialism is more about coercion than about voluntary association.
That is the absolute key point. I consider myself a rabid libertarian, but I absolutely support and favor groups of people voluntarily choosing to share resources and redistribute wealth among themselves as they choose. I think it devolves into an evil when such an association is forced. When there's choice, you have the option of withdrawing if you find yourself a producer among a bunch of lazy people who are living off you, or if you have one slacker in the bunch, ejecting them. I'm so tired of hearing from acquaintances who do or want to milk the system. One recently was singing the praises of Bill Clinton's attempted HillaryHealthCare program because it would benefit *him* (screw everyone else, right?) Well surely, socializing the health system is a better idea than his kicking the drug habit, getting off his ass and getting a job. Another professed a thankfully short lived desire to coast on unemployment for as long as possible, as if they have some right to a 6 month vacation at the expense of other hardworking people who no doubt could use the money to fulfill their own needs.
That voluntary component makes all the difference. Without it there's no accountability.
Whether you have good service or not, my experience with them was hellish. That tends to be the way with big companies, in my experience. As long as there aren't problems to resolve, everything's fine. The test comes when something goes wrong. In my case, they lost $120.00 of my money and I had to prove I really paid it, and STILL had my service turned off three months in a row. You don't have to like it, but it is 100% correct and true, was a royal pain to deal with, and I'd rather nail my tongue to a board than be an Earthlink subscriber again.
Since you were kind enough to remind me, they promised me a refund of the unused portion of my $120 in 6-8 weeks. Think I ever got it? Nope. I wish you well of them.
Another fun idea would be to round up a significant number of your local provider's customers and, en masse, tell them the deal's not acceptable and you're either keeping the old terms or dumping them until they see the light. Consumers *do* have power. Its just that they rarely wake up and use it. Arthur Anderson is on the verge of getting the corporate death penalty, something the government would never dream of (witness Microsoft), from their customers.
Only if you don't mind them "losing" your payment every month for three months in a row until you tell them where to shove it. It rapidly becomes tiresome to have to call their hell desk to get service turned on because they turned it off because you didn't pay. That's funny, my bank says you cashed the check. I think I'll start my own ISP rather than suffer with Earthlink again.
Only the people who have watched socialism fail miserably think its bad. There are some poor, ignorant, idealistic and naive souls who haven't figured it out yet.
If we agree that humans in isolation, don't have much motivation for mass killings
We don't agree. Humans in isolation, or rather humans acting alone, do this sort of thing. It is by no means a strictly group activity.
then it must be something about the structure of government (or religion, etc.).
Well, sure, it's the group mentality where if we all think this, it must be Right! You're correct that I shouldn't be painting governments exclusively with this brush. It's any group which acts in a ruling capacity over others. Such ruling groups are necessary unless we do want an anarchy, which I do not. They're a necessary evil. As such I think its wise to limit the harm they can do by pushing back against the inevitable power grab.
Personally I think that we should *first* try to remove the most egregious corrupting factors from government before denouncing it entirely (er, massive corporatization of politics, media, and culture in general).
There's no reason we can't do both. I'd love law or legal precedent establishing that no corporation ever has rights superceding those of a human. I'd also like to put the Fed back in its box and restrict it to the powers and duties it has actually been granted rather than those it has decided over time that it wished to have.
I find it interesting that the libertarian ethos pervasive on Slashdot prevents people from realizing how powerful govt CAN be when done right
I rather doubt there is a Libertarian out there who doesn't realize how powerful government can be, completely independent of whether government is doing Good Things (tm) or Bad Things(tm). That's why we tend to think government should be strictly limited to doing things they have actual legal authority to do (go read your Constitution if you're a US resident), and that the powers governments should be legally granted should be strictly limited as well.
Your statement is not too different from "I find it interesting that the anti-nuke ethos pervasive on Slashdot prevents people from realizing how powerful Joe Average CAN be when he uses nuclear warheads right." Well, yeah, but it's a heck of a gamble, isn't it? Find me any government anywhere which hasn't killed people in quantity without any moral justification ("oops" doesn't count) and you'll move me along the road to trusing random people who happen to have power over me. I can find plenty of examples of governments who have killed thousands or millions. Blind trust that they'll do good just because they can? Not a chance.
Of course, if you actually have the capability to nuke ANYTHING, taking out a DNS server or 6 begins to look kind of petty.
"Commander, we can either take out a few hundred thousand people and effectively cripple a city, or we can slow down porn surfing. What's it gonna be?"
Maybe they're thinking of crippling our economy when all those people can no longer MAKE MONEY FAST?
When I was a child, I didn't need a pager for my parents to locate me. I never got kidnapped and thrown into a trunk without an internal release. I didn't get corrupted by our TV's lack of "parental control" (what an oxymoron). My family never got crushed because we weren't driving around the mall in an armored SUV. Hell, I got through my childhood without a bicycle helmet and I didn't even crack my head open once!
This is a really thin argument. Anecdotal evidence is absolutely useless. When I was a kid, I played with matches and set my bed on fire but didn't burn the house down. I guess it's fine to play with matches? When I was a kid, I used to ride my bike without a helmet, too. I guess those studies which show a reduction in head injuries as a result of wearing a helmet are just off base. When I was a kid (or acting like one), I used to drive really, really fast but never got into a serious accident as a result. I guess we should scrap the speed limit in spite of studies which show that the likelihood of fatalities increases with speed. Come on, in 1999 there were 31,000+ involuntary juvenile abductions and most of those were by noncustodial parents. Even with absolutely irresponsible parents, odds are you wouldn't have been in the right place at the right time. I know smokers who aren't dead yet, too. Hell, they aren't even sick! I guess all that medical research showing the link to cancer is a pile too?
Just a hint: rarely does a risk have 100% probability.
This is just so much BS. I despise laws "for the children", but more I despise the stupid, brain-dead excuses for parents who necessitate them. Spending time with the kids is the cure for all, eh? You aren't a parent. Period. Kids have their own minds, their own (immature) morals, which don't necessarily mirror yours. Go HAVE a kid and learn firsthand how much time you can spend teaching them how to stay safe and watch them disregard it and do things that would harm them if you weren't around to provide the safety net.
Jeez, were none of you kids? When I was a kid I:
Nearly fell off a 100 foot+ cliff
Got a nice bite from the big dog next door because I didn't pay attention to it
Ran in front of a moped causing the driver to crash in his successful attempt not to run down the stupid 5 year old
Possibly nearly got abducted when I was 6[0]
The list goes on
[0] Couple guys in a car looking for a local store (a *very* local store which no one would be looking for unless they already knew about it) wanted directions and "couldn't hear" me and a friend shouting (yeah, right) to them from 12 feet away and wanted us to come up to the car. My friend started over and, for reasons I don't remember, I didn't. I told him he could go, but I wasn't going to. He changed his mind and stayed. They drove off, in the direction of the store they didn't know where to find, but turned left at the intersection on the corner right where the store was rather than right. They weren't looking for it at all. I have no idea what they were looking for, but am glad that's the extent of the story I have to tell.
My parents spent plenty of time with me. They weren't there at that particular moment, right in front of my house when it mattered, though. Don't kid yourself into thinking spending some time with your kids once a week will keep them safe. Keeping them safe is your job for the rest of your life. Kids are absolutely NOT little adults.
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Your viewpoint here affirms an underlying belief that senators are forever. Sadly, there's an element of truth to that, but I'm doing my one-vote bit to promote accountability, or zero vote in this case, since I'm not his constituent. Hollings has some work to do to win my support. One bill isn't going to cut it. He's shown me that he's either easily bought, or as you claim, put forth a proposed law while having no concept of what its effect will be. In neither case do I want such a person making laws for me. Hit the road, Fritz.
There's nothing emotional about it, I'm just electing (no pun intended) to play the game as originally intended. We shouldn't elect people to Congress and then coerce them into voting like we want, we should elect people to Congress who vote like we want because they think like we do. Senator Hollings does not think like I do. He doesn't seem to do the job in the manner in which I think it should be done. I don't have to be nice to him, he's got to earn my support. Get enough people thinking like this and we'll have a responsive and responsible legislature. Get enough thinking like you propose and we'll continue to have a ruling elite with little real accountability.
But I do hold a grudge, or more precisely, I judge people on their past actions. Senator Hollings was elected to serve his constituency, not Disney, and not the entertainment industry. If you recall, his reaction to the Intel rep who dared to have a different opinion wasn't exactly congenial. If you are a member of his constituency, vote the bastard out. I'd rather send the message that you only get to screw me over, or try to with reckless disregard for the rights of American citizens, exactly once.
The point here is acting like civilized, responsible people. Lots of people, including me, would see a nice car or something valuable inside and think, "Wow, I wish that were mine!" Society works much better if we suborn the greed to a common agreement to respect each other's property no matter how strong the greed initiated compulsion may be. I should also admit to a strong ethical bias here. I believe theft is just "wrong", as is rape, so I'm not going to do it regardless of the source of the desire to do so, pile of cash or strip-tease notwithstanding.
Hardly true. To my thinking it doesn't matter if the door was unlocked. When was the last time you went over to some random car and tested the door to see if it was unlocked. I can say I've *never* done that to a car I or someone I was with didn't own. To my way of thinking, you could leave a ferrari, doors open, windows down, keys in the ignition, cash 3 inches deep on the floor and the Hope diamond sitting on the passenger seat and you're *still* a thief if you steal it and it's *still* not entrapment if you do. No one's encouraging you to steal that several million dollar pile of someone else's property. You would have been quite willing to do it on your own. Now if a police officer offered to pay you to steal the car for him, or suggested you should for your own benefit, that's entrapment. If its entirely of your own volition, enjoy the cell.
Personally, I'm torn. I think its a good idea, but that it isn't the U.S. government's place to do it. I'd like an internet where I can type in a web address and know I'm not inadvertently typoing my way to a porn site. Landing on whitehouse.com by mistake at work on a closely monitored net is not fun. Basically, it's bad (unethical) business at work.
Potentially lethal objects, fine. No car I've ever owned has been a lethal object, unless you want to count bugs who failed the grill test. By all means, I believe cars *can* kill people and drivers should act with necessary safety. I just object ot the reasoning that because something might possibly be used to harm someone, it's a weapon. We should restrict that word to things which have exclusive or primary purpose of killing things, or things which have or the user intends to use to kill something. My putter isn't a weapon, but yours is if you've just been attacked with it.
Back to topic, it's these stretches of logic which make biometric drivers licenses dangerous. Forbidding weapons at school is fine and mostly reasonable. Disciplining, even severely, violators of that policy is not a bad thing. It becomes a bad thing when nitwits get to decide that a weapon is whatever they say it is. The problem isn't licensing drivers, the problem isn't linking biometric data to a drivers license, the problem is the next step. Because of the inevitability of the next step, I have to oppose the linking of biometric data.
So yes, I get a bit nervous when you say "but all we've done is digitize it". I don't like the idea that if I get pulled over and my physical drivers license doesn't match the almighty database, I'll inevitably be the one who's wrong. Or should I say a dangerous terrorist whose papers don't match because he has something to hide?
Bars now scan drivers licenses. Enough said?
A car is not a lethal weapon. We need to get *far* from that sort of reasoning. A car is a mode of transportation. A firearm is a weapon. A knife *might* be a weapon. The ones in my kitchen are tools, thank you, as is my axe, straight razor, etc. The logic that something is a weapon just because you can hurt someone with us is what gets good kids kicked dragged out of school through the auspices of zero-thinking^Wtolerance policies.
Simply put, avoiding the potential for abuse is always a good idea.
While I can't exactly blame you for flaming that dolt, you should know your statement is far from the truth. Quite a few Americans donate money to causes outside the United States. A local medical school has students volunteer to hop on a plane and fly thousands of miles to live in conditions worse than they'll ever see in their soon-to-be-priviledged-even-by-American-standards lives to deliver health care absolutely free of charge to people who otherwise wouldn't have it. We have a minor public debate over what we should do about all the people in sub-Saharan Africa who have or soon will have AIDS (minor only because that's just one of the major issues we're trying to figure out what to do about).
Some day I'd like to find a reference to the total aid in money, goods, and services which flows out of the U.S. When you can top it, then perhaps your claim will have merit. Until then you're just another person who thinks its cool to hate Americans. Welcome to the club. Your member ID is 4,252,273,251. Don't lose that number. We'll need it when you ask for food, health care, financial, diplomatic, or military assistance. Again.
benefit. Nor would they if I said, "Hey mom, no food for me this week, please!" Pets consume $11 billion a year and have better health care than some people elsewhere. The same applies. If I didn't have a pet, I wouldn't be sending the whopping $100 or so it costs me a year to starving kids in Foobarland. You can argue that I should give $100 (more) than I already do to starving kids in Foobarland, but were I to be swayed by that I'd cut the $100 from something other than maintaining a pet.
You really might consider a career other than micromanaging everyone elses resource use. We're fortunate[0] here in the U.S. to be rich in many things, just like other parts of the world are rich in the same things and others (oil in the Middle East comes to mind). We already give away tons of that (literally) in private and public charities. That some US citizen dares to spend < 1% of their income on something that makes them happy is really absolutely none of your concern. Most slashdotters probably spend more on internet access in a year than I do on my pet. More power to them. I do hope a large portion of your resources go to provide food and health care to those who don't have it.
[0] Possibly not the right word, but "lucky" is certainly not. We're in the position we are only as a result of decisions made by our economic ancestors--those who colonized the states and industrialized them. I'm better off than my grandparents and parents. My kids will be better off because I'll continue the same tradition of working hard to improve their condition.
That must be why Maryland was going to (or did, I don't recall) prosecute Linda Tripp for recording her calls with Monica Lewinski. It absolutely does depend on state law. I don't think I've lived in one yet where you could record calls without consent and notification, although in at least one notification could consist of playing a beep every n seconds and consent the other party not hanging up. As always, accepting legal advice from random people on the net is a horrifically bad idea. As a rule, they don't really know the law and presume too much. Notably, that the law is the way the law should be.
That is the absolute key point. I consider myself a rabid libertarian, but I absolutely support and favor groups of people voluntarily choosing to share resources and redistribute wealth among themselves as they choose. I think it devolves into an evil when such an association is forced. When there's choice, you have the option of withdrawing if you find yourself a producer among a bunch of lazy people who are living off you, or if you have one slacker in the bunch, ejecting them. I'm so tired of hearing from acquaintances who do or want to milk the system. One recently was singing the praises of Bill Clinton's attempted HillaryHealthCare program because it would benefit *him* (screw everyone else, right?) Well surely, socializing the health system is a better idea than his kicking the drug habit, getting off his ass and getting a job. Another professed a thankfully short lived desire to coast on unemployment for as long as possible, as if they have some right to a 6 month vacation at the expense of other hardworking people who no doubt could use the money to fulfill their own needs.
That voluntary component makes all the difference. Without it there's no accountability.
Since you were kind enough to remind me, they promised me a refund of the unused portion of my $120 in 6-8 weeks. Think I ever got it? Nope. I wish you well of them.
And you think this is a coincidence, do you?
FWIW, TW does, at least where I get it. If there's an outage, you don't pay for the day(s) in which it occurred.
Another fun idea would be to round up a significant number of your local provider's customers and, en masse, tell them the deal's not acceptable and you're either keeping the old terms or dumping them until they see the light. Consumers *do* have power. Its just that they rarely wake up and use it. Arthur Anderson is on the verge of getting the corporate death penalty, something the government would never dream of (witness Microsoft), from their customers.
Only if you don't mind them "losing" your payment every month for three months in a row until you tell them where to shove it. It rapidly becomes tiresome to have to call their hell desk to get service turned on because they turned it off because you didn't pay. That's funny, my bank says you cashed the check. I think I'll start my own ISP rather than suffer with Earthlink again.
Only the people who have watched socialism fail miserably think its bad. There are some poor, ignorant, idealistic and naive souls who haven't figured it out yet.
We don't agree. Humans in isolation, or rather humans acting alone, do this sort of thing. It is by no means a strictly group activity.
Well, sure, it's the group mentality where if we all think this, it must be Right! You're correct that I shouldn't be painting governments exclusively with this brush. It's any group which acts in a ruling capacity over others. Such ruling groups are necessary unless we do want an anarchy, which I do not. They're a necessary evil. As such I think its wise to limit the harm they can do by pushing back against the inevitable power grab.
There's no reason we can't do both. I'd love law or legal precedent establishing that no corporation ever has rights superceding those of a human. I'd also like to put the Fed back in its box and restrict it to the powers and duties it has actually been granted rather than those it has decided over time that it wished to have.
I rather doubt there is a Libertarian out there who doesn't realize how powerful government can be, completely independent of whether government is doing Good Things (tm) or Bad Things(tm). That's why we tend to think government should be strictly limited to doing things they have actual legal authority to do (go read your Constitution if you're a US resident), and that the powers governments should be legally granted should be strictly limited as well.
Your statement is not too different from "I find it interesting that the anti-nuke ethos pervasive on Slashdot prevents people from realizing how powerful Joe Average CAN be when he uses nuclear warheads right." Well, yeah, but it's a heck of a gamble, isn't it? Find me any government anywhere which hasn't killed people in quantity without any moral justification ("oops" doesn't count) and you'll move me along the road to trusing random people who happen to have power over me. I can find plenty of examples of governments who have killed thousands or millions. Blind trust that they'll do good just because they can? Not a chance.
"Commander, we can either take out a few hundred thousand people and effectively cripple a city, or we can slow down porn surfing. What's it gonna be?"
Maybe they're thinking of crippling our economy when all those people can no longer MAKE MONEY FAST?
This is a really thin argument. Anecdotal evidence is absolutely useless. When I was a kid, I played with matches and set my bed on fire but didn't burn the house down. I guess it's fine to play with matches? When I was a kid, I used to ride my bike without a helmet, too. I guess those studies which show a reduction in head injuries as a result of wearing a helmet are just off base. When I was a kid (or acting like one), I used to drive really, really fast but never got into a serious accident as a result. I guess we should scrap the speed limit in spite of studies which show that the likelihood of fatalities increases with speed. Come on, in 1999 there were 31,000+ involuntary juvenile abductions and most of those were by noncustodial parents. Even with absolutely irresponsible parents, odds are you wouldn't have been in the right place at the right time. I know smokers who aren't dead yet, too. Hell, they aren't even sick! I guess all that medical research showing the link to cancer is a pile too?
Just a hint: rarely does a risk have 100% probability.
Jeez, were none of you kids? When I was a kid I:
[0] Couple guys in a car looking for a local store (a *very* local store which no one would be looking for unless they already knew about it) wanted directions and "couldn't hear" me and a friend shouting (yeah, right) to them from 12 feet away and wanted us to come up to the car. My friend started over and, for reasons I don't remember, I didn't. I told him he could go, but I wasn't going to. He changed his mind and stayed. They drove off, in the direction of the store they didn't know where to find, but turned left at the intersection on the corner right where the store was rather than right. They weren't looking for it at all. I have no idea what they were looking for, but am glad that's the extent of the story I have to tell.
My parents spent plenty of time with me. They weren't there at that particular moment, right in front of my house when it mattered, though. Don't kid yourself into thinking spending some time with your kids once a week will keep them safe. Keeping them safe is your job for the rest of your life. Kids are absolutely NOT little adults.