Funny, stuff like that has ALREADY happened under the watch of the EPA.
Of course it happens under the EPA. It'll happen under any system you choose. There is no utopia as you said earlier. I'm not claiming a government solution is perfect, I'm claiming it is better than a market solution.
My point is: It is far easier for the sorts of things I described to occur under a market system because anybody polluting in a market system find it far easier to conceal their activities - there is never the possibility of inspectors actually coming onto the land, auditing the amount of waste output and questioning where it goes - it can all go on quite happily in private, and no one has to know till the effects finally leak out to be detectable beyond his borders.
Sure, they can still hide things from inspectors, but you have to admit, that would be significantly more work.
Personally I would prefer to see a hybrid system. I think it is painfully stupid that can't sue someone for polluting your land. replying on the EPA to take care of everything is stupid. relying on people to sue each other (what if the immediate neighbours don't have the money to sue, what if they don't notice till half of them are dead?) as the only means to check what is going is equally stupid.
You're trying to demonstrate the inconsistancy of the libertarian position by using extreme wacky examples. So what? I will freely admit that we libertarians are frequently inconsistant. But I dare you to show me a platform from any other party that is fully consistant.
I do apologise if I've chosen the wrong person to pick on. An admission that the policies etc. are inconsistent (just like everybody else) is all I was really looking for. I've argued with far too many people who would never admit that.
I freely admit that my examples are bizarre and wacky and quite in the extreme. They are still conceivably possible of course.
All I really wanted to argue was that the point where you draw the line on what weapons should be legal, and what should be proscribed is fairly arbitrary - there's no perfectly rational answer, but simply a variety of opinions about what is actually practical. It seems, however, that you were already well aware of this - so again, I apologise if I picked the wrong person to try and make my point against.
I read it. There are a lot of people in Texas that own a lot of land that could quite happily contain tactical nuke blasts. That is a real world situation. They can't police that area of land themselves with a rifle, but give them a nuke, or some other high powered explosives and they can take out any tresspassers with only a little video surveillance.
Equally a misfired burst of automatic rifle fire can kill innocent people when there's a burglar in your apartment - those rounds can go through thin apartment walls fairly well. That is a real world situation. Should fully automatic rifles be banned for people living in apartment buildings?
I'm quite happy to run with real practical policy, and realising that reasonable restrictions may be required on weapons that kill with remarkable ease would be a good start.
I object to libertarians who claim their "Yes, to this and this, no to that" is based on some lovely clean glasslike logic - it's not. They've got their concept of what is practical, and I have mine, and neither stance is inherently more cleanly rational than the other.
Not at all. The certainty of a reactive lawsuit is a wonderful preventative.... ou mention the atmosphere, but if you cause noxious emissions to drift over the fence into the air on my property, then you have still trespassed. If you dump sludge into the a river two states upstream from me and it winds up in my well, you have still trespassed. Dump waste into the middle of the ocean and if it ends up on my beach, you have trespassed.
I'm not sure you're quite getting it. I can bury my pollutants on my own property, and you'll never know - well, not until a 4 decades later when the groundwater is polluted in the whole area and your property is now worthless. But you'll file suit against me? Unfortunately, after having successfully milked all the profits I could from the land and the factory, I moved away, retired, and, most regrettably, I passed away a couple of years ago at age 82 in a very comfortable home in the Bahamas. Good luck with the lawsuit though...
Wrong. A nuke cannot be used defensively. You cannot use it without a huge collateral loss of innocent life.
What if I own a lot of land? A small tactical nuke could be quite happily contained, and it's my land so I can do what I want with it right?
Just because you can't think f a situation where you would use a nuclear weapon for your own defense on your own land doesn't mean that noone is in that position.
If I live in a cubicle farm where there is always someone in the next cubicle 3 feet away in every direction I sure as hell can't use a high powered or fully automatic rifle for my own defense with causing considerable collateral loss of innocent life. Does that mean I we should ban automatic rifles?
Pollution is trespass. You dump your garbage over the fence into my yard, you are trespassing. You dump your chemical waste into the stream that runs through my yard, you're also trespassing.
There's no need for an EPA as long as there is property. It doesn't even matter if this property is public or private, since the trespass still occurs. The EPA may be a solution, but it isn't the ONLY solution, or even the best solution.
The catch with this is that it tends to be ractive rather than preventative. If your neighbour is relatively sly about dumping his pollution onto your property you may not find out about it for quite some time. By that stage, perhaps your daughter and wife are already dead from groundwater poisoning. The EPA has the right to go onto your neighbours property for inspections, to try and see what he is doing with any waste he produces. Sure, he can hide things from them too, but the right to inspect his property, and his actions makes a significant difference. In your purely property law based system your neighbour could easily deny you any such opportunity to see what he was doing.
And then there's dumping from your neighbours property into unowned property. Unless everything (including the atmosphere - else you can dump pollutant gases) is owned there is always the possibility of the destruction of valuable property which can have potentially harmful downstream (literally) effects that won't become apparent for considerable time (consider, for example, groundwater contamination - once it's done it's done, yet it could take a decade or more for it to spread far enough to be detectable on owned land.
Again, the EPAs ability to inspect at the source is a huge advantage in preventing such issues before they occur (and turn out to be effectively irreversible).
There is much evidence that the 16th ammendment was NEVER RATIFIED by congress. It should be repealed, and the federal government should have NO power to tax individuals directly. Excise and tariffs can support a libertarian form of government.
What bullshit is this? Let's assume you are perfectly correct, and the 16th amendment is invalid, and gets repealed. Congress and the senate can add new amendments to the constitution. We just had them attempt to do so. Are you honestly telling me that there would be even the slightest difficulty in raising the 75% majority required to get a new amendment passed making taxation perfectly legal? These are politicians we're talking about. They live off you tax money. They won't blink at passing such an amendment with 100% consensus. And all of that will ber perfectly and legal as laid out in the constitution.
If taxation is not legal, they can make it so faster than you can blink.
The market is supposed to be moderated by the consumers. How do we give the consumers the knowledge they need to moderate the market intelligently?
Well, the first step is to make sure all the media channels are owned by various large corporate groups with vaguely similar agendas. Breaking news of corporate scandals is only worthwhile if it is a direct competitor - general corporate scandals will only make the consumers more suspicious of what you're up to.
Oh, I'm sorry, by intelligently you didn't mean for the benefit of large corporations?
Free markets work well, and are decently self regulating when those involved and making decisions are well informed. To be well informed you need information. As long as we continue down the road toward all information being owned, we are treading down a road where those that have the financial power to own the information also have the power to skew and manipulate the market.
Note that I an not claiming that all information must be free either - merely that, at the least, a balance needs to be struck, even if that balance is simply the acceptance and wider use of Copyleft style licenses.
I have voeted Libertarian the last 3 elections but this year the stakes are too high.
The stakes are too high? Isn't that just another way of saying that you've bought into the scaremongering of one side or the other?
As long as people keep voting to stop what they (think they) hate rather that voting for what they want, the negative attack campaigns scaremongering on either side of the fence and always threatening how it will be "So much worse under the other guy" will continue.
The really sad thing is that most of the scaremongering is crap. They take positions, and they sput rhetoric, but very little actually gets enacted (of the scaremongering claims - plenty of bad stauff gets enacted, but both sides tend to share equally in that).
I have to ask, in all seriousness, is George Lucas running out of money or something? The release of the DVDs (reworked of course), along with the prequels, a new Star Wars TV series in the pipeline, and talk of doing a sequel trilogy - at a time when demand and interest in Star Wars is declining. I was under the impression that Lucas was quite happily independently wealthy so why the sudden push for more and more Star Wars? Rick Berman I can understand - He wants to bleed the series for every last drop of cash now while he still has influence because if he gives Star Trek a rest for 5 years people will likely come to their senses and fire his ass - But why is Lucas maing a cash grab?
It's worth pointing out that, in fact, the entire production costs of all three films (not using ingenious studio accounting of course) were paid for by the box office of Fellowship of the Ring alone (DVD of course, was pure gravy). So in fact it runs more like
The Lord of the Rings 1: Profit! The Lord of the Rings 2: Profit!! The Lord of the Rings 3: Profit!!!
"The Republicans are the party of small government and responsible fiscal policy. Really? The current Republican president has grown the government by 7.5% and created the largest budget deficit in history. That's just Bush? Interestingly it was the last Republican presidencies, under Bush Snr. and Reagan that were responsible for the previous record for a budget deficit. Don't tell me the federal government didn't balloon overr that era too (I unfortnately do not have figures for that). "
The deficits were caused by cutting taxes, not by increasing govt. size significantly. They believe tax cuts prime the pump for stimulating economic growth in a recession. Democrats refer to tax cuts as govt. spending, which shows how warped their view of reality is.
I've taken a moment to emphasise a phrase in your quoting of my original post. If you think Clinton is to blame for making the federal government too large, then why, exactly, did Bush make it bigger in stead of smaller? The federal government has continued to grow fairly steadily regardless of which party was in power.
Has anyone else wondered if there's a competition between Star Wars and Star Trek as to who can drive their respective franchises into the ground farther and faster?
I think a Star Wars TV series is a great step forward. Rick Berman has been well ahead of Lucas for years now, due to the sheer volume of crap that can be produced with a weekly TV show. As hard as Lucas has worked, particularly with the new reworked special edition versions for DVD, Berman has, what, 5 seasons of Voyager behind him (okay, disregarding time travel, holodeck, and other "it never really happened episodes, maybe only 1 or 2 seasons)? You just can't compete with that sort of thing. While continuing to make some of the worst Star Trek feature films ever, Berman has been pumping out Enterprise.
But that's all going to change. Lucas has wised up. His glory years (Caravan of Courage, and Battle for Endor anyone?) are behind him, but he's still capable of of making everything cutesy and pointless for no good reason. Given an opportunity to get crap on air on a weekly basis can really bury the franchise - you only need to look at Droids, or the Star Wars Christmas Special to see what truly amazing things Lucas can do with the TV medium. That level of spectacularly awful work could undercut Berman's years of effort in under a season.
Star Wars' prospects are definitely looking up (or down, as the case may be).
I'd much rather wait the required time for proper digital paper - you know the stuff, they brand it variaously as eInk, and ePaper, and what have you, but it is decidedly different from LCD screens: for a start it uses reflected light like, you know, normal paper.
It is, very slowly, coming to market. I think sony is releasing a device that uses it. Okay, it's an eBook reader and still a little on the clunky side (though still as slim as similar device using LCD), but it has the promise to (in the next 5 years or so) get a lot slimmer, and more efficient. What's more it just looks better.
Once that sort of thing really hits the mass market, then using it as a notepad might have some real relevance.
I mean, c'mon, two skull and bones white male connected elite globalist millionaires as the "choices"? How blatant does it have to get?
Indeed. And where does the difference of opinion lie? They bluster and they talk on "major points of difference" but what are they exactly?
Let's start with the major ones.
The Republicans are the party of small government and responsible fiscal policy. Really? The current Republican president has grown the government by 7.5% and created the largest budget deficit in history. That's just Bush? Interestingly it was the last Republican presidencies, under Bush Snr. and Reagan that were responsible for the previous record for a budget deficit. Don't tell me the federal government didn't balloon overr that era too (I unfortnately do not have figures for that).
The Democrats are the party of progressive social policy. That would be why John Kerry doesn't actually support gay marriage then? That would be the Democrats are as supportive of the War on Drugs in its various forms as the Republicans. They are good at scaremongering over social policy - in 2000 we were warned that a vote for Bush would see legal abortions repealed. Bush has had 4 years, and the Republicans have been exceptionally dominant during much of it - is abortion illegal? No.
And for those Republicans who want the more conservative social policy - has Bush actually done anything about abortion? No, not really. For all his bluster about constituitonal amendments, has Bush actually done anything about gay marriage? No, he supported the single action that was the least likely to succeed, and have any real effect. It was all rhetoric - all for show.
Okay, so on the major issues, where the parties claim they are different, they turn out to be very similar in practice. Then surely there are plenty of differences on minor issues? Sure, if you dig around you can find plenty of reasons why the Democrats and Republicans differ. If you look at most of the broad issues that matter however, you'll find they agree. They argue so vehemently over the trivialities, they polarise their supporters into an "Us v. Them" mentality so well, that people have come to believe these are the only issues that matter - that they aren't as trivial as they appear.
Take some time out. Watch a debate between a couple of the major third parties and see all the other important issues that come up - issues that are usually not even discussed by Republicans or Democrats, but when you hear them, truly are worthy of at least having a discussion about. Whether you agree with these candidates or not, they have views that are certainly worthy of being heard and discussed.
Jedidiah.
Re:Why do you think we have the 2nd Amendment?
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Oh, we'd probably have some scary moments. A United States that's reached that political point is not going to be a pleasant point anyway.,/i>
Very very true. If things ever get to the point where you are rebelling against the government as a mass movement of serious significance, things are very bad indeed, and nothing will be pleasant about anything that results.
However, (a) it'd still be possible to prevail, and (b) as I've said, the main benefit is in the dissusasive factor, not in the actual reality of a revolution.
(a) You would probably have an almost equal chance of prevailing without a single assault rifle.
(b) In other words, it is of no real practical merit.
I should probably point out, at about this stage, that I am not, in fact, in favour of most gun control measures. I don't believe the assault rifle ban, as it was framed, has been at all useful in cutting down on crime and gun related deaths. I think the issue with gun deaths is more a cultural issue in the US than an issue of availability of guns.
I do believe, however, that it is time to reconsider the second amendment. It does not mean today anything at all like what it meant at the time it was written. When it was written a well armed citizenry had a very good expectation of overthrowing a government should it feel so inclined. That is no longer the case. It simply has no practical value in an attempted revolution. It is not dissuasive if it won't actually work.
Gun owenrship deserves to be debated on the actual merits in the modern world. Gun control deserves to be debated on whether it is effective, on costs and on value. Gun ownership should not be considered a constitutional right, nor a valid means of keeping the government in check, as it no longer is in the modern world. The founding fathers, while farsighted, could not anticipate everything, and it is time to reconsider the practical value of the second amendment.
Jedidiah.
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
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One way or another, you have to win the US military to your side, because they are going to be the deciding factor. If a dictator is refusing to step down and still has the entire US military at his disposal, your assault rifles won't help.
Sway enough people to your cause that a majority of the troops/commanders in the US military side with you, and you won't need any assault rifles to make someone step down - you've got more military might at your disposal than any citizen's milita could ever hope to muster.
Jedidiah.
Re:Why do you think we have the 2nd Amendment?
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[wrt peaceful resistance]And a leader refuses to step down. What then?
Then either the US military sides with you, or it sides against you. If the US military sides with you, then no leader is going to remain standing, if it sides against you, then it isn't going to have any compunctions about wiping you out - and it will have the resources to do that.
The only other situation is a split in the military that ends up fighting with itself - in that situation we're talking about an all out war with heavy ordinance where people with assault rifles aren't going to make too much difference. I guess you could argue this is the situation you're counting on, but it is a fairly narrow range of fairly even divisions of military where the sort of equipment you're talking about will make a hueg difference.
Tell me, what are you going to do with your citizen's militia that has defeated the better part of the US military is going to do when the leader refuses to step down and resorts to what of the nuclear stockpile remains at his disposal? The US possesses a very large number of nuclear weapons in a very wide number of locations - you can't tell me you're going to account for all of them?
Basically, what it comes down to, is that if you're fucked, you're well fucked and no amount of assault rifles is likely to do you an awful lot of good.
The crucial assumption, of course, being that no "modern western government" could turn totalitarian or into a dictatorship, where a leander won't step down just because of the people's wishes.
The crucial assumption is that given a majority of civilians peacefully refusing, the majority of the military would not be under sufficient control of a dictator so as to side with him, and put down any such rebellion. If you are claiming that the dictator can engage the military to fire on unarmed civilian targets, then they sure as hell will fire on armed citizen's militas, and we're back to you vs. the entire US military.
Your supply line extends through the industry. Heck, we ran nearly out of cruise missiles after Gulf War I. If you have an industry resisting what you want (and all the industries that supply the defense contractors that make said weapons, and so forth) you have a problem. Bullets and gunpowder aren't that hard to make and stockpile. Laser-guided bombs are.
Yes, the question is, how much of the pre-existing stockpile is required to put down an attempted rebellion. If we're talking about the utterly ruthless dictator that you are assuming, not all that much (think nuclear). If you're going to claim that the military wouldn't do such a thing... then again, you don't need the guns, you need a peaceful protest, and the US military to mostly line up in support of you.
Jedidiah.
Re:Why do you think we have the 2nd Amendment?
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If an administration ever attempted to turn the United States military against said United States citizenry, there are several differences from Iraq:
Yes, there are certainly differences.
(a) Many members of our military would probably not follow orders to kill US citizens.
Well, that depends really. If the citizenry have already been labelled dangerous terrorists seeking to overthrow the US government I think they may have less conscience in the matter. I would expect the US government to be very effective at handling the media spin on any such incident.
(b) The target count is overwhelming. Our military isn't designed around carpet-bombing any more. An angry populace doesn't have long tank convoys to destroy.
How many people are we talking about here? If we're talking about a majority of the country, you don't need the guns. Just stand there and say no. I can assure you that troops are a lot less likely to fire on unarmed peaceful protestors than they are on people bearing assault rifles. No modern western government is going to manage to stand in the face of the half the population engaging in peaceful civil disobedience. If you have that many people, you don't need the guns!
(c) Resupply wouldn't exist. How long can you keep an A-10 flying without a populace providing fuel and parts for it?
Actually, resupply would be a hell of a lot easier, what with all those bases all over the US fully stocked already. What, you think the technicians and supply crews and all aren't part of the US military?
And again, if we're talking that many people, you don't need the guns. Just stand up and say no.
Jedidiah.
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
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(a) It's hard to convince a complete military to stand against a nation's own people, unless the odds against the people are truly overwhelming. Take the final days of the Soviet Union, for instance -- Soviet troops refused to fire on peaceful protestors. They simply stopped their tanks and waited.
Thank you - that is exactly my point. "Soviet troops refused to fire on peaceful protestors."
An army will likely refuse to fight a peaceful protest. Put them under fire from assault rifles, and they may get a littl edgy. You will be far more effective staging peaceful protests, and engaging in civil disobedience. Many will probably die in such an endeavour (note that Chinese troops had very few compunctions about firing on unarmed protestors!), but in the end it is far more likely to win you reform.
I'll repeat - the guns just aren't a relevant issue these days.
Jedidiah.
Re:Why do you think we have the 2nd Amendment?
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I hate to break it to you, but you really aren't going to overthrow an oppressive regime with just assault rifles. Look at Iraq. There you have a populace that isn't standing an army (all standing armies do these days is get levelled - that's what heavy ordinance is for), but are equipped with not just assualt rifles, but mines, rocket propelled grenades, high explosives and a will to die for their cause. While they are managing to cause serious problems, they are a long way from overthrowing the government as long as the US military remains involved.
Try to overthrow the US government with assault rifles and whatever else you can scrounge, and you'll quickly be labelled a terrorist (to make sure you are alientated and hated by the rest of the country), then quickly and efficiently wiped out by whatever level of force is required - and the force available to the US military scales up remarkably high, you aren't going to win.
Unless you have a serious bargaining chip on hand - serious explosives on a large scale, nuclear weapons, or chemical or biological weapons, you are going to get nowhere. Have any of those, and you'll just ensure a whole lot of civilians get killed when the US government uses any and all force necessary (sacrificing patriotic Americans if required) to rid the world of dangerous terrorists.
You will not strike a functional military balance that will give you any chance in the modern world. The second amendment, as sensible as it was when written, just doesn't mean the same thing in a world with modern weapons and military. Holding weapons will not give you any real advantage against the government.
So if weapons aren't any good, what is? Your weakness. Take a lesson from history, and learn how to effect change in the modern world. Civil disobendience can be effective if it is on a large enough scale. They can't brand you terrorists if you never carry weapons, never make threats, never hurt anyone. They can't just wipe you out without a large chunk of the US population losing faith in their government and joining the movement (presuming that your initial movement is big enough not to be labelled a cult or what have you). That's your only way forward now, the guns just don't mean anything anymore.
Jedidiah.
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
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I would think it would be clear now that in the modern world, with the current state of military technology, unless you are unbelievably powerful, a standing army does very little good. Witness the effectiveness of standing armies in any war in the last 20 years when one side possesses significant military hardware. All a standing army does is paint a nice big spot on the ground for where to drop the heavy ordinance. I think you are deluded if you believe any form of citizen's militia would be able to effectively stand against the current US military.
No, in this modern day and age, with the US military as dominant, and bearing as much high tech military equipment as it does, a standing army is quite pointless. That's why the people now fighting the US are not bothering to stand an army - they are being subversive, they are blending with the populace and striing at soft targets. That's right, to stand against the US military the most effective thing to do is the blend in and make terrorist style strikes.
But wait, if you did that, you can be utterly certain that the US government would label you a terrorist faster than you can blink. Right now their busy reworking their intelligence and security agencies to fight exactly that new kind of war. I don't think you'll stand a chance.
The second amendment was a very fine thought, and utterly sensible at the time. In the modern environment however, it just isn't relevant anymore. You aren't going to overthrow the government with assault rifles - not when you don't have a goodly portion of the US military already on your side (at which point, why are civilians messing with assault rifles!)
Your best chance of effecting true political change is in mass civil disobedience. In a truly united movement that simply says "No!". Carrying an assualt rifle will make no difference - in fact, your message will be far more effective if you stand without it. Take a lesson from Ghandi, and Martin Luther King. That is how to fight the government in the modern world.
Jedidiah.
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
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This is one of those issues which wouldn't be complicated if we could sit down and work out a reasonable comprimise, but of course that's not how we work in America anymore. Gotta stick with either-or's, and the other side are a bunch of wackos or nutcases.
I would (once again) point people in the direction of Fisher's Deduction:
"The more issues a person attempts to crudely shoehorn down into an artifical liberal/conservative dichotomy, the more certain you can be that the person is an American."
Quote it at all those people that constantly have to paint every issue as some arbitrary "Us v.s Them" dichotomy. The more widely the meme gets spread, the more people might actually take a step back and think about issues rather than spouting the prearranged partisan rhetoric.
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Funny, stuff like that has ALREADY happened under the watch of the EPA.
Of course it happens under the EPA. It'll happen under any system you choose. There is no utopia as you said earlier. I'm not claiming a government solution is perfect, I'm claiming it is better than a market solution.
My point is: It is far easier for the sorts of things I described to occur under a market system because anybody polluting in a market system find it far easier to conceal their activities - there is never the possibility of inspectors actually coming onto the land, auditing the amount of waste output and questioning where it goes - it can all go on quite happily in private, and no one has to know till the effects finally leak out to be detectable beyond his borders.
Sure, they can still hide things from inspectors, but you have to admit, that would be significantly more work.
Personally I would prefer to see a hybrid system. I think it is painfully stupid that can't sue someone for polluting your land. replying on the EPA to take care of everything is stupid. relying on people to sue each other (what if the immediate neighbours don't have the money to sue, what if they don't notice till half of them are dead?) as the only means to check what is going is equally stupid.
Jedidiah.
You're trying to demonstrate the inconsistancy of the libertarian position by using extreme wacky examples. So what? I will freely admit that we libertarians are frequently inconsistant. But I dare you to show me a platform from any other party that is fully consistant.
I do apologise if I've chosen the wrong person to pick on. An admission that the policies etc. are inconsistent (just like everybody else) is all I was really looking for. I've argued with far too many people who would never admit that.
I freely admit that my examples are bizarre and wacky and quite in the extreme. They are still conceivably possible of course.
All I really wanted to argue was that the point where you draw the line on what weapons should be legal, and what should be proscribed is fairly arbitrary - there's no perfectly rational answer, but simply a variety of opinions about what is actually practical. It seems, however, that you were already well aware of this - so again, I apologise if I picked the wrong person to try and make my point against.
Jedidiah.
I read it. There are a lot of people in Texas that own a lot of land that could quite happily contain tactical nuke blasts. That is a real world situation. They can't police that area of land themselves with a rifle, but give them a nuke, or some other high powered explosives and they can take out any tresspassers with only a little video surveillance.
Equally a misfired burst of automatic rifle fire can kill innocent people when there's a burglar in your apartment - those rounds can go through thin apartment walls fairly well. That is a real world situation. Should fully automatic rifles be banned for people living in apartment buildings?
I'm quite happy to run with real practical policy, and realising that reasonable restrictions may be required on weapons that kill with remarkable ease would be a good start.
I object to libertarians who claim their "Yes, to this and this, no to that" is based on some lovely clean glasslike logic - it's not. They've got their concept of what is practical, and I have mine, and neither stance is inherently more cleanly rational than the other.
Jedidiah.
Not at all. The certainty of a reactive lawsuit is a wonderful preventative. ...
ou mention the atmosphere, but if you cause noxious emissions to drift over the fence into the air on my property, then you have still trespassed. If you dump sludge into the a river two states upstream from me and it winds up in my well, you have still trespassed. Dump waste into the middle of the ocean and if it ends up on my beach, you have trespassed.
I'm not sure you're quite getting it. I can bury my pollutants on my own property, and you'll never know - well, not until a 4 decades later when the groundwater is polluted in the whole area and your property is now worthless. But you'll file suit against me? Unfortunately, after having successfully milked all the profits I could from the land and the factory, I moved away, retired, and, most regrettably, I passed away a couple of years ago at age 82 in a very comfortable home in the Bahamas. Good luck with the lawsuit though...
Jedidiah.
Wrong. A nuke cannot be used defensively. You cannot use it without a huge collateral loss of innocent life.
What if I own a lot of land? A small tactical nuke could be quite happily contained, and it's my land so I can do what I want with it right?
Just because you can't think f a situation where you would use a nuclear weapon for your own defense on your own land doesn't mean that noone is in that position.
If I live in a cubicle farm where there is always someone in the next cubicle 3 feet away in every direction I sure as hell can't use a high powered or fully automatic rifle for my own defense with causing considerable collateral loss of innocent life. Does that mean I we should ban automatic rifles?
Jedidiah.
Pollution is trespass. You dump your garbage over the fence into my yard, you are trespassing. You dump your chemical waste into the stream that runs through my yard, you're also trespassing.
There's no need for an EPA as long as there is property. It doesn't even matter if this property is public or private, since the trespass still occurs. The EPA may be a solution, but it isn't the ONLY solution, or even the best solution.
The catch with this is that it tends to be ractive rather than preventative. If your neighbour is relatively sly about dumping his pollution onto your property you may not find out about it for quite some time. By that stage, perhaps your daughter and wife are already dead from groundwater poisoning. The EPA has the right to go onto your neighbours property for inspections, to try and see what he is doing with any waste he produces. Sure, he can hide things from them too, but the right to inspect his property, and his actions makes a significant difference. In your purely property law based system your neighbour could easily deny you any such opportunity to see what he was doing.
And then there's dumping from your neighbours property into unowned property. Unless everything (including the atmosphere - else you can dump pollutant gases) is owned there is always the possibility of the destruction of valuable property which can have potentially harmful downstream (literally) effects that won't become apparent for considerable time (consider, for example, groundwater contamination - once it's done it's done, yet it could take a decade or more for it to spread far enough to be detectable on owned land.
Again, the EPAs ability to inspect at the source is a huge advantage in preventing such issues before they occur (and turn out to be effectively irreversible).
Jedidiah.
There is much evidence that the 16th ammendment was NEVER RATIFIED by congress. It should be repealed, and the federal government should have NO power to tax individuals directly. Excise and tariffs can support a libertarian form of government.
What bullshit is this? Let's assume you are perfectly correct, and the 16th amendment is invalid, and gets repealed. Congress and the senate can add new amendments to the constitution. We just had them attempt to do so. Are you honestly telling me that there would be even the slightest difficulty in raising the 75% majority required to get a new amendment passed making taxation perfectly legal? These are politicians we're talking about. They live off you tax money. They won't blink at passing such an amendment with 100% consensus. And all of that will ber perfectly and legal as laid out in the constitution.
If taxation is not legal, they can make it so faster than you can blink.
Jedidiah.
The market is supposed to be moderated by the consumers. How do we give the consumers the knowledge they need to moderate the market intelligently?
Well, the first step is to make sure all the media channels are owned by various large corporate groups with vaguely similar agendas. Breaking news of corporate scandals is only worthwhile if it is a direct competitor - general corporate scandals will only make the consumers more suspicious of what you're up to.
Oh, I'm sorry, by intelligently you didn't mean for the benefit of large corporations?
Free markets work well, and are decently self regulating when those involved and making decisions are well informed. To be well informed you need information. As long as we continue down the road toward all information being owned, we are treading down a road where those that have the financial power to own the information also have the power to skew and manipulate the market.
Note that I an not claiming that all information must be free either - merely that, at the least, a balance needs to be struck, even if that balance is simply the acceptance and wider use of Copyleft style licenses.
Jedidiah
I have voeted Libertarian the last 3 elections but this year the stakes are too high.
The stakes are too high? Isn't that just another way of saying that you've bought into the scaremongering of one side or the other?
As long as people keep voting to stop what they (think they) hate rather that voting for what they want, the negative attack campaigns scaremongering on either side of the fence and always threatening how it will be "So much worse under the other guy" will continue.
The really sad thing is that most of the scaremongering is crap. They take positions, and they sput rhetoric, but very little actually gets enacted (of the scaremongering claims - plenty of bad stauff gets enacted, but both sides tend to share equally in that).
Get out of this silly "Us v. Them" mentality.
Jedidiah.
I have to ask, in all seriousness, is George Lucas running out of money or something? The release of the DVDs (reworked of course), along with the prequels, a new Star Wars TV series in the pipeline, and talk of doing a sequel trilogy - at a time when demand and interest in Star Wars is declining. I was under the impression that Lucas was quite happily independently wealthy so why the sudden push for more and more Star Wars? Rick Berman I can understand - He wants to bleed the series for every last drop of cash now while he still has influence because if he gives Star Trek a rest for 5 years people will likely come to their senses and fire his ass - But why is Lucas maing a cash grab?
Anyone know?
Jedidiah.
Minor correction:
Yog-Sothoth is running in the VP slot for the Cthulhu campaign this year I believe.
Jedidiah
You'll know something is wrong when the new President's first act is to make electronic voting terminals mandatory for all presidential elections.
Jedidiah.
It's worth pointing out that, in fact, the entire production costs of all three films (not using ingenious studio accounting of course) were paid for by the box office of Fellowship of the Ring alone (DVD of course, was pure gravy). So in fact it runs more like
The Lord of the Rings 1: Profit!
The Lord of the Rings 2: Profit!!
The Lord of the Rings 3: Profit!!!
Jedidiah.
"The Republicans are the party of small government and responsible fiscal policy. Really? The current Republican president has grown the government by 7.5% and created the largest budget deficit in history. That's just Bush? Interestingly it was the last Republican presidencies, under Bush Snr. and Reagan that were responsible for the previous record for a budget deficit. Don't tell me the federal government didn't balloon overr that era too (I unfortnately do not have figures for that).
"
The deficits were caused by cutting taxes, not by increasing govt. size significantly. They believe tax cuts prime the pump for stimulating economic growth in a recession. Democrats refer to tax cuts as govt. spending, which shows how warped their view of reality is.
I've taken a moment to emphasise a phrase in your quoting of my original post. If you think Clinton is to blame for making the federal government too large, then why, exactly, did Bush make it bigger in stead of smaller? The federal government has continued to grow fairly steadily regardless of which party was in power.
Jedidiah.
Has anyone else wondered if there's a competition between Star Wars and Star Trek as to who can drive their respective franchises into the ground farther and faster?
I think a Star Wars TV series is a great step forward. Rick Berman has been well ahead of Lucas for years now, due to the sheer volume of crap that can be produced with a weekly TV show. As hard as Lucas has worked, particularly with the new reworked special edition versions for DVD, Berman has, what, 5 seasons of Voyager behind him (okay, disregarding time travel, holodeck, and other "it never really happened episodes, maybe only 1 or 2 seasons)? You just can't compete with that sort of thing. While continuing to make some of the worst Star Trek feature films ever, Berman has been pumping out Enterprise.
But that's all going to change. Lucas has wised up. His glory years (Caravan of Courage, and Battle for Endor anyone?) are behind him, but he's still capable of of making everything cutesy and pointless for no good reason. Given an opportunity to get crap on air on a weekly basis can really bury the franchise - you only need to look at Droids, or the Star Wars Christmas Special to see what truly amazing things Lucas can do with the TV medium. That level of spectacularly awful work could undercut Berman's years of effort in under a season.
Star Wars' prospects are definitely looking up (or down, as the case may be).
Jedidiah.
I'd much rather wait the required time for proper digital paper - you know the stuff, they brand it variaously as eInk, and ePaper, and what have you, but it is decidedly different from LCD screens: for a start it uses reflected light like, you know, normal paper.
It is, very slowly, coming to market. I think sony is releasing a device that uses it. Okay, it's an eBook reader and still a little on the clunky side (though still as slim as similar device using LCD), but it has the promise to (in the next 5 years or so) get a lot slimmer, and more efficient. What's more it just looks better.
Once that sort of thing really hits the mass market, then using it as a notepad might have some real relevance.
Jedidiah.
I mean, c'mon, two skull and bones white male connected elite globalist millionaires as the "choices"? How blatant does it have to get?
Indeed. And where does the difference of opinion lie? They bluster and they talk on "major points of difference" but what are they exactly?
Let's start with the major ones.
The Republicans are the party of small government and responsible fiscal policy. Really? The current Republican president has grown the government by 7.5% and created the largest budget deficit in history. That's just Bush? Interestingly it was the last Republican presidencies, under Bush Snr. and Reagan that were responsible for the previous record for a budget deficit. Don't tell me the federal government didn't balloon overr that era too (I unfortnately do not have figures for that).
The Democrats are the party of progressive social policy. That would be why John Kerry doesn't actually support gay marriage then? That would be the Democrats are as supportive of the War on Drugs in its various forms as the Republicans. They are good at scaremongering over social policy - in 2000 we were warned that a vote for Bush would see legal abortions repealed. Bush has had 4 years, and the Republicans have been exceptionally dominant during much of it - is abortion illegal? No.
And for those Republicans who want the more conservative social policy - has Bush actually done anything about abortion? No, not really. For all his bluster about constituitonal amendments, has Bush actually done anything about gay marriage? No, he supported the single action that was the least likely to succeed, and have any real effect. It was all rhetoric - all for show.
Okay, so on the major issues, where the parties claim they are different, they turn out to be very similar in practice. Then surely there are plenty of differences on minor issues? Sure, if you dig around you can find plenty of reasons why the Democrats and Republicans differ. If you look at most of the broad issues that matter however, you'll find they agree. They argue so vehemently over the trivialities, they polarise their supporters into an "Us v. Them" mentality so well, that people have come to believe these are the only issues that matter - that they aren't as trivial as they appear.
Take some time out. Watch a debate between a couple of the major third parties and see all the other important issues that come up - issues that are usually not even discussed by Republicans or Democrats, but when you hear them, truly are worthy of at least having a discussion about. Whether you agree with these candidates or not, they have views that are certainly worthy of being heard and discussed.
Jedidiah.
Oh, we'd probably have some scary moments. A United States that's reached that political point is not going to be a pleasant point anyway.,/i>
Very very true. If things ever get to the point where you are rebelling against the government as a mass movement of serious significance, things are very bad indeed, and nothing will be pleasant about anything that results.
However, (a) it'd still be possible to prevail, and (b) as I've said, the main benefit is in the dissusasive factor, not in the actual reality of a revolution.
(a) You would probably have an almost equal chance of prevailing without a single assault rifle.
(b) In other words, it is of no real practical merit.
I should probably point out, at about this stage, that I am not, in fact, in favour of most gun control measures. I don't believe the assault rifle ban, as it was framed, has been at all useful in cutting down on crime and gun related deaths. I think the issue with gun deaths is more a cultural issue in the US than an issue of availability of guns.
I do believe, however, that it is time to reconsider the second amendment. It does not mean today anything at all like what it meant at the time it was written. When it was written a well armed citizenry had a very good expectation of overthrowing a government should it feel so inclined. That is no longer the case. It simply has no practical value in an attempted revolution. It is not dissuasive if it won't actually work.
Gun owenrship deserves to be debated on the actual merits in the modern world. Gun control deserves to be debated on whether it is effective, on costs and on value. Gun ownership should not be considered a constitutional right, nor a valid means of keeping the government in check, as it no longer is in the modern world. The founding fathers, while farsighted, could not anticipate everything, and it is time to reconsider the practical value of the second amendment.
Jedidiah.
One way or another, you have to win the US military to your side, because they are going to be the deciding factor. If a dictator is refusing to step down and still has the entire US military at his disposal, your assault rifles won't help.
Sway enough people to your cause that a majority of the troops/commanders in the US military side with you, and you won't need any assault rifles to make someone step down - you've got more military might at your disposal than any citizen's milita could ever hope to muster.
Jedidiah.
[wrt peaceful resistance]And a leader refuses to step down. What then?
Then either the US military sides with you, or it sides against you. If the US military sides with you, then no leader is going to remain standing, if it sides against you, then it isn't going to have any compunctions about wiping you out - and it will have the resources to do that.
The only other situation is a split in the military that ends up fighting with itself - in that situation we're talking about an all out war with heavy ordinance where people with assault rifles aren't going to make too much difference. I guess you could argue this is the situation you're counting on, but it is a fairly narrow range of fairly even divisions of military where the sort of equipment you're talking about will make a hueg difference.
Tell me, what are you going to do with your citizen's militia that has defeated the better part of the US military is going to do when the leader refuses to step down and resorts to what of the nuclear stockpile remains at his disposal? The US possesses a very large number of nuclear weapons in a very wide number of locations - you can't tell me you're going to account for all of them?
Basically, what it comes down to, is that if you're fucked, you're well fucked and no amount of assault rifles is likely to do you an awful lot of good.
The crucial assumption, of course, being that no "modern western government" could turn totalitarian or into a dictatorship, where a leander won't step down just because of the people's wishes.
The crucial assumption is that given a majority of civilians peacefully refusing, the majority of the military would not be under sufficient control of a dictator so as to side with him, and put down any such rebellion. If you are claiming that the dictator can engage the military to fire on unarmed civilian targets, then they sure as hell will fire on armed citizen's militas, and we're back to you vs. the entire US military.
Your supply line extends through the industry. Heck, we ran nearly out of cruise missiles after Gulf War I. If you have an industry resisting what you want (and all the industries that supply the defense contractors that make said weapons, and so forth) you have a problem. Bullets and gunpowder aren't that hard to make and stockpile. Laser-guided bombs are.
Yes, the question is, how much of the pre-existing stockpile is required to put down an attempted rebellion. If we're talking about the utterly ruthless dictator that you are assuming, not all that much (think nuclear). If you're going to claim that the military wouldn't do such a thing... then again, you don't need the guns, you need a peaceful protest, and the US military to mostly line up in support of you.
Jedidiah.
If an administration ever attempted to turn the United States military against said United States citizenry, there are several differences from Iraq:
Yes, there are certainly differences.
(a) Many members of our military would probably not follow orders to kill US citizens.
Well, that depends really. If the citizenry have already been labelled dangerous terrorists seeking to overthrow the US government I think they may have less conscience in the matter. I would expect the US government to be very effective at handling the media spin on any such incident.
(b) The target count is overwhelming. Our military isn't designed around carpet-bombing any more. An angry populace doesn't have long tank convoys to destroy.
How many people are we talking about here? If we're talking about a majority of the country, you don't need the guns. Just stand there and say no. I can assure you that troops are a lot less likely to fire on unarmed peaceful protestors than they are on people bearing assault rifles. No modern western government is going to manage to stand in the face of the half the population engaging in peaceful civil disobedience. If you have that many people, you don't need the guns!
(c) Resupply wouldn't exist. How long can you keep an A-10 flying without a populace providing fuel and parts for it?
Actually, resupply would be a hell of a lot easier, what with all those bases all over the US fully stocked already. What, you think the technicians and supply crews and all aren't part of the US military?
And again, if we're talking that many people, you don't need the guns. Just stand up and say no.
Jedidiah.
(a) It's hard to convince a complete military to stand against a nation's own people, unless the odds against the people are truly overwhelming. Take the final days of the Soviet Union, for instance -- Soviet troops refused to fire on peaceful protestors. They simply stopped their tanks and waited.
Thank you - that is exactly my point. "Soviet troops refused to fire on peaceful protestors."
An army will likely refuse to fight a peaceful protest. Put them under fire from assault rifles, and they may get a littl edgy. You will be far more effective staging peaceful protests, and engaging in civil disobedience. Many will probably die in such an endeavour (note that Chinese troops had very few compunctions about firing on unarmed protestors!), but in the end it is far more likely to win you reform.
I'll repeat - the guns just aren't a relevant issue these days.
Jedidiah.
I hate to break it to you, but you really aren't going to overthrow an oppressive regime with just assault rifles. Look at Iraq. There you have a populace that isn't standing an army (all standing armies do these days is get levelled - that's what heavy ordinance is for), but are equipped with not just assualt rifles, but mines, rocket propelled grenades, high explosives and a will to die for their cause. While they are managing to cause serious problems, they are a long way from overthrowing the government as long as the US military remains involved.
Try to overthrow the US government with assault rifles and whatever else you can scrounge, and you'll quickly be labelled a terrorist (to make sure you are alientated and hated by the rest of the country), then quickly and efficiently wiped out by whatever level of force is required - and the force available to the US military scales up remarkably high, you aren't going to win.
Unless you have a serious bargaining chip on hand - serious explosives on a large scale, nuclear weapons, or chemical or biological weapons, you are going to get nowhere. Have any of those, and you'll just ensure a whole lot of civilians get killed when the US government uses any and all force necessary (sacrificing patriotic Americans if required) to rid the world of dangerous terrorists.
You will not strike a functional military balance that will give you any chance in the modern world. The second amendment, as sensible as it was when written, just doesn't mean the same thing in a world with modern weapons and military. Holding weapons will not give you any real advantage against the government.
So if weapons aren't any good, what is? Your weakness. Take a lesson from history, and learn how to effect change in the modern world. Civil disobendience can be effective if it is on a large enough scale. They can't brand you terrorists if you never carry weapons, never make threats, never hurt anyone. They can't just wipe you out without a large chunk of the US population losing faith in their government and joining the movement (presuming that your initial movement is big enough not to be labelled a cult or what have you). That's your only way forward now, the guns just don't mean anything anymore.
Jedidiah.
I would think it would be clear now that in the modern world, with the current state of military technology, unless you are unbelievably powerful, a standing army does very little good. Witness the effectiveness of standing armies in any war in the last 20 years when one side possesses significant military hardware. All a standing army does is paint a nice big spot on the ground for where to drop the heavy ordinance. I think you are deluded if you believe any form of citizen's militia would be able to effectively stand against the current US military.
No, in this modern day and age, with the US military as dominant, and bearing as much high tech military equipment as it does, a standing army is quite pointless. That's why the people now fighting the US are not bothering to stand an army - they are being subversive, they are blending with the populace and striing at soft targets. That's right, to stand against the US military the most effective thing to do is the blend in and make terrorist style strikes.
But wait, if you did that, you can be utterly certain that the US government would label you a terrorist faster than you can blink. Right now their busy reworking their intelligence and security agencies to fight exactly that new kind of war. I don't think you'll stand a chance.
The second amendment was a very fine thought, and utterly sensible at the time. In the modern environment however, it just isn't relevant anymore. You aren't going to overthrow the government with assault rifles - not when you don't have a goodly portion of the US military already on your side (at which point, why are civilians messing with assault rifles!)
Your best chance of effecting true political change is in mass civil disobedience. In a truly united movement that simply says "No!". Carrying an assualt rifle will make no difference - in fact, your message will be far more effective if you stand without it. Take a lesson from Ghandi, and Martin Luther King. That is how to fight the government in the modern world.
Jedidiah.
This is one of those issues which wouldn't be complicated if we could sit down and work out a reasonable comprimise, but of course that's not how we work in America anymore. Gotta stick with either-or's, and the other side are a bunch of wackos or nutcases.
I would (once again) point people in the direction of Fisher's Deduction:
"The more issues a person attempts to crudely shoehorn down into an artifical liberal/conservative dichotomy, the more certain you can be that the person is an American."
Quote it at all those people that constantly have to paint every issue as some arbitrary "Us v.s Them" dichotomy. The more widely the meme gets spread, the more people might actually take a step back and think about issues rather than spouting the prearranged partisan rhetoric.
Jedidiah.