Parent post makes me think we need a "+1 Off-Topic" mod.
Perhaps "+1 Better Topic" would be more appropriate? "Off-Topic" has a somewhat negative connotation. Also, it would go well with the proposed "-1 Too Informative" mod.
Decorating (I want this room in a different shade of blue).
The robot would be so astronomically large to do the painting it would be impractical. It would need to be able to move every object away from the wall, without damaging it. Even if you move it for the stuff, in order to reach the ceilings and walls it would be very tall.
Given that a human could do that job, why would the robot need to be "astronomically large"? I'd say a human-sized robot should be able to do the job, provided it can use tools similar to those a human would use. Alternately, if you removed everything from the walls first a small wall-crawling bot might be able get the job done as well; that would require less clearance (both in terms of physical space and risk of inadvertently painting objects in the room) and might avoid the necessity of moving any heavy furniture.
In the future, it might be helpful if you would give some sort of warning before redefining well-known economic terms like "cost" and "time preference".
In standard economic parlance, "cost" is always positive, because it refers to the most-valued thing you must give up in exchange for what you choose; all choices have positive costs because every choice excludes some other option of positive value. You are simply stating that your creative endeavors are, to you, leisure activities (a first-order good) and not labor (a "means to an end" or higher-order good).
"Time preference" refers to the concept that all goods are preferred sooner rather than later; i.e. that a good available now has a greater present demand than a good available at some point in the future. (E.g. $100 now is worth more than that same $100 a year from now, but perhaps about the same as $110. The extra $10 is the interest.) What you referred to in your post was not "time preference" but rather the opportunity cost of your leisure time, the amount you give up by choosing an hour of leisure over the same time spent on labor.
You made several interesting and useful points (and several false ones, probably due to misinterpretation of the above concepts), but correct terminology is important if you want to do more than simply confuse your readers.
If a 7 year old cannot be tried as an adult for shooting someone (in self defence, or otherwise), then they cannot possess the right to own a gun.
All well and good, but if you're going to take that line of reasoning -- that rights are withheld because the subject is protected from responsibility for exercise of said rights -- then the subject should be permitted to waive that protection at any age in exchange for full adult rights. Otherwise it's not that the subject is inherently unable to take responsibility, but rather that you won't let them do so, which means that you are responsible for withholding their rights and your justification suddenly evaporates.
If you were to take one small step further and assert that any conscious attempt to exercise adult rights implies acceptance of adult responsibilities, then the age distinction would almost vanish.
Furthermore, this whole debate presumes a system of positive rights, which has plenty of internal contradictions on its own without even bringing up the child/adult distinction. Systems based on negative rights don't have to distinguish between groups based on age or responsibility.
HOWEVER: since you've appointed yourselves the arbiter of what your system will carry, you are no longer a common carrier and you are no longer afforded the protections of a common carrier.
Someone says this on every single article relating to traffic shaping, QoS, or filtering. Somehow this one even got a +5 Insightful (at one point), despite being based on an invalid premise. ISPs are not common carriers. The line-level divisions of the telecommunications companies are common carriers. The divisions relating to actual Internet service, and other non-telco ISPs like Comcast, are "information carriers" (or some such label) and not subject to common-carrier regulations. The ISPs don't want to be common carriers; they're much better off as they are. You can't threaten them with withdrawing a regulatory status they never had and never wanted.
Think about it -- why would you want to see another application's tool pallets when you're not working in it?
This behavior would interact poorly with the UNIX-standard "focus follows mouse" window management policy. Your pallets would tend to disappear whenever you happened to move the mouse across one background window or another to get to them. (The same issue applies to displaying the focused applications' menubar across the top of the screen.)
I suppose one could compensate by using the z-order instead of focus, assuming that information is readily available on all the platforms the GIMP was designed to run on.
Why does the gas company not make me have a contract? the electric company? hmmm?
First, they do have an implicit contract for payment in exchange for services rendered. Second, they either make you pay a deposit (in case you don't pay up later), or require evidence of good credit, or make you pay a month in advance (like most phone bills). Most importantly, they're only extending you one month's worth of well-insured credit at a time. There's always overhead and risk involved in signing up a new customer -- particularly if they're handing you a couple hundred dollars' worth of electrics as part of the deal -- and without a long-term contract there's no way they could extend that kind of credit. Everyone would have to pay the activation costs, the cost of the hardware, etc. up front.
Lastly, if you agreed to the contract you've claimed to have read it and known what you were getting into. Anyone who would do that and then later turn around and demand to have the contract voided as "unfair" is a far better example of a "thief" or "con-man" than the companies you're denouncing.
Your argument that somehow my example was an argument for absolute rights is absurd, because the sludge owner is being forced to do something he doesn't want to do.
No, the sludge owner is being prevented from doing something that he wants to do (store his sludge in an unshielded pool) on the basis that it would violate his neighbor's property rights to do so. It makes perfect sense when considered from the point of view of negative rights, and no one is forced to do anything against their will.
Both positions are absolute, but only the position based on negative rights is self-consistent. The concept of negative property rights has significant precedent, although I will admit that you don't see it much of late; it is often summed up informally with the saying "your right to swing your fist stops at the end of my nose" -- meaning you can act as you wish, provided the property rights of others are respected.
As you so astutely pointed out, absolute property rights are impossible, because they would conflict with each other in almost every conceivable way. Systems based on positive obligation have the same issue, to a lesser extent. Negative rights, however, are consistent because overlapping limitations (unlike overlapping permissions or obligations) can exist without conflict.
If you could cite a source for your assertion that people historically argue from the position of positive property rights, I'd be glad to see it. In my experience most people are not fundamentally lawless (the logical conclusion of absolute positive rights is, obviously, that no action can ever be wrong) so I don't think you'll find such a source anywhere.
Property rights are not, and never have been, absolute rights. I can not fill my backyard swimming pool full of radioactive sludge no matter how much I want to.
Why not? Provided you're not violating their absolute property rights by poisioning or irradiating them, I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to store whatever you like in your backyard pool.
Rights are negative, not positive. They describe what other people can't do to you, not what you can do. The fact that you can't act so as to poison or irradiate your neighbours is an example of absolute property rights, not an exception to them. By the same argument, they can't take action to stop you from filling your pool with radioactive sludge (or whatever) unless you happen to be violating their rights by doing so. This simple principle is the basis for most of the common law.
Keynesian economics haven't been "modern" for a while now. If you look at current policies it becomes clear that the whole "waste makes wealth" thing didn't work out, and they're working on some alternate theories -- ones that don't promote consumption at the expense of saving and investment.
The policies you propose -- bailing out failing businesses, extending easy credit, and generally wasting valuable resources in a futile attempt to put off the inevitable market correction to the malinvestments of the boom period -- are exactly how we ended up with the Great Depression. There's a complete analysis of the Depression available if you need further details.
Really? Can't the kids sell the copyright, and then invest the sale proceeds?
Sure they can, but that's not the same thing. Investment meants putting something toward a productive use. Copyrights per se have no productive use. While the copyright does confer a relative material advantage on its "owner" it can only do so by restricting everyone else. The "owner" has no resources or abilities it would not have in the absence of the copyright; instead, everyone else's natural abilities are curtailed to create that advantage for the "owner".
It's no different than if I decreed that everyone must, from now on, refrain from gathering their own water and instead purchase bottled water from me. Such a decree would have immense monetary value to myself, and to anyone I might choose to sell it to -- assuming for the moment that I could enforce it -- but only because everyone else has been unjustly restricted.
If you want to justify copyright, you'll first need to come up with an explanation for how a priviledge-based incentive system of dubious value could possibly justify infringing upon everyone's freedom of non-aggressive action.
Well, your kids (and grandkids) are lucky [individuals], because I know of no other line of work where your kids are getting paid for something you did when you were alive, while the kids are doing nothing themselves to earn it (besides being your kids).
every other form of inheritance?
No, normal inheritance is different. The kids only receive a one-time gift, not a continuing income. Any income past that point is the result of their own choice to defer gratification and instead invest that gift so that others can benefit from it.
In contrast, you can't invest a copyright; once the work has actually been created, the copyright can only represent a continuing loss to society, since copyright is only the legal right to artificially restrict the distribution of something that would otherwise be unlimited in supply, and such artificial restrictions are, of course, always a loss. This loss can be reduced -- creating a relative profit -- by reducing the copyright's scope through licensing, or by eliminating the copyright entirely, but a copyright is not a resource that can be invested, i.e. employed toward further production.
Government should own and maintain all of the lines and rent space on them to the (to any) ISPs. Not control over what goes over the lines, just the physical wire connecting 2 points.
Not a bad idea, provided that by "government" you mean local governments, or better yet a bunch of private co-ops, and not a state or federal government. (Not that the federal government could provide it legally without a Constitutional amendment.)
In my experience, bittorrent transfers are much faster on my Comcast connection when I choose to encrypt them. That suggests to me that Comcast is indeed throttling normal bittorrent traffic.
An alternate explanation would be that most of the well-connected peers may require encryption by this point; then you'd see the same effect even without interference from Comcast.
1) Under the Constitution Congress has the authority to grant copyrights and patents, not a responsibility to do so. If so inclined, Ron Paul could push for the elimination of copyrights and patents without encountering any Constitutional barriers. (Political ones, for sure, but not Constitutional.)
2) Perhaps you were only referring to members of the U.S. Libertarian Party, who tend to be strict Constitutionalists, but idolizing the Constitution is hardly a basic libertarian trait. Even ignoring the sizable number of libertarians who are not statists of any variety -- myself included -- many libertarians are minarchists who would hardly approve of Congress creating laws just because the Constitution grants them the authority to do so. The fact that you can do something doesn't mean it's a good idea.
But to add navigation to the Nokia is $120 for three years.
That's for the voice navigation service. The device includes the GPS unit and localized maps, so I suspect you could use it for general visual navigation out-of-the-box, just without the additional voice features (which are only $3.33/mo. anyway).
In the situation we're discussing, the 911 system has been 'hacked' and the SWAT team are given bogus information. They don't know it's bogus: they're responding to the kind of dangerous situation that they are supposed to respond to.
I agree. For the record, I never said there was anything wrong with what they actually did, although they should've taken into account the fact that their information could be falsified even without an ANI 'hack'; I objected to the idea that shooting someone on their own property could be justified solely on the basis of an unverified anonymous tip, when they could quite reasonably be acting in self-defense. The situation would've been different if they'd verified that someone was actually in danger.
If someone at that premises appears to be an imminent threat to them, of course they're going to respond with force, often lethal force.
If anything, the SWAT team poses a far more imminent threat to the property owner than visa-versa, judging by relative numbers and armament. Any threat to the SWAT team itself is due to their own uninvited and highly suspicious presence; if one or more members of the team gets shot for impersonating a group of well-armed bandits it would be entirely their own fault.
Moreover, if the SWAT team hasn't yet verified the caller's claims first-hand, then they have to assume that the owner is merely acting in self-defense. If they shot someone acting in reasonable self defense on their own property, that too would be their responsibility, since they created the situation in the first place. Even for a SWAT team there must remain a presumption of innocence on the part of the accused; no one can be above the law in a free society.
I think individualists in general (of which Slashdot has a large representation, particularly when stories like this come up) tend to be pro-self-defense, which generally translates into "pro-gun" sentiment. The argument applies to self-defense in general, though, not just guns.
The other police see him point the gun and shoot him. This... would not have the fault of the police nor reflect badly on their training or on the quality of their work.
I don't know about that. Generally I would consider someone to be at fault if they choose enter someone else's property without permission and end up shooting the owner. The owner has every right to be there, and to be armed, and to defend itself against intruders. Shooting someone for defending themselves against a threat you created hardly counts as self-defense, particularly when you're an uninvited guest on their property.
without rulers, or authority, there is nothing at all to stop anyone from seizing power & turning it into a totalitarian dictatorship.
You know, I never considered that. Such a simple solution to people using force to grab power: just give up and hand the power over to them without a fight. </sarcasm>
Your argument is no different than suggesting poverty as the solution to theft, or suicide as the cure for murder. The problem is the loss of property, or life -- or freedom -- not the theft, murder, or false claim of authority that leads to such states.
anarchism assumes that nobody will try to seize power.... therefore it cannot possibly work, long term, in a large group, unless everybody is 'good' & doesnt try to seize power through force, for their own gain.
They can try all they like; the system will work until someone actually succeeds. Perhaps you were thinking of pacifism?
Like communism and anarchy, it relies on the flawed axiom that humans are, at their core, good.
Communism presumes that all the members of the commune can effectively coordinate their actions toward a common set of goals. This matches what you said if and only if "good" is defined as the will of the majority of the group. This, BTW, is why communism doesn't scale: a small group may share common goals (i.e. concept of "good"), but the larger the group becomes the less likely it is that they will all agree on their goals and the best ways of achieving them.
Anarchism (any variant) doesn't presume any particular definition of "good", so it's meaningless to say that it relies on people being fundamentally "good". The most basic principle in anarchism is that no one has the right to govern anyone else (defn: "without rulers"). If anything, this could be taken as an assertion that no one is good, or at least that no one is better than anyone else, because if someone were objectively better they would at least have a rational excuse for telling the lesser beings around them what to do.
Lets skip over for a moment that they still don't have alt text for that image.
Why would anyone want a non-empty ALT property for a 1x1 image containing only a single transparent pixel (presumably for layout purposes)? It seems to me that their ALT text matches the visual content of the image perfectly. Anything else would disrupt the plain-text layout to no advantage.
I'm sorry -- someone should've notified you in advance that this discussion is intended to those who actually care whether what they believe in is true or false. Once someone reaches the point of simply believing whatever they wish to believe, as you have, debate becomes both impossible and irrelevant.
3) The current (unfree) political climate prevents that organization from existing.
Are you trying to say that such an organization would be illegal under current law? Because I don't think it would be. I'd happily concede (1) and (2), but I think (3) requires further clarification.
In a free society, a majority of people would successfully reject ageism.
So you say. Of course, you can't prove that in the absence of an actual free society. The only thing you can be sure of on this point is that in a free society there would be no involuntary ban on age-based discrimination, since the absence of involuntary bans is part of the definition of a free society.
Personally I think there would still be some discrimination, because for the most part I believe discrimination is not evidence of prejudice, but rather the cost of acquiring more targeted information. When all the costs are taken into account it's probably at least somewhat more efficient for those that do not fit the stereotype to work a bit harder to get noticed than it is for everyone to assume -- contrary to historical evidence -- that the stereotype is wrong.
As a consequence of our unfree society, the question becomes whether the minority or majority position dominates the whole population. Isn't it more just to let the majority rule in this context, even taking freedom of association into account?
You're attempting to set up a false dichotomy; it it not just for either the minority or the majority position to dominate. I do not intend to be draw into a debate over which unjust position is somehow more justifiable than the other when the entire issue can be easily avoided by simply acknowledging that no one has the right to dominate anyone else, regardless of their level of popular support. Rule by majority is, after all, merely the collectivist version of the "might makes right" principle of minority rule.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps "+1 Better Topic" would be more appropriate? "Off-Topic" has a somewhat negative connotation. Also, it would go well with the proposed "-1 Too Informative" mod.
Given that a human could do that job, why would the robot need to be "astronomically large"? I'd say a human-sized robot should be able to do the job, provided it can use tools similar to those a human would use. Alternately, if you removed everything from the walls first a small wall-crawling bot might be able get the job done as well; that would require less clearance (both in terms of physical space and risk of inadvertently painting objects in the room) and might avoid the necessity of moving any heavy furniture.
In the future, it might be helpful if you would give some sort of warning before redefining well-known economic terms like "cost" and "time preference".
In standard economic parlance, "cost" is always positive, because it refers to the most-valued thing you must give up in exchange for what you choose; all choices have positive costs because every choice excludes some other option of positive value. You are simply stating that your creative endeavors are, to you, leisure activities (a first-order good) and not labor (a "means to an end" or higher-order good).
"Time preference" refers to the concept that all goods are preferred sooner rather than later; i.e. that a good available now has a greater present demand than a good available at some point in the future. (E.g. $100 now is worth more than that same $100 a year from now, but perhaps about the same as $110. The extra $10 is the interest.) What you referred to in your post was not "time preference" but rather the opportunity cost of your leisure time, the amount you give up by choosing an hour of leisure over the same time spent on labor.
You made several interesting and useful points (and several false ones, probably due to misinterpretation of the above concepts), but correct terminology is important if you want to do more than simply confuse your readers.
All well and good, but if you're going to take that line of reasoning -- that rights are withheld because the subject is protected from responsibility for exercise of said rights -- then the subject should be permitted to waive that protection at any age in exchange for full adult rights. Otherwise it's not that the subject is inherently unable to take responsibility, but rather that you won't let them do so, which means that you are responsible for withholding their rights and your justification suddenly evaporates.
If you were to take one small step further and assert that any conscious attempt to exercise adult rights implies acceptance of adult responsibilities, then the age distinction would almost vanish.
Furthermore, this whole debate presumes a system of positive rights, which has plenty of internal contradictions on its own without even bringing up the child/adult distinction. Systems based on negative rights don't have to distinguish between groups based on age or responsibility.
Someone says this on every single article relating to traffic shaping, QoS, or filtering. Somehow this one even got a +5 Insightful (at one point), despite being based on an invalid premise. ISPs are not common carriers. The line-level divisions of the telecommunications companies are common carriers. The divisions relating to actual Internet service, and other non-telco ISPs like Comcast, are "information carriers" (or some such label) and not subject to common-carrier regulations. The ISPs don't want to be common carriers; they're much better off as they are. You can't threaten them with withdrawing a regulatory status they never had and never wanted.
This behavior would interact poorly with the UNIX-standard "focus follows mouse" window management policy. Your pallets would tend to disappear whenever you happened to move the mouse across one background window or another to get to them. (The same issue applies to displaying the focused applications' menubar across the top of the screen.)
I suppose one could compensate by using the z-order instead of focus, assuming that information is readily available on all the platforms the GIMP was designed to run on.
First, they do have an implicit contract for payment in exchange for services rendered. Second, they either make you pay a deposit (in case you don't pay up later), or require evidence of good credit, or make you pay a month in advance (like most phone bills). Most importantly, they're only extending you one month's worth of well-insured credit at a time. There's always overhead and risk involved in signing up a new customer -- particularly if they're handing you a couple hundred dollars' worth of electrics as part of the deal -- and without a long-term contract there's no way they could extend that kind of credit. Everyone would have to pay the activation costs, the cost of the hardware, etc. up front.
Lastly, if you agreed to the contract you've claimed to have read it and known what you were getting into. Anyone who would do that and then later turn around and demand to have the contract voided as "unfair" is a far better example of a "thief" or "con-man" than the companies you're denouncing.
No, the sludge owner is being prevented from doing something that he wants to do (store his sludge in an unshielded pool) on the basis that it would violate his neighbor's property rights to do so. It makes perfect sense when considered from the point of view of negative rights, and no one is forced to do anything against their will.
Both positions are absolute, but only the position based on negative rights is self-consistent. The concept of negative property rights has significant precedent, although I will admit that you don't see it much of late; it is often summed up informally with the saying "your right to swing your fist stops at the end of my nose" -- meaning you can act as you wish, provided the property rights of others are respected.
As you so astutely pointed out, absolute property rights are impossible, because they would conflict with each other in almost every conceivable way. Systems based on positive obligation have the same issue, to a lesser extent. Negative rights, however, are consistent because overlapping limitations (unlike overlapping permissions or obligations) can exist without conflict.
If you could cite a source for your assertion that people historically argue from the position of positive property rights, I'd be glad to see it. In my experience most people are not fundamentally lawless (the logical conclusion of absolute positive rights is, obviously, that no action can ever be wrong) so I don't think you'll find such a source anywhere.
Why not? Provided you're not violating their absolute property rights by poisioning or irradiating them, I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to store whatever you like in your backyard pool.
Rights are negative, not positive. They describe what other people can't do to you, not what you can do. The fact that you can't act so as to poison or irradiate your neighbours is an example of absolute property rights, not an exception to them. By the same argument, they can't take action to stop you from filling your pool with radioactive sludge (or whatever) unless you happen to be violating their rights by doing so. This simple principle is the basis for most of the common law.
Keynesian economics haven't been "modern" for a while now. If you look at current policies it becomes clear that the whole "waste makes wealth" thing didn't work out, and they're working on some alternate theories -- ones that don't promote consumption at the expense of saving and investment.
The policies you propose -- bailing out failing businesses, extending easy credit, and generally wasting valuable resources in a futile attempt to put off the inevitable market correction to the malinvestments of the boom period -- are exactly how we ended up with the Great Depression. There's a complete analysis of the Depression available if you need further details.
Sure they can, but that's not the same thing. Investment meants putting something toward a productive use. Copyrights per se have no productive use. While the copyright does confer a relative material advantage on its "owner" it can only do so by restricting everyone else. The "owner" has no resources or abilities it would not have in the absence of the copyright; instead, everyone else's natural abilities are curtailed to create that advantage for the "owner".
It's no different than if I decreed that everyone must, from now on, refrain from gathering their own water and instead purchase bottled water from me. Such a decree would have immense monetary value to myself, and to anyone I might choose to sell it to -- assuming for the moment that I could enforce it -- but only because everyone else has been unjustly restricted.
If you want to justify copyright, you'll first need to come up with an explanation for how a priviledge-based incentive system of dubious value could possibly justify infringing upon everyone's freedom of non-aggressive action.
No, normal inheritance is different. The kids only receive a one-time gift, not a continuing income. Any income past that point is the result of their own choice to defer gratification and instead invest that gift so that others can benefit from it.
In contrast, you can't invest a copyright; once the work has actually been created, the copyright can only represent a continuing loss to society, since copyright is only the legal right to artificially restrict the distribution of something that would otherwise be unlimited in supply, and such artificial restrictions are, of course, always a loss. This loss can be reduced -- creating a relative profit -- by reducing the copyright's scope through licensing, or by eliminating the copyright entirely, but a copyright is not a resource that can be invested, i.e. employed toward further production.
Not a bad idea, provided that by "government" you mean local governments, or better yet a bunch of private co-ops, and not a state or federal government. (Not that the federal government could provide it legally without a Constitutional amendment.)
An alternate explanation would be that most of the well-connected peers may require encryption by this point; then you'd see the same effect even without interference from Comcast.
1) Under the Constitution Congress has the authority to grant copyrights and patents, not a responsibility to do so. If so inclined, Ron Paul could push for the elimination of copyrights and patents without encountering any Constitutional barriers. (Political ones, for sure, but not Constitutional.)
2) Perhaps you were only referring to members of the U.S. Libertarian Party, who tend to be strict Constitutionalists, but idolizing the Constitution is hardly a basic libertarian trait. Even ignoring the sizable number of libertarians who are not statists of any variety -- myself included -- many libertarians are minarchists who would hardly approve of Congress creating laws just because the Constitution grants them the authority to do so. The fact that you can do something doesn't mean it's a good idea.
That's for the voice navigation service. The device includes the GPS unit and localized maps, so I suspect you could use it for general visual navigation out-of-the-box, just without the additional voice features (which are only $3.33/mo. anyway).
I agree. For the record, I never said there was anything wrong with what they actually did, although they should've taken into account the fact that their information could be falsified even without an ANI 'hack'; I objected to the idea that shooting someone on their own property could be justified solely on the basis of an unverified anonymous tip, when they could quite reasonably be acting in self-defense. The situation would've been different if they'd verified that someone was actually in danger.
If anything, the SWAT team poses a far more imminent threat to the property owner than visa-versa, judging by relative numbers and armament. Any threat to the SWAT team itself is due to their own uninvited and highly suspicious presence; if one or more members of the team gets shot for impersonating a group of well-armed bandits it would be entirely their own fault.
Moreover, if the SWAT team hasn't yet verified the caller's claims first-hand, then they have to assume that the owner is merely acting in self-defense. If they shot someone acting in reasonable self defense on their own property, that too would be their responsibility, since they created the situation in the first place. Even for a SWAT team there must remain a presumption of innocence on the part of the accused; no one can be above the law in a free society.
I think individualists in general (of which Slashdot has a large representation, particularly when stories like this come up) tend to be pro-self-defense, which generally translates into "pro-gun" sentiment. The argument applies to self-defense in general, though, not just guns.
I don't know about that. Generally I would consider someone to be at fault if they choose enter someone else's property without permission and end up shooting the owner. The owner has every right to be there, and to be armed, and to defend itself against intruders. Shooting someone for defending themselves against a threat you created hardly counts as self-defense, particularly when you're an uninvited guest on their property.
You know, I never considered that. Such a simple solution to people using force to grab power: just give up and hand the power over to them without a fight. </sarcasm>
Your argument is no different than suggesting poverty as the solution to theft, or suicide as the cure for murder. The problem is the loss of property, or life -- or freedom -- not the theft, murder, or false claim of authority that leads to such states.
They can try all they like; the system will work until someone actually succeeds. Perhaps you were thinking of pacifism?
Communism presumes that all the members of the commune can effectively coordinate their actions toward a common set of goals. This matches what you said if and only if "good" is defined as the will of the majority of the group. This, BTW, is why communism doesn't scale: a small group may share common goals (i.e. concept of "good"), but the larger the group becomes the less likely it is that they will all agree on their goals and the best ways of achieving them.
Anarchism (any variant) doesn't presume any particular definition of "good", so it's meaningless to say that it relies on people being fundamentally "good". The most basic principle in anarchism is that no one has the right to govern anyone else (defn: "without rulers"). If anything, this could be taken as an assertion that no one is good, or at least that no one is better than anyone else, because if someone were objectively better they would at least have a rational excuse for telling the lesser beings around them what to do.
Why would anyone want a non-empty ALT property for a 1x1 image containing only a single transparent pixel (presumably for layout purposes)? It seems to me that their ALT text matches the visual content of the image perfectly. Anything else would disrupt the plain-text layout to no advantage.
I'm sorry -- someone should've notified you in advance that this discussion is intended to those who actually care whether what they believe in is true or false. Once someone reaches the point of simply believing whatever they wish to believe, as you have, debate becomes both impossible and irrelevant.
Last time I checked, circular reasoning was a logical fallacy.
Are you trying to say that such an organization would be illegal under current law? Because I don't think it would be. I'd happily concede (1) and (2), but I think (3) requires further clarification.
So you say. Of course, you can't prove that in the absence of an actual free society. The only thing you can be sure of on this point is that in a free society there would be no involuntary ban on age-based discrimination, since the absence of involuntary bans is part of the definition of a free society.
Personally I think there would still be some discrimination, because for the most part I believe discrimination is not evidence of prejudice, but rather the cost of acquiring more targeted information. When all the costs are taken into account it's probably at least somewhat more efficient for those that do not fit the stereotype to work a bit harder to get noticed than it is for everyone to assume -- contrary to historical evidence -- that the stereotype is wrong.
You're attempting to set up a false dichotomy; it it not just for either the minority or the majority position to dominate. I do not intend to be draw into a debate over which unjust position is somehow more justifiable than the other when the entire issue can be easily avoided by simply acknowledging that no one has the right to dominate anyone else, regardless of their level of popular support. Rule by majority is, after all, merely the collectivist version of the "might makes right" principle of minority rule.