What! is that it, is that the best America has to offer. I'm not impressed. What exactly is that supposed to mean? Politics in America is a joke, you still haven't learnt from any of the lesson we have because you are so fucking arrogant.
Europeans have learned nothing; they are heading down the same path to economic, social, and political self-destruction they were heading down a century ago.
So YOU are another shinning example of exactly why there is anti-american sentiment in Europe
European intellectuals and politicians hated Americans in the 19th century, they hated Americans in the 20th century, and they are hating Americans in the 21st century. Do you think we give a f*ck anymore what you think?
Fucking grow up. You don't need guns, get it?
No, we don't "need" guns; in fact, they may be bad for us. But one isn't free if one doesn't have the freedom to make bad choices. The totalitarian mindset is so deeply engrained in Europe that you don't even realize it.
I encourage you to do the evaluation yourself. It literally takes only a few minutes in a spreadsheet or Google Docs, and once you know how to do it, it helps you check lots of other things.
If you really want to see just the pictures, go here. It contains plots for the world, OECD, OECD w/o US and Mexico, and Europe.
Americas relationship with guns simply seems CRAZY to me.
The Europeans' relationship to their ruling classes seems CRAZY to me, as does the fact that Europeans are so enamored with fascism, socialism, communism, and monarchies.
The answer, I suspect, is that we're dealing with a gun-nut libertarian desperate to get press for their TECHNO-LIBERATION concept.
Yes, you are. And you will just have to deal with the reality of it. After all, libertarians have to deal with the reality of nutty socialists, progressives, and Christian conservatives in government and politics as well. Welcome to the real world where you actually have to deal with people who hold different political and ideological beliefs from you. Of course, if you're too immature to deal with that kind of reality, you're not going to accomplish anything in politics.
I'm not going to kill you, so you have no right to restrict my ownership of potentially dangerous objects. Trying to restrict my liberties because you presume me to be dangerous without any kind of cause is an infringement on my liberties.
You're still starting from the erroneous assumption that the Second Amendment grants you a right that you don't already have, but the Bill of Rights instead merely clarifies rights that you already have. Even without a Second Amendment, there would be no legal basis for the federal government to restrict gun ownership.
The Second Amendment says, in effect, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. (The reason we think this is...)" It does not say "People shall have a right to keep and bear arms only as a part of a well-regulated militia.", which is what you seem to think it says.
Keep in mind that the entire Second Amendment, like all amendments, is not granting you specific rights, it is merely reinforcing rights you already have under the Constitution. I.e. Congress already doesn't have authority to infringe your right to keep and bear arms even without any amendment because the Constitution doesn't give it that right in the first place.
Good, you found some data. Why don't you copy it into your favorite spreadsheet and plot gun ownership vs homicide rates across all nations, or across OECD, and you'll see that there is no correlation.
You shouldn't get your science and statistics out of cartoons. The graph in that cartoon has been manipualted by choosing data points that fit the conclusion, and the reasoning behind the panels is unsound as well.
The US is an outlier (by a factor of two) on both gun ownership and murder rate. But you can look within the US and there is, again, no correlation between gun ownership within populations and their murder rate.
The idea that imposing additional gun control will reduce US murder rates has no scientific support.
Now, if you can somehow give example of how the economic theory you've posited, where half the population is put out of a job and somehow there is no negative effect on the economy as a whole,
Can't you read? The subject is "mass unemployment due to policies, not automation". Nowhere did I say that mass unemployment wasn't a bad thing.
Until you stop accusing people of naive idealism for illustrating an economic principle in a simple way with an idealized example, you are indeed wasting your time. You're like someone arguing that physics doesn't work because mechanics textbooks use examples without friction.
BTW, even if we wanted to have public funding for people like you as part of "civilization", we should pay for it through taxes, as an explicit budget item, and the costs should be born equally by everybody. Let's drop the pretense that these copyright fees on specific devices and services compensate you for illegal copies of your works.
And, actually, right now, we are paying for you several times over, first through the commission and performance of your works through often publicly funded organizations, and then you come back and want to extort even more money from Internet users and techies for hypothetical piracy of your works.
So you put the title "composer" on your shingle and all of a sudden you fancy yourself a contributor to civilization and the world owes you money? I don't think so. Contributing to civilization requires skill and artistry, and if you actually had those, you'd be able to make a living at it without stealing other people's money.
For example, I have no children but have ungrudgingly paid decades of property tax, the largest portion of which funded schools. There are hundreds of such situations, and they are part of the contract which makes up a culture.
Universal education is part of civilization, and I have no problem paying my share. I don't have a problem with paying for art and music that I consider good, both by purchasing it and through donations. I do have a problem with being forced to pay for your bad music; your music isn't part of "civilization" (yes, I listened to samples on YouTube, and yes, I am a classically trained musician).
It's not just about the money. The current system disconnects financial rewards from artistic quality, and that has led to a huge amount of crap being produced by people who fancy themselves "serious" musicians and artists.
Really? Which "places" would that be? France and Germany, for example, restrict the distribution of likenesses of non-famous people, but they don't restrict the recording.
I oppose long copyright terms, draconian prosecutions, DRM and most of the lot of the law since the DMCA.
Yeah, but you favor taking away money from other people as a tax on unrelated products and then enriching yourself with it, because that's what we're talking about here. And in addition to the numerous taxes that are already levied in Belgium, they now want to impose charges on Internet access.
I have no problem with performance royalties. What we're talking about here is agencies that demand money on the sale of unrelated products (Internet services, media, devices) and then funnel that money to you. What moral right do you have to try force me to pay you money (which is what you're arguing here), even though I think your product is crap and would never buy it, consume it, or even bother to pirate it?
Before you engage in the screw-you comments, please know that I provide all my sheet music for free download and only expect the performance royalties in return.
Then you shouldn't actually get any money. The amount of money you get is generally based on how much you actually sell. These fees are intended as a compensation for copying of commercially published materials, not as a revenue stream for lazy people who just put stuff out on the Internet and can't be bothered to start an actual business.
In several European countries, people already have to pay a significant fee on printers, computers, and cell phones, money that then is funneled to select publishers and other copyright trolls.
The EFF ranks these companies based on what they say they do for privacy. Nobody knows what they actually do. For all we know, Twitter may be an FBI/CIA front, or bound by some gag order. You can't trust online providers at all, and any use of an online service is a calculated risk, trading some privacy for some utility. Publishing this kind of nonsense, the EFF does more harm than good, by giving users a false sense of privacy and security.
AT&T and Verizon are operating as near monopolies right now. Not letting them bid may lose a bit of revenue to the government, but it saves people a lot more money in charges and contracts by making the market more competitive.
3. With the computer dumped, they will get to enjoy newer computers --- again, the money came from the gummint
And, more importantly, they'll be fully using their budget this year, allowing them to make an argument to have a budget increase next year. If they save money, their budget will be cut.
Slashdot Mirror
Europeans have learned nothing; they are heading down the same path to economic, social, and political self-destruction they were heading down a century ago.
European intellectuals and politicians hated Americans in the 19th century, they hated Americans in the 20th century, and they are hating Americans in the 21st century. Do you think we give a f*ck anymore what you think?
No, we don't "need" guns; in fact, they may be bad for us. But one isn't free if one doesn't have the freedom to make bad choices. The totalitarian mindset is so deeply engrained in Europe that you don't even realize it.
I encourage you to do the evaluation yourself. It literally takes only a few minutes in a spreadsheet or Google Docs, and once you know how to do it, it helps you check lots of other things.
If you really want to see just the pictures, go here. It contains plots for the world, OECD, OECD w/o US and Mexico, and Europe.
http://i.minus.com/id4Z4oYzqltEI.png
http://i.minus.com/isrBKRvyAclXW.png
http://i.minus.com/iPtfP6kkiItiq.png
http://i.minus.com/is6jR1mePdlGS.png
And you give us another shining example of what passes for political thought in Europe. Thanks for illustrating my point.
The Europeans' relationship to their ruling classes seems CRAZY to me, as does the fact that Europeans are so enamored with fascism, socialism, communism, and monarchies.
Yes, you are. And you will just have to deal with the reality of it. After all, libertarians have to deal with the reality of nutty socialists, progressives, and Christian conservatives in government and politics as well. Welcome to the real world where you actually have to deal with people who hold different political and ideological beliefs from you. Of course, if you're too immature to deal with that kind of reality, you're not going to accomplish anything in politics.
I'm not going to kill you, so you have no right to restrict my ownership of potentially dangerous objects. Trying to restrict my liberties because you presume me to be dangerous without any kind of cause is an infringement on my liberties.
You're still starting from the erroneous assumption that the Second Amendment grants you a right that you don't already have, but the Bill of Rights instead merely clarifies rights that you already have. Even without a Second Amendment, there would be no legal basis for the federal government to restrict gun ownership.
The Second Amendment says, in effect, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. (The reason we think this is...)" It does not say "People shall have a right to keep and bear arms only as a part of a well-regulated militia.", which is what you seem to think it says.
Keep in mind that the entire Second Amendment, like all amendments, is not granting you specific rights, it is merely reinforcing rights you already have under the Constitution. I.e. Congress already doesn't have authority to infringe your right to keep and bear arms even without any amendment because the Constitution doesn't give it that right in the first place.
Good, you found some data. Why don't you copy it into your favorite spreadsheet and plot gun ownership vs homicide rates across all nations, or across OECD, and you'll see that there is no correlation.
You shouldn't get your science and statistics out of cartoons. The graph in that cartoon has been manipualted by choosing data points that fit the conclusion, and the reasoning behind the panels is unsound as well.
The US is an outlier (by a factor of two) on both gun ownership and murder rate. But you can look within the US and there is, again, no correlation between gun ownership within populations and their murder rate.
The idea that imposing additional gun control will reduce US murder rates has no scientific support.
However, DRM disappeared for these other content categories even though it was available. I expect that won't be any different for video and ebooks.
Can't you read? The subject is "mass unemployment due to policies, not automation". Nowhere did I say that mass unemployment wasn't a bad thing.
Until you stop accusing people of naive idealism for illustrating an economic principle in a simple way with an idealized example, you are indeed wasting your time. You're like someone arguing that physics doesn't work because mechanics textbooks use examples without friction.
BTW, even if we wanted to have public funding for people like you as part of "civilization", we should pay for it through taxes, as an explicit budget item, and the costs should be born equally by everybody. Let's drop the pretense that these copyright fees on specific devices and services compensate you for illegal copies of your works.
And, actually, right now, we are paying for you several times over, first through the commission and performance of your works through often publicly funded organizations, and then you come back and want to extort even more money from Internet users and techies for hypothetical piracy of your works.
So you put the title "composer" on your shingle and all of a sudden you fancy yourself a contributor to civilization and the world owes you money? I don't think so. Contributing to civilization requires skill and artistry, and if you actually had those, you'd be able to make a living at it without stealing other people's money.
Universal education is part of civilization, and I have no problem paying my share. I don't have a problem with paying for art and music that I consider good, both by purchasing it and through donations. I do have a problem with being forced to pay for your bad music; your music isn't part of "civilization" (yes, I listened to samples on YouTube, and yes, I am a classically trained musician).
It's not just about the money. The current system disconnects financial rewards from artistic quality, and that has led to a huge amount of crap being produced by people who fancy themselves "serious" musicians and artists.
Really? Which "places" would that be? France and Germany, for example, restrict the distribution of likenesses of non-famous people, but they don't restrict the recording.
Yeah, but you favor taking away money from other people as a tax on unrelated products and then enriching yourself with it, because that's what we're talking about here. And in addition to the numerous taxes that are already levied in Belgium, they now want to impose charges on Internet access.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#Belgium
I have no problem with performance royalties. What we're talking about here is agencies that demand money on the sale of unrelated products (Internet services, media, devices) and then funnel that money to you. What moral right do you have to try force me to pay you money (which is what you're arguing here), even though I think your product is crap and would never buy it, consume it, or even bother to pirate it?
Then you shouldn't actually get any money. The amount of money you get is generally based on how much you actually sell. These fees are intended as a compensation for copying of commercially published materials, not as a revenue stream for lazy people who just put stuff out on the Internet and can't be bothered to start an actual business.
The difference is: you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting it, they do.
In several European countries, people already have to pay a significant fee on printers, computers, and cell phones, money that then is funneled to select publishers and other copyright trolls.
The EFF ranks these companies based on what they say they do for privacy. Nobody knows what they actually do. For all we know, Twitter may be an FBI/CIA front, or bound by some gag order. You can't trust online providers at all, and any use of an online service is a calculated risk, trading some privacy for some utility. Publishing this kind of nonsense, the EFF does more harm than good, by giving users a false sense of privacy and security.
AT&T and Verizon are operating as near monopolies right now. Not letting them bid may lose a bit of revenue to the government, but it saves people a lot more money in charges and contracts by making the market more competitive.
Wow, you really have no grasp of reality or understanding of economics.
And, more importantly, they'll be fully using their budget this year, allowing them to make an argument to have a budget increase next year. If they save money, their budget will be cut.