So... d'ya think separation will ever happen? I mean, without an economic collapse of the country first (at which point I think it's a given, along with an attempt by Quebec to take over the Maritimes, who'd probably then revolt).
"Living in the Rocky Mountains, I resent the fact that my electrical utility is owned by a board of directors who live in Scotland and likely have never even heard of the town where I live, much less care one little bit if their policies adversely impact the businesses or residents of this community."
Another victim of the Montana Power 'deregulation' or is this another one I hadn't heard about??
Hmm. Perhaps if the northern Great Plains states' secession movement ever goes anywhere, they should extend an invitation to Alberta to join them.
I'd correct your most-interesting post by observing that Quebec isn't anti-gov't, they're just against anyone who doesn't speak French as a first language telling them what to do. They're more than happy to over-govern their own or anyone else's English speakers, as your emphasized bit points out.
"...local governments would have to form a new national organization in parallel with the federal government to do things which they individually are not powerful enough to accomplish. Like smack down multinationals when they get out of line."
Nonsense. All that's required is "Play nice, or we won't let you do business in our state."
That's why the state banking commissions are the one power that big banks try not to piss off.
That's all fine when you HAVE an industrial revolution and constant growth in factory work. But my understanding (based on what's happened in Mexico City over the past few decades) is that in today's 3rd world cities the "factory work" is 90% fantasy (a million other backcountry peasants took most of those jobs long before you got there, so they're actually tough to get), but once dislocated it's tough to go back to the farm, which by then someone else has likely taken possession of, and now you're stuck. Hence the growth of cardboard slums beyond anything we've ever seen before in history, and utter dependence on the dole or the charity of others.
Exactly. Accumulating too many people with too few resources is why cities get squalid in the first place. The backcountry illiterate farmer's dream of a great city job to get out of subsistence farming is actually a nightmare. Better to disperse them back to subsistence farming; at least that's SOME living, rather than NO living.
Alternatively, expand the sinkhole and consider it a low-cost urban-renewal project.
[hefting my copy of the Physicians Desk Reference to Herbal Medicines] Because if the plethora of side effects, harmful or even lethal effects, drug interactions, and contraindiations ever became public knowledge, a whole lot of very profitable quackery would go out of business......at least until the next generation of new-ager 'educated idiots' came along with their desire to believe in "magic".
It's judged by measuring neurological response in the brain. Essentially hook a meter to the right part of the brain and squeeze a toe at a given pressure level. Watch the meter and judge how much response the brain is making.
I vaguely recall that some similar setup was used a while back during research to gauge effectiveness of human anaesthesia during surgery (due to the problem of some patients "waking up" in mid-operation).
"It is reasonable to limit access of minors to porn"
I'd rephrase that as "It is reasonable FOR PARENTS to limit access of minors to porn". No need to involve the government or gov't censors.
Otherwise -- at what point does gov't interference in parenting stop?? Tho from the info quoted in this post, http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1669582&cid=32397048, it appears that in S.A. gov't interference is allowed to go as far as it sees fit.
Probably would make it easier to find if desired, too -- type in anyrandomshit.xxx and chances are it'll be *some* porn domain. I don't see a downside for the legit porn industry.
As to finding it unwanted... never in all the time I've been online ('net since '96, BBSs before that) have I tripped over porn by accident. When I have encountered it unasked, I was already in some rather shady corner of the web. I have to wonder how many of the anti-porn types are doing "I typed in 'sexy girls' and there it was! see how much porn there is!!" That's kinda like making people go naked, then complaining about indecent exposure.
Not hardly. We barely understand micro lag-time wrt climate, let alone how much lag there is in the system over decades or hundreds or even thousands of years.
And big chunks of Africa with no real government, or at least no real defense force -- grapes waiting to be picked.
I wonder how much it would take to redirect a chunk of the Nile headwaters to Africa's east coast, where it could be tankered off to China?? Not to mention to China's buyers in other water-strapped countries. Imagine a partnership with, say, India, to help certain resource-rich 'developing' nations 'utilize' their resources, oh yeah the payback is we take 90% of the output. See? Don't even need a war, just enough backup that no one not ready for you will see fit to argue.
Some areas can legitimately cry drought, but China has dumped so much crud into its rivers that now ANYONE can walk on water. From what people who do business in China have told me, this is the root of their water issues right now -- not lack of water, but how much of it is no longer fit for ANY use.
But it was propelled by the jackbooted thugs of its era doing whatever the hell they wished, including simply taking any property they cared to. Today's thugs wear three-piece suits and pretend to do the will of the people, including all manner of "support" (despite that we pay for it with our taxes).
When you simply take, the descent into poverty is obvious. When you get people to "give" because it's how society has trained them, it's not.
I would say, WRT the issue of moral convictions, that this is because of a general failure to mature past the "mommy save me!" stage of social development... witness how many people turn first to the gov't to save them from everything, including poverty indirectly inflicted by high taxes.
Ah, yes, you're saying he should have picked a different point to argue, and I think you're right. Arguing that this was about personal consumption was too open to interpretation or contradiction. Arguing that it did not actually do the purported economic harm, with hard numbers to back that up, might have been more successful.
An AC responds with these excellent points, which are too valuable to languish at Score 0:
That is an excellent point. Consider the difficulties trying to live "cash only."
Currently I only know of one business that pays employees in cash - Waffle House. It's either that or:
$8-10 fees to cash paychecks, including thumbprint identification. Even if the check is:
DRAWN ON THAT BANK - to which they reply, we are not a check cashing service (?!?!?! are they that stupid?), but of course since the turrists happened, it's because it is now a matter of being a:
National Security Issue to have a check cashed at a bank. Don't believe me? Read the sign near the teller on the end.
Unless your bill is local, it is impossible to pay in cash, and even then often difficult. This can be gotten by:
Buying a money order for $1.50
I see what you are saying, but I'd say it is less a matter of being an ATM to the government, and more a matter of tracking and control, as evidence by the FTA in the very beginning. There is no reason to outlaw cash if it is exceptionally difficult and expensive.
Try to live cash only for a month. You'll probably quit.
I'd still contend the government's primary motivation is to track and control your money, so it can better extract the tolls it believes are due to itself. But the effect is the same -- it's damned hard to do anything without encountering something that, of your own necessity just for ordinary daily life, will cause you to be tracked.
That in turn makes the gov't think that tracking you is the government's natural function.
This is a good case of the side effect being as bad as the disease.
Just wondering... how many are actually stolen, and how many are pilfered out of the production and distribution pipelines with no one the wiser?? my understanding is that this is how a lot of the military grade arms wind up on the black market, but I have no idea what proportion that may be, nor how it impacts petty criminals.
And as I said above, why bother with stealing cellphones, when you can set up a legit retail store and "sell" them to your own fictional characters?? would make a nice side business for a fake ID store, at that.
I think the real principle here is that for every gov't restriction on trade, a new and thriving method of circumventing that restriction WILL be invented.
If there was no limit on the number of *chickens* he could produce, why does that matter??
The real point of that case is that it says, "We forbid you to produce this, and require you to purchase the exact same thing from someone else (so the someone else can make as much money as we think they should make)."
But if the object is to encourage economic recovery -- it backfires, because if this guy foregoes the wheat entirely, now can't produce as many chickens, and he becomes LESS properous. If he does buy the wheat, he incurs a greater cost per chicken, so again he becomes LESS properous. In either case, he loses prosperity by exactly the same amount as the cost of that wheat which he was required to buy rather than produce for himself. Net economic gain = at best zero.
As I've said before, we no longer have enough people who are actually starving (and I'd guess it takes around half the populace) to achieve a stste where unrest overwhelms both social inertia and the average person's desire to just not get involved.
So to agree with you in another way, one might say that prosperity is very good at dismantling unrest, so long as the ratio of prosperity to unrest remains positive. And so long as that's the case, gov't oppression doesn't really enter into it.
Thanks for the link. That's one seriously ugly decision.:( Essentially says "you're not helping someone else make enough money, therefore we're going to punish you." Do you see a parellel in recent legislation??:{~
Slashdot Mirror
Loop breaker: Viagra.
All very interesting. Thanks for the insight.
So... d'ya think separation will ever happen? I mean, without an economic collapse of the country first (at which point I think it's a given, along with an attempt by Quebec to take over the Maritimes, who'd probably then revolt).
"Living in the Rocky Mountains, I resent the fact that my electrical utility is owned by a board of directors who live in Scotland and likely have never even heard of the town where I live, much less care one little bit if their policies adversely impact the businesses or residents of this community."
Another victim of the Montana Power 'deregulation' or is this another one I hadn't heard about??
Hmm. Perhaps if the northern Great Plains states' secession movement ever goes anywhere, they should extend an invitation to Alberta to join them.
I'd correct your most-interesting post by observing that Quebec isn't anti-gov't, they're just against anyone who doesn't speak French as a first language telling them what to do. They're more than happy to over-govern their own or anyone else's English speakers, as your emphasized bit points out.
India has a growing economy. Central America does not, and has much of its natural wealth tied up in gov't corruption. That makes a huge difference.
"...local governments would have to form a new national organization in parallel with the federal government to do things which they individually are not powerful enough to accomplish. Like smack down multinationals when they get out of line."
Nonsense. All that's required is "Play nice, or we won't let you do business in our state."
That's why the state banking commissions are the one power that big banks try not to piss off.
That's all fine when you HAVE an industrial revolution and constant growth in factory work. But my understanding (based on what's happened in Mexico City over the past few decades) is that in today's 3rd world cities the "factory work" is 90% fantasy (a million other backcountry peasants took most of those jobs long before you got there, so they're actually tough to get), but once dislocated it's tough to go back to the farm, which by then someone else has likely taken possession of, and now you're stuck. Hence the growth of cardboard slums beyond anything we've ever seen before in history, and utter dependence on the dole or the charity of others.
How is that better than subsistence farming?
Exactly. Accumulating too many people with too few resources is why cities get squalid in the first place. The backcountry illiterate farmer's dream of a great city job to get out of subsistence farming is actually a nightmare. Better to disperse them back to subsistence farming; at least that's SOME living, rather than NO living.
Alternatively, expand the sinkhole and consider it a low-cost urban-renewal project.
Yeah, but it saves everyone else a ton of R&D money, by clearly demonstrating what won't work!
[hefting my copy of the Physicians Desk Reference to Herbal Medicines] Because if the plethora of side effects, harmful or even lethal effects, drug interactions, and contraindiations ever became public knowledge, a whole lot of very profitable quackery would go out of business... ...at least until the next generation of new-ager 'educated idiots' came along with their desire to believe in "magic".
It's judged by measuring neurological response in the brain. Essentially hook a meter to the right part of the brain and squeeze a toe at a given pressure level. Watch the meter and judge how much response the brain is making.
I vaguely recall that some similar setup was used a while back during research to gauge effectiveness of human anaesthesia during surgery (due to the problem of some patients "waking up" in mid-operation).
Endorphin release due to pain from the heat = no more headache.
I know someone who uses a good whipping as a remedy for menstrual pain -- same principle, different endorphin trigger.
"It is reasonable to limit access of minors to porn"
I'd rephrase that as "It is reasonable FOR PARENTS to limit access of minors to porn". No need to involve the government or gov't censors.
Otherwise -- at what point does gov't interference in parenting stop?? Tho from the info quoted in this post, http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1669582&cid=32397048, it appears that in S.A. gov't interference is allowed to go as far as it sees fit.
Probably would make it easier to find if desired, too -- type in anyrandomshit.xxx and chances are it'll be *some* porn domain. I don't see a downside for the legit porn industry.
As to finding it unwanted... never in all the time I've been online ('net since '96, BBSs before that) have I tripped over porn by accident. When I have encountered it unasked, I was already in some rather shady corner of the web. I have to wonder how many of the anti-porn types are doing "I typed in 'sexy girls' and there it was! see how much porn there is!!" That's kinda like making people go naked, then complaining about indecent exposure.
Not hardly. We barely understand micro lag-time wrt climate, let alone how much lag there is in the system over decades or hundreds or even thousands of years.
True... and as someone else pointed out, absolute control over the headwaters becomes a desirable thing from China's POV.
And big chunks of Africa with no real government, or at least no real defense force -- grapes waiting to be picked.
I wonder how much it would take to redirect a chunk of the Nile headwaters to Africa's east coast, where it could be tankered off to China?? Not to mention to China's buyers in other water-strapped countries. Imagine a partnership with, say, India, to help certain resource-rich 'developing' nations 'utilize' their resources, oh yeah the payback is we take 90% of the output. See? Don't even need a war, just enough backup that no one not ready for you will see fit to argue.
Some areas can legitimately cry drought, but China has dumped so much crud into its rivers that now ANYONE can walk on water. From what people who do business in China have told me, this is the root of their water issues right now -- not lack of water, but how much of it is no longer fit for ANY use.
But it was propelled by the jackbooted thugs of its era doing whatever the hell they wished, including simply taking any property they cared to. Today's thugs wear three-piece suits and pretend to do the will of the people, including all manner of "support" (despite that we pay for it with our taxes).
When you simply take, the descent into poverty is obvious. When you get people to "give" because it's how society has trained them, it's not.
I would say, WRT the issue of moral convictions, that this is because of a general failure to mature past the "mommy save me!" stage of social development... witness how many people turn first to the gov't to save them from everything, including poverty indirectly inflicted by high taxes.
Ah, yes, you're saying he should have picked a different point to argue, and I think you're right. Arguing that this was about personal consumption was too open to interpretation or contradiction. Arguing that it did not actually do the purported economic harm, with hard numbers to back that up, might have been more successful.
That is an excellent point. Consider the difficulties trying to live "cash only."
Currently I only know of one business that pays employees in cash - Waffle House. It's either that or:
$8-10 fees to cash paychecks, including thumbprint identification. Even if the check is:
DRAWN ON THAT BANK - to which they reply, we are not a check cashing service (?!?!?! are they that stupid?), but of course since the turrists happened, it's because it is now a matter of being a:
National Security Issue to have a check cashed at a bank. Don't believe me? Read the sign near the teller on the end.
Unless your bill is local, it is impossible to pay in cash, and even then often difficult. This can be gotten by:
Buying a money order for $1.50
I see what you are saying, but I'd say it is less a matter of being an ATM to the government, and more a matter of tracking and control, as evidence by the FTA in the very beginning. There is no reason to outlaw cash if it is exceptionally difficult and expensive.
Try to live cash only for a month. You'll probably quit.
I'd still contend the government's primary motivation is to track and control your money, so it can better extract the tolls it believes are due to itself. But the effect is the same -- it's damned hard to do anything without encountering something that, of your own necessity just for ordinary daily life, will cause you to be tracked.
That in turn makes the gov't think that tracking you is the government's natural function.
This is a good case of the side effect being as bad as the disease.
Just wondering... how many are actually stolen, and how many are pilfered out of the production and distribution pipelines with no one the wiser?? my understanding is that this is how a lot of the military grade arms wind up on the black market, but I have no idea what proportion that may be, nor how it impacts petty criminals.
And as I said above, why bother with stealing cellphones, when you can set up a legit retail store and "sell" them to your own fictional characters?? would make a nice side business for a fake ID store, at that.
I think the real principle here is that for every gov't restriction on trade, a new and thriving method of circumventing that restriction WILL be invented.
If there was no limit on the number of *chickens* he could produce, why does that matter??
The real point of that case is that it says, "We forbid you to produce this, and require you to purchase the exact same thing from someone else (so the someone else can make as much money as we think they should make)."
But if the object is to encourage economic recovery -- it backfires, because if this guy foregoes the wheat entirely, now can't produce as many chickens, and he becomes LESS properous. If he does buy the wheat, he incurs a greater cost per chicken, so again he becomes LESS properous. In either case, he loses prosperity by exactly the same amount as the cost of that wheat which he was required to buy rather than produce for himself. Net economic gain = at best zero.
As I've said before, we no longer have enough people who are actually starving (and I'd guess it takes around half the populace) to achieve a stste where unrest overwhelms both social inertia and the average person's desire to just not get involved.
So to agree with you in another way, one might say that prosperity is very good at dismantling unrest, so long as the ratio of prosperity to unrest remains positive. And so long as that's the case, gov't oppression doesn't really enter into it.
Thanks for the link. That's one seriously ugly decision. :( Essentially says "you're not helping someone else make enough money, therefore we're going to punish you." Do you see a parellel in recent legislation?? :{~