New Hampshire is making the news on each of these cases because we have a flock of activists that come down on the state like a ton of bricks each time one of these incidents happens. That particular incident in Weare started out when two friends of some activists got pulled over in a routine traffic stop. They called an activist alert hotline to let their friends know about the stop, and within minutes half a dozen people showed up to video the cops. The cops reacted by charging several people with "wiretapping," all of whom ended up going to court over it, and at least one of whom is now suing the town over civil rights violations.
Here's the blog of one of the activists who's following these cases closely (and has one of his own wending through the courts).
And here's a bill at the State House to fix this mess. All of those sponsoring reps are libertarians, by the way (not as in the "Libertarian Party," but as in highly rated by a non-partisan liberty lobbyist group). Out of 400 state representatives, we have maybe 40-50 staunchly pro-liberty reps in office. The chair of the subcommittee hearing this bill was the NHLA's legislator of the year for 2011. Can you say the same about your state?
N.H. was chosen by the FSP because, of the fifty states, it's the freest. It's by no means "free" by most libertarians' standards. But with almost a thousand FSPers in the state, and over a hundred of those active in the political system, it probably will be soon.
People here joke about how N.H. has two seasons: Winter, and "preparing for winter." Yet, our winters really aren't that much longer than typical: Snow usually comes in late November or December, and the melt comes by late March. Snow on the ground is gone by late April. You'll have the sporadic snowstorm in October or as late as May, but that hardly qualifies the state as "8 months of winter."
I'm using Grafton as my reference point, because that's where I am. South of Concord, the weather is not noticeably different than Massachusetts. The seacoast area is even milder due to the ocean. North of the "Notches" (the mountainous region that attracts the tourists, approx. from the town of Conway and up), the cold might start a month earlier and end a month later. The year still isn't 2/3 "winter" though.
Or at least not in any political faction that describes itself either as liberal or conservative.
Placing science first in politics is the tacit acceptance of utilitarianism or technocracy as the guiding principle or ideology. Liberalism is supposed to be about placing liberty first. And conservatives claim to be trying to bring back "traditional American values," which certainly includes liberty.
Very often you see this tacit acceptance of utilitarianism (the government should regulate anything that's harmful) and technocracy (what the experts say "is king") in political debates over policy decisions. For example, take two people debating over climate change, with one person citing data that supports climate change and the other citing data that discredits it. Often the whole point of the debate is actually whether or not some new policy should exist, but both people immediately attack the policy decision from the science angle: If global warming is real, obviously the government should pass these regulations! If global warming isn't real, obviously they shouldn't! Both people have already, tacitly, accepted that the government ought to pass the policy merely if the scientific data is correct, without addressing a deeper question that should be asked first: In a so-called "free society," which purports to respect things like personal freedom, property rights, &c., should the government even be legislating this particular topic in the first place, regardless of whether or not such regulations might stop or prevent some harm? Even if the policy might prevent some sort of physical harm, does the policy infringe upon human freedom?
As for the article, the whole thing is a straw man: Conservatives who "deny" climate change are in fact putting facts first; they are making the science "king" -- they're just presenting their own facts and data that discredit rather than support climate change, and basing their policy decisions on that. Both parties nowadays, while claiming to support "liberty" (albeit in slightly different ways) are in fact both utilitarian and technocratic. Only minority factions such as constitutionalists or libertarians seem to be willing to address the climate change debate from the deeper ethical and moral angle.
The moment Gates used the word patent, it became about rent-seeking. Patents -- paying the government for a monopoly privilege over an invention -- are a perfect example of the exact definition you posted.
The FDA is very conservative -- that much is clear. Perhaps *too* conservative, especially in the case of patients who are dying -- but there's a good reason for them to be conservative.
Why, exactly? It's better that people get sick or die naturally, than get sick or die from a treatment's side-effects?
Yes, take a look at alcohol: How the U.S. Government outlawed it and created their own problem of criminal gangs back in the 1920s, and how after the law was repealed, in large part because of the crime problem, the violence surrounding alcohol trade subsided.
On the topic of who's to blame, there are only two legitimate ways of assigning responsibility for something: An action is either (a) the responsibility of the individual who is closest to the act in question and who made the actual choice to initiate the act, or (b) the responsibility of people further away from the act but who knew or should have known that their choices would directly cause someone else to choose to commit the act in question, and a different choice on their part would cause that someone else to choose not to commit the act. You can't just blame anyone or everyone tangentially connected to a problem, because everyone is connected somehow (e.g., the "six degrees of separation" concept).
So, either the violence committed by the drug gangs is (a) solely their responsibility, because they are the ones choosing to use violence, whereas they could choose to use other methods, or (b) the violence is the responsibility of the government, because it is the government who passed laws that it knows or should have known will result in these gangs making the choice to use violence, and if they hadn't passed these laws, the gangs wouldn't be committing violence.
Drug consumers cannot be blamed under either of these models. Obviously they can't be blamed under "(a)", as the drug consumer is not committing the violence himself. And two, no one drug consumer choosing to buy, or choosing not to buy, will affect whether or not the gangs choose to continue using violence, so they can't be blamed under "(b)" either. One can assign responsibility to the government under "(b)" here because a single act of the government will either lead, or not lead, to the gangs choosing to using violence. No drug consumer has that sort of influence. There are millions, all of whom are individuals who have no control over the millions of other individual drug consumers.
Personally, I favor "(a)" because I believe an individual is always responsible for their own choices (unless they were outright forced into a situation by another, but that's beyond the scope of this post). To say otherwise is to essentially eschew free will. The moral responsibility for the gang violence lies with the gangs themselves. However, I understand that in a practical sense, "(b)" is often a useful way of looking at things; if person A does something that makes person B behave badly, blaming A and trying to convince them to change their ways, which will in turn make B stop behaving badly, is, practically speaking, sometimes the correct solution. But your suggestion, of blaming individuals only tangentially related, and whose choices will have no effect whatsoever on these gangs' choice to use violence, is no solution at all.
The article about the Anonymous hacking says nothing about their motives. It doesn't say or even imply this is in support of the gangs, or even in opposition to the government for some gang-related actions in which the government is engaged. There may be a connection, but there's no information out there (yet) stating this. So why, just like in this story yesterday, is some sort of spurious link being drawn between two unrelated events?
1. Whoever earns more than $8,000.00 (8 thousand pesos) biweekly. (underline in black whoever earns between 20 and 50 thousand pesos monthly)...
Advise them that after October 1 they must pay a "tax" of 50 percent of their salary and annual bonus.
Not only a tax, but a graduated income tax. Ever notice that the bigger a criminal gang becomes, the more indistinguishable from "government" it becomes?
Using computer algorithms to trade at millisecond resolution is not incompatible with adding security checks, suspicious activity reporting, and so on, to said algorithms.
No, the question is more like me saying: "How does a human being stealing your car have anything to do with the fact that Google can return a million search results in 0.15 seconds?"
In other words, the fraudster's crime had nothing to do with computer algorithms doing the trading, nor the trading taking place at millisecond resolutions.
Ultimately the purpose of any bureaucracy becomes to simply protect its own existence and make itself grow in order to further protect and secure its existence. At the ground level, it's just the employees, subconsciously or otherwise, ensuring their own job security. Higher up, it's parasitic leaders intoxicated with their own power and continually wanting more. "Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." This is true in any bureaucratic entity, such as large corporations, not just the government. Government is even more dangerous, though, because unlike private entities, they're the only entity that can actually get away with using force to get their way.
Climate change is the biggest boon to ever come along for the security of any agency who is tasked with environmental protection.
How big is the budget for the EPA or the equivalent fifty state-level agencies, or the thousands of local agencies, committees, and boards devoted to environmental issues, e.g., planning boards? How many people do these agencies employ? (Granted, not all of this is devoted to climate change -- yet, but that's quickly becoming the biggest environmental "concern" that these bureaucracies are tackling.) That's an awful lot of bureaucrats.
How much money would the government collect with a "carbon tax" or their "cap and trade" schemes? How much money do they already collect for environmental regulatory compliance, licensing, certification, and so on? That's a lot of money that can create an awful lot of new bureaucrats.
And this is just the United States --- a country that has, indeed, been relatively resistant to passing climate change laws and regulations. Most of the developed countries around the world, such as in Europe, are a lot less resistant.
The system seems designed to encode what the patient tells the doctor about the cause of the injury, not just information relevant to treating the injury. (It's a government-designed system, big surprise.) So if the doctor knows their sexual orientation, it'll get encoded in the injury code.
Just like the "walked into a lamp-post" one. Does it matter if it was a lamp-post as opposed to a telephone pole, a sign-post, or a mailbox? No, but they'll still encode that particular detail.
Climate science has policy implications: Every bit of new pro-climate change science that comes out aids the government in justifying its own expansion: New laws, new regulations, new or expanded bureaucracies, new taxes. Exoplanetary research has none of these policy implications. In a word, people don't care enough to pick apart the research.
Worse, climate science is very often done by scientists either directly working for governments or being funded by governments via grants, so when the conclusions of these scientists benefit said governments -- providing them with justifications for expanding their powers -- there's a clear conflict of interest. Any thinking person should see their conclusions as suspect, just as suspect as when research "denying" climate change is funded by the oil companies. Exoplanetary research suffers from no such conflicts of interest.
...with regulations in place to prevent the kind of bullshit that is happening at present.
Considering that the stock market has been regulated since the 1930s, that they continually add new regulations, and that there are now an enormous number of regulations in place that still don't seem to be "prevent[ing] the kind of bullshit that is happening," what makes you think any more regulations will solve the problem?
And yet the idiots on Cops talk (and consent to a search) every time.
Of course they do. Do you think the people who produce Cops are going to use the footage of the suspects who invoke their rights? It would make the cops look like idiots (or the bad guys, depending on how the cop reacts), and might teach people a thing or two about defending themselves against "authority" figures.
The majority of people seem to think they can talk their way out of a ticket / arrest, probably because they've been told they should always cooperate with police officers no matter what,...
The early adherents of the Abrahamic religions claimed that their belief system was unlike any other of the day, because they worshiped a living god while all the other religions worshiped dead or inanimate idols.
Every belief system possesses enough unique elements that set it apart from others, that anyone could claim that their own belief system, with the proper distinctions highlighted, is "unlike any other."
How do you think this would turn out in 100 years? We live in a democracy. I am imagining an Armageddon scenario where we descend into a second dark age because Evangelicals wanted to rid the world of the scientific process. Now, I don't believe that is the most likely scenario, but in any case it scares me.
So, really, how do you think this would turn out? Remember, it's likely that you're smarter than 90% of the people in this country, let alone this planet.
The idea that we'd end up with such a scenario is only possible if the Evangelicals win the current battle --- that is, if they're able to push the universal/compulsory school system into teaching their beliefs. That's not what I'm advocating: I'm advocating letting people who believe in this stuff teach it to their own children, and let those who don't, don't, with no interference in either direction. I think such a scenario would turn out just fine; Evangelicals are often loud and obnoxious but they don't make up an overwhelming percentage of the population. There'd be small enclaves of these people around the country, and without the ability to use force to coerce people into their belief system (either via the force of the State or by actually taking up arms themselves), they'd have to rely on persuasion to convince people to join them. Do you think they'd really ever be successful if they could only use persuasion? And if they were actually able to persuade so many people to join them that there are no longer enough adherents to science for it to continue as a viable belief system, well that's just the way it is: Belief systems wither and die all the time. If the proponents of a system have to resort to coercion to keep it alive, maybe it deserves to wither and die.
Also, this, like most issues of freedom of choice, is something that democracy should not apply to. Democracy, at least in our supposed constitutional republic, founded on principals and philosophies put forth by people such as John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, that government exists solely to protect "life, liberty, and property" or "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and not founded on the "general will" philosophy common to the French Revolution, is merely supposed be a method of electing our leaders, who in turn are only supposed to legislate within that framework of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Democracy is not a method to allow one interest group to force its belief systems on others or force others to subsidize said belief system.
I disagree that the scientific process is an equivalent belief system to Christianity.
That's fine. And I disagree that it's an equivalent belief system, too. I'm not a post-modernist who believes that all belief systems are equally valid, but I do believe that all people have an equal right to hold onto their own preferred belief systems. I personally believe that science and empiricism are far superior methods to learning about the world than revelation and received knowledge. But I also understand that a lot of people don't, and I shouldn't be able to force my idea of a superior system on them or their families using the power of the State.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't really say I'd wish either on them.
These people are miserable, and a bunch of assholes, but everything they do is legitimately covered by freedom of speech or religion.
New Hampshire is making the news on each of these cases because we have a flock of activists that come down on the state like a ton of bricks each time one of these incidents happens. That particular incident in Weare started out when two friends of some activists got pulled over in a routine traffic stop. They called an activist alert hotline to let their friends know about the stop, and within minutes half a dozen people showed up to video the cops. The cops reacted by charging several people with "wiretapping," all of whom ended up going to court over it, and at least one of whom is now suing the town over civil rights violations.
Here's the blog of one of the activists who's following these cases closely (and has one of his own wending through the courts).
And here's a bill at the State House to fix this mess. All of those sponsoring reps are libertarians, by the way (not as in the "Libertarian Party," but as in highly rated by a non-partisan liberty lobbyist group). Out of 400 state representatives, we have maybe 40-50 staunchly pro-liberty reps in office. The chair of the subcommittee hearing this bill was the NHLA's legislator of the year for 2011. Can you say the same about your state?
N.H. was chosen by the FSP because, of the fifty states, it's the freest. It's by no means "free" by most libertarians' standards. But with almost a thousand FSPers in the state, and over a hundred of those active in the political system, it probably will be soon.
People here joke about how N.H. has two seasons: Winter, and "preparing for winter." Yet, our winters really aren't that much longer than typical: Snow usually comes in late November or December, and the melt comes by late March. Snow on the ground is gone by late April. You'll have the sporadic snowstorm in October or as late as May, but that hardly qualifies the state as "8 months of winter."
I'm using Grafton as my reference point, because that's where I am. South of Concord, the weather is not noticeably different than Massachusetts. The seacoast area is even milder due to the ocean. North of the "Notches" (the mountainous region that attracts the tourists, approx. from the town of Conway and up), the cold might start a month earlier and end a month later. The year still isn't 2/3 "winter" though.
Those 45 people should move somewhere like New Hampshire.
I would consider it an honor to be picketed by these people. If they're angry, you're probably doing something right.
Try using UTF-8 (1998 technology) if you really want to marvel at the backwardness of Slashdot's comment handling.
But at least the site is stuffed full of AJAX now. So full of AJAX I had to enable NoScript here in order to make it usable.
Or at least not in any political faction that describes itself either as liberal or conservative.
Placing science first in politics is the tacit acceptance of utilitarianism or technocracy as the guiding principle or ideology. Liberalism is supposed to be about placing liberty first. And conservatives claim to be trying to bring back "traditional American values," which certainly includes liberty.
Very often you see this tacit acceptance of utilitarianism (the government should regulate anything that's harmful) and technocracy (what the experts say "is king") in political debates over policy decisions. For example, take two people debating over climate change, with one person citing data that supports climate change and the other citing data that discredits it. Often the whole point of the debate is actually whether or not some new policy should exist, but both people immediately attack the policy decision from the science angle: If global warming is real, obviously the government should pass these regulations! If global warming isn't real, obviously they shouldn't! Both people have already, tacitly, accepted that the government ought to pass the policy merely if the scientific data is correct, without addressing a deeper question that should be asked first: In a so-called "free society," which purports to respect things like personal freedom, property rights, &c., should the government even be legislating this particular topic in the first place, regardless of whether or not such regulations might stop or prevent some harm? Even if the policy might prevent some sort of physical harm, does the policy infringe upon human freedom?
As for the article, the whole thing is a straw man: Conservatives who "deny" climate change are in fact putting facts first; they are making the science "king" -- they're just presenting their own facts and data that discredit rather than support climate change, and basing their policy decisions on that. Both parties nowadays, while claiming to support "liberty" (albeit in slightly different ways) are in fact both utilitarian and technocratic. Only minority factions such as constitutionalists or libertarians seem to be willing to address the climate change debate from the deeper ethical and moral angle.
The moment Gates used the word patent, it became about rent-seeking. Patents -- paying the government for a monopoly privilege over an invention -- are a perfect example of the exact definition you posted.
People will begin associating suffering animals with porn and want to view more suffering animals. And get off on it.
Leave it to PETA to bring back "crush" videos.
They are all granted government monopolies: Patents.
Why, exactly? It's better that people get sick or die naturally, than get sick or die from a treatment's side-effects?
Yes, take a look at alcohol: How the U.S. Government outlawed it and created their own problem of criminal gangs back in the 1920s, and how after the law was repealed, in large part because of the crime problem, the violence surrounding alcohol trade subsided.
On the topic of who's to blame, there are only two legitimate ways of assigning responsibility for something: An action is either (a) the responsibility of the individual who is closest to the act in question and who made the actual choice to initiate the act, or (b) the responsibility of people further away from the act but who knew or should have known that their choices would directly cause someone else to choose to commit the act in question, and a different choice on their part would cause that someone else to choose not to commit the act. You can't just blame anyone or everyone tangentially connected to a problem, because everyone is connected somehow (e.g., the "six degrees of separation" concept).
So, either the violence committed by the drug gangs is (a) solely their responsibility, because they are the ones choosing to use violence, whereas they could choose to use other methods, or (b) the violence is the responsibility of the government, because it is the government who passed laws that it knows or should have known will result in these gangs making the choice to use violence, and if they hadn't passed these laws, the gangs wouldn't be committing violence.
Drug consumers cannot be blamed under either of these models. Obviously they can't be blamed under "(a)", as the drug consumer is not committing the violence himself. And two, no one drug consumer choosing to buy, or choosing not to buy, will affect whether or not the gangs choose to continue using violence, so they can't be blamed under "(b)" either. One can assign responsibility to the government under "(b)" here because a single act of the government will either lead, or not lead, to the gangs choosing to using violence. No drug consumer has that sort of influence. There are millions, all of whom are individuals who have no control over the millions of other individual drug consumers.
Personally, I favor "(a)" because I believe an individual is always responsible for their own choices (unless they were outright forced into a situation by another, but that's beyond the scope of this post). To say otherwise is to essentially eschew free will. The moral responsibility for the gang violence lies with the gangs themselves. However, I understand that in a practical sense, "(b)" is often a useful way of looking at things; if person A does something that makes person B behave badly, blaming A and trying to convince them to change their ways, which will in turn make B stop behaving badly, is, practically speaking, sometimes the correct solution. But your suggestion, of blaming individuals only tangentially related, and whose choices will have no effect whatsoever on these gangs' choice to use violence, is no solution at all.
The article about the Anonymous hacking says nothing about their motives. It doesn't say or even imply this is in support of the gangs, or even in opposition to the government for some gang-related actions in which the government is engaged. There may be a connection, but there's no information out there (yet) stating this. So why, just like in this story yesterday, is some sort of spurious link being drawn between two unrelated events?
Not only a tax, but a graduated income tax. Ever notice that the bigger a criminal gang becomes, the more indistinguishable from "government" it becomes?
Using computer algorithms to trade at millisecond resolution is not incompatible with adding security checks, suspicious activity reporting, and so on, to said algorithms.
No, the question is more like me saying: "How does a human being stealing your car have anything to do with the fact that Google can return a million search results in 0.15 seconds?"
In other words, the fraudster's crime had nothing to do with computer algorithms doing the trading, nor the trading taking place at millisecond resolutions.
I assume you have citations for such bold and declaratory assertions.
Right?
How does a human being engaged in $2B worth of fraud say anything about computer algorithms and millisecond-level trading?
Ultimately the purpose of any bureaucracy becomes to simply protect its own existence and make itself grow in order to further protect and secure its existence. At the ground level, it's just the employees, subconsciously or otherwise, ensuring their own job security. Higher up, it's parasitic leaders intoxicated with their own power and continually wanting more. "Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." This is true in any bureaucratic entity, such as large corporations, not just the government. Government is even more dangerous, though, because unlike private entities, they're the only entity that can actually get away with using force to get their way.
Climate change is the biggest boon to ever come along for the security of any agency who is tasked with environmental protection.
How big is the budget for the EPA or the equivalent fifty state-level agencies, or the thousands of local agencies, committees, and boards devoted to environmental issues, e.g., planning boards? How many people do these agencies employ? (Granted, not all of this is devoted to climate change -- yet, but that's quickly becoming the biggest environmental "concern" that these bureaucracies are tackling.) That's an awful lot of bureaucrats.
How much money would the government collect with a "carbon tax" or their "cap and trade" schemes? How much money do they already collect for environmental regulatory compliance, licensing, certification, and so on? That's a lot of money that can create an awful lot of new bureaucrats.
And this is just the United States --- a country that has, indeed, been relatively resistant to passing climate change laws and regulations. Most of the developed countries around the world, such as in Europe, are a lot less resistant.
The system seems designed to encode what the patient tells the doctor about the cause of the injury, not just information relevant to treating the injury. (It's a government-designed system, big surprise.) So if the doctor knows their sexual orientation, it'll get encoded in the injury code.
Just like the "walked into a lamp-post" one. Does it matter if it was a lamp-post as opposed to a telephone pole, a sign-post, or a mailbox? No, but they'll still encode that particular detail.
Climate science has policy implications: Every bit of new pro-climate change science that comes out aids the government in justifying its own expansion: New laws, new regulations, new or expanded bureaucracies, new taxes. Exoplanetary research has none of these policy implications. In a word, people don't care enough to pick apart the research.
Worse, climate science is very often done by scientists either directly working for governments or being funded by governments via grants, so when the conclusions of these scientists benefit said governments -- providing them with justifications for expanding their powers -- there's a clear conflict of interest. Any thinking person should see their conclusions as suspect, just as suspect as when research "denying" climate change is funded by the oil companies. Exoplanetary research suffers from no such conflicts of interest.
That's the difference.
Considering that the stock market has been regulated since the 1930s, that they continually add new regulations, and that there are now an enormous number of regulations in place that still don't seem to be "prevent[ing] the kind of bullshit that is happening," what makes you think any more regulations will solve the problem?
Of course they do. Do you think the people who produce Cops are going to use the footage of the suspects who invoke their rights? It would make the cops look like idiots (or the bad guys, depending on how the cop reacts), and might teach people a thing or two about defending themselves against "authority" figures.
And where do you think they learn that?
The early adherents of the Abrahamic religions claimed that their belief system was unlike any other of the day, because they worshiped a living god while all the other religions worshiped dead or inanimate idols.
Every belief system possesses enough unique elements that set it apart from others, that anyone could claim that their own belief system, with the proper distinctions highlighted, is "unlike any other."
The idea that we'd end up with such a scenario is only possible if the Evangelicals win the current battle --- that is, if they're able to push the universal/compulsory school system into teaching their beliefs. That's not what I'm advocating: I'm advocating letting people who believe in this stuff teach it to their own children, and let those who don't, don't, with no interference in either direction. I think such a scenario would turn out just fine; Evangelicals are often loud and obnoxious but they don't make up an overwhelming percentage of the population. There'd be small enclaves of these people around the country, and without the ability to use force to coerce people into their belief system (either via the force of the State or by actually taking up arms themselves), they'd have to rely on persuasion to convince people to join them. Do you think they'd really ever be successful if they could only use persuasion? And if they were actually able to persuade so many people to join them that there are no longer enough adherents to science for it to continue as a viable belief system, well that's just the way it is: Belief systems wither and die all the time. If the proponents of a system have to resort to coercion to keep it alive, maybe it deserves to wither and die.
Also, this, like most issues of freedom of choice, is something that democracy should not apply to. Democracy, at least in our supposed constitutional republic, founded on principals and philosophies put forth by people such as John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, that government exists solely to protect "life, liberty, and property" or "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and not founded on the "general will" philosophy common to the French Revolution, is merely supposed be a method of electing our leaders, who in turn are only supposed to legislate within that framework of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Democracy is not a method to allow one interest group to force its belief systems on others or force others to subsidize said belief system.
That's fine. And I disagree that it's an equivalent belief system, too. I'm not a post-modernist who believes that all belief systems are equally valid, but I do believe that all people have an equal right to hold onto their own preferred belief systems. I personally believe that science and empiricism are far superior methods to learning about the world than revelation and received knowledge. But I also understand that a lot of people don't, and I shouldn't be able to force my idea of a superior system on them or their families using the power of the State.