wow, simply assuming energy will infinitely decline in price... especially in light of the last few years... would seem to be a bit optimistic, wouldn't it?
I didn't say equally valuable. I said more valuable than stuff.
Stuff breaks, dude. If that TV is "part of your life", then perhaps you need to re-evaluate how you are living your life. If that TV is enough of your life that you would KILL someone else to protect it, you either have a severely overinflated sense of the worth of your own life, or a ridiculously overvalued sense of the value of stuff, or a severely undervalued sense of the worth of others.
It's like saying you are justified in killing someone for stealing a dime from your ashtray. That's just a ridiculous stance to take.
You would be correct given a large enough portion of your life invested in a thing to make it valuable enough to protect with violence, for instance if someone just wants to move into my house and kick my family out, that would require me to use violence to prevent (if there weren't a better means), as the alternative is much worse for me and my family.
but in general I find the right wing just doesn't get that A, they are wasting their lives in the pursuit of stuff they then have to "protect", and B, they don't understand the concept of "appropriate response" at all. It's black and white, for everything, all the time.
the study doesn't mention democratic or republican platforms at all.
they simply note that people who claim to have strong opinions toward right wing viewpoints and left wing viewpoints also tend to sort by this startle reflex.
To address your point, the republicans wouldn't succeed in pandering to christians if they didn't have more in common with other right wingers than the opposition did. that "mjore in common" is generally social conservativism, which is the kind of view this study is talking about.
note that's viewpoints its talking about, not parties.
the vast majority of stuff is not worth a human life. not even one currently being wasted on petty theft.
if someone is charging my wife or daughter, I'd shoot to kill without hesitation. Direct, immediate threats are one thing. If he's got my TV on his back on his way out to the car though, he's welcome to it; I probably wouldn't even try to stop him if I had a gun for fear of inadvertantly escalating into a violent situation. I'm not killing anyone over a pile of wires glass and plastic. And anyone who would is ridiculously attached to their stuff, or completely unable to determine what "appropriate force" means. Both of which seem to primarily apply to conservative americans more than most people for reasons I can't quite fathom. I guess the "principle" of "what's right" in that case is way more important than the actual choice to murder someone, to people like you at least.
it's not about others playing nice (though it does work *sometimes* to treat people like human beings even if you don't think they deserve it, and it's worth trying); their behaviour is up to them. it's about taking ownership of your own influence on the world and choosing violence as a tool only in times of actual need, not just a convenient excuse. You know, because violence is bad, generally speaking, and shouldn't be used very much, because using it tends to breed more violence. This is kindergarten stuff, I'm sure you've heard it before.
to the original situation, protecting a massive investment that perpetuates the employment of many and/or provides great service to many is probably worth a bit of violence to protect. But that doesn't make people who think you are a small minded, overly aggressive example of "what's wrong in the USA" wrong either.
I have been a heavy drug user for a good chunk of my past.
I have always been an exemplary employee (unless being at work early in the morning is the standard), even during that period.
ultimately it's the same as anything I guess. If you judge by irrelevant criteria, you lose out on potential rewards.
Luckily, now that I make hiring decisions, I am not swayed by such ignorance as you describe. and living your whole live to make a clean facebook profile is ridiculous (addressing an earlier post). the xkcd comic sums it up rather well, actually.
Understood, but that doesn't make them indicative of the entire anarchist movement. so if you are referring to them, you should refer to them, not to anarchists as a whole.
let me point out that "non violent" doesn't mean you do everything you're told, that's called "complicity" or at best "complacency". Having 50k people arrive at a location and sit down and refuse to leave may not be convenient, and might even put some people at risk (say, you were in the middle of hte crowd and had a heart attack), but that is not "violence".
"violence" involves destruction, pain, intimidation and real risk of bodily injury. *some* anarchists are into that sort of thing. But "Anarchist" covers a wide variety of people, just like "republican" does. Some "Republicans" don't think it's ok to kill anyone arab just because some arabs hate us. Some think we should "turn the middle east into a parking lot".
it's not fair to judge all republicans by the violent assholes within any more than it is to judge all anarchists by the same measure.
I also don't think that seizing property that is not being put to use when there are people who need shelter in the streets is so radical that "no civilized country" should get behind it.
further, I wouldn't demonize anyone who looks at the current state of our country and thinks that maybe we're getting close to the point where words alone is not sufficient response to the ongoing mismanagement, misinterpretation and appropriation of our government to anyone with suitable ambition and a large enough checkbook.
I'm not at that point myself, but I can't say that it would be impossible to get there in my lifetime and sometimes I do wonder if I'm just playing the game laid before me by "the house", and the house always wins.. witness RealID and the basic conception among most people that you "can't challenge the federal government", constitutional or not.
Wouldn't the USDA simply telling a company that it would be fraud to do X dissuade the company from doing X without the USDA having to do much else?
They certainly wouldn't have to go to the lengths they are to prevent "additional testing". they could simply define what is and is not acceptable test usage, and leave it at that.
I understand what you're saying, but certainly if you are claiming to have tested for mad cow with a test that is completely ineffective, it would take a severely autistic judge to rule that context, in that case, did not matter.
claiming you tested for mad cow would have to include a basic good faith effort to actually, you know, test for mad cow. Not just use a test that is intended to test for mad cow.
I could take the test and throw it at you. I did not, in fact, test you for mad cow, though I did use a test for mad cow disease. I could not label you "tested for mad cow disease".
Administering the test when it is known to be ineffective would be improperly utilizing the test; exactly as my throwing it at you is an improper administration of the test.
is the "most common" mad cow disease test the one that was going to be administered?
administering a test when it is ineffective and claiming the results tell a consumer something is "fraud". we already have laws for that, the USDA doesn't have to do anything except note that it would be fraud to do that and point at the justice department should such a thing occur.
you're still acting like having sex is a "problem".
it's a natural part of the human condition. there are risks, just like there are risks to driving a car. we are able to manage those risks.
I am not so sure I even want to advocate for abstinence as a possibility. I've never met anyone who abstained much past high school that I would consider a well balanced, healthy individual.
however, to do it requires about a 10k initial investment or so. large tanks of water have other problems, you'd need one big tank (or one big temperature differential) to heat or cool most homes, never mind the need for a hydronic heating and cooling system, which suits me just fine as a hydronic heating designer, but realistically only a small fraction of homes in our country have hydronic heating or cooling systems, which are also more expensive than the far, far more common forced air systems here in the US.
so for your 'typical' home, you'd be looking at more like a 15-20k initial investment. more if you need a condenser for cooling as well or if you want a really GOOD heating system.
not a bad idea, just not simple to implement for most people.
As an employer, I know I am not *responsible* for someone's kids. I'm not *responsible* for their health care either (though I might, someday, be legally obligated) but I want a compelling benefit package so I offer it anyway.
If I want to attract the best the brightest... even those who have decided to *gasp* have kids and *gasp* not shut one parent's career down in a screeching halt... then on site daycare is a major draw for parents. as another poster noted it reduces their stress, and it also saves time in their day... time they can spend working, perhaps. No rush to leave at 5 to go pick up the kids. etc, etc.
as an employer, I don't necessarily want to just throw parents to the wolves. a lot of parents are older, valuable employees who have put time into their careers and who now REALLY have a reason to think long-term, and about stability.
I would be stupid to try to attract different kinds of employees with the same palette of benefits. and while the single workaholic is certainly a valuable employee, he/she is not the only one I want working for me.
United states is not below replacement rate. our fertility rate is currently at 2.1 according to the CIA., at replacement value, regardless of the incorrect information at the bottom of that wikipedia article that contradicts the graph in the same article.
it's not a waste of a vote if your goal is to build a third party, not elect yet another liar to office.
when you vote third party, national vote percentage allows for ballot access in many states to potentially be unlocked. 5% is the magic number that unlocks many states, allowing a presidential vote to count for quite a lot of state parties' efforts towards ballot access.
writing in a candidate is a waste of a vote from this perspective, it is far better to vote for an actual third party who is attempting to grow.
we will never, by the way, get instant runoff elections by proving to the major parties that their lock on the electoral system will result in us supporting them at the ballot box. There is only one way to get a major player to endorse IRV: lose their elections for them until they realize they must support democracy.
this isn't my dream, necessarily, it's an inevitability, I just choose not to fear it. as recording and storage is more and more and more accessible, there is no other possible result; large numbers of people will end up recording practically everything they see on an ongoing basis, and why not, if there is practically zero cost to doing so? they may not choose to upload that information, but still; already, because of large hard drive sizes, I work with many people who never empty their digital trashcans. why should they? space is cheap. so they, in effect, have a recording of everything ever put on their computer sitting there in a folder.
when that occurs, and it will, it will obviously change things. where is the line between memory and recording? If you and i have hot gay sex, I can tell anyone I want about it. I could draw them a picture to illustrate how it all went down; stick figures, if you like. I could mimic the sounds. I could post on my blog about it, and it would all be totally legal, because you don't own me and you can't prevent me from sharing whatever I want about my life with others, without some sort of actual agreement on the matter.
So if I happen to record everything I do with perfection instead of reproducing it by my own hand and body, the only real difference is the level of your deniability. of course, if I happen to remember something really unique about your physique, even that would be compromised. Too bad you've got that nixon-shaped birthmark on your behind! i suppose you could still lie about the facts of the matter there, but still, I've got a pretty strong presentation going at that point.
Really though, in that case, you are defending your right to lie, or hide the truth from others. that's all privacy is. In a world where the truth is a weapon because it's only possessed by some, I am on your side and will fight for it forever (witness that I am fighting Real ID, here in real life).
but, like it or not, privacy will die, most likely in my lifetime. that's bad for a lot of reasons, so I won't get into those, I'm sure you can dream up a thousand horrific scenarios. but ultimately I think nearly unfettered access to truth would be a good thing. it is DIFFERENT levels of access to the truth that is a problem... i.e., when big brother controls the media or access to reality (truth), that's a problem for us. When we all are the media, that's a problem for big brother. and perhaps for those among us who violate cultural norms; but then, if it's obvious how many people DO, that would likely be less of a problem.
anyway, as I say, this isn't a dream of mine. I just think about it; and I have realized it is not all bad. at least, it doesn't have to be all bad. access to reality, I think, provides enough positives that it MIGHT outweigh the negatives. but regardless of whether it does or does not, I'm pretty sure we're going to find out in my lifetime because the tools that will allow it will be nearly inescapable.
just imagine what happens when this isn't even really a tool anymore, but I can instead augment my memory to be perfect recordings, reproducible at will. what if, for example, other people can just record my memories? You own my memories now?
I just don't see any way around this. Feel free to let me know if you do.
so, how are you going to survive, when everything a person says, hears, or sees can be PERSONALLY recorded, and uploaded to the internet in real time? without so much as saying "cheese"?
the day is coming, my friend. and nothing will stop it. personally, while I recognize it will be a great change, it is also a great opportunity.
'Street view' is the most watered down part of the INEVITABLE future that is coming. recording technology is getting cheaper, smaller, all the time. as is storage capacity. the day will come that you only truly forget a memory by choice.... but if others don't share that choice, you can't erase it utterly. and your "memory" will be transferrable... what expectation of privacy do you have from my memory?
I suggest you worry less about privacy on the street and consider what will happen when the person you are sleeping with only has to blink to share this experience you just had with thousands.
absolutely. the entire arguement for recognition of corporations as people were based on this. prior to that, i suppose I am not really differentiating between "corporation" and company, as there doesn't seem to be any functional difference. it is the 'personhood' that makes a corporation different, in my mind. if i'm missing something though... please do let me know!
they are beholden to their shareholders, who may or may not be people of the US. Also, corporate structure has nothing to do with bettering society and everything to do with shielding capital from retribution, and people from responsibility. That is all.
COMPANIES are structures designed by people to provide betterment of some kind to society, sometimes. corporations most certainly are not.
they should obviously be cleaning their own drinking water, if having clean drinking water is really so important.
and education? fah! they should pool together to teach their kids everything they need to know in their community.
If they don't, well, they made their choice. let them starve and die for it.
so says the wisdom of the free market!
says the truly wise, people stand up on their own when you show them how, and they believe they can, because they see how it works. when everything around you is shit, not many have the inner strength and conviction (or insanity) to believe they can be different "just because".
Slashdot Mirror
wow, simply assuming energy will infinitely decline in price... especially in light of the last few years... would seem to be a bit optimistic, wouldn't it?
I didn't say equally valuable. I said more valuable than stuff.
Stuff breaks, dude. If that TV is "part of your life", then perhaps you need to re-evaluate how you are living your life. If that TV is enough of your life that you would KILL someone else to protect it, you either have a severely overinflated sense of the worth of your own life, or a ridiculously overvalued sense of the value of stuff, or a severely undervalued sense of the worth of others.
It's like saying you are justified in killing someone for stealing a dime from your ashtray. That's just a ridiculous stance to take.
You would be correct given a large enough portion of your life invested in a thing to make it valuable enough to protect with violence, for instance if someone just wants to move into my house and kick my family out, that would require me to use violence to prevent (if there weren't a better means), as the alternative is much worse for me and my family.
but in general I find the right wing just doesn't get that A, they are wasting their lives in the pursuit of stuff they then have to "protect", and B, they don't understand the concept of "appropriate response" at all. It's black and white, for everything, all the time.
what?
the study doesn't mention democratic or republican platforms at all.
they simply note that people who claim to have strong opinions toward right wing viewpoints and left wing viewpoints also tend to sort by this startle reflex.
To address your point, the republicans wouldn't succeed in pandering to christians if they didn't have more in common with other right wingers than the opposition did. that "mjore in common" is generally social conservativism, which is the kind of view this study is talking about.
note that's viewpoints its talking about, not parties.
the vast majority of stuff is not worth a human life. not even one currently being wasted on petty theft.
if someone is charging my wife or daughter, I'd shoot to kill without hesitation. Direct, immediate threats are one thing. If he's got my TV on his back on his way out to the car though, he's welcome to it; I probably wouldn't even try to stop him if I had a gun for fear of inadvertantly escalating into a violent situation. I'm not killing anyone over a pile of wires glass and plastic. And anyone who would is ridiculously attached to their stuff, or completely unable to determine what "appropriate force" means. Both of which seem to primarily apply to conservative americans more than most people for reasons I can't quite fathom. I guess the "principle" of "what's right" in that case is way more important than the actual choice to murder someone, to people like you at least.
it's not about others playing nice (though it does work *sometimes* to treat people like human beings even if you don't think they deserve it, and it's worth trying); their behaviour is up to them. it's about taking ownership of your own influence on the world and choosing violence as a tool only in times of actual need, not just a convenient excuse. You know, because violence is bad, generally speaking, and shouldn't be used very much, because using it tends to breed more violence. This is kindergarten stuff, I'm sure you've heard it before.
to the original situation, protecting a massive investment that perpetuates the employment of many and/or provides great service to many is probably worth a bit of violence to protect. But that doesn't make people who think you are a small minded, overly aggressive example of "what's wrong in the USA" wrong either.
I have dumb friends and smart friends.
I have been a heavy drug user for a good chunk of my past.
I have always been an exemplary employee (unless being at work early in the morning is the standard), even during that period.
ultimately it's the same as anything I guess. If you judge by irrelevant criteria, you lose out on potential rewards.
Luckily, now that I make hiring decisions, I am not swayed by such ignorance as you describe. and living your whole live to make a clean facebook profile is ridiculous (addressing an earlier post). the xkcd comic sums it up rather well, actually.
snopes disagrees with you.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/kilkenny.asp
Understood, but that doesn't make them indicative of the entire anarchist movement. so if you are referring to them, you should refer to them, not to anarchists as a whole.
let me point out that "non violent" doesn't mean you do everything you're told, that's called "complicity" or at best "complacency". Having 50k people arrive at a location and sit down and refuse to leave may not be convenient, and might even put some people at risk (say, you were in the middle of hte crowd and had a heart attack), but that is not "violence".
"violence" involves destruction, pain, intimidation and real risk of bodily injury. *some* anarchists are into that sort of thing. But "Anarchist" covers a wide variety of people, just like "republican" does. Some "Republicans" don't think it's ok to kill anyone arab just because some arabs hate us. Some think we should "turn the middle east into a parking lot".
it's not fair to judge all republicans by the violent assholes within any more than it is to judge all anarchists by the same measure.
I also don't think that seizing property that is not being put to use when there are people who need shelter in the streets is so radical that "no civilized country" should get behind it.
further, I wouldn't demonize anyone who looks at the current state of our country and thinks that maybe we're getting close to the point where words alone is not sufficient response to the ongoing mismanagement, misinterpretation and appropriation of our government to anyone with suitable ambition and a large enough checkbook.
I'm not at that point myself, but I can't say that it would be impossible to get there in my lifetime and sometimes I do wonder if I'm just playing the game laid before me by "the house", and the house always wins.. witness RealID and the basic conception among most people that you "can't challenge the federal government", constitutional or not.
Dear Rhodes Scholar,
Wouldn't the USDA simply telling a company that it would be fraud to do X dissuade the company from doing X without the USDA having to do much else?
They certainly wouldn't have to go to the lengths they are to prevent "additional testing". they could simply define what is and is not acceptable test usage, and leave it at that.
Thanks for your bolt of insight,
-Genius
the other poster answered your question. the test is to test older cows, at least the "most common" test referenced was.
if you test them too young, it's a useless test.
I understand what you're saying, but certainly if you are claiming to have tested for mad cow with a test that is completely ineffective, it would take a severely autistic judge to rule that context, in that case, did not matter.
claiming you tested for mad cow would have to include a basic good faith effort to actually, you know, test for mad cow. Not just use a test that is intended to test for mad cow.
I could take the test and throw it at you. I did not, in fact, test you for mad cow, though I did use a test for mad cow disease. I could not label you "tested for mad cow disease".
Administering the test when it is known to be ineffective would be improperly utilizing the test; exactly as my throwing it at you is an improper administration of the test.
is the "most common" mad cow disease test the one that was going to be administered?
administering a test when it is ineffective and claiming the results tell a consumer something is "fraud". we already have laws for that, the USDA doesn't have to do anything except note that it would be fraud to do that and point at the justice department should such a thing occur.
right?
you're still acting like having sex is a "problem".
it's a natural part of the human condition. there are risks, just like there are risks to driving a car. we are able to manage those risks.
I am not so sure I even want to advocate for abstinence as a possibility. I've never met anyone who abstained much past high school that I would consider a well balanced, healthy individual.
Electric Thermal Storage exists: http://www.adamsec.coop/Default.aspx?tabid=107
however, to do it requires about a 10k initial investment or so. large tanks of water have other problems, you'd need one big tank (or one big temperature differential) to heat or cool most homes, never mind the need for a hydronic heating and cooling system, which suits me just fine as a hydronic heating designer, but realistically only a small fraction of homes in our country have hydronic heating or cooling systems, which are also more expensive than the far, far more common forced air systems here in the US.
so for your 'typical' home, you'd be looking at more like a 15-20k initial investment. more if you need a condenser for cooling as well or if you want a really GOOD heating system.
not a bad idea, just not simple to implement for most people.
As an employer, I know I am not *responsible* for someone's kids. I'm not *responsible* for their health care either (though I might, someday, be legally obligated) but I want a compelling benefit package so I offer it anyway.
If I want to attract the best the brightest... even those who have decided to *gasp* have kids and *gasp* not shut one parent's career down in a screeching halt... then on site daycare is a major draw for parents. as another poster noted it reduces their stress, and it also saves time in their day... time they can spend working, perhaps. No rush to leave at 5 to go pick up the kids. etc, etc.
as an employer, I don't necessarily want to just throw parents to the wolves. a lot of parents are older, valuable employees who have put time into their careers and who now REALLY have a reason to think long-term, and about stability.
I would be stupid to try to attract different kinds of employees with the same palette of benefits. and while the single workaholic is certainly a valuable employee, he/she is not the only one I want working for me.
United states is not below replacement rate. our fertility rate is currently at 2.1 according to the CIA., at replacement value, regardless of the incorrect information at the bottom of that wikipedia article that contradicts the graph in the same article.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html
and it's rising, by the way.
it's not a waste of a vote if your goal is to build a third party, not elect yet another liar to office.
when you vote third party, national vote percentage allows for ballot access in many states to potentially be unlocked. 5% is the magic number that unlocks many states, allowing a presidential vote to count for quite a lot of state parties' efforts towards ballot access.
writing in a candidate is a waste of a vote from this perspective, it is far better to vote for an actual third party who is attempting to grow.
we will never, by the way, get instant runoff elections by proving to the major parties that their lock on the electoral system will result in us supporting them at the ballot box. There is only one way to get a major player to endorse IRV: lose their elections for them until they realize they must support democracy.
this isn't my dream, necessarily, it's an inevitability, I just choose not to fear it. as recording and storage is more and more and more accessible, there is no other possible result; large numbers of people will end up recording practically everything they see on an ongoing basis, and why not, if there is practically zero cost to doing so? they may not choose to upload that information, but still; already, because of large hard drive sizes, I work with many people who never empty their digital trashcans. why should they? space is cheap. so they, in effect, have a recording of everything ever put on their computer sitting there in a folder.
when that occurs, and it will, it will obviously change things. where is the line between memory and recording? If you and i have hot gay sex, I can tell anyone I want about it. I could draw them a picture to illustrate how it all went down; stick figures, if you like. I could mimic the sounds. I could post on my blog about it, and it would all be totally legal, because you don't own me and you can't prevent me from sharing whatever I want about my life with others, without some sort of actual agreement on the matter.
So if I happen to record everything I do with perfection instead of reproducing it by my own hand and body, the only real difference is the level of your deniability. of course, if I happen to remember something really unique about your physique, even that would be compromised. Too bad you've got that nixon-shaped birthmark on your behind! i suppose you could still lie about the facts of the matter there, but still, I've got a pretty strong presentation going at that point.
Really though, in that case, you are defending your right to lie, or hide the truth from others. that's all privacy is. In a world where the truth is a weapon because it's only possessed by some, I am on your side and will fight for it forever (witness that I am fighting Real ID, here in real life).
but, like it or not, privacy will die, most likely in my lifetime. that's bad for a lot of reasons, so I won't get into those, I'm sure you can dream up a thousand horrific scenarios. but ultimately I think nearly unfettered access to truth would be a good thing. it is DIFFERENT levels of access to the truth that is a problem... i.e., when big brother controls the media or access to reality (truth), that's a problem for us. When we all are the media, that's a problem for big brother. and perhaps for those among us who violate cultural norms; but then, if it's obvious how many people DO, that would likely be less of a problem.
anyway, as I say, this isn't a dream of mine. I just think about it; and I have realized it is not all bad. at least, it doesn't have to be all bad. access to reality, I think, provides enough positives that it MIGHT outweigh the negatives. but regardless of whether it does or does not, I'm pretty sure we're going to find out in my lifetime because the tools that will allow it will be nearly inescapable.
just imagine what happens when this isn't even really a tool anymore, but I can instead augment my memory to be perfect recordings, reproducible at will. what if, for example, other people can just record my memories? You own my memories now?
I just don't see any way around this. Feel free to let me know if you do.
perhaps another word for privacy is lie?
so, how are you going to survive, when everything a person says, hears, or sees can be PERSONALLY recorded, and uploaded to the internet in real time? without so much as saying "cheese"?
the day is coming, my friend. and nothing will stop it. personally, while I recognize it will be a great change, it is also a great opportunity.
'Street view' is the most watered down part of the INEVITABLE future that is coming. recording technology is getting cheaper, smaller, all the time. as is storage capacity. the day will come that you only truly forget a memory by choice.... but if others don't share that choice, you can't erase it utterly. and your "memory" will be transferrable... what expectation of privacy do you have from my memory?
I suggest you worry less about privacy on the street and consider what will happen when the person you are sleeping with only has to blink to share this experience you just had with thousands.
when, exactly, was the last time you remember a corporation having its charter revoked?
theoretically, that sounds really great. in practice, you just made quite a funny.
absolutely. the entire arguement for recognition of corporations as people were based on this. prior to that, i suppose I am not really differentiating between "corporation" and company, as there doesn't seem to be any functional difference. it is the 'personhood' that makes a corporation different, in my mind. if i'm missing something though... please do let me know!
that's not true at all.
they are beholden to their shareholders, who may or may not be people of the US. Also, corporate structure has nothing to do with bettering society and everything to do with shielding capital from retribution, and people from responsibility. That is all.
COMPANIES are structures designed by people to provide betterment of some kind to society, sometimes. corporations most certainly are not.
providing clean drinking water?
what are you, some kind of communist?
they should obviously be cleaning their own drinking water, if having clean drinking water is really so important.
and education? fah! they should pool together to teach their kids everything they need to know in their community.
If they don't, well, they made their choice. let them starve and die for it.
so says the wisdom of the free market!
says the truly wise, people stand up on their own when you show them how, and they believe they can, because they see how it works. when everything around you is shit, not many have the inner strength and conviction (or insanity) to believe they can be different "just because".
uh, doesnt this moderation system basically allow that?
mod your friends up and browse at a high level.
what possible improvement would actually removing the links to other posts bring?
a 7x7x7 ballon isn't a real big deal for a house. Especially since shape is malleable.