have been done by hobbyists, i humbly submit this isn't possible anymore. all of the historical advances made by hobbyists were done decades ago, involving simple concepts. all advances today are not simple, but require the support of an advanced facility, simply because all of the fundamental, simple advances in chemistry have already been scoured
similar to hobbyist game makers of just 20, 30 years ago, and how there is no way they could compete on the same footing with modern mainline game studios and the high end graphical renderings they crank out
however, i also humbly submit that if you want to tinker in your shed, try genetics. genetics is still very much a frontier where the fundamentals are still being worked out, and although much equipment required for genetics research (centrifuges, gel electrophoresis, etc.) are still expensive, none of it is outside the realm of the committed hobbyist
i fully expect to see lone hackers working on the human genome in my lifetime. on the plus side, they break the monopoly of conglomerates who claim intellectual property over our genetic heritage. on the negative side, well, they are hacking the human genome. if the ethical considerations of that will give anyone pause
1. education isn't strictly for the purpose of future economic earning potential
2. we engage in lots of rites of passage in human society that are unnecessary, expensive, but inconceivable to not do otherwise
such as weddings. nothing wrong with standing on a beach in your shorts all alone with your soon-to-be wife exchanging vows in front of the sun. but lots of people mark the occasion with an expensive blowout. which is superior? neither, its a choice made for personal indulgence more than anything else, and you can criticize that personal indulgence and not sound like a hypocrite just as soon as you prove you are a monk without any personal possessions or indulgences of your own
college is, likewise, just an expensive middle class rite of passage. you don't need to do it simply for social reasons, but nor does not doing it for social reasons make you somehow more, or less, superior, just different. no big deal: do college, don't do college. just recognize the reality of what college is, and what you are actually engaging in/ actually missing out on
you want to tell me something like methamphetamine should be freely available to people?
see, the concept of freedom of choice is that it is a valid concept as long as people are... drum roll please... freely choosing. when they under duress, they are not making a free choice. one such form of duress is biological addiction. and some substances, like methamphetamine, represent an extremely easy biochemical pathway for addiction, for everyone, as long as your brain chemistry is that of homo sapiens. if you give someone a meth hit week after week for a few weeks, regardless of what they think of that hit (tied down forced versus happily engaged in) after a few weeks their body will actively crave it, altering their mental processes to engage in drug seeking behavior rather than a job, a relationship
in any way, do ou dispute that extremely straightforward obvious depiction? then you're deluded beyond belief. these are statements of simple pharamcological truth
therefore, in the name of increasing freedom, you reduce the availability of substances which are extremely inebriating+extremely addicting to people. because, while the first hit might be freely chosen, every hit after that is less and less of a freely chosen preoccupation
meanwhile, you seriously worry me
"many people who try or end up using these 'highly addictive, highly inebriating' substances you refer to have no problem holding a job, relationship, or anything else"
as a former aids counselor in lower east side manhattan in the early 1990s, i know very clearly what highly addictive+highly inbrieating drugs do to people. i've seen it lead to death a number of times
you, on the other hand, sound exactly like a junkie in denial
if you work in the media, say as a reporter, your job is to go out and gather information. gathering information leads to left-leaning opinions, simply out of acceptance of the definition of the concepts of liberalism and conservativism:
a liberal approach to life is one which goes out and seeks strange and different and new things. a conservative approach to life walls one off from change, purposefully shuts one in and denies new stimuli. tradition is favored
so working in the media would tend to shape someone as liberal. that is, working in the media is not something sought out by liberals, and therefore their ideology is reflected in their work, but rather, if you took a group of 10 people, conservativ,e liberal, moderate, whatever, and revisited them in 10 years, every one in the group would have shifted leftward ideologically
simply because the nature of their job forces them to go out and interview people they would never have normally associated with, involve themselves with events they would have otherwise shunned, go to places they would otherwise avoid, etc. in other words, to live the life of a liberal thinker. the nature of media work, reporting, forces you to engage in a liberal attitude towards life by going out and seeing and feeling new and different and alien things
meanwhile, conservative opinion is good for government mouthpieces and propaganda, statements of reaction, stasis, resistance to change: stubbornly walling the status quo off from challenges to the established way of thinking
whil marijuana should be legal, and the psyhedelics (because they aren't addictive), there is a subset of highly addictive AND highly inebriating (nicotine: highly addictive, not highly inebriating) which should and forever more be made illegal by any society that values freedom. i'm tlaking about cocaine, heroin, meth, etc.
for two reasons:
1. addiction to a highly addictve substanc eis a grater impediment on your freedom than the most brutal prison in the most fascist authoritarian dream. well, not ture... such a regime could addict you to heroin, as the ultimate form of freedom destruction
2. addicts to highly addictive, highly inebriating drugs function (or rather, don't function) with a huge impediment on their ability to hold a job, have a relationship, etc. such that they become wards fo the state, they become poor, they thieve to suppor their habit. a large number of drug addicts in your society is a huge impediment on your freedom
you realize that if helping the poor were voluntary rather than mandatory, help would be turned into a small fraction of what it is. does that not expose a rather huge flaw in your opinion?
and then the associated ills that would rise because of that would tax you: disease, crime, etc., far more than the bite out of your take home pay
in this life, on some issues, the choice is not a black and white choice between being free and not being free, but between shades of grey, different levels of impediments to your freedom
when it comes to your assistance to the poor, a mandated government program is actually cheaper, is actually less of an impediment on you, than some sort of volunteer situation that hardly anyone contributes to
"I do not, however, have any compassion for those who are in a permanent, self-made cycle of dependency on others to pay for their poor decisions, their thoughtless actions, or their general laziness."
i'm not saying you should. i'm just asking you to recognize that this stereotype, while real, is not the sum total of what your assistance to the poor is going to fulfill. its not even the majority. its a just a convenient cardboard cut out caricature you trounce out to make you feel better about your selfish attitude
because yes, there are good for nothings who live off the assistance of others. and then there are fools like you, their mirror opposite, who would walk by a man crying help and bleeding in the street, while you mumble out 'freeloaders'
because yes, you bring up the idea of volunteering in your words, but the overarching theme of what you wrote rules out the possibility that some people actually need help in this world for valid reasons. i would bet a year of my salary that you would never volunteer anything in your life, because you have basically rationalized that all assistance to the poor goes to freeloaders. so what are volunteers in your eyes? deluded fools who are duped by fast talking freeloading conmen?
all i see in your words are crocodile tears, not a morally or intellectually coherent opinion. start with the large chink in your armor that supposes volunteer aid to the poor is somehow as adequate as mandated aid, figure otu why you are wrong about that, and then claw your way back to a coherent common sense approach to society and freedom. you don't have it right now
whatever you have to validate, encode it as a form submission and bounce it against http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl, screen scrape the results, and if slashdot's lameness filter doesn't balk, consider it validated
making guns illegal won't stop deaths or criminals from geting them. absolutely
then lets make heroin legal. after all, people still get it, right? tamping down on the drug trade saves no lives, right?
why do we fight the drug war? you fight the drug war not because you think you can win it, or make drug deaths zero, you fight the drug trade so you have 10 deaths a year rather than one hundred. that justifies the expense
same logic applies to guns
not for a second do i think banning guns will prevent all bad guys from getting guns or all senseless firearm deaths. but absolutely do i believe it will put a huge dent it. people seek the path of least resistance. if a gun is hard to get, many won't get one. those absolutely committed to getting one will get guns, and heroin, or anything else. those people are a tiny minority, you can't do anything about them, nor did i ever think i could. nor do theymatter when determining legality or illegality. they're not statistically signifant enough
"but the important takeaway is that violence is much more a cultural thing than a product of laws"
human nature is human nature is human nature. every culture has violence. every culture always will. absolutely utterly uninstructive on the issue of gun control
"And I don't believe that you can lower the violent crime rate by passing gun control laws."
absolutely not. never thought you would. all you do is reduce the firepower assocated with the rage. if i lose it, and i go to town with a kitchen knife, i'm probably going to kill a few people, but if i lose it, and i go to town with a gun, i'm most certainly going to kill al hell of a lot more. point and click shooting from across the street is a hell of a lot different than run up and slash.
"The truly poor people who live in horrible places are in much worse danger than I am."
yeah. from guns. duh. you don't read the news? drive by shootings? random bullets hitting babies in cribs? oh, a gun is going to protect that baby? please!
the rest of arguments are equal dead ends
oh, and btw, i've read a few a few stories to curdle my blood too. seems to be a dozen every day. going to fark, i find one immediately, right now, no research required, repeated hour after hour in this country:
if bikes claimed a million lives, they would still be used. you need to get from point a to point b to make a living. transport is a vital need. bikes are too dangerous? pedicabs then. cars then. buses then. trains then. all claim deaths. all fulfill an absolutely necesary need in life: transportation
what do you need a gun for? what do you need a gun for in contemporary civil american society? nothing. absolutely nothing. it serves no vital need. you don't need a gun to live your life. take your gun, throw it out your window. how is your life impeded? you will still have a job, you will still feed your family, you will still pay the rent
understand the simple fucking point?
now please, tell us you are an eskimo. because what the inuit do to survive is instructive for 99.99% of american civil society, right?
now please, tell us all about your skeet hobby. necessary? necessry enough to justify untold deaths?
oh, making guns illegal won't stop deaths? then lets make heroin legal. after all, people still get it, right? tamping down on the drug trade saves no lives, right?
why do we fight the drug war? you fight the drug war not because you think you can win it, or make drug deaths zero, you fight the drug trade so you have 10 deaths a year rather than one hundred. that justifies the expense. same with guns
indeed, copying used to be for only a few large corporate players, in any media. copyright laws are merely polite gentleman agreements between major players. but the internet has entirely upended this by making everyone with a broadband connection the legal equivalent of bertelsmann, fox news corp, and time warner circa 1988. with a greater global reach and pretty much equivalent publishing capacity. and what used to be decided in terms of publishing outlays and release dates at the golf club over a cigar and a glass of whiskey between two executives is now decided by legions of 13 year olds
technology has taken us a lightyear in 20 years in terms of progress and how we relate to our culture and our media. meanwhile, the law concerning copyright and media has gone an inch
it is time not to reform copyright law and intellectual property, but to completely throw it out and rewrite it, based on a completely radically new status quo. or rather, of course, this will never happen. as if we ever has to rewrite copyright law. technology is moving so fast, the law's applicability can't keep up, and is outdated before it is defined and proposed. i'm not saying laws and morals are outdated, i'm saying that the ability to trade files in secret and without raising suspicion or flags will soon become commonplace
encryption and obfuscation are the next horizons in filing trading. at which point, the laws concerning our media will not be quaint and outdated, they will be completely alien. how do you enforce them? how do you investigate their compliance? its like coming into a spanish bank and holding a chicken up in the air and announcing in russian that you are making a bank robbery. who is going to pay attention to you? who is going to know what you are even talking about?
that's what copyright law is becoming: a russian bank robber with a chicken in a spanish bank: absurd, surreal, pointless, laughable
copyright law has been rendered obsolete, useless, defunct. there will soon be simply no way to enforce any of it, because there will soon be no insertion point for it into what is being done in media and culture nowadays. technology is evolving in ways beyond the law's ability to adapt
and no, that's not scary, its exhilarating. we are not talking about law concerning rape and murder here, we are talking about laws giving large media conglomerates the right to insert themselves into our culture, put up toll booths, and extort cash from us. simply not necessary anymore. bertelsmann, fox news corp, and time warner: they are now tollbooths on a dirt road for horses and buggies, over which a modern interstate highway bridge has just been installed. adios, media execs. your time is up. you are finished
in fact, the figures you cite support gun control: it shows tons of unnecessary deaths for an entirely optional tool in life, almost as bad as something as widespread and vital as driving
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants"
you MUST fight for your freedom. you are not automatically free, and nothing ever has to be done for you to remain free. freedom is a state of being which must be worked hard to maintain, not a state of being which just is
there are forces in this world which are seeking to subjugate you. always. through all human history, now, and for all time in the future. there is always, always some asshole being born somewhere who will seek through force of will to dominate you. always. and forever more
the fight for you to remain free is mandatory, it is not voluntary. for your own freedom. fight for your freedom and the freedom you enjoy in your society, and remain free on your own accord. or be a slave. simple as that
and so it is a strange sort of idiocy or propaganda on your part to confuse the mandatory fight for freedom from slavery, with slavery itself. no. completely different things. you're just lazy, and wish to exert no effort to maintain your freedom. in which case, you will be a slave
i think a lot of resistance to gun onwership would go away if it was more restricted and regulated. like you said, it should be difficult to buy a gun, not as easy as buying a set of tires
but groups like the nra seem more intent on allowing free and clear access to submachine guns. for this reason, the nra seals its own doom, by playing to the fringe and extreme, rather than the rational and prudent
guns perhaps should continue to be owned, but regulated, restricted, licensed. its just common sense. and if you oppose this simple common sense concept, you're helping to lose the argument for gun ownership rights, by being an extremist idiot
because its fun for me playing with plutonium. so what gives you the right to try to regulate the ownership of plutonium?
(rolls eyes)
you enjoy playing with guns. good for you. i don't enjoy thousands of unnecessary gun deaths in this country. and for that reason, i have no problem taking away your toys. deal with it, child
furthermore, i don't really have a problem with a thoughtful argument in favor of gun rights. but guess what? you're not it. and if your rationalization is the best argument for gun ownership out there, then say goodbye to your guns, because your attitude sucks
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
if you intend to frame the need to fight against slavery and tyranny, as a form of tyranny and slavery in and of itself, then you are not looking to remain free or protect freedom for your children. you're simply lazy: someone who is not willing to sacrifice for the sake of maintaining freedom can say the effort to maintain freedom is a form of slavery
be careful, when you work to oppose orwellian doublespeak, that your thinking not commit the same crimes you seek to disperse. the tenets of complex and multilayered concepts can be framed as seemingly contradictory statements on the surface, whether you are believing in orwellian ideas, or if you are refuting them. don't fight propaganda with more propaganda, fight propaganda with truth
and one such truth is that yes, maintaining your freedom requires effort on your part. and no, that's not a form of slavery
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
the need to fight against slavery and tyranny is not a form of tyranny and slavery in and of itself
if you think it is, then you are not looking to remain free or protect freedom for your children. you're simply lazy
you fight poverty, because it is a root cause of threats to your freedom. whether in odious ideologies that are antagonistic to freedom that find soldeirs in impoverished discarded people. or whether in undirected threats to your freedom: poor people robbing and stealing
you fight poverty if you care about your freedom, as certainly as you fight obious foreign ideological and military threats to your freedom
eminent domain laws and free speech codes are valid issues, but they will never fall under the rubrick of community service, since they have nothing to do with poverty
you need to understand that helping the homeless, or anyone else who is poor, is something that benefits society, in general. it does not benefit only democrats, it does not benefit only republicans
if you need a better explanation of why that is true, go to a homeless outreach center run by one of your deeply republican and deeply socially conservative religious organizations, and ask them
no, what you really have is the desire that you don't have to help the poor at all
why should you care, right?
well, poverty is the breeding ground for ideologies which are antagonistic to freedom. they also breed unorganized threats to your freedom, such as petty crime like theft and robbery
the poor who live near you, tax you, no matter what. in direct and financial ways, or in indirect, existential ways. you can choose the nature of how they tax you (government programs with explicit policies that you have control over as a citizen of a democracy), or choose to have the poor tax you with random criminal acts and ideological movements hostile to the notion of freedom
you are taxed by the poor in your world no matter what. you do not get to choose not to be taxed, because taxes on your freedom will play out in one way or another by the poor. you simply have a choice about the nature in which the poor tax you. government programs that benefit the poor and lift them out of poverty is the best form of taxation, the CHEAPEST form of taxation (financial or otherwise) before you
choose wisely
most of us understand the value of altruism, how it actually helps us out in the end, instinctively. others, like you, have to be dragged kicking and screaming to common sense
its an effort to combat the bad effects of poverty. that poverty "taxes" you, if you will, with all sorts of curtailments on your freedom, and community service is the fight against that
now you say: All "community service" represents to me is yet another tax on the poor.
so in effect you are saying that efforts to remove the taxes on the poor... is a tax on the poor. huh?
look, if you are poor, you are going to be "taxed" in a number of explicit and implicit ways on your ability to be free. a lot fo your time will be spent attempting to remain free from the bad effect of poverty. so you are already taxed, no matter what, by poverty if you are poor. you don't have the choice not to be taxed, if you are poor, from the bad effects of poverty
in this regard, a purposeful organized effort to remove poverty, commnity service, the effort to fight poverty, is, depending on your point of view:
1. not a tax at all. since your effort is at removing that which taxes you the greatest 2. the best tax on your freedoms you can choose as a poor person, since all the other taxes on your freedoms as a poor person are worse
i grew up rural, and i live urban now. i shot shotguns in the swamp behind the house with my granddaddy, a mile from our nearest neighbor, at gamebird and targets. i understand the need for your own form of protection when the police are half an hour away
now, living in an urban environment, i see the other side of guns. guns are not only tools of virtue. they are frequently tools of mayhem. guns are not always in the hands of those who intend good, nor is there some magic wand which can tell who should or should not have a gun. such that in an urban environment, it makes sense to let the police be armed, and everyone else to have suppressed gun ownership, amongst common people. it simply cuts down on needless death
and, as a side issue: no, arming only the police is not a formula for fascism. in fact, it is those who appeal to visceral force, who appeal to the gun, who are more likely fodder for embryonic fascist movements, not the police. really, read your history. random guys in the country is not a protection from fascism, it is the soil in which fascism grows
back to the larger point: gon control is the approach to guns as it exists in europe. europe is mostly urban. meanwhile, the usa has mostly been rural throughout its history, but is shifting to majority urban in recent years. therefore, it is natural that attitudes towards guns will shift from a rural attitude to an urban attitude, and experience a watershed moment in the coming years against gun ownership
and its simply a rural versus urban dynamic. currently, there are people dying in urban centers for the sake of a rural legal approach to gun ownership. in the future, there will be people dying in rural areas for the sake of an urban approach to gun ownership. its the majority deciding the legal approach. and either rural, or urban folk, suffer for the benefit of the other. for those of you want to keep your guns, urban blood is on your hands. for those of you who wish to curtail guns, rural blood will be on your hands. simple as that really
personally it would be ideal if you could own a gun in the country, but not in the city. but this is nearly impossible to enforce
and finally, the second amendment referred to posses in the countryside against native americans and british and french colonial forces. its completely taken out of historical context in reference to modern gun ownership needs, really folks. i don't know why the second amendment is so depended upon as a some sort of supporter of your right to have guns. are you the minutemen? the second amendment does not support the concept you think it does
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have been done by hobbyists, i humbly submit this isn't possible anymore. all of the historical advances made by hobbyists were done decades ago, involving simple concepts. all advances today are not simple, but require the support of an advanced facility, simply because all of the fundamental, simple advances in chemistry have already been scoured
similar to hobbyist game makers of just 20, 30 years ago, and how there is no way they could compete on the same footing with modern mainline game studios and the high end graphical renderings they crank out
however, i also humbly submit that if you want to tinker in your shed, try genetics. genetics is still very much a frontier where the fundamentals are still being worked out, and although much equipment required for genetics research (centrifuges, gel electrophoresis, etc.) are still expensive, none of it is outside the realm of the committed hobbyist
i fully expect to see lone hackers working on the human genome in my lifetime. on the plus side, they break the monopoly of conglomerates who claim intellectual property over our genetic heritage. on the negative side, well, they are hacking the human genome. if the ethical considerations of that will give anyone pause
1. education isn't strictly for the purpose of future economic earning potential
2. we engage in lots of rites of passage in human society that are unnecessary, expensive, but inconceivable to not do otherwise
such as weddings. nothing wrong with standing on a beach in your shorts all alone with your soon-to-be wife exchanging vows in front of the sun. but lots of people mark the occasion with an expensive blowout. which is superior? neither, its a choice made for personal indulgence more than anything else, and you can criticize that personal indulgence and not sound like a hypocrite just as soon as you prove you are a monk without any personal possessions or indulgences of your own
college is, likewise, just an expensive middle class rite of passage. you don't need to do it simply for social reasons, but nor does not doing it for social reasons make you somehow more, or less, superior, just different. no big deal: do college, don't do college. just recognize the reality of what college is, and what you are actually engaging in/ actually missing out on
you want to tell me something like methamphetamine should be freely available to people?
see, the concept of freedom of choice is that it is a valid concept as long as people are... drum roll please... freely choosing. when they under duress, they are not making a free choice. one such form of duress is biological addiction. and some substances, like methamphetamine, represent an extremely easy biochemical pathway for addiction, for everyone, as long as your brain chemistry is that of homo sapiens. if you give someone a meth hit week after week for a few weeks, regardless of what they think of that hit (tied down forced versus happily engaged in) after a few weeks their body will actively crave it, altering their mental processes to engage in drug seeking behavior rather than a job, a relationship
in any way, do ou dispute that extremely straightforward obvious depiction? then you're deluded beyond belief. these are statements of simple pharamcological truth
therefore, in the name of increasing freedom, you reduce the availability of substances which are extremely inebriating+extremely addicting to people. because, while the first hit might be freely chosen, every hit after that is less and less of a freely chosen preoccupation
meanwhile, you seriously worry me
"many people who try or end up using these 'highly addictive, highly inebriating' substances you refer to have no problem holding a job, relationship, or anything else"
as a former aids counselor in lower east side manhattan in the early 1990s, i know very clearly what highly addictive+highly inbrieating drugs do to people. i've seen it lead to death a number of times
you, on the other hand, sound exactly like a junkie in denial
which is what i do too
in which case, if the bias is natural, is there anything wrong with it? should anything really be done about it?
news reporting favors liberal thinking
everyone should get used to it. its natural and unavoidable
if you work in the media, say as a reporter, your job is to go out and gather information. gathering information leads to left-leaning opinions, simply out of acceptance of the definition of the concepts of liberalism and conservativism:
a liberal approach to life is one which goes out and seeks strange and different and new things. a conservative approach to life walls one off from change, purposefully shuts one in and denies new stimuli. tradition is favored
so working in the media would tend to shape someone as liberal. that is, working in the media is not something sought out by liberals, and therefore their ideology is reflected in their work, but rather, if you took a group of 10 people, conservativ,e liberal, moderate, whatever, and revisited them in 10 years, every one in the group would have shifted leftward ideologically
simply because the nature of their job forces them to go out and interview people they would never have normally associated with, involve themselves with events they would have otherwise shunned, go to places they would otherwise avoid, etc. in other words, to live the life of a liberal thinker. the nature of media work, reporting, forces you to engage in a liberal attitude towards life by going out and seeing and feeling new and different and alien things
meanwhile, conservative opinion is good for government mouthpieces and propaganda, statements of reaction, stasis, resistance to change: stubbornly walling the status quo off from challenges to the established way of thinking
whil marijuana should be legal, and the psyhedelics (because they aren't addictive), there is a subset of highly addictive AND highly inebriating (nicotine: highly addictive, not highly inebriating) which should and forever more be made illegal by any society that values freedom. i'm tlaking about cocaine, heroin, meth, etc.
for two reasons:
1. addiction to a highly addictve substanc eis a grater impediment on your freedom than the most brutal prison in the most fascist authoritarian dream. well, not ture... such a regime could addict you to heroin, as the ultimate form of freedom destruction
2. addicts to highly addictive, highly inebriating drugs function (or rather, don't function) with a huge impediment on their ability to hold a job, have a relationship, etc. such that they become wards fo the state, they become poor, they thieve to suppor their habit. a large number of drug addicts in your society is a huge impediment on your freedom
if drugs were legal, they would be even easier to get, thus proving my point
durrrrrrr
you realize that if helping the poor were voluntary rather than mandatory, help would be turned into a small fraction of what it is. does that not expose a rather huge flaw in your opinion?
and then the associated ills that would rise because of that would tax you: disease, crime, etc., far more than the bite out of your take home pay
in this life, on some issues, the choice is not a black and white choice between being free and not being free, but between shades of grey, different levels of impediments to your freedom
when it comes to your assistance to the poor, a mandated government program is actually cheaper, is actually less of an impediment on you, than some sort of volunteer situation that hardly anyone contributes to
"I do not, however, have any compassion for those who are in a permanent, self-made cycle of dependency on others to pay for their poor decisions, their thoughtless actions, or their general laziness."
i'm not saying you should. i'm just asking you to recognize that this stereotype, while real, is not the sum total of what your assistance to the poor is going to fulfill. its not even the majority. its a just a convenient cardboard cut out caricature you trounce out to make you feel better about your selfish attitude
because yes, there are good for nothings who live off the assistance of others. and then there are fools like you, their mirror opposite, who would walk by a man crying help and bleeding in the street, while you mumble out 'freeloaders'
because yes, you bring up the idea of volunteering in your words, but the overarching theme of what you wrote rules out the possibility that some people actually need help in this world for valid reasons. i would bet a year of my salary that you would never volunteer anything in your life, because you have basically rationalized that all assistance to the poor goes to freeloaders. so what are volunteers in your eyes? deluded fools who are duped by fast talking freeloading conmen?
all i see in your words are crocodile tears, not a morally or intellectually coherent opinion. start with the large chink in your armor that supposes volunteer aid to the poor is somehow as adequate as mandated aid, figure otu why you are wrong about that, and then claw your way back to a coherent common sense approach to society and freedom. you don't have it right now
whatever you have to validate, encode it as a form submission and bounce it against http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl, screen scrape the results, and if slashdot's lameness filter doesn't balk, consider it validated
i've always wanted to watch wall-e as it is being rendered in real-time
stuff that matters
understand the concept?
if not, try going to this site, it looks like it might be more your speed
buhbye
world domination
brain and brawn, unmatched
making guns illegal won't stop deaths or criminals from geting them. absolutely
then lets make heroin legal. after all, people still get it, right? tamping down on the drug trade saves no lives, right?
why do we fight the drug war? you fight the drug war not because you think you can win it, or make drug deaths zero, you fight the drug trade so you have 10 deaths a year rather than one hundred. that justifies the expense
same logic applies to guns
not for a second do i think banning guns will prevent all bad guys from getting guns or all senseless firearm deaths. but absolutely do i believe it will put a huge dent it. people seek the path of least resistance. if a gun is hard to get, many won't get one. those absolutely committed to getting one will get guns, and heroin, or anything else. those people are a tiny minority, you can't do anything about them, nor did i ever think i could. nor do theymatter when determining legality or illegality. they're not statistically signifant enough
"but the important takeaway is that violence is much more a cultural thing than a product of laws"
human nature is human nature is human nature. every culture has violence. every culture always will. absolutely utterly uninstructive on the issue of gun control
"And I don't believe that you can lower the violent crime rate by passing gun control laws."
absolutely not. never thought you would. all you do is reduce the firepower assocated with the rage. if i lose it, and i go to town with a kitchen knife, i'm probably going to kill a few people, but if i lose it, and i go to town with a gun, i'm most certainly going to kill al hell of a lot more. point and click shooting from across the street is a hell of a lot different than run up and slash.
"The truly poor people who live in horrible places are in much worse danger than I am."
yeah. from guns. duh. you don't read the news? drive by shootings? random bullets hitting babies in cribs? oh, a gun is going to protect that baby? please!
the rest of arguments are equal dead ends
oh, and btw, i've read a few a few stories to curdle my blood too. seems to be a dozen every day. going to fark, i find one immediately, right now, no research required, repeated hour after hour in this country:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27600105/
you don't need a gun to live
do you understand that?
if bikes claimed a million lives, they would still be used. you need to get from point a to point b to make a living. transport is a vital need. bikes are too dangerous? pedicabs then. cars then. buses then. trains then. all claim deaths. all fulfill an absolutely necesary need in life: transportation
what do you need a gun for? what do you need a gun for in contemporary civil american society? nothing. absolutely nothing. it serves no vital need. you don't need a gun to live your life. take your gun, throw it out your window. how is your life impeded? you will still have a job, you will still feed your family, you will still pay the rent
understand the simple fucking point?
now please, tell us you are an eskimo. because what the inuit do to survive is instructive for 99.99% of american civil society, right?
now please, tell us all about your skeet hobby. necessary? necessry enough to justify untold deaths?
oh, making guns illegal won't stop deaths? then lets make heroin legal. after all, people still get it, right? tamping down on the drug trade saves no lives, right?
why do we fight the drug war? you fight the drug war not because you think you can win it, or make drug deaths zero, you fight the drug trade so you have 10 deaths a year rather than one hundred. that justifies the expense. same with guns
indeed, copying used to be for only a few large corporate players, in any media. copyright laws are merely polite gentleman agreements between major players. but the internet has entirely upended this by making everyone with a broadband connection the legal equivalent of bertelsmann, fox news corp, and time warner circa 1988. with a greater global reach and pretty much equivalent publishing capacity. and what used to be decided in terms of publishing outlays and release dates at the golf club over a cigar and a glass of whiskey between two executives is now decided by legions of 13 year olds
technology has taken us a lightyear in 20 years in terms of progress and how we relate to our culture and our media. meanwhile, the law concerning copyright and media has gone an inch
it is time not to reform copyright law and intellectual property, but to completely throw it out and rewrite it, based on a completely radically new status quo. or rather, of course, this will never happen. as if we ever has to rewrite copyright law. technology is moving so fast, the law's applicability can't keep up, and is outdated before it is defined and proposed. i'm not saying laws and morals are outdated, i'm saying that the ability to trade files in secret and without raising suspicion or flags will soon become commonplace
encryption and obfuscation are the next horizons in filing trading. at which point, the laws concerning our media will not be quaint and outdated, they will be completely alien. how do you enforce them? how do you investigate their compliance? its like coming into a spanish bank and holding a chicken up in the air and announcing in russian that you are making a bank robbery. who is going to pay attention to you? who is going to know what you are even talking about?
that's what copyright law is becoming: a russian bank robber with a chicken in a spanish bank: absurd, surreal, pointless, laughable
copyright law has been rendered obsolete, useless, defunct. there will soon be simply no way to enforce any of it, because there will soon be no insertion point for it into what is being done in media and culture nowadays. technology is evolving in ways beyond the law's ability to adapt
and no, that's not scary, its exhilarating. we are not talking about law concerning rape and murder here, we are talking about laws giving large media conglomerates the right to insert themselves into our culture, put up toll booths, and extort cash from us. simply not necessary anymore. bertelsmann, fox news corp, and time warner: they are now tollbooths on a dirt road for horses and buggies, over which a modern interstate highway bridge has just been installed. adios, media execs. your time is up. you are finished
you don't need a gun to make a living
in fact, the figures you cite support gun control: it shows tons of unnecessary deaths for an entirely optional tool in life, almost as bad as something as widespread and vital as driving
so thanks
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants"
you MUST fight for your freedom. you are not automatically free, and nothing ever has to be done for you to remain free. freedom is a state of being which must be worked hard to maintain, not a state of being which just is
there are forces in this world which are seeking to subjugate you. always. through all human history, now, and for all time in the future. there is always, always some asshole being born somewhere who will seek through force of will to dominate you. always. and forever more
the fight for you to remain free is mandatory, it is not voluntary. for your own freedom. fight for your freedom and the freedom you enjoy in your society, and remain free on your own accord. or be a slave. simple as that
and so it is a strange sort of idiocy or propaganda on your part to confuse the mandatory fight for freedom from slavery, with slavery itself. no. completely different things. you're just lazy, and wish to exert no effort to maintain your freedom. in which case, you will be a slave
i think a lot of resistance to gun onwership would go away if it was more restricted and regulated. like you said, it should be difficult to buy a gun, not as easy as buying a set of tires
but groups like the nra seem more intent on allowing free and clear access to submachine guns. for this reason, the nra seals its own doom, by playing to the fringe and extreme, rather than the rational and prudent
guns perhaps should continue to be owned, but regulated, restricted, licensed. its just common sense. and if you oppose this simple common sense concept, you're helping to lose the argument for gun ownership rights, by being an extremist idiot
because its fun for me playing with plutonium. so what gives you the right to try to regulate the ownership of plutonium?
(rolls eyes)
you enjoy playing with guns. good for you. i don't enjoy thousands of unnecessary gun deaths in this country. and for that reason, i have no problem taking away your toys. deal with it, child
furthermore, i don't really have a problem with a thoughtful argument in favor of gun rights. but guess what? you're not it. and if your rationalization is the best argument for gun ownership out there, then say goodbye to your guns, because your attitude sucks
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
if you intend to frame the need to fight against slavery and tyranny, as a form of tyranny and slavery in and of itself, then you are not looking to remain free or protect freedom for your children. you're simply lazy: someone who is not willing to sacrifice for the sake of maintaining freedom can say the effort to maintain freedom is a form of slavery
be careful, when you work to oppose orwellian doublespeak, that your thinking not commit the same crimes you seek to disperse. the tenets of complex and multilayered concepts can be framed as seemingly contradictory statements on the surface, whether you are believing in orwellian ideas, or if you are refuting them. don't fight propaganda with more propaganda, fight propaganda with truth
and one such truth is that yes, maintaining your freedom requires effort on your part. and no, that's not a form of slavery
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
the need to fight against slavery and tyranny is not a form of tyranny and slavery in and of itself
if you think it is, then you are not looking to remain free or protect freedom for your children. you're simply lazy
you fight poverty, because it is a root cause of threats to your freedom. whether in odious ideologies that are antagonistic to freedom that find soldeirs in impoverished discarded people. or whether in undirected threats to your freedom: poor people robbing and stealing
you fight poverty if you care about your freedom, as certainly as you fight obious foreign ideological and military threats to your freedom
eminent domain laws and free speech codes are valid issues, but they will never fall under the rubrick of community service, since they have nothing to do with poverty
you need to understand that helping the homeless, or anyone else who is poor, is something that benefits society, in general. it does not benefit only democrats, it does not benefit only republicans
if you need a better explanation of why that is true, go to a homeless outreach center run by one of your deeply republican and deeply socially conservative religious organizations, and ask them
no, what you really have is the desire that you don't have to help the poor at all
why should you care, right?
well, poverty is the breeding ground for ideologies which are antagonistic to freedom. they also breed unorganized threats to your freedom, such as petty crime like theft and robbery
the poor who live near you, tax you, no matter what. in direct and financial ways, or in indirect, existential ways. you can choose the nature of how they tax you (government programs with explicit policies that you have control over as a citizen of a democracy), or choose to have the poor tax you with random criminal acts and ideological movements hostile to the notion of freedom
you are taxed by the poor in your world no matter what. you do not get to choose not to be taxed, because taxes on your freedom will play out in one way or another by the poor. you simply have a choice about the nature in which the poor tax you. government programs that benefit the poor and lift them out of poverty is the best form of taxation, the CHEAPEST form of taxation (financial or otherwise) before you
choose wisely
most of us understand the value of altruism, how it actually helps us out in the end, instinctively. others, like you, have to be dragged kicking and screaming to common sense
what is community service?
its an effort to combat the bad effects of poverty. that poverty "taxes" you, if you will, with all sorts of curtailments on your freedom, and community service is the fight against that
now you say: All "community service" represents to me is yet another tax on the poor.
so in effect you are saying that efforts to remove the taxes on the poor... is a tax on the poor. huh?
look, if you are poor, you are going to be "taxed" in a number of explicit and implicit ways on your ability to be free. a lot fo your time will be spent attempting to remain free from the bad effect of poverty. so you are already taxed, no matter what, by poverty if you are poor. you don't have the choice not to be taxed, if you are poor, from the bad effects of poverty
in this regard, a purposeful organized effort to remove poverty, commnity service, the effort to fight poverty, is, depending on your point of view:
1. not a tax at all. since your effort is at removing that which taxes you the greatest
2. the best tax on your freedoms you can choose as a poor person, since all the other taxes on your freedoms as a poor person are worse
i grew up rural, and i live urban now. i shot shotguns in the swamp behind the house with my granddaddy, a mile from our nearest neighbor, at gamebird and targets. i understand the need for your own form of protection when the police are half an hour away
now, living in an urban environment, i see the other side of guns. guns are not only tools of virtue. they are frequently tools of mayhem. guns are not always in the hands of those who intend good, nor is there some magic wand which can tell who should or should not have a gun. such that in an urban environment, it makes sense to let the police be armed, and everyone else to have suppressed gun ownership, amongst common people. it simply cuts down on needless death
and, as a side issue: no, arming only the police is not a formula for fascism. in fact, it is those who appeal to visceral force, who appeal to the gun, who are more likely fodder for embryonic fascist movements, not the police. really, read your history. random guys in the country is not a protection from fascism, it is the soil in which fascism grows
back to the larger point: gon control is the approach to guns as it exists in europe. europe is mostly urban. meanwhile, the usa has mostly been rural throughout its history, but is shifting to majority urban in recent years. therefore, it is natural that attitudes towards guns will shift from a rural attitude to an urban attitude, and experience a watershed moment in the coming years against gun ownership
and its simply a rural versus urban dynamic. currently, there are people dying in urban centers for the sake of a rural legal approach to gun ownership. in the future, there will be people dying in rural areas for the sake of an urban approach to gun ownership. its the majority deciding the legal approach. and either rural, or urban folk, suffer for the benefit of the other. for those of you want to keep your guns, urban blood is on your hands. for those of you who wish to curtail guns, rural blood will be on your hands. simple as that really
personally it would be ideal if you could own a gun in the country, but not in the city. but this is nearly impossible to enforce
and finally, the second amendment referred to posses in the countryside against native americans and british and french colonial forces. its completely taken out of historical context in reference to modern gun ownership needs, really folks. i don't know why the second amendment is so depended upon as a some sort of supporter of your right to have guns. are you the minutemen? the second amendment does not support the concept you think it does