If you ask me, it's because it is easy to blue-sky some possible scenarios and get credit for breaking new ground, and also not be held accountable for any demonstrable results from your research. Or is it just me?
Your complaint is unjustified for two reasons: (1) You misunderstand what ethicists do, and (2) you mis-represnt what most of their work deals with.
(1) Why not come up with some practical solutions to existing problems of discrimination, civil rights, etc?
Ethicists are not lawyers, or politicians, or political theorists (for the most part), or economists, or political activists. It is not their job to come up with "practical solutions" any more than it is Stephen Hawking's job to design cheaper lasers, or safer cars. Ethicists deal with theoretical questions about what actions are right or wrong, and which states of affairs are good or bad. Actually making the world a better place is an entirely different activity, just as designing cars is a different activity than investigating the laws of physics.
(2)...because it is easy to blue-sky some possible scenarios...
Feynman spoke and wrote about nano-tech long before it became anything like a reality. He also did a whole lot of very important work in theoretical physics. Likewise if you take a look through a typical ethics journal (like this one) you will find that most of the articles deal with real contemporary problems like the nature of political feedom, the problems of abortion and euthenasia, and so on. Sometimes people who do ethics also like to think about ethical problems that will soon be apon us, but which are not quite here yet. If that was all they did then you might have a real ground for complaint, but in fact it is only a small part of what they do.
This is actually two good questions packed into one. Philosophers and political theorists usually draw a distinction between political freedom and free will. Some, but not all, think you have to have free will in order to qualify for political freedom. Some think the two issues are entirely unrelated.
I would define freedom as being able to do what one wants.
This is not a bad start, but it turns out to be an unsatisfactory definition in several ways. Let's take political freedom first.
Political Freedom
But, of course, freedom is not absolute. If I want to kill someone, I do not have the freedom to do this.
Right, and in general if you want to do something that involves someone else, or someone else's property, then you have to get that person's consent first, otherwise you actions would infringe on his freedom. Indeed, many poltical theorists have thought that political freedom is not so much a matter of being able to do what you want to do, as a matter of being free from interference from others, unless you grant your consent. In other words you are politically free if other people are not allowed to mess around with you, or yours, without your permission.
Given this view of political freedom the question of whether an individual qualifies for freedom depends on whether that individual is capable of consenting. Still many philosophers think that in order to give consent one has to be able to make free choices.
Free Will
I would define freedom as being able to do what one wants.
It turns out that one of the most widely held philosophical views about free will is pretty close to this, but it gets stated a little differently. Compatibilists think that your choice is free just if you made that choice because you wanted to.
Robots have no desires, needs, wants. A robot would only do what a human has programmed it to do.
This is by no means obvious. One view of human desires is that they are just drives that result from eons of evolution. When we do what we want to do, we are just doing what evolution has programed us to do. Even so, it is still what we want, and thus the choices that result are still free. Likewise, even if robots choose only as we programe them to, so long as they doing what they want (and we want) them to do, they are free.
A somewhat more sophisticated view would be that a genuine artificial intelligence would have to be able to think about what it ought to do (i.e. engage in practical or moral reasoning), as well as thinking about strictly factual questions (what philosopher's tend to call theoretical reasoning). If a robot could think about what it ought to want, and modify its own desires accordingly then, when it acted on those self-regulated desires, it would be acting freely.
You make two claims that really don't sit very well with eachother.
(1)In other news, hundreds of thousands/millions of orphans and unwanted children continue to populate the Earth. (2)Egomaniacal yuppies continue to satisfy their own selfish desires. It's all about them. Never about the kids.
Presumably in (1) you are talking about the problem of unwanted children, yet in (2) you are denigrating the desire of many people to have, and raise, their own children. Of course some unwanted children are actually orphans, but most of them are unwanted because their parents weren't sufficiently "egomaniacal" as to actually want to raise them. Perhaps more people would be willing to take care of their own children if those who are already willing weren't subject to this kind of abuse.
Meanwhile, anti-abortion activists continue to have the lowest adoption rates in the world.
Do you have some evidence for this? I'm no fan of anti-abortion activists, but this kind of claim just strikes me as nonsense. Who counts as an anti-abortion activist? Who keeps track of their adoption rate? Lowest in the world compared to which groups? Do Benedictine Monks have a higher rate of adoption?
...rather than contributing to the overpopulation problem...
In countries where this kind of technology gets used most often there is no over-population problem. Most industrialized nations have declining populations, and the world as a whole may well have a declining population quite soon.
...and while there's that certain [stupid] ego-stroking factor of having a kid...
I think it's great that some people are willing to take on the difficult task of raising other people's children, but I also think it is sad when the natural desire to raise one's own children is denigrated as stupid, selfish, or perverse.
But, has the number of couples that can't have children gone up?
The number of people who are diagnosed with fertility problems has gone up, but there is some debate about the causes. One of the more obvious reasons for the rise in the diagnosis of infertility is that people are starting families later in life.
Also these procedures are not cheap! That money could really change an orphan's life...
Raising a child at all in a developed country is not cheap. For the price of raising 1 in a developed nation you could provide a good standard of living for 10 children in a devloping nation. Still, for some reason, people prefer to spend money on their own off-spring.
The Pentagon is responsible for every piece of equipment that goes into a military base, or onboard a ship, and they are responsible for every communication that goes into or out of both. As I said, if the Pentagon doesn't do it then it won't be done.
The only involvement the military should have in an election is to give servicemembers time off to vote.
Vote where? Here's a free clue. When you are stationed on an Aircraft carrier in the middle of the Indian ocean, if your method of voting is not organised by the Pentagon then it doesn't exist. That goes for voting by mail as well.
No doubt, but there is no guarantee that he will be able to keep the left when he does, especially if Nader runs again (the intense hatred of Bush on the left may well help here though).
...anti tax cuts for the rich...his position on the budget (he's a deficit hawk)... his position on education: special ed. is a huge unfunded mandate and the so-called, yet underfunded...
The economy is not going to work for the democrats in '04 (just as it didn't in '02), and they haven't even realized that they have a problem yet. Bush has pushed up spending, and cut taxes about as low as they can go. The Democrats have no room to move what so ever. Raising taxes will drive away the middle. Cutting domestic spending will drive away the left. Cutting military spending will strike the 70% of Americans who supported the war in Iraq as folly. If the economy is bad then everyone will hate spending cuts and tax raises. If the economy is good then no one will be listening. If the economy is really bad then people will vote against Bush, but otherwise the Democrats are not going to have any compelling message on the economy that will win over voters. About the only message that will not sink like a stone is "tax the rich".
National security: maybe not Dean's strong suit, but he can emphasize his first responder credentials (as both a physician and a Governor), blast Bush for not fully funding homeland security, and maybe even attack him on the Iraq decision...
He has no credible defense policy. Unless he gets one he will lose, even if things go really bad in Iraq. People forget that in the middle of the most unpopular foreign war in American history (a war that really had gone bad in a big way) the American people did not vote for the peace candidate. They voted (49 states to 1) for the guy who wanted to finish the war by bombing the enemy back into the stone age.
If the Democrats still have nothing more to say in November than "tax the rich" and "hold hands with the EU" then they will get screwed.
You can add Kant to the unmarried (and virgin) list, and for centuries Oxford Dons were not permitted to marry. On the other hand Socrates and Aristotle were both married.
Now my question is, how can trading mp3s of R.Kelly and Britany Spears be considered free speach...
You are asking the wrong question. Sharing and copying files is speech (even burning flags or crosses qualifies as speech in the US), but it is not protected speech. The courts have long held that 1st amendment protections are embodied in the fair use doctrine (and various other exceptions built into copyright law). If speech involving copyright material does not fall within those exceptions then it is (almost certainly) not protected.
The questions you should have asked are (1) Do p2p users have a 1st amendment right to remain anonymous?; and (2) Do the makers of software have a right to provide p2p users with the means to remain anonymous?. The answer to (1) is that file trading is speech, and some file trading does not involve copyright material, or any other illegal activity, so p2p users who do not break the law have a 1st amendment right to remain anonymous. The answer to (2) is more complicated. One way to argue for this is to argue (as Ian did) that the maker of a mask is not liable for any harm done by a user of one of his masks. So long as there is some significant legitimate use for his masks, he is in the clear. A second, and stronger, argument is that a prohibition of the means to remain anonymos would infringe on the right to remain anonymous, so software makers must be allowed to make software that can protect anonymous speech.
Re:Working more pays off
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
Since you seem to have some good sources for European tax information, could you recommend some of the more reputable sites.
The OECD site has some pretty good stuff available. You can also check out the revenue departments for each country (but of course most of them are not in English so finding what you want can be hard). The Tax Policy Center is also pretty good. They have a comparison of the tax burdens on averge income workers here.
Re:Working more pays off
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
Actually, I don't see tax figures on the link you provided.
It's 12 rows down under the heading of "Tax receipts as a % of GDP".
That's 48% on someone making only $28,000 to $68,000.
You are ignoring several factors that reduce that overall rate. You pay no income taxes on the first few thousand that you make each year (depends on your deductions). You pay a lower tax rate than 25% on income earned up to 28k. Most people also qualify for a bunch of other deductions (mortgage interest, educational expenses, children, etc). An individual who earned just 28k would actually wind up paying a rate that is more like 10-12%. Many states have no income tax, or a lower income tax than 7%. Sales taxes in the US are also much lower than in the EU region.
In many EU countriesd the maginal rate that kicks in at around the average income level (i.e. comparable to the 25% rate in the US) is around 40-50%. Sales taxs are usually around 10-15%. Some countries have social security taxes on top of that.
The US average (over time) is generally closer to 4%. The EU average is generally a little higher than it is now (although policy changes may mean that it continues to go down, rarther than returning to its usual level). Typically most countries in the EU have a rate that is about double that in the US.
Something that may be hard for Americans to appreciate is just how severe the social effects of high unemployment can be. Sure, in any EU country you will not find people starving, or going without basic medical care, but you will find families that have been unemployed for generations. You should consider what life is like for those who face the prospect of never having a real job.
It is also worth pointing out that the US actually spends quite a lot on social welfare programs. The US government spends more money per capita, than most EU countries, on health and education. No one starves in the US, and the unemployed do get medical coverge through the medicaid program. The two groups that really have a tough time in the US are illegal immigrants, and those who are employed and make just enough money that they do not qualify for government programs like medicaid.
Re:Working more pays off
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
Actually, tax rates aren't as different as you may think.
Actually the tax rates are very different. In the US the various levels of government take in around 30% of GDP in tax. Most EU governments take in somewhere between 40% and 50% of GDP. Disposable income (per capita, per year) in the US is around US$25k. In most EU countries it is closer to US$15k.
You might want to take a look at how each country calculates its unemployment numbers. We are actually about even.
This is entirely false. If you take a look at the standardised rates published by the OECD then the US was at about 6% in '02, while many EU countries were at about 9% (France, Germany, Italy, Spain). The rate in the UK was closer to the US rate.
Freedom of speech is in every EU country's constitution.
The UK doesn't have a constitution (at least not a writen one) and neither does the EU itself (at least not yet). More importantly no EU country has a constitutional protection of free speech that is as stringient as that found in the US. This is not merely a matter of words contained in constitutional documents (after all the constitution of the former Soviet Union had a clause that protected freedom of the press!) but more a matter of how the history of legal interpretation and practice has played out. Most countries in Europe allow curbs on speech that would be rejected out of hand by courts in the US. The case under discussion is a nice example. It would not even be a metter of controversy in the US because there would be no hope what so ever of such a measure surviving in US courts.
No member of the EU country lacks private property rights.
He did not say that they lacked private property entirely. What he said was that EU countries lack the same respect for private propety that is found in the US. As fas as their legal systems go this is true. By world standards private property rights in EU members are reasonably well protected. Even so the protection of private property rights in most EU members falls well short of that found in the US legal system.
...one of the problems with wind generators... is that they leak oil...
...but nowhere near as much as your average boat would I bet. If the environmentalists are worried about oil leaking then they should close all the marinas.
Why can't we keep the adminstrators out of these decisions?
Well for one thing they are talking about the software that the government itself will use. It's a little hard to avoid the involvement of government in that decision.
In some places the law requires that machines have a certain minimum probability of paying out. In other places the law merely requires that the probability be displayed on the machine. In either case the only requirement is that the machines have a certain expected return, not a certain actual return. It is, in principle, possible for a given machine to never pay out (although unlikely given the relatively high probabilities of hitting low payouts).
Slot machines don't have cycles. Whether they pay out or not is entirely random (or at least as random as it is possible to make them). Your chance of winning does not increase even slightly if other people have poured piles of money into the machine already.
Here are some other common myths about slot machines.
And just how long before someone creates a smart bullet to home in on the EM emissions of this helmet...
Anti-radiation missiles are actually pretty expensive, and if they could make them sensitive enough to home in on such low levels of EM-radiation then they would already be using them as anti-tank weapons.
Even when transmiting military radio communications gear is already very stealthy. It uses packets sent on varying frequencies, so there is no constant signal to lock on to.
At no point in recorded history has "fear of punishment" proven an effective mechanism for encouraging public order.
This is not true at all. There is evidence that people, even professional criminals, respond rationally to dis-incentives like increased penalties. In the case of traffic offenses the evidence is rock solid. Increasing fines and other penalties translates very directly into better compliance with the law.
Of course people also respond rationally to incentives. When the relative benefits of crime are huge (as with poor people selling drugs today, or poor people stealing food to survive in the past) then people will still commit crimes. Even more importantly, when the risk of getting caught is small then people will discount the penalties.
For most crimes a combination of severe penalties, and a reasonable chance of getting caught, will deter pretty much anyone from commiting them (except people who are actually nuts, or extemely dim-witted).
You probably should blame Ashcroft rather than Rumsfeld for the PATRIOT Act. Rumsfeld is Secretary of Defense, so he does not have much to do with drafting legislation. When he did have something to do with it (back when he was in congress) he had a pretty good record on civil liberties. He was, for example, one of the primary proponents and authors of the original Freedom of Information Act. The recent shift of DoD policy away from keeping reporters as far away from the military as possible, towards having them embedded in military units, was probably due to Rumsfeld.
I don't know how this works where you are, but I can tell you something about how speed cameras were implemented in New Zealand. The police in NZ already use a rule of thumb that anything up to 10 kph over the limit does not get a ticket. Speed cameras were implemented with a similar rule in mind, and in fact the way it used to work was that only the top 15% or so of speeders would get a ticket, so that if most people were speeding on a particular stretch of road, only the worst offenders were prosecuted. Recently the policy has changed so that the 10 kph rule is now uniformly applied, but that still means that you will not get a ticket for just being slightly over the limit.
Slashdot Mirror
If you ask me, it's because it is easy to blue-sky some possible scenarios and get credit for breaking new ground, and also not be held accountable for any demonstrable results from your research. Or is it just me?
...because it is easy to blue-sky some possible scenarios...
Your complaint is unjustified for two reasons: (1) You misunderstand what ethicists do, and (2) you mis-represnt what most of their work deals with.
(1) Why not come up with some practical solutions to existing problems of discrimination, civil rights, etc?
Ethicists are not lawyers, or politicians, or political theorists (for the most part), or economists, or political activists. It is not their job to come up with "practical solutions" any more than it is Stephen Hawking's job to design cheaper lasers, or safer cars. Ethicists deal with theoretical questions about what actions are right or wrong, and which states of affairs are good or bad. Actually making the world a better place is an entirely different activity, just as designing cars is a different activity than investigating the laws of physics.
(2)
Feynman spoke and wrote about nano-tech long before it became anything like a reality. He also did a whole lot of very important work in theoretical physics. Likewise if you take a look through a typical ethics journal (like this one) you will find that most of the articles deal with real contemporary problems like the nature of political feedom, the problems of abortion and euthenasia, and so on. Sometimes people who do ethics also like to think about ethical problems that will soon be apon us, but which are not quite here yet. If that was all they did then you might have a real ground for complaint, but in fact it is only a small part of what they do.
The real question is, what is freedom?
This is actually two good questions packed into one. Philosophers and political theorists usually draw a distinction between political freedom and free will. Some, but not all, think you have to have free will in order to qualify for political freedom. Some think the two issues are entirely unrelated.
I would define freedom as being able to do what one wants.
This is not a bad start, but it turns out to be an unsatisfactory definition in several ways. Let's take political freedom first.
Political Freedom
But, of course, freedom is not absolute. If I want to kill someone, I do not have the freedom to do this.
Right, and in general if you want to do something that involves someone else, or someone else's property, then you have to get that person's consent first, otherwise you actions would infringe on his freedom. Indeed, many poltical theorists have thought that political freedom is not so much a matter of being able to do what you want to do, as a matter of being free from interference from others, unless you grant your consent. In other words you are politically free if other people are not allowed to mess around with you, or yours, without your permission.
Given this view of political freedom the question of whether an individual qualifies for freedom depends on whether that individual is capable of consenting. Still many philosophers think that in order to give consent one has to be able to make free choices.
Free Will
I would define freedom as being able to do what one wants.
It turns out that one of the most widely held philosophical views about free will is pretty close to this, but it gets stated a little differently. Compatibilists think that your choice is free just if you made that choice because you wanted to.
Robots have no desires, needs, wants. A robot would only do what a human has programmed it to do.
This is by no means obvious. One view of human desires is that they are just drives that result from eons of evolution. When we do what we want to do, we are just doing what evolution has programed us to do. Even so, it is still what we want, and thus the choices that result are still free. Likewise, even if robots choose only as we programe them to, so long as they doing what they want (and we want) them to do, they are free.
A somewhat more sophisticated view would be that a genuine artificial intelligence would have to be able to think about what it ought to do (i.e. engage in practical or moral reasoning), as well as thinking about strictly factual questions (what philosopher's tend to call theoretical reasoning). If a robot could think about what it ought to want, and modify its own desires accordingly then, when it acted on those self-regulated desires, it would be acting freely.
No. The new supercomputer will run a Linus-designed Linux operating system...
Damn straight. And remeber its "Linus/Linux" not just "Linux". Give credit where its due.
You make two claims that really don't sit very well with eachother.
(1)In other news, hundreds of thousands/millions of orphans and unwanted children continue to populate the Earth.
(2)Egomaniacal yuppies continue to satisfy their own selfish desires. It's all about them. Never about the kids.
Presumably in (1) you are talking about the problem of unwanted children, yet in (2) you are denigrating the desire of many people to have, and raise, their own children. Of course some unwanted children are actually orphans, but most of them are unwanted because their parents weren't sufficiently "egomaniacal" as to actually want to raise them. Perhaps more people would be willing to take care of their own children if those who are already willing weren't subject to this kind of abuse.
Meanwhile, anti-abortion activists continue to have the lowest adoption rates in the world.
Do you have some evidence for this? I'm no fan of anti-abortion activists, but this kind of claim just strikes me as nonsense. Who counts as an anti-abortion activist? Who keeps track of their adoption rate? Lowest in the world compared to which groups? Do Benedictine Monks have a higher rate of adoption?
In countries where this kind of technology gets used most often there is no over-population problem. Most industrialized nations have declining populations, and the world as a whole may well have a declining population quite soon.
I think it's great that some people are willing to take on the difficult task of raising other people's children, but I also think it is sad when the natural desire to raise one's own children is denigrated as stupid, selfish, or perverse.
But, has the number of couples that can't have children gone up?
The number of people who are diagnosed with fertility problems has gone up, but there is some debate about the causes. One of the more obvious reasons for the rise in the diagnosis of infertility is that people are starting families later in life.
Also these procedures are not cheap! That money could really change an orphan's life...
Raising a child at all in a developed country is not cheap. For the price of raising 1 in a developed nation you could provide a good standard of living for 10 children in a devloping nation. Still, for some reason, people prefer to spend money on their own off-spring.
The Pentagon is responsible for every piece of equipment that goes into a military base, or onboard a ship, and they are responsible for every communication that goes into or out of both. As I said, if the Pentagon doesn't do it then it won't be done.
The only involvement the military should have in an election is to give servicemembers time off to vote.
Vote where? Here's a free clue. When you are stationed on an Aircraft carrier in the middle of the Indian ocean, if your method of voting is not organised by the Pentagon then it doesn't exist. That goes for voting by mail as well.
No doubt, but there is no guarantee that he will be able to keep the left when he does, especially if Nader runs again (the intense hatred of Bush on the left may well help here though).
The economy is not going to work for the democrats in '04 (just as it didn't in '02), and they haven't even realized that they have a problem yet. Bush has pushed up spending, and cut taxes about as low as they can go. The Democrats have no room to move what so ever. Raising taxes will drive away the middle. Cutting domestic spending will drive away the left. Cutting military spending will strike the 70% of Americans who supported the war in Iraq as folly. If the economy is bad then everyone will hate spending cuts and tax raises. If the economy is good then no one will be listening. If the economy is really bad then people will vote against Bush, but otherwise the Democrats are not going to have any compelling message on the economy that will win over voters. About the only message that will not sink like a stone is "tax the rich".
National security: maybe not Dean's strong suit, but he can emphasize his first responder credentials (as both a physician and a Governor), blast Bush for not fully funding homeland security, and maybe even attack him on the Iraq decision...
He has no credible defense policy. Unless he gets one he will lose, even if things go really bad in Iraq. People forget that in the middle of the most unpopular foreign war in American history (a war that really had gone bad in a big way) the American people did not vote for the peace candidate. They voted (49 states to 1) for the guy who wanted to finish the war by bombing the enemy back into the stone age.
If the Democrats still have nothing more to say in November than "tax the rich" and "hold hands with the EU" then they will get screwed.
You can add Kant to the unmarried (and virgin) list, and for centuries Oxford Dons were not permitted to marry. On the other hand Socrates and Aristotle were both married.
Now my question is, how can trading mp3s of R.Kelly and Britany Spears be considered free speach...
You are asking the wrong question. Sharing and copying files is speech (even burning flags or crosses qualifies as speech in the US), but it is not protected speech. The courts have long held that 1st amendment protections are embodied in the fair use doctrine (and various other exceptions built into copyright law). If speech involving copyright material does not fall within those exceptions then it is (almost certainly) not protected.
The questions you should have asked are (1) Do p2p users have a 1st amendment right to remain anonymous?; and (2) Do the makers of software have a right to provide p2p users with the means to remain anonymous?. The answer to (1) is that file trading is speech, and some file trading does not involve copyright material, or any other illegal activity, so p2p users who do not break the law have a 1st amendment right to remain anonymous. The answer to (2) is more complicated. One way to argue for this is to argue (as Ian did) that the maker of a mask is not liable for any harm done by a user of one of his masks. So long as there is some significant legitimate use for his masks, he is in the clear. A second, and stronger, argument is that a prohibition of the means to remain anonymos would infringe on the right to remain anonymous, so software makers must be allowed to make software that can protect anonymous speech.
Since you seem to have some good sources for European tax information, could you recommend some of the more reputable sites.
The OECD site has some pretty good stuff available. You can also check out the revenue departments for each country (but of course most of them are not in English so finding what you want can be hard). The Tax Policy Center is also pretty good. They have a comparison of the tax burdens on averge income workers here.
Actually, I don't see tax figures on the link you provided.
It's 12 rows down under the heading of "Tax receipts as a % of GDP".
That's 48% on someone making only $28,000 to $68,000.
You are ignoring several factors that reduce that overall rate. You pay no income taxes on the first few thousand that you make each year (depends on your deductions). You pay a lower tax rate than 25% on income earned up to 28k. Most people also qualify for a bunch of other deductions (mortgage interest, educational expenses, children, etc). An individual who earned just 28k would actually wind up paying a rate that is more like 10-12%. Many states have no income tax, or a lower income tax than 7%. Sales taxes in the US are also much lower than in the EU region.
In many EU countriesd the maginal rate that kicks in at around the average income level (i.e. comparable to the 25% rate in the US) is around 40-50%. Sales taxs are usually around 10-15%. Some countries have social security taxes on top of that.
The US average (over time) is generally closer to 4%. The EU average is generally a little higher than it is now (although policy changes may mean that it continues to go down, rarther than returning to its usual level). Typically most countries in the EU have a rate that is about double that in the US.
Something that may be hard for Americans to appreciate is just how severe the social effects of high unemployment can be. Sure, in any EU country you will not find people starving, or going without basic medical care, but you will find families that have been unemployed for generations. You should consider what life is like for those who face the prospect of never having a real job.
It is also worth pointing out that the US actually spends quite a lot on social welfare programs. The US government spends more money per capita, than most EU countries, on health and education. No one starves in the US, and the unemployed do get medical coverge through the medicaid program. The two groups that really have a tough time in the US are illegal immigrants, and those who are employed and make just enough money that they do not qualify for government programs like medicaid.
Actually, tax rates aren't as different as you may think.
Actually the tax rates are very different. In the US the various levels of government take in around 30% of GDP in tax. Most EU governments take in somewhere between 40% and 50% of GDP. Disposable income (per capita, per year) in the US is around US$25k. In most EU countries it is closer to US$15k.
Here are the most recent OECD figures.
You might want to take a look at how each country calculates its unemployment numbers. We are actually about even.
This is entirely false. If you take a look at the standardised rates published by the OECD then the US was at about 6% in '02, while many EU countries were at about 9% (France, Germany, Italy, Spain). The rate in the UK was closer to the US rate.
Freedom of speech is in every EU country's constitution.
The UK doesn't have a constitution (at least not a writen one) and neither does the EU itself (at least not yet). More importantly no EU country has a constitutional protection of free speech that is as stringient as that found in the US. This is not merely a matter of words contained in constitutional documents (after all the constitution of the former Soviet Union had a clause that protected freedom of the press!) but more a matter of how the history of legal interpretation and practice has played out. Most countries in Europe allow curbs on speech that would be rejected out of hand by courts in the US. The case under discussion is a nice example. It would not even be a metter of controversy in the US because there would be no hope what so ever of such a measure surviving in US courts.
No member of the EU country lacks private property rights.
He did not say that they lacked private property entirely. What he said was that EU countries lack the same respect for private propety that is found in the US. As fas as their legal systems go this is true. By world standards private property rights in EU members are reasonably well protected. Even so the protection of private property rights in most EU members falls well short of that found in the US legal system.
Why can't we keep the adminstrators out of these decisions?
Well for one thing they are talking about the software that the government itself will use. It's a little hard to avoid the involvement of government in that decision.
In some places the law requires that machines have a certain minimum probability of paying out. In other places the law merely requires that the probability be displayed on the machine. In either case the only requirement is that the machines have a certain expected return, not a certain actual return. It is, in principle, possible for a given machine to never pay out (although unlikely given the relatively high probabilities of hitting low payouts).
Slot machines don't have cycles. Whether they pay out or not is entirely random (or at least as random as it is possible to make them). Your chance of winning does not increase even slightly if other people have poured piles of money into the machine already.
Here are some other common myths about slot machines.
And just how long before someone creates a smart bullet to home in on the EM emissions of this helmet ...
Anti-radiation missiles are actually pretty expensive, and if they could make them sensitive enough to home in on such low levels of EM-radiation then they would already be using them as anti-tank weapons.
Even when transmiting military radio communications gear is already very stealthy. It uses packets sent on varying frequencies, so there is no constant signal to lock on to.
At no point in recorded history has "fear of punishment" proven an effective mechanism for encouraging public order.
This is not true at all. There is evidence that people, even professional criminals, respond rationally to dis-incentives like increased penalties. In the case of traffic offenses the evidence is rock solid. Increasing fines and other penalties translates very directly into better compliance with the law.
Of course people also respond rationally to incentives. When the relative benefits of crime are huge (as with poor people selling drugs today, or poor people stealing food to survive in the past) then people will still commit crimes. Even more importantly, when the risk of getting caught is small then people will discount the penalties.
For most crimes a combination of severe penalties, and a reasonable chance of getting caught, will deter pretty much anyone from commiting them (except people who are actually nuts, or extemely dim-witted).
Thanks Rummie for PATRIOT I and II...
You probably should blame Ashcroft rather than Rumsfeld for the PATRIOT Act. Rumsfeld is Secretary of Defense, so he does not have much to do with drafting legislation. When he did have something to do with it (back when he was in congress) he had a pretty good record on civil liberties. He was, for example, one of the primary proponents and authors of the original Freedom of Information Act. The recent shift of DoD policy away from keeping reporters as far away from the military as possible, towards having them embedded in military units, was probably due to Rumsfeld.
It's the automatically part I object to.
I don't know how this works where you are, but I can tell you something about how speed cameras were implemented in New Zealand. The police in NZ already use a rule of thumb that anything up to 10 kph over the limit does not get a ticket. Speed cameras were implemented with a similar rule in mind, and in fact the way it used to work was that only the top 15% or so of speeders would get a ticket, so that if most people were speeding on a particular stretch of road, only the worst offenders were prosecuted. Recently the policy has changed so that the 10 kph rule is now uniformly applied, but that still means that you will not get a ticket for just being slightly over the limit.