well, that's a reasonable thought, but regardless of how high minded a business is and how willing to take on risk, they are going to be guided by what they think could turn into a product in some kind of reasonable timeframe, and they are going to focus into some sort of core compentancies. Plus, you lose the "open source' nature of current science, where patents don't drive scientific progress... any discovery can be siezed upon, improved, and used by anyone else interested and motivated to do so. The damage to overall progress could be huge, if a corporation stashed its findings because it wasn't immediately clear how it could be profitable, waiting to figure it out themselves... when all the while, that guy in the university basement working on something totally unrelated could have seen that research and seen the connection to his own work....
I really think it is *by far* best to decouple pure research from the pure profit motive of business, or at least to have some area of it not dictated by profit motive. The businesses can profit from the results of research now, and they also finance research into what they consider to be related to their businesses. Letting them decide the course of research *entirely*, however, seems like it would destroy scientific inquiry and progress nearly utterly.
As others more able than I have posted, you can never know what discovery will bring the revolutionary change that spurs progress. So in whose possible best interest is it to restrict research to that which may seem, with current knowledge, to be vaguely profitable?
Well, this is really a fine illustration of the limits of free market economics.
No rational marketeer would invest in pure research, ever, for any reason. Because by definition, you can't even forsee whether it's useful or not, whether it will EVER turn into a practical application or not. Sure, sometimes it's wildly successful, but it is a very expensive, time consuming, risky proposition if you require a profit payoff to pursue it. There is no way to even tell if the product that may ever come of it will generate the kind of return that would economically justify the investment your company put into it. THAT discovery may be three or four steps down the discovery chain, in a completely unrelated field, that your company is not tooled up to research.
But eventually, knowing how things work is beneficial to everyone, including corporations and the economy. But the only way to do that is to explore things that MAY NOT have an economic payoff.
But if you need a more direct benefit comparison, what company would ever do the research and developement required to go into space, learn about it, and, say, build an asteroid protection device? Who would end up paying for that? It may not be immediately necessary... but ultimately, we'll need one. Who will build it and why, and how exactly will it not be taxpayers/citizens paying for it?
Those corporations often rely on advancements in SCIENCE, largely funded publicly (NASA, DARPA are two huge examples I might toss out there), to allow them to develop TECHNOLOGY.. applied science.
Get that? to make things applicable to daily life... that is, to develop technology... you need to research science, which is not immediately or directly applicable to daily life typically.
Funny how that works, I think. You'd almost think it was worth funding science research.
I think you're overlooking the intensity of the radical elements in the middle east. Any muslim leader that was really pushing for reconciliation with Israel, IMHO, would be assassinated in short order, whether the country was doing well or not. It's not just the common Iranians they have to pay attention to.
You mistake some radical elements for the government of Iran. The government plays to the radical elements, but they are still a government that desires power, not suicide. Every step they are taking so far bears that up.
Compound that with a few more facts; like, for instance, the fact that you cannot detonate a nuclear device without it being traceable to where it was manufactured due to the residue left behind. Iran simply cannot slip a nuke to anyone and let them go detonate it without reprisal. Look at the Polonium case recently.. they can trace the stuff right back to the original mine. In fact, Iran would have quite significant reason NOT to let anyone get a hold of their nukes, since it would be the same as if they had done it themselves.
The leaders of Iran are not trying to create a nation of martyrs for their cause. They want power and influence just like any other country, and with Iraq out of the way or even soon to become a Shiite ally, now is their time to make a move. And they are. It all looks pretty rational from here, except for the language they use to "play to their base". Their language makes them heroes to all of the angry middle eastern factions; even moreso, because they are standing up to the US at the same time.
How long do you think a sitting Iranian prime minister would last, preaching reconciliation with Israel? Not long. But that doesn't mean that they are going to commit mass suicide to nuke Israel either. At worst, there will be more terrorist bombers moving across a now-friendly Iraq towards Israel. But you can be pretty damn sure they won't ever be toting Iranian nuclear material. Hell, nuking Israel would wreck palestine and countless sites holy to Iran and other Muslims as well; it's never going to happen. Never Ever.
When was the last time two nuclear armed antagonists engaged in truly large scale ground conflict?
That's no more likely than nuking each other.. because if one starts losing badly enough, they enter the "nothing left to lose" phase of desparation. No one will risk that. That's why China will never invade america, or vice versa. That's why Pakistan and India are not engaged in full-out war. It's why Israel still exists at all.. either because of their own, or our own nuclear arsenal.
As far as I'm concerned... and it seems Iran probably feels this way as well... Nukes are peacekeepers rivalled by nothing else. You simply cannot push around a nuclear power to the point of breaking. It's probably done more for regional stability in Europe, for instance, than anything else including democractic reform.. which, if memory serves, occurred in germany BEFORE WWII, and did not stop a massive conflagration there.
Nothing more than relatively low-level conflicts are possible between two nuclear powers. Invasion or decimation of one side or the other is no longer an option once they have an "end game" weapon.
That said, I would expect the current state of conflict between Israel and Iran to continue if Iran had nukes. If Iran, say, smuggled a nuke into israel to wipe it out in a surprise attack, it knows damn well that would result in a nuclear exchange with america they are simply not capable of "winning", which would wreck any chance Iran has at being top dog in the middle east, which is what they are really shooting for. America may not be able to invade Iran and hold it, but it is certainly capable of an utterly devastating retaliatory strike, and if a nuclear weapon went off in Israel, it would be able to do so with the moral high ground in the world political theatre. Condemning Israel in its conflict with Palestine is one thing, but NO nuclear power is going to stand for a little guy (relatively) taking such extreme disregard for their nuclear arsenal.
Well, that's fine. But don't pretend that law is the ultimate arbitration of morality, that's all. Law and morality are not even passingly related. And incidentally, I think you'd find that if your family is living in abject poverty, you'd do whatever you could to help or protect them, so on purely moral grounds I'd have a hard time faulting an "alien" for trying to get work here. Their action may be Illegal, sure, but not immoral. They are still human beings doing the best they know how to. If, for some reason, we feel the need to protect ourselves from them, then so be it. But that doesn't make them immoral people, nor necessarily us immoral, unless you're advocating for extreme violations of basic human rights like torturing them to make an example or something perhaps.
Basically, if someone wants to treat them like criminals then they should feel free, but they should at least man up and admit that the "illegals" or "aliens" are people who aren't necessarily some slavering horde of theives and rapists. It's not ok to justify the actions behind some guise of "morality". if it's justified then it may be a pragmatic reality, but it's not a moral question, and pretending something is a moral question when it is not, ironically, often allows quite immoral behaviour to be justified, so I'm a little distrustful of people using it lightly. People tend to more extreme reactions if they paint their target as an immoral being.
Not saying you were; you were just asking a question. Just explaining my reaction and its cause.
The existence of a law has no correlation with the prescence of morality. Many immoral things have been and are still legal. Many things that could very well be considered not only moral, but righteous, are illegal.
You're right that attempting to change a situation through the democratic process is important, and that to some extent law is a social contract we all deal with to get along a bit better... but that does not mean that all laws should be obeyed, and it MOST CERTAINLY does not mean that any particular law is MORAL.
If this were a mistake from a cashier, I am not so cold hearted that I would cost that person their job for an honest mistake. If I noticed, I too would pay.
However, this is automation. You do it right, once, and the system keeps doing it that way. If you can't be bothered to set up an automated system to work correctly, I am not going to feel bad for your mistake. And obviously, since it is automated without human oversight, it is just that much more important to make sure it is set up correctly before it is deployed, or situations just like this can occur.. obviously... since it did.
I would understand if a glitch is discovered and they refunded people's money and didn't ship the product. But once it's gone, it's gone. You don't get to go back and try again after the fact.
If I charge my client a price for an item or service, and they stand up to their end of our bargin, I must stand up for my end... period.
If I accidentally give them a quote with no shipping costs on it, for example... well, I eat shipping on that order.
If I quote them a price on a special order item, then go to order it and realize the price I had was old, well, that's my fault too, not my customers. We made a deal, and they lived up to their end of it.
Going back after the fact to revise the terms of your deal is not only fraudulent, but opens the door to huge amount of intentional fraud. A contract would have no legitamacy at all... "whups, sorry, I messed up, let's rewrite the deal".
I'm sorry, if you cannot be bothered to keep your own systems in order, you pay the price of failure. Amazon has no right and should have no expectation whatsoever that a single one of those customers would or should return what they purchased, fairly, for a price Amazon told them was good. Period.
I do find spotlight to be a pretty intensive task... not very snappy, and I'm running a last-gen midrange G5 dual proc w/1.5 gigs of RAM.
I'm going to guess that since you're new to the OS, you're running a lesser machine? In which case... spotlight's gonna be slow. Not one of my favorite mac features, for sure.
You wouldn't consider Operating Systems to be the basic infrastructure for personal computing?
A little further up this discussion people talk about how apple can screw with programmers for their OS. In this market you must be Windows compatible to compete in the mass market.
How is that wide open?
What kind of resources do you think you have to have to develop, say, an OS that can compete in any meaningful way with what's available now, with hundreds of thousands of coding hours behind it, if not millions? You don't have to replicate it hour for hour, for sure, but still... we're way beyond "two guys in a garage" developing a breakthrough OS.
In short, it may theoretically be possible, and it may even happen someday.. but you could have said that about the Bells as well. And waited. For a long time. And I think the free marketeers like to ignore the damage large scale monopolies can do while we all wait for it to get so, so bad that someone who is already filthy stinking rich decides to fight it.
Let me get this straight; you're supposed to wait half a lifetime, if you're lucky, for a market to settle down?
Also, it would be a little disengenuous to ignore that the only reason the bells monopoly did not continue is because of a forcible breakup. They owned the infrastructure, and without intervention it would have taken until someone with gigantic pockets, not a smaller "savvy competitor", decided to build another system of infrastructure to compete.
Maybe by now, with wireless communication, they would have finally seen some competition. But you say these examples happen throughout history, again and again.. and only in the last hundred years have competing technologies been developed with any appreciable speed in practically any sphere of our lives.
I have to point out that certain very left wing groups, such as the green party, are also proponents of locally based, decentralized authority in many respects.
This is because to have a truly active democracy, it must be responsive to the will of the people, and the larger your mass of people the less responsive it can be.
So in some respects yes, cities and towns should be able to uphold their rights against states, as states should be able to do the same with the federal government.
While it may not be terribly efficient to have lots of fragmented, disparate power structures, this is a good thing for a few reasons.
First, it is protective. Centralized power in the truest sense is a threat to liberty. You may not be particularly afraid of it, but it is a threat.
More importantly, in my mind, is it allows for smaller scale experimentation in governance without having to change the inertia of a huge mass central beauracracy. Maine can implement something, and try it out on a much smaller subset of people who are willing to try it out for whatever reason. If it serves our needs, other states can look at it and see if it will serve their needs too, or perhaps a slightly tweaked version would suit their needs better.
There are things in which only a collection of states can really implement, but in general I see nothing wrong with defaulting to state's rights prior to federal rights. When in doubt, decentralize. At least then the damage that can be done by an overreaching beuracracy is limited in scope and power and freedom/liberty stands the greatest chance of survival.
Are you seriously not aware that this is a current problem? Granted, it's not front page news any more, but hey, if you're going to dismiss something, at least look into it a little.
The good news is, BECAUSE OF ALL THE MEDIA HYPE, we (the industralized nations of the world) stopped using CFCs to a large number and now the ozone layer is HEALING ITSELF.
Wow, we can have an impact on our environment. WHOUDA THUNK, HUH?
See the continuing discussion; that isn't really a well trained, professional electoral process. I was, admittedly, not clear in my intentions in the post you were responding to.
I can see it for the military (vs. conscription) but I wasn't aware of the use of that term for poll workers.
I thought I had already posted this, so if it shows up twice don't shoot me;) but instead of "paid" I should have said "professional". Trained, well trained. Of course the danger there might be that with training comes the knowledge of how to "break the system", but I would think it would be a good deal better to have a well paid and trained force of electoral administrators that understand the consequences of their actions are quite severe should anything irregular be discovered. Of course they could still make things look like 'accidents', and there would still be accidents. But you would not be able to have willful fraud as easily as you could now.. and there would at least be some consequence!
Both parties probably already engage in shady electoral dealings on a regular basis though (dead people voting, for example), and so stepping up enforcement of existing laws and/or toughening of them is probably a pipe dream....
Perhaps we should pay people to administer polls then. I mean.. it is only the basis for the entire operation of our country, after all. I understand your point, and agree, but this cannot be acceptable. Far too much to gain and too little to lose as it currently stands, IMHO.
Am I the only person that thinks that willfully subverting the electoral process, on which every thing in our country's governance hinges, should be tried as NOTHING LESS than treason?
I don't care if you're running for dog catcher... the democratic process should be defended with the most uncompromising principles possible, should it not?
It's still a possible conflict of interest that needs to be disclosed in any professional relationship, and you become a professional when you take that money, IMHO.
If consumer reports says something nice about Toyota, and Toyota starts paying them... wouldn't that change how you view the information Consumer reports generates about Toyota after that? But they do not take the money, to prevent the conflict of interest.
I acknowledge this is highly debatable, but that's where I stand; you take the money, you take responsibility for it, which is disclosure.
to a point sure. But then, when should we sit by and watch people who have more money get more say and influence in our government, quietly, just because it's "their right"? How, exactly, does that serve the best interests of any particular community of any size? And if a structure does not serve the interest of the community at large, is it moral because it serves YOUR interest?
Seems pretty weak to me, though I certainly recognize this can be a very involvement and complicated discussion, and I do support rights for the individual in most cases. But, I do believe there are some limits that any pragmatic and reasonable person needs to accept, since whether you like it or not, you do live in a community of some kind and its welfare must be balanced against yours.
You are not spending time "on political speech" in this case.
You are working. AS a political lobbyist; that is, you take money to promote an ideology, professionally.
I would have no problem with MoveOn having to register as a lobbying organization. It most certainly lobbies, collects and distributes cash to or for the benefit of political causes and organizations.
There is a difference, emotionally however. MoveOn is supported by people, not companies, and companies are not people. It is truly a grassroots organization, lobbying or not. While i hate most of what they do (and I'm pretty liberal, but I think they are dumb), I can't argue with the fact that it is actually a grassroots organization with lots and lots of "active" members...
It's not separate at all. If you are paid to write something as if it were your personal stance on something, without disclosing the income, that is fraudulent. If it is not legally fraudulent, it should be. You are lying if you imply it is your own natural stance, and if you are going to be a professional shill, you should have to declare that as a profession in the interest of full disclosure. Once it becomes a business relationship, you are subject to basic business ethics and professional standards of conduct, IMHO.
Some of it might be cultural, but we've already seen studies that say that not all of it is.
If you walk into a baby's room with a snazzy toy on a stick and move it around, most of the time a boy baby will check out the toy, and a girl baby will ignore it and check you out.
I think that says a lot about how much of it is purely biological.
Or you could make the case that society has selective bred us over time according to our prejudices (i.e. women that like tech or boys that like dolls tend not to be found attractive by the opposite, biased gender).
OR you could say that people who break those gender norms don't breed for... other reasons;)
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well, that's a reasonable thought, but regardless of how high minded a business is and how willing to take on risk, they are going to be guided by what they think could turn into a product in some kind of reasonable timeframe, and they are going to focus into some sort of core compentancies. Plus, you lose the "open source' nature of current science, where patents don't drive scientific progress... any discovery can be siezed upon, improved, and used by anyone else interested and motivated to do so. The damage to overall progress could be huge, if a corporation stashed its findings because it wasn't immediately clear how it could be profitable, waiting to figure it out themselves... when all the while, that guy in the university basement working on something totally unrelated could have seen that research and seen the connection to his own work....
I really think it is *by far* best to decouple pure research from the pure profit motive of business, or at least to have some area of it not dictated by profit motive. The businesses can profit from the results of research now, and they also finance research into what they consider to be related to their businesses. Letting them decide the course of research *entirely*, however, seems like it would destroy scientific inquiry and progress nearly utterly.
As others more able than I have posted, you can never know what discovery will bring the revolutionary change that spurs progress. So in whose possible best interest is it to restrict research to that which may seem, with current knowledge, to be vaguely profitable?
Well, this is really a fine illustration of the limits of free market economics.
No rational marketeer would invest in pure research, ever, for any reason. Because by definition, you can't even forsee whether it's useful or not, whether it will EVER turn into a practical application or not. Sure, sometimes it's wildly successful, but it is a very expensive, time consuming, risky proposition if you require a profit payoff to pursue it. There is no way to even tell if the product that may ever come of it will generate the kind of return that would economically justify the investment your company put into it. THAT discovery may be three or four steps down the discovery chain, in a completely unrelated field, that your company is not tooled up to research.
But eventually, knowing how things work is beneficial to everyone, including corporations and the economy. But the only way to do that is to explore things that MAY NOT have an economic payoff.
But if you need a more direct benefit comparison, what company would ever do the research and developement required to go into space, learn about it, and, say, build an asteroid protection device? Who would end up paying for that? It may not be immediately necessary... but ultimately, we'll need one. Who will build it and why, and how exactly will it not be taxpayers/citizens paying for it?
Those corporations often rely on advancements in SCIENCE, largely funded publicly (NASA, DARPA are two huge examples I might toss out there), to allow them to develop TECHNOLOGY.. applied science.
Get that? to make things applicable to daily life... that is, to develop technology... you need to research science, which is not immediately or directly applicable to daily life typically.
Funny how that works, I think. You'd almost think it was worth funding science research.
I think you're overlooking the intensity of the radical elements in the middle east. Any muslim leader that was really pushing for reconciliation with Israel, IMHO, would be assassinated in short order, whether the country was doing well or not. It's not just the common Iranians they have to pay attention to.
You mistake some radical elements for the government of Iran. The government plays to the radical elements, but they are still a government that desires power, not suicide. Every step they are taking so far bears that up.
Compound that with a few more facts; like, for instance, the fact that you cannot detonate a nuclear device without it being traceable to where it was manufactured due to the residue left behind. Iran simply cannot slip a nuke to anyone and let them go detonate it without reprisal. Look at the Polonium case recently.. they can trace the stuff right back to the original mine. In fact, Iran would have quite significant reason NOT to let anyone get a hold of their nukes, since it would be the same as if they had done it themselves.
The leaders of Iran are not trying to create a nation of martyrs for their cause. They want power and influence just like any other country, and with Iraq out of the way or even soon to become a Shiite ally, now is their time to make a move. And they are. It all looks pretty rational from here, except for the language they use to "play to their base". Their language makes them heroes to all of the angry middle eastern factions; even moreso, because they are standing up to the US at the same time.
How long do you think a sitting Iranian prime minister would last, preaching reconciliation with Israel? Not long. But that doesn't mean that they are going to commit mass suicide to nuke Israel either. At worst, there will be more terrorist bombers moving across a now-friendly Iraq towards Israel. But you can be pretty damn sure they won't ever be toting Iranian nuclear material. Hell, nuking Israel would wreck palestine and countless sites holy to Iran and other Muslims as well; it's never going to happen. Never Ever.
When was the last time two nuclear armed antagonists engaged in truly large scale ground conflict?
That's no more likely than nuking each other.. because if one starts losing badly enough, they enter the "nothing left to lose" phase of desparation. No one will risk that. That's why China will never invade america, or vice versa. That's why Pakistan and India are not engaged in full-out war. It's why Israel still exists at all.. either because of their own, or our own nuclear arsenal.
As far as I'm concerned... and it seems Iran probably feels this way as well... Nukes are peacekeepers rivalled by nothing else. You simply cannot push around a nuclear power to the point of breaking. It's probably done more for regional stability in Europe, for instance, than anything else including democractic reform.. which, if memory serves, occurred in germany BEFORE WWII, and did not stop a massive conflagration there.
Nothing more than relatively low-level conflicts are possible between two nuclear powers. Invasion or decimation of one side or the other is no longer an option once they have an "end game" weapon.
That said, I would expect the current state of conflict between Israel and Iran to continue if Iran had nukes. If Iran, say, smuggled a nuke into israel to wipe it out in a surprise attack, it knows damn well that would result in a nuclear exchange with america they are simply not capable of "winning", which would wreck any chance Iran has at being top dog in the middle east, which is what they are really shooting for. America may not be able to invade Iran and hold it, but it is certainly capable of an utterly devastating retaliatory strike, and if a nuclear weapon went off in Israel, it would be able to do so with the moral high ground in the world political theatre. Condemning Israel in its conflict with Palestine is one thing, but NO nuclear power is going to stand for a little guy (relatively) taking such extreme disregard for their nuclear arsenal.
Well, that's fine. But don't pretend that law is the ultimate arbitration of morality, that's all. Law and morality are not even passingly related. And incidentally, I think you'd find that if your family is living in abject poverty, you'd do whatever you could to help or protect them, so on purely moral grounds I'd have a hard time faulting an "alien" for trying to get work here. Their action may be Illegal, sure, but not immoral. They are still human beings doing the best they know how to. If, for some reason, we feel the need to protect ourselves from them, then so be it. But that doesn't make them immoral people, nor necessarily us immoral, unless you're advocating for extreme violations of basic human rights like torturing them to make an example or something perhaps.
Basically, if someone wants to treat them like criminals then they should feel free, but they should at least man up and admit that the "illegals" or "aliens" are people who aren't necessarily some slavering horde of theives and rapists. It's not ok to justify the actions behind some guise of "morality". if it's justified then it may be a pragmatic reality, but it's not a moral question, and pretending something is a moral question when it is not, ironically, often allows quite immoral behaviour to be justified, so I'm a little distrustful of people using it lightly. People tend to more extreme reactions if they paint their target as an immoral being.
Not saying you were; you were just asking a question. Just explaining my reaction and its cause.
The existence of a law has no correlation with the prescence of morality. Many immoral things have been and are still legal. Many things that could very well be considered not only moral, but righteous, are illegal.
You're right that attempting to change a situation through the democratic process is important, and that to some extent law is a social contract we all deal with to get along a bit better... but that does not mean that all laws should be obeyed, and it MOST CERTAINLY does not mean that any particular law is MORAL.
Sometimes, you do need to break laws.
That doesn't mean it's legally defensible or even morally correct.
If this were a mistake from a cashier, I am not so cold hearted that I would cost that person their job for an honest mistake. If I noticed, I too would pay.
However, this is automation. You do it right, once, and the system keeps doing it that way. If you can't be bothered to set up an automated system to work correctly, I am not going to feel bad for your mistake. And obviously, since it is automated without human oversight, it is just that much more important to make sure it is set up correctly before it is deployed, or situations just like this can occur.. obviously... since it did.
I would understand if a glitch is discovered and they refunded people's money and didn't ship the product. But once it's gone, it's gone. You don't get to go back and try again after the fact.
I'm sorry, that's total BS.
If I charge my client a price for an item or service, and they stand up to their end of our bargin, I must stand up for my end... period.
If I accidentally give them a quote with no shipping costs on it, for example... well, I eat shipping on that order.
If I quote them a price on a special order item, then go to order it and realize the price I had was old, well, that's my fault too, not my customers. We made a deal, and they lived up to their end of it.
Going back after the fact to revise the terms of your deal is not only fraudulent, but opens the door to huge amount of intentional fraud. A contract would have no legitamacy at all... "whups, sorry, I messed up, let's rewrite the deal".
I'm sorry, if you cannot be bothered to keep your own systems in order, you pay the price of failure. Amazon has no right and should have no expectation whatsoever that a single one of those customers would or should return what they purchased, fairly, for a price Amazon told them was good. Period.
I do find spotlight to be a pretty intensive task... not very snappy, and I'm running a last-gen midrange G5 dual proc w/1.5 gigs of RAM.
I'm going to guess that since you're new to the OS, you're running a lesser machine? In which case... spotlight's gonna be slow. Not one of my favorite mac features, for sure.
You wouldn't consider Operating Systems to be the basic infrastructure for personal computing?
A little further up this discussion people talk about how apple can screw with programmers for their OS. In this market you must be Windows compatible to compete in the mass market.
How is that wide open?
What kind of resources do you think you have to have to develop, say, an OS that can compete in any meaningful way with what's available now, with hundreds of thousands of coding hours behind it, if not millions? You don't have to replicate it hour for hour, for sure, but still... we're way beyond "two guys in a garage" developing a breakthrough OS.
In short, it may theoretically be possible, and it may even happen someday.. but you could have said that about the Bells as well. And waited. For a long time. And I think the free marketeers like to ignore the damage large scale monopolies can do while we all wait for it to get so, so bad that someone who is already filthy stinking rich decides to fight it.
Let me get this straight; you're supposed to wait half a lifetime, if you're lucky, for a market to settle down?
Also, it would be a little disengenuous to ignore that the only reason the bells monopoly did not continue is because of a forcible breakup. They owned the infrastructure, and without intervention it would have taken until someone with gigantic pockets, not a smaller "savvy competitor", decided to build another system of infrastructure to compete.
Maybe by now, with wireless communication, they would have finally seen some competition. But you say these examples happen throughout history, again and again.. and only in the last hundred years have competing technologies been developed with any appreciable speed in practically any sphere of our lives.
I have to point out that certain very left wing groups, such as the green party, are also proponents of locally based, decentralized authority in many respects.
This is because to have a truly active democracy, it must be responsive to the will of the people, and the larger your mass of people the less responsive it can be.
So in some respects yes, cities and towns should be able to uphold their rights against states, as states should be able to do the same with the federal government.
While it may not be terribly efficient to have lots of fragmented, disparate power structures, this is a good thing for a few reasons.
First, it is protective. Centralized power in the truest sense is a threat to liberty. You may not be particularly afraid of it, but it is a threat.
More importantly, in my mind, is it allows for smaller scale experimentation in governance without having to change the inertia of a huge mass central beauracracy. Maine can implement something, and try it out on a much smaller subset of people who are willing to try it out for whatever reason. If it serves our needs, other states can look at it and see if it will serve their needs too, or perhaps a slightly tweaked version would suit their needs better.
There are things in which only a collection of states can really implement, but in general I see nothing wrong with defaulting to state's rights prior to federal rights. When in doubt, decentralize. At least then the damage that can be done by an overreaching beuracracy is limited in scope and power and freedom/liberty stands the greatest chance of survival.
Wow, Ozone depletion isn't a problem?
You don't live in australia do you?
Are you seriously not aware that this is a current problem? Granted, it's not front page news any more, but hey, if you're going to dismiss something, at least look into it a little.
The good news is, BECAUSE OF ALL THE MEDIA HYPE, we (the industralized nations of the world) stopped using CFCs to a large number and now the ozone layer is HEALING ITSELF.
Wow, we can have an impact on our environment. WHOUDA THUNK, HUH?
See the continuing discussion; that isn't really a well trained, professional electoral process. I was, admittedly, not clear in my intentions in the post you were responding to.
I can see it for the military (vs. conscription) but I wasn't aware of the use of that term for poll workers.
;) but instead of "paid" I should have said "professional". Trained, well trained. Of course the danger there might be that with training comes the knowledge of how to "break the system", but I would think it would be a good deal better to have a well paid and trained force of electoral administrators that understand the consequences of their actions are quite severe should anything irregular be discovered. Of course they could still make things look like 'accidents', and there would still be accidents. But you would not be able to have willful fraud as easily as you could now.. and there would at least be some consequence!
I thought I had already posted this, so if it shows up twice don't shoot me
Both parties probably already engage in shady electoral dealings on a regular basis though (dead people voting, for example), and so stepping up enforcement of existing laws and/or toughening of them is probably a pipe dream....
Perhaps we should pay people to administer polls then. I mean.. it is only the basis for the entire operation of our country, after all. I understand your point, and agree, but this cannot be acceptable. Far too much to gain and too little to lose as it currently stands, IMHO.
Am I the only person that thinks that willfully subverting the electoral process, on which every thing in our country's governance hinges, should be tried as NOTHING LESS than treason?
I don't care if you're running for dog catcher... the democratic process should be defended with the most uncompromising principles possible, should it not?
It's still a possible conflict of interest that needs to be disclosed in any professional relationship, and you become a professional when you take that money, IMHO.
If consumer reports says something nice about Toyota, and Toyota starts paying them... wouldn't that change how you view the information Consumer reports generates about Toyota after that? But they do not take the money, to prevent the conflict of interest.
I acknowledge this is highly debatable, but that's where I stand; you take the money, you take responsibility for it, which is disclosure.
to a point sure. But then, when should we sit by and watch people who have more money get more say and influence in our government, quietly, just because it's "their right"? How, exactly, does that serve the best interests of any particular community of any size? And if a structure does not serve the interest of the community at large, is it moral because it serves YOUR interest?
Seems pretty weak to me, though I certainly recognize this can be a very involvement and complicated discussion, and I do support rights for the individual in most cases. But, I do believe there are some limits that any pragmatic and reasonable person needs to accept, since whether you like it or not, you do live in a community of some kind and its welfare must be balanced against yours.
You are not spending time "on political speech" in this case.
You are working. AS a political lobbyist; that is, you take money to promote an ideology, professionally.
I would have no problem with MoveOn having to register as a lobbying organization. It most certainly lobbies, collects and distributes cash to or for the benefit of political causes and organizations.
There is a difference, emotionally however. MoveOn is supported by people, not companies, and companies are not people. It is truly a grassroots organization, lobbying or not. While i hate most of what they do (and I'm pretty liberal, but I think they are dumb), I can't argue with the fact that it is actually a grassroots organization with lots and lots of "active" members...
It's not separate at all. If you are paid to write something as if it were your personal stance on something, without disclosing the income, that is fraudulent. If it is not legally fraudulent, it should be. You are lying if you imply it is your own natural stance, and if you are going to be a professional shill, you should have to declare that as a profession in the interest of full disclosure. Once it becomes a business relationship, you are subject to basic business ethics and professional standards of conduct, IMHO.
Some of it might be cultural, but we've already seen studies that say that not all of it is.
;)
If you walk into a baby's room with a snazzy toy on a stick and move it around, most of the time a boy baby will check out the toy, and a girl baby will ignore it and check you out.
I think that says a lot about how much of it is purely biological.
Or you could make the case that society has selective bred us over time according to our prejudices (i.e. women that like tech or boys that like dolls tend not to be found attractive by the opposite, biased gender).
OR you could say that people who break those gender norms don't breed for... other reasons