Both solar troughs and heliostats are interesting tech, but they suffer from similar problems:
They require (comparatively) large amounts of space to generate the equivalent of a single nuclear reactor. For example, a typical nuclear power station will generate roughly 1000 MW, whereas the Solar Two project generated roughly 30 MW. I know it was an experimental project, but you're going to be looking at tens of thousands of mirrors for a large-scale operation.
They rely on high-quality, exposed, reflective surfaces. This equates to high-maintenance, as every flaw, scratch, and obstruction diminishes the effectiveness of the system. Something like a hailstorm could cause massive damage to such a facility.
A solar station's performance is directly related to its physical location. While this isn't a showstopper, it does put a crimp in a planned large-scale rollout of said systems.
I'm a fan of clean power, but I'm also well aware of the fact that we have a fair amount of work to be done before this becomes a truly viable large-scale energy source. Like I said, we probably only need that one more technological jump to make this really take off.
On the 'attacking nuclear reactors' note: if terrorists get their hands on a weapon powerful enough to effectively breach containment at a nuclear plant, odds are pretty damn good that they'd use it to strike directly at a more 'desirable' target. Anything that'll breach a nuclear facility will wreak utter havoc if used directly on a major metropolitan area.
I'd love to own my own power. But with today's technology, I simply can't afford to--I don't have the money to even acquire the space to build such a thing, much less the money to pay for the equipment. Nor do I have the time to maintain said equipment. I'd rather pay a slow trickle to the local energy company for their very reliable service.
Once I can go out and spend, say, $8000 on a low-maintenance, self-contained solar system the size of a washing machine that is capable of powering my house through a combination of generation and stored reserves for nighttime, then I'll be interested...
Agreed. Conservation is an essential part of a viable long-term energy strategy, but it is a way of reducing costs, not replacing fuel sources.
Solar is promising, but we really need a next-generation solar collection technology to make it viable on a large scale; current systems are cumbersome, comparatively fragile, and contain small amounts of toxic compounds which require careful disposal. Wind power is similarly cumbersome, and requires large amounts of space to generate comparatively little power. They're promising technologies, but they're not there yet, and we may not hit that next-big breakthrough for a while.
The biggest thing nuclear power has going against it as that a lot of people are really, really scared of it. Nevermind that we now have rugged, compact reactor designs that are literally incapable of melting down. Nevermind that we're finding new and better ways of securing/reusing waste every day. Nevermind that we can generate staggering amounts of power in a very, very small space. Nevermind that the physically small amount of waste material is not steadily pumped back into the air we breathe and the water we drink. Nevermind that it could be used to easily meet our power needs in its current technological state.
When, oh when, is the environmental mainstream going to wake up to the boon of nuclear power?
...yes, the bathroom is a lousy place for a litterbox, where else would you have put it?
(As for mess and such, that's more a function of your lazy roomie failing to keep the damn box area clean. It's surprisingly easy to sweep that stuff up off a dry bathroom floor...)
If you don't have a basement keep it somewhere where no one goes.
As someone who has lived in his share of one bedroom apartments, I can safely say that a good chunk of cat owners don't have such places in their residence.
Bedroom, living/dining room, kitchen, middle of the hallway, bathroom: take your pick...
When discussing vulcanology, one should avoid using as one's primary reference a movie in which Pierce Brosnan successfully drives a pickup truck over several meters of red-hot lava.
not to mention that the terrorist would need a multi-million dollar setup that would track the cockpit of an airliner while it's flying.
...if he needed to hit it every time, yes. If he only needed to hit it eventually, then no. All he'd need is a reasonably well-calibrated optic sight attached to his laser/tripod.
To answer your questions:
1. Getting a Stinger in the U.S. is considerably more challenging than getting your hands on a 'dual use' weapon, like a cutting laser. High-powered lasers have many legitimate industrial and scientific uses, unlike Stinger missiles.
2. Well, if you get a powerful enough laser and blind the pilots at the right time, you could cause a plane crash. That would probably be considered effective.
3. An untraceable, inexpensive, "hi-tech", hard-to-counter way of putting flights at risk? You better believe that's terror, especially once the news outlets pick up on a pattern! In any case, we're afraid of everything here in the US--and the real evidence of terrorists using lasers to try to blind pilots is certain to cause a lot of people to freak out.
Instead of envisioning hooligans careening down the road with tripods and lasers sticking out of their pickup truck, consider a person simply living in a seventh-story studio apartment near the airport with a clear line of sight on an approach vector. No need to go about exposing your plans in public--just open the window and take aim from the obscurity of your building!
...or heck, why bother trying to strike on the (tough to target) approach? Focus on the takeoff, instead!
I agree that it takes skill, but it'd be relatively simple to do the following:
Purchase a tripod.
Mount your souped-up class IV laser on said tripod.
Over the course of several weeks, study the approach vectors of various aircraft.
Position your tripod such that it is lined up to hit a cockpit at a specific point. Once you have it positioned, leave it in place and don't touch it.
Start taking shots with your laser.
...if a terrorist were to do this carefully, it'd be practically untraceable (assuming the laser is outside the visible spectrum,) and he could take his sweet time in actually scoring a hit.
I'm not saying it's an easy or quick thing to accomplish, but time, planning, and patience are key strengths of successful terrorists.
The opinions of people like Mr. Larry J. Schutter of the Turtle Party and Darren Karr of Party-X are every bit as valid as those of Badnarik and Cobb. Likewise, they all share the same chance of winning said office. What makes Badnarik and Cobb more deserving of a debate than any of the other "Dark Horse" candidates?
You can only do five things - move, jump, get sticky, get slippery, and get dense - but it's how well you can control all that and what you do with it that makes it interesting. Momentum is everything.
The rules make no mention of what platform the game should run on. Are we to assume that the contest is open to OS X games, Linux games, and Commodore 64 games--or are we to assume that the game must run on Windows XP?
...and I do not doubt that the private sector is capable of providing these services; further, I recognize that the private sector can do things more efficiently than the public sector. On the other hand, I staunchly believe that a strong government is safer for society, and that it's worth sacrificing efficiency for stability and justice. My greatest fear is grounded in human nature, and the fact that it is so much easier to foul things up than it is to make things work properly. I simply don't trust the rest of humanity to behave in a manner that is in the best interests of the whole rather than in their own best interests. What's more, I believe that this is an intractable problem, and that there will always be a significant enough number of amoral, self-interested, opportunistic people who want to take for themselves what the rest of us have worked so hard to build. I don't see the free market as being powerful enough to keep these people in check. Not without a powerful, centralized government, founded on law, supporting it.
There certainly are enough resources to launch another shot at a Free Society like the one you speak of. What would happen to that society, though, after three or four generations had passed? Your founders may all be honest, hard-working, dyed-in-the-wool Free Marketers, but what of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren? There will eventually be a critical mass of unscrupulous characters in the Free Market Nation; how have you prepared to deal with the nastier side of human nature?
Thanks for this discourse--again, I apologize for my earlier acrimony. (You'd caught me at a bad time, as I'd just finished tearing out some hair in response to a rather egregious abuse of statistics elsewhere in this thread...)
I may be hazy on the details, but I do understand the basics of the free market. All I'm saying is that I sincerely doubt we can reclaim that style of society, at least not until we've 'solved' the problem of the frontier.
Part of the reason free market worked so well in the first 1/3 of our nation's history is that there were literally boundless resources available. There was no end in sight to the amount of raw materials and land out there; all you had to do was go somewhere and begin (literally) carving out your niche. We simply can't do that anymore. There is nothing left undiscovered; there is nothing left unowned. Our next great frontier lies either in the depths of our oceans or beyond our atmosphere, and we're nowhere near exploiting these regions on a mass scale.
Consider, too, that there was a very real social structure in our early history. Beyond slaves and indentured servants (a very significant part of our 'menial' labor-pool back then,) you still had very rich men and very poor men. The biggest difference was that a poor man of strong will could strike out and try to tap some of the boundless resources that were at his disposal--if you were healthy and strong, you could build your own house, raise your own food, and even sell your wares, if you were skilled at a trade. The closest thing there is to this in the modern day is the Internet, and you need a fair bit more skill and resources (advanced literacy, logic, typing, server space, bandwidth, and a modern building from which to work) to exploit this resource--a resource that has already become glutted with small businesses, independent contractors, and fly-by-night operations. We simply can't do this anymore. Technology permits the proliferation of information, but the lack of a frontier, bounded resources, and the complexity of modern society prohibit this return to the Irish or Icelandic ideals of Midieval free-market life.
...like I said, I do think the French unions are doing themselves a disservice, and that they're chasing after more than is deserved. But for the most part, the strikes are little more than a hiccough in daily life. (the protracted ones that have been becoming popular recently being an exception.)
I don't believe in welfare for welfare's sake--I think we could and should be doing a lot better than that. If you're going to rely on the state for help, you should be receiving rigorous vocational training, education, performing public work--any number of things. It's not impossible to balance social welfare with work and productivity. Overhauls are needed, but I remain convinced that there should be a social welfare structure that actually thrusts people back into the workplace.
My lament was poorly stated, as it doesn't really even gel well in my mind. There's a problem I'm picking up on. There's a growing sense of entitlement in this country, a growing sense of disconnect from our neighbors--local and global. There's a growing sense that We Can Do No Wrong, and that Our Way is the best way. I see it manifest itself in many ways, and one of the root causes, in my perception, is that we've drifted from thinking of our individual selves as being part of the greater nation. Instead, there's a growing sense that the nation doesn't--and cannot--really provide anything of value, save for a few very basic areas such as security. I simply don't agree with this, and I don't think it is the best course for society to follow. I still can't put it to words properly, because it refuses to fully make sense to me in the first place, but it's there, and it disturbs me.
Seeing as these men were responsible for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they would probably tend towards your third example, where freedom is "do what you like, according to certain rules and regulations". The founding fathers took great pains to emphasize the rights of the individual, though, and not the majority; in fact, they even went so far as to pontificate explicitly on the concept of "minority rights" and the "tyrrany of the majority".
Contextually, you'd be hard pressed to argue that the founding documents' primary impetus and foundation was not driven by the Enlightenment and the entire concept of the "Rights of Man". If it were a Christian document at heart, you'd see more than passing references to God.
No, no, no--there are seventeen Pillars and eight Pointy, Interlocking Arches of Holy Matrimony. You can safely remove any combination of up to six Arches and/or Pillars, but after that the system suffers a catastrophic failure of integrity and causes Heaven to collapse onto earth, killing us all.
You can remove one bonus Arch if you manage to successfully navigate the Sphere of Fidelity through at least three archways in under sixty seconds.
It's right there in Article VIII of the Constitution. I can't believe you missed it.
Yes, yes, but don't you see? Gay marriage is simply the first step down a slippery slope! What they really want is for all decent, God-fearing Americans being forced to marry autographed copies of Atlas Shrugged and have aural sex with box turtles!
Can't you see the madness of it all? Dammit, man! Open your eyes! They won't be satisfied until they've destroyed the very fabric of the universe!
I do. Marriage is what society holds up to be the ideal. If you disagree, then you must also logically hold polygamy to be a valid form of marriage. Who are we to say that fifteen consenting adults cannot express their love through a committed set of relationships?
...so describe why polygamy, between consenting adults, should be illegal. Frame your response in Constitutional terms. "Because it's just wrong" is not a valid answer.
Bear in mind, too, that society once held racial discrimination laws up to be the ideal. Indeed, the majority still favored them when they were struck down as Unconstitutional. Do you think the courts were wrong to do what they did? Do you think they should have deferred to the will of the majority instead of favoring the rights of the minority?
Why should we put such stock in the whim of "society's ideal" when our nation's legal foundation has some pretty clear positions on the importance of human rights and liberty? Why should the liberty of some be sacrificed for the religious particulars of others?
I love where you're ending up, I just disagree on how best to get there from the mess we have now. A free marketplace would be great, but it's simply beyond our means today. I agree that education is the key, but until we've fixed the education problem, it's very dangerous for us to set the mood to move towards a free market system and away from a government regulation system. It's simply too easy for multinationals (which we have rather limited power over, anyhow,) to embrace those changes they like, stop the ones they don't, and turn the ideal of free market into something even worse than what we have today. Yeah, I know that they're able to exert similar influence over government, but it's not as easy for them to veil their intentions in that arena. I think we've got a better shot at fixing things if we move towards a strong, centralized, citizen-oriented government. I think we still can, as the two things that individuals can still exercise vast amounts of is speech and the sharing of information. We may not be able to go toe-to-toe with the giants when it comes to pocketbooks, but find the right facts and use the right words and you can tear the foundation right out from under their noses. Drifting towards a free-market system means we play the game on their home turf; drifting towards a citizen-oriented government means that we take the fight to the one place where we can still really hold our own.
No, I'm not bragging that French freeloaders had a better life, merely observing. There were decidedly times it ticked me off. (For example, I had an acquaintance who didn't have a job but was busily working on a JavaScript-driven search engine he was utterly convinced would become as big as Google...*shudder* don't wanna talk too much about this guy...) Then again, having made it through a couple of stints of unemployment here in the US, I can understand the value of being in a society that takes a bit better care of those indivuduals who are down on their luck.
I really do like the idea of a free market. I just honestly don't see it working out in the way you want it to happen. Bear in mind that I'm not advocating banishment of the private sector, either; I've got my own little side projects I'm nurturing, and I like the idea of (just maybe) being able to make buttloads of cash off them some day. I just also like the notion of Civic Duty, and I think that part of one's civic duty is to act as an advocate for the less fortunate. While the private sector is a source of a great deal of such help, that help is subject to the whim of the economy, and dwindles to a trickle when times are hard--just when that help is most essential.
I simply don't believe that "profit" should be a factor in social policy. There are certain fundamental needs that should not be left to the fates of the market, and I believe strongly that government should exist to provide for these needs. Beyond that, it's open season--sink or swim, according to your skill and the fates. But it simply doesn't mesh with the progress we've made as a society that 'sink' should mean that you run the risk of becoming homeless, unemployed, and destitute. That should simply not exist as a problem in a society as exorbitantly rich as ours.
The funny thing about the strikes was that it wasn't really all that bad. Yeah, the trains ran like crap for a day or two, or traffic was hell for a bit when the truckers blocked the road. They weren't crippling, though, and they did serve as an effective reminder that the services we take for granted are run by a silent army of ordinary people. America's silent army has been sapped of its will. Our workers no longer care about their work the way they used to--sure, there's always going to be a group who does, but the spirit is dead. There's value in that spirit, and at least in France, that spirit is still alive, aided in part by the occasional strike. (I -do- think they over-strike, and that it's greatly diminished the effectiveness of such an action, but look back at the U.S...where has our pride gone? Are we really happy as a nation of number-crunchers, armchair economists, and service representatives? What do we do anymore?)
So in your first post, $75k is implied to be quite wealthy, now $160k is nothing???
Context. 75k, for a typical American family, is doing quite well. 160k, for the typical member of the US Congress, is a surprisingly small amount. Even if a Congressperson isn't worth that much money personally (which is not terribly common,) the sheer amount of power they've been entrusted with dwarfs the monetary value of their salary. Furthermore, being a Congressperson all but guarantees you any number of lucrative private sector engagements, should you ever decide to leave public office. If you're a member of a major party, the party will do a fair amount to help you out with campaigning and the like; you can also use campaign contributions to cover a lot of the incidental costs of being on the campaign trail.
Sorry about the touchiness on the communist bit--even to this day it's still an 'underhanded' thing to say in American political discussion, but I can understand how somebody overseas would miss it. Where are you?
Sir, you might gain some insight into the source of my ire if you simply took a moment to consider the following phrase, posted at the beginning of your original statement:
Echoing the other reply to your post in some respects, but are you a communist?
Consider it carefully, avoid disingenuity, and then ask yourself: "was this an honest inquiry into AAiP's political leanings, or was there some greater meaning implied in my asking AAiP if he was a communist?"
Now, I read this statement as being a cheap shot--a way to make me out to be some spectre of a defeated Cold-War era boogeyman and all-around Evil Thing. If the statement "are you a communist?" was an honest question, entirely unencumbered by innuendo or implication, then I offer you genuine apologies for flying off the handle at you, and ask that you ignore the following paragraph, as it is not intended for you.
If, after careful and honest consideration, you conclude that it was something of a cheap shot, my ever-so-colorful language stands, and you can go fuck yourself for trying to weasel your way around it with your sanctimonious "Easy cheetah".
as I said originally, what ticks me off is when it is implied that somehow, someway, a flat tax is not going to continue to have the rich shoulder beyond a majority of the burden.
I clearly missed that implication in your original post. Please, quote the lines where you implied this. I'm still missing it.
And who do you think runs the government? In case you missed it, your congressman "earns" more than $160k! Do you think they are working in our best interests or are they listening to the lobbyists?
$160k is chump change. That gets you a mortgage on a decent townhouse near the Capitol. Senators and Representatives don't get rich or powerful off their congressional salary. Maybe if we paid them even more, they'd be less succeptible to etrernal influences (though this is admittedly a dubious hypothesis.)
The lobbyists don't pay Congressional salaries. Taxpayers do. The lobbies do provide a great deal of funding and support to the major parties, who in turn lean one direction or another on the members of their party depending on which direction their lobbies want them to lean. Even this isn't too evil, though; there are countless special interest groups, and you can be sure that there's a good clump of them out there fighting every day for things you agree with.
That one falls on its face before it gets away from the starting blocks. Corporate scandal. Corporation. Modern corporation. Intentional government constructs. Market socialism. Corporations do not exist in free markets [or the private sector, if by definition you take it as free markets]. Almost a good try though. Almost.
...so what the heck is your solution? Magically dissolve the corporations? You really think that'd happen?
Here's the rub: we've got a system of powerful corporations, and they're not going to go gently into that dark night. How, exactly, do you plan to eliminate the massive, powerful multinational corporation? Like it or not, they're here, and they're more powerful than your typical small nation. What can we possibly do to eliminate them--and once we do, where the hell do we get things like inexpensive consumer goods?
Oh wow! The same mistakes. The division between classes isn't caused by the private sector, or free markets. You're talking about corruption, and increased variance between the wealthy and the poor. Do you know how the wealthy get wealthier, at the expense of the poor? Government regulation, or laws protecting the wealthy elite. In other words, when you have too much democracy [part of us moving from a Limited Republic to a Democracy], it becomes very easy to alter laws in your favor depending on if you have more money than the next guy, or simply more backers.
For the most part, I agree with that statement. The powerful will always be able to tailor laws to suit their desires, so long as the regular classes remain disinterested in their own role in governance. I don't think the problem is too much democracy; rather, it's a lack of critical thought on the part of the average person. We believe what we're told--some of us, beyond the point of all rationality, so long as it comes from the right people. I don't have a good or easy solution for this, but my gut tells me that expanded democracy is not at the root of this.
What better way to wrest control of the government from these corporations than by working to use that government to enable the poor and undereducated? Even if we do wrest that control back from the wealthy elite, what's to stop them from simply using the marketplace in its stead?
Reasonably priced? Please. You were an American citizen living their, not having to pay the full price through taxes. Their taxes increase every year to pay for those things. That's how it works. When something is perceived as cheap and high-quality, it is used very often. Unfortunately, people start to use more than they're willing to pay for.
Au contraire. You assume I was granted some special status as an American. I wasn't. I had my Carte du Sejour du travail, held a job, got a paycheck, and I paid the same taxes as my French co-workers. Their tax forms for individuals are amazingly straightforward; it took all of one hour to complete my French taxes--and that was in a foreign language. (Now, I had to file a god-awful maze of American tax forms, too, proving that I was indeed being taxed enough by the country I was in and thus not eligible to be double-taxed by the US.) Amazingly enough, I still had a pretty good life. I even managed to use the (reasonably priced and subsidized by my tax dollars) trains, from time to time. Yeah, there were problems. They loved to strike, and it was a miracle that the city managed to stay marginally filthy, in spite of the army of guys in green jumpsuits cleaning things 24/7. Yeah, there are freeloaders. They lead a much better life than an American freeloader, and I paid more in taxes to keep them going. Even factoring all that in, though, the quality of life was exceptional. Had there not been that pesky 'having to do everything a foreign language' bit and the fact that my wife wouldn't be able to legally work until three years after we'd arrived, we probably would have stayed longer.
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I'm a fan of clean power, but I'm also well aware of the fact that we have a fair amount of work to be done before this becomes a truly viable large-scale energy source. Like I said, we probably only need that one more technological jump to make this really take off.
On the 'attacking nuclear reactors' note: if terrorists get their hands on a weapon powerful enough to effectively breach containment at a nuclear plant, odds are pretty damn good that they'd use it to strike directly at a more 'desirable' target. Anything that'll breach a nuclear facility will wreak utter havoc if used directly on a major metropolitan area.
I'd love to own my own power. But with today's technology, I simply can't afford to--I don't have the money to even acquire the space to build such a thing, much less the money to pay for the equipment. Nor do I have the time to maintain said equipment. I'd rather pay a slow trickle to the local energy company for their very reliable service.
Once I can go out and spend, say, $8000 on a low-maintenance, self-contained solar system the size of a washing machine that is capable of powering my house through a combination of generation and stored reserves for nighttime, then I'll be interested...
Solar is promising, but we really need a next-generation solar collection technology to make it viable on a large scale; current systems are cumbersome, comparatively fragile, and contain small amounts of toxic compounds which require careful disposal. Wind power is similarly cumbersome, and requires large amounts of space to generate comparatively little power. They're promising technologies, but they're not there yet, and we may not hit that next-big breakthrough for a while.
The biggest thing nuclear power has going against it as that a lot of people are really, really scared of it. Nevermind that we now have rugged, compact reactor designs that are literally incapable of melting down. Nevermind that we're finding new and better ways of securing/reusing waste every day. Nevermind that we can generate staggering amounts of power in a very, very small space. Nevermind that the physically small amount of waste material is not steadily pumped back into the air we breathe and the water we drink. Nevermind that it could be used to easily meet our power needs in its current technological state.
When, oh when, is the environmental mainstream going to wake up to the boon of nuclear power?
Inflatable space modules are all well and good--until The Terrorists(tm) develop a gigantic space pin!
(As for mess and such, that's more a function of your lazy roomie failing to keep the damn box area clean. It's surprisingly easy to sweep that stuff up off a dry bathroom floor...)
As someone who has lived in his share of one bedroom apartments, I can safely say that a good chunk of cat owners don't have such places in their residence.
Bedroom, living/dining room, kitchen, middle of the hallway, bathroom: take your pick...
When discussing vulcanology, one should avoid using as one's primary reference a movie in which Pierce Brosnan successfully drives a pickup truck over several meters of red-hot lava.
To answer your questions:
1. Getting a Stinger in the U.S. is considerably more challenging than getting your hands on a 'dual use' weapon, like a cutting laser. High-powered lasers have many legitimate industrial and scientific uses, unlike Stinger missiles.
2. Well, if you get a powerful enough laser and blind the pilots at the right time, you could cause a plane crash. That would probably be considered effective.
3. An untraceable, inexpensive, "hi-tech", hard-to-counter way of putting flights at risk? You better believe that's terror, especially once the news outlets pick up on a pattern! In any case, we're afraid of everything here in the US--and the real evidence of terrorists using lasers to try to blind pilots is certain to cause a lot of people to freak out.
Instead of envisioning hooligans careening down the road with tripods and lasers sticking out of their pickup truck, consider a person simply living in a seventh-story studio apartment near the airport with a clear line of sight on an approach vector. No need to go about exposing your plans in public--just open the window and take aim from the obscurity of your building!
...if a terrorist were to do this carefully, it'd be practically untraceable (assuming the laser is outside the visible spectrum,) and he could take his sweet time in actually scoring a hit.
I'm not saying it's an easy or quick thing to accomplish, but time, planning, and patience are key strengths of successful terrorists.
The opinions of people like Mr. Larry J. Schutter of the Turtle Party and Darren Karr of Party-X are every bit as valid as those of Badnarik and Cobb. Likewise, they all share the same chance of winning said office. What makes Badnarik and Cobb more deserving of a debate than any of the other "Dark Horse" candidates?
Dude, that game is as old as life itself.
Dene Moore, you get a cookie. I can't wait to read your next exposé, "Bullets Fired From New, Hi-Tech Guns May Be Deadly"...
The rules make no mention of what platform the game should run on. Are we to assume that the contest is open to OS X games, Linux games, and Commodore 64 games--or are we to assume that the game must run on Windows XP?
There certainly are enough resources to launch another shot at a Free Society like the one you speak of. What would happen to that society, though, after three or four generations had passed? Your founders may all be honest, hard-working, dyed-in-the-wool Free Marketers, but what of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren? There will eventually be a critical mass of unscrupulous characters in the Free Market Nation; how have you prepared to deal with the nastier side of human nature?
Thanks for this discourse--again, I apologize for my earlier acrimony. (You'd caught me at a bad time, as I'd just finished tearing out some hair in response to a rather egregious abuse of statistics elsewhere in this thread...)
Part of the reason free market worked so well in the first 1/3 of our nation's history is that there were literally boundless resources available. There was no end in sight to the amount of raw materials and land out there; all you had to do was go somewhere and begin (literally) carving out your niche. We simply can't do that anymore. There is nothing left undiscovered; there is nothing left unowned. Our next great frontier lies either in the depths of our oceans or beyond our atmosphere, and we're nowhere near exploiting these regions on a mass scale.
Consider, too, that there was a very real social structure in our early history. Beyond slaves and indentured servants (a very significant part of our 'menial' labor-pool back then,) you still had very rich men and very poor men. The biggest difference was that a poor man of strong will could strike out and try to tap some of the boundless resources that were at his disposal--if you were healthy and strong, you could build your own house, raise your own food, and even sell your wares, if you were skilled at a trade. The closest thing there is to this in the modern day is the Internet, and you need a fair bit more skill and resources (advanced literacy, logic, typing, server space, bandwidth, and a modern building from which to work) to exploit this resource--a resource that has already become glutted with small businesses, independent contractors, and fly-by-night operations. We simply can't do this anymore. Technology permits the proliferation of information, but the lack of a frontier, bounded resources, and the complexity of modern society prohibit this return to the Irish or Icelandic ideals of Midieval free-market life.
I don't believe in welfare for welfare's sake--I think we could and should be doing a lot better than that. If you're going to rely on the state for help, you should be receiving rigorous vocational training, education, performing public work--any number of things. It's not impossible to balance social welfare with work and productivity. Overhauls are needed, but I remain convinced that there should be a social welfare structure that actually thrusts people back into the workplace.
My lament was poorly stated, as it doesn't really even gel well in my mind. There's a problem I'm picking up on. There's a growing sense of entitlement in this country, a growing sense of disconnect from our neighbors--local and global. There's a growing sense that We Can Do No Wrong, and that Our Way is the best way. I see it manifest itself in many ways, and one of the root causes, in my perception, is that we've drifted from thinking of our individual selves as being part of the greater nation. Instead, there's a growing sense that the nation doesn't--and cannot--really provide anything of value, save for a few very basic areas such as security. I simply don't agree with this, and I don't think it is the best course for society to follow. I still can't put it to words properly, because it refuses to fully make sense to me in the first place, but it's there, and it disturbs me.
Contextually, you'd be hard pressed to argue that the founding documents' primary impetus and foundation was not driven by the Enlightenment and the entire concept of the "Rights of Man". If it were a Christian document at heart, you'd see more than passing references to God.
That's something to take pride in, all right. America: We're Not As Bad As Saddam, Dammit!
Mua-hahaha...
You can remove one bonus Arch if you manage to successfully navigate the Sphere of Fidelity through at least three archways in under sixty seconds.
It's right there in Article VIII of the Constitution. I can't believe you missed it.
Can't you see the madness of it all? Dammit, man! Open your eyes! They won't be satisfied until they've destroyed the very fabric of the universe!
Bear in mind, too, that society once held racial discrimination laws up to be the ideal. Indeed, the majority still favored them when they were struck down as Unconstitutional. Do you think the courts were wrong to do what they did? Do you think they should have deferred to the will of the majority instead of favoring the rights of the minority?
Why should we put such stock in the whim of "society's ideal" when our nation's legal foundation has some pretty clear positions on the importance of human rights and liberty? Why should the liberty of some be sacrificed for the religious particulars of others?
No, I'm not bragging that French freeloaders had a better life, merely observing. There were decidedly times it ticked me off. (For example, I had an acquaintance who didn't have a job but was busily working on a JavaScript-driven search engine he was utterly convinced would become as big as Google...*shudder* don't wanna talk too much about this guy...) Then again, having made it through a couple of stints of unemployment here in the US, I can understand the value of being in a society that takes a bit better care of those indivuduals who are down on their luck.
I really do like the idea of a free market. I just honestly don't see it working out in the way you want it to happen. Bear in mind that I'm not advocating banishment of the private sector, either; I've got my own little side projects I'm nurturing, and I like the idea of (just maybe) being able to make buttloads of cash off them some day. I just also like the notion of Civic Duty, and I think that part of one's civic duty is to act as an advocate for the less fortunate. While the private sector is a source of a great deal of such help, that help is subject to the whim of the economy, and dwindles to a trickle when times are hard--just when that help is most essential.
I simply don't believe that "profit" should be a factor in social policy. There are certain fundamental needs that should not be left to the fates of the market, and I believe strongly that government should exist to provide for these needs. Beyond that, it's open season--sink or swim, according to your skill and the fates. But it simply doesn't mesh with the progress we've made as a society that 'sink' should mean that you run the risk of becoming homeless, unemployed, and destitute. That should simply not exist as a problem in a society as exorbitantly rich as ours.
The funny thing about the strikes was that it wasn't really all that bad. Yeah, the trains ran like crap for a day or two, or traffic was hell for a bit when the truckers blocked the road. They weren't crippling, though, and they did serve as an effective reminder that the services we take for granted are run by a silent army of ordinary people. America's silent army has been sapped of its will. Our workers no longer care about their work the way they used to--sure, there's always going to be a group who does, but the spirit is dead. There's value in that spirit, and at least in France, that spirit is still alive, aided in part by the occasional strike. (I -do- think they over-strike, and that it's greatly diminished the effectiveness of such an action, but look back at the U.S...where has our pride gone? Are we really happy as a nation of number-crunchers, armchair economists, and service representatives? What do we do anymore?)
(Rrgh--need to run out and buy stuff before the store closes...I'll try to reply (a little less arrogantly) later when I get back...)
Context. 75k, for a typical American family, is doing quite well. 160k, for the typical member of the US Congress, is a surprisingly small amount. Even if a Congressperson isn't worth that much money personally (which is not terribly common,) the sheer amount of power they've been entrusted with dwarfs the monetary value of their salary. Furthermore, being a Congressperson all but guarantees you any number of lucrative private sector engagements, should you ever decide to leave public office. If you're a member of a major party, the party will do a fair amount to help you out with campaigning and the like; you can also use campaign contributions to cover a lot of the incidental costs of being on the campaign trail.
Sorry about the touchiness on the communist bit--even to this day it's still an 'underhanded' thing to say in American political discussion, but I can understand how somebody overseas would miss it. Where are you?
Echoing the other reply to your post in some respects, but are you a communist?
Consider it carefully, avoid disingenuity, and then ask yourself: "was this an honest inquiry into AAiP's political leanings, or was there some greater meaning implied in my asking AAiP if he was a communist?"
Now, I read this statement as being a cheap shot--a way to make me out to be some spectre of a defeated Cold-War era boogeyman and all-around Evil Thing. If the statement "are you a communist?" was an honest question, entirely unencumbered by innuendo or implication, then I offer you genuine apologies for flying off the handle at you, and ask that you ignore the following paragraph, as it is not intended for you.
If, after careful and honest consideration, you conclude that it was something of a cheap shot, my ever-so-colorful language stands, and you can go fuck yourself for trying to weasel your way around it with your sanctimonious "Easy cheetah".
as I said originally, what ticks me off is when it is implied that somehow, someway, a flat tax is not going to continue to have the rich shoulder beyond a majority of the burden.
I clearly missed that implication in your original post. Please, quote the lines where you implied this. I'm still missing it.
And who do you think runs the government? In case you missed it, your congressman "earns" more than $160k! Do you think they are working in our best interests or are they listening to the lobbyists?
$160k is chump change. That gets you a mortgage on a decent townhouse near the Capitol. Senators and Representatives don't get rich or powerful off their congressional salary. Maybe if we paid them even more, they'd be less succeptible to etrernal influences (though this is admittedly a dubious hypothesis.)
The lobbyists don't pay Congressional salaries. Taxpayers do. The lobbies do provide a great deal of funding and support to the major parties, who in turn lean one direction or another on the members of their party depending on which direction their lobbies want them to lean. Even this isn't too evil, though; there are countless special interest groups, and you can be sure that there's a good clump of them out there fighting every day for things you agree with.
Here's the rub: we've got a system of powerful corporations, and they're not going to go gently into that dark night. How, exactly, do you plan to eliminate the massive, powerful multinational corporation? Like it or not, they're here, and they're more powerful than your typical small nation. What can we possibly do to eliminate them--and once we do, where the hell do we get things like inexpensive consumer goods?
Oh wow! The same mistakes. The division between classes isn't caused by the private sector, or free markets. You're talking about corruption, and increased variance between the wealthy and the poor. Do you know how the wealthy get wealthier, at the expense of the poor? Government regulation, or laws protecting the wealthy elite. In other words, when you have too much democracy [part of us moving from a Limited Republic to a Democracy], it becomes very easy to alter laws in your favor depending on if you have more money than the next guy, or simply more backers.
For the most part, I agree with that statement. The powerful will always be able to tailor laws to suit their desires, so long as the regular classes remain disinterested in their own role in governance. I don't think the problem is too much democracy; rather, it's a lack of critical thought on the part of the average person. We believe what we're told--some of us, beyond the point of all rationality, so long as it comes from the right people. I don't have a good or easy solution for this, but my gut tells me that expanded democracy is not at the root of this.
What better way to wrest control of the government from these corporations than by working to use that government to enable the poor and undereducated? Even if we do wrest that control back from the wealthy elite, what's to stop them from simply using the marketplace in its stead?
Reasonably priced? Please. You were an American citizen living their, not having to pay the full price through taxes. Their taxes increase every year to pay for those things. That's how it works. When something is perceived as cheap and high-quality, it is used very often. Unfortunately, people start to use more than they're willing to pay for.
Au contraire. You assume I was granted some special status as an American. I wasn't. I had my Carte du Sejour du travail, held a job, got a paycheck, and I paid the same taxes as my French co-workers. Their tax forms for individuals are amazingly straightforward; it took all of one hour to complete my French taxes--and that was in a foreign language. (Now, I had to file a god-awful maze of American tax forms, too, proving that I was indeed being taxed enough by the country I was in and thus not eligible to be double-taxed by the US.) Amazingly enough, I still had a pretty good life. I even managed to use the (reasonably priced and subsidized by my tax dollars) trains, from time to time. Yeah, there were problems. They loved to strike, and it was a miracle that the city managed to stay marginally filthy, in spite of the army of guys in green jumpsuits cleaning things 24/7. Yeah, there are freeloaders. They lead a much better life than an American freeloader, and I paid more in taxes to keep them going. Even factoring all that in, though, the quality of life was exceptional. Had there not been that pesky 'having to do everything a foreign language' bit and the fact that my wife wouldn't be able to legally work until three years after we'd arrived, we probably would have stayed longer.
Not all of the UK's t