I think you underestimate how difficult it is to get a handgun in the UK. So what about enthusiasts? They're a small number of nut-jobs, and gun possession isn't a divine right.
The UK has this, and the advantage that it's an island nation, near a continent whose nations also have strong gun control. And yet violent crime has risen since the UK banned handguns. In fact, violent crime using handguns has risen since the ban was enacted. I'm not saying that the increased violence is a result of the ban; cause and effect are very hard to tease out given the large number of factors that affect crime rates.
Violent crime, and murders are on a long term decline in the UK. The handgun ban is irrelevance, as before the ban hardly anyone had a handgun other than enthusiasts. It's not like the entire population was walking around like John Wayne.
You'll find that socio-economic factors have more to do with crime than anything else, and they can't be solved by yet more expensive technology.
What exactly is too slow for conditions? I can't think of a situation in which driving slower isn't safer unless you're being chased by zombies. It'd be simple to reduce speed limits in urban areas to 20mph, enforced by speed cameras and $1000 fines.
Isn't that an issue of demand? In most countries poor areas are full of greengrocers and markets selling cheap fruit and veg. Shops, especially the chains, are normally pretty in tune with what people want to buy.
They taste a lot better most of the time than stuff that is good for you without qualification. That keeps your brain cookin with pleasure-inducing chemistry.
Actually a lot of junk food doesn't actually taste very good, or of anything at all, it just has the right levels of fat, salt and sugar to stimulate the brain's reward response. Consider McDonalds, when you eat it the brain gives you a reward so it feels good to eat, even though there isn't actually any flavour in it.
You do realize that the USA has 400.000 military personnel and China.... well 1.600.000....... Not saying they have the boats to get them all anywhere, but I would think they can deliver quite a punch if they need to.
So China has a 4:1 man advantage. In the second opium war, China had a 10:1 man advantage over France and Britain, and still lost hopelessly. Don't underestimate the effect of technology and experience. China has millions of troops who have never seen a war and an organisation which has never been tested.
Every dollar that goverment spends is one less dollar that the individual spends. In fact, the return on government spending is LESS than individual spending (I'm trying to dig up those numbers now).
You cannot spend your way out of a recession. That money is best left in the hands of the individuals to spend as they will. Will some people resort to the hoarder mentality? Yep but it's not an absolute.
Ok, a few points here: 1. A dollar that the government spends is more likely to be spent domestically than a consumer dollar spent on imports. 2. Yeah you'd better dig that up. 3. Government deficit spending is funded by borrowing and quantitative easing, i.e. money that would not otherwise have been spent by individuals. 4. The Keynes school of economics is why we're not in a second depression. 5. The hoarder mentality is why Japan has been so stagnant. When people aren't confident of keeping their jobs, people won't spend unless necessary, which is why government has to spend. 6. Cutting government spending accentuates a recession, anyone with even the remotest understanding of economics understands this.
So the government is bad because it pays its workers living wages, and capitalism is good because it keeps down the wages of the people who do the work and hand it all over to the rich? I suppose that's the opinion you would hold if you received your news from a publication run by a billionaire sociopath.
Most worryingly, though, it is the newspaper whose political leanings decide the result of the UK's General Elections.
You've got it backwards, the Sun backs who it thinks is already going to win. The Tories were miles ahead in the poll for years, Murdoch suddenly put his weight behind them, and they've been on a gradual decline ever since. I doubt most Sun readers even vote.
How much money does the Scott Trust actually have? It'd cost them a billion or so to keep the Guardian going for twenty years, and that's before the incoming government pulls all the adverts for new Mandarins.
My bank needed no federal handout to survive. Neither did my car company.
Actually, both of them needed bailouts to survive, even if they didn't receive any directly. When a bank goes bust, everyone there loses their savings, therefore can't buy any cars. The banks who were owed money by that bank also go bust, and more companies go bust. Millions lose their jobs and default on their mortgages, the mortgages owned by your bank which also goes bust.
The problem with libertarianism is that its proponents have no understanding of economics and think they exist in a vacuum.
Always? Socialism isn't even two hundred years old, and there have hardly been any attempts at it. It took capitalism thousands of years to produce a society that wasn't a brutally oppressive serfdom.
Except the US is not a 'former' adultery, it's been doing it for the best part of half a century. When was the last time China tried to assassinate a foreign head of state? When did China fund the overthrow of a democratic government to replace it with a genocidal dictatorship favourable to Chinese interests?
Socialism means the workers control the means of production. How much control or ownership do you think the average Chinese labourer has over the sweatshop he works in?
Also remember, that Sergey Brin's parents were academics, which made them an active target of the government.
Under the Soviet bloc, you didn't become an academic unless you supported and abetted the government. It's likely that Brin's parents were part of that totalitarianism, that they enjoyed favoured status by reporting dissidents etc.
You can't have a middle class unless you have an upper class. Kill the upper class and you kill the middle class. They are joined at the hip. So keep attacking their wealth and soon we will all be poor. Class warfare never ends well.
The last few decades have seen a decline in the middle class whilst the upper class gets smaller and vastly richer. Kill the middle class and the first world returns to the middle ages, or at best somewhere like Mexico or Brazil. The upper class isn't anywhere near as important as you think it is, the world needs middle class workers more than it needs sports stars, CEOs and heirs.
If people had to cut their energy consumption in half within a year, only the most stupid would not be able to do so. I think you underestimate how much waste there is in modern civilisation.
There's also the government's terrible record for procurement. Is it worth eliminating a few thousand pen-pushing jobs with a multi-billion pound IT project? Especially as most of that pen-pusher's salary will be dragged back through taxes and savings in welfare.
Plus the laid-off workers probably won't be able to find another job. There are already millions on the dole, and anyone laid off in their 50s or later is effectively on the scrapheap.
Slashdot Mirror
That's now 11 million PC gamers who won't buy another game because they've been addicted to WoW for five years.
I think you underestimate how difficult it is to get a handgun in the UK. So what about enthusiasts? They're a small number of nut-jobs, and gun possession isn't a divine right.
Violent crime, and murders are on a long term decline in the UK. The handgun ban is irrelevance, as before the ban hardly anyone had a handgun other than enthusiasts. It's not like the entire population was walking around like John Wayne.
You'll find that socio-economic factors have more to do with crime than anything else, and they can't be solved by yet more expensive technology.
http://www.xkcd.com/
Because then people would just live even further away from where they need to be.
What exactly is too slow for conditions? I can't think of a situation in which driving slower isn't safer unless you're being chased by zombies. It'd be simple to reduce speed limits in urban areas to 20mph, enforced by speed cameras and $1000 fines.
Isn't that an issue of demand? In most countries poor areas are full of greengrocers and markets selling cheap fruit and veg. Shops, especially the chains, are normally pretty in tune with what people want to buy.
Actually a lot of junk food doesn't actually taste very good, or of anything at all, it just has the right levels of fat, salt and sugar to stimulate the brain's reward response. Consider McDonalds, when you eat it the brain gives you a reward so it feels good to eat, even though there isn't actually any flavour in it.
That's true if you eat nothing but processed convenience foods. Maybe the real problem is that your pantry is full of crap rather than actual food.
Stop worshipping the rich. It will solve all of your problems.
Who is this 'they' who would make politicians reduce their own standards of living?
So China has a 4:1 man advantage. In the second opium war, China had a 10:1 man advantage over France and Britain, and still lost hopelessly. Don't underestimate the effect of technology and experience. China has millions of troops who have never seen a war and an organisation which has never been tested.
Ok, a few points here:
1. A dollar that the government spends is more likely to be spent domestically than a consumer dollar spent on imports.
2. Yeah you'd better dig that up.
3. Government deficit spending is funded by borrowing and quantitative easing, i.e. money that would not otherwise have been spent by individuals.
4. The Keynes school of economics is why we're not in a second depression.
5. The hoarder mentality is why Japan has been so stagnant. When people aren't confident of keeping their jobs, people won't spend unless necessary, which is why government has to spend.
6. Cutting government spending accentuates a recession, anyone with even the remotest understanding of economics understands this.
So the government is bad because it pays its workers living wages, and capitalism is good because it keeps down the wages of the people who do the work and hand it all over to the rich? I suppose that's the opinion you would hold if you received your news from a publication run by a billionaire sociopath.
You've got it backwards, the Sun backs who it thinks is already going to win. The Tories were miles ahead in the poll for years, Murdoch suddenly put his weight behind them, and they've been on a gradual decline ever since. I doubt most Sun readers even vote.
How much money does the Scott Trust actually have? It'd cost them a billion or so to keep the Guardian going for twenty years, and that's before the incoming government pulls all the adverts for new Mandarins.
Actually, both of them needed bailouts to survive, even if they didn't receive any directly. When a bank goes bust, everyone there loses their savings, therefore can't buy any cars. The banks who were owed money by that bank also go bust, and more companies go bust. Millions lose their jobs and default on their mortgages, the mortgages owned by your bank which also goes bust.
The problem with libertarianism is that its proponents have no understanding of economics and think they exist in a vacuum.
Always? Socialism isn't even two hundred years old, and there have hardly been any attempts at it. It took capitalism thousands of years to produce a society that wasn't a brutally oppressive serfdom.
Except the US is not a 'former' adultery, it's been doing it for the best part of half a century. When was the last time China tried to assassinate a foreign head of state? When did China fund the overthrow of a democratic government to replace it with a genocidal dictatorship favourable to Chinese interests?
Socialism means the workers control the means of production. How much control or ownership do you think the average Chinese labourer has over the sweatshop he works in?
Under the Soviet bloc, you didn't become an academic unless you supported and abetted the government. It's likely that Brin's parents were part of that totalitarianism, that they enjoyed favoured status by reporting dissidents etc.
The last few decades have seen a decline in the middle class whilst the upper class gets smaller and vastly richer. Kill the middle class and the first world returns to the middle ages, or at best somewhere like Mexico or Brazil. The upper class isn't anywhere near as important as you think it is, the world needs middle class workers more than it needs sports stars, CEOs and heirs.
If people had to cut their energy consumption in half within a year, only the most stupid would not be able to do so. I think you underestimate how much waste there is in modern civilisation.
There's also the government's terrible record for procurement. Is it worth eliminating a few thousand pen-pushing jobs with a multi-billion pound IT project? Especially as most of that pen-pusher's salary will be dragged back through taxes and savings in welfare.
Plus the laid-off workers probably won't be able to find another job. There are already millions on the dole, and anyone laid off in their 50s or later is effectively on the scrapheap.
Fourth, it'd lead to all sorts of complications with European trade laws.