"I believe in free speech, but there's got to be an exception for dirty words/weird ideas/this thing I don't like."
"I believe in open government, but they have to be able to keep secret things like how much money they spend on any "classified" military design project/their evidence justifying "anti-terrorist" actions/how the current war is really going."
"I believe in due process, but in order to fight the drug war we have to have no-knock warrants/Army soldiers wandering around and ending up shooting goat-herders/ludicrous mandatory minimum laws/property confiscation laws."
All noble compromises, certainly.
As Ben Franklin pointed out, when you start trading away your freedoms for safety, you don't get either.
It's clear that the noble consumer can be won over by smooth talk and obfuscation, all of which is fostered by large corporations that consider 10 or 20 deaths acceptable in the name of profits.
That seems to compare fairly favorably with the masses of people who die from FDA-approved drugs given to them from regulated pharmacies and doctors with the legal power of prescription...and which are, of course, still produced by companies who have to acknowledge the risk (in any drug) of adverse reactions in some circumstances.*
Regulation doesn't seem to be doing that great a job protecting us from bad or misused drugs. Yes, we avoided thalidomide (which Europe, Center of Regulation, allowed!), but we didn't avoid Phen-Fen. Yes, some idiots would die (and do anyhow!) from using Viagra when they have a heart condition, but many people die from reactions, side-effects, and plain mis-prescriptions in the current system.
* Anyone who doesn't read the warnings and other information about any drug they (or their kids) take is an idiot, and there's simply no denying that. You can't protect people from themselves.
You do realize that with the rapidity of bacterial evolution the only way to prevent bacteria from becoming resistant to antibiotics is to prevent the use of all antibiotics?
Given the choice between curing people now (and having to invent new drugs in the future) and not treating those people in order to have the satisfaction that the drug you daren't use does indeed work...well, you can guess my choice, I think.
Horribly difficult to prove point. I've known too many terribly ignorant people who thought their mommy and daddy's money made education a low priority. They had a big surprise after graduation.:)
...and I'd like sales taxes to replace virtually all taxes.
Why? Because they are simple, comprehensive, instantaneous, and anonymous. There's one rate for a given locale, and a binary fact of applies/doesn't apply for any given item, so you know your tax burden at a glance, without being bitten by little hidden fees, taxes, line-items, and exceptions. Everyone pays sales taxes, because short of giving money to other people, you will eventually spend pretty much every dime you make. Sales taxes are based on a one-time payment of money for any income you make (this is shared with the income tax, admittedly), instead of property and similar taxes where you own one asset that will cost you again and again in taxes. Unlike the income tax system, you don't have to dick around with the government and worry about errors or audits, because the sales tax system is completely unaware of you and how you spend your money, as an individual. It's completely unintrusive.
Furthermore, the poor do get a break on sales taxes, as in most places the sales tax doesn't apply to "necessities" such as food, medicines, and clothing. Even better, there's one number that basically determines how much you're going to pay in taxes, no matter who you are, so the government can't hide just how much it takes in through a myriad of selective tax rules. A sales tax-only system would not discourage savings (though you'd still have to pay those taxes on your saved money when you at last spent it...), unlike our income and other taxes.
Now, after that litany of wonderful aspects of the sales tax, and why it should be our only tax (:) ), I have to say this particular implementation of the tax sucks. Not only is it tacked on to an income tax form, but it selectively targets a group, which sales tax should never do unless we want to get into a real mess. As the Supreme Court has pointed out, pretty much any distant-order sales tax puts an unfair burden on a company in another state to collect taxes for a distant jurisdiction (since, after all, if I go down the road to a location with a lower sales tax and make a purchase, my home city doesn't come back and try to charge me for the difference!). This particular plan gets around that, but puts an unreasonable burden on the consumer, along with the heavy-handed "pay this much and we won't audit you" hint about expected purchases by income level. NC is not making a good-faith effort to fairly collect a sales tax, but is attempting to indimidate taxpayers into supplementing their income tax.
Any sales tax puts a burden on the consumer (the tax) and on a vendor (the cost of collecting and sending along the sales tax to the government.) That's fair and reasonable as long as both parties are paying that money to the same governmental entity. Taxation is a necessary evil (in a very literal meaning of the word), but it's completely unreasonable to force either party to pay money or spend time complying with the rules of a government they aren't at the moment of the sale governed by - because neither, at that moment, are getting anything for that money. Therefore, any attempt to collect sales tax from a business outside the taxing body's jurisdiction, or on a person at the time outside that jurisdiction, is unjustifiable.
So, my point? The only tax that should apply to a company (or the customers of that company) that is selling products through mail order, by phone, or through the internet would be a federal sales tax (that would replace all other federal taxes instead of supplementing them...). Of course, such a federal income tax should apply to all taxable purchases in the US, not just internet taxes. This, of course, assumes both parties are in the US. (One could argue for a tariff equal to sales tax being set up to collect *those* funds, but that would just become a mess, and special interest groups would never let the rate stay the same as the sales tax. I'd frankly be willing to just let that money go - if the government spends a reasonable amount, that paltry sum wouldn't be needed).
Am I better off spending $1000 on books and computers and have public schools suck?
You're certainly better off being able to spend that money when the US public schools (which spend more per student than almost any other industrialized nation, and yet have the worst performance) will suck anyway. And why can't a private organization create a park and only charge the people who go to use it, instead of people who may never visit it because it's on the other side of town?
Last time I checked, everyone here in Texas, regardless of income, buys stuff. Furthermore, when I stop in gas stations, I see people of virtually every income level buying lottery tickets. It's not a tax on the poor, it's a tax on the people who didn't pay attention in math class.
Especially when the federal government STILL takes our tax money and subsidizes tobacco growers. This keeps the price of cigarettes artificially low and means more tax money coming in.
Because They Were Out for Themselves
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1 and 2 only "certainly happened" in the minds of those who hate everything that is mass-produced. Certainly, sweatshop conditions do exist in some places, but far from every textile factory is the sort of firetrap you see on hidden-camera portrayals. As for "inferior product", it's an issue of apples and oranges. Is a product that is of decent quality but affordable to virtually anyone "inferior" to a more luxurious product that far fewer people can afford? Products that anyone can purchase and enjoy are the legacy of mass production. (Nor do they eliminate more expensive, hand-made items. Hit any yuppie mail-order catalogue and you can find any number of products lovingly hand-made by people all over the world...)
And you definitely missed my point: the Luddites had nothing to do with the anti-technological doctrine called "Luddism". They simply opposed someone else having the means to out-compete them in the market. They tried intimidating would-be competitors, then they tried destroying the tools of their competitors. "Semi-terroristic" was probably wrong, as this is more a gangster-esque behavior - they were simply bullies trying to protect their turf. (I would certainly agree that the punishments levied against them were ridiculous, but the British criminal justice system of the time was quite brutal and lacked any effective protections for its citizens (not that the US system was much better, to be fair).)
Frankly, the Luddites were an overhyped footnote later used as a romantic symbol for a doctrine they didn't form or possess. They can safely be forgotten, and we can really use a better epithet.
Supports of the ideologies of Mao and Stalin will quite loudly claim that both were opportunists who had no reverence for the ideals of their systems. Nazism as it was expressed became merely an apologistic attempt at combining a madman's ramblings with the philosopy of facism. So, it's impossible to claim that all these guys killed all their victims for purely ideological reasons (as opposed to paranoia and a desire to destroy enemies). You *might* be able to put Mao on that list, but he was a piker compared to Hitler and Stalin. Therefore, your demand for a reference for such a super-murderous Christian ruler who killed for purely "Christian" reasons is ridiculous.
Besides, what Christian ruler has had as much power over as many people as Mao, Hitler, or Stalin? The Pope couldn't start a genocide if he wanted to.
Re:Some serious bigorty in this piece
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Just to be fair, which religious movements lately have been in control of powerful countries and have had industrial technology to back up any possible evil plans they had?
I'm personally deeply amused at the very idea that anyone has ever had "control" over the course of technological growth. If history had gone different in very trivial ways, our technology today would be very different, even if it were equally "advanced". Try reading through The Pinball Effect and you'll get an idea of just why that is.
Luddism? Why do we even REMEMBER those guys?
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Ah, Luddism. A protectionist, semi-terroristic economic movement that opposed automation because it would cost the members of the movement their relatively cushy jobs. Somehow, it got conflated, for good or ill, with an ostritch-like head-in-the-sand attitude of "we really shouldn't learn - bad things might happen." And digbats who think ripping off a certain comedian's Sledge-o-Matic shtick, just with computers instead of watermelons, is somehow profound and revolutionary. Trying to stop science isn't going to do any good. Trying to stop invention misses the point. If you really want to stop bad things from happening, look out for the people who use or misuse inventions.
Let the *UN* set the rules on this?
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The UN is currently pondering out how to make the internet censor-friendly on every possible evil axis - political, sexual, social, etc. It has anti-drug resolutions calling for the banning of speech or writing that promotes drug legalization or questions the international war on drugs. It administers sanctions and blockades to starve the people of countries run by dictators that the UN dislikes. (And this is all publically stated, not some paranoid "fight the black helicopters" conclusion.)
The UN strikes me as the last body that should be settling this.
Then the scientist sighs and goes and builds a huge particle accelerator to form the basic elemental components of dirt out of pure energy.;)
On the other hand, I don't really hear much about scientists going on about how they've surpassed God. A significant minority of them don't even believe that a God exists, so why trumpet one's superiority to a nonentity? The only guy I can think of who wanked loudly about human superiority to some God was Nietzche, and what did he ever come up with? This is the sort of contest that scientists never bother dreaming up and inappropriately anxious religionists seem to produce in factories.
It is the responsibility of everyone to make oneself informed on this sort of subject and chime in if that person things s/he has a point. You may argue whether Katz has successfully made himself well-informed or whether he's right in his opinions, but you can't say that because he doesn't have a PhD (or he isn't going for one) that he has no right to contribute. On the other hand, if you're just saying he's ignorant and should get informed before venturing an opinion, fair enough. I'm not sure that you were, though.
Science Can Give the Data - You Have to Process it
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Katz and a lot of people are missing something very vital: science has nothing to do with what is done with science. Why? Because science is simply a search for knowledge. What is done with that knowledge is a very different issue and is the responsibility of every person to decide from a ethical, legal, and moral standpoint. This has two important implications:
First, science cannot be held responsible for what is done with scientific knowledge. Knowledge is neutral in a moral sense. The "rightness" or "wrongness" of an action is wholly based on the action, not the know-how one used to perform it. (This should be very clear to people here - the knowledge of how computer systems work is completely separate from whether one uses that knowledge to hack and damage systems.) The only responsibility scientists acting as scientists and not as people with opinions have is to keep us informed.
Second, science can't be used as a touchstone for whether Things May Be Done. Science isn't ethics or morality, it's just study of reality. This is not to say that scientists aren't to be allowed to contribute to any debate (scientists have a wide variety of opinions on ethical or moral views, and should chime in), but just the opposite - scientists can't be the only people in on the debate.
So what does this mean? Well, very simply, that the responsibility for the ultimate social effects of what's going to be done with genetic engineering (whether wonderful or horrific) isn't anywhere near the scientists who make the discoveries that lead to those effects, whatever they may be. The responsibility falls on the people in the social and political system where it happens.
Let's take the idea of a society stratified by biological engineering, which has been used in stories almost since science fiction came about. If genetic engineering and analysis becomes advanced enough to let us detect and eliminate almost all genetic/physical degects, and we then set up a caste system based on degrees of genetic perfection, who is responsible? Not the scientists who sequenced the human genome, but the politicians who passed such discriminatory laws, the special interest groups who persuaded them, the courts that didn't throw out the laws, and the citizens who supported the laws or didn't bother to oppose them!
Let's take another example: clones. Suppose human clones become second-class citizens or slaves in the future... No, let's not even go that far. Back up. "Become"? Even the wording of that old idea squirms around how it happens. A living, breathing, thinking, clone of a human being is a human being. If that human being is denied his or her due in the forms of the essential rights and liberties of a human being, it's not some accident, it's an intentional choice! Someone passes a law, someone points guns at clones to limit their freedom, and some mass of people supports it or just lets it happen.
So, what's my point? Well, unfortunately, that this debate must (really, will, one way or another) take place in Congress and every legislative body in the country, sooner or later. It must and will take place in the courts. However, serious, informed, intelligent debate really must take place in the homes and restaurants and online forums and other places people talk.
What's the real danger? That the kind of power-alcoholic politicians who brought you Great Stuff like the Alien and Sedition Laws, the New Deal, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the CDA are going to tell you what Great Things they are going to do with genetic technology...and you're going to go along with it. Why? Because our society pays only lip service to freedom and worships as panaceas the various heavy-handed "fixes" and "adjustments" to society handed down from on high by politicians and appointed officials. In my opinion, a society that wants a law or a government program to fix every percieved problem is just the society that can lead to a Brave New World or Gattaca - type scenario.
So, what do we do? I say, fix that problem, pay attention to science so we know how upcoming advances may be used, and proceed from the rather comprehensible principles of human rights and liberties. (Hmm, put that way, we may be doomed. Oh, well. Have to try.)
Re:How does this mock religion?
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Roughly 1 in 1 in our case. What this argument ignores is that there very well may be huge numbers of different base-chemical combinations that can result in life. Certainly, the most readily-forming amino acids, the ones that all but fall into shape in the lab, may be "universal", but others occurred through simple, random chemical interactions. Give stuff a few billion years to interact, with a crude "natural selection" mechanism among the growing chemical structures, and you end up with a good basis for life. (I'm skipping over the fuzzy issue of "at what point does chemically complex glop that does lifelike things become life", of course - another topic.)
It's arguable whether the chances of our particular chemical setup are rare or not. Some claim that it's almost inevitable and claim that as evidence of a Diety, specifically one that set up the physical parameters and laws of the universe as to lead to life on Earth and the evolution of humanity (not that they satisfactorily answer the question of how they know God wasn't going for the cockroaches...). Others suggest "life as we know it" is more rare, but the various types of "life as we don't know it", ie life that spawned from the countless other chemical combinations that might work, may make life in general fairly common throughout the universe.
Currently, we're looking over a very small sample of life - what's on this single planet. We'll only really get some more definite answers about the possible chemistries for life once we get telescopes powerful enough to discern the spectra of planets...and look for atmospheric chemistries that aren't stable without biology.
The internet is a set of media for communicating. Whether one communicates for the purpose of sharing ideas, chatting with friends, or making a buck is a choice that should be left up to that person. "eCommerce" (an incredibly silly name) doesn't stop any other kind of communication on the internet. Or, more succinctly: the evil green paper won't contaminate you though the wires.
Yeah, but it isn't trade, it is plunder. It always has been, always will be. Take the Europeans and the Native Americans. Native American culture had no notion of "private property".
*Wrong*. Many aboriginal American (about the only term that isn't silly, inaccurate, or offensive, so it's the one I use for a large fraction of my ancestors) societies had well-developed systems of private property, especially in the northeast of what became the US. Even others that more closely (though superficially) resemble your simultaneously deifying and patronizing image - ie, those that wandered the central and western portions of the US - certainly understood concepts like "OUR land" or "MY horse" in varying degrees. As to corporations controlling a country and many other things you decry, those are not the results of free trade among free people. Those are the results of societies and governments not protecting the rights of individuals, specifically corrupt administrations that accept money or other considerations to look the other way while rights violations and crimes occur. It doesn't matter if it's the KKK, Nike, or the Mafia - it has nothing to do with trade and everything to do with corruption.
Well, first of all, "the poverty line" is not a person making less than $12,000. It's a four person family supported only by that income. Second, Wal-Mart is not under any moral or ethical obligation to provide jobs for people. It is only obligated to not violate peoples' rights. If they do that, fine, slap 'em or worse. But outcompeting other businesses isn't a sin (and of COURSE it's unfair - a winning business always has an advantage or set of advantages its competitors lack, whether really cheap distribution and economies of scale or a talented workforce and for-the-moment-clueful management), nor is providing less costly products to people. After all, looked another way I would consider equally inaccurate, one could say that such local businesses are just packs of people who fight to force consumers to buy their more expensive products and keep cheaper alternatives out.
Can you actually substantiate this "true story"? Chain stores set pre-tax prices centrally, usually only lowering prices to beat or match competitors' sales.
Slashdot Mirror
"I believe in free speech, but there's got to be an exception for dirty words/weird ideas/this thing I don't like."
"I believe in open government, but they have to be able to keep secret things like how much money they spend on any "classified" military design project/their evidence justifying "anti-terrorist" actions/how the current war is really going."
"I believe in due process, but in order to fight the drug war we have to have no-knock warrants/Army soldiers wandering around and ending up shooting goat-herders/ludicrous mandatory minimum laws/property confiscation laws."
All noble compromises, certainly.
As Ben Franklin pointed out, when you start trading away your freedoms for safety, you don't get either.
That seems to compare fairly favorably with the masses of people who die from FDA-approved drugs given to them from regulated pharmacies and doctors with the legal power of prescription...and which are, of course, still produced by companies who have to acknowledge the risk (in any drug) of adverse reactions in some circumstances.*
Regulation doesn't seem to be doing that great a job protecting us from bad or misused drugs. Yes, we avoided thalidomide (which Europe, Center of Regulation, allowed!), but we didn't avoid Phen-Fen. Yes, some idiots would die (and do anyhow!) from using Viagra when they have a heart condition, but many people die from reactions, side-effects, and plain mis-prescriptions in the current system.
* Anyone who doesn't read the warnings and other information about any drug they (or their kids) take is an idiot, and there's simply no denying that. You can't protect people from themselves.
You do realize that with the rapidity of bacterial evolution the only way to prevent bacteria from becoming resistant to antibiotics is to prevent the use of all antibiotics?
Given the choice between curing people now (and having to invent new drugs in the future) and not treating those people in order to have the satisfaction that the drug you daren't use does indeed work...well, you can guess my choice, I think.
If the guy can't install Linux for that reason, he's definitely never installed NT!
Horribly difficult to prove point. I've known too many terribly ignorant people who thought their mommy and daddy's money made education a low priority. They had a big surprise after graduation. :)
...and I'd like sales taxes to replace virtually all taxes.
:) ), I have to say this particular implementation of the tax sucks. Not only is it tacked on to an income tax form, but it selectively targets a group, which sales tax should never do unless we want to get into a real mess. As the Supreme Court has pointed out, pretty much any distant-order sales tax puts an unfair burden on a company in another state to collect taxes for a distant jurisdiction (since, after all, if I go down the road to a location with a lower sales tax and make a purchase, my home city doesn't come back and try to charge me for the difference!). This particular plan gets around that, but puts an unreasonable burden on the consumer, along with the heavy-handed "pay this much and we won't audit you" hint about expected purchases by income level. NC is not making a good-faith effort to fairly collect a sales tax, but is attempting to indimidate taxpayers into supplementing their income tax.
Why? Because they are simple, comprehensive, instantaneous, and anonymous. There's one rate for a given locale, and a binary fact of applies/doesn't apply for any given item, so you know your tax burden at a glance, without being bitten by little hidden fees, taxes, line-items, and exceptions. Everyone pays sales taxes, because short of giving money to other people, you will eventually spend pretty much every dime you make. Sales taxes are based on a one-time payment of money for any income you make (this is shared with the income tax, admittedly), instead of property and similar taxes where you own one asset that will cost you again and again in taxes. Unlike the income tax system, you don't have to dick around with the government and worry about errors or audits, because the sales tax system is completely unaware of you and how you spend your money, as an individual. It's completely unintrusive.
Furthermore, the poor do get a break on sales taxes, as in most places the sales tax doesn't apply to "necessities" such as food, medicines, and clothing. Even better, there's one number that basically determines how much you're going to pay in taxes, no matter who you are, so the government can't hide just how much it takes in through a myriad of selective tax rules. A sales tax-only system would not discourage savings (though you'd still have to pay those taxes on your saved money when you at last spent it...), unlike our income and other taxes.
Now, after that litany of wonderful aspects of the sales tax, and why it should be our only tax (
Any sales tax puts a burden on the consumer (the tax) and on a vendor (the cost of collecting and sending along the sales tax to the government.) That's fair and reasonable as long as both parties are paying that money to the same governmental entity. Taxation is a necessary evil (in a very literal meaning of the word), but it's completely unreasonable to force either party to pay money or spend time complying with the rules of a government they aren't at the moment of the sale governed by - because neither, at that moment, are getting anything for that money. Therefore, any attempt to collect sales tax from a business outside the taxing body's jurisdiction, or on a person at the time outside that jurisdiction, is unjustifiable.
So, my point? The only tax that should apply to a company (or the customers of that company) that is selling products through mail order, by phone, or through the internet would be a federal sales tax (that would replace all other federal taxes instead of supplementing them...). Of course, such a federal income tax should apply to all taxable purchases in the US, not just internet taxes. This, of course, assumes both parties are in the US. (One could argue for a tariff equal to sales tax being set up to collect *those* funds, but that would just become a mess, and special interest groups would never let the rate stay the same as the sales tax. I'd frankly be willing to just let that money go - if the government spends a reasonable amount, that paltry sum wouldn't be needed).
You're certainly better off being able to spend that money when the US public schools (which spend more per student than almost any other industrialized nation, and yet have the worst performance) will suck anyway. And why can't a private organization create a park and only charge the people who go to use it, instead of people who may never visit it because it's on the other side of town?
Last time I checked, everyone here in Texas, regardless of income, buys stuff. Furthermore, when I stop in gas stations, I see people of virtually every income level buying lottery tickets. It's not a tax on the poor, it's a tax on the people who didn't pay attention in math class.
Especially when the federal government STILL takes our tax money and subsidizes tobacco growers. This keeps the price of cigarettes artificially low and means more tax money coming in.
1 and 2 only "certainly happened" in the minds of those who hate everything that is mass-produced. Certainly, sweatshop conditions do exist in some places, but far from every textile factory is the sort of firetrap you see on hidden-camera portrayals. As for "inferior product", it's an issue of apples and oranges. Is a product that is of decent quality but affordable to virtually anyone "inferior" to a more luxurious product that far fewer people can afford? Products that anyone can purchase and enjoy are the legacy of mass production. (Nor do they eliminate more expensive, hand-made items. Hit any yuppie mail-order catalogue and you can find any number of products lovingly hand-made by people all over the world...)
And you definitely missed my point: the Luddites had nothing to do with the anti-technological doctrine called "Luddism". They simply opposed someone else having the means to out-compete them in the market. They tried intimidating would-be competitors, then they tried destroying the tools of their competitors. "Semi-terroristic" was probably wrong, as this is more a gangster-esque behavior - they were simply bullies trying to protect their turf. (I would certainly agree that the punishments levied against them were ridiculous, but the British criminal justice system of the time was quite brutal and lacked any effective protections for its citizens (not that the US system was much better, to be fair).)
Frankly, the Luddites were an overhyped footnote later used as a romantic symbol for a doctrine they didn't form or possess. They can safely be forgotten, and we can really use a better epithet.
Supports of the ideologies of Mao and Stalin will quite loudly claim that both were opportunists who had no reverence for the ideals of their systems. Nazism as it was expressed became merely an apologistic attempt at combining a madman's ramblings with the philosopy of facism. So, it's impossible to claim that all these guys killed all their victims for purely ideological reasons (as opposed to paranoia and a desire to destroy enemies). You *might* be able to put Mao on that list, but he was a piker compared to Hitler and Stalin. Therefore, your demand for a reference for such a super-murderous Christian ruler who killed for purely "Christian" reasons is ridiculous.
Besides, what Christian ruler has had as much power over as many people as Mao, Hitler, or Stalin? The Pope couldn't start a genocide if he wanted to.
Just to be fair, which religious movements lately have been in control of powerful countries and have had industrial technology to back up any possible evil plans they had?
I'm personally deeply amused at the very idea that anyone has ever had "control" over the course of technological growth. If history had gone different in very trivial ways, our technology today would be very different, even if it were equally "advanced". Try reading through The Pinball Effect and you'll get an idea of just why that is.
Ah, Luddism. A protectionist, semi-terroristic economic movement that opposed automation because it would cost the members of the movement their relatively cushy jobs. Somehow, it got conflated, for good or ill, with an ostritch-like head-in-the-sand attitude of "we really shouldn't learn - bad things might happen." And digbats who think ripping off a certain comedian's Sledge-o-Matic shtick, just with computers instead of watermelons, is somehow profound and revolutionary.
Trying to stop science isn't going to do any good. Trying to stop invention misses the point. If you really want to stop bad things from happening, look out for the people who use or misuse inventions.
The UN is currently pondering out how to make the internet censor-friendly on every possible evil axis - political, sexual, social, etc. It has anti-drug resolutions calling for the banning of speech or writing that promotes drug legalization or questions the international war on drugs. It administers sanctions and blockades to starve the people of countries run by dictators that the UN dislikes. (And this is all publically stated, not some paranoid "fight the black helicopters" conclusion.)
The UN strikes me as the last body that should be settling this.
Then the scientist sighs and goes and builds a huge particle accelerator to form the basic elemental components of dirt out of pure energy. ;)
On the other hand, I don't really hear much about scientists going on about how they've surpassed God. A significant minority of them don't even believe that a God exists, so why trumpet one's superiority to a nonentity? The only guy I can think of who wanked loudly about human superiority to some God was Nietzche, and what did he ever come up with? This is the sort of contest that scientists never bother dreaming up and inappropriately anxious religionists seem to produce in factories.
It is the responsibility of everyone to make oneself informed on this sort of subject and chime in if that person things s/he has a point.
You may argue whether Katz has successfully made himself well-informed or whether he's right in his opinions, but you can't say that because he doesn't have a PhD (or he isn't going for one) that he has no right to contribute.
On the other hand, if you're just saying he's ignorant and should get informed before venturing an opinion, fair enough. I'm not sure that you were, though.
Katz and a lot of people are missing something very vital: science has nothing to do with what is done with science. Why? Because science is simply a search for knowledge. What is done with that knowledge is a very different issue and is the responsibility of every person to decide from a ethical, legal, and moral standpoint. This has two important implications:
First, science cannot be held responsible for what is done with scientific knowledge. Knowledge is neutral in a moral sense. The "rightness" or "wrongness" of an action is wholly based on the action, not the know-how one used to perform it. (This should be very clear to people here - the knowledge of how computer systems work is completely separate from whether one uses that knowledge to hack and damage systems.) The only responsibility scientists acting as scientists and not as people with opinions have is to keep us informed.
Second, science can't be used as a touchstone for whether Things May Be Done. Science isn't ethics or morality, it's just study of reality. This is not to say that scientists aren't to be allowed to contribute to any debate (scientists have a wide variety of opinions on ethical or moral views, and should chime in), but just the opposite - scientists can't be the only people in on the debate.
So what does this mean? Well, very simply, that the responsibility for the ultimate social effects of what's going to be done with genetic engineering (whether wonderful or horrific) isn't anywhere near the scientists who make the discoveries that lead to those effects, whatever they may be. The responsibility falls on the people in the social and political system where it happens.
Let's take the idea of a society stratified by biological engineering, which has been used in stories almost since science fiction came about. If genetic engineering and analysis becomes advanced enough to let us detect and eliminate almost all genetic/physical degects, and we then set up a caste system based on degrees of genetic perfection, who is responsible? Not the scientists who sequenced the human genome, but the politicians who passed such discriminatory laws, the special interest groups who persuaded them, the courts that didn't throw out the laws, and the citizens who supported the laws or didn't bother to oppose them!
Let's take another example: clones. Suppose human clones become second-class citizens or slaves in the future... No, let's not even go that far. Back up. "Become"? Even the wording of that old idea squirms around how it happens. A living, breathing, thinking, clone of a human being is a human being. If that human being is denied his or her due in the forms of the essential rights and liberties of a human being, it's not some accident, it's an intentional choice! Someone passes a law, someone points guns at clones to limit their freedom, and some mass of people supports it or just lets it happen.
So, what's my point? Well, unfortunately, that this debate must (really, will, one way or another) take place in Congress and every legislative body in the country, sooner or later. It must and will take place in the courts. However, serious, informed, intelligent debate really must take place in the homes and restaurants and online forums and other places people talk.
What's the real danger? That the kind of power-alcoholic politicians who brought you Great Stuff like the Alien and Sedition Laws, the New Deal, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the CDA are going to tell you what Great Things they are going to do with genetic technology...and you're going to go along with it. Why? Because our society pays only lip service to freedom and worships as panaceas the various heavy-handed "fixes" and "adjustments" to society handed down from on high by politicians and appointed officials. In my opinion, a society that wants a law or a government program to fix every percieved problem is just the society that can lead to a Brave New World or Gattaca - type scenario.
So, what do we do? I say, fix that problem, pay attention to science so we know how upcoming advances may be used, and proceed from the rather comprehensible principles of human rights and liberties. (Hmm, put that way, we may be doomed. Oh, well. Have to try.)
Roughly 1 in 1 in our case. What this argument ignores is that there very well may be huge numbers of different base-chemical combinations that can result in life. Certainly, the most readily-forming amino acids, the ones that all but fall into shape in the lab, may be "universal", but others occurred through simple, random chemical interactions. Give stuff a few billion years to interact, with a crude "natural selection" mechanism among the growing chemical structures, and you end up with a good basis for life. (I'm skipping over the fuzzy issue of "at what point does chemically complex glop that does lifelike things become life", of course - another topic.)
It's arguable whether the chances of our particular chemical setup are rare or not. Some claim that it's almost inevitable and claim that as evidence of a Diety, specifically one that set up the physical parameters and laws of the universe as to lead to life on Earth and the evolution of humanity (not that they satisfactorily answer the question of how they know God wasn't going for the cockroaches...). Others suggest "life as we know it" is more rare, but the various types of "life as we don't know it", ie life that spawned from the countless other chemical combinations that might work, may make life in general fairly common throughout the universe.
Currently, we're looking over a very small sample of life - what's on this single planet. We'll only really get some more definite answers about the possible chemistries for life once we get telescopes powerful enough to discern the spectra of planets...and look for atmospheric chemistries that aren't stable without biology.
The internet is a set of media for communicating. Whether one communicates for the purpose of sharing ideas, chatting with friends, or making a buck is a choice that should be left up to that person. "eCommerce" (an incredibly silly name) doesn't stop any other kind of communication on the internet.
Or, more succinctly: the evil green paper won't contaminate you though the wires.
*Every* grocery stores does loss leaders. Such a law is just a tool of local business.
No.
*Wrong*. Many aboriginal American (about the only term that isn't silly, inaccurate, or offensive, so it's the one I use for a large fraction of my ancestors) societies had well-developed systems of private property, especially in the northeast of what became the US. Even others that more closely (though superficially) resemble your simultaneously deifying and patronizing image - ie, those that wandered the central and western portions of the US - certainly understood concepts like "OUR land" or "MY horse" in varying degrees.
As to corporations controlling a country and many other things you decry, those are not the results of free trade among free people. Those are the results of societies and governments not protecting the rights of individuals, specifically corrupt administrations that accept money or other considerations to look the other way while rights violations and crimes occur. It doesn't matter if it's the KKK, Nike, or the Mafia - it has nothing to do with trade and everything to do with corruption.
Well, first of all, "the poverty line" is not a person making less than $12,000. It's a four person family supported only by that income.
Second, Wal-Mart is not under any moral or ethical obligation to provide jobs for people. It is only obligated to not violate peoples' rights. If they do that, fine, slap 'em or worse. But outcompeting other businesses isn't a sin (and of COURSE it's unfair - a winning business always has an advantage or set of advantages its competitors lack, whether really cheap distribution and economies of scale or a talented workforce and for-the-moment-clueful management), nor is providing less costly products to people.
After all, looked another way I would consider equally inaccurate, one could say that such local businesses are just packs of people who fight to force consumers to buy their more expensive products and keep cheaper alternatives out.
Can you actually substantiate this "true story"?
Chain stores set pre-tax prices centrally, usually only lowering prices to beat or match competitors' sales.