Why on earth would you blame science, and not religion, for the holocaust?
German scientists claimed to have lots of evidence that some races are intellectually inferior. Concepts like third position economics, Lebensraum, and the Dolchstosslegende were developed by scientists and asserted as scientific fact. But the churches were no better. The Catholic church made deals with Hitler legitimizing his regime and getting large amounts of money in return. German protestants had been very anti-Semitic and became the Nazi state church. The Christian parties in German parliament supported Hitler and the Nazis. So, it's not an either/or: both science and religion are to blame for the rise of Nazis and the subsequent genocide.
This isn't limited to Nazi Germany. Both science and Christianity have frequently supported racism, oppression, and genocide in many places, including the US and South Africa.
"Modernism" is primarily a cultural and artistic movement. While a part of modernism is a response to science and technology, modernism does not embrace or endorse science, reason, or technology. No, whatever term the article was looking for, "modernism" wasn't it.
Atheism simply means that one does not believe in the existence of God. You can be religious and an atheist: there are many atheistic religions. And you don't need science to see through the self-serving web of lies preached by corrupt Christian churches, or to reject the evil morality that theism is based on.
The contradictions between theism and science are probably the least important argument against theism, both because science tends to be careful in its pronouncements, and because contradictions with reality are not convinced to theistic worshipers, and they are easily addressed by saying that whatever aspects of theism are contradictory are simply metaphor.
No, what I was pointing out is that as "deregulation" was done where I'm painfully familiar with how it worked out (namely, Montana and California), said "deregulation" was a crock
It probably was. A lot of crony capitalist policies are mislabeled as "deregulation", and California is one of the most corrupt states in the nation and has one of the highest costs of living.
And I speculate that absent this bogus "deregulation", alt-energy might have been a lot more cost-competitive -- without raising prices on conventional-fuel energy.
Alternative energy simply isn't cost-competitive, and it receives massive government support, both direct and indirect.
The best choice for consumers is a private, competitive energy market in which no form of energy receives special support or treatment from the government.
Beyond the computational aspect, we also need to decide, as a society, if this is a technology that should exist.
Sorry to break it to you, but society not only doesn't "need" to make this decision, it has no right to make this decision. You don't get to decide what other people invent, and for the most part not even what it is used for.
Uber relies on a pool of casual workers who get paid piss poor wages. These piss poor workers will work lots of hours in order to make enough money. So that's a system that is _designed_ to create unsafe driving.
"Designed" implies that the intended purpose is lack of safety, which is ludicrous. Uber's business model is "designed" to make Uber money by lowering costs, increasing competition, increasing efficiency, and lowering prices.
More importantly, your premise is wrong. Uber drivers seem to be making about as much as cab drivers according to the ones I talked to (many of whom used to be cab drivers). Regular cab drivers pay a ton of money to the owners of the medallions, fat cats who can just reap the benefits of the government monopoly they have been granted. Unlike cab drivers, who must do an entire shift at once or lose a lot of money, Uber drivers are far more flexible when and how they work. Unlike a regular taxi driver, a Uber driver can just stay home for an extra hour or two if he's tired.
But first we should get rid of situations where it happens by design, and a lot.
You're proposing policy based on pure fabrications, many of which actually are wrong. And you're defending the interests of wealthy medallion owners over the interests of the public.
Also, cost in the U.S. varies as much as it does in the rest of the world.
True. And we should take advantage of that variation within the US to figure out what lowers energy prices; it's not hard to see what that is: deregulation and competition.
Absent deregulation (aka "sell all our power generation facilities to foreign investors, who then charge us through the nose") the "green" energy might not wind up being that much more costly to the consumer.
First, you point out that the highly regulated places in the US have the highest energy prices, and then you suggest that deregulation is responsible for high prices? Are you insane?
You are right that regulation would make energy prices for fossil and alternative energy the same, namely by strongly raising the price charged for fossil fuel.
No, I didn't come out with a second hypothesis. If you eliminated alternative energy subsidies in Germany, electricity prices would go down; that's not something that requires a lot of complicated analysis because that's the way pricing is deliberately set up. Support for alternative energy is clearly the cause for high energy prices in Germany.
You tried to make the argument that because other EU countries had similar prices but didn't support alternative energies, that couldn't be true; that German support for alternative energy should increase prices beyond those found elsewhere. You asked for an explanation why prices are roughly the same across the EU, and I gave it. European politics enables irrational, monopolistic and corrupt energy policies. The form that these corrupt policies and who enriches themselves through them take vary from country to country. But all of them hit their limits in monopoly pricing: no matter how corrupt the political process is, no matter what mechanisms they use to enrich themselves, and no matter how much they'd like to fleece consumers for, 3x US prices is pretty much as high as they can go. Charging more than that, even a monopolist starts losing money because consumer demand for energy is elastic. (Business demand for energy is often far less elastic, which is why businesses in the EU often don't pay the same monopoly prices.)
But I, as Joe Driver, can't choose whether I want to share the road with a taxi driver who pulls 16-hour workdays out of greed or desperation.
And how is that different from sharing the road with any other tired driver? How do I know you don't drive tired because you are overextended on your mortgage and are rushing from one job to another? Or running a delivery business on the side?
If that's your justification, then let's introduce a system in which everybody is required to state the purpose of their trip and the amount of hours before they take their care out, perhaps combined with sleep tracking. Only safe trips for a list of approved purposes would be allowed! How about it?
And of course you're also ignoring the well-known fact that human beings are extremely bad at estimating risks.
Again, how does that justify limiting the number of cabs? That's what licensing does.
Furthermore, Uber is actually better that public licensing in that the company (unlike the licensing commission) faces potential liability, every ride is tracked, and drivers and passengers give each other feedback. No public licensing scheme has anything like that level of tracking and accountability.
Another problem with that argument is that taxi commissions (and licensing commissions in general) are no more qualified at estimating risks and have no demonstrated track record at reducing risk. The only thing they achieve is lining their pockets.
Furthermore, if the principle is for the government to keep me from stupidly doing things that are risky, why start with taxi cab? Riding an unlicensed cab is a very safe activity compared to having sex, riding a bicycle, skiing, or climbing a ladder. If anything, Are you suggesting that we outlaw all those other activities unless people get a government license? I don't want to live in that kind of society.
Sorry, but you are full of it. Taxi licensing does not improve safety at all, and the principles by which you and others attempt to justify taxi licensing are incompatible with living in a free society.
And you don't get to be exempt from consumer protection regulations just because you're doing your selling on the web.
There are no "consumer protection" laws. What you so foolishly refer to as "consumer protection" is the result of lobbying by special interests and corporations to enrich themselves.
The point here is that the government is in a much better position to do things like that than idiots like you seem to think. Contracts only work when both parties have the option of full due diligence and people aren't going to be in the position to do so when it comes to ride share apps. Especially in cases where the drivers are independents who may or may not be properly overseen by the party brokering the transactions.
Those are all wonderful reasons for voluntary government certification: anybody who wants to can go to the government and get some government seal of approval; I as a rider can then make a voluntary choice whether that certification is useful information or whether I want to throw caution to the wind and ride with uncertified drivers.
Your reasons simply don't justify compulsory government licensing.
When you do something for profit, your in business. Your legal liability changed. Your insurance needs changed.
Yes, your liability changes. Your insurance changes as well. That's true for most businesses. What does that have to do with CPUC? Why does this require "legal hurdles"?
I did not have that meaning in mind. I should have said "spending money on renewable energy".
But it's no accident that you used that term: politicians use it. Public spending on solar energy in Germany was justified by saying that it would bring a positive return in terms of jobs and business activity (it has failed to do either).
Why did the maximum they can fleece people for in Germany go up
You pointed out that German electricity costs generally tracked European energy costs, and that they were all roughly 3x US electricity costs. Now you're saying it went up? Which point are you trying to make?
and what does that have to do with renewable energy?
Nothing, that's the point. The fact that electricity in Europe is roughly 3x US prices despite vastly different spending on alternative energies needs explanation, and a good explanation is that it is due to monopoly pricing. Companies can't get monopolies unless they successfully lobby governments to grant them one. And there are two standard lobbying strategies: (A) claim that it's good for health/safety/the environment to grant a monopoly, and (B) claim that it will make consumers financially better off if government grants a monopoly. Of these, (A) is rarely true, and (B) is always a lie. Solar happens to be the form excuses (A) and (B) take in Germany; other countries use other excuses. But whatever argument lobbyists succeed with, in the end, you get monopoly pricing.
I think the treaty was OK in the sense that it prevented an arms race in space and the threat of bombardment from space. That was a good thing to agree on. Let's hold on to that for as long as we can.
Prohibitions on asteroid mining, on the other hand, serve no purpose. Either they get renegotiated, or they simply get ignored. Countries that haven't ratified the treaty aren't bound by them anyway.
States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty.
So what? It wouldn't be the first treaty anybody has broken. Are there any penalties? Who is going to enforce them? And, in any case, the US could simply leave the treaty or demand it be renegotiated. The Outer Space Treaty simply isn't going to last in its current form, and it should last in its current form. Get used to it. Treaties aren't binding law, they are simply mutual agreements to help make things work more smoothly.
In any case, private space companies could simply move to countries that haven't ratified the treaty, and they wouldn't be in violation of any treaty or international law.
Congress can very much make asteroid mining legal for Americans; for an American to break a treaty entered into by the US government isn't, by itself, illegal. Calling it "a violation of international law" is really a misnomer, since "international law" isn't "law" in the usual sense of the word. There is no judicial branch of government enforcing international law, no constitutional principles governing it, no consent of the governed.
If Congress decides to make asteroid mining legal, it may or may not be a treaty violation on the part of the US, but so what? Treaties aren't binding law, nor are they immutable, they are merely agreements between states and are renegotiable.
There's a capital cost for building and maintaining the equipment required to tap that energy, but the energy itself is free once you've covered that initial cost.
"Maintaining" isn't capital cost, and those things require constant maintenance. They'll break in big storms. They wear out and develop cracks. They need to be replaced eventually, usually around every 20 years. Then there are the costs for leasing/owning the land, insurance, and environmental impact.
You might as well say that fossil fuel plants have "free chemical energy": it's right there, in the ground, for free! All you need to do is dig it up and burn it!
Also, the Model S is not their "entry level" vehicle. That vehicle is still under development.
In different words, it is their entry level vehicle.
Thanks for illustrating again how absolutely out of touch people advocating "alternative energies" are with the real world of machines, the environment, and engineering.
The Energy and Motor industries get far more in subsidies, tax breaks and bailouts.
And how is that relevant? The fact remains that the cheapest Tesla you can buy is $70k. Tax breaks and bailouts for the US auto industry are reprehensible, but you can buy a foreign car that didn't receive any of those and it still costs a fraction of the Tesla.
So much so that dwindling fossil fuels can still compete economically with kinetic energy that costs nothing.
No, you have misinterpreted what's happening. What you call "buying back" is crony capitalism, paying inflated prices for junk that nobody else in their right mind would buy.
The end result will be much cheaper and very much worth it, not to mention putting Germany at the forefront of this lucrative global market for green technology.
Yeah, right after Jesus and Elvis descend together on a glowing cloud and start the Rapture, and sheep and lions cuddle up in peace. You have to be terminally stupid to believe that crap.
How much of that comes from their invesment in renewable energy, though?
None of it, I presume, since the term "investment in renewable energy" is b.s.; investment implies an expected return, and people are never going to see a return.
"Investment in renewable energy" is just Germany's preferred fig leaf for crony capitalism involving energy companies and lobbyists. Denmark and other EU nations have other fig leafs. That explains the otherwise remarkable coincidence that energy prices are so similar: it's determined not by how much countries spend to produce energy, but by the maximum amount they can fleece consumers for.
There are a few countries with prices comparable to the USA in the EU
Yes, and I'd prefer if the US don't join the EU in terms of excessive energy prices.
What "ignorance"? The points are stated are facts, They are easy enough to check for you. If you don't know these facts, it's you who is ignorant.
Trying to blame Republicans for asset forfeiture laws is ludicrous. The problem is a bipartisan problem, with Republican "tough-on-crime" and Democratic support for public sector unions both enabling police powers to spin out of control. And rather than reversing the trend, Obama has done sh*t.
It's idiots like you that are responsible for our inability to combat police brutality and an unfair justice system, because idiots like you keep voting for the people who make it happen.
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You can call it a "religion", but it was widely accepted as scientific at the time.
You're right that it was "as scientific as creationism", but the same can be said for many modern scientific ideas tossed about in modern politics.
German scientists claimed to have lots of evidence that some races are intellectually inferior. Concepts like third position economics, Lebensraum, and the Dolchstosslegende were developed by scientists and asserted as scientific fact. But the churches were no better. The Catholic church made deals with Hitler legitimizing his regime and getting large amounts of money in return. German protestants had been very anti-Semitic and became the Nazi state church. The Christian parties in German parliament supported Hitler and the Nazis. So, it's not an either/or: both science and religion are to blame for the rise of Nazis and the subsequent genocide.
This isn't limited to Nazi Germany. Both science and Christianity have frequently supported racism, oppression, and genocide in many places, including the US and South Africa.
"Modernism" is primarily a cultural and artistic movement. While a part of modernism is a response to science and technology, modernism does not embrace or endorse science, reason, or technology. No, whatever term the article was looking for, "modernism" wasn't it.
Atheism simply means that one does not believe in the existence of God. You can be religious and an atheist: there are many atheistic religions. And you don't need science to see through the self-serving web of lies preached by corrupt Christian churches, or to reject the evil morality that theism is based on.
The contradictions between theism and science are probably the least important argument against theism, both because science tends to be careful in its pronouncements, and because contradictions with reality are not convinced to theistic worshipers, and they are easily addressed by saying that whatever aspects of theism are contradictory are simply metaphor.
It probably was. A lot of crony capitalist policies are mislabeled as "deregulation", and California is one of the most corrupt states in the nation and has one of the highest costs of living.
Alternative energy simply isn't cost-competitive, and it receives massive government support, both direct and indirect.
The best choice for consumers is a private, competitive energy market in which no form of energy receives special support or treatment from the government.
Sorry to break it to you, but society not only doesn't "need" to make this decision, it has no right to make this decision. You don't get to decide what other people invent, and for the most part not even what it is used for.
"Designed" implies that the intended purpose is lack of safety, which is ludicrous. Uber's business model is "designed" to make Uber money by lowering costs, increasing competition, increasing efficiency, and lowering prices.
More importantly, your premise is wrong. Uber drivers seem to be making about as much as cab drivers according to the ones I talked to (many of whom used to be cab drivers). Regular cab drivers pay a ton of money to the owners of the medallions, fat cats who can just reap the benefits of the government monopoly they have been granted. Unlike cab drivers, who must do an entire shift at once or lose a lot of money, Uber drivers are far more flexible when and how they work. Unlike a regular taxi driver, a Uber driver can just stay home for an extra hour or two if he's tired.
You're proposing policy based on pure fabrications, many of which actually are wrong. And you're defending the interests of wealthy medallion owners over the interests of the public.
None of them require government licensing to engage in; that's what we are talking about here.
True. And we should take advantage of that variation within the US to figure out what lowers energy prices; it's not hard to see what that is: deregulation and competition.
First, you point out that the highly regulated places in the US have the highest energy prices, and then you suggest that deregulation is responsible for high prices? Are you insane?
You are right that regulation would make energy prices for fossil and alternative energy the same, namely by strongly raising the price charged for fossil fuel.
No, I didn't come out with a second hypothesis. If you eliminated alternative energy subsidies in Germany, electricity prices would go down; that's not something that requires a lot of complicated analysis because that's the way pricing is deliberately set up. Support for alternative energy is clearly the cause for high energy prices in Germany.
You tried to make the argument that because other EU countries had similar prices but didn't support alternative energies, that couldn't be true; that German support for alternative energy should increase prices beyond those found elsewhere. You asked for an explanation why prices are roughly the same across the EU, and I gave it. European politics enables irrational, monopolistic and corrupt energy policies. The form that these corrupt policies and who enriches themselves through them take vary from country to country. But all of them hit their limits in monopoly pricing: no matter how corrupt the political process is, no matter what mechanisms they use to enrich themselves, and no matter how much they'd like to fleece consumers for, 3x US prices is pretty much as high as they can go. Charging more than that, even a monopolist starts losing money because consumer demand for energy is elastic. (Business demand for energy is often far less elastic, which is why businesses in the EU often don't pay the same monopoly prices.)
And how is that different from sharing the road with any other tired driver? How do I know you don't drive tired because you are overextended on your mortgage and are rushing from one job to another? Or running a delivery business on the side?
If that's your justification, then let's introduce a system in which everybody is required to state the purpose of their trip and the amount of hours before they take their care out, perhaps combined with sleep tracking. Only safe trips for a list of approved purposes would be allowed! How about it?
Again, how does that justify limiting the number of cabs? That's what licensing does.
Furthermore, Uber is actually better that public licensing in that the company (unlike the licensing commission) faces potential liability, every ride is tracked, and drivers and passengers give each other feedback. No public licensing scheme has anything like that level of tracking and accountability.
Another problem with that argument is that taxi commissions (and licensing commissions in general) are no more qualified at estimating risks and have no demonstrated track record at reducing risk. The only thing they achieve is lining their pockets.
Furthermore, if the principle is for the government to keep me from stupidly doing things that are risky, why start with taxi cab? Riding an unlicensed cab is a very safe activity compared to having sex, riding a bicycle, skiing, or climbing a ladder. If anything, Are you suggesting that we outlaw all those other activities unless people get a government license? I don't want to live in that kind of society.
Sorry, but you are full of it. Taxi licensing does not improve safety at all, and the principles by which you and others attempt to justify taxi licensing are incompatible with living in a free society.
There are no "consumer protection" laws. What you so foolishly refer to as "consumer protection" is the result of lobbying by special interests and corporations to enrich themselves.
If that's what you believe, you have a simple solution: don't ride them.
That's no reason to impose your preferences on others.
Those are all wonderful reasons for voluntary government certification: anybody who wants to can go to the government and get some government seal of approval; I as a rider can then make a voluntary choice whether that certification is useful information or whether I want to throw caution to the wind and ride with uncertified drivers.
Your reasons simply don't justify compulsory government licensing.
Yes, your liability changes. Your insurance changes as well. That's true for most businesses. What does that have to do with CPUC? Why does this require "legal hurdles"?
But it's no accident that you used that term: politicians use it. Public spending on solar energy in Germany was justified by saying that it would bring a positive return in terms of jobs and business activity (it has failed to do either).
You pointed out that German electricity costs generally tracked European energy costs, and that they were all roughly 3x US electricity costs. Now you're saying it went up? Which point are you trying to make?
Nothing, that's the point. The fact that electricity in Europe is roughly 3x US prices despite vastly different spending on alternative energies needs explanation, and a good explanation is that it is due to monopoly pricing. Companies can't get monopolies unless they successfully lobby governments to grant them one. And there are two standard lobbying strategies: (A) claim that it's good for health/safety/the environment to grant a monopoly, and (B) claim that it will make consumers financially better off if government grants a monopoly. Of these, (A) is rarely true, and (B) is always a lie. Solar happens to be the form excuses (A) and (B) take in Germany; other countries use other excuses. But whatever argument lobbyists succeed with, in the end, you get monopoly pricing.
I think the treaty was OK in the sense that it prevented an arms race in space and the threat of bombardment from space. That was a good thing to agree on. Let's hold on to that for as long as we can.
Prohibitions on asteroid mining, on the other hand, serve no purpose. Either they get renegotiated, or they simply get ignored. Countries that haven't ratified the treaty aren't bound by them anyway.
So what? It wouldn't be the first treaty anybody has broken. Are there any penalties? Who is going to enforce them? And, in any case, the US could simply leave the treaty or demand it be renegotiated. The Outer Space Treaty simply isn't going to last in its current form, and it should last in its current form. Get used to it. Treaties aren't binding law, they are simply mutual agreements to help make things work more smoothly.
In any case, private space companies could simply move to countries that haven't ratified the treaty, and they wouldn't be in violation of any treaty or international law.
Congress can very much make asteroid mining legal for Americans; for an American to break a treaty entered into by the US government isn't, by itself, illegal. Calling it "a violation of international law" is really a misnomer, since "international law" isn't "law" in the usual sense of the word. There is no judicial branch of government enforcing international law, no constitutional principles governing it, no consent of the governed.
If Congress decides to make asteroid mining legal, it may or may not be a treaty violation on the part of the US, but so what? Treaties aren't binding law, nor are they immutable, they are merely agreements between states and are renegotiable.
"Maintaining" isn't capital cost, and those things require constant maintenance. They'll break in big storms. They wear out and develop cracks. They need to be replaced eventually, usually around every 20 years. Then there are the costs for leasing/owning the land, insurance, and environmental impact.
You might as well say that fossil fuel plants have "free chemical energy": it's right there, in the ground, for free! All you need to do is dig it up and burn it!
In different words, it is their entry level vehicle.
Thanks for illustrating again how absolutely out of touch people advocating "alternative energies" are with the real world of machines, the environment, and engineering.
And how is that relevant? The fact remains that the cheapest Tesla you can buy is $70k. Tax breaks and bailouts for the US auto industry are reprehensible, but you can buy a foreign car that didn't receive any of those and it still costs a fraction of the Tesla.
Free kinetic energy? Where?
Yes, my preferred alternative.
Well, I could but I won't if I can help it. Neither will most people on this planet.
No, you have misinterpreted what's happening. What you call "buying back" is crony capitalism, paying inflated prices for junk that nobody else in their right mind would buy.
Yeah, right after Jesus and Elvis descend together on a glowing cloud and start the Rapture, and sheep and lions cuddle up in peace. You have to be terminally stupid to believe that crap.
None of it, I presume, since the term "investment in renewable energy" is b.s.; investment implies an expected return, and people are never going to see a return.
"Investment in renewable energy" is just Germany's preferred fig leaf for crony capitalism involving energy companies and lobbyists. Denmark and other EU nations have other fig leafs. That explains the otherwise remarkable coincidence that energy prices are so similar: it's determined not by how much countries spend to produce energy, but by the maximum amount they can fleece consumers for.
Yes, and I'd prefer if the US don't join the EU in terms of excessive energy prices.
What "ignorance"? The points are stated are facts, They are easy enough to check for you. If you don't know these facts, it's you who is ignorant.
Trying to blame Republicans for asset forfeiture laws is ludicrous. The problem is a bipartisan problem, with Republican "tough-on-crime" and Democratic support for public sector unions both enabling police powers to spin out of control. And rather than reversing the trend, Obama has done sh*t.
It's idiots like you that are responsible for our inability to combat police brutality and an unfair justice system, because idiots like you keep voting for the people who make it happen.