But can't you see that justified self-defense and the Non-Aggression Principle is a moral stance, if a very bare-bones one?
How so? Reciprocation and estoppel as a basis for justified self-defense makes no assumptions regarding right or wrong. In fact, it leaves the determination of morality entirely up to the defendant. The only requirement is consistency. If the accused says that their action was right, then reciprocation (the same action taken against them) must also be right. If they say that their action was wrong then they admit either that punishment is deserved, or that the same (wrong) action can be taken against them without incurring any punishment. If the defendant were to argue against the requirement for consistency then it would go even worse for them, since the other side can then make the same argument in favor of any retribution they prefer, not just the same action.
One can adopt the Non-Aggression Principle as a moral worldview (or part of one), as I do, but in itself it only describes the set of actions which can be taken without justifying defensive action by others in accordance with the above reasoning. As such, it is equally amoral.
I also think "most people" can't live in a society sidestepping morality, and will try to enforce their views of good and evil on others given the chance.
You may be right, but what about that forms an argument for letting them do so?
It basically seems like taking the core principles of most every justice system everywhere, and saying "here, this is all there should be, no special cases or additional [clauses]."
It is more basic than that: these principles grant the maximum freedom while minimizing coercion. Any special cases or additional clauses can only restrict freedoms and/or legitimize the use of coercion beyond self-defense. That is why these principles form the core of every justice system out there. Now if only those with the charisma and power to shape society could resist the urge to corrupt them with mindless tinkering just to show that they're Doing Something, we might have a chance...
I am not really suggesting anything new so far as the child's financial and medical dependence on its parents is concerned.
Actually, you are. Most states have insurance programs for children, so that the care of children is not impacted by the financial status of their parents.
Actually, I'm not. It is these pseudo-charity programs which are new, and even they only exist in certain areas. For all of human history, including the present in many areas, children have depended on their parents for their financial and medical well-being.
Hey, I never said that it was fair, or that I'd even vote this way.... However, reality is the world we live in, and given a choice between my scenarios #1 and #2, I think that society is going to be more likely to choose #1.... I'd be the last person to take a dime of yours.
My apologies. I suppose I read your comment as being slanted in favor of #1, but in retrospect you never did say outright that you favored that approach. I have to admit that I tend to agree with your projection (unfortunately), though that may just be the cynic in me speaking. I'd like to think there is a bit more hope for our future than that.
Society is not about being left alone. Society is very much about human interactions.
Yes, voluntary interactions. But to have meaningful voluntary interactions you have to first start with the right to avoid involuntary interactions: the right to be left alone. Once you have that, you can give up as much or as little of it as you wish in exchange for the benefits which (sometimes) result from participation in society.
For example the right to have justice administered fairly when your interactions with other humans fall afoul of society's laws.
That goes much too far, depending on what you mean by "society's laws". Certainly the right to be left alone, in the general nature of rights everywhere, is subject to reciprocation: if you don't leave others alone, they are not obligated to leave you alone. If you steal, others can take your property from you; if you commit murder then you can be killed. However, if "society's laws" go beyond reciprocation then they cannot be administered justly, much less fairly, as the laws themselves would be unjust.
A society that gave you no rights except the right to be left alone (by not participating in that society) would be an awful one,...
I agree, but I never said that your only other choice would be not to participate at all. This is not a binary option; you can participate as much or as little as you like, provided you respect others' right not to participate if and when they so choose.
...let's say that I'm a selfless person who hate to see others suffer, and manage to convince enough people of my position to implement a heavily taxed socialistic system in the society in which i live, raising general welfare on the expense of the successful, some of which truly detest this.... Who's "enlightened self interest" takes predecence? The strongest?
"Enlightened self-interest" is entirely a matter of how one chooses one's own actions. As such, one's own self-interest always takes precedence. As to whose self-interest wins out, that would obviously be the strongest: by definition, the strongest individual or group is the one most able to impose its own preferences on the world around it.
Thus, "enlightened self interest" is just "moral relativism" in disguise? Or it assumes moral relativism?
It is not "moral relativism" for the simple reason that it has nothing to do with morality in the first place. Enlightened self-interest is an argument in favor of acting in a socially acceptable manner which does not appeal to the concepts notions of right and wrong, and is thus amoral (not immoral). It does not claim that morality is necessarily subjective or relative; neither does it claim that morality is objective or absolute. It side-steps the question by ignoring morality entirely.
In my opinion, morality should be treated as subjective. It may turn out to be objective in the end, but at least for now it seems that no two people can entirely agree on what that objective morality might look like, so we might as well treat it as something on which there can be reasonable disagreement. We can afford to do that, since it is entirely possible to implement a free and civilized society with reasonable laws (that is, one universal law: the Non-Aggression Principle) and justified self-defense on the basis of proportional reciprocation without appealing to any particular view of morality, relative or otherwise.
In pretty much any philosophy where "self-interest" is considered paramount, it is entirely safe to assume that this includes not just material wealth but also absence of pain (of all kinds), good reputation, positive self-image, and anything else the individual may care about. In the end it all comes down to minimizing present discomfort, from whatever source (incl. expectation of future discomfort) that may be derived.
Assuming "self-interest" is limited to material wealth is just a quick and easy way to dismiss such "unified-interest" philosophies without bothering to consider what they actually advocate.
Insurance is basically an agreement of a bunch of people to share a single risk pool.
No, insurance is when you enter into an agreement to trade (low probability, high cost) for (high probability, low cost). Aside from overhead, the risk (i.e. probability * cost) remains unchanged. It is true that having a pool of similar (but independent!) insurance risks makes it much easier to offer insurance without courting bankruptcy, since the actual costs tend to average out, but the pool itself is not in any way mandatory, and is really irrelevant from the insured's point-of-view.
That isn't a completely horrible scenario, since it at least sounds feasible. However, it is a heck of a future to look forward to, and it will be a chain around your neck all your life saving up to it.
As opposed to not knowing, in which case I'd have to prepare for the possibility of cancer anyway, while simultaneously subsidizing those with higher (undisclosed) risk than myself? No thanks; I'd rather know what to expect.
And what do you do with kids whose parents chose not to take out such a policy? Essentially this makes the financial/health outcome of a child completely dependent on the actions of their parents before they were even born.
It is the responsibility of the parents to provide for their child's welfare. Perhaps you didn't realize this, but the mere existence of a child is "completely dependent on the actions of [its] parents before [it] was even born."
I am not really suggesting anything new so far as the child's financial and medical dependence on its parents is concerned. Rather, I am merely suggesting the obvious strategy for insuring against genetic risks realized at conception. There is no such thing as real insurance against an event with a known outcome, so you have to take out insurance before the outcome is known—in this case, before the child's genetic makeup is determined.
Most would not consider it just to make a child pay for their parents' irresponsibility, or their own inability to pay.
Justice has nothing to do with it. No one deserves to be given life, much less a good start with responsible, fore-sighted, affluent, and loving parents. These things are gifts, and each gift demands a multi-generational effort, parents passing on their accumulated character, wisdom, education, material investments, and love on to their children.
Should anyone happen to not be completely satisfied with their life, as easy or hard as it may be, they have always had the option of returning it for a full refund.
It is far more likely that the majority of society will vote to adopt laws enacting my scenario #1. They will then send you a tax bill to help pay for it. If you don't pay for it, you will be hunted down and sent to prison.
Thank you for providing the clearest possible illustration of exactly what is wrong with your preferred society, and the petty criminals who would choose it. I merely suggest that individuals be permitted to choose their own path without interference from or violence toward anyone else, and you counter with threats of theft, kidnapping, and extortion.
There are only two stable insurance scenarios in a world where genetic testing accurately predicts insurance risk:
One problem: your case #1 isn't insurance at all, but rather (false) "charity" for those with high risk. Case #2, on the other hand, is basically the definition of insurance. So there is really only one stable scenario which actually counts as insurance, and that scenario is the one where cost corresponds to risk.
Somebody at risk for cancer in their 50s might have cheap insurance until they are 40, and then can't afford it.
Solution: If you know you are likely to develop cancer in your 50s, then set aside the savings from your cheap (pre-40s) insurance and be prepared.
Some children might have astronomical premiums before they are even born.
Solution: Parents take out insurance on the child before conception, at a cost dependent on their own genetic profiles and the resulting likelihood of hereditary genetic issues. If it later turns out that their child does indeed have some sort of genetic defect, the insurance provides them with a trust fund to deal with it.
Money paid into social security is invested in U. S. government securities.
This is perhaps the most underhanded aspect of the whole scheme. With very few exceptions, income from U.S. government securities is spent on current consumption, not investment. The principle and interest are paid back with future tax income, which comes from—you guessed it—the same people paying into Social Security. So these "investors" are paying not only the original S.S. income tax, but also the principle and interest to pay back the "loans" S.S. makes to the rest of the government. Even assuming the principle part balances out (in lieu of additional taxes elsewhere, with spending remaining constant), that still leaves them paying their own interest on top of the regular S.S. income tax.
The only right [dolphins] need is the right to live in [their] society without us bothering them.
Strangely enough, that is also the only right we humans need within our own society. Unfortunately, it also happens to be one of the least recognized rights. It would be bitterly ironic if this most fundamental of rights was extended by humans to dolphins, and yet still withheld from other human beings.
It only takes a cop a moment to realize that the overwhelming stench of a reported possible rotting body isn't coming from your house. He doesn't need a warrant to determine that and leave.
Sure, so long as he can make that determination from outside the house, without trespassing. If he intends to cross the threshold and actually enter the dwelling, however—or if he has been asked to leave the property—then he definitely needs to get a warrant (read: the only source of legal authority to perform a search or seizure) first. Otherwise he is no different from any other private citizen trespassing on and/or entering another's property without permission.
That's true if the attacker is trying to brute-force the hash: they would have no reason to repeat actually compute the hash even once, much less thousands of times, as they would just submit (pseudo-)random numbers and hope that one of them matches the expected hash.
However, a decent hash is utterly impractical to brute-force in this manner; scanning a mere 128-bit hash space would take around one sextillion (1.0e+21) years even at a billion hashes/second (which would strain even a 10Gb network link). The more likely "brute-force" attack would be to scan likely passwords, and to do that you actually have to compute the hash of each prospective password (and nonce!) thousands of times over.
This is exactly why you never change state on the basis of an HTTP GET (or HEAD, etc.) request, only HTTP POST. GET and HEAD requests are "safe"—they only return information. POST requests are explicitly not safe, and for that reason are never sent without user action or deliberate scripting. These rules have been in place practically since the dawn of the Web, so if you design a site which cannot accept random GET or HEAD requests without major issues you have only yourself to blame.
There is no flexibility regarding the definition of "reasonable" here; it's clearly stated right in the text. If you have a warrant listing (a) probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, (b) a specific place to search, and (c) specific person(s) or thing(s) to seize, then the search and/or seizure is deemed reasonable. Otherwise it is prohibited.
Very interesting, but I wouldn't place too much confidence in their ability to actually achieve that kind of thrust any time soon. What they're currently demonstrating, under lab conditions, is less than half a newton per kilowatt, or about one ten-thousandth of the amount needed to support a car. For comparison, you can get around 120 N/kW (240 times their current max thrust) right now with a simple ducted fan, readily available online. The 30 kN/kW figure is an extrapolation based on the ridiculously high amplification (Q) levels achieved in dedicated high-energy physics labs with finely-tuned, liquid-helium-cooled superconductors—not something you're likely to ever see in a personal automobile. They seem to be marketing their design mainly toward satellite/space use, where reaction mass is a limiting factor. For terrestrial applications, of course, reaction mass isn't really a problem; you can just use the surrounding atmosphere.
If you want to discriminate in your place of business, then you are relying on the government to enforce that discrimination.
False. At most you are relying on them to enforce your property rights against trespass. However, you don't have to rely on them even for that; you can always hire your own security personnel to protect your own property. In fact, you should be doing that anyway, since the government holds that it does not have any obligation to protect you, as an individual, or your property against assault, theft, or trespass. They may help you track down the offender(s) afterward, though, if you're lucky, but even then it's still entirely up to you to seek compensation through the courts on your own dime.
I imagine it takes a larger police presence to protect against non-discriminatory theft, trespass, and assault than would be necessary if we just let people do whatever they wanted, too. However, it is unacceptable to ban the exercise of a right for no better reason than enforcing it may make the police's job a bit more difficult. So far as I'm concerned they are free not to respond, but in that case they had better not get in the way when people choose to defend their rights on their own.
Even putting aside the issue of jurisdiction, the purpose of the Interstate Commerce Clause was for the federal government to facilitate free trade between the states. For example, due to the ICC individual states are not permitted to impose tariffs or customs on import or export of goods between their own citizens and those of other states, and it is up to the federal government to provide arbitration for any interstate trade disputes. The ICC was never meant as a justification for the federal government to restrict trade between—or within—states, however, though in practice that is its most common use.
You're thinking of polynomial functions (x^n), where a variable (x) is raised to a constant power (n) greater than one. Quadratic functions are polynomial functions with a constant (n) equal to two. Exponential functions are constants raised to variable powers (n^x); these grow much more quickly.
One problem with looking at "public debt per GDP" is that GDP measures consumption, including any deficit spending, which means such spending will increase both public debt and GDP without improving their "ability to pay that debt". The "debt per GDP" figure would thus understate the "debt vs. ability to pay" figure you're really looking for.
There is also the fact that the government can't count the entire GDP (even disregarding the debt component) toward their own ability to pay. So far as that goes they shouldn't count any of it; that property isn't theirs to use. Putting that aside, however, "public debt vs. public revenue" would probably make for a much better measurement of their ability to pay off their loans.
Even if they could do that without violating any contracts, they still have to consider the diplomatic ramifications of that sort of unilateral action. No one is obligated to turn to ARIN for IP addresses; ARIN has the authority it does only because people need someone to allocate routable Internet addresses, and ARIN currently fulfills that role. Switching to someone else would carry a high cost, to be sure, but were ARIN to annoy enough well-placed organizations by rescinding their addresses it could become a realistic possibility.
IP addresses are neither scarce nor property. Like personal names, they are nothing more or less than the label by which a given host identifies itself. Others may or may not recognize that label, and the same label can be claimed by any number of hosts without any conflict, provided they aren't routed as part of a single network. For example, NAT gateways reuse the same address ranges for many different networks without conflict.
Trouble only arises when the same address is used more than once in a single routed network, which is where ARIN et al. come in. No one is obligated to listen to them, but there has to be some organizing principle behind allocation of routable IP addresses on the Internet—other networks can have their own policies for the same addresses without any trouble—and these organizations currently serve that role. If they want to recognize private address-transfer agreements that is their business, but nothing obligates them to do so, and there are some rather good arguments against separating the IP address hierarchy from the physical layout of the Internet. For one, it would be disastrous from an infrastructure perspective to require every router to track every individual IP address, rather than the large, contiguous address ranges currently in use. The registrary would be perfectly justified in refusing to recognize such transfers, and reclaiming the addresses involved for independent reallocation. However, even if ARIN et al. do choose to allow private address trading the only actual property involved is the IP registrar's self-ownership in voluntarily publishing address allocation charts recognizing those trades. The addresses themselves are not owned by anyone.
I'd be perfectly fine with that provided your "ideal society" also recognizes that self-ownership and other property rights are not mere privileges granted only to citizens, but rights common to all human beings. Unfortunately, governments have a very poor track record when it comes to recognizing the genuine human rights of non-citizens; they'd rather act as through anyone not owned by themselves or some other government whose power they respect is practically a non-person.
Note that I'm not saying they should feel obligated to protect self-ownership or property rights of non-citizens from external interference, just that they shouldn't violate such rights themselves. Non-citizens are obviously responsible for their own defense, as with everything else.
Personally I think people often go crazy over Atlas Shrugged only because they've never read Alongside Night, which is to classical liberalism (libertarianism) as Atlas Shrugged is to Objectivism. Many libertarians are drawn to Objectivism and Ayn Rand for the individualistic aspects, but Objectivism isn't a particularly good fit for libertarianism in other respects (such as the actual nature of property as scarce, rivalrous goods vs. Objectivism's "products of the mind").
You are making two major mistakes here. The first is the—far too common—idea that copyright (in the United States) is meant to be some sort of balance between producers of copyrightable works and the public. It's not. The purpose of copyright is entirely to enrich the public domain, for the benefit of the public. The means by which this is done is to trade away a part of the public's natural freedom of speech and other property rights in regard to copies of an original creative work in a time-limited distribution monopoly as an incentive for someone to create the work in the first place.
(Note that the constitutional conflict between copyright and free speech is well-documented; copyright came very close be prohibited as a violation of the 1st Amendment. It was only permitted as part of the compromise which created exceptions for "fair use".)
The second mistake is here:
Artists have a right to set a price for their work.
On the contrary, one only has the right to set a price for their alienable property. Inalienable property (such as self-ownership) obviously has no price, as it cannot be traded away. That which is not property, such as a "work" in the copyright sense, cannot have a price for much the same reason—as a non-rivalrous good, no one need seek your permission to benefit from it; the fact that the good is non-rivalrous means that their benefit causes you no harm, which in turn means you have no rational basis on which to seek compensation as you would were someone to interfere with your use of your own rivalrous property for their own benefit.
Artists and the like are, of course, free to set a price for the labor of creating an original work, or of distributing a work (original or otherwise) to an individual buyer or the public at large, or for access to any of their property in which a work may reside. They can also seek to control distribution through contractual relationships, much like trade secrets, but in this they are limited to seeking compensation voluntarily agreed to in advance as part of the contract; they cannot go after anyone outside the contract for simply receiving or distributing the work in question.
So, in your opinion, constitution limits are meaningless in regard to any action not absolutely necessary to survive? If so, why bother with a constitution in the first place? Please take a moment to savor just how ridiculous you appear right now.
The U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee your right to do anything—you're correct so far as that goes. That is because the Constitution was never intended to create or guarantee rights in the first place; rather, it delineates the powers delegated from its voluntary signers to the government. It doesn't matter what "the government has decided"; if the Constitution doesn't specifically grant the power to do something then the government can't do it, and the 4th Amendment clearly denies the government the power to perform any searches or seizures whatsoever without probable cause and a specific warrant, however other areas of the Constitution may have been interpreted prior to that amendment.
I understand the principle just fine, thanks. Price ceilings and fixed rates don't work very well anywhere else, so I see no reason to expect them to work well in the case of legal representation. However, making the loser pay their own legal costs to the winner should solve the problem just as well. If you want to represent yourself at minimum cost then the other side can do the same, or absorb the extra cost of hiring legal counsel. On the other hand, if you decide to spend a great deal of money on a crack legal team, the other side can arrange for similarly expensive representation, perhaps on a contingency basis—assuming they have a change of winning.
Set rates wouldn't handle either of these cases at all well. In the former case the pro se side would be forced to pay out even more for their opponent's representation than their own. They could choose to spend more, of course—up to the fixed rates—but that just serves to drive up the cost of justice. I happen to think we would be better off with more one-on-one pro se cases, even if that doesn't help the lawyers very much. In the latter case it would be even worse, since a wealthy plaintiff or defendant could spend as much as it wished while the other side, lacking its resources, would be limited to "standard rates".
Slashdot Mirror
But can't you see that justified self-defense and the Non-Aggression Principle is a moral stance, if a very bare-bones one?
How so? Reciprocation and estoppel as a basis for justified self-defense makes no assumptions regarding right or wrong. In fact, it leaves the determination of morality entirely up to the defendant. The only requirement is consistency. If the accused says that their action was right, then reciprocation (the same action taken against them) must also be right. If they say that their action was wrong then they admit either that punishment is deserved, or that the same (wrong) action can be taken against them without incurring any punishment. If the defendant were to argue against the requirement for consistency then it would go even worse for them, since the other side can then make the same argument in favor of any retribution they prefer, not just the same action.
One can adopt the Non-Aggression Principle as a moral worldview (or part of one), as I do, but in itself it only describes the set of actions which can be taken without justifying defensive action by others in accordance with the above reasoning. As such, it is equally amoral.
I also think "most people" can't live in a society sidestepping morality, and will try to enforce their views of good and evil on others given the chance.
You may be right, but what about that forms an argument for letting them do so?
It basically seems like taking the core principles of most every justice system everywhere, and saying "here, this is all there should be, no special cases or additional [clauses]."
It is more basic than that: these principles grant the maximum freedom while minimizing coercion. Any special cases or additional clauses can only restrict freedoms and/or legitimize the use of coercion beyond self-defense. That is why these principles form the core of every justice system out there. Now if only those with the charisma and power to shape society could resist the urge to corrupt them with mindless tinkering just to show that they're Doing Something, we might have a chance...
I am not really suggesting anything new so far as the child's financial and medical dependence on its parents is concerned.
Actually, you are. Most states have insurance programs for children, so that the care of children is not impacted by the financial status of their parents.
Actually, I'm not. It is these pseudo-charity programs which are new, and even they only exist in certain areas. For all of human history, including the present in many areas, children have depended on their parents for their financial and medical well-being.
Hey, I never said that it was fair, or that I'd even vote this way. ... However, reality is the world we live in, and given a choice between my scenarios #1 and #2, I think that society is going to be more likely to choose #1. ... I'd be the last person to take a dime of yours.
My apologies. I suppose I read your comment as being slanted in favor of #1, but in retrospect you never did say outright that you favored that approach. I have to admit that I tend to agree with your projection (unfortunately), though that may just be the cynic in me speaking. I'd like to think there is a bit more hope for our future than that.
Society is not about being left alone. Society is very much about human interactions.
Yes, voluntary interactions. But to have meaningful voluntary interactions you have to first start with the right to avoid involuntary interactions: the right to be left alone. Once you have that, you can give up as much or as little of it as you wish in exchange for the benefits which (sometimes) result from participation in society.
For example the right to have justice administered fairly when your interactions with other humans fall afoul of society's laws.
That goes much too far, depending on what you mean by "society's laws". Certainly the right to be left alone, in the general nature of rights everywhere, is subject to reciprocation: if you don't leave others alone, they are not obligated to leave you alone. If you steal, others can take your property from you; if you commit murder then you can be killed. However, if "society's laws" go beyond reciprocation then they cannot be administered justly, much less fairly, as the laws themselves would be unjust.
A society that gave you no rights except the right to be left alone (by not participating in that society) would be an awful one, ...
I agree, but I never said that your only other choice would be not to participate at all. This is not a binary option; you can participate as much or as little as you like, provided you respect others' right not to participate if and when they so choose.
...let's say that I'm a selfless person who hate to see others suffer, and manage to convince enough people of my position to implement a heavily taxed socialistic system in the society in which i live, raising general welfare on the expense of the successful, some of which truly detest this.... Who's "enlightened self interest" takes predecence? The strongest?
"Enlightened self-interest" is entirely a matter of how one chooses one's own actions. As such, one's own self-interest always takes precedence. As to whose self-interest wins out, that would obviously be the strongest: by definition, the strongest individual or group is the one most able to impose its own preferences on the world around it.
Thus, "enlightened self interest" is just "moral relativism" in disguise? Or it assumes moral relativism?
It is not "moral relativism" for the simple reason that it has nothing to do with morality in the first place. Enlightened self-interest is an argument in favor of acting in a socially acceptable manner which does not appeal to the concepts notions of right and wrong, and is thus amoral (not immoral). It does not claim that morality is necessarily subjective or relative; neither does it claim that morality is objective or absolute. It side-steps the question by ignoring morality entirely.
In my opinion, morality should be treated as subjective. It may turn out to be objective in the end, but at least for now it seems that no two people can entirely agree on what that objective morality might look like, so we might as well treat it as something on which there can be reasonable disagreement. We can afford to do that, since it is entirely possible to implement a free and civilized society with reasonable laws (that is, one universal law: the Non-Aggression Principle) and justified self-defense on the basis of proportional reciprocation without appealing to any particular view of morality, relative or otherwise.
In pretty much any philosophy where "self-interest" is considered paramount, it is entirely safe to assume that this includes not just material wealth but also absence of pain (of all kinds), good reputation, positive self-image, and anything else the individual may care about. In the end it all comes down to minimizing present discomfort, from whatever source (incl. expectation of future discomfort) that may be derived.
Assuming "self-interest" is limited to material wealth is just a quick and easy way to dismiss such "unified-interest" philosophies without bothering to consider what they actually advocate.
Insurance is basically an agreement of a bunch of people to share a single risk pool.
No, insurance is when you enter into an agreement to trade (low probability, high cost) for (high probability, low cost). Aside from overhead, the risk (i.e. probability * cost) remains unchanged. It is true that having a pool of similar (but independent!) insurance risks makes it much easier to offer insurance without courting bankruptcy, since the actual costs tend to average out, but the pool itself is not in any way mandatory, and is really irrelevant from the insured's point-of-view.
That isn't a completely horrible scenario, since it at least sounds feasible. However, it is a heck of a future to look forward to, and it will be a chain around your neck all your life saving up to it.
As opposed to not knowing, in which case I'd have to prepare for the possibility of cancer anyway, while simultaneously subsidizing those with higher (undisclosed) risk than myself? No thanks; I'd rather know what to expect.
And what do you do with kids whose parents chose not to take out such a policy? Essentially this makes the financial/health outcome of a child completely dependent on the actions of their parents before they were even born.
It is the responsibility of the parents to provide for their child's welfare. Perhaps you didn't realize this, but the mere existence of a child is "completely dependent on the actions of [its] parents before [it] was even born."
I am not really suggesting anything new so far as the child's financial and medical dependence on its parents is concerned. Rather, I am merely suggesting the obvious strategy for insuring against genetic risks realized at conception. There is no such thing as real insurance against an event with a known outcome, so you have to take out insurance before the outcome is known—in this case, before the child's genetic makeup is determined.
Most would not consider it just to make a child pay for their parents' irresponsibility, or their own inability to pay.
Justice has nothing to do with it. No one deserves to be given life, much less a good start with responsible, fore-sighted, affluent, and loving parents. These things are gifts, and each gift demands a multi-generational effort, parents passing on their accumulated character, wisdom, education, material investments, and love on to their children.
Should anyone happen to not be completely satisfied with their life, as easy or hard as it may be, they have always had the option of returning it for a full refund.
It is far more likely that the majority of society will vote to adopt laws enacting my scenario #1. They will then send you a tax bill to help pay for it. If you don't pay for it, you will be hunted down and sent to prison.
Thank you for providing the clearest possible illustration of exactly what is wrong with your preferred society, and the petty criminals who would choose it. I merely suggest that individuals be permitted to choose their own path without interference from or violence toward anyone else, and you counter with threats of theft, kidnapping, and extortion.
There are only two stable insurance scenarios in a world where genetic testing accurately predicts insurance risk:
One problem: your case #1 isn't insurance at all, but rather (false) "charity" for those with high risk. Case #2, on the other hand, is basically the definition of insurance. So there is really only one stable scenario which actually counts as insurance, and that scenario is the one where cost corresponds to risk.
Somebody at risk for cancer in their 50s might have cheap insurance until they are 40, and then can't afford it.
Solution: If you know you are likely to develop cancer in your 50s, then set aside the savings from your cheap (pre-40s) insurance and be prepared.
Some children might have astronomical premiums before they are even born.
Solution: Parents take out insurance on the child before conception, at a cost dependent on their own genetic profiles and the resulting likelihood of hereditary genetic issues. If it later turns out that their child does indeed have some sort of genetic defect, the insurance provides them with a trust fund to deal with it.
Money paid into social security is invested in U. S. government securities.
This is perhaps the most underhanded aspect of the whole scheme. With very few exceptions, income from U.S. government securities is spent on current consumption, not investment. The principle and interest are paid back with future tax income, which comes from—you guessed it—the same people paying into Social Security. So these "investors" are paying not only the original S.S. income tax, but also the principle and interest to pay back the "loans" S.S. makes to the rest of the government. Even assuming the principle part balances out (in lieu of additional taxes elsewhere, with spending remaining constant), that still leaves them paying their own interest on top of the regular S.S. income tax.
The only right [dolphins] need is the right to live in [their] society without us bothering them.
Strangely enough, that is also the only right we humans need within our own society. Unfortunately, it also happens to be one of the least recognized rights. It would be bitterly ironic if this most fundamental of rights was extended by humans to dolphins, and yet still withheld from other human beings.
It only takes a cop a moment to realize that the overwhelming stench of a reported possible rotting body isn't coming from your house. He doesn't need a warrant to determine that and leave.
Sure, so long as he can make that determination from outside the house, without trespassing. If he intends to cross the threshold and actually enter the dwelling, however—or if he has been asked to leave the property—then he definitely needs to get a warrant (read: the only source of legal authority to perform a search or seizure) first. Otherwise he is no different from any other private citizen trespassing on and/or entering another's property without permission.
That's true if the attacker is trying to brute-force the hash: they would have no reason to repeat actually compute the hash even once, much less thousands of times, as they would just submit (pseudo-)random numbers and hope that one of them matches the expected hash.
However, a decent hash is utterly impractical to brute-force in this manner; scanning a mere 128-bit hash space would take around one sextillion (1.0e+21) years even at a billion hashes/second (which would strain even a 10Gb network link). The more likely "brute-force" attack would be to scan likely passwords, and to do that you actually have to compute the hash of each prospective password (and nonce!) thousands of times over.
This is exactly why you never change state on the basis of an HTTP GET (or HEAD, etc.) request, only HTTP POST. GET and HEAD requests are "safe"—they only return information. POST requests are explicitly not safe, and for that reason are never sent without user action or deliberate scripting. These rules have been in place practically since the dawn of the Web, so if you design a site which cannot accept random GET or HEAD requests without major issues you have only yourself to blame.
There is no flexibility regarding the definition of "reasonable" here; it's clearly stated right in the text. If you have a warrant listing (a) probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, (b) a specific place to search, and (c) specific person(s) or thing(s) to seize, then the search and/or seizure is deemed reasonable. Otherwise it is prohibited.
Very interesting, but I wouldn't place too much confidence in their ability to actually achieve that kind of thrust any time soon. What they're currently demonstrating, under lab conditions, is less than half a newton per kilowatt, or about one ten-thousandth of the amount needed to support a car. For comparison, you can get around 120 N/kW (240 times their current max thrust) right now with a simple ducted fan, readily available online. The 30 kN/kW figure is an extrapolation based on the ridiculously high amplification (Q) levels achieved in dedicated high-energy physics labs with finely-tuned, liquid-helium-cooled superconductors—not something you're likely to ever see in a personal automobile. They seem to be marketing their design mainly toward satellite/space use, where reaction mass is a limiting factor. For terrestrial applications, of course, reaction mass isn't really a problem; you can just use the surrounding atmosphere.
If you want to discriminate in your place of business, then you are relying on the government to enforce that discrimination.
False. At most you are relying on them to enforce your property rights against trespass. However, you don't have to rely on them even for that; you can always hire your own security personnel to protect your own property. In fact, you should be doing that anyway, since the government holds that it does not have any obligation to protect you, as an individual, or your property against assault, theft, or trespass. They may help you track down the offender(s) afterward, though, if you're lucky, but even then it's still entirely up to you to seek compensation through the courts on your own dime.
I imagine it takes a larger police presence to protect against non-discriminatory theft, trespass, and assault than would be necessary if we just let people do whatever they wanted, too. However, it is unacceptable to ban the exercise of a right for no better reason than enforcing it may make the police's job a bit more difficult. So far as I'm concerned they are free not to respond, but in that case they had better not get in the way when people choose to defend their rights on their own.
Even putting aside the issue of jurisdiction, the purpose of the Interstate Commerce Clause was for the federal government to facilitate free trade between the states. For example, due to the ICC individual states are not permitted to impose tariffs or customs on import or export of goods between their own citizens and those of other states, and it is up to the federal government to provide arbitration for any interstate trade disputes. The ICC was never meant as a justification for the federal government to restrict trade between—or within—states, however, though in practice that is its most common use.
You're thinking of polynomial functions (x^n), where a variable (x) is raised to a constant power (n) greater than one. Quadratic functions are polynomial functions with a constant (n) equal to two. Exponential functions are constants raised to variable powers (n^x); these grow much more quickly.
constant=O(1) < logarithmic=O(log x) < linear=O(x) < polynomial=O(x^n) < exponential=O(n^x)
One problem with looking at "public debt per GDP" is that GDP measures consumption, including any deficit spending, which means such spending will increase both public debt and GDP without improving their "ability to pay that debt". The "debt per GDP" figure would thus understate the "debt vs. ability to pay" figure you're really looking for.
There is also the fact that the government can't count the entire GDP (even disregarding the debt component) toward their own ability to pay. So far as that goes they shouldn't count any of it; that property isn't theirs to use. Putting that aside, however, "public debt vs. public revenue" would probably make for a much better measurement of their ability to pay off their loans.
Even if they could do that without violating any contracts, they still have to consider the diplomatic ramifications of that sort of unilateral action. No one is obligated to turn to ARIN for IP addresses; ARIN has the authority it does only because people need someone to allocate routable Internet addresses, and ARIN currently fulfills that role. Switching to someone else would carry a high cost, to be sure, but were ARIN to annoy enough well-placed organizations by rescinding their addresses it could become a realistic possibility.
IP addresses are neither scarce nor property. Like personal names, they are nothing more or less than the label by which a given host identifies itself. Others may or may not recognize that label, and the same label can be claimed by any number of hosts without any conflict, provided they aren't routed as part of a single network. For example, NAT gateways reuse the same address ranges for many different networks without conflict.
Trouble only arises when the same address is used more than once in a single routed network, which is where ARIN et al. come in. No one is obligated to listen to them, but there has to be some organizing principle behind allocation of routable IP addresses on the Internet—other networks can have their own policies for the same addresses without any trouble—and these organizations currently serve that role. If they want to recognize private address-transfer agreements that is their business, but nothing obligates them to do so, and there are some rather good arguments against separating the IP address hierarchy from the physical layout of the Internet. For one, it would be disastrous from an infrastructure perspective to require every router to track every individual IP address, rather than the large, contiguous address ranges currently in use. The registrary would be perfectly justified in refusing to recognize such transfers, and reclaiming the addresses involved for independent reallocation. However, even if ARIN et al. do choose to allow private address trading the only actual property involved is the IP registrar's self-ownership in voluntarily publishing address allocation charts recognizing those trades. The addresses themselves are not owned by anyone.
Service guarantees citizenship, after all.
I'd be perfectly fine with that provided your "ideal society" also recognizes that self-ownership and other property rights are not mere privileges granted only to citizens, but rights common to all human beings. Unfortunately, governments have a very poor track record when it comes to recognizing the genuine human rights of non-citizens; they'd rather act as through anyone not owned by themselves or some other government whose power they respect is practically a non-person.
Note that I'm not saying they should feel obligated to protect self-ownership or property rights of non-citizens from external interference, just that they shouldn't violate such rights themselves. Non-citizens are obviously responsible for their own defense, as with everything else.
Personally I think people often go crazy over Atlas Shrugged only because they've never read Alongside Night , which is to classical liberalism (libertarianism) as Atlas Shrugged is to Objectivism. Many libertarians are drawn to Objectivism and Ayn Rand for the individualistic aspects, but Objectivism isn't a particularly good fit for libertarianism in other respects (such as the actual nature of property as scarce, rivalrous goods vs. Objectivism's "products of the mind").
You are making two major mistakes here. The first is the—far too common—idea that copyright (in the United States) is meant to be some sort of balance between producers of copyrightable works and the public. It's not. The purpose of copyright is entirely to enrich the public domain, for the benefit of the public. The means by which this is done is to trade away a part of the public's natural freedom of speech and other property rights in regard to copies of an original creative work in a time-limited distribution monopoly as an incentive for someone to create the work in the first place.
(Note that the constitutional conflict between copyright and free speech is well-documented; copyright came very close be prohibited as a violation of the 1st Amendment. It was only permitted as part of the compromise which created exceptions for "fair use".)
The second mistake is here:
Artists have a right to set a price for their work.
On the contrary, one only has the right to set a price for their alienable property. Inalienable property (such as self-ownership) obviously has no price, as it cannot be traded away. That which is not property, such as a "work" in the copyright sense, cannot have a price for much the same reason—as a non-rivalrous good, no one need seek your permission to benefit from it; the fact that the good is non-rivalrous means that their benefit causes you no harm, which in turn means you have no rational basis on which to seek compensation as you would were someone to interfere with your use of your own rivalrous property for their own benefit.
Artists and the like are, of course, free to set a price for the labor of creating an original work, or of distributing a work (original or otherwise) to an individual buyer or the public at large, or for access to any of their property in which a work may reside. They can also seek to control distribution through contractual relationships, much like trade secrets, but in this they are limited to seeking compensation voluntarily agreed to in advance as part of the contract; they cannot go after anyone outside the contract for simply receiving or distributing the work in question.
So, in your opinion, constitution limits are meaningless in regard to any action not absolutely necessary to survive? If so, why bother with a constitution in the first place? Please take a moment to savor just how ridiculous you appear right now.
The U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee your right to do anything—you're correct so far as that goes. That is because the Constitution was never intended to create or guarantee rights in the first place; rather, it delineates the powers delegated from its voluntary signers to the government. It doesn't matter what "the government has decided"; if the Constitution doesn't specifically grant the power to do something then the government can't do it, and the 4th Amendment clearly denies the government the power to perform any searches or seizures whatsoever without probable cause and a specific warrant, however other areas of the Constitution may have been interpreted prior to that amendment.
I understand the principle just fine, thanks. Price ceilings and fixed rates don't work very well anywhere else, so I see no reason to expect them to work well in the case of legal representation. However, making the loser pay their own legal costs to the winner should solve the problem just as well. If you want to represent yourself at minimum cost then the other side can do the same, or absorb the extra cost of hiring legal counsel. On the other hand, if you decide to spend a great deal of money on a crack legal team, the other side can arrange for similarly expensive representation, perhaps on a contingency basis—assuming they have a change of winning.
Set rates wouldn't handle either of these cases at all well. In the former case the pro se side would be forced to pay out even more for their opponent's representation than their own. They could choose to spend more, of course—up to the fixed rates—but that just serves to drive up the cost of justice. I happen to think we would be better off with more one-on-one pro se cases, even if that doesn't help the lawyers very much. In the latter case it would be even worse, since a wealthy plaintiff or defendant could spend as much as it wished while the other side, lacking its resources, would be limited to "standard rates".