Without bureaucracy that makes it so slow and difficult to turn the ship around, without the inefficient bureaucracy, what's your alternative? Chaos?
But the founding fathers didn't build a ship of state. They built an empty hull. They said, "if we need to go somewhere, people will get on board." They realized that governments, if given the opportunity, will mostly sail around in circles for no real reason.
Well, I don't remember boarding this ship. But we've been sailing around in circles for a while now. We've raised the Jolly Roger and attacked lots of other ships for no real reason. There's a slavemaster whipping us now. Though we started out with mostly Americans, there's lots of Mexicans on board for some reason. The officers are putting the cannons on lifeboats and transferring them to other ships. The ship is falling apart. There's talk of mutiny. And the onboard movies they show us just keep getting worse, which is sad because they're mostly remakes. I want the fuck off.
those who don't take care of their future, have no future.
Ironically, that's the best argument against socialism that there is. Socialist governments are too busy caring for the present, putting out fires, dealing with this week's catastrophe, making poor investments to cover up people's bad decisions, to begin to care about the future. And that's if you have a moderately well-run socialist government. If you have a socialist government run by idiots, or worse, greedy idiots, you're completely screwed.
Look at social security. Everybody was told it's a "trust fund" and a "lockbox" and that their money is being stored for them for when they need it. It's complete bullshit. That money is spent the day it's received, often on things that have nothing to do with caring for the elderly. It's a pyramid scheme of the first order. The entire system collapses when it stops growing.
Under the US Constitution as written, however, it doesn't matter who's in charge. It doesn't matter who wins the next election. Because, ultimately, each and every person is mostly responsible for their own future.
You're the best person to know what you'll need in old age. My grandmother does. She has a house. She has her church. She has a garden. And she has a canner. And she's happy as hell and will live until she's 105.
Without a safety net, people learn not to do hazardous things, like build homes and live in dangerous areas. If they know the government isn't going to swoop in and rebuild their home, people might invest in more disaster-proof structures. Or they might have a back-up plan, a trailer in the sticks, in case the worst happens.
Now, of course you can argue it's not an efficient allocation of resources for everyone to have two homes. But look what it produces: responsible citizens! You can't buy that with safety nets.
Here's an anecdote I've heard a few times. Native American babies don't cry. You'll never see one crying. They are quiet and peaceful and content. Little white kids, on the other hand, cry like they're being abused. Until way into childhood, white kids cry at the drop of a hat.
Why? Native American mothers will let their kids cry. They say it's good for them. They feed them when necessary, let them cry the rest of the time. It lasts about two weeks. The kid learns that crying doesn't get you attention, or food, and quits. Some people never seem to learn that lesson. We'd all be better off if they did.
Of the pieces that may be considered speech, the schools are generally justified in prohibiting them.
No, actually, they're not. In fact, preventing exactly this sort of government regulation of completely harmless behavior is what the First Amendment is for. You should read and understand the Bill of Rights.
no suggestive images
Sounds like expression to me.
they are seen as gang symbols
Also, expression. Specifically, expression you don't like. Gee, does that sound like a constitutional right we've heard of before...
suggestive clothing
But I'm sure there are exceptions for cheerleaders and football players.
In a fight, they can be a weapon.
Thousands of things in schools can be and do become weapons in fights. Most of them were put there by the school.
In a PE class, they are dangerous.
PE is dangerous. Yet, it's required. Chains are dangerous. They're banned. See how this is getting stupid...
chains... not a form of expression in a general sense.
Okay, let's assume you're right for a second. They're a form of self-defense. You still have a right to defend yourself and your property. You have locks on your lockers that can easily be used as weapons. Chains are there to prevent crime, to prevent someone from stealing your wallet. It's sad that a person's self-defense is a reason for you to persecute him.
A dress code is part of that.
No, it isn't. Dress is not behaviour. Clothes do not cause behaviour. Despite the beliefs of millions of left-brained idiots, people actually are the ones responsible for their behaviour. Not clothes. Dress codes are extraneous and unnecessary...
Wait a minute...
Do you have a fucking web site with a UK address????
Are you a Brit????
Mind your own fucking business, then.
We wrote our Bill of Rights because of you idiots, you know.
9th amendment [wikipedia.org] page has a link to natural rights, which looky look! Lists education as a right.
Yes. It also says that education is a "right", in the sense of Rosseau, that must be provided by government. The founding fathers would not have agreed with Rousseau on this point. They mostly preferred Locke on matters of natural rights. Rousseau's view of rights, which is more in the tradition of socialist governments in Europe, is deliberately at odds with the structure of the US Constitution. Most Americans travelled a long way and fought more than a few wars to get away from philosophies such as these.
(P.S. -- I'm going to continue to use the word "socialist", because it's accurate, not because it's disparaging.)
Yet, even Rousseau, whose writings were a major basis of socialism in Europe, recognized that man's duty to his fellow man is subservient to man's duty to himself. In a country such as the United States in the 17 and 1800's, providing for one's own welfare was more important (and practical) than providing for others'. Even today, many problems would be solved by Americans taking greater responsibility for their own problems than by meddling in the affairs of others. We're pretty terrible at that to begin with, and with such a diverse population, it tends to cause more trouble than it's worth.
Like I said, under the Constitution, you have a right to an education. You don't have a right to extract money from me to provide it.
The US does have antitrust laws, and they go against the very grain of noninterference you speak about. Is it a socialist thing? Why do we have social security? Is that a socialist thing?
As is pointed out on Slashdot all the time, monopolies are usually a product of government intervention. The railroads were given patents on rails and all the free land they could take. Telephone and electric distribution monopolies are given land every day. Microsoft is given absurd 70-year copyrights and quite a bit of legal protection against reverse-engineered competition. You could argue that Standard Oil wasn't really a government-granted monopoly, but I'm sure they had their fair share of patent protection. As you know, patent and copyright are a giant mess. I'm not sure I consider it "socialist" for the US to clean up this mess in a roundabout way using antitrust laws.
And, yes, social security is a socialist thing. That's why it's nearly bankrupt.
You are never completely free, other than in your inner world, but in the external world, your actions affect others, and it's a cooperative process that gets people anywhere, as a whole.
It doesn't require government for Americans to cooperate. We happily form the largest corporations on the face of the earth. And where there aren't corporations, there are co-ops. We have some of the largest private charities, and religious institutions. Hell, look at the internet, and FOSS in the US. We have amateur astronauts, for Christ's sake! Americans are pretty much self-organizing. And it mostly just requires government to get the hell out of the way.
Because a world without an absolutely safe safety net, where there is a 95 year old woman, who just ran out of her lifesavings, because some idiot on the phone was clever to scheme her out of her last dime and buy life insurance on it, or she just simply ran out of funds, we owe her nothing, it's not our duty to care for her?
If you'll notice, society (without the help of government) has already evolved quite an effective safety net for little old ladies. It's called "inhereitance". Little old ladies are some of the richest people on the planet.
Regardless, let's take your example to it's logical conclusion. Let's assume, 30 years from now, that technology exists to keep a person alive indefinitely at the cost of $100,000 per year. You have a right to life. Does the government have a responsibility to provide this treatment to you? What if the treatment requires,
while I may not be able to recite the Constitution, I feel that I fully know the spirit of it, and I'm not misinterpreting it, and take offense to being told otherwise.
You should be offended. You admit you've never read the Constitution. You're merely arguing from a socialist perspective without really understanding what it is you're arguing against.
I say that because you should know what the Constitution actually says and means. It's not as bad as you think. And it's definitely not as bad as you would expect from looking at the current sorry state of affairs.
The US government is a wonderful concept that has been absolutely ignored in implementation.
The rights you seek are protected in the 9th amendment.
Unfortunately a prime fault of democracy
The US is not a democracy. It is a Republic. It exists at the consent of the governed. The majority have no power to compel you to do anything.
Education should not be mandatory to accept, however it should be mandatory to offer and provide, at least I'd like to live in a utopian society like that.
Well I'd like to live in a utopian society in which I can educate my children without the interference of government and without having to support schools they don't attend. And, oh look, guess what? I do! If you'd like to live in a socialist utopia, you're free to gather up some like-minded people and go for it. Leave me out of it, please.
The Constitution is not perfect, and in this protection of the powerless, what could be more effective than leveling the playing field, and enabling everyone, empowering everyone.
The playing field is level. But, as I've said, it's a logical impossibility to level the playing field in more than rights, in those actions which are granted to all of us equally by our creator, and which do not by definition cause harm to others by their exercise. In going beyond this, you must take from one person to give to another. This is not a level playing field, no matter its outcome. This is theft, pure and simple.
How is a world where you owe your existence to some royalty, you owe him to pay him for the air you breathe, for the knowledge you "consume," for your right to exist, any different than the very system the founding fathers fought against?
You don't! And it's not! Even patents and copyrights were not meant to apply to average people! They were meant to benefit average people. They only apply to US corporations, mythical constructs of commerce. You only incur their jurisdiction by competing with said corporations. Implementing patents and copying works of art for your own use are inherently beyond the scope of the United States.
It is no different than a large corporation insisting that you not wear torn blue jeans and a t-shirt to work.
Of course it's different. Corporations aren't held to the First Amendment. And I'm not forced by law to attend a corporation every day until adulthood.
Perhaps we should add a 0'th amendment, the right to oxygen, the right to air to breathe, together with the right to learn a spoken language.
You have all of those rights. And they did add that amendment (of course it would be kind of pointless to put it at the beginning). Perhaps you should, you know, *read* the Constitution before debating it. Of course, that won't make a difference until you understand what a right actually is.
I think no education whatsoever can be the equivalent of child abuse
So what? I think not providing all people with free shelter is abuse. Surely people need shelter more than education. Maslow would agree. You don't see me going around stealing from people to build houses, do you?
The case of no education whatsoever, because it's not mandatory to provide.
Education existed before government. Lots of things exist without government, without being mandatory. There is no balancing point necessary because you're arguing from a faulty premise.
The Constitution is the absolute law of the land. We don't need you to balance it with any of your ideas of what should happen. If you feel everyone should have an education, start a damn school. Don't whine and cry and ask for the government to make people help you.
How can you have a society of equals then? Equal opportunity to every child?
Had they wanted to create a society of equals, the founding fathers certainly could have tried. They did not. Equal opportunity doesn't even mean that all people are of equal talent and means. (But of course the phrase "equal opportunity" also appears nowhere in the Constitution nor in any of the writings of the founding fathers.)
To say that men are "created equal" does not mean that they are equal in all respects. It means that they are equal in their rights.
The founding fathers never believed in nobility, and never believed in privilege rights by birth.
That's true. I think you're misinterpreting what a "right" is. Of course you have a right to an education; but having a right doesn't mean the government (or anyone) has to provide it to you. Free education provided by the government is rather a priviledge. And the US government doesn't even have a mandate to provide that priviledge.
The nobility that the founding fathers fought against and that they so despised, denied men their equal rights, so much so that it even prevented people from engaging in a trade of their choosing. That was nobility as they knew it: government dictating what they can and can't do. They certainly weren't fighting for equal handouts from government. They were fighting for their ability to choose their own damn way in life.
Also, "according to the spirit of the founding fathers," they would be more upset with someone's right to their own property/money being taken from them, whether to fund education or anything else not included in the Constitution they wrote.
want to mold the system in their favor
That's the point. The system the founding fathers created can't be molded at all, because it was barely a system, more like the bare minimum. What it has become, of course, is a giant mess, mostly because of people taking expansive interpretations of all of government's legitimate functions, and adding more that weren't included to begin with.
How do you support our country if you're sending our jobs overseas?
Ding ding. Here's your wake up call. These companies are supporting the country by shipping jobs overseas to free up Americans to fight in foreign wars.
The US gov't won't outlaw outsourcing because it's by design. As outsourced techies are working at McDonalds, the people who should be working at McDonalds are being shot at in Iraq.
If everybody had jobs they could do right here, no one would voluntarily sign up to fight the Jews' wars for them. And the last time they tried to force people to fight a needless war, all hell broke loose.
Public education, which, according to the spirit of the founding fathers, should be a human right
You don't have a right to a free public education. No founding father ever said anything like that.
It's been interpreted, correctly I might add, that if there is any public education at all, it must be provided to everyone. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a priviledge.
Lemme tell ya, I'm a pretty big fucking dude. And, like most nerdy white kids, I keep to myself. I went to all sorts of schools growing up, 7 in all. Every one of them had more than a few degenerate fucks that liked to attack people for no reason. I have had my face grabbed, kneed in the groin, by random people I didn't even know. Friends were beat to the ground and kicked by niggers for looking at them wrong, or for just being white. A friend had their kid stabbed in the face, near the eye, with a pencil just recently at a public, mostly black high school. The principal is now trying to force her to put her kid back in the same school. Fucking idiot.
And god fucking help you if you decide to fight back when attacked. The whole mantra all through my degenrate public schooling was that "if you defend yourself, you get suspended along with whomever attacks you". This is the kind of doublespeak bullshit that the public schools have become. Blame the victims because all the fat stupid fuck teachers are too lazy to do their fucking jobs.
It was not a fucking picnic. I am not putting my kids through any kind of similar experience.
There was a time not long ago when entire sections of a town would be burnt to the fucking ground if some white person got the fuck beat out of them by a crazy bitch nigger. Now, people just roll over and take it for granted that they have to go to school, work, and live their lives with mongoloids.
Well, I'm fucking sick of it. I will not pay taxes to support it. I will not send my kids to be abused. I will be happy to point out whenever people are being railroaded by bullshit affirmative action and pansy-ass blame-the-victim mentality. I didn't fucking keep slaves. I didn't enact any fucking Jim Crowe laws. But I sure as fuck will unless niggers learn how to act.
It's been happening on land for years. Right down the street is a factory for the largest appliance manufacturer in the US.
They don't own the building, the city does. They don't hire the workers, a local temp agency does. They get tax breaks for being there. They can pack up and leave and be operational anywhere else within three weeks. They threaten go to Mexico every time production slips.
If you have a city run by nincompoops, chances are you already have one of these same mobile factories, right here in the US.
What sort of fucked-up economics does it take for people to buy $2600 guard dog robots, yet I'm still shouting my fucking lunch order to a person whose sole job it is to type it into a cash register?
The only thing two-income households have accomplished is increased the cost of life's necessities.
Nice sig. But it's also created a host of corporations to rule over us, with all the Mcjobs and crappy food that goes with them. Oh, and let's not forget all the unsupervised little brats running around, and the brats and psychiatry bills they'll produce when they grow up.
By any reasonable analysis, you were clearly comparing either the 1) quantity, 2) quality, or 3) existence of collectivists in China to those elsewhere.
Since you seem to be denying 2 and 3, the only thing left is to assume you meant "China isn't full of stupid collectivists."
And if so, then you may technically be correct. However, I'd point out that China is one of the more densely populated countries on the planet. In fact, don't they have a rather strict regimen of only one child per couple in order to curtail population growth?
These kids are following their hearts. They can look around and see the problems that face the world today.
Proving word processing programs isn't going to solve them. But having a basic understanding of the logic of computation can definitely help. You can't get that in a Arts college, where logic classes are taught by fuzzy-minded idiot philosophy professors.
Computation is a tool, like math or writing. And if you really want to tackle the big problems in science, and even some in business, it's the most important tool you should have. Basic computing should be a required course, for all university students.
One degree would be theoretical with a lot of math
Yeah well that's great and all, and I'm not saying it wouldn't help the industry. But until you can get companies to hire these sorts of people and get past the "ship it and forget it" and "first to market" bullshit that dominates, having this degree available is like pissing in the wind.
Try getting a CS degree combined with *anything* these days in a reputable engineering school. Without taking 20 hours a semester, or being in school for 6 years, it's impossible.
And as you're learning obscure 30 year old languages and optimized algorithms for problems nobody cares about, people in the real world are learning how businesses work. No wonder your $100,000 education won't be worth squat.
It's good that students have finally realized this. Good luck getting their professors to go along.
Right, the collectivists in China are quite intelligent. So, the lesson to be learned here is that the most effective collectivist government is military dictatorship followed by enlightened appointees. Plato would be proud.
There are those who thrive and succeed with guidance and orders, with someone telling them what to do, with a fearless leader: Communists, Catholics, slaves.
There are others who thrive on anarchy and chaos, on rampant individualism, with a government that can be drowned in a bathtub: Protestants, Americans, terrorists.
China has made the most of the 20th century. The rise of Communism and Socialism has allowed China untold opportunity to provide its people with an environment in which they naturally thrive. Large scale projects and complete sociological overhaul have allowed China to go from primitive isolation to world superpower in just a few generations. China is now reaping the benefits of this realignment of their natural interests and their socio-political structure.
Unfortunately for us, however, the West has followed suit. Beginning with the introduction of Socialism, straight through 50 years of the cold war and into the "war on terror", we have done more to emulate the enemies of individualism and freedom than to compete with them. We have modeled our society after one that is incompatible with our natural best interests.
As a result, the West has declined. The foremost product of rampant individualism, technological advancement, has suffered. We have spent the 20th century getting-by, exploiting our natural wealth with 100-year-old inventions borne of a time before rampant collectivism made its way to our shores. Most notable technological advances of the past 100 years were the product of Germany's last ditch struggle against this same collectivist horde.
As a result, we long ago lost our technological superiority. We are well on our way to being displaced as world hedgemon. Colonies and territories are in revolt. Allies are allying with our enemies. The West is under invasion by those who breed without remorse. And the entire human race is again under threat of mass extinction due to the triumph of collectivism over sustainability.
They'll save us from 'litigation' by creating a new bureaucracy of patent dispute resolution within the executive branch.
Same story, bankrolled by the taxpayers instead of the corporations, with no juries, no appeals, and thus no risk for said corps.
Re:algae carrying crap for a few centimeters...
on
Algae Can Carry Cargo
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· Score: 1
Let's see, perhaps redundancy, control, absolute size, ability to metabolize their own fuel from readily-available materials.
But what makes you think algae aren't the simplest process? If evolution is even somewhat true, algae would have long ago become a more efficient self-contained carrier than we could economically muster.
Slashdot Mirror
Without bureaucracy that makes it so slow and difficult to turn the ship around, without the inefficient bureaucracy, what's your alternative? Chaos?
But the founding fathers didn't build a ship of state. They built an empty hull. They said, "if we need to go somewhere, people will get on board." They realized that governments, if given the opportunity, will mostly sail around in circles for no real reason.
Well, I don't remember boarding this ship. But we've been sailing around in circles for a while now. We've raised the Jolly Roger and attacked lots of other ships for no real reason. There's a slavemaster whipping us now. Though we started out with mostly Americans, there's lots of Mexicans on board for some reason. The officers are putting the cannons on lifeboats and transferring them to other ships. The ship is falling apart. There's talk of mutiny. And the onboard movies they show us just keep getting worse, which is sad because they're mostly remakes. I want the fuck off.
those who don't take care of their future, have no future.
Ironically, that's the best argument against socialism that there is. Socialist governments are too busy caring for the present, putting out fires, dealing with this week's catastrophe, making poor investments to cover up people's bad decisions, to begin to care about the future. And that's if you have a moderately well-run socialist government. If you have a socialist government run by idiots, or worse, greedy idiots, you're completely screwed.
Look at social security. Everybody was told it's a "trust fund" and a "lockbox" and that their money is being stored for them for when they need it. It's complete bullshit. That money is spent the day it's received, often on things that have nothing to do with caring for the elderly. It's a pyramid scheme of the first order. The entire system collapses when it stops growing.
Under the US Constitution as written, however, it doesn't matter who's in charge. It doesn't matter who wins the next election. Because, ultimately, each and every person is mostly responsible for their own future.
You're the best person to know what you'll need in old age. My grandmother does. She has a house. She has her church. She has a garden. And she has a canner. And she's happy as hell and will live until she's 105.
Without a safety net, people learn not to do hazardous things, like build homes and live in dangerous areas. If they know the government isn't going to swoop in and rebuild their home, people might invest in more disaster-proof structures. Or they might have a back-up plan, a trailer in the sticks, in case the worst happens.
Now, of course you can argue it's not an efficient allocation of resources for everyone to have two homes. But look what it produces: responsible citizens! You can't buy that with safety nets.
Here's an anecdote I've heard a few times. Native American babies don't cry. You'll never see one crying. They are quiet and peaceful and content. Little white kids, on the other hand, cry like they're being abused. Until way into childhood, white kids cry at the drop of a hat.
Why? Native American mothers will let their kids cry. They say it's good for them. They feed them when necessary, let them cry the rest of the time. It lasts about two weeks. The kid learns that crying doesn't get you attention, or food, and quits. Some people never seem to learn that lesson. We'd all be better off if they did.
Merchandise sitting on shelves (and gas sitting in storage tanks!) does not magically cost the business 3x more.
No, but the merchandise they have to buy to replace that merchandise does.
If a business can't make enough on the merchandise on their shelves to purchase replacements, they go out of business.
Price controls are counter-productive.
Of the pieces that may be considered speech, the schools are generally justified in prohibiting them.
No, actually, they're not. In fact, preventing exactly this sort of government regulation of completely harmless behavior is what the First Amendment is for. You should read and understand the Bill of Rights.
no suggestive images
Sounds like expression to me.
they are seen as gang symbols
Also, expression. Specifically, expression you don't like. Gee, does that sound like a constitutional right we've heard of before...
suggestive clothing
But I'm sure there are exceptions for cheerleaders and football players.
In a fight, they can be a weapon.
Thousands of things in schools can be and do become weapons in fights. Most of them were put there by the school.
In a PE class, they are dangerous.
PE is dangerous. Yet, it's required. Chains are dangerous. They're banned. See how this is getting stupid...
chains... not a form of expression in a general sense.
Okay, let's assume you're right for a second. They're a form of self-defense. You still have a right to defend yourself and your property. You have locks on your lockers that can easily be used as weapons. Chains are there to prevent crime, to prevent someone from stealing your wallet. It's sad that a person's self-defense is a reason for you to persecute him.
A dress code is part of that.
No, it isn't. Dress is not behaviour. Clothes do not cause behaviour. Despite the beliefs of millions of left-brained idiots, people actually are the ones responsible for their behaviour. Not clothes. Dress codes are extraneous and unnecessary...
Wait a minute...
Do you have a fucking web site with a UK address????
Are you a Brit????
Mind your own fucking business, then.
We wrote our Bill of Rights because of you idiots, you know.
We don't need you to interpret it for us.
9th amendment [wikipedia.org] page has a link to natural rights, which looky look! Lists education as a right.
Yes. It also says that education is a "right", in the sense of Rosseau, that must be provided by government. The founding fathers would not have agreed with Rousseau on this point. They mostly preferred Locke on matters of natural rights. Rousseau's view of rights, which is more in the tradition of socialist governments in Europe, is deliberately at odds with the structure of the US Constitution. Most Americans travelled a long way and fought more than a few wars to get away from philosophies such as these.
(P.S. -- I'm going to continue to use the word "socialist", because it's accurate, not because it's disparaging.)
Yet, even Rousseau, whose writings were a major basis of socialism in Europe, recognized that man's duty to his fellow man is subservient to man's duty to himself. In a country such as the United States in the 17 and 1800's, providing for one's own welfare was more important (and practical) than providing for others'. Even today, many problems would be solved by Americans taking greater responsibility for their own problems than by meddling in the affairs of others. We're pretty terrible at that to begin with, and with such a diverse population, it tends to cause more trouble than it's worth.
Like I said, under the Constitution, you have a right to an education. You don't have a right to extract money from me to provide it.
The US does have antitrust laws, and they go against the very grain of noninterference you speak about. Is it a socialist thing? Why do we have social security? Is that a socialist thing?
As is pointed out on Slashdot all the time, monopolies are usually a product of government intervention. The railroads were given patents on rails and all the free land they could take. Telephone and electric distribution monopolies are given land every day. Microsoft is given absurd 70-year copyrights and quite a bit of legal protection against reverse-engineered competition. You could argue that Standard Oil wasn't really a government-granted monopoly, but I'm sure they had their fair share of patent protection. As you know, patent and copyright are a giant mess. I'm not sure I consider it "socialist" for the US to clean up this mess in a roundabout way using antitrust laws.
And, yes, social security is a socialist thing. That's why it's nearly bankrupt.
You are never completely free, other than in your inner world, but in the external world, your actions affect others, and it's a cooperative process that gets people anywhere, as a whole.
It doesn't require government for Americans to cooperate. We happily form the largest corporations on the face of the earth. And where there aren't corporations, there are co-ops. We have some of the largest private charities, and religious institutions. Hell, look at the internet, and FOSS in the US. We have amateur astronauts, for Christ's sake! Americans are pretty much self-organizing. And it mostly just requires government to get the hell out of the way.
Because a world without an absolutely safe safety net, where there is a 95 year old woman, who just ran out of her lifesavings, because some idiot on the phone was clever to scheme her out of her last dime and buy life insurance on it, or she just simply ran out of funds, we owe her nothing, it's not our duty to care for her?
If you'll notice, society (without the help of government) has already evolved quite an effective safety net for little old ladies. It's called "inhereitance". Little old ladies are some of the richest people on the planet.
Regardless, let's take your example to it's logical conclusion. Let's assume, 30 years from now, that technology exists to keep a person alive indefinitely at the cost of $100,000 per year. You have a right to life. Does the government have a responsibility to provide this treatment to you? What if the treatment requires,
while I may not be able to recite the Constitution, I feel that I fully know the spirit of it, and I'm not misinterpreting it, and take offense to being told otherwise.
You should be offended. You admit you've never read the Constitution. You're merely arguing from a socialist perspective without really understanding what it is you're arguing against.
I say that because you should know what the Constitution actually says and means. It's not as bad as you think. And it's definitely not as bad as you would expect from looking at the current sorry state of affairs.
The US government is a wonderful concept that has been absolutely ignored in implementation.
The rights you seek are protected in the 9th amendment.
Unfortunately a prime fault of democracy
The US is not a democracy. It is a Republic. It exists at the consent of the governed. The majority have no power to compel you to do anything.
Education should not be mandatory to accept, however it should be mandatory to offer and provide, at least I'd like to live in a utopian society like that.
Well I'd like to live in a utopian society in which I can educate my children without the interference of government and without having to support schools they don't attend. And, oh look, guess what? I do! If you'd like to live in a socialist utopia, you're free to gather up some like-minded people and go for it. Leave me out of it, please.
The Constitution is not perfect, and in this protection of the powerless, what could be more effective than leveling the playing field, and enabling everyone, empowering everyone.
The playing field is level. But, as I've said, it's a logical impossibility to level the playing field in more than rights, in those actions which are granted to all of us equally by our creator, and which do not by definition cause harm to others by their exercise. In going beyond this, you must take from one person to give to another. This is not a level playing field, no matter its outcome. This is theft, pure and simple.
How is a world where you owe your existence to some royalty, you owe him to pay him for the air you breathe, for the knowledge you "consume," for your right to exist, any different than the very system the founding fathers fought against?
You don't! And it's not! Even patents and copyrights were not meant to apply to average people! They were meant to benefit average people. They only apply to US corporations, mythical constructs of commerce. You only incur their jurisdiction by competing with said corporations. Implementing patents and copying works of art for your own use are inherently beyond the scope of the United States.
Companies that want to be the biggest on earth do.
It is no different than a large corporation insisting that you not wear torn blue jeans and a t-shirt to work.
Of course it's different. Corporations aren't held to the First Amendment. And I'm not forced by law to attend a corporation every day until adulthood.
School is not fucking job training.
Perhaps we should add a 0'th amendment, the right to oxygen, the right to air to breathe, together with the right to learn a spoken language.
You have all of those rights. And they did add that amendment (of course it would be kind of pointless to put it at the beginning). Perhaps you should, you know, *read* the Constitution before debating it. Of course, that won't make a difference until you understand what a right actually is.
I think no education whatsoever can be the equivalent of child abuse
So what? I think not providing all people with free shelter is abuse. Surely people need shelter more than education. Maslow would agree. You don't see me going around stealing from people to build houses, do you?
The case of no education whatsoever, because it's not mandatory to provide.
Education existed before government. Lots of things exist without government, without being mandatory. There is no balancing point necessary because you're arguing from a faulty premise.
The Constitution is the absolute law of the land. We don't need you to balance it with any of your ideas of what should happen. If you feel everyone should have an education, start a damn school. Don't whine and cry and ask for the government to make people help you.
How can you have a society of equals then? Equal opportunity to every child?
Had they wanted to create a society of equals, the founding fathers certainly could have tried. They did not. Equal opportunity doesn't even mean that all people are of equal talent and means. (But of course the phrase "equal opportunity" also appears nowhere in the Constitution nor in any of the writings of the founding fathers.)
To say that men are "created equal" does not mean that they are equal in all respects. It means that they are equal in their rights.
The founding fathers never believed in nobility, and never believed in privilege rights by birth.
That's true. I think you're misinterpreting what a "right" is. Of course you have a right to an education; but having a right doesn't mean the government (or anyone) has to provide it to you. Free education provided by the government is rather a priviledge. And the US government doesn't even have a mandate to provide that priviledge.
The nobility that the founding fathers fought against and that they so despised, denied men their equal rights, so much so that it even prevented people from engaging in a trade of their choosing. That was nobility as they knew it: government dictating what they can and can't do. They certainly weren't fighting for equal handouts from government. They were fighting for their ability to choose their own damn way in life.
Also, "according to the spirit of the founding fathers," they would be more upset with someone's right to their own property/money being taken from them, whether to fund education or anything else not included in the Constitution they wrote.
want to mold the system in their favor
That's the point. The system the founding fathers created can't be molded at all, because it was barely a system, more like the bare minimum. What it has become, of course, is a giant mess, mostly because of people taking expansive interpretations of all of government's legitimate functions, and adding more that weren't included to begin with.
How do you support our country if you're sending our jobs overseas?
Ding ding. Here's your wake up call. These companies are supporting the country by shipping jobs overseas to free up Americans to fight in foreign wars.
The US gov't won't outlaw outsourcing because it's by design. As outsourced techies are working at McDonalds, the people who should be working at McDonalds are being shot at in Iraq.
If everybody had jobs they could do right here, no one would voluntarily sign up to fight the Jews' wars for them. And the last time they tried to force people to fight a needless war, all hell broke loose.
Public education, which, according to the spirit of the founding fathers, should be a human right
You don't have a right to a free public education. No founding father ever said anything like that.
It's been interpreted, correctly I might add, that if there is any public education at all, it must be provided to everyone. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a priviledge.
School is not a fucking social experience. It's a zoo.
Until kids can go to public schools without having to deal with crazy niggers beating on white girls, they should all fucking rot.
Lemme tell ya, I'm a pretty big fucking dude. And, like most nerdy white kids, I keep to myself. I went to all sorts of schools growing up, 7 in all. Every one of them had more than a few degenerate fucks that liked to attack people for no reason. I have had my face grabbed, kneed in the groin, by random people I didn't even know. Friends were beat to the ground and kicked by niggers for looking at them wrong, or for just being white. A friend had their kid stabbed in the face, near the eye, with a pencil just recently at a public, mostly black high school. The principal is now trying to force her to put her kid back in the same school. Fucking idiot.
And god fucking help you if you decide to fight back when attacked. The whole mantra all through my degenrate public schooling was that "if you defend yourself, you get suspended along with whomever attacks you". This is the kind of doublespeak bullshit that the public schools have become. Blame the victims because all the fat stupid fuck teachers are too lazy to do their fucking jobs.
It was not a fucking picnic. I am not putting my kids through any kind of similar experience.
There was a time not long ago when entire sections of a town would be burnt to the fucking ground if some white person got the fuck beat out of them by a crazy bitch nigger. Now, people just roll over and take it for granted that they have to go to school, work, and live their lives with mongoloids.
Well, I'm fucking sick of it. I will not pay taxes to support it. I will not send my kids to be abused. I will be happy to point out whenever people are being railroaded by bullshit affirmative action and pansy-ass blame-the-victim mentality. I didn't fucking keep slaves. I didn't enact any fucking Jim Crowe laws. But I sure as fuck will unless niggers learn how to act.
It's been happening on land for years. Right down the street is a factory for the largest appliance manufacturer in the US.
They don't own the building, the city does. They don't hire the workers, a local temp agency does. They get tax breaks for being there. They can pack up and leave and be operational anywhere else within three weeks. They threaten go to Mexico every time production slips.
If you have a city run by nincompoops, chances are you already have one of these same mobile factories, right here in the US.
I'm not holding my breath.
What sort of fucked-up economics does it take for people to buy $2600 guard dog robots, yet I'm still shouting my fucking lunch order to a person whose sole job it is to type it into a cash register?
The only thing two-income households have accomplished is increased the cost of life's necessities.
Nice sig. But it's also created a host of corporations to rule over us, with all the Mcjobs and crappy food that goes with them. Oh, and let's not forget all the unsupervised little brats running around, and the brats and psychiatry bills they'll produce when they grow up.
Your reading ability is disgraceful.
Hmm... perhaps it's your rhetoric that is flawed.
By any reasonable analysis, you were clearly comparing either the 1) quantity, 2) quality, or 3) existence of collectivists in China to those elsewhere.
Since you seem to be denying 2 and 3, the only thing left is to assume you meant "China isn't full of stupid collectivists."
And if so, then you may technically be correct. However, I'd point out that China is one of the more densely populated countries on the planet. In fact, don't they have a rather strict regimen of only one child per couple in order to curtail population growth?
Follow your heart and the money will follow.
These kids are following their hearts. They can look around and see the problems that face the world today.
Proving word processing programs isn't going to solve them. But having a basic understanding of the logic of computation can definitely help. You can't get that in a Arts college, where logic classes are taught by fuzzy-minded idiot philosophy professors.
Computation is a tool, like math or writing. And if you really want to tackle the big problems in science, and even some in business, it's the most important tool you should have. Basic computing should be a required course, for all university students.
Well, it was either that, or assume you were dumb enough to say "China isn't full of collectivists." I'll just let you clear that one up.
One degree would be theoretical with a lot of math
Yeah well that's great and all, and I'm not saying it wouldn't help the industry. But until you can get companies to hire these sorts of people and get past the "ship it and forget it" and "first to market" bullshit that dominates, having this degree available is like pissing in the wind.
Try getting a CS degree combined with *anything* these days in a reputable engineering school. Without taking 20 hours a semester, or being in school for 6 years, it's impossible.
And as you're learning obscure 30 year old languages and optimized algorithms for problems nobody cares about, people in the real world are learning how businesses work. No wonder your $100,000 education won't be worth squat.
It's good that students have finally realized this. Good luck getting their professors to go along.
China isn't full of stupid collectivists
Right, the collectivists in China are quite intelligent. So, the lesson to be learned here is that the most effective collectivist government is military dictatorship followed by enlightened appointees. Plato would be proud.
There are those who thrive and succeed with guidance and orders, with someone telling them what to do, with a fearless leader: Communists, Catholics, slaves.
There are others who thrive on anarchy and chaos, on rampant individualism, with a government that can be drowned in a bathtub: Protestants, Americans, terrorists.
China has made the most of the 20th century. The rise of Communism and Socialism has allowed China untold opportunity to provide its people with an environment in which they naturally thrive. Large scale projects and complete sociological overhaul have allowed China to go from primitive isolation to world superpower in just a few generations. China is now reaping the benefits of this realignment of their natural interests and their socio-political structure.
Unfortunately for us, however, the West has followed suit. Beginning with the introduction of Socialism, straight through 50 years of the cold war and into the "war on terror", we have done more to emulate the enemies of individualism and freedom than to compete with them. We have modeled our society after one that is incompatible with our natural best interests.
As a result, the West has declined. The foremost product of rampant individualism, technological advancement, has suffered. We have spent the 20th century getting-by, exploiting our natural wealth with 100-year-old inventions borne of a time before rampant collectivism made its way to our shores. Most notable technological advances of the past 100 years were the product of Germany's last ditch struggle against this same collectivist horde.
As a result, we long ago lost our technological superiority. We are well on our way to being displaced as world hedgemon. Colonies and territories are in revolt. Allies are allying with our enemies. The West is under invasion by those who breed without remorse. And the entire human race is again under threat of mass extinction due to the triumph of collectivism over sustainability.
They'll save us from 'litigation' by creating a new bureaucracy of patent dispute resolution within the executive branch.
Same story, bankrolled by the taxpayers instead of the corporations, with no juries, no appeals, and thus no risk for said corps.
Let's see, perhaps redundancy, control, absolute size, ability to metabolize their own fuel from readily-available materials.
But what makes you think algae aren't the simplest process? If evolution is even somewhat true, algae would have long ago become a more efficient self-contained carrier than we could economically muster.
I'm sick of looking at it. It's completely wrong. Whomever modded it up needs to be examined.
Windows servers *do* need more attention. It's blatantly obvious.