A government can arrest you, imprison you, and even kill you. Governments all around the world are waging wars, rounding people up, and torturing them. What business can do that?
PS: If I had mod points, I'd mod you funny... but I think we're the only two people to have seen Idiocracy.:)
That makes three of us... just saw it this weekend, finally.
I think Idiocracy (unfortunately) went unseen by too many people for the "plants crave electrolytes" to become an internet meme, but I enjoyed seeing the quote here.
I would feel fairly safe competing in said contest if an organization was sponsoring it (unless they put out the disclaimer: YOU MAY BE HURT OR DIE AS A RESULT OF COMPETING IN THIS CONTENT).
Even then, I think most people would figure that the organization was just trying to cover their asses, and there wasn't any *real* danger, but threw that in there just-in-case something did go wrong so they couldn't be sued.
It's the equivalent of crying wolf- disclaimers are on so many things, that when the truly dangerous things have disclaimers warning you of death or injury, they're generally ignored.
How about "I don't wish my shareholders to go to hell for owning shares in an evil company". ? That's not a rational economic incentive; it's an irrational moral incentive, reflecting a moral belief system that may not be as effective a universal motivator
It may be an irrational moral incentive to the investors, but that can translate directly into a rational economic incentive to the company.
Plenty of people would not invest their money in a company they consider to be doing "evil" things. If the company did "good" things, more investors (and customers) would be willing to give their money to that company, thus resulting in an a rational economic incentive for the company to stop being evil.
Of course, there's plenty of money in evil, so there's an economic incentive to continue that as well.
Real-time conversation is unnecessary - and a bad idea with such a signal lag. Why fall silent while awaiting a reply? Build a massive signal laser. Put it on the roof of Google HQ. Send everything. Continuously.
Imagine the receiving civilization is already in touch with other civilizations and interstellar communication is old hat to them.
Suddenly, they start getting a crapflood of "HALLO! THIS IS EARTH! HALLO! THIS IS EARTH! HALLO! THIS IS EARTH!" on every channel of communication on their planet. Continuously.
I think if they had the means, they'd probably squash us like bugs just to shut us up.
Now read this article Putin says Iraq planned US attack, or any of the many others that say the same thing, and tell me again how Bush lied and there was no evidence for the war.
Maybe Putin wasn't acting with the best interests of the US at heart?
I have to agree with another child post. Let me give you some non-violent and important examples of the DoD's research.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with the DoD researching new technologies. Sure, they come up with great new inventions for both military and civilian use. It just says something about our national priorities that the only way a lot of these things could get researched is if they have some sort of potential military application.
The proper obligatory Simpsons response would go something like this:
Homer: Aw, twenty dollars! I wanted a peanut! Homer's Brain: Twenty dollars can buy many peanuts! Homer: Explain how? Homer's Brain: Money can be exchanged for goods and services! Homer: Woo-hoo!
substitute $10 and chocolate for $20 and peanuts as needed.
Does this mean that Medieval 2: Total War, where one also converts or exterminates ones enemies, or [Doom|Quake] [1-4] should also be banned, or....? The list would be endless.
This is what I was thinking. Any game with any sort of violence in it (i.e. the fun ones*) will probably offend someone on some level.
If they'll let me have my games where I can gun down hookers and cops, I'll let them have their games where they kill unbelievers.
Plus, think of the fun when some religious nut guns down a room full of unbelievers, people blame the game and sue the creators.
*I'm exaggerating. Please people, don't respond with 100 different non-violent fun games.
The split between man/nature goes back a LOT longer than the frickin hippies. Personally I've always blamed it on a Judeo-Christian view of the world.
Have you read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn? (this will make it the third time I've recommended it today actually.) A major theme of the book is the man/nature split and how it relates to the Judeo-Christian worldview, and how our culture views nature as an enemy to be conquered.
And yet the only species in the entire world that gives a damn about preserving other species is human beings.
We're the only species in the entire world that gives a damn about anything, since we're the only ones with high-enough brain power to give damns.
How many predatory species wander into a herd of prey and just indiscriminately kill as many as possible, eat what they want, and leave the rest to rot? Preserving other species isn't even an issue for any other species. They take what they need, and once they have their kill, they leave the rest alone. It generally (maybe not always, but almost always) balances out to a stable population of predators and a stable population of prey.
The fact that even one land mammal had lived there, at least 16 million years ago, has put paid to the theory that New Zealand's rich bird fauna had evolved there because they had no competition from land mammals."
OK, that theory is total crap now. Here's the new theory:
New Zealand's rich bird fauna had evolved there because they had only a little bit of competition from one tiny land mammal.
And it wasn't just in the Middle east either. Hunter-gatherer societies all around the globe have adapted to agriculture as a natural part of thier progress. Yes, that's true.. I suppose it was rather ethnocentrist of me to limit my example to just the one example of agricultural development:) I only mentioned that one since it was the seed of the currently dominant world culture. In any case, I think we do agree on most of the larger points.
However, I don't have as much faith in future technology being able to solve all of the problems we create. Sure, we're problem solvers, but for every bigger and better solution we create, we're also good at creating bigger and better problems. Like a twist on the old riddle- can humankind create a problem so large that even we can't solve it? I think it's a possibility.
I think enlightened self interest isn't necessarily great for long-term planning, but the alternatives really aren't much better. And I think you're right- most laws are doomed to failure, especially if one society cripples itself with draconian laws while others don't. Really, I don't have a better solution, or at least a better realistic solution that could actually be implemented.
Huh? How about a source on this, because I am not buying it. People in hunter/gatherer societies basically spend all their waking hours providing for their basic needs.
Modern hunter-gatherer societies generally only spend about 3-5 hours per day in search of food. Of course, this assumes a rather small, stable, mobile population. If every person on earth today decided to drop what they're doing and go forage the countryside for food, we'd pick the earth clean by the end of the day. Agriculture allowed a large surplus in food, which in turn created tremendous growth in population, which allowed for the specialization of labor. In a hunter-gatherer society, people generally take the food that they need for the day, and then they're done, they spend the rest of the day in leisure, and start over with the hunting and gathering the next day. They get enough food to maintain their lifestyle, but the system doesn't lend itself to creating a large food surplus that would support the creation of specialized labor.
Also contributing to the specialization of labor was the sedentary lifestyle that the agricultural revolution would bring. It's hard to create industry when your people are constantly on the move.
I'm not saying we should all just drop what we're doing and become hunter-gatherers. There are indeed huge advantages to agricultural society, but a lot of our views of hunter-gatherer societies are based on the cultural myth that looks down upon them as what basically amounts to savages making a poor choice for their society, and wouldn't-it-be-great-if-we-civilized-them, or else they're just taking up space on land that could be developed for agricultural/industrial society.
Civilization goes WITH Humanity's basic desires and needs. If it didn't, we wouldn't HAVE Civilization. How do you think we got here, Luck?
We're here because a few thousand years ago, someone in the middle east noticed if they saved some seeds, they could plant them again the following year. So yeah, basically luck.
Civilization, at least agricultural civilization, and especially industrial civilization, is not the end result of some biological need for order. Humans survived for hundreds of thousands of years without what we would call "civilization" and it's only within the last few thousand years that we assembled into anything us modern humans would refer to as being civilized. I guess part of it depends on how loosely you want to define the term "civilization."
Additionally, modern civilization- our 'way of life' with all its benefits- does indeed come at a cost. We are forced to surrender some of our animal instincts (our basic desires and needs) to fulfill other desires and needs. We actually spend more time per day in an agricultural/industrial society fulfilling our basic needs than we would in a hunter-gatherer society.
If you're interested in the history and evolution of human civilization, I generally recommend a few books on the subject: 'The Third Chimpanzee' by Jared Diamond covers the facts of the history of human evolution and civilization; 'Ishmael' by Daniel Quinn, 'Civilisation and Its Discontents' by Freud, and 'Eros and Civilization' by Herbert Marcuse present the authors points of view on the impact of civilization on the human species. You might not agree with the conclusions the authors reach, especially with the Marcuse, since it has a definite Marxist bend to it, but it's an interesting read nonetheless.
the implicit assumption in such a request is that the state of marriage is somehow more desirable, more ideal, than the state of being in a gay relationship.
Well, isn't it? It's also more desirable and ideal than an unmarried straight relationship. There's a reason why people get married.
The state of marriage is somehow more desirable/ideal than an unmarried relationship, regardless of the sexuality of the involved individuals. There are definite legal and social benefits to having a legally recognized marriage.
I'm an unmarried straight male, in a long-term relationship, and I probably will be getting married soon. My primary motivation for getting married is to enjoy the legal and social benefits that come with being married. I just think that anyone in a committed, long-term relationship should be able to have a legally recognized union and enjoy all the benefits that come with it. I really don't care if you call it a marriage, or a union, or what, as long as it comes with equal legal benefits.
* Parents have a natural affinity for their own offspring. Children have a natural affinity for their birth parents. Marriage provides the best solution - children have access to both parents, and both parents give their children full affection. This eliminates the "Your not my real father... " or "Why should I support *YOUR* kid..." types of situations.
Clearly this isn't limited to homosexual relationships- heterosexual marriages often (usually?) end in divorce, and often the participants in the original marriage get remarried, thus opening it up to "You're not my real father" or "why should I support your kid" types of situations. Additionally, the phrase "both parents give their children full affection" in the context of heterosexual marriage implies that homosexual couples are unfit parents, unable to give the child their full affection. In any case, any given set of a man and a woman can crap out a child, regardless of whether or not it is wanted. It takes extra effort for a homosexual couple to obtain a child, thus ensuring the child is loved and wanted.
* Men and women desire exclusive access to their spouse - sexual, emotional, financial, mental, etc... Relationships with more than two people do not have the exclusivity privelege enjoyed by married couples. That is, one "spouse" will have to be shared by more than one of the other "spouses".
If the individuals in question desire exclusive access to their spouse, then they should not enter into a polygamous relationship. However, that should be left up to the individual consenting adults to decide if they want to enter into a plural marriage.
* The couple as a whole makes more intellectually and emotionally balanced, and less self-centered decisions. The complementarity of the sexes forces the couple to consider both feminine and masculine points of view when making decisions. A relationship between two men could exist without any consideration of how their public decisions (i.e. voting, politics, charity, etc...) affect women. Likewise, the relationship of two women would be unlikely to create any sense of understanding or compassion for masculine points of view. The exclusively-male and exclusively-female couples should then balance each other out:) To use your logic, the public decisions of heterosexual voters don't exactly show any sense of understanding or compassion for the homosexuals who want to get married, eh?
* The union of man and woman usually produces offspring, and the raising of children provides a service essential to the future of the state. Unions of only men or only women do not have the procreative potential and do not provide the essential service of future generation to the state. This reason alone would be sufficient for the state to recognize a union of one man and one woman as distinct from civil unions for the purposes of law.
I didn't realize there was a shortage of children in this country. In any case, I don't think allowing two men or two women to marry each other will contribute to a decline in the birth rate. Generally, people who are heterosexual enter into heterosexual relationships and get married and have children, while people who are homosexual enter into homosexual relationships, don't get married, and don't have children. Do you really think that if homosexual marriage was allowed, a bunch of straight people would suddenly say "enough of this opposite-sex crap. I'm off to get gay-married, to live a childless life of debauchery!"
Don't punish them after they've already been punished. It's bad enough that they won't ever be able to vote or get a job better than grocery bagger, you have to start restricting their online rights to save "children" from "potential risks." How about _not_ scaremongering about children and saving our rights instead?
Why are you soft on crime? Why do you hate children and America?
Seriously though, I agree with your point. The problem is political- I don't think any politician would ever get work again if they proposed anything that could be construed as going easy on sex offenders.
I bet the guys who held him captive are happy to hear about this. Think about it - he's doing more to destroy american freedom than the viet cong ever could do.
I don't think the Viet Cong cared one way or the other about American freedom. Mostly they were focused on just trying to get the US out of Vietnam. The state of American freedom had little to do with that.
Amazing 31.02% procent of the world population has an income of less than nothing!
You don't even need to read the article, but please at least RTFSummary: ". Most previous studies of economic disparity have looked at income, whereas this one looks at wealth -- assets minus debts. "
It's not income, it's wealth.
So apparently 31.02% of the population owe more than they have. I don't know about any other countries, but I know that's fairly common in the US, even among middle-class people with good standards of living.
Slashdot Mirror
A government can arrest you, imprison you, and even kill you. Governments all around the world are waging wars, rounding people up, and torturing them. What business can do that?
Shell, Coca Cola, Union Carbide, DeBeers, ExxonMobil...
should I go on?
PS: If I had mod points, I'd mod you funny... but I think we're the only two people to have seen Idiocracy. :)
That makes three of us... just saw it this weekend, finally.
I think Idiocracy (unfortunately) went unseen by too many people for the "plants crave electrolytes" to become an internet meme, but I enjoyed seeing the quote here.
I would feel fairly safe competing in said contest if an organization was sponsoring it (unless they put out the disclaimer: YOU MAY BE HURT OR DIE AS A RESULT OF COMPETING IN THIS CONTENT).
Even then, I think most people would figure that the organization was just trying to cover their asses, and there wasn't any *real* danger, but threw that in there just-in-case something did go wrong so they couldn't be sued.
It's the equivalent of crying wolf- disclaimers are on so many things, that when the truly dangerous things have disclaimers warning you of death or injury, they're generally ignored.
How about "I don't wish my shareholders to go to hell for owning shares in an evil company". ?
That's not a rational economic incentive; it's an irrational moral incentive, reflecting a moral belief system that may not be as effective a universal motivator
It may be an irrational moral incentive to the investors, but that can translate directly into a rational economic incentive to the company.
Plenty of people would not invest their money in a company they consider to be doing "evil" things. If the company did "good" things, more investors (and customers) would be willing to give their money to that company, thus resulting in an a rational economic incentive for the company to stop being evil.
Of course, there's plenty of money in evil, so there's an economic incentive to continue that as well.
Real-time conversation is unnecessary - and a bad idea with such a signal lag. Why fall silent while awaiting a reply? Build a massive signal laser. Put it on the roof of Google HQ. Send everything. Continuously.
Imagine the receiving civilization is already in touch with other civilizations and interstellar communication is old hat to them.
Suddenly, they start getting a crapflood of "HALLO! THIS IS EARTH! HALLO! THIS IS EARTH! HALLO! THIS IS EARTH!" on every channel of communication on their planet. Continuously.
I think if they had the means, they'd probably squash us like bugs just to shut us up.
It would be worse than AOL + usenet.
Now read this article Putin says Iraq planned US attack, or any of the many others that say the same thing, and tell me again how Bush lied and there was no evidence for the war.
Maybe Putin wasn't acting with the best interests of the US at heart?
I have to agree with another child post. Let me give you some non-violent and important examples of the DoD's research.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with the DoD researching new technologies. Sure, they come up with great new inventions for both military and civilian use. It just says something about our national priorities that the only way a lot of these things could get researched is if they have some sort of potential military application.
The proper obligatory Simpsons response would go something like this:
Homer: Aw, twenty dollars! I wanted a peanut!
Homer's Brain: Twenty dollars can buy many peanuts!
Homer: Explain how?
Homer's Brain: Money can be exchanged for goods and services!
Homer: Woo-hoo!
substitute $10 and chocolate for $20 and peanuts as needed.
The ten dollars you would have earned could be exchanged for many chocolate bars.
Explain how?
Does this mean that Medieval 2: Total War, where one also converts or exterminates ones enemies, or [Doom|Quake] [1-4] should also be banned, or....? The list would be endless.
This is what I was thinking. Any game with any sort of violence in it (i.e. the fun ones*) will probably offend someone on some level.
If they'll let me have my games where I can gun down hookers and cops, I'll let them have
their games where they kill unbelievers.
Plus, think of the fun when some religious nut guns down a room full of unbelievers, people blame the game and sue the creators.
*I'm exaggerating. Please people, don't respond with 100 different non-violent fun games.
The split between man/nature goes back a LOT longer than the frickin hippies. Personally I've always blamed it on a Judeo-Christian view of the world.
Have you read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn? (this will make it the third time I've recommended it today actually.)
A major theme of the book is the man/nature split and how it relates to the Judeo-Christian worldview, and how our culture views nature as an enemy to be conquered.
And yet the only species in the entire world that gives a damn about preserving other species is human beings.
We're the only species in the entire world that gives a damn about anything, since we're the only ones with high-enough brain power to give damns.
How many predatory species wander into a herd of prey and just indiscriminately kill as many as possible, eat what they want, and leave the rest to rot? Preserving other species isn't even an issue for any other species. They take what they need, and once they have their kill, they leave the rest alone. It generally (maybe not always, but almost always) balances out to a stable population of predators and a stable population of prey.
That's not how humans operate.
The fact that even one land mammal had lived there, at least 16 million years ago, has put paid to the theory that New Zealand's rich bird fauna had evolved there because they had no competition from land mammals."
OK, that theory is total crap now.
Here's the new theory:
New Zealand's rich bird fauna had evolved there because they had only a little bit of competition from one tiny land mammal.
And it wasn't just in the Middle east either. Hunter-gatherer societies all around the globe have adapted to agriculture as a natural part of thier progress. :) I only mentioned that one since it was the seed of the currently dominant world culture.
Yes, that's true.. I suppose it was rather ethnocentrist of me to limit my example to just the one example of agricultural development
In any case, I think we do agree on most of the larger points.
However, I don't have as much faith in future technology being able to solve all of the problems we create.
Sure, we're problem solvers, but for every bigger and better solution we create, we're also good at creating bigger and better problems. Like a twist on the old riddle- can humankind create a problem so large that even we can't solve it? I think it's a possibility.
I think enlightened self interest isn't necessarily great for long-term planning, but the alternatives really aren't much better. And I think you're right- most laws are doomed to failure, especially if one society cripples itself with draconian laws while others don't. Really, I don't have a better solution, or at least a better realistic solution that could actually be implemented.
Huh? How about a source on this, because I am not buying it. People in hunter/gatherer societies basically spend all their waking hours providing for their basic needs.
It's the theory of the original affluent society.
Modern hunter-gatherer societies generally only spend about 3-5 hours per day in search of food.
Of course, this assumes a rather small, stable, mobile population. If every person on earth today decided to drop what they're doing and go forage the countryside for food, we'd pick the earth clean by the end of the day.
Agriculture allowed a large surplus in food, which in turn created tremendous growth in population, which allowed for the specialization of labor. In a hunter-gatherer society, people generally take the food that they need for the day, and then they're done, they spend the rest of the day in leisure, and start over with the hunting and gathering the next day. They get enough food to maintain their lifestyle, but the system doesn't lend itself to creating a large food surplus that would support the creation of specialized labor.
Also contributing to the specialization of labor was the sedentary lifestyle that the agricultural revolution would bring. It's hard to create industry when your people are constantly on the move.
I'm not saying we should all just drop what we're doing and become hunter-gatherers. There are indeed huge advantages to agricultural society, but a lot of our views of hunter-gatherer societies are based on the cultural myth that looks down upon them as what basically amounts to savages making a poor choice for their society, and wouldn't-it-be-great-if-we-civilized-them, or else they're just taking up space on land that could be developed for agricultural/industrial society.
Civilization goes WITH Humanity's basic desires and needs. If it didn't, we wouldn't HAVE Civilization. How do you think we got here, Luck?
We're here because a few thousand years ago, someone in the middle east noticed if they saved some seeds, they could plant them again the following year. So yeah, basically luck.
Civilization, at least agricultural civilization, and especially industrial civilization, is not the end result of some biological need for order. Humans survived for hundreds of thousands of years without what we would call "civilization" and it's only within the last few thousand years that we assembled into anything us modern humans would refer to as being civilized. I guess part of it depends on how loosely you want to define the term "civilization."
Additionally, modern civilization- our 'way of life' with all its benefits- does indeed come at a cost. We are forced to surrender some of our animal instincts (our basic desires and needs) to fulfill other desires and needs. We actually spend more time per day in an agricultural/industrial society fulfilling our basic needs than we would in a hunter-gatherer society.
If you're interested in the history and evolution of human civilization, I generally recommend a few books on the subject: 'The Third Chimpanzee' by Jared Diamond covers the facts of the history of human evolution and civilization; 'Ishmael' by Daniel Quinn, 'Civilisation and Its Discontents' by Freud, and 'Eros and Civilization' by Herbert Marcuse present the authors points of view on the impact of civilization on the human species. You might not agree with the conclusions the authors reach, especially with the Marcuse, since it has a definite Marxist bend to it, but it's an interesting read nonetheless.
the implicit assumption in such a request is that the state of marriage is somehow more desirable, more ideal, than the state of being in a gay relationship.
Well, isn't it? It's also more desirable and ideal than an unmarried straight relationship.
There's a reason why people get married.
The state of marriage is somehow more desirable/ideal than an unmarried relationship, regardless of the sexuality of the involved individuals. There are definite legal and social benefits to having a legally recognized marriage.
I'm an unmarried straight male, in a long-term relationship, and I probably will be getting married soon.
My primary motivation for getting married is to enjoy the legal and social benefits that come with being married. I just think that anyone in a committed, long-term relationship should be able to have a legally recognized union and enjoy all the benefits that come with it. I really don't care if you call it a marriage, or a union, or what, as long as it comes with equal legal benefits.
* Parents have a natural affinity for their own offspring. Children have a natural affinity for their birth parents. Marriage provides the best solution - children have access to both parents, and both parents give their children full affection. This eliminates the "Your not my real father... " or "Why should I support *YOUR* kid..." types of situations.
:)
Clearly this isn't limited to homosexual relationships- heterosexual marriages often (usually?) end in divorce, and often the participants in the original marriage get remarried, thus opening it up to "You're not my real father" or "why should I support your kid" types of situations. Additionally, the phrase "both parents give their children full affection" in the context of heterosexual marriage implies that homosexual couples are unfit parents, unable to give the child their full affection. In any case, any given set of a man and a woman can crap out a child, regardless of whether or not it is wanted. It takes extra effort for a homosexual couple to obtain a child, thus ensuring the child is loved and wanted.
* Men and women desire exclusive access to their spouse - sexual, emotional, financial, mental, etc... Relationships with more than two people do not have the exclusivity privelege enjoyed by married couples. That is, one "spouse" will have to be shared by more than one of the other "spouses".
If the individuals in question desire exclusive access to their spouse, then they should not enter into a polygamous relationship. However, that should be left up to the individual consenting adults to decide if they want to enter into a plural marriage.
* The couple as a whole makes more intellectually and emotionally balanced, and less self-centered decisions. The complementarity of the sexes forces the couple to consider both feminine and masculine points of view when making decisions. A relationship between two men could exist without any consideration of how their public decisions (i.e. voting, politics, charity, etc...) affect women. Likewise, the relationship of two women would be unlikely to create any sense of understanding or compassion for masculine points of view.
The exclusively-male and exclusively-female couples should then balance each other out
To use your logic, the public decisions of heterosexual voters don't exactly show any sense of understanding or compassion for the homosexuals who want to get married, eh?
* The union of man and woman usually produces offspring, and the raising of children provides a service essential to the future of the state. Unions of only men or only women do not have the procreative potential and do not provide the essential service of future generation to the state. This reason alone would be sufficient for the state to recognize a union of one man and one woman as distinct from civil unions for the purposes of law.
I didn't realize there was a shortage of children in this country. In any case, I don't think allowing two men or two women to marry each other will contribute to a decline in the birth rate. Generally, people who are heterosexual enter into heterosexual relationships and get married and have children, while people who are homosexual enter into homosexual relationships, don't get married, and don't have children. Do you really think that if homosexual marriage was allowed, a bunch of straight people would suddenly say "enough of this opposite-sex crap. I'm off to get gay-married, to live a childless life of debauchery!"
The marriage between one man and one woman has a distinctly different character than the union of two men, or a man and a dog, or 3 women, etc...
Barring your asinine example of man + dog, explain how it's different for man + woman vs two men vs three women?
The USA's healthcare system is only ranked 37th in terms of effectiveness. It's ranked top in terms of cost.
As in most expensive, or best value for what you get?
The moment you even elude to denying the holocaust
The word in this context is "allude".
To all slashdot grammer/spelling nazi's: It's a blog not a term paper, book, or essay. So get over it!
There shouldn't be an apostrophe in "Nazis" either, and additionally, "Nazis" should be capitalized.
Also, the word is spelled "grammar."
Don't punish them after they've already been punished. It's bad enough that they won't ever be able to vote or get a job better than grocery bagger, you have to start restricting their online rights to save "children" from "potential risks." How about _not_ scaremongering about children and saving our rights instead?
Why are you soft on crime? Why do you hate children and America?
Seriously though, I agree with your point. The problem is political- I don't think any politician would ever get work again if they proposed anything that could be construed as going easy on sex offenders.
I bet the guys who held him captive are happy to hear about this. Think about it - he's doing more to destroy american freedom than the viet cong ever could do.
I don't think the Viet Cong cared one way or the other about American freedom.
Mostly they were focused on just trying to get the US out of Vietnam.
The state of American freedom had little to do with that.
Maybe it's because most Americans are waiting for another country to implement a system that actually works.
Check out the World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health care systems
36 Costa Rica
37 United States of America
38 Slovenia
It's not like our current system is working so great as it is now.
Amazing 31.02% procent of the world population has an income of less than nothing!
You don't even need to read the article, but please at least RTFSummary:
". Most previous studies of economic disparity have looked at income, whereas this one looks at wealth -- assets minus debts. "
It's not income, it's wealth.
So apparently 31.02% of the population owe more than they have.
I don't know about any other countries, but I know that's fairly common in the US, even among middle-class people with good standards of living.