I simply refuse to believe that anyone could become so obsessed with *nix, or with computers, or technology in general, that it could adversely affect other aspects of their life, be they social, romantic, personal hygiene etc... Just could not happen!
One could say that only once Man tilled the land, plants became able to grow on their own?
Virgin jungle?
... no rain to irrigate, which leads to no ground water
You are correct, you don't know much about the Bible. Rain is water from the sky, the ground water wells up from below. Remember earth's atmosphere is a skin holding back the "the waters above," while beneath the ground are "the waters below," (that much is consistent across the creation stories and elsewhere, as also in Mesopotamian mythology). Note the verse that follows on.
[W]hen there no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil, but a flow would well up from the ground and water the whole surface of the earth.
-- Gen 2:5,6 (JPS, 1985)
It goes without saying that the earth is not spherical in early Biblical cosmography.
I don't find the story All dogs go To heaven insightful, do you?
Heaven? What does heaven have to do with the "books of Moses?!" There's no heaven, no eternal life, only humanity, alone of all creatures possessing God-like understanding, yet mortal and doomed to return into the earth of which the are made. Humanity suffering in childbirth and old age and surviving by the sweat of their brow. The very understanding of their own impermanence a source of suffering. Have you even read Genesis. I mean actually read what it says without viewing it either through a Christian or an anti-Christian lens?
Mate, you wouldn't know insightful if you were smacked over the face with a 80 kilo sack of the stuff!
You seem to have a reading comprehension impairment. Chapter 1 is an executive summary showing the general chronological order of creation. Chapter 2 goes into detail about the creation of Adam and Eve.
No, Gen 1:1-2:3 and Gen 2:4 on are different stories as is obvious to any reader who, as I put it above, has not since childhood been exposed to harmonising accounts. The general chronological order in the 2nd account (Gen 2:4...) completely contradicts the order of the 1st. In the first (as it appears in the text, but probably also the more recent) account life is created in this order: plants (Gen 1:11); fish & birds (Gen 1:20); land animals (Gen 1:24); humansboth male and female (Gen 1:26-27). The 2nd account, but contrast, has this order, male human (Gen 2:7); plants (Gen 2:9); land animals & birds (Gen 2:19) and female human (Gen 2:22). Nor does the strict classification of creation by days in the 1st account, and the narrative necessity for the primacy of Adam and the final creation of Eve in the 2nd allow for any honest harmonisation of these two distinct accounts. I'm sorry you have been misled.
Now I could point out the differences style, the designed symmetrical account in the 1st account vs. the rambling folk-talesy tone of the second; or between the nature of God (Elohim), who creates by pure will, "Let there be light" and who dwells on high, with the LORD (YHVH... for the fist few instances the harmonising YHVH-Elohim), a terrestrial being who "fashions" out of clay, who has to call Adam and Eve from their hiding spots and discovers their transgression by their covering (hardly behaviour God on high would engage in). But given the radical disagreement in the "chronological order of creation," all that would be superfluous.
See the heading at verse 4, Chapter 2?
And extremely interesting verse. Though there is room for disagreement here, the best reading IMO is that this verse, though presented as a way to connect both accounts, the first half of the verse "[t]his is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created" ends the first account, and the second "when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens" (a mirror of the beginning of the first, "When God began creating the heavens and earth..." or however you want to translate this difficult piece of Hebrew). Among the facts that recommend this reading is the order heaven-earth vs the earth-heaven which reflect the extra-terrestrial and terrestrial nature of the different numen described above. Also that the highly symmetrical 1st account will end as it began. However, it may simply be that the entire verse is the introduction to the 2nd account.
I have only the slightest hope that this may help rectify your "reading comprehension impairment."
It's only a discrepancy if one fails to recognise that we are dealing with two separate myths. The fact that they are 2 separate stories will be obvious to any naive (in the sense that they have not since childhood been exposed to harmonising accounts) and objective reader. Even the deities are obviously different, and not merely by name.
The second account is clearly the easier target from a scientific PoV. The most glaring internal (to that myth) problem comes in the 2nd 'verse' of this account, Gen 2:5, where we are told that plant life did not exist for two reasons. 1. YHVH-Elohim (a[n editorial?] joining of names that is soon abandoned) had not yet caused it to rain AND there was no man to tend the ground. So what we need to do to "disprove" this account is to show plant life growing independently of human cultivation. Not a big ask. More interesting is the question of what kind of culture could have given rise to a myth that makes such a presumption, which might seem absurd to forest based peoples for instance (HINT: Mesopotamian irrigation cultures).
But to treat the 2nd account as Science, as a literal account of physical origins, is of course knuckle-headed. Worse still, it is simply to miss the beauty of the text, and its actual insight (which should be apparent to believers and non-believers alike, though both for different reason like to miss it) into the human condition. And (and this is why I find this difficult text so interesting), it's complex role as a witness to the origin of ancient near eastern civilisation.
I am not a lawyer, so I don't understand what it means. Either all such Terms and Conditions on the Internet are null and void (since nobody signs them,) or there is something in them that makes them worth the lawyer's time.
Firstly signing is neither here nor there. Only a tiny fraction of contracts are written or signed. Everyday we navigate a sea of contractual agreements. You enter into a contract whenever you ride in a taxi, buy a chocolate (candy bar) from a shop etc etc.
What is necessary is a) that the terms and conditions can taken to be understood (e.g You agree to pay a fare in exchange for the taxi driver agreeing to carry you to your destination), or where they cannot simply be taken to be understood, that the person agreeing to terms and conditions be made aware of what they are (what is required to satisfy this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction); b) that both parties actually agree to them; AND c) the quid pro quo, or more formally that consideration flows in both directions (and to be extremely technical, consideration involves suffering a legal detriment). (eg. the taxi driver is bound to carry you where you want to go rather than driving where his fancy takes him <---> you are bound to make yourself poorer.)
One wonders with many online "agreements" what the consideration actually is. My feeling that among all the Terms and Conditions on the internet, there is a subgroup that is null and void.
But this isn't really a contract issue per se. More pertinent here are statutory copyright protections; the extent to which any fair use exception allows you to use the protected material; and where your use exceeds what fair use permits, whether it is economically justifiable to enter into what appears on the face (is that $150 per article?!!) an excessively expensive licensing agreement (which would of course be a contract). My feeling is that this is a try on.
This post is just plain wrong. You are in no way free to do "whatever [you] like" with copyright protected works. The fact that this post has been modded 5 Insightful is a testament to the wishful thinking that takes over when IP try ons like this come up. If you want to be free do something to change the law. Wiping your arse with an infringing copy is an extremely low level of freedom to aspire to.
Even easier: turn Javascript off. Or will allowing websites to run arbitrary programs on your computer become a legal requirement too?
The issue is not whether you are required to run arbitrary programs on your computer or not. The issue is whether you are permitted to copy the article, and if so how much (many fair use provisions around the world limit the amount that can be cited and will not protect against reproducing a "substantial portion").
Obviously the Javascript on the site is not meant to stop you copying the content. One accomplishes that by having the legislature in one's pocket. The Javascript is meant a) to remind you that the article is subject to copyright (while bluffing you into forgetting any your fair use rights use may have) and b) as a offer to purchase a license to reproduce the content. Whether you require that license for lawful reproduction will of course depend on the relevant fair use provision(s) applying.
However, the command and control model definitely is in play.
Of course any comparison to the gulag would be overwrought. However being generous to GP, I think his point (at least that was what I was agreeing with) is the the internal organisation of the modern corporation bears more similarity with that of the Soviet factory (or the polity in general) than it does to the self-motivated boss-less approach described here. This actually foregrounds the hypocrisy of the Soviet regime in instituting "relations of production" which reproduced the very 'alienation' their scriptures sought to repair. Imagine if there were Christians who don't literally love their enemies, unthinkable really.
Quite an interesting comparation because then, how is it that the vast majority of companies are governed by Communism, just the Soviet Russia style?
It's an interesting comparison because the basic idea behind communism was that fundamentally the same as that behind Theory Y style organisations. The idea, that is, that left to their own devices, without the imposition of formal authority (remember that in theory 'communism' was to be a stateless and non-hierarchical society), humans will be self-motivated and express themselves by what they produce. You will recall from your reading of Marx, that one of the great criticisms communists levelled at capitalist production methods (Taylorism), is that the assembly line robbed the factory worker of their human identity by 'alienating' them from the products of their own labour. For Marx you are what you make.
just the Soviet Russia style?
OP wrote about "Communism on paper," so a comparison with Soviet Russia (which never claimed to have a communist system in place anyway) is a little unfair. I do agree, however, that the human management in the Soviet state seems to have a more in common (and if I understand it this is your point) with that in the majority of modern corporations, than with this self-motivated pride in one's own work approach.
Sure you can pay an existing debt in legal tender (that is in fact the definition of legal tender), but you cannot force people to be your creditor.
That really goes without saying. I agree that it is tautological that entering into contract is voluntary and this is of no relevance to the fact that money can be used non-voluntarily to settle any debt that arises from entering a voluntary agreement. So this observation adds nothing.
To give a concrete example (assuming here that we are not criminally in breach of the tax code for bartering), we could enter into a contract where you specify that I must pay you in X ozt of gold because you don't like handling money. However should I refuse to hand over the gold (and since gold is fungible) you will be able to recover only the market value (though at what date that value is to be calculated will depend on the facts of the case) of that gold in actual money. I can, in other words I can compel you to settle the debt in money (of course ultimately you could refuse and be out of pocket).
In hyperinflationary economies...
We see a collapse of the money system. To argue against a definition of money based on the hyperinflation alone is like arguing against the definition of a bridge as a "something that spans two points a fold" (however inadequate that definition may otherwise be) by looking at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge post collapse and shouting out: "look it doesn't connect two points together at all!"... or understanding how a car works once the engine is removed.
If you want to understand how something works, look at it when it works. After that you will be in a better position to draw conclusions about the circumstances under which it ceases to work.
... sure, people could legally settle existing debts in Marks (or whatever), but they couldn't buy stuff like food for them since noone would except [sic] them
Well they would for a time, even as the prices in RM rose as you stood in a queue and if workers demanded to be paid thrice a day and their wives waited for them at the factory gates with wheelbarrows. As it happens I own a fine (and near complete) set of German postage stamps from that period. Interestingly the first 2/3rds of the stamps have higher and higher prices printed on them, but towards the end the stamps were printed without any price at all. That was stamped on at the time of sale. Very interesting stuff hyperinflation, but again, not the first port of call if you wish to understand how money works and what money is.
... in such circumstances, the economy is so fucked that people are more concerned with eating that debts and taxes...
Indeed and in such circumstances the economy is so fucked that the government can no longer raise taxes. As I explained above, money takes its value not from some mere "promise that others [ie. other private individuals] will accept it in exchange," but from the government's ability to raise taxes (as well as its secondary, state mediated, debt settling function). The fact that the "Zimbabweian dollar" became "worthless" once the economy tanked merely highlights this fact.
Who was it who defined money as "whatever is accepted at government pay offices?" In any cases, I hope we can all agree that Bitcoin is not money.
Realy? And how does the transaction between two parties work, when one party refuses to accept your "real" currency?
Refusing party goes hungry?
Party must accept legal tender in satisfaction of a debt or accept that the debt is unrecoverable.). Of course it may be in certain cases of contractual breach that a court will order some equitable remedy such as specific performance, but debt judgment will ring only in money.
Bitcoin has no inherent worth; neither does "real" currency. The value comes from the promise that others will accept it in exchange for the things you want to get.
What you are describing is simply is a contract mediated by a mutually acceptable exchange medium. What distinguishes ""real" currency" (that is legal tender; aka money) is that mutually acceptability is not required for its use.
For traditional money, this guarantee is practically given...
It's just a tad stronger than that. Money has (at least) two distinct characteristics not shared by other exchange media (such as Bitcoin): a) The government will accepted it in satisfaction of your tax liability; AND (more to the point here), you can compel a creditor to accept it in satisfaction of a debt.
The argument that God "invented" Evolution as a sort of programming environment is more sophisticated than the idea that he made Adam and Eve from dust and breathed life into them, but it's still no more susceptible to falsification, and is therefore unscientific.
Firstly, despite the apparently wide acceptance of the idea, it seems to me that falsifiability is not sufficient, and probably not even necessary, to demarcate Science. A tautology, for instance, is necessarily unfalsifiable. Yet a tautology aptly stated may not only be scientific, but revolutionise the way a science is conducted. I'm thinking here of the observation that the biological diversity we observe today is the result of the survival of the fittest, where fit is of course defined as most apt to survive. The touchstone of naïve falsificationism would leave this observation outside the realm of Science. [Note: I'm being a little disingenuous here as my own, reductionist, view of Science has similar problems incorporating much of biology.]
Secondly, and more to the point, the question is not whether the religious understanding is scientific (which Augustine already disavowed), the question is whether a religious world view requires a rejection of the scientific one.
Nor does one have to believe in the literal truth of any tale to be able to ascertain the deeper meaning it conveys.
... the idea that he made Adam and Eve from dust and breathed life into them...
The man was made from the dust (hence 'Adam'), but Eve from his rib. Get your (Iron|Bronze)-Age Hebrew mythology right!;) In any case that is the second creation myth (Gen 2:4 onward). The idea that God used evolution as the tool of creation has a better fit with (the more sophisticated) first (though probably later) account in Gen 1:1 - 2:3.
1) Using the theory intelligent design, explain the emergence of the Ebola virus and construct a forensic psychological profile of the intelligent designer.
Nor is he charged; Nor if he were to be charged would definitely be with 'rape' (sexual misconduct seems more likely); nor were he charged would we be entitled to presume anything other than his innocence; nor were we to examine the publicly known facts that led to the warrant being issued would I (here YMMV) be led to doubt that innocence; nor was that expose (if I have the same book in mind) written by his "best friend"; nor is the accusation that he is "motivated purely by money" anything other than absurd; nor is his penchant for promiscuous relationships with members of the opposite sex pertinent as to his motivations in running Wikileaks, as it happens. And surely there is no one so innocent as seriously to believe that if the two women he slept with in the same week had not confided this fact in each other none of this would now be of any concern to anyone. Hell hath no fury.
In favour of OP it can at least be said that in going out of his way to defame someone he has been gentlemanly enough to do so in a way that will not enable him to hide, like a coward, behind any 'truth' based defence.
Oddly enough, I'm conservative enough to believe that some level of state secrecy, problematic as it is, is a necessity even in a democracy. I'm not 100% behind what either Assange does (nor 100% against it). I shall, however, scurry to his defence when people, rather addressing the substantive issue of state secrecy, seek to attack his stance and the activities of Wikileaks on the entirely irrelevant basis of his alleged sexual misconduct.
I find nothing in that citation to indicate that Assange has been charged with any offence. On the contrary and to quote directly: "Assange has not yet been formally charged with any offence."
Or Chris Dorner for that matter? You know if I didn't know better I'd suspect that AC was trying the cheap propaganda trick of linking the names Aaron Swartz, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, (who, whether we agree with of their actions or not, we ought to recognise as men of high ideals), with those of crazy mass murderers?! But no, my friend AC would never do that kind of thing.
I see the original poster's story as a somewhat deft case of blame deflection. The welfare state didn't work like he wanted it to, so when the excuse came around that big, bad Bismarck did it, he readily latched on.
You may see it like that, but as you observe, perception is not necessarily reality. I cannot imagine what you even mean when you write "the welfare state didn't work like he wanted to." What exactly leads you to the belief that the original poster wanted the welfare state to work one way or another? I suggest you try to engage with people on the basis of what they actually write, rather than shadow boxing with the phantoms of your own political paranoia. Don't make the mistake of projecting your own level of ideological commitment onto your interlocutor! Remember the original poster's stated motivation was to help you overcome your misapprehension as to the facts. And as I read this last post to AC, I am disappointed that you have proven to be so dull a student --or perhaps you need to remove yourself from the heat of battle before you give yourself permission to learn?
But it doesn't follow that public welfare is a construction of conservative forces - especially when as I observe, its universal presence in socialist governments.
This is so silly I must respond. 1) It is simply a fact that the modern welfare state is a construction of conservative forces. That's data not theory (insofar as they are separable). 2) It's presences in subsequent "socialist" governments cannot tautologically alter that fact. 3) It is, as I pointed out, also present in conservative governments (which by itself says nothing about 1 either).
And just for the record, I regard "big, bad Bismarck" as one of the finest and most able of statesman who ever wielded power. His great (and ultimately unforgivable) fault, however, was his failure to grasp what would become of the autocratic power structure he set up when once it fell into the hands of lesser mortals.
I know it probably gratifies your ego to debate the AC rather than someone who plainly has you out-gunned (and one of my degrees is a double History major so forgive me if I'm being a bully here). I assure you, however, playing with the big boys (as you could have done by addressing this post) is a far better learning experience than knocking off low-hanging fruit. Opportunity missed (i.e. I shan't be replying again).
Slashdot Mirror
So, about all those *nix zealots in here...
I simply refuse to believe that anyone could become so obsessed with *nix, or with computers, or technology in general, that it could adversely affect other aspects of their life, be they social, romantic, personal hygiene etc... Just could not happen!
One could say that only once Man tilled the land, plants became able to grow on their own?
Virgin jungle?
You are correct, you don't know much about the Bible. Rain is water from the sky, the ground water wells up from below. Remember earth's atmosphere is a skin holding back the "the waters above," while beneath the ground are "the waters below," (that much is consistent across the creation stories and elsewhere, as also in Mesopotamian mythology). Note the verse that follows on.
[W]hen there no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil, but a flow would well up from the ground and water the whole surface of the earth. -- Gen 2:5,6 (JPS, 1985)
It goes without saying that the earth is not spherical in early Biblical cosmography.
I don't find the story All dogs go To heaven insightful, do you?
Heaven? What does heaven have to do with the "books of Moses?!" There's no heaven, no eternal life, only humanity, alone of all creatures possessing God-like understanding, yet mortal and doomed to return into the earth of which the are made. Humanity suffering in childbirth and old age and surviving by the sweat of their brow. The very understanding of their own impermanence a source of suffering. Have you even read Genesis. I mean actually read what it says without viewing it either through a Christian or an anti-Christian lens?
Mate, you wouldn't know insightful if you were smacked over the face with a 80 kilo sack of the stuff!
You seem to have a reading comprehension impairment. Chapter 1 is an executive summary showing the general chronological order of creation. Chapter 2 goes into detail about the creation of Adam and Eve.
No, Gen 1:1-2:3 and Gen 2:4 on are different stories as is obvious to any reader who, as I put it above, has not since childhood been exposed to harmonising accounts. The general chronological order in the 2nd account (Gen 2:4 ...) completely contradicts the order of the 1st. In the first (as it appears in the text, but probably also the more recent) account life is created in this order: plants (Gen 1:11); fish & birds (Gen 1:20); land animals (Gen 1:24); humans both male and female (Gen 1:26-27). The 2nd account, but contrast, has this order, male human (Gen 2:7); plants (Gen 2:9); land animals & birds (Gen 2:19) and female human (Gen 2:22). Nor does the strict classification of creation by days in the 1st account, and the narrative necessity for the primacy of Adam and the final creation of Eve in the 2nd allow for any honest harmonisation of these two distinct accounts. I'm sorry you have been misled.
Now I could point out the differences style, the designed symmetrical account in the 1st account vs. the rambling folk-talesy tone of the second; or between the nature of God (Elohim), who creates by pure will, "Let there be light" and who dwells on high, with the LORD (YHVH ... for the fist few instances the harmonising YHVH-Elohim), a terrestrial being who "fashions" out of clay, who has to call Adam and Eve from their hiding spots and discovers their transgression by their covering (hardly behaviour God on high would engage in). But given the radical disagreement in the "chronological order of creation," all that would be superfluous.
See the heading at verse 4, Chapter 2?
And extremely interesting verse. Though there is room for disagreement here, the best reading IMO is that this verse, though presented as a way to connect both accounts, the first half of the verse "[t]his is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created" ends the first account, and the second "when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens" (a mirror of the beginning of the first, "When God began creating the heavens and earth ..." or however you want to translate this difficult piece of Hebrew). Among the facts that recommend this reading is the order heaven-earth vs the earth-heaven which reflect the extra-terrestrial and terrestrial nature of the different numen described above. Also that the highly symmetrical 1st account will end as it began. However, it may simply be that the entire verse is the introduction to the 2nd account.
I have only the slightest hope that this may help rectify your "reading comprehension impairment."
True, but that's the most glaring [discrepancy].
It's only a discrepancy if one fails to recognise that we are dealing with two separate myths. The fact that they are 2 separate stories will be obvious to any naive (in the sense that they have not since childhood been exposed to harmonising accounts) and objective reader. Even the deities are obviously different, and not merely by name.
The second account is clearly the easier target from a scientific PoV. The most glaring internal (to that myth) problem comes in the 2nd 'verse' of this account, Gen 2:5, where we are told that plant life did not exist for two reasons. 1. YHVH-Elohim (a[n editorial?] joining of names that is soon abandoned) had not yet caused it to rain AND there was no man to tend the ground. So what we need to do to "disprove" this account is to show plant life growing independently of human cultivation. Not a big ask. More interesting is the question of what kind of culture could have given rise to a myth that makes such a presumption, which might seem absurd to forest based peoples for instance (HINT: Mesopotamian irrigation cultures).
But to treat the 2nd account as Science, as a literal account of physical origins, is of course knuckle-headed. Worse still, it is simply to miss the beauty of the text, and its actual insight (which should be apparent to believers and non-believers alike, though both for different reason like to miss it) into the human condition. And (and this is why I find this difficult text so interesting), it's complex role as a witness to the origin of ancient near eastern civilisation.
As you put it ... "nutjob."
I am not a lawyer, so I don't understand what it means. Either all such Terms and Conditions on the Internet are null and void (since nobody signs them,) or there is something in them that makes them worth the lawyer's time.
Firstly signing is neither here nor there. Only a tiny fraction of contracts are written or signed. Everyday we navigate a sea of contractual agreements. You enter into a contract whenever you ride in a taxi, buy a chocolate (candy bar) from a shop etc etc.
What is necessary is a) that the terms and conditions can taken to be understood (e.g You agree to pay a fare in exchange for the taxi driver agreeing to carry you to your destination), or where they cannot simply be taken to be understood, that the person agreeing to terms and conditions be made aware of what they are (what is required to satisfy this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction); b) that both parties actually agree to them; AND c) the quid pro quo, or more formally that consideration flows in both directions (and to be extremely technical, consideration involves suffering a legal detriment). (eg. the taxi driver is bound to carry you where you want to go rather than driving where his fancy takes him <---> you are bound to make yourself poorer.)
One wonders with many online "agreements" what the consideration actually is. My feeling that among all the Terms and Conditions on the internet, there is a subgroup that is null and void.
But this isn't really a contract issue per se. More pertinent here are statutory copyright protections; the extent to which any fair use exception allows you to use the protected material; and where your use exceeds what fair use permits, whether it is economically justifiable to enter into what appears on the face (is that $150 per article?!!) an excessively expensive licensing agreement (which would of course be a contract). My feeling is that this is a try on.
I can also print out the HTML and wipe my ass with it if I like.
Wiping your arse with an infringing copy is an extremely low level of freedom to aspire to.
Well look at that. I end the last sentence of my post with a preposition and I get modded down as a Troll. My bad.
At least it reaffirms my faith in the quality of the moderation here. Keep it factual, keep it fair, keep it grammatical.
I am more terrified of a world where not running anti-copying software in my browser is a crime.
I wouldn't put it past them.
This post is just plain wrong. You are in no way free to do "whatever [you] like" with copyright protected works. The fact that this post has been modded 5 Insightful is a testament to the wishful thinking that takes over when IP try ons like this come up. If you want to be free do something to change the law. Wiping your arse with an infringing copy is an extremely low level of freedom to aspire to.
Even easier: turn Javascript off. Or will allowing websites to run arbitrary programs on your computer become a legal requirement too?
The issue is not whether you are required to run arbitrary programs on your computer or not. The issue is whether you are permitted to copy the article, and if so how much (many fair use provisions around the world limit the amount that can be cited and will not protect against reproducing a "substantial portion").
Obviously the Javascript on the site is not meant to stop you copying the content. One accomplishes that by having the legislature in one's pocket. The Javascript is meant a) to remind you that the article is subject to copyright (while bluffing you into forgetting any your fair use rights use may have) and b) as a offer to purchase a license to reproduce the content. Whether you require that license for lawful reproduction will of course depend on the relevant fair use provision(s) applying.
Is that going to be illegal now?
Well that depends on the IP framework in play in the relevant jurisdictions. However most likely it already is.
However, the command and control model definitely is in play.
Of course any comparison to the gulag would be overwrought. However being generous to GP, I think his point (at least that was what I was agreeing with) is the the internal organisation of the modern corporation bears more similarity with that of the Soviet factory (or the polity in general) than it does to the self-motivated boss-less approach described here. This actually foregrounds the hypocrisy of the Soviet regime in instituting "relations of production" which reproduced the very 'alienation' their scriptures sought to repair. Imagine if there were Christians who don't literally love their enemies, unthinkable really.
Quite an interesting comparation because then, how is it that the vast majority of companies are governed by Communism, just the Soviet Russia style?
It's an interesting comparison because the basic idea behind communism was that fundamentally the same as that behind Theory Y style organisations. The idea, that is, that left to their own devices, without the imposition of formal authority (remember that in theory 'communism' was to be a stateless and non-hierarchical society), humans will be self-motivated and express themselves by what they produce. You will recall from your reading of Marx, that one of the great criticisms communists levelled at capitalist production methods (Taylorism), is that the assembly line robbed the factory worker of their human identity by 'alienating' them from the products of their own labour. For Marx you are what you make.
just the Soviet Russia style?
OP wrote about "Communism on paper," so a comparison with Soviet Russia (which never claimed to have a communist system in place anyway) is a little unfair. I do agree, however, that the human management in the Soviet state seems to have a more in common (and if I understand it this is your point) with that in the majority of modern corporations, than with this self-motivated pride in one's own work approach.
Sure you can pay an existing debt in legal tender (that is in fact the definition of legal tender), but you cannot force people to be your creditor.
That really goes without saying. I agree that it is tautological that entering into contract is voluntary and this is of no relevance to the fact that money can be used non-voluntarily to settle any debt that arises from entering a voluntary agreement. So this observation adds nothing.
To give a concrete example (assuming here that we are not criminally in breach of the tax code for bartering), we could enter into a contract where you specify that I must pay you in X ozt of gold because you don't like handling money. However should I refuse to hand over the gold (and since gold is fungible) you will be able to recover only the market value (though at what date that value is to be calculated will depend on the facts of the case) of that gold in actual money. I can, in other words I can compel you to settle the debt in money (of course ultimately you could refuse and be out of pocket).
In hyperinflationary economies ...
We see a collapse of the money system. To argue against a definition of money based on the hyperinflation alone is like arguing against the definition of a bridge as a "something that spans two points a fold" (however inadequate that definition may otherwise be) by looking at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge post collapse and shouting out: "look it doesn't connect two points together at all!" ... or understanding how a car works once the engine is removed.
If you want to understand how something works, look at it when it works. After that you will be in a better position to draw conclusions about the circumstances under which it ceases to work.
Well they would for a time, even as the prices in RM rose as you stood in a queue and if workers demanded to be paid thrice a day and their wives waited for them at the factory gates with wheelbarrows. As it happens I own a fine (and near complete) set of German postage stamps from that period. Interestingly the first 2/3rds of the stamps have higher and higher prices printed on them, but towards the end the stamps were printed without any price at all. That was stamped on at the time of sale. Very interesting stuff hyperinflation, but again, not the first port of call if you wish to understand how money works and what money is.
Indeed and in such circumstances the economy is so fucked that the government can no longer raise taxes. As I explained above, money takes its value not from some mere "promise that others [ie. other private individuals] will accept it in exchange," but from the government's ability to raise taxes (as well as its secondary, state mediated, debt settling function). The fact that the "Zimbabweian dollar" became "worthless" once the economy tanked merely highlights this fact.
Who was it who defined money as "whatever is accepted at government pay offices?" In any cases, I hope we can all agree that Bitcoin is not money.
Realy? And how does the transaction between two parties work, when one party refuses to accept your "real" currency?
Refusing party goes hungry?
Party must accept legal tender in satisfaction of a debt or accept that the debt is unrecoverable.). Of course it may be in certain cases of contractual breach that a court will order some equitable remedy such as specific performance, but debt judgment will ring only in money.
Bitcoin has no inherent worth; neither does "real" currency. The value comes from the promise that others will accept it in exchange for the things you want to get.
What you are describing is simply is a contract mediated by a mutually acceptable exchange medium. What distinguishes ""real" currency" (that is legal tender; aka money) is that mutually acceptability is not required for its use.
For traditional money, this guarantee is practically given ...
It's just a tad stronger than that. Money has (at least) two distinct characteristics not shared by other exchange media (such as Bitcoin): a) The government will accepted it in satisfaction of your tax liability; AND (more to the point here), you can compel a creditor to accept it in satisfaction of a debt.
The argument that God "invented" Evolution as a sort of programming environment is more sophisticated than the idea that he made Adam and Eve from dust and breathed life into them, but it's still no more susceptible to falsification, and is therefore unscientific.
Firstly, despite the apparently wide acceptance of the idea, it seems to me that falsifiability is not sufficient, and probably not even necessary, to demarcate Science. A tautology, for instance, is necessarily unfalsifiable. Yet a tautology aptly stated may not only be scientific, but revolutionise the way a science is conducted. I'm thinking here of the observation that the biological diversity we observe today is the result of the survival of the fittest, where fit is of course defined as most apt to survive. The touchstone of naïve falsificationism would leave this observation outside the realm of Science. [Note: I'm being a little disingenuous here as my own, reductionist, view of Science has similar problems incorporating much of biology.]
Secondly, and more to the point, the question is not whether the religious understanding is scientific (which Augustine already disavowed), the question is whether a religious world view requires a rejection of the scientific one.
Nor does one have to believe in the literal truth of any tale to be able to ascertain the deeper meaning it conveys.
The man was made from the dust (hence 'Adam'), but Eve from his rib. Get your (Iron|Bronze)-Age Hebrew mythology right! ;) In any case that is the second creation myth (Gen 2:4 onward). The idea that God used evolution as the tool of creation has a better fit with (the more sophisticated) first (though probably later) account in Gen 1:1 - 2:3.
Sample Essay Question:
1) Using the theory intelligent design, explain the emergence of the Ebola virus and construct a forensic psychological profile of the intelligent designer.
I had a discussion with three or four people who insisted on defending Chris Dorner.
I stand corrected. Foolish of me to underestimate the pull of contrarianism, I suppose.
Except that is not correct, he did not flee
Nor is he charged; Nor if he were to be charged would definitely be with 'rape' (sexual misconduct seems more likely); nor were he charged would we be entitled to presume anything other than his innocence; nor were we to examine the publicly known facts that led to the warrant being issued would I (here YMMV) be led to doubt that innocence; nor was that expose (if I have the same book in mind) written by his "best friend"; nor is the accusation that he is "motivated purely by money" anything other than absurd; nor is his penchant for promiscuous relationships with members of the opposite sex pertinent as to his motivations in running Wikileaks, as it happens. And surely there is no one so innocent as seriously to believe that if the two women he slept with in the same week had not confided this fact in each other none of this would now be of any concern to anyone. Hell hath no fury.
In favour of OP it can at least be said that in going out of his way to defame someone he has been gentlemanly enough to do so in a way that will not enable him to hide, like a coward, behind any 'truth' based defence.
Oddly enough, I'm conservative enough to believe that some level of state secrecy, problematic as it is, is a necessity even in a democracy. I'm not 100% behind what either Assange does (nor 100% against it). I shall, however, scurry to his defence when people, rather addressing the substantive issue of state secrecy, seek to attack his stance and the activities of Wikileaks on the entirely irrelevant basis of his alleged sexual misconduct.
I find nothing in that citation to indicate that Assange has been charged with any offence. On the contrary and to quote directly: "Assange has not yet been formally charged with any offence."
Well, one out of three, anyway.
Lemme guess ... Bradley?
Assange is charged with rape
That's news to me.
Who the hell on this site supported Adam Lanza?
Or Chris Dorner for that matter? You know if I didn't know better I'd suspect that AC was trying the cheap propaganda trick of linking the names Aaron Swartz, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, (who, whether we agree with of their actions or not, we ought to recognise as men of high ideals), with those of crazy mass murderers?! But no, my friend AC would never do that kind of thing.
I see the original poster's story as a somewhat deft case of blame deflection. The welfare state didn't work like he wanted it to, so when the excuse came around that big, bad Bismarck did it, he readily latched on.
You may see it like that, but as you observe, perception is not necessarily reality. I cannot imagine what you even mean when you write "the welfare state didn't work like he wanted to." What exactly leads you to the belief that the original poster wanted the welfare state to work one way or another? I suggest you try to engage with people on the basis of what they actually write, rather than shadow boxing with the phantoms of your own political paranoia. Don't make the mistake of projecting your own level of ideological commitment onto your interlocutor! Remember the original poster's stated motivation was to help you overcome your misapprehension as to the facts. And as I read this last post to AC, I am disappointed that you have proven to be so dull a student --or perhaps you need to remove yourself from the heat of battle before you give yourself permission to learn?
But it doesn't follow that public welfare is a construction of conservative forces - especially when as I observe, its universal presence in socialist governments.
This is so silly I must respond. 1) It is simply a fact that the modern welfare state is a construction of conservative forces. That's data not theory (insofar as they are separable). 2) It's presences in subsequent "socialist" governments cannot tautologically alter that fact. 3) It is, as I pointed out, also present in conservative governments (which by itself says nothing about 1 either).
And just for the record, I regard "big, bad Bismarck" as one of the finest and most able of statesman who ever wielded power. His great (and ultimately unforgivable) fault, however, was his failure to grasp what would become of the autocratic power structure he set up when once it fell into the hands of lesser mortals.
I know it probably gratifies your ego to debate the AC rather than someone who plainly has you out-gunned (and one of my degrees is a double History major so forgive me if I'm being a bully here). I assure you, however, playing with the big boys (as you could have done by addressing this post) is a far better learning experience than knocking off low-hanging fruit. Opportunity missed (i.e. I shan't be replying again).