I will grant you that no one is happy about these massacres. However, there is no reasonable discriminator function that will prevent people intent upon destruction from accomplishing their goal while also allowing law abiding people to live with liberty.
I mean, it really doesn't get much easier than "fertilizer plus diesel". Hell, McVeigh made a shaped charge out of it by using a sheet of plywood. Years ago, well before the post 9/11 terrorism paranoia, you could indeed buy ANFO premade (and why not, given it is so easy to make?).
In the end, though, I have stated my rationale for why I believe it is legitimate and appropriate to allow private citizens to own modern firearms (self-defense, and the Constitutional basis of using the armed citizenry to offset the prospect of tyranny). You appear not to agree, though I am inferring this from your line of questioning. What is your position? Complete abolition of firearms ownership?
Hm, that doesn't really roll off the tongue, but the point is valid.
This debate is rapidly devolving to a consideration of how much money people are willing to spend to inflict massive casualties. Terrorists like McVeigh can do a lot with a relatively low budget. I will note that ANFO and Ryder trucks are legal to own, and yet this has happened only once. Technically, Mohammed Atta et al managed to do a lot more with just a few box cutters.
Your concern appears to be that if regular, private citizens had arms they would use them for mayhem. You know that a modern MANPADS costs hundreds of thousands, right? The firing unit is very expensive. Okay, so are you suggesting "cheap" RPGs or grenades would be an issue? We know the terrorists can get them already, so the concern is limited to law-abiding citizens that go crazy once they have said weapons, right?
As you correctly surmised, there is really no point banning the ownership of warships and other expensive weapons. If someone has that much money and is determined to inflict mayhem, they will succeed. Were you aware that three of those miniguns that Jesse Ventura used in The Predator are legally in private citizens' hands? Does that worry you? What if I told you that their going price is well over $100k and they can fire $1000 worth of ammo in a minute or two?
The difference between burglary and home invasion is whether occupants are present—this is a standard definition. The most affronting type of home invasion is the deliberate kind, as in the Wichita Massacre. The invaders forced their way in after the occupants opened the front door when they rang the doorbell. This is an example of what I meant by "rabid".
In the end, though, the person/people forcing their way into my home are not accorded the benefit of the doubt and are (yes) assumed to intend harm upon my family. Thus, the use of deadly force is appropriate and legal. Yes, I know this means that "simple" burglars may end up being killed. If people don't want to risk getting shot, all they have to do is... not force their way into my home.
Serious question though, should people be allowed to privately own tanks with live shells? Where is the line drawn between allowing people to own dangerous items and items being too dangerous to be allowed widespread private ownership due to the potential on infringing on others' right to life?
I suspect you are trolling, but in the interest of rational debate I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
From a historical basis, the Constitution authorizes letters of marque and reprisal (Article I, section 8), which reinforces the notion that the framers were comfortable with the concept of heavy weaponry in private hands. Letters of marque, of course, were the basis that distinguished a warship owner as a privateer rather than a pirate. So... the founders were comfortable with private ownership of warships and cannons. Tanks with live shells can do less damage than a warship with rows of cannons, so I'm going to use logical induction to say they would consider that acceptable as well. Suffice it to say, I don't believe it's legitimate to infringe upon the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear modern firearms.
Practically speaking, though, the tank thing really isn't an issue. A modern battle tank costs millions, and I'm guessing the shells are in the tens of thousands, and the fuel for an M1 Abrams is quite expensive (it gets ~0.6 mpg). What would allowing private ownership of this tank do to threaten peace, in your opinion?
Besides, if someone *really* wants to inflict mayhem, they will build a Killdozer.
I live in a much nicer community than the one in which I used to live, and really do not think that my gun would be much extra protection over my swords and bows. (Not that they would be much protection, either) Furthermore, a few months ago, agun owner 20 miles away, in San Bernadino, got killed when he interrupted a home invasion (by unarmed people) He got two, the third strangled him. So three people dead, one in jail for life (I hope)... which probably would not have happened if he had not had a gun.
First off, I will give my standard libertarian disclaimer that I don't care what you do as long as you don't try to compel me to do what you think is best. So, fair enough you believe you have no use for a firearm anymore. Great, just don't try to prevent me from owning and using firearms for my own protection.
As for your anecdote, I would take the odds of potentially only stopping 2 out of 3 while defending my family with my firearm. Because, you know, home invaders aren't your typical burglars (cf. Wichita Massacre). Home invaders are more like rabid animals—normally burglars have a fear of being discovered. Home invaders, like rabid animals, somehow lack that fear and are willing to enter the home while people are present. Witnesses... something every criminal wants.
If someone forces their way into my home, their right to live is forfeit in favor of my right and duty to protect my family.
You REALLY haven't thought this through... there's a million and one things that have to be considered and designed-in to prevent accidents and ensure everything goes right. You need a big room with lots of air flow, sensors/alarms, just to ensure the safety of the personnel, should something spring a leak, or rupture.
Tsk, tsk. Didn't run the math, did you? Let's run some back of the envelope calculations.
You can achieve brain death by hypoxia in 7 minutes. Let's say we go for 14. Let's say the inmate's vital capacity is 5L and he is somehow managing to have a respiratory rate of 32 for the whole time (yes, I know, impossible once he's lost consciousness, but we're giving you the benefit of the doubt here). Okay, so that's 2200 L. What's the size of the death chamber? 6m by 6x by 3m? Okay, that's 108,000 liters. Now, don't forget that the room air is 78% nitrogen already. Let's say we had catastrophic failure and the entire 2200 L tank leaked into the room. Well, now the room is filled with 86,440 L of N2 rather than 84,240 L.
Don't forget that nitrogen is an *inert* gas. Unlike, say, carbon monoxide, nitrogen causes problems when there is insufficient oxygen rather than when there is excess N2. All right, so now the room is 80% nitrogen instead of 78%. There's still plenty of oxygen for anyone who wanders around here.
Sure, put a fan in the room and ensure it's ventilated. You really don't need to go into your histrionics about the "safety of the personnel" unless they are stockpiling a decade's worth of nitrogen right there in the room. Even then the risk of the pressure vessels themselves being hazardous is likely greater than the nitrogen within.
Protip: you need approximately 200 mL of O2 per minute during normal activity. Your normal tidal volume of unlabored breathing at 12 breaths/min in 20% O2 atmosphere gives you 1200 mL of O2. In other words, room air has about 6x the O2 concentration you need.
But, like I said, you could use the gas chamber for execution theater. Otherwise, strap the fucker down to the erstwhile lethal injection gurney (including his head), put the mask over his face, and say goodbye. He'll lose consciousness in under a minute due to the hyperventilation anyway, because he will blow out his alveolar reserve O2 that much faster (replacing it with pure N2).
Protip 2: you don't actually need a seal for the mask, you just need to run the damn mask at slightly higher than ambient pressure. You can monitor his blood oxygen saturation via a dirt cheap pulse oximeter and watch that go down to 0. The devices even let you know if they are getting an accurate reading or not. Hell, I own two myself. That technology is a commodity now.
...then you wait until a few minutes until he's good & dead (determining whether he is dead is also a solved problem).
I'm fairly certain repurposing the chamber would be nothing more than execution theater. A nitrogen tank and a simple hospital mask for the condemned are all that's required. That's the point: the gas is inert.
That's like getting mad at the internet because the routers inspect the IP packet headers.
Uh, no. This is like getting mad when the routers inspect your packets' metadata for delivery (fine) and then they continually cc the NSA/DEA/FBI with all this metadata they collected and recorded of everything routed through their system since the 1970's.
Since they are the delivery mechanism, they need to pay attention to the metadata.
There is a difference betwen your bank, your doctor, or your ISP having information about you and the NSA having this information.
...and since the USPS has performed the latter function (providing images of the exterior of literally every piece of mail to other government agencies, since the 1970's), then it seems quite obvious they have transcended their need for the metadata.
Seriously, this is called the "mail covers program", and you can read the New York Times article about it from last year. Oh, and FYI, each of those square barcodes you see on modern stamps printed by the APC (i.e. that ATM thing in the USPS lobby) has a unique serial code that is tied to your credit card and a picture of you that was taken by the APC. Obviously, that's available to other government agencies too.
Enjoy the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Agree with them or not, the NRA knows what is needed to protect their favorite amendment.
Obviously not, since they've accepted some amount of gun control.
It's not for nothing that the NRA is sometimes referred to as "Negotiate Rights Away". That's why years ago I chose to avoid the compromise-loving, surrender monkey NRA and joined GOA instead.
However, the NRA did a decent job helping to protect our rights after Newton, so perhaps they have finally grown a spine.
Seriously, though, if I wanted to eat meat I would. The main thing I miss about meat is that it is damn hard to find a replacement with the appropriate consistency and texture to serve as a substitute. When people ask me why I eat fake meat, it's about not wanting to give up a dish that has meat as a critical ingredient. Unlike real meat, fake meat is not usually used as an end to itself: I rarely see a fake steak and potato dinner, but I *do* see fake meat crumbles in marinara, etc.
I think people should try this Beyond Meat product. I have eaten it repeatedly over the past year or so. It is the first meat substitute that I have tried that comes close to matching the texture of its analogue. It's literally almost indistinguishable from deli sliced chicken breast, save that this is a little less juicy than the real thing.
...then enjoy your baldness from the DHT (testosterone) in red meat.
Or, you know, you can realize that peas aren't going to castrate you in moderation and an occasional steak probably won't turn you into a shoulder/back hair troglodyte from the excess testosterone.
FWIW, I suggest trying this particular Beyond Meat product. It comes the closest to matching the texture of meat of any product I have tried. Aside from being slightly less juicy than deli chicken breast strips, it's almost indistinguishable in my opinion. Most fake meat products are full of fail; this one is an exception. Hopefully the bar will be raised for future meat substitutes.
I have yet to meet a person who switched and didn't FEEL much better afterwards.
Hi there. I switched to ovo-lacto vegetarianism four years ago. I feel no better than I did while eating meat. Zero improvement.
Perhaps you meant veganism, but I guarantee you that I wouldn't feel better as a vegan. I spent 90 days as a vegan some years ago, and I hated life thanks to it.
So, anyway, now you have met someone who doesn't fit your rule.
...and we have come full circle. As you say, you have to take greater risks to beat inflation. The urge to do that wasn't really prevalent following the 2008 crash, but the real answer to avoiding the gerito-plutocracy is to prevent them from accumulating a critical mass of wealth.
Inflation destroys stored wealth. I suggested that policy changes would be required. Wealth tax was one idea, but high inflation accomplishes the same goal. However, high inflation is even more of a blunt tool than wealth tax, and it is fraught with other consequences.
Uh, have you been under a rock since 2008? Simply having huge capital reserves does not imply that it is made available by those who hold the capital. The Fed backstopped all these banks and dialed monetary policy up to 11, and what did the banks do? They sat on it.
Capital, capital, everywhere and not a dollar to borrow. Hell, most investors were spooked out of equities for a while. They even bought negative interest Treasuries to avoid the risk.
No matter how you construct the scenario, people are not going to accept a 50% risk losing 100% of their principal for the chance at a 0.01% upside. Ergo, venture capital wouldn't change much because the risk simply does not make sense otherwise.
Right, but the point remains that the overwhelming preponderance of the wealth would gravitate toward this incumbent class of "immortal" geriatrics. They aren't going to fund projects without a positive risk vs. reward balance for their investment, which reinforces their position.
Practically speaking, the money is tantamount to power. They can dictate who gets funding. Same as today, but with the long term effect of compounding on their side.
Investment rate of return may be lower in this scenario, but that still does not change the fact that after some point the critical mass has been achieved. Since you have an indefinite time horizon, you can invest in the SP500 and you can probably expect a real return of 2% per year after the effects of tax and inflation. That implies a doubling every 36 years.
The existence of spendthrifts doesnt really address the issue (because not all of the wealthy are so irresponsible), just like the suggestion of very expensive goods and services does not either.
In terms of power dynamics in politics, we are likely to see geritocracy in the US as our population ages. We *need* to increase the retirement age and reduce the amount of spending on pensions. How is this going to happen when the majority of the population is old and is willing to express their displeasure in the voting booth?
Think it through. Andrew Carnegie had a net worth of approximately $300 billion (in 2007 dollars). At 5% compounded annually for the past 100 years, this would become approximately 30 trillion. Since that is infeasibly large (more than our GDP), some practical limit would be hit before then. However, this was just one person.
You mistakenly believed I was literally referring to transfer of wealth from one rich mangate to their scion. No, what I meant was more along the lines of the fact that Carnegie's wealth has been dispersed. It's not like the Kennedy dynasty model of literal generational transfer within the family, it's about dispersing accumulated wealth rather than retaining it as a compounding critical mass for "eternity" (or whatever the practical limits on immortality would be).
People are born with literally nothing. Immortality favors the incumbents. As for your point about the cost of goods and services, in what way do you think the system could compensate for the overwhelming preponderance of wealth being held by the old? Hint: if the cost of eggs rises to $1000/dozen, that is still going to affect the working person more than the elderly magnate living on the snowball effect of compound interest. There is no free market discriminator that would effect this generational wealth transfer. The person making minimum wage is always going to be spending a larger percentage of their earnings on goods and services.
Some Scandinavian countries attempt to fix this via a wealth tax. I shudder at the thought of encouraging people to spend more money when we already have a negative marginal propensity to save, but perhaps outlooks would become more long-range if people expect to live indefinitely.
My concern wouldn't be about cultural stagnation due to a dearth of new ideas; rather, it would be the reign of terror caused by compound interest. It's a given that people are born with nothing and those who are alive already own the resources.
Generational transfer of wealth happens first via loans from the elder generation to the new generation (the youth buy education, houses,etc) and in time, the new generation inherits the wealth from the older generation as they die. The loop iterates.
However, given essentially unlimited time due to practical immortality, those who are already alive and are eldest will have the exponential growth of compound interest working for them. They will in effect control the world's wealth unless the economic system is changed to reflect this reality and correct its effects.
Again, it sounds like a perfectly reasonable, equivalent deduction in the course of normal business. Your description is very vague. If you are referring to "intangible drilling costs", these are all things I would expect to deduct if my business were engaged in such an activity.
You need to be more specific about what makes this "special" and "something that no other industry gets to use" aside from the obvious fact that only oil companies prepare oil drilling sites.
This intangible drilling costs deduction isn't a tax credit, this is a tax deduction. They are deducting the cost of doing business (meaning this is an expenditure that reduces their profit). The oil drilling site is a capital asset, so the cost of acquisition is likely depreciated over time. Either way, it gets deducted. Examples of what I would consider to be special treatment would be a tax credit (credit, not deduction!), being able to deduct *more* than the cost of the site preparation, etc. I saw nothing like that in the few links I checked (it's really not my job to prove your claims for you, BTW).
Again, I believe it is illegitimate to disallow the deduction of a legitimate cost of doing business simply because one wishes to discriminate against a particular industry. Disallowing this deduction would be a punitive tax.
So I went to closed-source hardware, specifically an Asus router, and it works just great. No problems. Lots of bells and whistles and enough horsepower to cope with actually doing what the buzzwords on the box say it can do, without crapping out. This thing is a beast. Never needs nursing. It just works.
Uh, I chose an 802.11ac Asus router for the hardware, too. However, I would not characterize it as "never needing nursing".
The closed source firmware sucks, apparently has a development team that can't comprehend basoc security, and the QoS system it has sends throughput down to telegraph-operator speeds. I would love to load OpenWRT on it, but I will settle for DD-WRT.
I would give the router four stars if it cost $45, but it cost ~$200.
On a more serious note, a coproate death penalty means the dissolution of the corporate charter and dispersal of its assets to creditors, and then, if any are left, to stockholders.
That's sort of my point: this is ripe for a leveraged buyout at cheap prices. The business is an emergent property of its assets, and there is momentum with customers.
Here's how the sleight of hand unfolds. CondemnedCorp has been convicted of heinous crimes against protected unicorn habitats and has been sentenced to the ultimate punishment: the corporate death penalty. This will show those dastardly majority shareholders on the board of directors who voted to spray TCDD on those unicorn nests!
Feeling miffed, the major shareholders/board members of CondemnedCorp go to, say, Goldman Sachs and arrange for a line of credit sufficient to buy the assets of the company cheaply (I presume CondemnedCorp is being liquidated in a fashion similar to bankruptcy, with a trustee who has a fiduciary duty to maximize value for the creditors/shareholders). Said line of credit is extended to these majority owners of CondemnedCorp in a newly-created corporation called BrandNewCorp.
The majority owners of CondemnedCorp, acting through BrandNewCorp, place a calculated, lowball bid for *all* the assets of CondemnedCorp. This is accepted by the trustee and courts since it is likely to represent the maximum value vs an extended, piecemeal liquidation. BrandNewCorp immediately hires all the employees of CondemnedCorp, and continues doing the same business as before, just with different letterhead and logos. The line of credit is retired by selling shares in BrandNewCorp, which should be slightly more valuable than CondemnedCorp because BrandNewCorp got their assets for less than book value. CondemnedCorp's charter is now revoked and it ceases to exist.
Congratulations, you have "executed" a vile corporation, and the common shareholders got less than market value while the majority owners who did the leveraged buyout are now much richer. Justice has been served.
...or, if we ever get tired of that kind of justice, we can instead fine the evil corporation *and* imprison the board members for giving orders to spray dioxin on the endangered unicorn nests.
Oh, X corporation is responsible for the deaths of X people? Looks like a serial killer to me, execute the corporation.
Okay, I have often heard this call for a corporate death penalty. However, how do you envision this would work? Despite the twisted perspective of the courts, corporations are nothing more than the real, human people who own them and work for them.
If punishment is due, then who should it be incident upon? The stockholders, like your local firefighters' pension fund who owns many shares of this condemned corporation? No? Well, shall it be broken up and sold off instead? Fine, the current owners will form a new shell corporation to asset strip the condemned corporation by buying its assets cheaply and leaving the debts behind in the "executed" corporation. Congratulations, the wealthy owners got richer as a consequence of the "punishment". Shall the corporation be taken over by the government and the owners forfeit the shares? Now the government has a moral hazard... all those profitable corporations look mighty guilty of "crimes" if we are debating having to raise unpopular taxes.
I say hold the executives responsible for what their underlings do, and don't allow plausible deniability to be claimed by execs who should know what is happening. We can't legislate morality into sociopaths, but we *can* make them fear incarceration for wrongdoing. *That* would go a long way toward increasing ethical action by corporations. Of course, it will never happen, but at least the incentives are aligned to punish those who are responsible with this proposal, whereas the corporate death penalty invariably would punish the hapless "little guy" shareholders (i.e. the wealthy would circumvent the effects).
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I will grant you that no one is happy about these massacres. However, there is no reasonable discriminator function that will prevent people intent upon destruction from accomplishing their goal while also allowing law abiding people to live with liberty.
I mean, it really doesn't get much easier than "fertilizer plus diesel". Hell, McVeigh made a shaped charge out of it by using a sheet of plywood. Years ago, well before the post 9/11 terrorism paranoia, you could indeed buy ANFO premade (and why not, given it is so easy to make?).
In the end, though, I have stated my rationale for why I believe it is legitimate and appropriate to allow private citizens to own modern firearms (self-defense, and the Constitutional basis of using the armed citizenry to offset the prospect of tyranny). You appear not to agree, though I am inferring this from your line of questioning. What is your position? Complete abolition of firearms ownership?
"Criminals gonna commit crime."
Hm, that doesn't really roll off the tongue, but the point is valid.
This debate is rapidly devolving to a consideration of how much money people are willing to spend to inflict massive casualties. Terrorists like McVeigh can do a lot with a relatively low budget. I will note that ANFO and Ryder trucks are legal to own, and yet this has happened only once. Technically, Mohammed Atta et al managed to do a lot more with just a few box cutters.
Your concern appears to be that if regular, private citizens had arms they would use them for mayhem. You know that a modern MANPADS costs hundreds of thousands, right? The firing unit is very expensive. Okay, so are you suggesting "cheap" RPGs or grenades would be an issue? We know the terrorists can get them already, so the concern is limited to law-abiding citizens that go crazy once they have said weapons, right?
As you correctly surmised, there is really no point banning the ownership of warships and other expensive weapons. If someone has that much money and is determined to inflict mayhem, they will succeed. Were you aware that three of those miniguns that Jesse Ventura used in The Predator are legally in private citizens' hands? Does that worry you? What if I told you that their going price is well over $100k and they can fire $1000 worth of ammo in a minute or two?
The difference between burglary and home invasion is whether occupants are present—this is a standard definition. The most affronting type of home invasion is the deliberate kind, as in the Wichita Massacre. The invaders forced their way in after the occupants opened the front door when they rang the doorbell. This is an example of what I meant by "rabid".
In the end, though, the person/people forcing their way into my home are not accorded the benefit of the doubt and are (yes) assumed to intend harm upon my family. Thus, the use of deadly force is appropriate and legal. Yes, I know this means that "simple" burglars may end up being killed. If people don't want to risk getting shot, all they have to do is... not force their way into my home.
This really isn't hard to comprehend.
Serious question though, should people be allowed to privately own tanks with live shells? Where is the line drawn between allowing people to own dangerous items and items being too dangerous to be allowed widespread private ownership due to the potential on infringing on others' right to life?
I suspect you are trolling, but in the interest of rational debate I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
From a historical basis, the Constitution authorizes letters of marque and reprisal (Article I, section 8), which reinforces the notion that the framers were comfortable with the concept of heavy weaponry in private hands. Letters of marque, of course, were the basis that distinguished a warship owner as a privateer rather than a pirate. So... the founders were comfortable with private ownership of warships and cannons. Tanks with live shells can do less damage than a warship with rows of cannons, so I'm going to use logical induction to say they would consider that acceptable as well. Suffice it to say, I don't believe it's legitimate to infringe upon the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear modern firearms.
Practically speaking, though, the tank thing really isn't an issue. A modern battle tank costs millions, and I'm guessing the shells are in the tens of thousands, and the fuel for an M1 Abrams is quite expensive (it gets ~0.6 mpg). What would allowing private ownership of this tank do to threaten peace, in your opinion?
Besides, if someone *really* wants to inflict mayhem, they will build a Killdozer.
I live in a much nicer community than the one in which I used to live, and really do not think that my gun would be much extra protection over my swords and bows. (Not that they would be much protection, either) Furthermore, a few months ago, agun owner 20 miles away, in San Bernadino, got killed when he interrupted a home invasion (by unarmed people) He got two, the third strangled him. So three people dead, one in jail for life (I hope) ... which probably would not have happened if he had not had a gun.
First off, I will give my standard libertarian disclaimer that I don't care what you do as long as you don't try to compel me to do what you think is best. So, fair enough you believe you have no use for a firearm anymore. Great, just don't try to prevent me from owning and using firearms for my own protection.
As for your anecdote, I would take the odds of potentially only stopping 2 out of 3 while defending my family with my firearm. Because, you know, home invaders aren't your typical burglars (cf. Wichita Massacre). Home invaders are more like rabid animals—normally burglars have a fear of being discovered. Home invaders, like rabid animals, somehow lack that fear and are willing to enter the home while people are present. Witnesses... something every criminal wants.
If someone forces their way into my home, their right to live is forfeit in favor of my right and duty to protect my family.
You REALLY haven't thought this through... there's a million and one things that have to be considered and designed-in to prevent accidents and ensure everything goes right. You need a big room with lots of air flow, sensors/alarms, just to ensure the safety of the personnel, should something spring a leak, or rupture.
Tsk, tsk. Didn't run the math, did you? Let's run some back of the envelope calculations.
You can achieve brain death by hypoxia in 7 minutes. Let's say we go for 14. Let's say the inmate's vital capacity is 5L and he is somehow managing to have a respiratory rate of 32 for the whole time (yes, I know, impossible once he's lost consciousness, but we're giving you the benefit of the doubt here). Okay, so that's 2200 L. What's the size of the death chamber? 6m by 6x by 3m? Okay, that's 108,000 liters. Now, don't forget that the room air is 78% nitrogen already. Let's say we had catastrophic failure and the entire 2200 L tank leaked into the room. Well, now the room is filled with 86,440 L of N2 rather than 84,240 L.
Don't forget that nitrogen is an *inert* gas. Unlike, say, carbon monoxide, nitrogen causes problems when there is insufficient oxygen rather than when there is excess N2. All right, so now the room is 80% nitrogen instead of 78%. There's still plenty of oxygen for anyone who wanders around here.
Sure, put a fan in the room and ensure it's ventilated. You really don't need to go into your histrionics about the "safety of the personnel" unless they are stockpiling a decade's worth of nitrogen right there in the room. Even then the risk of the pressure vessels themselves being hazardous is likely greater than the nitrogen within.
Protip: you need approximately 200 mL of O2 per minute during normal activity. Your normal tidal volume of unlabored breathing at 12 breaths/min in 20% O2 atmosphere gives you 1200 mL of O2. In other words, room air has about 6x the O2 concentration you need.
But, like I said, you could use the gas chamber for execution theater. Otherwise, strap the fucker down to the erstwhile lethal injection gurney (including his head), put the mask over his face, and say goodbye. He'll lose consciousness in under a minute due to the hyperventilation anyway, because he will blow out his alveolar reserve O2 that much faster (replacing it with pure N2).
Protip 2: you don't actually need a seal for the mask, you just need to run the damn mask at slightly higher than ambient pressure. You can monitor his blood oxygen saturation via a dirt cheap pulse oximeter and watch that go down to 0. The devices even let you know if they are getting an accurate reading or not. Hell, I own two myself. That technology is a commodity now.
I'm fairly certain repurposing the chamber would be nothing more than execution theater. A nitrogen tank and a simple hospital mask for the condemned are all that's required. That's the point: the gas is inert.
The State can never provide enough proof to justify the Death Penalty.
The problem with absolute statements is that it only takes one counterexample to disprove them.
They did a superb job earning their death penalty.
That's like getting mad at the internet because the routers inspect the IP packet headers.
Uh, no. This is like getting mad when the routers inspect your packets' metadata for delivery (fine) and then they continually cc the NSA/DEA/FBI with all this metadata they collected and recorded of everything routed through their system since the 1970's.
Cf. here
Since they are the delivery mechanism, they need to pay attention to the metadata.
There is a difference betwen your bank, your doctor, or your ISP having information about you and the NSA having this information.
...and since the USPS has performed the latter function (providing images of the exterior of literally every piece of mail to other government agencies, since the 1970's), then it seems quite obvious they have transcended their need for the metadata.
Seriously, this is called the "mail covers program", and you can read the New York Times article about it from last year. Oh, and FYI, each of those square barcodes you see on modern stamps printed by the APC (i.e. that ATM thing in the USPS lobby) has a unique serial code that is tied to your credit card and a picture of you that was taken by the APC. Obviously, that's available to other government agencies too.
Enjoy the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Agree with them or not, the NRA knows what is needed to protect their favorite amendment.
Obviously not, since they've accepted some amount of gun control.
It's not for nothing that the NRA is sometimes referred to as "Negotiate Rights Away". That's why years ago I chose to avoid the compromise-loving, surrender monkey NRA and joined GOA instead.
However, the NRA did a decent job helping to protect our rights after Newton, so perhaps they have finally grown a spine.
I must have been holding veganism the wrong way.
Seriously, though, if I wanted to eat meat I would. The main thing I miss about meat is that it is damn hard to find a replacement with the appropriate consistency and texture to serve as a substitute. When people ask me why I eat fake meat, it's about not wanting to give up a dish that has meat as a critical ingredient. Unlike real meat, fake meat is not usually used as an end to itself: I rarely see a fake steak and potato dinner, but I *do* see fake meat crumbles in marinara, etc.
I think people should try this Beyond Meat product. I have eaten it repeatedly over the past year or so. It is the first meat substitute that I have tried that comes close to matching the texture of its analogue. It's literally almost indistinguishable from deli sliced chicken breast, save that this is a little less juicy than the real thing.
...then enjoy your baldness from the DHT (testosterone) in red meat.
Or, you know, you can realize that peas aren't going to castrate you in moderation and an occasional steak probably won't turn you into a shoulder/back hair troglodyte from the excess testosterone.
FWIW, I suggest trying this particular Beyond Meat product. It comes the closest to matching the texture of meat of any product I have tried. Aside from being slightly less juicy than deli chicken breast strips, it's almost indistinguishable in my opinion. Most fake meat products are full of fail; this one is an exception. Hopefully the bar will be raised for future meat substitutes.
I have yet to meet a person who switched and didn't FEEL much better afterwards.
Hi there. I switched to ovo-lacto vegetarianism four years ago. I feel no better than I did while eating meat. Zero improvement.
Perhaps you meant veganism, but I guarantee you that I wouldn't feel better as a vegan. I spent 90 days as a vegan some years ago, and I hated life thanks to it.
So, anyway, now you have met someone who doesn't fit your rule.
...and we have come full circle. As you say, you have to take greater risks to beat inflation. The urge to do that wasn't really prevalent following the 2008 crash, but the real answer to avoiding the gerito-plutocracy is to prevent them from accumulating a critical mass of wealth.
Inflation destroys stored wealth. I suggested that policy changes would be required. Wealth tax was one idea, but high inflation accomplishes the same goal. However, high inflation is even more of a blunt tool than wealth tax, and it is fraught with other consequences.
Uh, have you been under a rock since 2008? Simply having huge capital reserves does not imply that it is made available by those who hold the capital. The Fed backstopped all these banks and dialed monetary policy up to 11, and what did the banks do? They sat on it.
Capital, capital, everywhere and not a dollar to borrow. Hell, most investors were spooked out of equities for a while. They even bought negative interest Treasuries to avoid the risk.
No matter how you construct the scenario, people are not going to accept a 50% risk losing 100% of their principal for the chance at a 0.01% upside. Ergo, venture capital wouldn't change much because the risk simply does not make sense otherwise.
Unsold Lisas were rebadged and packaged with a Mac emulator as the 'Macintosh XL' and 'Macintosh Professional'.
I, too, played "You Don't Know Mac" in the mid 90's on a PowerTower Pro 225.
Right, but the point remains that the overwhelming preponderance of the wealth would gravitate toward this incumbent class of "immortal" geriatrics. They aren't going to fund projects without a positive risk vs. reward balance for their investment, which reinforces their position.
Practically speaking, the money is tantamount to power. They can dictate who gets funding. Same as today, but with the long term effect of compounding on their side.
Investment rate of return may be lower in this scenario, but that still does not change the fact that after some point the critical mass has been achieved. Since you have an indefinite time horizon, you can invest in the SP500 and you can probably expect a real return of 2% per year after the effects of tax and inflation. That implies a doubling every 36 years.
The existence of spendthrifts doesnt really address the issue (because not all of the wealthy are so irresponsible), just like the suggestion of very expensive goods and services does not either.
In terms of power dynamics in politics, we are likely to see geritocracy in the US as our population ages. We *need* to increase the retirement age and reduce the amount of spending on pensions. How is this going to happen when the majority of the population is old and is willing to express their displeasure in the voting booth?
Think it through. Andrew Carnegie had a net worth of approximately $300 billion (in 2007 dollars). At 5% compounded annually for the past 100 years, this would become approximately 30 trillion. Since that is infeasibly large (more than our GDP), some practical limit would be hit before then. However, this was just one person.
You mistakenly believed I was literally referring to transfer of wealth from one rich mangate to their scion. No, what I meant was more along the lines of the fact that Carnegie's wealth has been dispersed. It's not like the Kennedy dynasty model of literal generational transfer within the family, it's about dispersing accumulated wealth rather than retaining it as a compounding critical mass for "eternity" (or whatever the practical limits on immortality would be).
People are born with literally nothing. Immortality favors the incumbents. As for your point about the cost of goods and services, in what way do you think the system could compensate for the overwhelming preponderance of wealth being held by the old? Hint: if the cost of eggs rises to $1000/dozen, that is still going to affect the working person more than the elderly magnate living on the snowball effect of compound interest. There is no free market discriminator that would effect this generational wealth transfer. The person making minimum wage is always going to be spending a larger percentage of their earnings on goods and services.
Some Scandinavian countries attempt to fix this via a wealth tax. I shudder at the thought of encouraging people to spend more money when we already have a negative marginal propensity to save, but perhaps outlooks would become more long-range if people expect to live indefinitely.
My concern wouldn't be about cultural stagnation due to a dearth of new ideas; rather, it would be the reign of terror caused by compound interest. It's a given that people are born with nothing and those who are alive already own the resources.
Generational transfer of wealth happens first via loans from the elder generation to the new generation (the youth buy education, houses ,etc) and in time, the new generation inherits the wealth from the older generation as they die. The loop iterates.
However, given essentially unlimited time due to practical immortality, those who are already alive and are eldest will have the exponential growth of compound interest working for them. They will in effect control the world's wealth unless the economic system is changed to reflect this reality and correct its effects.
Again, it sounds like a perfectly reasonable, equivalent deduction in the course of normal business. Your description is very vague. If you are referring to "intangible drilling costs", these are all things I would expect to deduct if my business were engaged in such an activity.
You need to be more specific about what makes this "special" and "something that no other industry gets to use" aside from the obvious fact that only oil companies prepare oil drilling sites.
This intangible drilling costs deduction isn't a tax credit, this is a tax deduction. They are deducting the cost of doing business (meaning this is an expenditure that reduces their profit). The oil drilling site is a capital asset, so the cost of acquisition is likely depreciated over time. Either way, it gets deducted. Examples of what I would consider to be special treatment would be a tax credit (credit, not deduction!), being able to deduct *more* than the cost of the site preparation, etc. I saw nothing like that in the few links I checked (it's really not my job to prove your claims for you, BTW).
Again, I believe it is illegitimate to disallow the deduction of a legitimate cost of doing business simply because one wishes to discriminate against a particular industry. Disallowing this deduction would be a punitive tax.
So I went to closed-source hardware, specifically an Asus router, and it works just great. No problems. Lots of bells and whistles and enough horsepower to cope with actually doing what the buzzwords on the box say it can do, without crapping out. This thing is a beast. Never needs nursing. It just works.
Uh, I chose an 802.11ac Asus router for the hardware, too. However, I would not characterize it as "never needing nursing".
The closed source firmware sucks, apparently has a development team that can't comprehend basoc security, and the QoS system it has sends throughput down to telegraph-operator speeds. I would love to load OpenWRT on it, but I will settle for DD-WRT.
I would give the router four stars if it cost $45, but it cost ~$200.
On a more serious note, a coproate death penalty means the dissolution of the corporate charter and dispersal of its assets to creditors, and then, if any are left, to stockholders.
That's sort of my point: this is ripe for a leveraged buyout at cheap prices. The business is an emergent property of its assets, and there is momentum with customers.
Here's how the sleight of hand unfolds. CondemnedCorp has been convicted of heinous crimes against protected unicorn habitats and has been sentenced to the ultimate punishment: the corporate death penalty. This will show those dastardly majority shareholders on the board of directors who voted to spray TCDD on those unicorn nests!
Feeling miffed, the major shareholders/board members of CondemnedCorp go to, say, Goldman Sachs and arrange for a line of credit sufficient to buy the assets of the company cheaply (I presume CondemnedCorp is being liquidated in a fashion similar to bankruptcy, with a trustee who has a fiduciary duty to maximize value for the creditors/shareholders). Said line of credit is extended to these majority owners of CondemnedCorp in a newly-created corporation called BrandNewCorp.
The majority owners of CondemnedCorp, acting through BrandNewCorp, place a calculated, lowball bid for *all* the assets of CondemnedCorp. This is accepted by the trustee and courts since it is likely to represent the maximum value vs an extended, piecemeal liquidation. BrandNewCorp immediately hires all the employees of CondemnedCorp, and continues doing the same business as before, just with different letterhead and logos. The line of credit is retired by selling shares in BrandNewCorp, which should be slightly more valuable than CondemnedCorp because BrandNewCorp got their assets for less than book value. CondemnedCorp's charter is now revoked and it ceases to exist.
Congratulations, you have "executed" a vile corporation, and the common shareholders got less than market value while the majority owners who did the leveraged buyout are now much richer. Justice has been served.
Then treat them like one.
Oh, X corporation is responsible for the deaths of X people? Looks like a serial killer to me, execute the corporation.
Okay, I have often heard this call for a corporate death penalty. However, how do you envision this would work? Despite the twisted perspective of the courts, corporations are nothing more than the real, human people who own them and work for them.
If punishment is due, then who should it be incident upon? The stockholders, like your local firefighters' pension fund who owns many shares of this condemned corporation? No? Well, shall it be broken up and sold off instead? Fine, the current owners will form a new shell corporation to asset strip the condemned corporation by buying its assets cheaply and leaving the debts behind in the "executed" corporation. Congratulations, the wealthy owners got richer as a consequence of the "punishment". Shall the corporation be taken over by the government and the owners forfeit the shares? Now the government has a moral hazard... all those profitable corporations look mighty guilty of "crimes" if we are debating having to raise unpopular taxes.
I say hold the executives responsible for what their underlings do, and don't allow plausible deniability to be claimed by execs who should know what is happening. We can't legislate morality into sociopaths, but we *can* make them fear incarceration for wrongdoing. *That* would go a long way toward increasing ethical action by corporations. Of course, it will never happen, but at least the incentives are aligned to punish those who are responsible with this proposal, whereas the corporate death penalty invariably would punish the hapless "little guy" shareholders (i.e. the wealthy would circumvent the effects).