I greatly miss Lockheed Georgia Employees' Federal Credit Union which I joined in college at Georgia Tech, but I switched away from them for two reasons -- one practical and one petty.
1) The nearest ATM that didn't charge me $1.50+ to use was over 15 minutes drive away. (15 minutes plus a toll or 25 minutes w/o.) Also their hours were very inconvient, and the nearest branch location was the one 25 minutes away. I joined them in college when they still had a branch office in the college, but left them later long after they'd closed that branch.
2) The required signing a digital signature pad for any teller transaction. I hate that and don't trust it. It removes a step or two for a thief to steal the ability to copy my signature on documents.
Nowadays, I'd grumble and compromise on #2, but I can't deal with #1. I lost far more money from ATM transaction fees than I gained from superior interest rates. All other CUs in my area that I can find have exclusive requirements for joining, so I'm stuck without one for now.
I know it's best to just walk away, but I can't let that stand.
This is the part that needs to be amended. This helps the current 'invasion' by our neighbors to the south. It should not be allowed that illegal aliens can run across the border to drop a kid in the US, and have that kid automatically be a US citizen.
I don't see this as a problem. I've personally always thought that countries that put strong limits on who can become a citizen are backwards and xenophobic. Call it racist; call it nationalist -- whatever. It's an "-ist" mentality, and I despise people who divide and exclude. What you're proposing isn't nearly as reactionary as the policies of countries that allow multiple generations of people born, raised, and grown old in the same country to still not be citizens, but it's a step in that direction, and I think it's a step away from the grand American tradition of acceptance, equality, and growth.
Our country has grown great on the back of immigrants. From the Irish to the Chinese to now the Mexicans, our country has grown stronger and more interesting. Immigrants built the foundations of our economy from railroads to factories in the 19th century. They gave us holidays, unique architecture, and music and arts that have enriched American culture. Almost all the great American foods come from either non-Anglican immigrants or from slaves.
I don't fear the "Invasion from the South" anymore than I fear "the Yellow Peril." It's just a new wave of Americans to be (if we'll let them). There is no such thing as a "true-blood" American. We're all immigrants and that's what makes us special. We have enjoyed having only a future and not the baggage of a past for many generations.
I tell you something -- sometimes I value the patriotism of a person who sacrificed to come and be an American more than someone who just lucked into the position. At least they came to love America by conscious choice instead of by just not shopping around for other options. If someone so loves America that they'd give their child the gift of an American citizenship that they themselves cannot so easily get, then I personally welcome them with open arms, and I find it shameful that you would turn your back on 200 years of American progress to shut them out.
It's the people that look forward to America with the future in mind that will make this nation great and not those who pine for the past and resist change.
I think the point is though, that capitalism has everyone acting in their own best interests, instead of trying to act in the best interests of everyone else (which is impossible to plan and know).
Of course. That's where the human element ruins things. If every one had community-minded best interests or at the very least a modicum of empathy, capitalism would be almost perfect. You don't actually have to know what everyone else's interests are. The Golden Rule is generally sufficient -- don't do to others what you'd hate having done to you. Unfortunately, capitalism is a dog-eat-dog competition where you are encouraged to do unto others before they get a chance to do unto you.
No one sane can take seriously the idea, "Everyone acting in only their own best interests produces an ideal society." All you have to do is look at the use of force. If laws didn't prevent everyone from using physical force in their own best interest, you'd have tribal/gang warfare everywhere. Force could be used only for good if -- you know -- people were almost all decent and never succumbed to the temptation to harm others for profit.
When it's economic force that's used, the effects are far more subtle. However, there are plenty of clear examples of predatory behavior in the financial world that should show that unchecked capitalism is quite destructive thanks to the sociopathic lack of empathy of its primary actors, the corporations.
Take credit for example. Credit cards could run their fee schedules to simply hedge against bad behavior by their customers and use sticks and carrots to promote good financial habits while turning a profit and building customer loyalty. Alternately, they could run their fee schedules to squeeze maximum profit out of the weakest customers, heavily target the financially desperate, and choose to punish financially sensible customers for not making them enough money by not screwing up constantly. After all, there's always more rubes to take advantage of.
Guess which path credit card companies have taken in recent years.
Communism fails because it fails to motivate exceptional effort. Capitalism fails because it fails to motivate people not to prey on those weaker than them. Communism's sins are the sloth of the workers and the temptations of those in control of the state's property. Capitalism's sin is the callous indifference to those one hurts to get ahead. Neither are particularly democratic systems because they both concentrate power in the hands of a few, and only a mixed model system that ensure that no class of people stays entrenched on top without earning it can offer hope for democracy and thus for freedom.
Unfettered capitalism is little more than predation without the ability to strike a blow physically. It's the law of the jungle and not the law of a decent and civilized society, in my opinion.
If the people don't like it, they can vote to change it. Oh wait, they're not democracies? Well then, they can revolt and form democracies, then change it. Or they can wimp out and sneak into the USA. Meh.
So, in the meantime, we should just shut and economically support these poor labor practices that are helping to kill our own labor market and provide arguments for stripping these protections at home to "stay competitive?"
I don't think that funding the race to the bottom exactly encourages positive change.
Communism is actually the ideal system until you add the human factor. Once human nature is introduced you'll end up with what became the Soviet Union and China. Therefore, the best system in the real world is a capitalist society which is a republic or democracy.
I would counter that capitalism is also an ideal system until you add the human factor.
Communism fails because of labor sloth, abuse of asymmetrical state power between leaders and citizens, and a lack of feeling of obligation to total strangers.
Capitalism fails because of business avarice, abuse of asymmetrical contract power between the rich and the not-rich, and a lack of feeling of obligation to total strangers.
The only system that works is a mixed economy system where greed and apathy are balanced against each other (profit motive must be present but not overwhelm human dignity), state and corporate power are checked by rule of law and an engaged citizenry (democracy, sunshine laws, anti-trust law, labor law, etc.), and consideration of the effects of one's actions on others enforced by courts and legislatures (pollution control, worker safety laws, food safety laws, reasonable tort law, etc.).
Poor countries need sweatshops, need free trade of agricultural products, and need less subsidies. That's the way out.
Why is that the way out for developing nations when every industrial and post-industrial power in the world put an end to child labor and sub-subsistience wages through government regulations?
It's not like the US got to where it is today through free trade of goods and a lack of subsidies. Ever hear of Henry Clay and the American System? Free trade may be the way to connect economies into a global whole, provide extremely cheap goods, and possibly prevent wars, but it's not the way that America and other pre-WWII Great Powers became as powerful as they did. Read your history.
You think that supply and demand do not exist in a command economy and that the mere existence of a reaction to them implies a free market? What a strange understanding of "free" markets you must have.
Before the Civil War, there was strong arguments for the idea that the limitations on the federal government (as noted in the 1st Amendment "Congress shall make no law") did not apply to the state governments. The state governments could theoretically pass laws abridging the freedoms of its citizens that the federal government could not. The 10th Amendment is in fact the strongest source of support for that idea. A restriction barring the federal government from doing something is not "power delegated to" it -- it's the opposite.
After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was passed specifically to prevent Southern states from passing laws that discriminated against blacks in the way that the federal government could not. This is known as the Equal Protection Clause (and has sadly been used to defend the rights of corporations far more than it has been used to defend the rights of minorities). It reads like this:
"Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
This is the clause that extends limitations on the powers of the federal government to the state governments and prevents the abridgement of free speech by them.
However, pornography and obscenity have long been ruled by the Supreme Court as having lesser protection that political speech. The case Miller v. California set forth a test to determine pornography that has been used ever since. Justice Burger in his opinion wrote the following:
The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards" would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Change "sexual conduct" in part (b) to "violence to people" and you've probably got a bill that would survive a Supreme Court decision. Whether or not the list of barred things is overly broad and violates the second test is where it's most likely to stand or fall. The third test is where a lot people think that works will escape, but as Burger says in the sentence immediately following this test, "We do not adopt as a constitutional standard the 'utterly without redeeming social value" test of Memoirs v. Massachusetts.'" You can read more about obscenity and the 1st Amendment here.
That was a well written and thoughtful post. Every one I've ever met who entertained this sort of idea is unmarried and doesn't seem to understand just how bad the stress of doing this will destroy their lives. This is a recipe to burn out and to find yourself in a career path that you can no longer enjoy.
But in the end, whether they work hard or not (I personally have known teachers that do not fit the workaholic description you give above), the market determines their pay.
You are under some sort of delusion about what "the market" is if you think that government paid jobs whose raises are up the whim of the state legislature or governor are subject to the whims of "the market." You must have some very strange definition of "market" that includes politics as a deciding factor. Unlike a normal free-market driven job, the quality / quantity of labor does not affect profits, since there is no profit in teaching -- a necessity to keep education universal. The same forces are not at work as in a regular free market job.
Teaching is not considered difficult by a lot of people...
Yeah, by people that haven't done it and who don't know anyone who does it. I'm sure there are a lot idiots who think construction work is easy because they see people taking breaks. A lot of people believe a lot of stupid things that have no connection to reality.
Teaching is difficult. Both my parents are/were teachers. (My dad's retired now.) I see what they go through, and I see how much they work, and I see all the grief they get from poorly disciplined children and from parents who believe that "their little angel" can do no wrong and should never have to undergo any sort of pressure to succeed. They don't really have summers off because there's a lot of training and preparation for next year to do. What free time they do get is generally spent on chores that they didn't have time to do during the school year. While they do get I'd say about a month of genuine vacation time, that's not nearly enough to make the job easy, just like all those little breaks doesn't make construction a slacker's job either.
Teachers are available at the wages that are being paid. What motivation does the district have to raise pay?
You mean, besides the fact that they have a shortage of nearly 1000 teachers? Exactly what attraction is there to a job that offers too poor pay to live off of in an area with very expensive average home costs that involves dealing with poorly behaved kids and irresponsible parents? Teaching is a job that requires a lot of personal sacrifice and the fact that people go into it at all shows that there are a lot of people with dedication that are willing to sacrifice money to help out children. That doesn't mean that they should be rewarded with the opportunity to sacrifice as much as they can.
The parent mentioned that the teachers he/she knows are in it because they love what they do. Unfortunately, that's not reason enough to raise the pay - I love playing video games and drinking Starbucks, but I don't get paid a dime for either one.
While I can understand the difficulty they're in, I don't necessarily sympathize.
Of course not, you apparently think that the reward of acting for the benefit for others and the reward of indulging in selfish pleasures are equivalent and should be equally unpaid. It's just a shame that people like teachers are dependent on uninformed or uncaring voters like you for their salaries.
You obviously have either taught or are the relative / spouse of a teacher. No one who isn't seems to have any understanding of what teachers do or go through. As the child of two teachers, I have to say, "Kudos," to you for an understanding post.
If a school district anywhere pays a teacher enough to live comfortably for an entire year, yet gives them a quarter of the year off work, the tax payers should raise hell.
I find it interesting that people will bemoan the failures of the public educational system to attract good teachers on the one hand and then claim that we pay teachers too much on the other hand. Curse those foul teachers for demanding that they have enough to live off!
FFX's battle system was functionally identical to standard ATB with the option (available in all ATB-using FF games) to have the clock pause when your turn came up.
This is the mode in which I always play FF games because I hate being pressured by the clock. I play RPGs tactically and not as an exercise in speed and reflexes, so to me FFX was the perfection of how I play the ATB system.
Actually, if you want to go for the best high-speed battle system that Square's put out, I'd have to vote for Kingdom Hearts II. I'm not generally a fan of real-time RPG combat systems, but KH2 is a pure joy to play and get a lot of incredibly flashy mileage out of 4 buttons. It's extremely pretty and fun.
(I do love Seiken Densetsu 2 & 3, by the way, but KH2 is just so over the top.)
FFX almost perfected the active-time battle system in my opinion. It kept the order of initiative preserved, kept you from getting pounded on if you needed to dig into the menus (which I hate), and allowed you to pound away as fast as you could select actions. FFX was just smooth.
The only was ATB could be made better is to eliminate any need to dig into menus without getting rid of the pretty. I wish FF XIII luck, but I'm not sure I like where the series is going with FF XII in terms of control schema.
The leading edge of the plasma ball could be defined by the focus of a phased array of microwave emitters, a fancy version of the votive-candle-in-microwave-oven trick.
Where would the phased array of microwave emitters have to be positioned on a battlefield? Could it move while the shot is still being fired (as from a moving vehicle)? What range would it be effective at?
The idea of a self-contained plasma bolt speeding through an atmosphere is just silly. What holds the pocket of plasma together against the wind? I just don't see a high-speed projectile application in the technology's future.
It's an issue I'm sure that a lot of Nokia phone owners aren't aware of. I didn't realize that my phone's Bluetooth settings were set that way until I read the blurb and checked. I turned it off and changed it to hidden (just in case I ever want to reactivate it later).
I don't exactly have anything important in my phone, but given the existance of Bluetooth exploits, I'd rather not leave the ports open as it were.
Now that is a textbook example of pendantry. Never say in 2 words what could be said in 18. You do realize that everyone knew that's what they meant, right, Mr. Rosetta Stone?
But not private property like a bar, or the smoking section of a restaraunt, or a designated smoking area?
Specifically, I meant areas where you come explicitly to be in the presence of smoke. I don't go to a restraunt to be near smokers; I go for food. I don't go to work to be near smokers; I go to program in exchange for money. Smoking/non-smoking areas in restraunts don't fully shield patrons and don't shield workers at all.
If smoking were something innocent but annoying, then it would be one thing, but it genuinely represents a threat to the health and longevity of others. No one should be able to force that on others, especially when the only benefit of smoking is the pleasure of the smoker.
By your logic, we should also ban loud music, food additives, overhead power lines, drinking alcohol outside of walking distance from the home, and vogon poetry.
I'll address these in order.
1) Yes, we should ban loud music but only when it gets to a volume to cause physical damage to others who do not consent to be in its presence (thus exempting concerts). Maybe you could argue for a lower volume ban at night when people are supposed to be sleeping. Oddly enough, we already have laws that cover both situations -- public disturbance ordinances.
2) I don't know what you mean by food additives specifically, but if it represents a health threat and it's not a natural element of food, like trans fats or cyclamates, then ban it. I don't want poison in my food, even if it's clearly labelled as being there (and thus alright because the government says it's safe).
3) Overhead power lines? What?
4) People who like to drink far from home should get a cab, have a designated driver, or have some other form of transportation to a place to sleep that doesn't involve them driving. Anything else displays a lack of common sense, and your tongue-in-cheek solution isn't something that anyone would suggest.
5) Now you're just being silly, but if such a thing existed as poetry that is deliberately used to cause pain and anguish to the listener, then it should be treated as any other form of assault.
What a safe, secure, boring, restrictive world you must dream of.
What an asshole-filled world of narcissists that believe it's their God-given right to harm others around them for their own pleasure you must dream of.
The evidience isn't tenuous. Go back and read the other studies. The effects of smoking on lung health are certainly more pronounced.
They don't seem to realize that there is a cost to personal liberty to balance against a tiny increased health risk.
The problem with smoking is that it robs other people of their choices. I don't care if you shoot up heroine, funnel gin and whisky down your hole, or go deaf from Oxycontin so long as you don't go driving or do something else reckless or harmful to others. If you smoke, unless you do it in private and isolated from others, you are forcing them to engage to some degree in your own chosen path of self-destruction. That isn't acceptable. Your right to swing your fist ends at my face.
Smoking is a choice you make and at this point is a choice you make in light of strong evidence of the harm you do to yourself and others.
Do we also ban other sources of occasional SHS such as sitting around campfires and cooking over charcoal grills?
This sort of smoke is a risk, but is less of a risk than cigarette smoke and has less allergenic properties. Ask a non-smoker to stand near a campfire / charcoal grill smoke and ask them if it feels the same as standing near a smoker. More importantly, though, from a liberty standpoint is the fact that you don't do these activities indoors without ventilation, and you do this only in areas where people have to actively choose to come to the smoke, like on private property or in parks.
Should we ban persons with family histories of CHD (a much more pronounced effect) from having children?
They didn't choose to have have a genetic predisposition to CHD. They don't have the ability to choose whether to pass the genes on or not, so no we don't. If we one day do get the ability to choose what genes to pass on, then we don't do this because it may be unaffordable, may offend the person's religious sentiments, etc. Furthermore, a genetic predisposition to CHD is something that can be mitigated with diet, exercise, and medicines.
Do we require all citizens to exercise regularly?
Of course not. That would take away their choices, much like smokers do when they force people to choose between poisoning theirselves or not being able to go to some public place.
The evidence isn't tenuous or unsupported, you know, if you actually read what doctors are saying. There may be other factors that have stronger influence (like stress or diet for heart disease or radon exposure for lung cancer), but that doesn't mitigate the dangers of SHS. It's exactly like global warming. All the experts are on one side, and all the critics are laymen or experts in other fields. There is no debate; cigarette smoke is a health hazard, and there is no reason that others should be forced to suffer it for the sake of the smoker's pleasure.
In short, you may be right that second hand smoke is bad for you, but if you don't do the research to actually find out whether and how much of an effect it has, then you are just as bad as creationists.
Is that evidence enough for you? If not, you can play for days on Google's Scholar search putting in "second hand smoke" and various diseases caused by it. You will find next to no studies claiming that SHS is harmless. Much like global warming, you have to step outside the realm of experts on the subject to find "debunkers." I'm not sure what sort of logical process would invoke such a strong skepticism over the idea that the same chemical stew that kills smokers might also have effects on the people not holding the cigarette without questioning the effect on smokers themselves. Skepticism's healthy, but there's a limit.
In the few minutes he talked about it he seemed to be taking a reactionary stance against people like you who attack and namecall based on your unsupported assumptions. If you want to sway the middle-of-the-roaders like me, you need to provide scientific evidence rather than conjecture blown way out of proportion by people with extreme views.
Hrm. It seems interesting that a "middle of the roader" will hold me to standards of intellectual integrity that you won't hold Crichton to. I mean, nowhere do I see him making any support for his assertions (which is the bulk of what I actually wrote about, if you go back and actually read my post). Also, I do provide links to articles thoroughly debunking the assertions he makes in his books (even though there's nothing directly refutable in his empty statements of "they're just wrong" in his speeches). The best he ever gets is, "Scientists were wrong on this other completely unrelated subject material, so why trust them on this?" But, hey, I'm the one not backing myself up, right?
If you are simply asking for supporting evidence of global warming, then please go and read the many articles in RealClimate's archive. For a more layman's approach, go see the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." There is no lack of consensus within the climate research community.
If you're actually attacking my assertions on SHS and not global warming, then fine. I did not back them up initially because I thought it was freaking obvious and because my post was excessively long at that point anyway. It was pretty rushed and had some nasty grammar errors because of cutting and pasting sentences into a more cohesive whole. (That's also how I lost the bit about DDT being banned because of effects on wildlife.) In my experience, the only people who seriously question SHS's effects on others are smokers in denial. Why bother trying to reach them? They've built up a lifetime of mental and emotional defenses against the ramifications of their actions, and no amount of truth will reach them.
Slashdot Mirror
I greatly miss Lockheed Georgia Employees' Federal Credit Union which I joined in college at Georgia Tech, but I switched away from them for two reasons -- one practical and one petty.
1) The nearest ATM that didn't charge me $1.50+ to use was over 15 minutes drive away. (15 minutes plus a toll or 25 minutes w/o.) Also their hours were very inconvient, and the nearest branch location was the one 25 minutes away. I joined them in college when they still had a branch office in the college, but left them later long after they'd closed that branch.
2) The required signing a digital signature pad for any teller transaction. I hate that and don't trust it. It removes a step or two for a thief to steal the ability to copy my signature on documents.
Nowadays, I'd grumble and compromise on #2, but I can't deal with #1. I lost far more money from ATM transaction fees than I gained from superior interest rates. All other CUs in my area that I can find have exclusive requirements for joining, so I'm stuck without one for now.
I know it's best to just walk away, but I can't let that stand.
This is the part that needs to be amended. This helps the current 'invasion' by our neighbors to the south. It should not be allowed that illegal aliens can run across the border to drop a kid in the US, and have that kid automatically be a US citizen.
I don't see this as a problem. I've personally always thought that countries that put strong limits on who can become a citizen are backwards and xenophobic. Call it racist; call it nationalist -- whatever. It's an "-ist" mentality, and I despise people who divide and exclude. What you're proposing isn't nearly as reactionary as the policies of countries that allow multiple generations of people born, raised, and grown old in the same country to still not be citizens, but it's a step in that direction, and I think it's a step away from the grand American tradition of acceptance, equality, and growth.
Our country has grown great on the back of immigrants. From the Irish to the Chinese to now the Mexicans, our country has grown stronger and more interesting. Immigrants built the foundations of our economy from railroads to factories in the 19th century. They gave us holidays, unique architecture, and music and arts that have enriched American culture. Almost all the great American foods come from either non-Anglican immigrants or from slaves.
I don't fear the "Invasion from the South" anymore than I fear "the Yellow Peril." It's just a new wave of Americans to be (if we'll let them). There is no such thing as a "true-blood" American. We're all immigrants and that's what makes us special. We have enjoyed having only a future and not the baggage of a past for many generations.
I tell you something -- sometimes I value the patriotism of a person who sacrificed to come and be an American more than someone who just lucked into the position. At least they came to love America by conscious choice instead of by just not shopping around for other options. If someone so loves America that they'd give their child the gift of an American citizenship that they themselves cannot so easily get, then I personally welcome them with open arms, and I find it shameful that you would turn your back on 200 years of American progress to shut them out.
It's the people that look forward to America with the future in mind that will make this nation great and not those who pine for the past and resist change.
I think the point is though, that capitalism has everyone acting in their own best interests, instead of trying to act in the best interests of everyone else (which is impossible to plan and know).
Of course. That's where the human element ruins things. If every one had community-minded best interests or at the very least a modicum of empathy, capitalism would be almost perfect. You don't actually have to know what everyone else's interests are. The Golden Rule is generally sufficient -- don't do to others what you'd hate having done to you. Unfortunately, capitalism is a dog-eat-dog competition where you are encouraged to do unto others before they get a chance to do unto you.
No one sane can take seriously the idea, "Everyone acting in only their own best interests produces an ideal society." All you have to do is look at the use of force. If laws didn't prevent everyone from using physical force in their own best interest, you'd have tribal/gang warfare everywhere. Force could be used only for good if -- you know -- people were almost all decent and never succumbed to the temptation to harm others for profit.
When it's economic force that's used, the effects are far more subtle. However, there are plenty of clear examples of predatory behavior in the financial world that should show that unchecked capitalism is quite destructive thanks to the sociopathic lack of empathy of its primary actors, the corporations.
Take credit for example. Credit cards could run their fee schedules to simply hedge against bad behavior by their customers and use sticks and carrots to promote good financial habits while turning a profit and building customer loyalty. Alternately, they could run their fee schedules to squeeze maximum profit out of the weakest customers, heavily target the financially desperate, and choose to punish financially sensible customers for not making them enough money by not screwing up constantly. After all, there's always more rubes to take advantage of.
Guess which path credit card companies have taken in recent years.
Communism fails because it fails to motivate exceptional effort. Capitalism fails because it fails to motivate people not to prey on those weaker than them. Communism's sins are the sloth of the workers and the temptations of those in control of the state's property. Capitalism's sin is the callous indifference to those one hurts to get ahead. Neither are particularly democratic systems because they both concentrate power in the hands of a few, and only a mixed model system that ensure that no class of people stays entrenched on top without earning it can offer hope for democracy and thus for freedom.
Unfettered capitalism is little more than predation without the ability to strike a blow physically. It's the law of the jungle and not the law of a decent and civilized society, in my opinion.
If the people don't like it, they can vote to change it. Oh wait, they're not democracies? Well then, they can revolt and form democracies, then change it. Or they can wimp out and sneak into the USA. Meh.
So, in the meantime, we should just shut and economically support these poor labor practices that are helping to kill our own labor market and provide arguments for stripping these protections at home to "stay competitive?"
I don't think that funding the race to the bottom exactly encourages positive change.
I'll start popping the corn, or would that be compiling kernels? I've been saving that joke for such a long time.
Well, I guess that's what you get for hording perishable goods.
Communism is actually the ideal system until you add the human factor. Once human nature is introduced you'll end up with what became the Soviet Union and China. Therefore, the best system in the real world is a capitalist society which is a republic or democracy.
I would counter that capitalism is also an ideal system until you add the human factor.
Communism fails because of labor sloth, abuse of asymmetrical state power between leaders and citizens, and a lack of feeling of obligation to total strangers.
Capitalism fails because of business avarice, abuse of asymmetrical contract power between the rich and the not-rich, and a lack of feeling of obligation to total strangers.
The only system that works is a mixed economy system where greed and apathy are balanced against each other (profit motive must be present but not overwhelm human dignity), state and corporate power are checked by rule of law and an engaged citizenry (democracy, sunshine laws, anti-trust law, labor law, etc.), and consideration of the effects of one's actions on others enforced by courts and legislatures (pollution control, worker safety laws, food safety laws, reasonable tort law, etc.).
Poor countries need sweatshops, need free trade of agricultural products, and need less subsidies. That's the way out.
Why is that the way out for developing nations when every industrial and post-industrial power in the world put an end to child labor and sub-subsistience wages through government regulations?
It's not like the US got to where it is today through free trade of goods and a lack of subsidies. Ever hear of Henry Clay and the American System? Free trade may be the way to connect economies into a global whole, provide extremely cheap goods, and possibly prevent wars, but it's not the way that America and other pre-WWII Great Powers became as powerful as they did. Read your history.
You think that supply and demand do not exist in a command economy and that the mere existence of a reaction to them implies a free market? What a strange understanding of "free" markets you must have.
Before the Civil War, there was strong arguments for the idea that the limitations on the federal government (as noted in the 1st Amendment "Congress shall make no law") did not apply to the state governments. The state governments could theoretically pass laws abridging the freedoms of its citizens that the federal government could not. The 10th Amendment is in fact the strongest source of support for that idea. A restriction barring the federal government from doing something is not "power delegated to" it -- it's the opposite.
After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was passed specifically to prevent Southern states from passing laws that discriminated against blacks in the way that the federal government could not. This is known as the Equal Protection Clause (and has sadly been used to defend the rights of corporations far more than it has been used to defend the rights of minorities). It reads like this:
This is the clause that extends limitations on the powers of the federal government to the state governments and prevents the abridgement of free speech by them.
However, pornography and obscenity have long been ruled by the Supreme Court as having lesser protection that political speech. The case Miller v. California set forth a test to determine pornography that has been used ever since. Justice Burger in his opinion wrote the following:
Change "sexual conduct" in part (b) to "violence to people" and you've probably got a bill that would survive a Supreme Court decision. Whether or not the list of barred things is overly broad and violates the second test is where it's most likely to stand or fall. The third test is where a lot people think that works will escape, but as Burger says in the sentence immediately following this test, "We do not adopt as a constitutional standard the 'utterly without redeeming social value" test of Memoirs v. Massachusetts.'" You can read more about obscenity and the 1st Amendment here.
That was a well written and thoughtful post. Every one I've ever met who entertained this sort of idea is unmarried and doesn't seem to understand just how bad the stress of doing this will destroy their lives. This is a recipe to burn out and to find yourself in a career path that you can no longer enjoy.
But in the end, whether they work hard or not (I personally have known teachers that do not fit the workaholic description you give above), the market determines their pay.
You are under some sort of delusion about what "the market" is if you think that government paid jobs whose raises are up the whim of the state legislature or governor are subject to the whims of "the market." You must have some very strange definition of "market" that includes politics as a deciding factor. Unlike a normal free-market driven job, the quality / quantity of labor does not affect profits, since there is no profit in teaching -- a necessity to keep education universal. The same forces are not at work as in a regular free market job.
Teaching is not considered difficult by a lot of people...
Yeah, by people that haven't done it and who don't know anyone who does it. I'm sure there are a lot idiots who think construction work is easy because they see people taking breaks. A lot of people believe a lot of stupid things that have no connection to reality.
Teaching is difficult. Both my parents are/were teachers. (My dad's retired now.) I see what they go through, and I see how much they work, and I see all the grief they get from poorly disciplined children and from parents who believe that "their little angel" can do no wrong and should never have to undergo any sort of pressure to succeed. They don't really have summers off because there's a lot of training and preparation for next year to do. What free time they do get is generally spent on chores that they didn't have time to do during the school year. While they do get I'd say about a month of genuine vacation time, that's not nearly enough to make the job easy, just like all those little breaks doesn't make construction a slacker's job either.
Teachers are available at the wages that are being paid. What motivation does the district have to raise pay?
You mean, besides the fact that they have a shortage of nearly 1000 teachers? Exactly what attraction is there to a job that offers too poor pay to live off of in an area with very expensive average home costs that involves dealing with poorly behaved kids and irresponsible parents? Teaching is a job that requires a lot of personal sacrifice and the fact that people go into it at all shows that there are a lot of people with dedication that are willing to sacrifice money to help out children. That doesn't mean that they should be rewarded with the opportunity to sacrifice as much as they can.
The parent mentioned that the teachers he/she knows are in it because they love what they do. Unfortunately, that's not reason enough to raise the pay - I love playing video games and drinking Starbucks, but I don't get paid a dime for either one.
While I can understand the difficulty they're in, I don't necessarily sympathize.
Of course not, you apparently think that the reward of acting for the benefit for others and the reward of indulging in selfish pleasures are equivalent and should be equally unpaid. It's just a shame that people like teachers are dependent on uninformed or uncaring voters like you for their salaries.
You obviously have either taught or are the relative / spouse of a teacher. No one who isn't seems to have any understanding of what teachers do or go through. As the child of two teachers, I have to say, "Kudos," to you for an understanding post.
Are you under any of the following dellusions?
a) Teachers don't do work during the summer?
b) Governments would pay teachers more if we had year-round schools?
If a school district anywhere pays a teacher enough to live comfortably for an entire year, yet gives them a quarter of the year off work, the tax payers should raise hell.
I find it interesting that people will bemoan the failures of the public educational system to attract good teachers on the one hand and then claim that we pay teachers too much on the other hand. Curse those foul teachers for demanding that they have enough to live off!
FFX's battle system was functionally identical to standard ATB with the option (available in all ATB-using FF games) to have the clock pause when your turn came up.
This is the mode in which I always play FF games because I hate being pressured by the clock. I play RPGs tactically and not as an exercise in speed and reflexes, so to me FFX was the perfection of how I play the ATB system.
Actually, if you want to go for the best high-speed battle system that Square's put out, I'd have to vote for Kingdom Hearts II. I'm not generally a fan of real-time RPG combat systems, but KH2 is a pure joy to play and get a lot of incredibly flashy mileage out of 4 buttons. It's extremely pretty and fun.
(I do love Seiken Densetsu 2 & 3, by the way, but KH2 is just so over the top.)
FFX almost perfected the active-time battle system in my opinion. It kept the order of initiative preserved, kept you from getting pounded on if you needed to dig into the menus (which I hate), and allowed you to pound away as fast as you could select actions. FFX was just smooth.
The only was ATB could be made better is to eliminate any need to dig into menus without getting rid of the pretty. I wish FF XIII luck, but I'm not sure I like where the series is going with FF XII in terms of control schema.
The leading edge of the plasma ball could be defined by the focus of a phased array of microwave emitters, a fancy version of the votive-candle-in-microwave-oven trick.
Where would the phased array of microwave emitters have to be positioned on a battlefield? Could it move while the shot is still being fired (as from a moving vehicle)? What range would it be effective at?
The idea of a self-contained plasma bolt speeding through an atmosphere is just silly. What holds the pocket of plasma together against the wind? I just don't see a high-speed projectile application in the technology's future.
It's an issue I'm sure that a lot of Nokia phone owners aren't aware of. I didn't realize that my phone's Bluetooth settings were set that way until I read the blurb and checked. I turned it off and changed it to hidden (just in case I ever want to reactivate it later).
I don't exactly have anything important in my phone, but given the existance of Bluetooth exploits, I'd rather not leave the ports open as it were.
Now that is a textbook example of pendantry. Never say in 2 words what could be said in 18.
You do realize that everyone knew that's what they meant, right, Mr. Rosetta Stone?
But not private property like a bar, or the smoking section of a restaraunt, or a designated smoking area?
Specifically, I meant areas where you come explicitly to be in the presence of smoke. I don't go to a restraunt to be near smokers; I go for food. I don't go to work to be near smokers; I go to program in exchange for money. Smoking/non-smoking areas in restraunts don't fully shield patrons and don't shield workers at all.
If smoking were something innocent but annoying, then it would be one thing, but it genuinely represents a threat to the health and longevity of others. No one should be able to force that on others, especially when the only benefit of smoking is the pleasure of the smoker.
By your logic, we should also ban loud music, food additives, overhead power lines, drinking alcohol outside of walking distance from the home, and vogon poetry.
I'll address these in order.
1) Yes, we should ban loud music but only when it gets to a volume to cause physical damage to others who do not consent to be in its presence (thus exempting concerts). Maybe you could argue for a lower volume ban at night when people are supposed to be sleeping. Oddly enough, we already have laws that cover both situations -- public disturbance ordinances.
2) I don't know what you mean by food additives specifically, but if it represents a health threat and it's not a natural element of food, like trans fats or cyclamates, then ban it. I don't want poison in my food, even if it's clearly labelled as being there (and thus alright because the government says it's safe).
3) Overhead power lines? What?
4) People who like to drink far from home should get a cab, have a designated driver, or have some other form of transportation to a place to sleep that doesn't involve them driving. Anything else displays a lack of common sense, and your tongue-in-cheek solution isn't something that anyone would suggest.
5) Now you're just being silly, but if such a thing existed as poetry that is deliberately used to cause pain and anguish to the listener, then it should be treated as any other form of assault.
What a safe, secure, boring, restrictive world you must dream of.
What an asshole-filled world of narcissists that believe it's their God-given right to harm others around them for their own pleasure you must dream of.
I don't care if you shoot up heroine ...
Whoops. Shooting up a heroine might be infringing on her liberties.
The evidience isn't tenuous. Go back and read the other studies. The effects of smoking on lung health are certainly more pronounced.
They don't seem to realize that there is a cost to personal liberty to balance against a tiny increased health risk.
The problem with smoking is that it robs other people of their choices. I don't care if you shoot up heroine, funnel gin and whisky down your hole, or go deaf from Oxycontin so long as you don't go driving or do something else reckless or harmful to others. If you smoke, unless you do it in private and isolated from others, you are forcing them to engage to some degree in your own chosen path of self-destruction. That isn't acceptable. Your right to swing your fist ends at my face.
Smoking is a choice you make and at this point is a choice you make in light of strong evidence of the harm you do to yourself and others.
Do we also ban other sources of occasional SHS such as sitting around campfires and cooking over charcoal grills?
This sort of smoke is a risk, but is less of a risk than cigarette smoke and has less allergenic properties. Ask a non-smoker to stand near a campfire / charcoal grill smoke and ask them if it feels the same as standing near a smoker. More importantly, though, from a liberty standpoint is the fact that you don't do these activities indoors without ventilation, and you do this only in areas where people have to actively choose to come to the smoke, like on private property or in parks.
Should we ban persons with family histories of CHD (a much more pronounced effect) from having children?
They didn't choose to have have a genetic predisposition to CHD. They don't have the ability to choose whether to pass the genes on or not, so no we don't. If we one day do get the ability to choose what genes to pass on, then we don't do this because it may be unaffordable, may offend the person's religious sentiments, etc. Furthermore, a genetic predisposition to CHD is something that can be mitigated with diet, exercise, and medicines.
Do we require all citizens to exercise regularly?
Of course not. That would take away their choices, much like smokers do when they force people to choose between poisoning theirselves or not being able to go to some public place.
The evidence isn't tenuous or unsupported, you know, if you actually read what doctors are saying. There may be other factors that have stronger influence (like stress or diet for heart disease or radon exposure for lung cancer), but that doesn't mitigate the dangers of SHS. It's exactly like global warming. All the experts are on one side, and all the critics are laymen or experts in other fields. There is no debate; cigarette smoke is a health hazard, and there is no reason that others should be forced to suffer it for the sake of the smoker's pleasure.
In short, you may be right that second hand smoke is bad for you, but if you don't do the research to actually find out whether and how much of an effect it has, then you are just as bad as creationists.
Here you go:
Epidemological study on the correlations between exposure to SHS and severe childhood asthma attacks.
A study showing the increased risk of developing heart disease from SHS.
An analysis of 37 studies on SHS and lung cancer.
Is that evidence enough for you? If not, you can play for days on Google's Scholar search putting in "second hand smoke" and various diseases caused by it. You will find next to no studies claiming that SHS is harmless. Much like global warming, you have to step outside the realm of experts on the subject to find "debunkers." I'm not sure what sort of logical process would invoke such a strong skepticism over the idea that the same chemical stew that kills smokers might also have effects on the people not holding the cigarette without questioning the effect on smokers themselves. Skepticism's healthy, but there's a limit.
In the few minutes he talked about it he seemed to be taking a reactionary stance against people like you who attack and namecall based on your unsupported assumptions. If you want to sway the middle-of-the-roaders like me, you need to provide scientific evidence rather than conjecture blown way out of proportion by people with extreme views.
Hrm. It seems interesting that a "middle of the roader" will hold me to standards of intellectual integrity that you won't hold Crichton to. I mean, nowhere do I see him making any support for his assertions (which is the bulk of what I actually wrote about, if you go back and actually read my post). Also, I do provide links to articles thoroughly debunking the assertions he makes in his books (even though there's nothing directly refutable in his empty statements of "they're just wrong" in his speeches). The best he ever gets is, "Scientists were wrong on this other completely unrelated subject material, so why trust them on this?" But, hey, I'm the one not backing myself up, right?
If you are simply asking for supporting evidence of global warming, then please go and read the many articles in RealClimate's archive. For a more layman's approach, go see the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." There is no lack of consensus within the climate research community.
If you're actually attacking my assertions on SHS and not global warming, then fine. I did not back them up initially because I thought it was freaking obvious and because my post was excessively long at that point anyway. It was pretty rushed and had some nasty grammar errors because of cutting and pasting sentences into a more cohesive whole. (That's also how I lost the bit about DDT being banned because of effects on wildlife.) In my experience, the only people who seriously question SHS's effects on others are smokers in denial. Why bother trying to reach them? They've built up a lifetime of mental and emotional defenses against the ramifications of their actions, and no amount of truth will reach them.