I think a legitimate libertarian complaint would be:
If I have to spend one tax, ie non-voluntary, dollar to develop free cars then it's too much.
This position would be even stronger if this person lives in a city wherein he doesn't need to drive and probably never will.
It becomes very dangerous when someone else is allowed to decide that "short term disasters" are really for the public good in the long run. I'm sure that there are many Japanese-Americans who were interred during WWII who might agree, for example.
Re:may god forgive him for what he has unleashed
on
The First Smiley :-)
·
· Score: 1
I'm lucky I only read the first part of your post.
You really need to put a warning before you quote stuff like that.
Why don't you mod up some posts that are erroneously marked troll or offtopic? Usually these are bogus moderations, but once modded to zero they rarely bounce back.
There is a huge need for moderators to repair other moderators' damage, if you catch my drift.
I will second the "require original box" policy. My labmate's Viewsonic died and he went through the same crap. Luckily Viewsonic actually has a local presence in Los Angeles so he just drove the monitor there and handed it to them.
In bars in New Orleans, at least, there are women, working for cigarette companies, who walk around with a large box full of "sample" packs of cigarettes. She'll just check your id and hand you whatever you want.
Maybe guys take that job, too, but I never saw any.
I have, by merely posting this message within 20 (Earth) minutes of the time at which you wrote your own message, proven you wrong, in at least an empirical sense.
It is unfortunate for you, jpmorgan, that our "calculations" (the closest word in your English) do not predict the successful transference of knowledge between our species over the course of the next 7,342 of your Earth years.
I bought a copy of Dune from Ace Books and found the editing errors to be enormously distracting. The most egregious, and recurring, errors were single, and sometimes multiple, arbitrary lines in a different fontsize than the others. Three pages had the left side of the text completely missing due to a bad cut of the paper.
I've plowed through many a $3-5 fantasy book and have never seen such publishing problems. What gives nowadays?
I think I understand exactly where you are coming from, though, and I'm sorry if you feel that I misrepresented you in any fashion. I would put together a long and involved response at the moment, but I am going to need time to do so and I don't have it right now.
Cheerio, BitKeeper, I'll write something up early tomorrow or late tomorrow night. I just hope that this stupid web system keeps it ontopic for a sufficient period of time for you and anyone else who cares to notice.
Well, she wrote it originally. By writing it again yourself, without attributing it, you are effectively claiming that it's a first work.
If I were to then say, "That's DYNOMITE! I'm going to quote that!" and attribute it to BitKeeper then someone is going to kick my ass later by pointing out that Ayn Rand wrote it first.
Shouldn't you credit Ayn Rand with this? Otherwise you're verging on plagiarism.
I don't mean this in a bad way (like you're crazy or stealing), I just mean that this sounds SO like one of her rants that perhaps you might just make mention of the fact that she has been a bit influential in your life.
Please see my other response in this thread. I hope you find it interesting.
It seems that your beliefs can pretty much be summed up in one sentence: It is possible, with extreme amounts of work and self-discipline, to pull oneself out of any situation into success, therefore anybody who doesn't do that deserves their place in life.
Imagine, please, that our society was still back in a nomadic period. Now, in that society, how much charity do you think existed to help out those who were unable, at any given time, to pull their own weight? Assuredly it was low. Tribal members that were incapable of any given task were burdens and required special accomodation. It would be only through the development of personal relations that these individuals could possibly withstand the wrath of the bulk of the rest of the tribe in periods of hardship.
Fast-forward to our current (in the US) society. There is no such thing as direct tribal wrath. A person can be a hermit and still collect the same welfare check as a diligent worker who happens to be on hard times. There is a vast net there to catch and enable all of those who haven't "found their place" at the moment. This, IMO, is because we have developed enough wealth to accomodate those persons who MAY be able to contribute something in the future. When all is said and done, it is worth the possible loss of resources in order to rehabilitate someone (in the sense of giving them a job, food, whatever) on the off-chance that they might actually BE rehabilitated and contribute back to society. In an economical sense, when one marginalizes over time, the cost of welfare is paid back and more.
BitKeeper's point, if I may put words in his/her mouth, is that people who leech off the system, or who permanently accept a minimum wage (one-rung up from leeching) job as their career-path are already receiving more than ever before in history. It is not up to BitKeeper, you, or I to continue to provide for these people (and BitKeeper and I probably assume that minimum wage is inflated) just because they happen to be here. Ergo, they "deserve that place in life".
While that is valid philosophy, I personally find it morally repulsive. Give me one good reason why we, as a society, should not consider it our obligation to ensure that every member has as high a quality of life as possible, even if for some reason they are unable to do work.
Regardless of whether you find this perspective morally repulsive, it does not change the fact that those who have this viewpoint generally believe very strongly in the human capability to achieve. A reason, and I think it is a good one, for not attempting to provide for every single person on the planet is that there are many people that will not THINK about what they are requiring of others in order to survive. If you, psicE, can think of one person who expects welfare or any other government-supplied aid not because of their investment in it, but because it's always there, then you already know someone who does not truly recognize the sacrifice made by others to provide that system for them.
BitKeeper would probably like to minimize those instances. He, and I, would like to build a system that rewards those who work hard and properly chastizes those who simply take and take without realizing (or especially if they do) the consequences.
Also, what about illegal immigrants? They sneak into the US, attempting to find whatever job they can get; there's a house-cleaning service around where I live, staffed by Portuguese immigrants - though I have no evidence to back it up, I'd be surprised if a single one was legal. And these immigrants provide many services that US upper-class citizens enjoy, that very few non-recent-immigrant US residents want to do. Yet, because they don't want to get deported, these residents are unable to qualify for any benefits - so they really are working huge weeks to put food on the table.
I have a fairly interesting background for this sort of discussion. My father is Mexican. I was born and raised in San Diego. No one in my gigantic, huge, enormous family (that counts) is NOT a hard worker. We have massive sympathy for the staggering number of illegals that come into where we live looking for work. My nuclear family has dealt with many local initiatives spawned either from purely racist, neighborhood [upkeep in the sense of market-value] conservatist (which is not necessarily bad), and/or good-meaning intentions (in a humanitarian sense). The only consistent aspect of these dealings is the illegal aliens just want a job. They have braved many adventures to get where they are. They don't really care that much about dental plans or life insurance. Schooling is a non-issue. These people do the SHIT jobs that no one else wants to do because those jobs still need to be done. They know, and they are correct, that the SHIT work that they do here in the States will pay better than the non-work that they may or may not have back in Tijuana or the outskirts where they might live.
I would like to see THESE people rewarded for their efforts. The problem is that they are not citizens of the U.S. I, Buck2, because of the way the current system is setup, have to pay for these individuals whenever they get hurt. I have to pay for the policing of those individuals who come here just to make noise. I have to pay for the problems that happen in another country, basically. I don't think that anyone who is against taxes/(accomodation for the unfit) is generally also against humans, they merely want those social organizations (Mexico, Puerto Rico, etc) to take care of their own in a similar fashion as what we do for ourselves.
A civilized society cannot rightly ignore such factors, and should insure, at the least, that nobody starves.
I think that many would agree with you. My aunt is living with an invalid, though. he cannot get out of his wheelchair. He has not paid his bills in months, the bank which gave them the mortgage for his home wants to repossess the home and move on with their business. Are you going to stand there and tell me that everyone in the USA should pledge a dollar to save this guy's ass because he's crippled and can't make any money?
My parents, both with no more than a mid-sixties high school education, have busted their asses, made wise investments, and are just those sorts of middle-class targets to leech off of to pay for my aunt's love. Taxes are providing for this person, as well as my family's love for my aunt (which translates into dollars).
I think that BitKeeper, and I, are well within our rights to say, "I don't CARE about that guy. He's affecting my parents, he's affecting my friends, he's affecting me. It's my money, it's my work, it's my LIFE! Let me choose who I want to support and draw the line there."
Before you get out of line, remember that if you do successfully dominate the world you could watch The Two Towers as a live reenactment put on by your slaves^H^H^H^H^Hminions^H^H^H^H^Hadmirers.
Ironically, when friends of ours told us that they were dating people they'd met over the Internet, our first reaction was to freak out. "Oh," we'd say, "the Internet was different back when we met online ('93 and '94). It's not the same anymore." Which is, of course, true, but to a degree we're just vulnerable to the same stupid hysteria that affects everyone else (read: non geek types) regarding online relationships.
I think you're being unnecessarily harsh on yourself. The types of people that you meet in a MUD, MUSH, MOO, or whatever are, by the game's very nature, usually pre-filtered so as to have a much lower percentage of wackos.
Now with the pervasiveness of IM'ing and whatnot any joker can "meet someone online".
I think there is a down-moderator contingent on the loose right now. I've been posting to/. for 4 years now and I was just recently BANNED for 72 hours because of down-moderation.
Slashdot Mirror
I think a legitimate libertarian complaint would be:
If I have to spend one tax, ie non-voluntary, dollar to develop free cars then it's too much.
This position would be even stronger if this person lives in a city wherein he doesn't need to drive and probably never will.
It becomes very dangerous when someone else is allowed to decide that "short term disasters" are really for the public good in the long run. I'm sure that there are many Japanese-Americans who were interred during WWII who might agree, for example.
I'm lucky I only read the first part of your post.
You really need to put a warning before you quote stuff like that.
Unless, of course, the whale wouldn't have been harpooned and might have died of toxins or something.
??
It was a popular song in the 80s.
Styx, Kilroy Was Here, 1983.
Sometimes, I put a huge piece of raw ground beef on a celery stick and eat it like a lollipop, but that's only once in a while.
You do that too? Our family always called those Meat Trees. Like, "Yay! Meat Trees for dinner! Yay!"
Mod this up. -1 Troll is a terrible joke.
Why don't you mod up some posts that are erroneously marked troll or offtopic? Usually these are bogus moderations, but once modded to zero they rarely bounce back.
There is a huge need for moderators to repair other moderators' damage, if you catch my drift.
GPL
I will second the "require original box" policy. My labmate's Viewsonic died and he went through the same crap. Luckily Viewsonic actually has a local presence in Los Angeles so he just drove the monitor there and handed it to them.
In bars in New Orleans, at least, there are women, working for cigarette companies, who walk around with a large box full of "sample" packs of cigarettes. She'll just check your id and hand you whatever you want.
Maybe guys take that job, too, but I never saw any.
Man, you're whipped. hehe
I'm wondering why they're already showing that movie on planes if it's still in the theaters?
I'm not doubting you, but isn't this rather uncommon? Is it an independent thing?
I have, by merely posting this message within 20 (Earth) minutes of the time at which you wrote your own message, proven you wrong, in at least an empirical sense.
It is unfortunate for you, jpmorgan, that our "calculations" (the closest word in your English) do not predict the successful transference of knowledge between our species over the course of the next 7,342 of your Earth years.
Instead of just standing there, why don't you pick up that rock and keep it away from them?
I bought a copy of Dune from Ace Books and found the editing errors to be enormously distracting. The most egregious, and recurring, errors were single, and sometimes multiple, arbitrary lines in a different fontsize than the others. Three pages had the left side of the text completely missing due to a bad cut of the paper.
I've plowed through many a $3-5 fantasy book and have never seen such publishing problems. What gives nowadays?
You are very angry.
I think I understand exactly where you are coming from, though, and I'm sorry if you feel that I misrepresented you in any fashion. I would put together a long and involved response at the moment, but I am going to need time to do so and I don't have it right now.
Cheerio, BitKeeper, I'll write something up early tomorrow or late tomorrow night. I just hope that this stupid web system keeps it ontopic for a sufficient period of time for you and anyone else who cares to notice.
Well, she wrote it originally. By writing it again yourself, without attributing it, you are effectively claiming that it's a first work.
If I were to then say, "That's DYNOMITE! I'm going to quote that!" and attribute it to BitKeeper then someone is going to kick my ass later by pointing out that Ayn Rand wrote it first.
Your misattribution will affect me and others.
yeah, sweeeeet.
although that one is already solved, it seems.
Like what, go? There are assloads of info about go. If not go, then please be more specific.
Shouldn't you credit Ayn Rand with this? Otherwise you're verging on plagiarism.
I don't mean this in a bad way (like you're crazy or stealing), I just mean that this sounds SO like one of her rants that perhaps you might just make mention of the fact that she has been a bit influential in your life.
Please see my other response in this thread. I hope you find it interesting.
It seems that your beliefs can pretty much be summed up in one sentence: It is possible, with extreme amounts of work and self-discipline, to pull oneself out of any situation into success, therefore anybody who doesn't do that deserves their place in life.
Imagine, please, that our society was still back in a nomadic period. Now, in that society, how much charity do you think existed to help out those who were unable, at any given time, to pull their own weight? Assuredly it was low. Tribal members that were incapable of any given task were burdens and required special accomodation. It would be only through the development of personal relations that these individuals could possibly withstand the wrath of the bulk of the rest of the tribe in periods of hardship.
Fast-forward to our current (in the US) society. There is no such thing as direct tribal wrath. A person can be a hermit and still collect the same welfare check as a diligent worker who happens to be on hard times. There is a vast net there to catch and enable all of those who haven't "found their place" at the moment. This, IMO, is because we have developed enough wealth to accomodate those persons who MAY be able to contribute something in the future. When all is said and done, it is worth the possible loss of resources in order to rehabilitate someone (in the sense of giving them a job, food, whatever) on the off-chance that they might actually BE rehabilitated and contribute back to society. In an economical sense, when one marginalizes over time, the cost of welfare is paid back and more.
BitKeeper's point, if I may put words in his/her mouth, is that people who leech off the system, or who permanently accept a minimum wage (one-rung up from leeching) job as their career-path are already receiving more than ever before in history. It is not up to BitKeeper, you, or I to continue to provide for these people (and BitKeeper and I probably assume that minimum wage is inflated) just because they happen to be here. Ergo, they "deserve that place in life".
While that is valid philosophy, I personally find it morally repulsive. Give me one good reason why we, as a society, should not consider it our obligation to ensure that every member has as high a quality of life as possible, even if for some reason they are unable to do work.
Regardless of whether you find this perspective morally repulsive, it does not change the fact that those who have this viewpoint generally believe very strongly in the human capability to achieve. A reason, and I think it is a good one, for not attempting to provide for every single person on the planet is that there are many people that will not THINK about what they are requiring of others in order to survive. If you, psicE, can think of one person who expects welfare or any other government-supplied aid not because of their investment in it, but because it's always there, then you already know someone who does not truly recognize the sacrifice made by others to provide that system for them.
BitKeeper would probably like to minimize those instances. He, and I, would like to build a system that rewards those who work hard and properly chastizes those who simply take and take without realizing (or especially if they do) the consequences.
Also, what about illegal immigrants? They sneak into the US, attempting to find whatever job they can get; there's a house-cleaning service around where I live, staffed by Portuguese immigrants - though I have no evidence to back it up, I'd be surprised if a single one was legal. And these immigrants provide many services that US upper-class citizens enjoy, that very few non-recent-immigrant US residents want to do. Yet, because they don't want to get deported, these residents are unable to qualify for any benefits - so they really are working huge weeks to put food on the table.
I have a fairly interesting background for this sort of discussion. My father is Mexican. I was born and raised in San Diego. No one in my gigantic, huge, enormous family (that counts) is NOT a hard worker. We have massive sympathy for the staggering number of illegals that come into where we live looking for work. My nuclear family has dealt with many local initiatives spawned either from purely racist, neighborhood [upkeep in the sense of market-value] conservatist (which is not necessarily bad), and/or good-meaning intentions (in a humanitarian sense). The only consistent aspect of these dealings is the illegal aliens just want a job. They have braved many adventures to get where they are. They don't really care that much about dental plans or life insurance. Schooling is a non-issue. These people do the SHIT jobs that no one else wants to do because those jobs still need to be done. They know, and they are correct, that the SHIT work that they do here in the States will pay better than the non-work that they may or may not have back in Tijuana or the outskirts where they might live.
I would like to see THESE people rewarded for their efforts. The problem is that they are not citizens of the U.S. I, Buck2, because of the way the current system is setup, have to pay for these individuals whenever they get hurt. I have to pay for the policing of those individuals who come here just to make noise. I have to pay for the problems that happen in another country, basically. I don't think that anyone who is against taxes/(accomodation for the unfit) is generally also against humans, they merely want those social organizations (Mexico, Puerto Rico, etc) to take care of their own in a similar fashion as what we do for ourselves.
A civilized society cannot rightly ignore such factors, and should insure, at the least, that nobody starves.
I think that many would agree with you. My aunt is living with an invalid, though. he cannot get out of his wheelchair. He has not paid his bills in months, the bank which gave them the mortgage for his home wants to repossess the home and move on with their business. Are you going to stand there and tell me that everyone in the USA should pledge a dollar to save this guy's ass because he's crippled and can't make any money?
My parents, both with no more than a mid-sixties high school education, have busted their asses, made wise investments, and are just those sorts of middle-class targets to leech off of to pay for my aunt's love. Taxes are providing for this person, as well as my family's love for my aunt (which translates into dollars).
I think that BitKeeper, and I, are well within our rights to say, "I don't CARE about that guy. He's affecting my parents, he's affecting my friends, he's affecting me. It's my money, it's my work, it's my LIFE! Let me choose who I want to support and draw the line there."
Before you get out of line, remember that if you do successfully dominate the world you could watch The Two Towers as a live reenactment put on by your slaves^H^H^H^H^Hminions^H^H^H^H^Hadmirers.
Why is this a troll? It's funny.
Ironically, when friends of ours told us that they were dating people they'd met over the Internet, our first reaction was to freak out. "Oh," we'd say, "the Internet was different back when we met online ('93 and '94). It's not the same anymore." Which is, of course, true, but to a degree we're just vulnerable to the same stupid hysteria that affects everyone else (read: non geek types) regarding online relationships.
I think you're being unnecessarily harsh on yourself. The types of people that you meet in a MUD, MUSH, MOO, or whatever are, by the game's very nature, usually pre-filtered so as to have a much lower percentage of wackos.
Now with the pervasiveness of IM'ing and whatnot any joker can "meet someone online".
Times ARE different, for better or for worse.
I think there is a down-moderator contingent on the loose right now. I've been posting to /. for 4 years now and I was just recently BANNED for 72 hours because of down-moderation.
It's sick. Sick, I tell you.