"If so many people do it, then it should be acceptable."
You're forgetting the number one rule to driving: you're the best driver on the road. People push for these laws to be passed because they want to see them enforced on other people. Few people ever stop to think that such low speed limits will ever apply to them, the best driver on the road...
Take the ticket to court, and make the point that one would assume that a cop's speedometer is more reliable than the average civillian's. Either the cop would be forced to admit to a judge that he, too, was violating the law for no good reason, or the charges would probably be dropped.
"Umm... I'm pretty sure the Constitution is fairly clear on who gets to regulate interstate commerce, and I'm pretty sure that the states ain't it."
OK, Perry Mason, here is a copy of the Constitution of the United States. Find me the part that denies regulating interstate commerce to the states.
There is a clause granting that power to Congress, but there is no similar clause refusing that power to the states. Other than very specific prohibitions against things like duties, but there is nothing in the document that broadly forbids the states fom affecting that area. And, really, if the broad area of "interstate commerce" is refused the states, what's the point in including such specific restrictions like the one against duties?
What you are probably thinking of is referred to as the Dormant Commerce Clause which is notable in the way it does not explicitly exist in the Constitution. It's more a work of judicial precedence than legislation.
You've really opened a can of worms. In essence, you've just asked "What's wrong with the US?" and you'll get a million different answers.:)
At any rate, my own personal spin is that we've managed to break our federal model of government. For example...
"Is there really that little money left over for society once the corporations have had their fill? Do they really have that much power that they can shut down municipal WiFi like I've read in previous slashdot articles?"
The problem maybe isn't so much that the corporations have so much power in state government, but that local governments and municipalities have so little. Even if the people in a city or a county were so in agreement with each other as to form a big enough chunk of the population to sway state policy, often they're gerrymandered into different districts and into obscurity in the name of creating single-party districts. Ultimately, the places that set up MuniWiFi are stuck with working through their own bunch of lobbyists. Even if the private interests don't have as much weight, they are better organized.
The same can be said about state-national relations. State policies can be trumped by the FCC for any reason whatsoever, but the states are rarely given a real voice to defend themselves. States can try to lobby Congress one way or the other, but there's only so much money they can spend on lobbying efforts without raising the ire of state taxpayers (though now I'm curious about what would happen if a state actually hired some big-name Washington lobbyist...).
The lack of communication between layers also means a lack of coordination in policies, which also helps to explain why municipalities are pushing one way while states are pushing in the opposite direction. It's not just voters watching those "Save Texas Broadband!" commercials on TV but also state legislators. And there's little reason for the state governments to listen a little more closely to municipalities when they all claim to represent the same people.
Yeah, but it's also circular. He relies entirely on the concept of a legal contract, but without a perpetual constitution (or some other body of laws) there is no such thing. Legal contracts require something external against which the contract is compared to verify its legality. After all, he speaks over and over in the tracts you pasted about historical customs in what is a contract and what is not, but just as I may have never signed onto a constitution, I never signed on to using historical example. What if I'd rather use the principle of "This gun in my hand says everything you own is now mine?"
It's like science, where everything requires that you make a rather unscientific leap of faith and believe that there is a single, external reality for all observers. Just as you can't expect to use the scientific method to prove that you're not really living in your own dream world, you can't expect to use contractual law and custom to prove the legal validity of a constitution.
As to how this all applies to internet ads, the entire point of a written constitution, external to all people, is to form a government that is as fair as practicable. What we have here is a relatively small group of advertisers saying that it is unfair that people are actively avoiding advertising, while the rest of the people are complaining about the unfairness of being exptected to look at the advertising to begin with.
Personally, I'd say the advertisers are ultimately at fault because they know people want to avoid them. Otherwise, most advertising-supported sites would have a dialog box pop up in your browser and say "The following site is advertising supported. Click OK to continue loading the content and the advertising." Instead, the first thing that's loaded is the advertising, often only the advertising, as a "pre-mercial" as The Onion has dubbed it. You can't change your mind about continuing until after having seen the ad.
Advertising is the art of making people do things they don't want to do, and the advertisers are crying foul now that the playing field is even, and people are free to force advertising away from themselves just as easily as it was forced onto them to begin with.
"Go into a restaurant, sit down"... and a menu, listing all the prices, will magicly show up in your hands. By ordering off of the menu, it is implied that you have read it and seen the price tag printed next to your choice of food.
On the other hand, I've never seen a screen pop up that says "The page you're about to view has advertisements. In order to continue, you must agree to read the advertisements."
"Every time the topic of poor broadband availability in the US comes up, this fallacy is repeated."
And every time someone like you posts the "But we have connectivity X-thousand kms away from anything!" I have to say "Look at the picture!"
Canadians clump around cities. Period. It can't be compared to the contiguous 48, especially the US Midwest or South. Thanks to that, you only need to run a few long-distance legs to a major hub and then only worry about those tiny little hops from hub to end-user.
The reason you're connected even though you're a 5-hour drive from anywhere is because you're alone out there. All that was needed was that single long leg out to your community and the job was done.
You say that you're 5 hours away from a city with over 50,000 people in it. OK, how many towns of 5000 people are within 2.5 hours of you?
At this point I'm not an apologist to our broken method of running out public utilities here in the US, but I don't see how you can deny the lower per-capita cost to connect people in Canada.
" I'm contracting with a private entity, whose existence is perpetuated by the charges I pay, "
Many ISPs, however, are also willing to sell your information to interested advertisers. They have a vested interest to bend the rules and your tolerance of their actions in order to make a buck.
It's not that they care about "keeping you happy" so much as they care about "not making you angry enough to leave."
Also, many private ISPs are more than willing to share any and all information they have on you with the flash of a badge, whether that badge has a warrant behind it or not. Since they're a private entity, they'd be within their rights to share what you admit is their information to whomever they want. Heck, when it comes to the RIAA and MPAA, they don't even need to see a badge.
Often, government-run agencies have stricter privacy rules and practices than the privately-owned ones, because voters tend to be more worried about privacy than consumers.
"members of congress are giving themseleves a place they can spend as much money as they want in elections. "
I hate to burst your bubble, but members of the House of Representatives are decided every ten years in the state capitals. When the districts are drawn in such a way that it gives one party's candidate a distinct majority, and margins of victory unheard of in state-wide or presidential elections, the biennial elections are mere formality. No amount of money can change demographics.
The argument has been made that campaign donations are less an act of trying to influence an election so much as bribe a sure winner ("remember us when you get elected" insted of "remember us if you get elected").
"The days of going door to door, meeting people is over."
When and where did these days you refer to actually exist?
"The days of long talks about what you believe and why is over."
Again, you seem to believe that such times actually existed. They didn't. Before you had radio and television, you had party schills with ready-made soapbox spiels to tell you about how the other party's guy is a pedophile (even ol' "Honest Abe" had his collection of "Wide Awakes"). All we're seeing today is the continued appliation of strategies that have been proven to work over the past two centuries.
For example, the attack ad: in the past, you didn't just have attack ads, you had attack newspapers--party propoganda rags that were wholly owned by the parties, long before our modern concept of an independent, impartial news service. The ol' Sedition Act was a Federalist Party attempt to silence those Democrat-Republican newspapers spewing vitriol about their candidates (while the D-R's worked to enact similar state laws skewed against Federalist newspapers).
And let's not forget, there's a reason why attack ads are used: they work and have been proven to work. As much as people complain about them, the voters ultimately love a good mud-slinging contest and will gladly vote for the winner, no matter how badly he comes out smelling.
What we are seeing here is nothing new, this is the way democracy has always been and will likely always be. If anything, things have gotten better, even if they aren't necesarily "good."
The people don't want to hear about philosophies and beliefs. Other than insults aimed at the other guy, all the people want to know is if they'll be voting for someone that will do exactly what they're told. Washington is full of sycophants because that is what we, as a people, demand of them.
"You can't be over-represented in the House because its apportioned by population. "
You forget about the one-seat minimum granted every state.
According to the 2000 Census, there were 281,421,906 living in the US. Divided by 435 seats in the house, and each seat should represent 646,947 people. Thanks to the one-seat minimum, though, Wyoming's member of the House represents only 493,782.
Wyoming's population puts its represetnation in the House 31% higher than the mean. With apportionment, they would be forced to pay for that overrepresentation through taxes federal taxes that are 31% higher than the national mean (paying 1/435 of the national budget instead of 493,782/281,421,906).
It shouldn't be surprising to learn that the last time the House increased its size was a little before the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, around 100 years, 4 states and 200,000,000 people ago. The small states like the current scheme since it gives them more weight than they're due in both the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. Because federal taxes are no longer apportioned, they have no incentive to try to change that.
Do you think it's coincidence, with the House's control over spending, that the more populous states tend to pay more taxes and the less populous ones tend to receive more federal money?
Granted, but how would income tax change the situation? Tax would only be paid on the principle when it was first earned, afterwards only the income from the interest is taxed, much like someone who had to work for a living.
Sorry to burst your sarcasm bubble, but most countries, in an effort to encourage tourism, will rebate you the sales taxes you pay in their country. Shopping in another country is different from shopping in another state.
"Upper class earners spend a much smaller percentage of their wages."
So? If you don't spend the money, you see no benefit from having it.
At any rate, my personal favorite solution is apportionment. The feds stop collecting income tax and such directly and instead hand the bill over to the states. Then the individual states decide for themselves whether they want to pay their share through income tax, sales tax, some combination of the two, or something completely different.
This would also have the added benefit of increasing the tax burden on those states that are over-represented in the House of Representatives.
Re:I had a problem like this
on
Tracking Your Taxes
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
"I bought a VISA gift card at AAA(that travel place), and they got my social security number"
Those gift cards are are something you have to pay up front for, correct? If so, why did you give out your SSN for a cash transaction?
Slashdot Mirror
So it's magically better if your friend/relative was killed by vehicular manslaughter that didn't involve "aggression" or alcohol?
" The point is there are no laws against what you named. Felon's broke the law and thus are punished."
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
"If so many people do it, then it should be acceptable."
You're forgetting the number one rule to driving: you're the best driver on the road. People push for these laws to be passed because they want to see them enforced on other people. Few people ever stop to think that such low speed limits will ever apply to them, the best driver on the road...
First, the ol' IANAL disclaimer.
Take the ticket to court, and make the point that one would assume that a cop's speedometer is more reliable than the average civillian's. Either the cop would be forced to admit to a judge that he, too, was violating the law for no good reason, or the charges would probably be dropped.
"Umm... I'm pretty sure the Constitution is fairly clear on who gets to regulate interstate commerce, and I'm pretty sure that the states ain't it."
OK, Perry Mason, here is a copy of the Constitution of the United States. Find me the part that denies regulating interstate commerce to the states.
There is a clause granting that power to Congress, but there is no similar clause refusing that power to the states. Other than very specific prohibitions against things like duties, but there is nothing in the document that broadly forbids the states fom affecting that area. And, really, if the broad area of "interstate commerce" is refused the states, what's the point in including such specific restrictions like the one against duties?
What you are probably thinking of is referred to as the Dormant Commerce Clause which is notable in the way it does not explicitly exist in the Constitution. It's more a work of judicial precedence than legislation.
Shameless plug.
You've really opened a can of worms. In essence, you've just asked "What's wrong with the US?" and you'll get a million different answers. :)
At any rate, my own personal spin is that we've managed to break our federal model of government. For example...
"Is there really that little money left over for society once the corporations have had their fill? Do they really have that much power that they can shut down municipal WiFi like I've read in previous slashdot articles?"
The problem maybe isn't so much that the corporations have so much power in state government, but that local governments and municipalities have so little. Even if the people in a city or a county were so in agreement with each other as to form a big enough chunk of the population to sway state policy, often they're gerrymandered into different districts and into obscurity in the name of creating single-party districts. Ultimately, the places that set up MuniWiFi are stuck with working through their own bunch of lobbyists. Even if the private interests don't have as much weight, they are better organized.
The same can be said about state-national relations. State policies can be trumped by the FCC for any reason whatsoever, but the states are rarely given a real voice to defend themselves. States can try to lobby Congress one way or the other, but there's only so much money they can spend on lobbying efforts without raising the ire of state taxpayers (though now I'm curious about what would happen if a state actually hired some big-name Washington lobbyist...).
The lack of communication between layers also means a lack of coordination in policies, which also helps to explain why municipalities are pushing one way while states are pushing in the opposite direction. It's not just voters watching those "Save Texas Broadband!" commercials on TV but also state legislators. And there's little reason for the state governments to listen a little more closely to municipalities when they all claim to represent the same people.
At any rate, that's my biased $0.02.
Yeah, but it's also circular. He relies entirely on the concept of a legal contract, but without a perpetual constitution (or some other body of laws) there is no such thing. Legal contracts require something external against which the contract is compared to verify its legality. After all, he speaks over and over in the tracts you pasted about historical customs in what is a contract and what is not, but just as I may have never signed onto a constitution, I never signed on to using historical example. What if I'd rather use the principle of "This gun in my hand says everything you own is now mine?"
It's like science, where everything requires that you make a rather unscientific leap of faith and believe that there is a single, external reality for all observers. Just as you can't expect to use the scientific method to prove that you're not really living in your own dream world, you can't expect to use contractual law and custom to prove the legal validity of a constitution.
As to how this all applies to internet ads, the entire point of a written constitution, external to all people, is to form a government that is as fair as practicable. What we have here is a relatively small group of advertisers saying that it is unfair that people are actively avoiding advertising, while the rest of the people are complaining about the unfairness of being exptected to look at the advertising to begin with.
Personally, I'd say the advertisers are ultimately at fault because they know people want to avoid them. Otherwise, most advertising-supported sites would have a dialog box pop up in your browser and say "The following site is advertising supported. Click OK to continue loading the content and the advertising." Instead, the first thing that's loaded is the advertising, often only the advertising, as a "pre-mercial" as The Onion has dubbed it. You can't change your mind about continuing until after having seen the ad.
Advertising is the art of making people do things they don't want to do, and the advertisers are crying foul now that the playing field is even, and people are free to force advertising away from themselves just as easily as it was forced onto them to begin with.
"Part of the advertising social contract is the ability of the viewer to totally ignore ads."
Ah, but not only am I ignoring them, my browser is ignoring them by not even bothering to render them. Is this where you're splitting hair?
"Go into a restaurant, sit down" ... and a menu, listing all the prices, will magicly show up in your hands. By ordering off of the menu, it is implied that you have read it and seen the price tag printed next to your choice of food.
On the other hand, I've never seen a screen pop up that says "The page you're about to view has advertisements. In order to continue, you must agree to read the advertisements."
"also latin should be auto modded down since its a dead language"
I propose that Perl posts be automatically modded down for the same reason!
Come on! Any real Mac user could tell you that a five-fingered glove plugged into your USB port would work just fine!
"Every time the topic of poor broadband availability in the US comes up, this fallacy is repeated."
And every time someone like you posts the "But we have connectivity X-thousand kms away from anything!" I have to say "Look at the picture!"
Canadians clump around cities. Period. It can't be compared to the contiguous 48, especially the US Midwest or South. Thanks to that, you only need to run a few long-distance legs to a major hub and then only worry about those tiny little hops from hub to end-user.
The reason you're connected even though you're a 5-hour drive from anywhere is because you're alone out there. All that was needed was that single long leg out to your community and the job was done.
You say that you're 5 hours away from a city with over 50,000 people in it. OK, how many towns of 5000 people are within 2.5 hours of you?
At this point I'm not an apologist to our broken method of running out public utilities here in the US, but I don't see how you can deny the lower per-capita cost to connect people in Canada.
Because a lot of us are fans and it's interesting to see some life in a brand that was thought to be dead and buried years ago.
Is this related to the problems with auction houses and the /search function I've been experiencing on Fairy today?
"China employs thousands officials and private citizens"
Is there such a thing as a "private citizen" in the People's Republic?
" I'm contracting with a private entity, whose existence is perpetuated by the charges I pay, "
Many ISPs, however, are also willing to sell your information to interested advertisers. They have a vested interest to bend the rules and your tolerance of their actions in order to make a buck.
It's not that they care about "keeping you happy" so much as they care about "not making you angry enough to leave."
Also, many private ISPs are more than willing to share any and all information they have on you with the flash of a badge, whether that badge has a warrant behind it or not. Since they're a private entity, they'd be within their rights to share what you admit is their information to whomever they want. Heck, when it comes to the RIAA and MPAA, they don't even need to see a badge.
Often, government-run agencies have stricter privacy rules and practices than the privately-owned ones, because voters tend to be more worried about privacy than consumers.
"Yeah, but wait, I had a cable modem in the Northwest Territories back in 2000."
1 wire 100 km long is cheaper to run than 10 wires 10 km long. It's easy to reach a rural minority when they're very firmly in the minority.
"members of congress are giving themseleves a place they can spend as much money as they want in elections. "
I hate to burst your bubble, but members of the House of Representatives are decided every ten years in the state capitals. When the districts are drawn in such a way that it gives one party's candidate a distinct majority, and margins of victory unheard of in state-wide or presidential elections, the biennial elections are mere formality. No amount of money can change demographics.
The argument has been made that campaign donations are less an act of trying to influence an election so much as bribe a sure winner ("remember us when you get elected" insted of "remember us if you get elected").
"The days of going door to door, meeting people is over."
When and where did these days you refer to actually exist?
"The days of long talks about what you believe and why is over."
Again, you seem to believe that such times actually existed. They didn't. Before you had radio and television, you had party schills with ready-made soapbox spiels to tell you about how the other party's guy is a pedophile (even ol' "Honest Abe" had his collection of "Wide Awakes"). All we're seeing today is the continued appliation of strategies that have been proven to work over the past two centuries.
For example, the attack ad: in the past, you didn't just have attack ads, you had attack newspapers--party propoganda rags that were wholly owned by the parties, long before our modern concept of an independent, impartial news service. The ol' Sedition Act was a Federalist Party attempt to silence those Democrat-Republican newspapers spewing vitriol about their candidates (while the D-R's worked to enact similar state laws skewed against Federalist newspapers).
And let's not forget, there's a reason why attack ads are used: they work and have been proven to work. As much as people complain about them, the voters ultimately love a good mud-slinging contest and will gladly vote for the winner, no matter how badly he comes out smelling.
What we are seeing here is nothing new, this is the way democracy has always been and will likely always be. If anything, things have gotten better, even if they aren't necesarily "good."
The people don't want to hear about philosophies and beliefs. Other than insults aimed at the other guy, all the people want to know is if they'll be voting for someone that will do exactly what they're told. Washington is full of sycophants because that is what we, as a people, demand of them.
"You can't be over-represented in the House because its apportioned by population. "
You forget about the one-seat minimum granted every state.
According to the 2000 Census, there were 281,421,906 living in the US. Divided by 435 seats in the house, and each seat should represent 646,947 people. Thanks to the one-seat minimum, though, Wyoming's member of the House represents only 493,782.
Wyoming's population puts its represetnation in the House 31% higher than the mean. With apportionment, they would be forced to pay for that overrepresentation through taxes federal taxes that are 31% higher than the national mean (paying 1/435 of the national budget instead of 493,782/281,421,906).
It shouldn't be surprising to learn that the last time the House increased its size was a little before the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, around 100 years, 4 states and 200,000,000 people ago. The small states like the current scheme since it gives them more weight than they're due in both the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. Because federal taxes are no longer apportioned, they have no incentive to try to change that.
Do you think it's coincidence, with the House's control over spending, that the more populous states tend to pay more taxes and the less populous ones tend to receive more federal money?
Granted, but how would income tax change the situation? Tax would only be paid on the principle when it was first earned, afterwards only the income from the interest is taxed, much like someone who had to work for a living.
Sorry to burst your sarcasm bubble, but most countries, in an effort to encourage tourism, will rebate you the sales taxes you pay in their country. Shopping in another country is different from shopping in another state.
"Upper class earners spend a much smaller percentage of their wages."
So? If you don't spend the money, you see no benefit from having it.
At any rate, my personal favorite solution is apportionment. The feds stop collecting income tax and such directly and instead hand the bill over to the states. Then the individual states decide for themselves whether they want to pay their share through income tax, sales tax, some combination of the two, or something completely different.
This would also have the added benefit of increasing the tax burden on those states that are over-represented in the House of Representatives.
"I bought a VISA gift card at AAA(that travel place), and they got my social security number"
Those gift cards are are something you have to pay up front for, correct? If so, why did you give out your SSN for a cash transaction?
"If you don't believe me, go look at the mission statement of any big company. It doesn't read like English."
How else do you expect them to stretch "To make money" out to fill up an entire page?
Generally speaking, if you ever find yourself asking "Is this bullshit?" you already know the answer.