It makes little scientific sense to provide welfare to people who will never be productive citizens ever again.
That's because you are only placing value on economic work. Grandparents (especially retired grandparents) provide a great deal of high quality and unpaid services such as day care which don't show up as economic transactions. Productive is hard to quantify. There are people who do little to be worthwhile people, but I think they are less common than many people believe.
It also makes little scientific sense to protect individual rights to the extent that we do. My friends over in Europe and Asia often point out that the banning of hate speech has a demonstrable effect on reducing bigotry. Yet our non-scientific culture values free speech.
Not really. The non-scientific culture values free speech that it agrees with. There are many examples of populist reprisals against people who say things the non-scientific don't want to hear. Racism and bigotry are tolerated in America because at least one popular party uses it as a way to attract some voters.
The difference is that Microsoft deliberately used it's OS monopoly to destroy a specific company that it perceived to potentially be a threat to it's monopoly. They forced people to have the browser by tying it to their operating system. That's anticompetitive. Google on the other hand is only encouraging people to use Chrome.
Most people are able to see a difference between being asked to do something and being forced to do something.
I checked three different dictionaries and got essentially the exact same definition:
capitalist noun \-ist\ 1 : a person who has capital especially invested in business; broadly : a person of wealth : plutocrat 2 : a person who favors capitalism
Notice it does not say that a capitalist must be opposed to government. You might be convinced that capitalism itself is opposed to government, so let's look at that too, shall we?
capitalism noun \ka-p-t-liz-m, kap-t-, British also k-pi-t-\ Definition of CAPITALISM : an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
What's this? I can't seem to find your definition that government is antithetical to capitalism. It doesn't appear to be in the definition. Maybe you meant "by inference", "by deduction" or "by custom"? Wow, it's a good thing you didn't call the person you were disagreeing with brain damaged or you'd really have egg all over your face.
The point you seem incapable of understanding is that using your definition there are no real capitalists, there is only an ever changing list of people who have not disappointed you so far, and when they do disappoint they are replaced with an identical person who primarily qualification is that they have not yet disappointed. You will forever be hoping that this time they aren't really human.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results - Albert Einstein.
That's why the entire developed world is run by liberal democratic governments with state-regulated capitalism, because it's the best system for the most people that we have discovered so far. Libertarian-capitalist governments have been tried a few times and they rarely last more than a year before they collapse due to internal or external pressures.
I doubt it has "nothing" to do with capitalism. The people bailed out are certainly hailed as "capitalists". A lot of capitalism fans are in denial that their "team" is made of humans too. And that like most other humans they will bend the rules and outright cheat if it looks like it will benefit them. This is particularly true in the U.S. where cheating creatively is often viewed as good and right. The sad truth is that Ayn Rand's superhuman capitalists don't exist.
The sooner everyone understand that capitalists and capitalism are neither all good nor all evil, the sooner the U.S. can start to actually fix itself.
No, it's not quite that. You have to understand that every mainstream media outlet in the United Stats (and most other developed countries) are owned and operated by corporations. There is a systemic pro-corporate bias to the news because all of the reporters, anchors, and editors all work for corporations. They idea that there may be merit in protesting corporations is either alien to most of them because they are too used to working in that environment, or they are a victim of the rule that "it is difficult to make someone believe something when his lively hood depends on him not believing it".
The political right is usually the culprit for misinformation on crime, they constantly claim that we need to be "tough" on crime, people naturally assume that if they're telling us that we're too easy on crime that there is a crime problem. It's a "big lie" problem. I wish I knew any easy way to deal with these problems, but frankly the majority of people in western nations seem to have no interest in knowing anything about politics or current events that don't involve celebrities.
You can be mentally stable and still be a complete bastard. Your question could be alternatively phrased as which is more likely to start violence: a bunch of uniformed men with weapons or a bunch of unarmed men and women?
It is what it is.
Violence on the part of one individual on either side only justified sufficient violence to stop that individual. It doesn't matter if some protesters are violent, you don't kill, beat or mace the ones who aren't. Likewise it doesn't matter if some police officers are brutal, you don't attack or kill the ones who are just doing their jobs. I'm not taking either side, but I've seen too many people try to justify extreme over-reactions on flimsy pretexts.
The Supreme Court did prevent a recount from occurring and thus changed the results of the Presidential Election in 2000. You may want to spend some time considering how the world might be different if instead of playing politics they had simply ruled that all ballots in Florida must be recounted as an equal protection measure. Would the war in Iraq have happened? Would the financial crash in 2008? We will never know, but the Supreme court bears partial responsibility both disasters now since they clearly chose to decide along political lines instead of legal ones and thus tampered with the will of the people.
It's never a good sign when the legal system is picking the political leaders is a supposed democracy (democratic republic for the ignorant mouth-breathing pendants).
Again the question is who is going to use it? Who will want to go and see your timeline other than you? It still seems to be a feature that's slick but ultimately not very relevant. It might be nice when you feel nostalgic and want to see the highlights of your Facebook life but beyond that it seems mostly useful to people you probably don't want looking at it. In other words, it's most useful to people who don't know you.
It's slick, but really who's going to use it? Would you set it up and then expect all of your friends and family to go and look at your personal timeline? If you're a celebrity, maybe there's some value in paying someone else to set it up for you as a promotional tool. However, I suspect for the vast majority of users they will neither have the inclination to set it up at all, nor the look at anyone else's timeline. It seems to be gimmicky to me. The first few people to set it up will get some people looking at it because it's new, and they'll get some appreciative comments and then I think it will become "old news" and unused except by people who are looking to use it for some other purpose. For example the promotion video was pretty slick and might be useful for creating a video for a Barr Mitzvah, Wedding, 80th birthday or Funeral. I don't see a whole lot of use beyond that type of special occasion, though.
Maybe the plants got shut down or moved because they shouldn't have been there in the first place?
The thing I noticed first was that the plants they were protesting were being built in already-designated "environmentally sensitive" areas. Maybe you should blame the businessmen and politicians who chose poorly when deciding where to put the plants and then chose not to follow the regulations they are required to meet. It's about as dumb as climbing into the lion exhibit at the zoo and then complaining that you really didn't deserve to be disemboweled by the lions.
Your "investments" are most likely in stocks. The money you invested goes to other investors, not to the companies. So your "investments" do nothing to generate wealth, they're just part of a giant wealth transfer system designed to make stocks more liquid. However the main function of the stock market now is as a casino where people bet on winners and losers.
I make no assumptions about what you do with your wealth because it doesn't matter. The truth is that the government supplies a host of services that shelter and support your business. Do you whine so self-righteously when one of your suppliers raises prices?
I'm not saying the government is perfect or that it even spends tax money wisely, just that government is a cost of business. And just like every other cost it has to be paid. Without government your business would likely be destroyed either by looters or the lack of armed customers willing to brave the rioting to reach you.
Following that logic dividends and wage income are both taxed an infinite number of times.
1) Twice when the wage earner gets it. (Income + Payroll) 2) Once when it spent with a company (Sales tax). 3) Once when the company gets it. (Corporate Income Tax) 4) Once when the investor gets it (Dividend/Capital Gains tax). 5) Once when the investor spends it (Sales tax). 6) Return to step 1) or to Step 3)
If I put in more effort than is my fair share, why have I not earned the right to claim a greater profit?
Indeed you should, but you should also feel proud that you are contributing some of that profit back to the system that allowed you to make the profits in the first place. Let's say your making $2,000,000 is an year, is paying an extra $30,000 to maintain that prosperity really so bad?
Let's be honest here, Government is a collection of services the primary goal of which is to secure a safe and stable society in which people can generate wealth. The rich have forgotten that they owe practically all of their wealth to government programs to create a stable and prosperous society. It's not a matter of keeping what you earned or not, it's a matter of paying for the programs that keep the companies they invest in running safely and securely. An environment they have clearly been exploiting for all it's worth. All you need to do is look at the wealth distribution to determine that wealthy are not, in fact, paying their share of the bill.
2) The workers are paid little more than slave wages, and China should be brough before the UN for crimes against their citizens.
That's not generally true. In China the workers are actually paid a comparatively handsome wage. China is building huge cities filled with people who are becoming affluent enough to buy millions of cars. As a rule, slaves don't own cars.
3) "China's government directly owns industries, including farms and factories".... And because of it they can tell every citizen to shut up and take it. Who else are they going to work for or get a wage from?
The could do that, but generally they don't. The Chinese Communist Party would like to remain in power, telling their citizens to shut up and take it works about as well as telling them to "eat cake" if there's no bread. The Party is deeply worried about their future because they know what's keeping them in power right now is wealth creation. When that ends, China will slip from their grasp.
4) "Coporate Anarchy" is a contradiction. Capatilism and corporations rely on stability and predictability. Anarchy is the anthesis of stability. Ackward.....
That would be an oxymoron like military intelligence, yet both still exist. Specifically, the op called you a corporate anarchist, in that he believes that you desire a world with no laws except for those enforced by corporations. More or less, the point was that you'd prefer a world resembling Japanese Zaibatsu.
5) There's nothing that a Democrat wont say about the benefits of a communist or socialist system while trying desperately not to use either title, because any rational person can show how both systems have historically led to nothing but mass death and oppression.
Actually, it tends to be the dictatorships that lead to mass death and oppression. The communist revolutions are just the tools used to put the dictators in power, exactly like Libertarians wish to put themselves in power in the name of freedom.
6) I'm not a Republican; Registered Independent.
You must be one of those "independents" the Tea Party people are always talking about. You hold a wide assortment of typically Republican views that have no relationship to reality, for all intents and purposes you are a Republican, whether or not you've registered with them.
Let's see, I think of 2 really good reasons why they should be conservative, they don't want people: 1) Spending all of their family's money on sham treatments that leave them penniless and then dying anyway or 2) Getting an alternative treatment that actually has a higher mortality rate than the standard treatment and dying when they would have otherwise recovered
There are other reasons but those are two very good reason for the FDA to be conservative with new drugs. Even with the FDA's conservative behaviour, drugs which have a worse success rate than placebos occasionally get approved.
More accurately, the money that he will be making 30 years from now on the prequels did not convince him to make the prequels, however, the prequels do bear all the finger marks of having been made for the love of money. When external factors such a power, fame or money are the primary motivations for doing something, the end result tends to be rushed and poor quality work. The goal becomes to finish the work and get the rewards, not making a high quality product. There is a bell-shaped curve with a sweet spot where creative types make enough money to do the work well, but so much that they focus on the rewards instead of the work.
Lucas clearly falls into the "doing it for the wrong reasons" group. Watching bits of the behind the scenes footage clearly shows that he let the rewards go to his head and spent his time trying to get the prequels done, instead of done well.
Slashdot Mirror
It makes little scientific sense to provide welfare to people who will never be productive citizens ever again.
That's because you are only placing value on economic work. Grandparents (especially retired grandparents) provide a great deal of high quality and unpaid services such as day care which don't show up as economic transactions. Productive is hard to quantify. There are people who do little to be worthwhile people, but I think they are less common than many people believe.
It also makes little scientific sense to protect individual rights to the extent that we do. My friends over in Europe and Asia often point out that the banning of hate speech has a demonstrable effect on reducing bigotry. Yet our non-scientific culture values free speech.
Not really. The non-scientific culture values free speech that it agrees with. There are many examples of populist reprisals against people who say things the non-scientific don't want to hear. Racism and bigotry are tolerated in America because at least one popular party uses it as a way to attract some voters.
The difference is that Microsoft deliberately used it's OS monopoly to destroy a specific company that it perceived to potentially be a threat to it's monopoly. They forced people to have the browser by tying it to their operating system. That's anticompetitive. Google on the other hand is only encouraging people to use Chrome.
Most people are able to see a difference between being asked to do something and being forced to do something.
Since idiots decided that "not giving them money" was "theft".
There's probably a business model there for someone who's enterprising.
The lethal does for sarin gas is about 0.5 mg for most people. Little things can have effects that are disproportionate to their concentrations.
Sigh. Were you born as dumb as this or is your brain damage given to you with a blunt instrument.
That lines alone shows you have nothing but bluster and arrogance supporting you.
Your link to useful idiot is also insanely misplaced. You clearly didn't even understand what a useful idiot is.
I'm afraid it is you who do not understand. You sir, are being used. A definition of convenience is only useful for jiggery-pokery.
Someone who supports cronyism and big government spending is not a capitalist, no matter what they or others think. By definition.
Whose definition?
There is no consensus on the precise definition of capitalism, nor on how the term should be used as a historical category.
I checked three different dictionaries and got essentially the exact same definition:
capitalist
noun \-ist\
1 : a person who has capital especially invested in business; broadly : a person of wealth : plutocrat
2 : a person who favors capitalism
Notice it does not say that a capitalist must be opposed to government. You might be convinced that capitalism itself is opposed to government, so let's look at that too, shall we?
capitalism
noun
\ka-p-t-liz-m, kap-t-, British also k-pi-t-\
Definition of CAPITALISM
: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
What's this? I can't seem to find your definition that government is antithetical to capitalism. It doesn't appear to be in the definition. Maybe you meant "by inference", "by deduction" or "by custom"? Wow, it's a good thing you didn't call the person you were disagreeing with brain damaged or you'd really have egg all over your face.
The point you seem incapable of understanding is that using your definition there are no real capitalists, there is only an ever changing list of people who have not disappointed you so far, and when they do disappoint they are replaced with an identical person who primarily qualification is that they have not yet disappointed. You will forever be hoping that this time they aren't really human.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results - Albert Einstein.
That's why the entire developed world is run by liberal democratic governments with state-regulated capitalism, because it's the best system for the most people that we have discovered so far. Libertarian-capitalist governments have been tried a few times and they rarely last more than a year before they collapse due to internal or external pressures.
That's wonderful. Everyone's a capitalist until they are not. That's certainly a politically useful definition.
I doubt it has "nothing" to do with capitalism. The people bailed out are certainly hailed as "capitalists". A lot of capitalism fans are in denial that their "team" is made of humans too. And that like most other humans they will bend the rules and outright cheat if it looks like it will benefit them. This is particularly true in the U.S. where cheating creatively is often viewed as good and right. The sad truth is that Ayn Rand's superhuman capitalists don't exist.
The sooner everyone understand that capitalists and capitalism are neither all good nor all evil, the sooner the U.S. can start to actually fix itself.
No, it's not quite that. You have to understand that every mainstream media outlet in the United Stats (and most other developed countries) are owned and operated by corporations. There is a systemic pro-corporate bias to the news because all of the reporters, anchors, and editors all work for corporations. They idea that there may be merit in protesting corporations is either alien to most of them because they are too used to working in that environment, or they are a victim of the rule that "it is difficult to make someone believe something when his lively hood depends on him not believing it".
The political right is usually the culprit for misinformation on crime, they constantly claim that we need to be "tough" on crime, people naturally assume that if they're telling us that we're too easy on crime that there is a crime problem. It's a "big lie" problem. I wish I knew any easy way to deal with these problems, but frankly the majority of people in western nations seem to have no interest in knowing anything about politics or current events that don't involve celebrities.
You can be mentally stable and still be a complete bastard. Your question could be alternatively phrased as which is more likely to start violence: a bunch of uniformed men with weapons or a bunch of unarmed men and women?
It is what it is.
Violence on the part of one individual on either side only justified sufficient violence to stop that individual. It doesn't matter if some protesters are violent, you don't kill, beat or mace the ones who aren't. Likewise it doesn't matter if some police officers are brutal, you don't attack or kill the ones who are just doing their jobs. I'm not taking either side, but I've seen too many people try to justify extreme over-reactions on flimsy pretexts.
The Supreme Court did prevent a recount from occurring and thus changed the results of the Presidential Election in 2000. You may want to spend some time considering how the world might be different if instead of playing politics they had simply ruled that all ballots in Florida must be recounted as an equal protection measure. Would the war in Iraq have happened? Would the financial crash in 2008? We will never know, but the Supreme court bears partial responsibility both disasters now since they clearly chose to decide along political lines instead of legal ones and thus tampered with the will of the people.
It's never a good sign when the legal system is picking the political leaders is a supposed democracy (democratic republic for the ignorant mouth-breathing pendants).
Again the question is who is going to use it? Who will want to go and see your timeline other than you? It still seems to be a feature that's slick but ultimately not very relevant. It might be nice when you feel nostalgic and want to see the highlights of your Facebook life but beyond that it seems mostly useful to people you probably don't want looking at it. In other words, it's most useful to people who don't know you.
It's slick, but really who's going to use it? Would you set it up and then expect all of your friends and family to go and look at your personal timeline? If you're a celebrity, maybe there's some value in paying someone else to set it up for you as a promotional tool. However, I suspect for the vast majority of users they will neither have the inclination to set it up at all, nor the look at anyone else's timeline. It seems to be gimmicky to me. The first few people to set it up will get some people looking at it because it's new, and they'll get some appreciative comments and then I think it will become "old news" and unused except by people who are looking to use it for some other purpose. For example the promotion video was pretty slick and might be useful for creating a video for a Barr Mitzvah, Wedding, 80th birthday or Funeral. I don't see a whole lot of use beyond that type of special occasion, though.
Maybe the plants got shut down or moved because they shouldn't have been there in the first place?
The thing I noticed first was that the plants they were protesting were being built in already-designated "environmentally sensitive" areas. Maybe you should blame the businessmen and politicians who chose poorly when deciding where to put the plants and then chose not to follow the regulations they are required to meet. It's about as dumb as climbing into the lion exhibit at the zoo and then complaining that you really didn't deserve to be disemboweled by the lions.
Your "investments" are most likely in stocks. The money you invested goes to other investors, not to the companies. So your "investments" do nothing to generate wealth, they're just part of a giant wealth transfer system designed to make stocks more liquid. However the main function of the stock market now is as a casino where people bet on winners and losers.
I make no assumptions about what you do with your wealth because it doesn't matter. The truth is that the government supplies a host of services that shelter and support your business. Do you whine so self-righteously when one of your suppliers raises prices?
I'm not saying the government is perfect or that it even spends tax money wisely, just that government is a cost of business. And just like every other cost it has to be paid. Without government your business would likely be destroyed either by looters or the lack of armed customers willing to brave the rioting to reach you.
Really? You think in the near future Education, Medicare and Social Security will eat 500% of annual tax revenues?
Following that logic dividends and wage income are both taxed an infinite number of times.
1) Twice when the wage earner gets it. (Income + Payroll)
2) Once when it spent with a company (Sales tax).
3) Once when the company gets it. (Corporate Income Tax)
4) Once when the investor gets it (Dividend/Capital Gains tax).
5) Once when the investor spends it (Sales tax).
6) Return to step 1) or to Step 3)
That's the way the system works.
If I put in more effort than is my fair share, why have I not earned the right to claim a greater profit?
Indeed you should, but you should also feel proud that you are contributing some of that profit back to the system that allowed you to make the profits in the first place. Let's say your making $2,000,000 is an year, is paying an extra $30,000 to maintain that prosperity really so bad?
Let's be honest here, Government is a collection of services the primary goal of which is to secure a safe and stable society in which people can generate wealth. The rich have forgotten that they owe practically all of their wealth to government programs to create a stable and prosperous society. It's not a matter of keeping what you earned or not, it's a matter of paying for the programs that keep the companies they invest in running safely and securely. An environment they have clearly been exploiting for all it's worth. All you need to do is look at the wealth distribution to determine that wealthy are not, in fact, paying their share of the bill.
2) The workers are paid little more than slave wages, and China should be brough before the UN for crimes against their citizens.
That's not generally true. In China the workers are actually paid a comparatively handsome wage. China is building huge cities filled with people who are becoming affluent enough to buy millions of cars. As a rule, slaves don't own cars.
3) "China's government directly owns industries, including farms and factories".... And because of it they can tell every citizen to shut up and take it. Who else are they going to work for or get a wage from?
The could do that, but generally they don't. The Chinese Communist Party would like to remain in power, telling their citizens to shut up and take it works about as well as telling them to "eat cake" if there's no bread. The Party is deeply worried about their future because they know what's keeping them in power right now is wealth creation. When that ends, China will slip from their grasp.
4) "Coporate Anarchy" is a contradiction. Capatilism and corporations rely on stability and predictability. Anarchy is the anthesis of stability. Ackward.....
That would be an oxymoron like military intelligence, yet both still exist. Specifically, the op called you a corporate anarchist, in that he believes that you desire a world with no laws except for those enforced by corporations. More or less, the point was that you'd prefer a world resembling Japanese Zaibatsu .
5) There's nothing that a Democrat wont say about the benefits of a communist or socialist system while trying desperately not to use either title, because any rational person can show how both systems have historically led to nothing but mass death and oppression.
Actually, it tends to be the dictatorships that lead to mass death and oppression. The communist revolutions are just the tools used to put the dictators in power, exactly like Libertarians wish to put themselves in power in the name of freedom.
6) I'm not a Republican; Registered Independent.
You must be one of those "independents" the Tea Party people are always talking about. You hold a wide assortment of typically Republican views that have no relationship to reality, for all intents and purposes you are a Republican, whether or not you've registered with them.
No it's more like:
1) Do crazy shit
2) Get donations from crazy people.
3) Return to step 1)
Actually, extremists are never correct, by definition.
Of course not everyone labelled an extremist, is.
Let's see, I think of 2 really good reasons why they should be conservative, they don't want people:
1) Spending all of their family's money on sham treatments that leave them penniless and then dying anyway
or
2) Getting an alternative treatment that actually has a higher mortality rate than the standard treatment and dying when they would have otherwise recovered
There are other reasons but those are two very good reason for the FDA to be conservative with new drugs. Even with the FDA's conservative behaviour, drugs which have a worse success rate than placebos occasionally get approved.
More accurately, the money that he will be making 30 years from now on the prequels did not convince him to make the prequels, however, the prequels do bear all the finger marks of having been made for the love of money. When external factors such a power, fame or money are the primary motivations for doing something, the end result tends to be rushed and poor quality work. The goal becomes to finish the work and get the rewards, not making a high quality product. There is a bell-shaped curve with a sweet spot where creative types make enough money to do the work well, but so much that they focus on the rewards instead of the work.
Lucas clearly falls into the "doing it for the wrong reasons" group. Watching bits of the behind the scenes footage clearly shows that he let the rewards go to his head and spent his time trying to get the prequels done, instead of done well.
That would be an example of idiocy turning people into criminals.