So I take it that you have no problem with big government on a state level? Or do we need to go even smaller? Municipal level?
Your idea of how 'homogeneous' countries with 'big government' are is wrong and a cop out. It has nothing to do with managing and deciding things on a larger scale, which is extremely effective for a lot of things in life. Your fundamental thinking error is that because an implementation of an influential government is broken in the US, that the concept of an influential government is broken. It isn't. You just suck at it.
Don't get me wrong. It's not easy. Humans are generally greedy, selfish, violent, short-sighted animals. We need to keep ourselves in check and prevent ourselves from making mistakes. One only need to look as far as the tragedy of the commons to understand why government is the way to do that.
The times of your PC speaker blasting Yankee Doodle at 17:00 are long gone.
TFA is overlooking a very important part of how hacking and viruses work anno 2014 and that is that hackers and virus makers have gone from people just messing around to people making hard cash or disrupting very specific and powerful entities. If anything, the symptoms described would only be part of ransomware or some terrorist attack when directed at average Joes.
Like the devices targeted by most viruses today, these sorts of devices will mainly be infected to track and sell data, to be able to use them for ddossing or cryptomining, and as a vector to extract financial authorization data. I don't think the 'my house has a virus and now I'm hearing Skrillex every day' is going to be very prevalent.
Of course the threat is real and the results when being targeted specifically more dangerous (to the body) than in traditional hacking. In that sense, we do need to be extra concerned with safety when it comes to 'connected homes'.
Are you OK with totalitarian dictatorships as long as they're not genocidal?
What's the dividing line between "big government" and "totalitarian" anyway?
Really? Really?? Are you really equating 'big government' and 'totalitarian government'? The world is not black and white, you know?
How do we keep a government with few limits from becoming a government with very few limits or no limits? Wishful thinking?
Functioning democracy. The US doesn't have that. And that is your problem, not 'big government'.
The current government is already spying on us all and sending the IRS after political enemies. Farm policies, defense spending, tariffs and import restrictions, immigration policies, financial regulations, clean energy loan guarantees, and environmental regulations are already for sale for campaign cash or non-cash campaign support. This is big government. This is what happens.
And you're defending corruption and graft and repression.
Bullshit. Go ahead: quote me where I did that.
Plus you skipped the part of "history" where governments slaughtered 100s of millions of innocent people and enslaved tens of millions more.
What the fuck are you talking about, man? There's a difference between 'big government' and totalitarian genocidal dictatorships. You should really try to get over your irrational, perpetual and unwavering disliking for the word 'government'. It's a sign of indoctrination.
Any evidence that humans will achieve those feats?
I was trying to point out that bacteria will never be able to do so actively. I was never claiming that humans will (your/.siblings both seemed to have missed that point as well).
But if you must know, in fact I believe that humans will not. Even though I respect the fact that the human biological form has gotten us to where we are today, I don't believe it is very futureproof.
Our society may become powerful enough (for some definitions of humanity), but humans as a species most probably will not. Well, who cares about species anyway?
One could also argue that is it in fact bacteria that are evolutionary most successful organisms on earth.
That is a misleading statement. Humans are a single species. 'Bacteria' is a ridiculously large set of species, with each of them being adapted to quite a specific environment.
In addition to that, they will never be able to actively prevent their own extinction on a solar or galactic level, nor will they be able to actively spread on those levels. They might by chance, but not actively.
When one tries to force, via seizing or forfeiture of assets, those assets are going to move away from the source of that force very quickly. Taxation of assets is tolerable to a degree until the taxed feel that the services paid for by taxation no longer benefit their interests or exceeds that individual's tolerance level for taxation. Once the threshold has been passed, individuals move their assets to a more tolerable environment. This is why wealth flees heavily taxed states.
So you agree with taxation, but not more than what people feel benefits their interests? Protip: the only place feelings have in science is when they are the subject of investigation.
I'll tell you something else: the concept of 'stealing' does not exist in the animal world. It's simply about who is able to dominate who. As highly intelligent, social and cooperative species, we have created laws that have us all respect possession because it benefits society as a whole. Never forget that it's not about the money or the things, but about living in a society that functions well and promotes progress and prosperity. My point is: we need to make sure that our system of government, our monetary system and our laws in general work towards that, instead of mentally clinging to a manufactured absolute concept of "what's yours is yours".
Just because something occurs, that doesn't mean it needs to be governed at all. For the most part, people can live their own lives without a government mommy watching and second guessing everything they do.
For the most part, people live their own lives relying on running water, roads, electricity, safety standards for food, cars and houses, centralized conflict resolution and prevention. Wherever you are: take a look around you and realize that there are loads of things that would be an absolute fucking mess if there wasn't some regulation making sure it wouldn't be. I'm talking about child labor, carcinogens in toys for children, rampant crime, etc.
The layer of civilization is very, very thin and fragile. Living in the jungle is cool, until you get eaten by a tiger or poisoned by a venomous insect.
Economies aren't "run".
Yes, they are. Interest rates are set, tax rates are set, legislation around working is set up, crises are dealt with, etc. You can believe the fairy tale that an economy without rules benefits the people, but it would be just that: a fairy tale.
The government didn't write the standard for email, for example, but there's still a more-or-less universal standard.
Actually, ARPANET was pretty important in the development of SMTP.
The Romans...
...died and their empire crumbled. Their centralized government didn't save them.
Yeah. One of the main reasons the empire fell is because it became so big that it became hard to keep the distant parts of the empire in check (information pretty much traveled at the speed of a horse). They found a real physical limitation to their political structure. Not some made up bullshit story about 'big government' always being 'inefficient'.
I do appreciate what they do. It's just not worth the cost. I appreciate a good hamburger. I don't want to pay $2000 for a good hamburger. I don't appreciate being policed and regulated and threatened and spied on and otherwise oppressed in return for the opportunity to get on a waiting list buy a good hamburger for $2000.
The thing is: you have no idea how it would be like without that hamburger. Would you want to eat dog poop every day for $2? Because that's what you're looking at: something really cheap and really shitty.
That something occurs locally, doesn't mean that it is efficient to govern it locally.
Calling train transportation or education 'local' is absolutely retarded. Good luck running an economy with people that have diplomas like 'Smartest kid in the world. Signed, mom' or getting trains to run on railways with different widths.
The Romans figured out why centralized government works for a lot of aspects in life 2000 years ago. You should take (or at least fucking read) a page from their book. Also, you should appreciate what centralized government has already done for you personally instead of taking it for granted.
I would presume that yes, that money is invested by the banks that the money is stored in to generate money for the banks and pay interest to clients
So the best way to get an economy to flourish is to have everybody put their money into savings accounts and not buy anything anymore? Do you have any idea why the concept of inflation is popular among economists?
Anyway, the problem is that it is just not doable to get wealthy people to spend money the way you want them to. The thing is that they are very good at managing their money and have the resources to do so. Dislike it as much as you want, but a lot of the economy is driven by (non-wealthy) people buying stuff they don't really need (instead of investing their money for the highest ROI and instead of finding loop holes to avoid losing their money).
No, you said: "a better plan to get less money in politics" As long as a company has money burning in its pocket and ways and means to get it to people that can greatly influence the operations of that company, it will throw the money at those people. Parliaments must be held to the strictest of standards when it comes to corruption and nepotism, not stripped of power.
So the money in all those accounts in various island states, Switzerland and Luxembourg is what, 'invested'? Also, 'investing' in commodities isn't really investing. It's more like a currency exchange; the only jobs that such activities drive are in the financial sector.
Ultimately, an economy is demand-driven; if you want to stimulate a certain economy, you need to look at what that economy can provide (without to much extra effort) and then put money into the hands of the people that want what said economy can provide. That is very hard to do, because who knows what people will spend their money on?
One of the things we do know is that when it comes to 'buying local', poor people are a lot more effective than rich people (they tend to go for 'exclusive' and 'exotic' things).
Right, because lobbying and funding political campaigns to influence what laws are instated will disappear because of the FairTax (tm). If you think tax breaks are the only thing these lobbyists are interested in, you are blissfully naive.
Appeal to authority, argumentum ad populum and poisoning the well. Classy. The science is actually more interesting than you believe:
"First, twenty-four rhesus macaques were infected with the Lyme bacteria in the laboratory. After four to six months, half the macaques received aggressive antibiotic therapy, which, in theory, should have cured them, but the bacteria persisted in some of the animals. Then the scientists used a method called xenodiagnosis to determine if treatment worked in three other monkeys. They planted ticks that had been reared in the lab under sterile conditions on macaques that had received antibiotics, and let them feed for four days. When the ticks were removed and examined, the scientists found small numbers of intact, functioning spirochetes in two of them, which could have come only from the blood of the macaques." ( http://www.newyorker.com/repor... )
It is a fact that a significant amount of people chronically suffer from symptoms that are perfectly in line with the symptoms of Lyme, after having definitely had Lyme. So, that is 'a thing'. Whether the cause is indeed recurring Lyme, a yeast infection or damage to the body doesn't really matter all that much to those with the symptoms. Being dismissed as 'kooky' or being told to 'get over it' by assholes as yourself does matter.
Vice is spreading the misinformation: they are misrepresenting BFA as an astroturfer. It's a bald-faced lie on their part.
Quote, please. Also, this is a tu quoque. You seem to be implying that the article mentioned in TFA is somehow not misinformation. Which it is. And I quote: 'Yes, it's "disingenuous"'
If you are talking about the arguments about net neutrality itself
Nope. I was talking about you deriding an article that tries to make people a little bit more aware of how corporate interests are being 'masked' as messages from consumer advocacy groups.
Given the corruption and past failures of the FCC and telecoms regulation, Vice is either utterly stupid, or they are in the pocket of some powerful special interests. And frankly, so are you.
Your premise doesn't even remotely support your conclusions here. But I am pretty interested in how you propose achieving net neutrality, if not via the FCC or 'telecoms regulation'.
Nobody was implying that in this instance free speech should have been curtailed.
Again, this is about you saying this about TFA: "I don't see why people get their panties in a knot about companies presenting their point of view publicly; you can listen to their arguments and either agree with them or disagree with them."
By (mostly incorrectly) deriding TFA, the people writing it and its readers, you are actively aiding the misinformation that Vice is trying to combat in TFA. That is a definite step beyond defending free speech, my friend.
It never says that anywhere. Unless they changed the article, the only accusation I find is in the headline: "CABLE COMPANIES ARE ASTROTURFING FAKE CONSUMER SUPPORT TO END NET NEUTRALITY". Anyway, if you really want to get into this: the writers of the article in SFgate are probably also very much responsible for (or at least very influential in) the characterization of the BfA below that article.
I see.
No, you don't. You want to sit back, allow the public to be misinformed (and lulled into inaction) due to word trickery from people that have financial interests in certain corporations and bitch about articles that try to shine a light on such word trickery. Don't get me wrong, I do agree with you that using the word 'astroturfing' is debatable here, but knocking the article and the people upset about the word trickery (and their panties) is just counterproductive. And that is what this thread is about.
Don't make this about who's to blame. This is about public misinformation actively promoted by corporate interests and how and whether to counter it. Whether that SFGate, BfA or a combination of those two drives the misinformation is irrelevant.
Personally, I'd do nothing.
That says enough about you. But thanks for answering the question honestly.
I dunno, you tell me what you're willing to do in the name of "fixing misinformation".
As opposed to implying that what's going on is just "companies presenting their point of view publicly" and people "[getting] their panties in a knot about [it]".
Slashdot Mirror
No, I'm the load your mother swallows eight times every weekend.
Come on, we can let what was a at some point witty thread devolve even further. Give me your best shot (I'm throwing this one into your lap here).
Well, that's what they get for not using a condom.
So I take it that you have no problem with big government on a state level?
Or do we need to go even smaller? Municipal level?
Your idea of how 'homogeneous' countries with 'big government' are is wrong and a cop out. It has nothing to do with managing and deciding things on a larger scale, which is extremely effective for a lot of things in life. Your fundamental thinking error is that because an implementation of an influential government is broken in the US, that the concept of an influential government is broken.
It isn't. You just suck at it.
Don't get me wrong. It's not easy. Humans are generally greedy, selfish, violent, short-sighted animals. We need to keep ourselves in check and prevent ourselves from making mistakes. One only need to look as far as the tragedy of the commons to understand why government is the way to do that.
The times of your PC speaker blasting Yankee Doodle at 17:00 are long gone.
TFA is overlooking a very important part of how hacking and viruses work anno 2014 and that is that hackers and virus makers have gone from people just messing around to people making hard cash or disrupting very specific and powerful entities. If anything, the symptoms described would only be part of ransomware or some terrorist attack when directed at average Joes.
Like the devices targeted by most viruses today, these sorts of devices will mainly be infected to track and sell data, to be able to use them for ddossing or cryptomining, and as a vector to extract financial authorization data. I don't think the 'my house has a virus and now I'm hearing Skrillex every day' is going to be very prevalent.
Of course the threat is real and the results when being targeted specifically more dangerous (to the body) than in traditional hacking. In that sense, we do need to be extra concerned with safety when it comes to 'connected homes'.
Are you OK with totalitarian dictatorships as long as they're not genocidal?
What's the dividing line between "big government" and "totalitarian" anyway?
Really?
Really??
Are you really equating 'big government' and 'totalitarian government'?
The world is not black and white, you know?
How do we keep a government with few limits from becoming a government with very few limits or no limits? Wishful thinking?
Functioning democracy.
The US doesn't have that. And that is your problem, not 'big government'.
The current government is already spying on us all and sending the IRS after political enemies. Farm policies, defense spending, tariffs and import restrictions, immigration policies, financial regulations, clean energy loan guarantees, and environmental regulations are already for sale for campaign cash or non-cash campaign support. This is big government. This is what happens.
Not where I live.
Checkmate.
And you're defending corruption and graft and repression.
Bullshit. Go ahead: quote me where I did that.
Plus you skipped the part of "history" where governments slaughtered 100s of millions of innocent people and enslaved tens of millions more.
What the fuck are you talking about, man? There's a difference between 'big government' and totalitarian genocidal dictatorships.
You should really try to get over your irrational, perpetual and unwavering disliking for the word 'government'. It's a sign of indoctrination.
Any evidence that humans will achieve those feats?
I was trying to point out that bacteria will never be able to do so actively. I was never claiming that humans will (your /.siblings both seemed to have missed that point as well).
But if you must know, in fact I believe that humans will not. Even though I respect the fact that the human biological form has gotten us to where we are today, I don't believe it is very futureproof.
Our society may become powerful enough (for some definitions of humanity), but humans as a species most probably will not. Well, who cares about species anyway?
One could also argue that is it in fact bacteria that are evolutionary most successful organisms on earth.
That is a misleading statement. Humans are a single species. 'Bacteria' is a ridiculously large set of species, with each of them being adapted to quite a specific environment.
In addition to that, they will never be able to actively prevent their own extinction on a solar or galactic level, nor will they be able to actively spread on those levels. They might by chance, but not actively.
FUD? You mean history.
You're a spoiled brat and don't realize that at all.
You didn't answer my questions.
When one tries to force, via seizing or forfeiture of assets, those assets are going to move away from the source of that force very quickly.
Taxation of assets is tolerable to a degree until the taxed feel that the services paid for by taxation no longer benefit their interests or exceeds that individual's tolerance level for taxation. Once the threshold has been passed, individuals move their assets to a more tolerable environment. This is why wealth flees heavily taxed states.
So you agree with taxation, but not more than what people feel benefits their interests? Protip: the only place feelings have in science is when they are the subject of investigation.
I'll tell you something else: the concept of 'stealing' does not exist in the animal world. It's simply about who is able to dominate who. As highly intelligent, social and cooperative species, we have created laws that have us all respect possession because it benefits society as a whole. Never forget that it's not about the money or the things, but about living in a society that functions well and promotes progress and prosperity. My point is: we need to make sure that our system of government, our monetary system and our laws in general work towards that, instead of mentally clinging to a manufactured absolute concept of "what's yours is yours".
Just because something occurs, that doesn't mean it needs to be governed at all. For the most part, people can live their own lives without a government mommy watching and second guessing everything they do.
For the most part, people live their own lives relying on running water, roads, electricity, safety standards for food, cars and houses, centralized conflict resolution and prevention. Wherever you are: take a look around you and realize that there are loads of things that would be an absolute fucking mess if there wasn't some regulation making sure it wouldn't be. I'm talking about child labor, carcinogens in toys for children, rampant crime, etc.
The layer of civilization is very, very thin and fragile. Living in the jungle is cool, until you get eaten by a tiger or poisoned by a venomous insect.
Economies aren't "run".
Yes, they are. Interest rates are set, tax rates are set, legislation around working is set up, crises are dealt with, etc. You can believe the fairy tale that an economy without rules benefits the people, but it would be just that: a fairy tale.
The government didn't write the standard for email, for example, but there's still a more-or-less universal standard.
Actually, ARPANET was pretty important in the development of SMTP.
The Romans...
...died and their empire crumbled. Their centralized government didn't save them.
Yeah. One of the main reasons the empire fell is because it became so big that it became hard to keep the distant parts of the empire in check (information pretty much traveled at the speed of a horse). They found a real physical limitation to their political structure. Not some made up bullshit story about 'big government' always being 'inefficient'.
I do appreciate what they do. It's just not worth the cost. I appreciate a good hamburger. I don't want to pay $2000 for a good hamburger. I don't appreciate being policed and regulated and threatened and spied on and otherwise oppressed in return for the opportunity to get on a waiting list buy a good hamburger for $2000.
The thing is: you have no idea how it would be like without that hamburger. Would you want to eat dog poop every day for $2?
Because that's what you're looking at: something really cheap and really shitty.
That something occurs locally, doesn't mean that it is efficient to govern it locally.
Calling train transportation or education 'local' is absolutely retarded. Good luck running an economy with people that have diplomas like 'Smartest kid in the world. Signed, mom' or getting trains to run on railways with different widths.
The Romans figured out why centralized government works for a lot of aspects in life 2000 years ago. You should take (or at least fucking read) a page from their book.
Also, you should appreciate what centralized government has already done for you personally instead of taking it for granted.
Really now? It's just a sick aggressive dog that is unnecessary?
How do you envision your world without (meaningful) government? How would that work?
I would presume that yes, that money is invested by the banks that the money is stored in to generate money for the banks and pay interest to clients
So the best way to get an economy to flourish is to have everybody put their money into savings accounts and not buy anything anymore?
Do you have any idea why the concept of inflation is popular among economists?
Anyway, the problem is that it is just not doable to get wealthy people to spend money the way you want them to. The thing is that they are very good at managing their money and have the resources to do so. Dislike it as much as you want, but a lot of the economy is driven by (non-wealthy) people buying stuff they don't really need (instead of investing their money for the highest ROI and instead of finding loop holes to avoid losing their money).
No, you said: "a better plan to get less money in politics"
As long as a company has money burning in its pocket and ways and means to get it to people that can greatly influence the operations of that company, it will throw the money at those people. Parliaments must be held to the strictest of standards when it comes to corruption and nepotism, not stripped of power.
So the money in all those accounts in various island states, Switzerland and Luxembourg is what, 'invested'?
Also, 'investing' in commodities isn't really investing. It's more like a currency exchange; the only jobs that such activities drive are in the financial sector.
Ultimately, an economy is demand-driven; if you want to stimulate a certain economy, you need to look at what that economy can provide (without to much extra effort) and then put money into the hands of the people that want what said economy can provide. That is very hard to do, because who knows what people will spend their money on?
One of the things we do know is that when it comes to 'buying local', poor people are a lot more effective than rich people (they tend to go for 'exclusive' and 'exotic' things).
Right, because lobbying and funding political campaigns to influence what laws are instated will disappear because of the FairTax (tm). If you think tax breaks are the only thing these lobbyists are interested in, you are blissfully naive.
- "My computer is broken."
= "Throw it away."
Although you've technically resolved the initial problem, it's not a very good solution. I hope you realize that.
What's your plan?
Ah, so it's the lefties that are violent.
You have absolutely no clue how urbanization works, do you?
Appeal to authority, argumentum ad populum and poisoning the well. Classy. The science is actually more interesting than you believe:
"First, twenty-four rhesus macaques were infected with the Lyme bacteria in the laboratory. After four to six months, half the macaques received aggressive antibiotic therapy, which, in theory, should have cured them, but the bacteria persisted in some of the animals. Then the scientists used a method called xenodiagnosis to determine if treatment worked in three other monkeys. They planted ticks that had been reared in the lab under sterile conditions on macaques that had received antibiotics, and let them feed for four days. When the ticks were removed and examined, the scientists found small numbers of intact, functioning spirochetes in two of them, which could have come only from the blood of the macaques."
( http://www.newyorker.com/repor... )
It is a fact that a significant amount of people chronically suffer from symptoms that are perfectly in line with the symptoms of Lyme, after having definitely had Lyme. So, that is 'a thing'. Whether the cause is indeed recurring Lyme, a yeast infection or damage to the body doesn't really matter all that much to those with the symptoms. Being dismissed as 'kooky' or being told to 'get over it' by assholes as yourself does matter.
Vice is spreading the misinformation: they are misrepresenting BFA as an astroturfer. It's a bald-faced lie on their part.
Quote, please.
Also, this is a tu quoque. You seem to be implying that the article mentioned in TFA is somehow not misinformation. Which it is. And I quote: 'Yes, it's "disingenuous"'
If you are talking about the arguments about net neutrality itself
Nope. I was talking about you deriding an article that tries to make people a little bit more aware of how corporate interests are being 'masked' as messages from consumer advocacy groups.
Given the corruption and past failures of the FCC and telecoms regulation, Vice is either utterly stupid, or they are in the pocket of some powerful special interests. And frankly, so are you.
Your premise doesn't even remotely support your conclusions here. But I am pretty interested in how you propose achieving net neutrality, if not via the FCC or 'telecoms regulation'.
Nobody was implying that in this instance free speech should have been curtailed.
Again, this is about you saying this about TFA: "I don't see why people get their panties in a knot about companies presenting their point of view publicly; you can listen to their arguments and either agree with them or disagree with them."
By (mostly incorrectly) deriding TFA, the people writing it and its readers, you are actively aiding the misinformation that Vice is trying to combat in TFA. That is a definite step beyond defending free speech, my friend.
Vice is accusing BFA of astroturfing
It never says that anywhere. Unless they changed the article, the only accusation I find is in the headline: "CABLE COMPANIES ARE ASTROTURFING FAKE CONSUMER SUPPORT TO END NET NEUTRALITY".
Anyway, if you really want to get into this: the writers of the article in SFgate are probably also very much responsible for (or at least very influential in) the characterization of the BfA below that article.
I see.
No, you don't. You want to sit back, allow the public to be misinformed (and lulled into inaction) due to word trickery from people that have financial interests in certain corporations and bitch about articles that try to shine a light on such word trickery. Don't get me wrong, I do agree with you that using the word 'astroturfing' is debatable here, but knocking the article and the people upset about the word trickery (and their panties) is just counterproductive. And that is what this thread is about.
so you should blame SFGate.
Don't make this about who's to blame. This is about public misinformation actively promoted by corporate interests and how and whether to counter it. Whether that SFGate, BfA or a combination of those two drives the misinformation is irrelevant.
Personally, I'd do nothing.
That says enough about you. But thanks for answering the question honestly.
I dunno, you tell me what you're willing to do in the name of "fixing misinformation".
How about defending an article exposing said misinformation? (Yes, The Fucking Article)
As opposed to implying that what's going on is just "companies presenting their point of view publicly" and people "[getting] their panties in a knot about [it]".