All of that is arbitrary. The political alliances don't make sense. You have too many people marching on both sides of the line that don't like the people they're marching with anymore than the people they're marching against.
I mean, how much do you think libertarians care about fighting gay marriage?
They don't.
Or on the left, how much do you think urban black voters are for Green legislation that will limit their job opportunities by closing factories and businesses in their communities? They're not.
The reality is that neither party makes any sense. The vast majority of people in both parties are just going through the motions.
Talk to democrats about what they feel about Hillary Clinton... most don't like her. She's clearly a hack politician. Talk to republicans about Jeb Bush... they don't like him either.
But the establishment of both parties have picked these people to be their person.
We're seeing the base of both parties go CRAZY... you have the republicans now fixating on Donald f'ing Trump for some reason... that is just baffling to me. And then you have the democrats fixing and Bernie Sanders.
This is a wasted effort and completely pointless. Neither of these people can be president. Which is only making the establishment picks stronger. Hillary is going to win if Sanders is the alternative in the democratic base.
And Jeb Bush is going to get the nod if Trump is the alternative.
The idiots in both parties don't get that they're ensuring that the last person they want to get the nod will get it by picking goofball candidates.
On the republican side they have about a million candidates. From what I can tell... Trump is literally the most stupid option. So... way to be idiots.
And amongst the democrats they have Martin O'Malley who whatever you might say about the guy is less damaged goods than Hillary.
So its all madness. The bases of both parties are really confused and really angry because they can't agree on anything internally and don't trust/like their establishments.
What should happen is that the establishment from both parties should merge into its own party. The establishment republicans and democrats pretty much agree on everything anyway. They're very much "business as usual" people.
And one they've merged, the issue is who wants to stand with the establishment and who wants to fight it.
THAT is the real left and right. That is what left and right used to mean. The right used to be the aristocracy in Europe. The left was everything that stood against it.
Left and right don't mean that anymore but they should. Have the establishment condense... and that can be the right.
Look at Occupy Wall street and the Tea Party... they basically were making the same point. They had more in common with each other than not. But because they were divided by arbitrary party lines they were ineffective. The establishment of both parties united to crush the opposition. While the rebellion movements were divided and ineffective.
The rebellion on the right and the rebellion on the left... have to join forces to overthrow the establishment.
Or we'll just be ruled by them.
Very few on the right or the left are open minded enough to see that that is the way forward. They are too much victims of their own propaganda. They've both mutually painted the opposition as evil. And they can't conceive of alliance.
I don't agree with your definitions and reject them.
We cannot communicate much less have a discussion without mutually agreed upon terminology.
Self interest is merely doing whatever is in your interest indifferent to any other consideration. Period.
Any attribute beyond that is in addition to self interest. Period.
I defined what I believed to be enlightened self interest. That is additional qualities in excess of simple self interest. You appear to have a complex and counter intuitive and frankly very confusing notion of what enlightened self interest means.
So I'm going to not use that term anymore because I don't wish to debate the point. Its a waste of time.
I'll simply stand on my previous definition but instead use the designation "socially acceptable self interest" which has nothing what so ever to do with... whatever you were talking about. I couldn't get past your statement that something that was quite obviously more involved than self interest was just self interest. That triggered an instant error trap and I stopped.
it also includes more than that. Your presumption that you can arbitarily limit the scope of my comment against my clear intentions is inherently dishonest.
Stop attempting to save you still born argument by strawmanning me.
Your argument is dead. It never lived. It is a blue shriveled tragedy. Wrap it in blankets and burn it.
Let it go. You made a mistake. I did not.
For the future, know that I quite good at this... assume competence on my part. You'll put your foot in your mouth less in the future.
Nobility doesn't enter into it. The damn things make copies of themselves.
And your obsession with class is not helping the discussion. The separation between classes are often arbitrary. Which means the people in a lower class are often every bit as smart as people in a higher class. And that means the lower class as you put it can occasionally outwit the upper class. And if they do that so much as fucking once they'll have the damned thing.
And that is just ONE way it can get out.
Another way is that rival oligarchs could struggle for power and that will require that whomever is challenging the primary authority will need one of these machines doing things and likely minions. that situation is chaotic enough that something could break out.
Another way is that the middle class which will be responsible for guarding it, programming it, etc could sneak out a copy of it which could then make copies of copies and then it is everywhere.
Another way is that once it is known that the technology exists it will be much easier to replicate or reverse engineer. People will know roughly how it works, the components that make it up are likely sourcable or producible using lower end machinery that is harder to regulate. And then it is just a matter of trial and error to make a version of the thing that works. And then the only thing that might separate the one from the other is a certain amount of refinement.
When I said... you CAN"T keep it bottled up... I did not use that word loosely. You... CANNOT.
Nobility doesn't enter into it.
All your attempts to control it will do is delay the inevitable. I don't doubt you could keep it bottled up for years. But eventually its getting out.
As to your seeming attempt to correct me about the distinction between star fleet and the federation... I know all that... I don't think I said anything that would suggest otherwise.
The enlightened self interest only mean you do what is in your own best interest without trying to fuck over everyone else in the process or otherwise damage your society. That's all that means. Its not that hard.
As to revolutions never doing anything... wrong... a revolution is chaos and the results of it are unpredictable.
As to quibbles, I just showed you a fucking link that skips right to a bit where you can see material in the food processor slamming off the top of the lid.
We're done. You're a fucking space cadet. I'm not reading anything further in your post until you concede that my point on the food processor was legit and your point was in fucking error.
You couldn't even admit you were wrong about the food processor... when I showed you a video of it happening. What the fuck is wrong with you?
The tech can replicate itself. So the instant it breaks out you won't be able to put it back in the bottle again.
Initially something like that would be tightly controlled if only to give the creators and whomever owned it maximum return. But eventually the thing would break out one way or the other.
And then trying to control who had it would be an exercise in futility.
That's another thing you just don't see in star trek which indicates some very reliable psychological controls... you don't see terrorists or lone gunmen. They have the tech for any idiot to print a phaser. This is a weapon that in the first series they could vaperize hillsides... with a hand phaser.
And there is nothing to stop the person from printing out a much larger weapon if he wants that.
No one even tries to do that sort of thing though. Which means everyone is reliably "sane"... and that doesn't happen naturally.
Some of us are naturally crazy. So that has to be something monitored and regulated.
yeah... but the incentives by everyone to have the machine replicated and stratified throughout society would be huge.
The federation has some sort of quasi democracy... I don't know how it works exactly but they have some sort of democracy. So "give us access to the everything maker" would have to be a powerful political platform.
And then you have the economic incentives... everyone that has nearly as much clout as the people with the machine would be kept down almost entirely because they don't... and they'd have an incentive to get close to it and take it. And then the people with the machine could buy temporary clout by giving the machine or causing it to be leaked.
The point is that it wouldn't be sustainable. And as soon as it leaked it would be out there.
Well... its a question of how crazy you get with it. I mean... no sane person is going to demand they get a whole world all to themselves. A crazy person might.
So yeah... you're not giving a planet to one guy. But one guy isn't going to ask for a planet.
More commonly you find in star trek that a little community is given a whole planet. I mean... a thousand people that all sort of share the same views and like each other are given an entire planet. That happens in startek.
As to owning people... that's less a scarcity issue than an ethical one. And in any case we're just coming back to questions of mental illness again. Why do you want to own someone when you can get everything that owning a person could give you from the technology... short of some sort of sadistic pleasure from dominating someone... and that's sickness.
In startrek they "fix" people that have that sort of notion. They get "corrected"...
So can we just exclude the people that are mentally ill?i
Its full of flashing graphics. I mean just the pages loading in has flashing graphics. Images aren't there... then they are... the page realigns when graphics load in above or below... additional scripts load that change formating.
If I had photo sensitive epilepsy... I'd need a bib just to use the internet... I'd be foaming all over myself.
At a bear minimum, I would think I'd just have adblock enabled when I used the internet... because... photo sensitive epilepsy. I'm pretty sure I'd still need a bib.
Progressives are intellectually incapable of actually discussing anything that challenges their world view. All they can do is play identity politics or cite you for some flavor racism because in their mind, their politics are basically a religion.
So when you challenge their faith, you get responses back that are quite similar to what you'd get if you challenged any religious ideologue.
They'll quote scripture at you... they'll say you're unclean in the eyes of their god... lots of moral judgement... lots of pointless references to whatever their dogma is or whatever their various dear leaders say about their dogma.
that's all they've got.
This isn't an attack on all leftists by the way. There is a difference between a normal leftist and a progressive. Leftists are people with leftist politics. Progressives are cultists.
First, I am very good at maintaining alertness even when I am very tired. It was something I learned in college and... I can operate effectively for about 3 days without sleep. After that, I start to develop problems but I can remain alert for about 4 days. On the 5th day I can keep my eyes open but whether I respond to anything is questionable. On the 6th day I will probably spontaneously pass out. But it takes that long for that to be a concern. I can stop myself from sleeping up to that point simply by willing it.
it isn't even hard until day 4. Around day 4, I need to exert a constant mental will to remain conscious. Prior to that point... I can subconsciously maintain consciousness.
When I board the plane... I flip the mental switch that was keeping me going... and I go out like a light. Click. Typically I wake up about half an hour before the plane lands. Sometimes the actual force of the plane hitting the runway wakes me up.
Its my preferred way of dealing with long flights. I just shut off and wake up at my destination.
I haven't seen you in awhile... You don't call, you don't write.
I missed you!
*hugs*!:D
As to games I play... nah... I express my opinion on posts that I feel merit a comment.
If someone wishes to engage me afterwards then that either merits a honest response if they are engaging with me honestly... or if THEY are playing stupid fucking games... then I will of course accept their lead and respond with my slightly more sophisticated games.
Don't like it? Don't be such a fucking tool. I respond very well to honest and authentic discourse. Dishonest and disingenuous comments don't merit honesty than they display.
Actually you have no idea what you spend on healthcare because its buried in your budgets.
What portion of your taxes goes to your medical systems at this point?
Regardless... the cost inflation in the US system is largely caused by the fight between capitalists and socialists like yourself. If the socialists left it alone the prices would come down. Likely if capitalists like myself gave in the price would also come down.
The high costs come from unfavorable compromises between the two systems.
The big problem is that the democrats like to deal with problems by throwing money at them. And that is not a good idea when dealing with capitalistic supply systems because they just raise prices when you do that. Practically ever price increase comes immediately after an increase to the subsidies. If they just didn't have them then the prices would be a good deal lower.
The preferred method of dealing with this from a capitalistic stand point is to increase supply... that is the number of doctors or the care or the drugs or something. And that naturally lowers the price by increasing competition and avaliability and lowering the ability of providers to demand higher prices because there's just too many other organizations willing to do the same job for less. So prices go down or you go out of business and your competitors eat you alive.
Different ways of doing things.
You're a socialist so you don't understand this... never mind that you trust and rely on these systems for nearly everything else. You rely on it to keep food prices low. You rely on it to keep clothing prices low. You rely on it to keep car or gasoline prices low.
But suddenly when it comes to healthcare you think something that works everywhere else doesn't work for healthcare? Your position is nonsense.
But if you want to live that way, then so be it. Unlike the Europeans that can't stop telling people how great their stupid systems are... even as Greece eats itself... I don't need other societies to live the way I do. You don't like capitalism? Fine. More money for me.
I just wish the socialists would stop trying to force their bullshit on everyone else.
Don't be silly. The only person that would want such a thing would be a literal crazy person. And in most of these speculative utopias... they would just drug you one day... and you'd wake up later with them congratulating you on your new mental readjustment.
I have many words for many different things because I perceive differences between them and I use the correct word for the correct thing. I don't think this conflation of different concepts is helpful or constructive. It just clouds the issue.
As to definitions, having more than is needed is not in conflict with having a good life. You don't need to have a good life. You don't need the little luxuries we all have and take for granted. I mean, do you NEED to have social networks where you talk about tech issues on the internet for fun? No... its a luxury. Are you greedy for wanting it?
In a poor country the only way to get a good life is to have substancially more than everyone else. You want a big house in a country where everyone lives in mud huts? You want to send your kid to a nice university in a country where most people can't read? Are you greedy? From the perspective of the poor people that don't know anything... yes. But maybe you're smart... maybe you worked really hard... maybe you deserve to have a good life... maybe your earned all that stuff. But the fucking peasants aren't going to see it that way. All they see is that you have more than them so they hate you.
And frankly I find that entire world view to be ignorant and regressive. Just because someone has more than you doesn't make them a bad person or greedy. And just because someone likes nice things doesn't mean they're bad people either.
Enough with the fucking moral judgements of people you don't know.
As to greed being good... it depends on what you mean.
Enlightened self interest is obviously good. Stress on the "enlightened"... aka... not being a fucking prick about it. A society where people don't try to better themselves is going to be a shitty society. So yes... a society were people try to improve themselves is superior. It just is.
Why you're a republican or democrat doesn't appear to have anything to do with anything.
Why are libertarians right wing but hard core kill all humans and meat is murder green party people leftists?
Right and left doesn't mean anything. Republican and democrat doesn't mean anything.
They're just fucking flags at this point on arbitary factions that only agree that they want to oppose the other side but most of the time they've forgotten why.
Why are latino Catholics left wing but evangelical white Christians right wing? Go through the list of things they believe and they believe pretty much the same thing about everything.
There is no coherent glue that holds either party together besides arbitary opposition to the other side.
Its dumb. Both sides should just disolve and everyone should introduce themselves to everyone else... reform their factions on the basis of what they actually believe... and then see what happens.
The increasingly puritanical progressives are in most cases more simliar to the religious right than a lot of people.
My underlying desire... what drives me? I want to be left alone. That's it.
I just want everyone to stop presuming to tell me what to do. Do that and I'm happy. I don't really care what other people put in their bodies... who fucks who... or what for that matter. I don't care what people call themselves. Just leave me alone.
No... you're describing some sort of megalomaniacal horder. That's not the same thing as greed.
Most "greedy" people simply want what they consider to be a good life. They want things... sure... but they don't necessarily need you to not have them. A guy that wants 20 Ferraris doesn't necessarily want no one else to have one or thirty for that matter.
Do some people measure their accomplishments by what they have and others do not? Sure... but in a post scarcity environment you're not going to horde STUFF you're going to horde POWER.
You see this in societies that centralize all political and economic power in the state. The greedy people as you term them just become government ministers. THat's where the power and the wealth went so they just control the government and get to live in the mansions with the servants.
The communist party members tend to live that way. They talk about equality etc... but then they live in the mansions with the servants and the whores... and what really changed for the peasants? Nothing. If anything it tends to be worse because the old oligarchies were generally authoritarian instead of totalitarian. Totalitarian states are the worst. If I had to live in one, I'd need to kill people in the government on a regular basis just feel normal. Would that mean I'd probably get tortured to death at some point? Sure... I can't stand totalitarian states though. The North Koreas of the world. Utterly intolerable. I'd need to go Hannibal Lector or possibly Dextor in that environment just to stand it.
Actually... I got a couple down votes and 14 upvotes. Not in this thread. But overall.
I find it quite easy to maintain an "excellent" karma rating and I've found it is getting easier.
There are fewer progressive drones. There is a civil war in the left at the moment between the authoritarian progressive left and the permissive more socially liberal left.
And as I am myself more of the latter than the former, I find that when push comes to shove I can count on most leftists to stab their progressive cousins in the back and give me a wink these days.
No one likes the progressives. They're fucking tools.
I don't know why Sparta had a population problem. I know that they were different from the Athenians and the Thebens that had a more classically conventional gender role structure... and those societies were pumping out the kids like crazy.
What I can show is correlation. Causation?... No. I don't think causation in that case is even possible to prove really.
However, look at the entire First World. We have a population trend going on here and there is very little to explain it except for that.
Appreciate... I WANT women to have really whatever they want.
However... if that leads to the ruin of my civilization and ultimately women losing all that stuff anyway when the civiliation collapses... then what is the point? Better to shift to something sustainable where at least we'll be able to bias the system to be a generous towards women as possible.
And again... this is only temporary. In 100 years it won't matter. Our life expectancies are going to go vertical on the graph and you won't even need women to produce children anymore. The whole biological role thing can be bypassed entirely.
Here is something I believe.
I think human beings are the third phase in life on earth.
First phase: Random mutation. Second phase: Sexual selection. Third phase: Intelligent design.
I think humans are the third phase. I think we are as big a step on the ladder of life as the Cambrian explosion.
But only certain civilizations are even going to be capable of doing anything with it. The stupid islamists are making ignorance into a virtue. The Chinese are mostly concerned with maintaining the power and authority of their oligarchy. And... really in the end the south american Catholics will probably be pretty solid in the end... I think they're chaotic and shortsighted. But something could rise out of that to replace us. It will just waste a lot of time.
We're so fucking close. Think of where we'd be today if Rome never fell. Rome was on the cusp of the industrial revolution before they fell. They had steam power, water wheels, simple mechanical computers. We could have landed on the moon a thousand years ago. We're a hundred years off from solving so many of our problems. We just need to buy a little time.
Pretty much, though they redeemed themselves to some extent in DS9. There was a bit where someone tried to high hat Quark and say humans were better or something. And he responded "My people have never genocided anyone. My people don't go to war." something like that... I'll try to find a clip on youtube because it was in a lot of ways a redemptive moment:
I'm rated interesting with an excellent karma rating... and you're rated troll apparently... with what appears to be a "good" rating... so... color me indifferent to your judgements. I mean, what are you using as your basis to judge me here? the censure of the board? Excellent rating. I'm not being censured. My posts are on average quite popular.
These are all very recent posts. You could mod this one post here to -5 Troll and it wouldn't effect my Karma rating because I'm just that fucking positive. So... eat my ass with raspberry jam.:-D
Its so funny that the progressives haven't realized that most of the left has started to turn on them as well.
Everyone thinks the progressives are tools. You've been in your little echo chambers and hug boxes for so long that you've deluded yourselves.
Nope... that's just the same bullshit you spew all the time. You tell us that the economy has recovered. You tell us that unemployment is down. You tell that healthcare costs are down.
After the ACA, my healthcare premiums DOUBLED. Fucking... Doubled.
And on top of that, you have companies left right and center canceling health insurance for employees or reducing the number of full time employees because you don't need to provide healthcare to part time employees.
So your bullshit isn't actually making it any better.
And I note you're not talking about the education system anywhere... no comment about that anywhere.
As to crime, tell me what program you put in place that had a positive impact on the crime rate? And I note... our prisons are fucking full of people. We have one of the most incarcerated populations in the world. So tell me again how proud you are of that.
Slashdot Mirror
All of that is arbitrary. The political alliances don't make sense. You have too many people marching on both sides of the line that don't like the people they're marching with anymore than the people they're marching against.
I mean, how much do you think libertarians care about fighting gay marriage?
They don't.
Or on the left, how much do you think urban black voters are for Green legislation that will limit their job opportunities by closing factories and businesses in their communities? They're not.
The reality is that neither party makes any sense. The vast majority of people in both parties are just going through the motions.
Talk to democrats about what they feel about Hillary Clinton... most don't like her. She's clearly a hack politician. Talk to republicans about Jeb Bush... they don't like him either.
But the establishment of both parties have picked these people to be their person.
We're seeing the base of both parties go CRAZY... you have the republicans now fixating on Donald f'ing Trump for some reason... that is just baffling to me. And then you have the democrats fixing and Bernie Sanders.
This is a wasted effort and completely pointless. Neither of these people can be president. Which is only making the establishment picks stronger. Hillary is going to win if Sanders is the alternative in the democratic base.
And Jeb Bush is going to get the nod if Trump is the alternative.
The idiots in both parties don't get that they're ensuring that the last person they want to get the nod will get it by picking goofball candidates.
On the republican side they have about a million candidates. From what I can tell... Trump is literally the most stupid option. So... way to be idiots.
And amongst the democrats they have Martin O'Malley who whatever you might say about the guy is less damaged goods than Hillary.
So its all madness. The bases of both parties are really confused and really angry because they can't agree on anything internally and don't trust/like their establishments.
What should happen is that the establishment from both parties should merge into its own party. The establishment republicans and democrats pretty much agree on everything anyway. They're very much "business as usual" people.
And one they've merged, the issue is who wants to stand with the establishment and who wants to fight it.
THAT is the real left and right. That is what left and right used to mean. The right used to be the aristocracy in Europe. The left was everything that stood against it.
Left and right don't mean that anymore but they should. Have the establishment condense... and that can be the right.
Look at Occupy Wall street and the Tea Party... they basically were making the same point. They had more in common with each other than not. But because they were divided by arbitrary party lines they were ineffective. The establishment of both parties united to crush the opposition. While the rebellion movements were divided and ineffective.
The rebellion on the right and the rebellion on the left... have to join forces to overthrow the establishment.
Or we'll just be ruled by them.
Very few on the right or the left are open minded enough to see that that is the way forward. They are too much victims of their own propaganda. They've both mutually painted the opposition as evil. And they can't conceive of alliance.
I don't agree with your definitions and reject them.
We cannot communicate much less have a discussion without mutually agreed upon terminology.
Self interest is merely doing whatever is in your interest indifferent to any other consideration. Period.
Any attribute beyond that is in addition to self interest. Period.
I defined what I believed to be enlightened self interest. That is additional qualities in excess of simple self interest. You appear to have a complex and counter intuitive and frankly very confusing notion of what enlightened self interest means.
So I'm going to not use that term anymore because I don't wish to debate the point. Its a waste of time.
I'll simply stand on my previous definition but instead use the designation "socially acceptable self interest" which has nothing what so ever to do with... whatever you were talking about. I couldn't get past your statement that something that was quite obviously more involved than self interest was just self interest. That triggered an instant error trap and I stopped.
it also includes more than that. Your presumption that you can arbitarily limit the scope of my comment against my clear intentions is inherently dishonest.
Stop attempting to save you still born argument by strawmanning me.
Your argument is dead. It never lived. It is a blue shriveled tragedy. Wrap it in blankets and burn it.
Let it go. You made a mistake. I did not.
For the future, know that I quite good at this... assume competence on my part. You'll put your foot in your mouth less in the future.
Nobility doesn't enter into it. The damn things make copies of themselves.
And your obsession with class is not helping the discussion. The separation between classes are often arbitrary. Which means the people in a lower class are often every bit as smart as people in a higher class. And that means the lower class as you put it can occasionally outwit the upper class. And if they do that so much as fucking once they'll have the damned thing.
And that is just ONE way it can get out.
Another way is that rival oligarchs could struggle for power and that will require that whomever is challenging the primary authority will need one of these machines doing things and likely minions. that situation is chaotic enough that something could break out.
Another way is that the middle class which will be responsible for guarding it, programming it, etc could sneak out a copy of it which could then make copies of copies and then it is everywhere.
Another way is that once it is known that the technology exists it will be much easier to replicate or reverse engineer. People will know roughly how it works, the components that make it up are likely sourcable or producible using lower end machinery that is harder to regulate. And then it is just a matter of trial and error to make a version of the thing that works. And then the only thing that might separate the one from the other is a certain amount of refinement.
When I said... you CAN"T keep it bottled up... I did not use that word loosely. You... CANNOT.
Nobility doesn't enter into it.
All your attempts to control it will do is delay the inevitable. I don't doubt you could keep it bottled up for years. But eventually its getting out.
As to your seeming attempt to correct me about the distinction between star fleet and the federation... I know all that... I don't think I said anything that would suggest otherwise.
I'm not sure what you're responding to here.
The enlightened self interest only mean you do what is in your own best interest without trying to fuck over everyone else in the process or otherwise damage your society. That's all that means. Its not that hard.
As to revolutions never doing anything... wrong... a revolution is chaos and the results of it are unpredictable.
As to quibbles, I just showed you a fucking link that skips right to a bit where you can see material in the food processor slamming off the top of the lid.
We're done. You're a fucking space cadet. I'm not reading anything further in your post until you concede that my point on the food processor was legit and your point was in fucking error.
You couldn't even admit you were wrong about the food processor... when I showed you a video of it happening. What the fuck is wrong with you?
The tech can replicate itself. So the instant it breaks out you won't be able to put it back in the bottle again.
Initially something like that would be tightly controlled if only to give the creators and whomever owned it maximum return. But eventually the thing would break out one way or the other.
And then trying to control who had it would be an exercise in futility.
That's another thing you just don't see in star trek which indicates some very reliable psychological controls... you don't see terrorists or lone gunmen. They have the tech for any idiot to print a phaser. This is a weapon that in the first series they could vaperize hillsides... with a hand phaser.
And there is nothing to stop the person from printing out a much larger weapon if he wants that.
No one even tries to do that sort of thing though. Which means everyone is reliably "sane"... and that doesn't happen naturally.
Some of us are naturally crazy. So that has to be something monitored and regulated.
yeah... but the incentives by everyone to have the machine replicated and stratified throughout society would be huge.
The federation has some sort of quasi democracy... I don't know how it works exactly but they have some sort of democracy. So "give us access to the everything maker" would have to be a powerful political platform.
And then you have the economic incentives... everyone that has nearly as much clout as the people with the machine would be kept down almost entirely because they don't... and they'd have an incentive to get close to it and take it. And then the people with the machine could buy temporary clout by giving the machine or causing it to be leaked.
The point is that it wouldn't be sustainable. And as soon as it leaked it would be out there.
Well... its a question of how crazy you get with it. I mean... no sane person is going to demand they get a whole world all to themselves. A crazy person might.
So yeah... you're not giving a planet to one guy. But one guy isn't going to ask for a planet.
More commonly you find in star trek that a little community is given a whole planet. I mean... a thousand people that all sort of share the same views and like each other are given an entire planet. That happens in startek.
As to owning people... that's less a scarcity issue than an ethical one. And in any case we're just coming back to questions of mental illness again. Why do you want to own someone when you can get everything that owning a person could give you from the technology... short of some sort of sadistic pleasure from dominating someone... and that's sickness.
In startrek they "fix" people that have that sort of notion. They get "corrected"...
So can we just exclude the people that are mentally ill?i
Its full of flashing graphics. I mean just the pages loading in has flashing graphics. Images aren't there... then they are... the page realigns when graphics load in above or below... additional scripts load that change formating.
If I had photo sensitive epilepsy... I'd need a bib just to use the internet... I'd be foaming all over myself.
At a bear minimum, I would think I'd just have adblock enabled when I used the internet... because... photo sensitive epilepsy. I'm pretty sure I'd still need a bib.
Progressives are intellectually incapable of actually discussing anything that challenges their world view. All they can do is play identity politics or cite you for some flavor racism because in their mind, their politics are basically a religion.
So when you challenge their faith, you get responses back that are quite similar to what you'd get if you challenged any religious ideologue.
They'll quote scripture at you... they'll say you're unclean in the eyes of their god... lots of moral judgement... lots of pointless references to whatever their dogma is or whatever their various dear leaders say about their dogma.
that's all they've got.
This isn't an attack on all leftists by the way. There is a difference between a normal leftist and a progressive. Leftists are people with leftist politics. Progressives are cultists.
Easy. I don't do that. :-D
First, I am very good at maintaining alertness even when I am very tired. It was something I learned in college and... I can operate effectively for about 3 days without sleep. After that, I start to develop problems but I can remain alert for about 4 days. On the 5th day I can keep my eyes open but whether I respond to anything is questionable. On the 6th day I will probably spontaneously pass out. But it takes that long for that to be a concern. I can stop myself from sleeping up to that point simply by willing it.
it isn't even hard until day 4. Around day 4, I need to exert a constant mental will to remain conscious. Prior to that point... I can subconsciously maintain consciousness.
When I board the plane... I flip the mental switch that was keeping me going... and I go out like a light. Click. Typically I wake up about half an hour before the plane lands. Sometimes the actual force of the plane hitting the runway wakes me up.
Its my preferred way of dealing with long flights. I just shut off and wake up at my destination.
I haven't seen you in awhile... You don't call, you don't write.
I missed you!
*hugs*! :D
As to games I play... nah... I express my opinion on posts that I feel merit a comment.
If someone wishes to engage me afterwards then that either merits a honest response if they are engaging with me honestly... or if THEY are playing stupid fucking games... then I will of course accept their lead and respond with my slightly more sophisticated games.
Don't like it? Don't be such a fucking tool. I respond very well to honest and authentic discourse. Dishonest and disingenuous comments don't merit honesty than they display.
Actually you have no idea what you spend on healthcare because its buried in your budgets.
What portion of your taxes goes to your medical systems at this point?
Regardless... the cost inflation in the US system is largely caused by the fight between capitalists and socialists like yourself. If the socialists left it alone the prices would come down. Likely if capitalists like myself gave in the price would also come down.
The high costs come from unfavorable compromises between the two systems.
The big problem is that the democrats like to deal with problems by throwing money at them. And that is not a good idea when dealing with capitalistic supply systems because they just raise prices when you do that. Practically ever price increase comes immediately after an increase to the subsidies. If they just didn't have them then the prices would be a good deal lower.
The preferred method of dealing with this from a capitalistic stand point is to increase supply... that is the number of doctors or the care or the drugs or something. And that naturally lowers the price by increasing competition and avaliability and lowering the ability of providers to demand higher prices because there's just too many other organizations willing to do the same job for less. So prices go down or you go out of business and your competitors eat you alive.
Different ways of doing things.
You're a socialist so you don't understand this... never mind that you trust and rely on these systems for nearly everything else. You rely on it to keep food prices low. You rely on it to keep clothing prices low. You rely on it to keep car or gasoline prices low.
But suddenly when it comes to healthcare you think something that works everywhere else doesn't work for healthcare? Your position is nonsense.
But if you want to live that way, then so be it. Unlike the Europeans that can't stop telling people how great their stupid systems are... even as Greece eats itself... I don't need other societies to live the way I do. You don't like capitalism? Fine. More money for me.
I just wish the socialists would stop trying to force their bullshit on everyone else.
Don't be silly. The only person that would want such a thing would be a literal crazy person. And in most of these speculative utopias... they would just drug you one day... and you'd wake up later with them congratulating you on your new mental readjustment.
You're welcome... we cured you.
I don't think they are indistinguishable.
I have many words for many different things because I perceive differences between them and I use the correct word for the correct thing. I don't think this conflation of different concepts is helpful or constructive. It just clouds the issue.
As to definitions, having more than is needed is not in conflict with having a good life. You don't need to have a good life. You don't need the little luxuries we all have and take for granted. I mean, do you NEED to have social networks where you talk about tech issues on the internet for fun? No... its a luxury. Are you greedy for wanting it?
In a poor country the only way to get a good life is to have substancially more than everyone else. You want a big house in a country where everyone lives in mud huts? You want to send your kid to a nice university in a country where most people can't read? Are you greedy? From the perspective of the poor people that don't know anything... yes. But maybe you're smart... maybe you worked really hard... maybe you deserve to have a good life... maybe your earned all that stuff. But the fucking peasants aren't going to see it that way. All they see is that you have more than them so they hate you.
And frankly I find that entire world view to be ignorant and regressive. Just because someone has more than you doesn't make them a bad person or greedy. And just because someone likes nice things doesn't mean they're bad people either.
Enough with the fucking moral judgements of people you don't know.
As to greed being good... it depends on what you mean.
Enlightened self interest is obviously good. Stress on the "enlightened"... aka... not being a fucking prick about it. A society where people don't try to better themselves is going to be a shitty society. So yes... a society were people try to improve themselves is superior. It just is.
Its worse than that. Both parties are incoherent.
Why you're a republican or democrat doesn't appear to have anything to do with anything.
Why are libertarians right wing but hard core kill all humans and meat is murder green party people leftists?
Right and left doesn't mean anything. Republican and democrat doesn't mean anything.
They're just fucking flags at this point on arbitary factions that only agree that they want to oppose the other side but most of the time they've forgotten why.
Why are latino Catholics left wing but evangelical white Christians right wing? Go through the list of things they believe and they believe pretty much the same thing about everything.
There is no coherent glue that holds either party together besides arbitary opposition to the other side.
Its dumb. Both sides should just disolve and everyone should introduce themselves to everyone else... reform their factions on the basis of what they actually believe... and then see what happens.
The increasingly puritanical progressives are in most cases more simliar to the religious right than a lot of people.
My underlying desire... what drives me? I want to be left alone. That's it.
I just want everyone to stop presuming to tell me what to do. Do that and I'm happy. I don't really care what other people put in their bodies... who fucks who... or what for that matter. I don't care what people call themselves. Just leave me alone.
I've only seen the ending where he dies on the docks after his sub sinks from an allied dive bomber.
That was the director's cut. I've never seen anything else.
No... you're describing some sort of megalomaniacal horder. That's not the same thing as greed.
Most "greedy" people simply want what they consider to be a good life. They want things... sure... but they don't necessarily need you to not have them. A guy that wants 20 Ferraris doesn't necessarily want no one else to have one or thirty for that matter.
Do some people measure their accomplishments by what they have and others do not? Sure... but in a post scarcity environment you're not going to horde STUFF you're going to horde POWER.
You see this in societies that centralize all political and economic power in the state. The greedy people as you term them just become government ministers. THat's where the power and the wealth went so they just control the government and get to live in the mansions with the servants.
The communist party members tend to live that way. They talk about equality etc... but then they live in the mansions with the servants and the whores... and what really changed for the peasants? Nothing. If anything it tends to be worse because the old oligarchies were generally authoritarian instead of totalitarian. Totalitarian states are the worst. If I had to live in one, I'd need to kill people in the government on a regular basis just feel normal. Would that mean I'd probably get tortured to death at some point? Sure... I can't stand totalitarian states though. The North Koreas of the world. Utterly intolerable. I'd need to go Hannibal Lector or possibly Dextor in that environment just to stand it.
Actually... I got a couple down votes and 14 upvotes. Not in this thread. But overall.
I find it quite easy to maintain an "excellent" karma rating and I've found it is getting easier.
There are fewer progressive drones. There is a civil war in the left at the moment between the authoritarian progressive left and the permissive more socially liberal left.
And as I am myself more of the latter than the former, I find that when push comes to shove I can count on most leftists to stab their progressive cousins in the back and give me a wink these days.
No one likes the progressives. They're fucking tools.
I don't know why Sparta had a population problem. I know that they were different from the Athenians and the Thebens that had a more classically conventional gender role structure... and those societies were pumping out the kids like crazy.
What I can show is correlation. Causation?... No. I don't think causation in that case is even possible to prove really.
However, look at the entire First World. We have a population trend going on here and there is very little to explain it except for that.
Appreciate... I WANT women to have really whatever they want.
However... if that leads to the ruin of my civilization and ultimately women losing all that stuff anyway when the civiliation collapses... then what is the point? Better to shift to something sustainable where at least we'll be able to bias the system to be a generous towards women as possible.
And again... this is only temporary. In 100 years it won't matter. Our life expectancies are going to go vertical on the graph and you won't even need women to produce children anymore. The whole biological role thing can be bypassed entirely.
Here is something I believe.
I think human beings are the third phase in life on earth.
First phase: Random mutation.
Second phase: Sexual selection.
Third phase: Intelligent design.
I think humans are the third phase. I think we are as big a step on the ladder of life as the Cambrian explosion.
But only certain civilizations are even going to be capable of doing anything with it. The stupid islamists are making ignorance into a virtue. The Chinese are mostly concerned with maintaining the power and authority of their oligarchy. And... really in the end the south american Catholics will probably be pretty solid in the end... I think they're chaotic and shortsighted. But something could rise out of that to replace us. It will just waste a lot of time.
We're so fucking close. Think of where we'd be today if Rome never fell. Rome was on the cusp of the industrial revolution before they fell. They had steam power, water wheels, simple mechanical computers. We could have landed on the moon a thousand years ago. We're a hundred years off from solving so many of our problems. We just need to buy a little time.
Pretty much, though they redeemed themselves to some extent in DS9. There was a bit where someone tried to high hat Quark and say humans were better or something. And he responded "My people have never genocided anyone. My people don't go to war." something like that... I'll try to find a clip on youtube because it was in a lot of ways a redemptive moment:
This one is interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Which is a hell of a change from this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
DS9 is seriously underrated in the cannon of that franchise. Its frequently much more interesting.
I'm rated interesting with an excellent karma rating... and you're rated troll apparently... with what appears to be a "good" rating... so... color me indifferent to your judgements. I mean, what are you using as your basis to judge me here? the censure of the board? Excellent rating. I'm not being censured. My posts are on average quite popular.
a list of recent posts that got 5+ ratings:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
These are all very recent posts. You could mod this one post here to -5 Troll and it wouldn't effect my Karma rating because I'm just that fucking positive. So... eat my ass with raspberry jam. :-D
Its so funny that the progressives haven't realized that most of the left has started to turn on them as well.
Everyone thinks the progressives are tools. You've been in your little echo chambers and hug boxes for so long that you've deluded yourselves.
Nope... that's just the same bullshit you spew all the time. You tell us that the economy has recovered. You tell us that unemployment is down. You tell that healthcare costs are down.
After the ACA, my healthcare premiums DOUBLED. Fucking... Doubled.
And on top of that, you have companies left right and center canceling health insurance for employees or reducing the number of full time employees because you don't need to provide healthcare to part time employees.
So your bullshit isn't actually making it any better.
And I note you're not talking about the education system anywhere... no comment about that anywhere.
As to crime, tell me what program you put in place that had a positive impact on the crime rate? And I note... our prisons are fucking full of people. We have one of the most incarcerated populations in the world. So tell me again how proud you are of that.