Don't believe me? Go try breathing in a city 50 years ago. You mean fifty years ago when no laws were in place to restrict pollution? Laws that were opposed by the affected industries using capitalist ideology to support their right to spew all the toxins they want? That fifty years ago? Yeah... good point.;-|
If only smokers ever patronized restaurants you could be certain non-smoking restaurants would open almost immediately. And if wishes were horses we'd all be eating steaks.
Please, beyond your faux-witty rhetorical device, how capitalism is in any way an idealistic philosophy. You skipped over the verb for the action you request of me in your haste to post faux-intellectual put downs.
But I'll explain/demonstrate/illustrate/etc. anyway, 'cause I'm nice: The idielistic philosophy of capitalism is 'The market will fix EVERYTHING!'
Pollution? The market will fix that, don't bother looking at the entire history of the market to see that it systematically doesn't, just believe! Healthcare? The market! Racism? The market! It's like god, but it lets you buy your way into heaven.
Now, the operative clause above is "if I'm not hurting you". There can be much debate between libertarians about that, as it applies to various issues. Second-hand smoke and drunk driving are two; let's say you disagree with the cancer risk, fine, but it still hurts. It physically hurts the eyes, the throat, the lungs. Your smoking issue still misses the point. States are against smoking not because of its medical effects on non-smokers, but because of its financial effects on the states budget when the state has to take care of sick smokers. Your state issue misses the libertarian point: it's about the smokers forcing their choice onto others.
Secondhand smoke is less harmful to you than a walk down the street on a busy day So that's why when I walk downtown I don't cough and my eyes don't water until I cross the path of a smoker!
If you don't like someone smoking in the bar or restaurant, which is a PRIVATELY OWNED BUSINESS, that you wish to go to, too bad if they are. You don't have to go there if you don't like it, why should other people be forced to act a certain way just because you don't like what they do. If I'm sitting in a restaurant and someone comes in and lights cigarette, your argument just tuned to smoke. And it's not that I don't like what they do, it's that I don't like what they do to me.
Why should I be forced to act a certain way just because they decided to make me inhale poison?
Advocacy groups and charities have accused Nestlé of unethical methods of promoting infant formula over breast-milk to poor mothers in third world countries.[15][16] For example, IBFAN claim that Nestlé supports the distribution of free powdered formula samples to hospitals and maternity wards; after leaving the hospital, the formula is no longer free, but because the supplementation has interfered with lactation the family must continue to buy the formula. IBFAN also allege that Nestlé uses "humanitarian aid" to create markets, does not label its products in a language appropriate to the country where they are sold, and offers gifts and sponsorship to influence health workers to promote its products. [17] Nestlé denies these allegations.
That article talks about stuff from the 70's onward, but the whole deal is much older than that. In the fifties doctors were used to promote this corporate line of thought, and people were led to believe that artificial substitute were better than the natural alternative.
If I had three wishes, one of them would be to raise the level of awereness of humanity so that they might be able to see other people's agendas throuh their misleading speeches and to see the result of their actions on others. When a corparation says 'this is good for your baby', they probably mean 'this is good for out money'. Because corporations care about nothing else. Yet people still choose to believe their sales speech, rather than this simple truth.
Nerds are unrealistic when it comes to how human beings actually work. They seem to have some vision of people that is way closer to ideal than actually exists. What's more, most nerds I talk to recognize this even in themselves, yet persist in the delusion.
From my observations, I have an answer to the question of why there are so many Libertarians in tech. My observation may be an oversimplification, but oversimplification is the crux of the issue as I see it. From the Libertarians that I have spoken with there seems to be a common thread of wanting to break things down into fundamental principles and having faith that there really are fundamental phenomena such as market forces that can control society for the best if they are allowed to operate unfettered. To me, this is just an absurd and ignorant proposition, but it's not surprising that you see people in tech get so hung up on this because it mirrors the rules that govern technology and especially computers and most particularly computer hardware. [...]
As seductive as this is to people, it's really closed minded and ignorant of how we got to where we are today in terms of technology and society in general. Well said! I usually frame it as immaturity, rather than ignorance, because libertarian-loving geeks tend to have a couple of encyclopias' worth of knowledge crammed into their heads, so I feel that they'll automaticlly reject the notion that 'ignorant' applies to them, but oversimplification really seems to be the crux, as you so eloquently put it.
I used to have libertarian leanings, I still do, deep down, but I have seen people act in ways that made me accept that we need a whole lotta laws and regulations, because people are too short-sighted for our own good.
say that republicans are to blame and will then back W's request to stay in Iraq You can go check my posts from early 2003 to see that I preticted much of this clusterfuck, but now that our warnings have gone unheeded: You break it, you bought it.
Once the place is back in the condition in wich you found it (before you blew up the power, the water, the sewers, the bridges and roads and airports, let the hospitals and museums be looted, etc.), then you can leave. But until then, take resposibility for the consequences of your actions.
That being said, if you want out of Iraq: Ron Paul for president! At least he won't make things worse.
Now, the operative clause above is "if I'm not hurting you". There can be much debate between libertarians about that, as it applies to various issues. Second-hand smoke and drunk driving are two; I very much believe the dangers of the former are over-blown, while the dangers of the latter are relatively obvious. Everything you said made perfect sense, but the second hand smoke issue... let's say you disagree with the cancer risk, fine, but it still hurts. It physically hurts the eyes, the throat, the lungs. Smoking has been banned indoors in public around here for a bit over a year, and I've never been out so much (and the crod is huge where I go out). The smokers still smoke, outside, they are as free as they've ever been, but the non-smokers now have the freedom to go out without being forced to smoke.
So, I'm not looking for an argument with all the smokers who think their right to poison me trumps my right to be poison-free, but I just wanted to point out that there is more to tobacco smoke than cancer.
P.S. Not libertarian because I want a system that keeps food safety inspectors around to make sure no one is running a get-rich-quick scheme involving tainted food and an open ticket to Aruba for when the bodies start piling up.
You are marked as off-topic, but I think the CIA and GWB know very well most details of the corrupt nature of America's political guests. Lavish welcomes for a guy who robs his country of billions are not a Good Thing(TM). Lavish wellcome to a guy who, like yourself, is robbing his country of billions, however vile, is par for the course.
I've been getting a lot of unwarranted downmods lately, I guess someone's got an ax to grind. Possibly someone who'll mod up the trite I replied to. Someone who doesn't know the difference between jingoism and patriotism.
Socialism causes corruption? Why don't you show me an example of a corruption-free capitalist country?
Socialism which centralizes all p;power in the government, causes this. When the same government that is responsible for policing, is repsonsible for economic activity such as providing electricity and even news to the public.. seriously fucked up shit like this can happen. It irreverasbly fucks a country hard.
Show me where socialism and government control over business activity has brought about prosperity and lifted a country out of poverty? My socialist prosperity, let me show you it: http://www.hydroquebec.com/profile/index.html Interestingly enough, when deregulation in Ohio led to the great blackout of 2003, the Quebec grid was mostly unaffected because Hydro-Quebec keeps its grid out of sync with its neighbors because they expected something like that to happen, since the states around it are dangerously under-regulated.
And the CBC is a much more reliable source of news than any of the conglomerate-operated sources in the USA, FOX news they ain't.
prosperity and lifted a country out of poverty? I can show examples for capitalism: China http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3641 475.stm It was not clear of the counterfeit powder included any toxic ingredients, but some children were reported to have died within three days of being fed the fake milk. Others were hospitalised when their parents realised they were ill. Fuyang's People's Hospital alone received more than 60 babies who had been fed fake milk formula, according to the Beijing News.
to find out how this is George Bush's fault... I'm too sleepy to make a proper clever joke about Kenya's bush and some sort of safari reference to the wiki, someone else will, hopefully.
In the meantime, there's always this: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/10/20 031006-1.html
PRESIDENT KIBAKI: Mr. President, thank you for your kind remarks. I wish to thank you for -- Mr. President, the government and the people of the United States, for the warm welcome and hospitality extended to me and my delegation since our arrival. I feel privileged to have been accorded such a great honor and look forward to successful deliberations on matters of mutual interest to our two nations.
Star Trek died for me anyway with Cochrane's initial encounter with the Vulcans at the end of First Contact. Picard never came out of the WoderfulLife-space anomaly: everything we've been shown since then has been his hallucinations.
Star Trek has been out of new plot ideas since about season 4 of TNG. About when Gene Roddenberry died and the show was fully controlled by people who did not like his utopian's vision and went full steam ahead into creating conflict and darkness in the show. They inserted religion, they inserted all the stuff the GP says trek needs. And trek died.
They killed it by trying to make it likable to people who will never like it. It's a fantastically stupid and predictable outcome.
The fundamental issues I see is the utopian nature of the universe Roddenberry created. Ignoring the probability or possibility of human nature being so utterly warped into an utopia (I personally can't suspend my disbelief that far), as a basis for a TV or movie it's all very nice and all, but it makes for dull writing and little drama. Dull writing and no drama, huh? That must be why fans were so passionate about it that they forced it back to life after people like you at the network had it canceled. The dullness and lack of drama was what motivated the letter writing campaign that got the first shuttle prototype named after the show's ship.
Yeah, Gene sure didn't know what the hell he was doing, just look at how his creation slipped into the dark forgotten pit of TV history.
Roddenberry's dream was that in the future, humanity will be perfect. We'll all have worked out our differences, and there will be no crime, poverty or disease. In fact, there will be no money, because everyone will have whatever they need, thanks to replicator technology. All conflict must therefore come from encounters with alien species that aren't as evolved as we are.
But that dream just doesn't fit reality. Which would be why it's shown in the context of FTL space travel and teleportation. The idea is that if we can accomplish such great progress in technology, we can do the same in sociology.
Looking back over the last several thousand years of recorded history, I've seen absolutely no indication that human nature has changed one bit. You're not looking hard enough. Before Zarathustra, emperors would raze villages they conquered. He introduced the idea of letting them live, helping them prosper, and taking a steady tax from them instead of pillaging once and burning the place down. And so humanity evolved one step further. Skip forward a few thousand years: The poor used be left to their own devices until the New Deal of the 20th Century. Widowed mothers could never have afforded to keep their sick child in an iron lung for months, but there are people alive and prosperous today because universal healthcare came along in the 60's (yes, the 60's in which Gene gave us a vision of a better future) and allowed the poor to survive polio. Medical progress coupled with social progress made the world a better place.
A bright future of happy workaholics is possible, if we strive for it. And a dark future of religious fanaticism and selfish greed is possible... all that is necessary for that is for good men to do nothing.
Deep Space Nine (created after Roddenberry's death) showed that greed still exists. Yes, the soulless crap they labelled "Star Trek" after Roddenberry's death were created out of greed and run by evilmen.
It has the copyrighted name of Star Trek, it has the copyrighted look of Star Trek, but it is not Star Trek.
If you want a dark space adventure show, you have your Firefly, and your Galactica, and countless others. But for the love of all that is good, for crying out loud, don't pervert Star Trek, don't snuff out the only candle of hope.
P.S. They did the same to Asimov's I Robot, those evil, greedy, Hollywood hacks.
There are no MPAA or RIAA strongarm tactics at work here. Rather, there are actual writers attempting to defend their copyrights. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to fraudulently remove numerous non-infringing works from Scribd, a site that allows the general public to share text files with one another in much the same way that Flickr allows its users to share pictures.
Included in the takedown were: a junior high teacher's bibliography of works that will excite children about reading sf, the back-catalog of a magazine called Ray Gun Revival, books by other authors who have never authorized SFWA to act on their behalf, such as Bruce Sterling, and my [Cory's] own Creative Commons-licensed novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom."
RTFA before saying the summary got the story wrong.
Yes, but it's part of a virus' nature to insert its DNA into the host. THat's how they work. This is a BACTERIAL genome. Bacteria don't just mix themselves into the hosts. What happens if a funky DNA-transferring virus infects a symbiotic or parasited host?
There is no logical conflict between a company defending a legal right for a customer to do something, while also failing to provide the technical means to exercise that right, or even placing technical hurdles to exercise it. Yes there is a GIGANTIC logical conflict between defending a right and going out of your way to make it as hard as possible for someone to excercise that right.
If someone says that they defend my right of way, but place their car in my path so that I cannot proceed, I will not believe their statement, because actions speak louder than words and their deed is incompatible with their words.
And when a company who has invested their precious money into assuring that only geeks can enact their rights by using their software, because only geeks can overcome the hurdles they have chosen to spend man hours on implementing, I will not believe them when they say they defend our rights. I will believe that their legal expenses related to those rights have now exceed the profits they intended to make by denying to their customers the means to excercise those rights.
There is a gigantic difference between "I defend your right on principle, but I will not intervene on your behalf" and "I defend your right, but I'll intervene so that you may not act on them if to the extent of my abilities". They took the initiative to place an obstacle, that is not compatible with a claim of intent to defend the right, not at all.
this guy would have a hard time arguing that he was damaged in any economic way. Good thing that's not even remotely close to what he's doing then. He's arguing that posting a clip of a show that was his derivative work, he's not infringing their copyrights.
Slashdot Mirror
But I'll explain/demonstrate/illustrate/etc. anyway, 'cause I'm nice: The idielistic philosophy of capitalism is 'The market will fix EVERYTHING!'
Pollution? The market will fix that, don't bother looking at the entire history of the market to see that it systematically doesn't, just believe! Healthcare? The market! Racism? The market! It's like god, but it lets you buy your way into heaven.
And it's not that I don't like what they do, it's that I don't like what they do to me.
Why should I be forced to act a certain way just because they decided to make me inhale poison?
Advocacy groups and charities have accused Nestlé of unethical methods of promoting infant formula over breast-milk to poor mothers in third world countries.[15][16] For example, IBFAN claim that Nestlé supports the distribution of free powdered formula samples to hospitals and maternity wards; after leaving the hospital, the formula is no longer free, but because the supplementation has interfered with lactation the family must continue to buy the formula. IBFAN also allege that Nestlé uses "humanitarian aid" to create markets, does not label its products in a language appropriate to the country where they are sold, and offers gifts and sponsorship to influence health workers to promote its products. [17] Nestlé denies these allegations.
That article talks about stuff from the 70's onward, but the whole deal is much older than that. In the fifties doctors were used to promote this corporate line of thought, and people were led to believe that artificial substitute were better than the natural alternative.
If I had three wishes, one of them would be to raise the level of awereness of humanity so that they might be able to see other people's agendas throuh their misleading speeches and to see the result of their actions on others.
When a corparation says 'this is good for your baby', they probably mean 'this is good for out money'. Because corporations care about nothing else. Yet people still choose to believe their sales speech, rather than this simple truth.
Nerds are unrealistic when it comes to how human beings actually work. They seem to have some vision of people that is way closer to ideal than actually exists. What's more, most nerds I talk to recognize this even in themselves, yet persist in the delusion.
[...]
As seductive as this is to people, it's really closed minded and ignorant of how we got to where we are today in terms of technology and society in general. Well said! I usually frame it as immaturity, rather than ignorance, because libertarian-loving geeks tend to have a couple of encyclopias' worth of knowledge crammed into their heads, so I feel that they'll automaticlly reject the notion that 'ignorant' applies to them, but oversimplification really seems to be the crux, as you so eloquently put it.
I used to have libertarian leanings, I still do, deep down, but I have seen people act in ways that made me accept that we need a whole lotta laws and regulations, because people are too short-sighted for our own good.
Once the place is back in the condition in wich you found it (before you blew up the power, the water, the sewers, the bridges and roads and airports, let the hospitals and museums be looted, etc.), then you can leave. But until then, take resposibility for the consequences of your actions.
That being said, if you want out of Iraq: Ron Paul for president! At least he won't make things worse.
So, I'm not looking for an argument with all the smokers who think their right to poison me trumps my right to be poison-free, but I just wanted to point out that there is more to tobacco smoke than cancer.
P.S. Not libertarian because I want a system that keeps food safety inspectors around to make sure no one is running a get-rich-quick scheme involving tainted food and an open ticket to Aruba for when the bodies start piling up.
I've been getting a lot of unwarranted downmods lately, I guess someone's got an ax to grind.
Possibly someone who'll mod up the trite I replied to. Someone who doesn't know the difference between jingoism and patriotism.
Show me where socialism and government control over business activity has brought about prosperity and lifted a country out of poverty? My socialist prosperity, let me show you it: http://www.hydroquebec.com/profile/index.html
Interestingly enough, when deregulation in Ohio led to the great blackout of 2003, the Quebec grid was mostly unaffected because Hydro-Quebec keeps its grid out of sync with its neighbors because they expected something like that to happen, since the states around it are dangerously under-regulated.
And the CBC is a much more reliable source of news than any of the conglomerate-operated sources in the USA, FOX news they ain't. prosperity and lifted a country out of poverty? I can show examples for capitalism: China http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/364
It was not clear of the counterfeit powder included any toxic ingredients, but some children were reported to have died within three days of being fed the fake milk.
Others were hospitalised when their parents realised they were ill. Fuyang's People's Hospital alone received more than 60 babies who had been fed fake milk formula, according to the Beijing News.
In the meantime, there's always this: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/10/2
PRESIDENT KIBAKI: Mr. President, thank you for your kind remarks. I wish to thank you for -- Mr. President, the government and the people of the United States, for the warm welcome and hospitality extended to me and my delegation since our arrival. I feel privileged to have been accorded such a great honor and look forward to successful deliberations on matters of mutual interest to our two nations.
There, the continuity is fixed. Carry on.
Star Trek has been out of new plot ideas since about season 4 of TNG. About when Gene Roddenberry died and the show was fully controlled by people who did not like his utopian's vision and went full steam ahead into creating conflict and darkness in the show. They inserted religion, they inserted all the stuff the GP says trek needs. And trek died.
They killed it by trying to make it likable to people who will never like it. It's a fantastically stupid and predictable outcome.
Sincerely, a former Trek fan.
Yeah, Gene sure didn't know what the hell he was doing, just look at how his creation slipped into the dark forgotten pit of TV history.
But that dream just doesn't fit reality. Which would be why it's shown in the context of FTL space travel and teleportation.
The idea is that if we can accomplish such great progress in technology, we can do the same in sociology. Looking back over the last several thousand years of recorded history, I've seen absolutely no indication that human nature has changed one bit. You're not looking hard enough.
Before Zarathustra, emperors would raze villages they conquered. He introduced the idea of letting them live, helping them prosper, and taking a steady tax from them instead of pillaging once and burning the place down.
And so humanity evolved one step further.
Skip forward a few thousand years: The poor used be left to their own devices until the New Deal of the 20th Century. Widowed mothers could never have afforded to keep their sick child in an iron lung for months, but there are people alive and prosperous today because universal healthcare came along in the 60's (yes, the 60's in which Gene gave us a vision of a better future) and allowed the poor to survive polio. Medical progress coupled with social progress made the world a better place.
A bright future of happy workaholics is possible, if we strive for it. And a dark future of religious fanaticism and selfish greed is possible... all that is necessary for that is for good men to do nothing. Deep Space Nine (created after Roddenberry's death) showed that greed still exists. Yes, the soulless crap they labelled "Star Trek" after Roddenberry's death were created out of greed and run by evil men.
It has the copyrighted name of Star Trek, it has the copyrighted look of Star Trek, but it is not Star Trek.
If you want a dark space adventure show, you have your Firefly, and your Galactica, and countless others. But for the love of all that is good, for crying out loud, don't pervert Star Trek, don't snuff out the only candle of hope.
P.S. They did the same to Asimov's I Robot, those evil, greedy, Hollywood hacks.
Included in the takedown were: a junior high teacher's bibliography of works that will excite children about reading sf, the back-catalog of a magazine called Ray Gun Revival, books by other authors who have never authorized SFWA to act on their behalf, such as Bruce Sterling, and my [Cory's] own Creative Commons-licensed novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom."
RTFA before saying the summary got the story wrong.
If someone says that they defend my right of way, but place their car in my path so that I cannot proceed, I will not believe their statement, because actions speak louder than words and their deed is incompatible with their words.
And when a company who has invested their precious money into assuring that only geeks can enact their rights by using their software, because only geeks can overcome the hurdles they have chosen to spend man hours on implementing, I will not believe them when they say they defend our rights. I will believe that their legal expenses related to those rights have now exceed the profits they intended to make by denying to their customers the means to excercise those rights.
There is a gigantic difference between "I defend your right on principle, but I will not intervene on your behalf" and "I defend your right, but I'll intervene so that you may not act on them if to the extent of my abilities". They took the initiative to place an obstacle, that is not compatible with a claim of intent to defend the right, not at all.