No, he's showing that income is not wealth. This insight reveals how the Fair Tax isn't fair.
Nothing is fair. Equal % isn't fair. Equal absolute amount isn't fair. Fair by one standard is unfair by all the others.
But some approaches are better than others, as they are *simpler*. Do you enjoy a tax code so convoluted that not even tax attorneys understand it? One where even the IRS has trouble putting it into practice?
Now what about the rich? The rich owns the apple farm. The rich doesn't have to "buy" and consume apples from somebody else, and thus don't have to pay a consumption tax.
You're arguing that every rich person owns an apple farm, a computer factory, and a design house, and thus will never pay consumption taxes on *anything*?
Rich people have higher opportunity costs than poor people. How much does it cost the rich person in time and money to run that apple farm, both actual costs and opportunity? You believe every rich person is going to go through that time and trouble just to avoid paying 10% on $1/pound apples when he wants one?
I suspect those rich people - who are willing to hire a personal chef, own yachts and fly on private jets - are not going to waste their time doing what you think they will be doing.
Unless you're saying a Fair Tax would include massive surveillance for everybody, especially the rich, so that somehow when the rich consumes an apple from his own farm, he gets taxed the "fair" amount, the same as if the poor bought it at market price.
A fair tax is basically a sales tax. You may have paid one the last time you went shopping.
Since sales taxes are implemented *now*, your claim that fair taxes (a sales tax) are infeasible to implement is nonsense.
All that said, I'm simply pointing out the bogus objections to a Fair Tax. A more realistic objection to the Fair Tax is that the politicians will find a way to ADD a Fair Tax to the existing income taxes, increasing the tax burden rather than simplifying and reducing it.
No, purely economic feedback loops are sufficient. The doomsday scenario ignores economic feedback loops that prevent itself from happening. Namely, that robots can't actually replace humans, and that jobs are not zero sum.
Technology can obsolete certain types of jobs, but every new technology also creates new jobs. Where were the fast food restaurants and burger flipper jobs 200 years ago? They didn't exist. They came into being after industrialization built the transportation network that could combine the necessary food ingredients, and population density created demand for a quick and relatively cheap food restaurant. (then came franchising and globalization that allows you to find a McDs almost *anywhere* now)
As goods get cheaper and more available to the general population, this is an improvement. Civil unrest, or a revolution "against the machines" is going to destroy the system that makes these automation gains possible. If you have to rebuild your civilization from scratch, that is not an improvement. Replacing broken windows is not an economic gain.
The world has changed and the game is no longer about producing what people need, but instead producing what they will buy, particularly if you can get them to buy it over and over again.
No one needs a computer. Or a house with plumbing, or a car, or a meaty diet.
Economies have always been about producing what people want, and interestingly people have been and are still willing to pay a lot for fashion and status. (4-5 figures for a handbag? For a dress with practically no fabric? Heh.)
I really wish the "mechanics" of power were universally taught in the public schools,... Of course, this is unrealistic. The government funds and operates those schools, and there is no way the government is going to sponsor that. It would be like asking Microsoft to recommend OSX.
It isn't in the interest of politicians for public education to be comprehensive or high quality.
It's a pity that people still think so highly of public education that they want to keep that system. Whoever pays for it, controls it; if gov't pays, gov't will aim to get their money's worth. (ex: produce students who won't question growth and abuse of gov't power)
What makes the system perverse is that the people are the ones paying, but it is the gov't (politicians) taking control of how that money is used.
One more point - in no sane world does a Fair Tax exempt luxury items, which are precisely the things the rich WILL buy. A fair tax will tax the rich, except for the rare few that live like paupers. But even those exceptions will not be in the long run. Any heirs will spend the money; or the money gets gifted to charities who are also in the business of spending it.
Forget the poor, someone making $30k a year with a family of four should not be paying the same rate as a billionaire. Hell, under the fair tax act he would pay a higher percentage income as tax.
Interesting that your comment got rated "insightful".
You conflated income with wealth. You compared $30k/yr to 1 billion in assets, which is like comparing a car traveling at 30 MPH to a car that has traveled 200k miles. What insight is that comparison supposed to reveal?
Next, you said that an equal rate is unfair. Rates scale with income. Let's say the billionaire has an income of $30 mil/yr. If you charged each the same rate (say 50%), the billionaire pays $15 mil/yr, the other guy pays $15k/yr. Is one guy paying 1000x as much in taxes as another guy "fair" or "unfair"? It can be viewed as fair since he has 1000x more income, but it is unfair that he pays 1000x more of the cost of gov't.
Last point, the Fair Tax can be modified to be more progressive (AKA "unfair") to the poor by exempting groceries and rent from taxation.
But who keeps the machines working? Humans. Who designs the machines? Humans. Who improves the machines? Humans.
Until we invent robots that are flat out superior in humans in all aspects (not possible in the near term, probably impossible in the long term), we are in no danger of being replaced by technology.
but it doesn't mean it'll be any kind of life worth living. Do I have to remind you what life was like prior to the 20th century...
Goods becoming cheaper due to new technology GUARANTEES a higher standard of living, not a lower one. If you can buy two burgers for the same cost as one burger now, you've GAINED, not LOST.
City living prior to the 20th century sucked compared to now, but there were still advantages and gains over the farm life of that period. (notice that farmers CHOSE to move into the city to take advantage of the opportunities there)
Cheaper burgers are not going to ruin human life. If you seriously think it will destroy civilization as we know it, I suggest studying economics more carefully, particularly on how resources are not a zero sum game. Cheaper goods bring more opportunities, not less.
On the other hand, you likely can't argue that there will always be more of those jobs than there are humans to fill them.
Supply and demand. There is a finite supply of these machines that can replace human labor. On the other hand, jobs are not a zero sum game.
Abstract the machines as an extension of the engineers/technicians who design/build them. What the "problem" boils down to then is that you have an "engineer" who is say 1000x more efficient at burger production than a McD burger flipper. Even with that lopsided ratio, the burger flipper still has a comparative advantage in doing *something*, such that it is advantageous to *both* to trade. If they have something of value to offer each other, the doomsday scenario where the person currently working as a burger flipper is completely obsoleted by technology does not happen. (His current job may become obsolete; but there will be *something* that he can do over the machine)
In other words, we are in danger of transitioning to post-scarcity technology without transitioning to a post-scarcity economy. That leaves most people, at best, working themselves to death in completely unproductive, pointless jobs.
As likely as the grey goo scenario. Your doomsday scenario is likely missing out on some feedback loops that prevent it from happening.
People are more adaptable than machines, and thus have a higher value than them. Machines can be specialized to do some jobs more efficiently than humans, but they aren't good enough to replace humans in every possible role. There will always be work that a human can do more economically than a machine.
I don't think we need to know how a mind works to make one. After all, hydrogen and time have led to this forum post, and I doubt the primordial hydrogen atoms were intelligent. So we know that with biochemical systems, it's possible to come up with strong I given enough time and evolution. Since evolution requires only variation, selection, and heritabillity, it's hard for me to believe we can't do that with computational systems. Is it so difficult to write a learning system that assimilates data about the world, asks questions, and changes its assumptions and conclusions on the basis of feedback from humans?
That claim would sound so ridiculous with any other complex system.
"I don't need to know how a computer works to make one"
"I don't need to know how a car works to make one"
You can get away with not knowing how it works at the start, but you're going to learn that before you ever create a working prototype. There's room for serendipity, but expecting that it must happen is wishful thinking.
And yes, the problem is hard, seeing how we haven't built it yet. The problem is orders of magnitude harder than the fanciest super computer ever built, and the ones who built that knew how it was supposed to work.
So self defense of life/property or rebelling against a government, if it tries to ignore the majority will of the people, are not legitimate uses of guns?
Not only are they not legitimate, they're barely rational.
If you think self defense is irrational, you're irrational.
It's not "other guns". As I stated it's "Other guns and type not stated". Some of those type not stated will certainly be rifles. That's perfectly valid.
Your math involved lumping the majority of that number to pad the rifle death stats. The simplest (and still guaranteed wrong) way to interpret the stat is to add it to the other gun stats in proportion. Since handguns are 35x more likely to be involved in a crime than a rifle, the "uncounted" rifle deaths lumped into "other guns" would be a tiny portion (3~% of total). So much for "debunking" rifle stats with that 3rd point..
People taking sentences and ignoring the other sentences around them, and then claiming not to understand is a problem.
A person dead because they were hit in the head with a rock is no less dead than a person shot in the head with a rifle.
Without any discussion, you dismiss fixing the former with weapon control as futile, but assume that fixing the latter with weapon control would most definitely work. That is the point of the comparison. "But guns are assault weapons" is not an argument. It is the addition of emotive language, but adds nothing to your base argument.
The purpose of assault weapons is indeed killing people. That's exactly what they were designed for.
The purpose of weapons is to inflict harm. Death is one possible result, but not the only possibility, or the only desired result.
The problem our society has is not the existence of weapons; the problem our society has is the existence of a group of people who wish to inflict harm without reason.
Your proposed solution to the latter problem is to disarm everyone of guns. Your chosen course of action aims to disarm both potential victims and potential perpetrators. Given the ratio of potential victims to potential perpetrators, your strategy is guaranteed to negatively affect the innocent more than the guilty. (Since the innocent who are armed are able to act to stop perpetrators)
The UK police are ordinarily without guns. Only specialist forces carry firearms. It works perfectly well, and the people, the police and the politicians are all overwhelmingly in favour of keeping it that way. So that's not such a ridiculous notion as you imagine. If the USA didn't have such an insane attitude to guns, it'd be possible there too.
You pointed to the UK as an example that we ought to follow. You don't seem to be aware that the UK is more violent per capita than the US. Why are you arguing for us to emulate a system with more crime and violence? Is that your desired end result?
We arm police because we want them to have the capability to kill people; but that does not mean police are there to kill people. The purpose of armed police is to reduce violence, not increase it.
Comparing the UK vs. the US, it seems the US has the more effective police force - and it is because we do not have the UK's insane view of the relationship between weapons and violence. People cause violence, not weapons. Give weapons to the right people, and that reduces violence. Taking away weapons from everyone except criminals, on the other hand, guarantees the worst possible results.
That seems obvious to you? Who cares if pistols aren't affect by an "assault weapon" ban? Guess what. There are absolutely NO BANS on ashtrays and hammers, but apparently you think it still makes sense to lump them together and compare them to assault rifles. If you want to lump all blunt objects together, no matter how dissimilar they are, then you should be lumping all firearms together, too, no matter how dissimilar they are. Anything less and you are just arbitrarily fudging the numbers to say what you want it to say. Well, if that's what were gonna do, then guess what...I think we should be making a distinction between claw hammers, mason's hammers, sledge hammers, and rubber mallets.
If you have a problem with blunt objects being lumped into a weapon category, I suggest you take that up with the FBI. They're the ones who made that call.
To borrow gun-control advocate logic for a moment - "Why are you in favor of murders committed by blunt objects?"
Clearly, we need to support "blunt object weapon control". Is that an assault hammer in your garage? What do you *need* a hammer for?
Sure. That's why I gave 3 points not just one. The other two points debunk the rifle claim. The point that there are other guns besides rifles was worth making too though.
Concession on this point accepted. As for your 3rd point, I'd note that automatically lumping "other guns" into the rifle category is not a valid way to interpret the statistics.
As I said, rocks are blunt objects. As are hundreds of normal household objects. So no, it's not the same magnitude of problem....
It is the same magnitude of problem based on its measured effect.
... Indeed it's not a problem at all....
People being killed with blunt objects is not a problem? Come again? Is it a legal method to kill people where you live?
You recognize, of course, the absurdity of trying to ban blunt objects, because there is no shortage of such weapons. That however, is not a point in favor for gun bans.
If you're going to give up banning a type of weapon because it's hard ("not a problem", in your words), just how easy do you think banning guns is?
Eliminating objects who's entire purpose is killing people rapidly is not equivalent to ridding the world of objects that could be used to kill people slowly.
The extent to which gun-nuts will come up with stupid arguments never ceases to amaze.
Your attempt to differentiate between guns and other types of weapons is nonsensical. Guns are tools, and guns accomplish their purpose in legal manners all the time. Ex: being used for practice at gun ranges or sitting unused in the homes of law abiding citizens.
The purpose of guns is not "killing people", but to be a weapon. Weapons aren't always used to kill people, they are tool capable of inflicting harm whose mere existence can be used to send a statement.
Unless you are in favor of disarming the police of guns as well, you are capable of recognizing the difference.
Restricting the comparison to only "rifle murders" is appropriate if arguing against a "assault weapon" or "rifle" ban.
Uh, no. I think an assault rifle and a pistol have a lot more in common than an ashtray and a hammer do. So why is it fair to lump an ashtray and a hammer together and then say we only compare it to the rifle and not the pistol, too?
It just seems obvious to me, but perhaps it isn't apparent to you that pistols are not affected by "assault weapon" and "rifle" bans.
By definition, unless you'd like to legally classify pistols as "rifles", or if you think there's such a thing as an "assault pistol".
That limits the maximum possible benefit of such a ban to only eliminate rifle related deaths. In practice, it won't even eliminate rifle deaths because criminals don't follow gun control laws, and no ban is enforced perfectly. (See drug laws and drug use)
You also argue that some asshole can be just as lethal with a machete. You forget that on the same day as the Newtown shooting, some asshole with a knife walked into a school in China and stabbed two dozen or so children. None of the children died. Furthermore, the asshole was subdued by teachers using chairs. Try to do that against a guy with an assault rifle; two teachers at Newtown tried, and they were both shot in the head.
Is it acceptable for there to be a school stabbing?
Do we need knife control, and is knife control going to work?
Because a new law restricting gun magazines is as likely to prevent another school shooting, as a new Chinese law restricting knives will prevent a school stabbing.
Laws restricting murder do not prevent murder from still happening; but in gun control fantasy land, laws can make it impossible for mass gun murder to happen.
Slight tangential question: What made the gun used an "assault rifle"?
So if you want to make a real case, forget the anecdotes and cite some real numbers.
The anecdotes are important if we are to apply principles.
Not every question is solved by the numbers; unless you think it is acceptable to use prisoners as live human test subjects. It would almost certainly save lives to perform that research; but the cruelty involved and the potential for abuse makes it both horrifying and unacceptable.
When you can tell every person who successfully used a gun in self-defense, "I want you to be stripped of your ability to defend yourself, and society would be better off if you had been murdered or raped" - only then would you be justified to act on "numbers" that show gun control saves lives.
28 gun deaths per day is a steep price for our society's inability to distinguish between anecdotes and statistics.
Your statistic completely ignores the woman who used a gun to defend herself from harm without inflicting fatal injury. Your stat cannot measure lives saved, and never attempts to. Yet lives saved vs. lives lost is the most important comparison if we were to honestly judge guns based on their net gain or harm to society.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics - the existence of a stat that you can cite does not make your position the most reasoned or best course of action.
2) Every single type of murder involving any type of blunt object when added together comes to slightly more than the number of homicides by rifle. Of course add in all the other varieties of gun, and you're up to about 35 times the numebr of blunt object murders.
Restricting the comparison to only "rifle murders" is appropriate if arguing against a "assault weapon" or "rifle" ban.
If someone wants to ban all rifles to "save lives", why not restrict blunt objects (including hammers)? Same magnitude problem. It may take more work, but I thought saving lives was the end goal?
I have watched this cycle with every MMORPG I have played so far. The people who scream the most about the game endlessly on the forums are NOT the ones to listen to. The average gameplayer is not qualified to do game design, even though they think they are. Almost every one of those raging complaints I have read is about 1 aspect of a game design and is often far too personal and coming from far too narrow a perspective.
I used to argue for the status quo on a class forum for a certain MMO for precisely those reasons. People would argue about how the class needed to be changed to be "competitive", and I'd point out how those changes made other classes obsolete or broke other aspects of the game's design.
Then the next expac came and the game incorporated many of the suggestions I argued against, and I realized there was no more point to holding to the status quo. (Which to be fair, should be shaken up by an expac).
I enjoyed the game the most in its 1.x incarnation, and I stopped caring about the game halfway into its 3rd expac. Somewhere along the way, the sum total of changes based on player feedback just sucked out the fun for me. (Though not everyone else, it's still the MMO to emulate)
The 10th amendment is not a block to firearm regulation, since the constitution grants the various article 1 section 8 powers, which are sufficient for firearm regulation.
Let's recall what the 2nd amendment says:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.[8]
Recall your history - the 2nd Amendment was added *after* Article I Section 8, and whereever the two may conflict in wording, the amendment takes precedence. Do you really think that Article I Section 8 powers allow the US Gov't to bypass the 2nd amendment? That's giving the gov't a blank check to bypass ALL the amendments. (As well as failing reading comprehension)
Hasan purchased the weapon off-base. Had the same rules existed off-base as on, his victims would be alive today.
There's a law against murder. Why didn't that law work? There's laws against drunk driving, recreationally enjoying certain classes of drugs, and so on - but yet those crimes happen all the same.
Faced with the failure of a law to prevent an atrocity, your solution is a new law. Does anything sound wrong with that line of reasoning?
Why should the 12-year-old not have had a firearm? Yes, she might have been harmed or killed. But 20 other children would be alive today if an effective firearm ban had been in place.
I find it funny that you only suspect that the 12 year old might come to harm if gun bans were in effect, but you are absolutely certain that no children would be harmed by this madman if gun bans were in effect.
Why is that? Do you actually have supporting statistics to show that gun bans save more children than they hurt?
Chances are that you don't, because you didn't bother supporting the claim that military gun control saved live, either. You are arguing from emotion, not evidence.
Judging from our discussion, you're not that interested in saving the lives of children, you are more interested in using their tragedy to promote your own political agenda to subvert the 2nd Amendment (using a method that subverts ALL OF THEM).
Be proud of what you are and just be straightforward - you want to repeal the Bill of Rights, For The Children.
And because of how laws are passed and the difficulty of restructuring society, even if you had gotten your desired gun ban last year, it wouldn't take effect fast enough to prevent this particular murderer from committing this atrocity. (Unless you are willing to give police broad powers to search and seize all guns from all homes; having also negated the 4th amendment "for the children")
No. It is the second amendment that is written to justify its purpose as its benefit to the state. Nowhere else in the constitution is there any mention of an inalienable right to carry firearms, and any such thing would be in contravention of the civil rights of the potential victims.
It's like you've never heard of the 10th amendment. The Bill of Rights is not meant to be a complete declaration of what rights US citizens are "allowed" to have. It's a set of restrictions on gov't power to protect some of the important natural rights that US citizens have.
Yes, the US takes casualties, mainly from IEDs. But the U.S. military is limiting gun access to its own troops outside of combat situations because they are much too prone to inflict violence upon each other. Most military bases already prohibit anyone but MPs from routinely carrying weapons.
So how did it prevent the Ft. Hood shooting? It didn't. Gun control doesn't work the way you think it will. You should show evidence that military gun control saves lives - because the existence of a rationale isn't proof that the rationale is correct.
Your rights, yes, are the mutual agreement of the society you live in. There is a libertarian notion of living independently from society and enforcing your rights with your own firearm. But this is a romantic notion far from reality. Murder rates per locality back then were close to those of today, but with 1/100 the population. The net effect of firearms where there was no effective civil justice was that more innocent people were killed.
Yes, society is an agreement on how we'll exercise our rights. (Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins) In this case, you are using a dishonest emotion based argument to attempt to unilaterally rewrite that agreement. You and your ilk are not acting in good faith.
Gun owners have a right to use guns for leisure and self-defense. You have failed to make a case that restricting their rights make society safer. You've cited no statistics on how gun control reduces crime, only made faulty arguments rooted in your fear of law-abiding citizens. (The only ones who will give up their guns if it were law)
You haven't answered my earlier question. Why is that 12 year old girl better off at the mercy of a home invader? She sucessfully defended herself from a criminal with a gun, and you need to explain why society is better off if she were helpless instead.
Slashdot Mirror
No, he's showing that income is not wealth. This insight reveals how the Fair Tax isn't fair.
Nothing is fair. Equal % isn't fair. Equal absolute amount isn't fair. Fair by one standard is unfair by all the others.
But some approaches are better than others, as they are *simpler*. Do you enjoy a tax code so convoluted that not even tax attorneys understand it? One where even the IRS has trouble putting it into practice?
Now what about the rich? The rich owns the apple farm. The rich doesn't have to "buy" and consume apples from somebody else, and thus don't have to pay a consumption tax.
You're arguing that every rich person owns an apple farm, a computer factory, and a design house, and thus will never pay consumption taxes on *anything*?
Rich people have higher opportunity costs than poor people. How much does it cost the rich person in time and money to run that apple farm, both actual costs and opportunity? You believe every rich person is going to go through that time and trouble just to avoid paying 10% on $1/pound apples when he wants one?
I suspect those rich people - who are willing to hire a personal chef, own yachts and fly on private jets - are not going to waste their time doing what you think they will be doing.
Unless you're saying a Fair Tax would include massive surveillance for everybody, especially the rich, so that somehow when the rich consumes an apple from his own farm, he gets taxed the "fair" amount, the same as if the poor bought it at market price.
A fair tax is basically a sales tax. You may have paid one the last time you went shopping.
Since sales taxes are implemented *now*, your claim that fair taxes (a sales tax) are infeasible to implement is nonsense.
All that said, I'm simply pointing out the bogus objections to a Fair Tax. A more realistic objection to the Fair Tax is that the politicians will find a way to ADD a Fair Tax to the existing income taxes, increasing the tax burden rather than simplifying and reducing it.
No, purely economic feedback loops are sufficient. The doomsday scenario ignores economic feedback loops that prevent itself from happening. Namely, that robots can't actually replace humans, and that jobs are not zero sum.
Technology can obsolete certain types of jobs, but every new technology also creates new jobs. Where were the fast food restaurants and burger flipper jobs 200 years ago? They didn't exist. They came into being after industrialization built the transportation network that could combine the necessary food ingredients, and population density created demand for a quick and relatively cheap food restaurant. (then came franchising and globalization that allows you to find a McDs almost *anywhere* now)
As goods get cheaper and more available to the general population, this is an improvement. Civil unrest, or a revolution "against the machines" is going to destroy the system that makes these automation gains possible. If you have to rebuild your civilization from scratch, that is not an improvement. Replacing broken windows is not an economic gain.
The world has changed and the game is no longer about producing what people need, but instead producing what they will buy, particularly if you can get them to buy it over and over again.
No one needs a computer. Or a house with plumbing, or a car, or a meaty diet.
Economies have always been about producing what people want, and interestingly people have been and are still willing to pay a lot for fashion and status. (4-5 figures for a handbag? For a dress with practically no fabric? Heh.)
I really wish the "mechanics" of power were universally taught in the public schools, ... Of course, this is unrealistic. The government funds and operates those schools, and there is no way the government is going to sponsor that. It would be like asking Microsoft to recommend OSX.
It isn't in the interest of politicians for public education to be comprehensive or high quality.
It's a pity that people still think so highly of public education that they want to keep that system. Whoever pays for it, controls it; if gov't pays, gov't will aim to get their money's worth. (ex: produce students who won't question growth and abuse of gov't power)
What makes the system perverse is that the people are the ones paying, but it is the gov't (politicians) taking control of how that money is used.
One more point - in no sane world does a Fair Tax exempt luxury items, which are precisely the things the rich WILL buy. A fair tax will tax the rich, except for the rare few that live like paupers. But even those exceptions will not be in the long run. Any heirs will spend the money; or the money gets gifted to charities who are also in the business of spending it.
Forget the poor, someone making $30k a year with a family of four should not be paying the same rate as a billionaire. Hell, under the fair tax act he would pay a higher percentage income as tax.
Interesting that your comment got rated "insightful".
You conflated income with wealth. You compared $30k/yr to 1 billion in assets, which is like comparing a car traveling at 30 MPH to a car that has traveled 200k miles. What insight is that comparison supposed to reveal?
Next, you said that an equal rate is unfair. Rates scale with income. Let's say the billionaire has an income of $30 mil/yr. If you charged each the same rate (say 50%), the billionaire pays $15 mil/yr, the other guy pays $15k/yr. Is one guy paying 1000x as much in taxes as another guy "fair" or "unfair"? It can be viewed as fair since he has 1000x more income, but it is unfair that he pays 1000x more of the cost of gov't.
Last point, the Fair Tax can be modified to be more progressive (AKA "unfair") to the poor by exempting groceries and rent from taxation.
But who keeps the machines working? Humans. Who designs the machines? Humans. Who improves the machines? Humans.
Until we invent robots that are flat out superior in humans in all aspects (not possible in the near term, probably impossible in the long term), we are in no danger of being replaced by technology.
but it doesn't mean it'll be any kind of life worth living. Do I have to remind you what life was like prior to the 20th century...
Goods becoming cheaper due to new technology GUARANTEES a higher standard of living, not a lower one. If you can buy two burgers for the same cost as one burger now, you've GAINED, not LOST.
City living prior to the 20th century sucked compared to now, but there were still advantages and gains over the farm life of that period. (notice that farmers CHOSE to move into the city to take advantage of the opportunities there)
Cheaper burgers are not going to ruin human life. If you seriously think it will destroy civilization as we know it, I suggest studying economics more carefully, particularly on how resources are not a zero sum game. Cheaper goods bring more opportunities, not less.
On the other hand, you likely can't argue that there will always be more of those jobs than there are humans to fill them.
Supply and demand. There is a finite supply of these machines that can replace human labor. On the other hand, jobs are not a zero sum game.
Abstract the machines as an extension of the engineers/technicians who design/build them. What the "problem" boils down to then is that you have an "engineer" who is say 1000x more efficient at burger production than a McD burger flipper. Even with that lopsided ratio, the burger flipper still has a comparative advantage in doing *something*, such that it is advantageous to *both* to trade. If they have something of value to offer each other, the doomsday scenario where the person currently working as a burger flipper is completely obsoleted by technology does not happen. (His current job may become obsolete; but there will be *something* that he can do over the machine)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
In other words, we are in danger of transitioning to post-scarcity technology without transitioning to a post-scarcity economy. That leaves most people, at best, working themselves to death in completely unproductive, pointless jobs.
As likely as the grey goo scenario. Your doomsday scenario is likely missing out on some feedback loops that prevent it from happening.
People are more adaptable than machines, and thus have a higher value than them. Machines can be specialized to do some jobs more efficiently than humans, but they aren't good enough to replace humans in every possible role. There will always be work that a human can do more economically than a machine.
Time to reread Manna. The cooks, the manager, the cleaning staff, and finally you, until nobody has any work or any money.
Therefore, ban robots - or we'll end up with no jobs and no hamburgers!
I don't think we need to know how a mind works to make one. After all, hydrogen and time have led to this forum post, and I doubt the primordial hydrogen atoms were intelligent. So we know that with biochemical systems, it's possible to come up with strong I given enough time and evolution. Since evolution requires only variation, selection, and heritabillity, it's hard for me to believe we can't do that with computational systems. Is it so difficult to write a learning system that assimilates data about the world, asks questions, and changes its assumptions and conclusions on the basis of feedback from humans?
That claim would sound so ridiculous with any other complex system.
"I don't need to know how a computer works to make one"
"I don't need to know how a car works to make one"
You can get away with not knowing how it works at the start, but you're going to learn that before you ever create a working prototype. There's room for serendipity, but expecting that it must happen is wishful thinking.
And yes, the problem is hard, seeing how we haven't built it yet. The problem is orders of magnitude harder than the fanciest super computer ever built, and the ones who built that knew how it was supposed to work.
So self defense of life/property or rebelling against a government, if it tries to ignore the majority will of the people, are not legitimate uses of guns?
Not only are they not legitimate, they're barely rational.
If you think self defense is irrational, you're irrational.
In a world without people, we would have 100% less war.
Your point being ... ?
It's not "other guns". As I stated it's "Other guns and type not stated". Some of those type not stated will certainly be rifles. That's perfectly valid.
Your math involved lumping the majority of that number to pad the rifle death stats. The simplest (and still guaranteed wrong) way to interpret the stat is to add it to the other gun stats in proportion. Since handguns are 35x more likely to be involved in a crime than a rifle, the "uncounted" rifle deaths lumped into "other guns" would be a tiny portion (3~% of total). So much for "debunking" rifle stats with that 3rd point. .
People taking sentences and ignoring the other sentences around them, and then claiming not to understand is a problem.
A person dead because they were hit in the head with a rock is no less dead than a person shot in the head with a rifle.
Without any discussion, you dismiss fixing the former with weapon control as futile, but assume that fixing the latter with weapon control would most definitely work. That is the point of the comparison. "But guns are assault weapons" is not an argument. It is the addition of emotive language, but adds nothing to your base argument.
The purpose of assault weapons is indeed killing people. That's exactly what they were designed for.
The purpose of weapons is to inflict harm. Death is one possible result, but not the only possibility, or the only desired result.
The problem our society has is not the existence of weapons; the problem our society has is the existence of a group of people who wish to inflict harm without reason.
Your proposed solution to the latter problem is to disarm everyone of guns. Your chosen course of action aims to disarm both potential victims and potential perpetrators. Given the ratio of potential victims to potential perpetrators, your strategy is guaranteed to negatively affect the innocent more than the guilty. (Since the innocent who are armed are able to act to stop perpetrators)
The UK police are ordinarily without guns. Only specialist forces carry firearms. It works perfectly well, and the people, the police and the politicians are all overwhelmingly in favour of keeping it that way. So that's not such a ridiculous notion as you imagine. If the USA didn't have such an insane attitude to guns, it'd be possible there too.
You pointed to the UK as an example that we ought to follow. You don't seem to be aware that the UK is more violent per capita than the US. Why are you arguing for us to emulate a system with more crime and violence? Is that your desired end result?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7922755/England-has-worse-crime-rate-than-the-US-says-Civitas-study.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html
We arm police because we want them to have the capability to kill people; but that does not mean police are there to kill people. The purpose of armed police is to reduce violence, not increase it.
Comparing the UK vs. the US, it seems the US has the more effective police force - and it is because we do not have the UK's insane view of the relationship between weapons and violence. People cause violence, not weapons. Give weapons to the right people, and that reduces violence. Taking away weapons from everyone except criminals, on the other hand, guarantees the worst possible results.
That seems obvious to you? Who cares if pistols aren't affect by an "assault weapon" ban? Guess what. There are absolutely NO BANS on ashtrays and hammers, but apparently you think it still makes sense to lump them together and compare them to assault rifles. If you want to lump all blunt objects together, no matter how dissimilar they are, then you should be lumping all firearms together, too, no matter how dissimilar they are. Anything less and you are just arbitrarily fudging the numbers to say what you want it to say. Well, if that's what were gonna do, then guess what...I think we should be making a distinction between claw hammers, mason's hammers, sledge hammers, and rubber mallets.
If you have a problem with blunt objects being lumped into a weapon category, I suggest you take that up with the FBI. They're the ones who made that call.
To borrow gun-control advocate logic for a moment - "Why are you in favor of murders committed by blunt objects?"
Clearly, we need to support "blunt object weapon control". Is that an assault hammer in your garage? What do you *need* a hammer for?
Sure. That's why I gave 3 points not just one. The other two points debunk the rifle claim. The point that there are other guns besides rifles was worth making too though.
Concession on this point accepted. As for your 3rd point, I'd note that automatically lumping "other guns" into the rifle category is not a valid way to interpret the statistics.
As I said, rocks are blunt objects. As are hundreds of normal household objects. So no, it's not the same magnitude of problem. ...
It is the same magnitude of problem based on its measured effect.
People being killed with blunt objects is not a problem? Come again? Is it a legal method to kill people where you live?
You recognize, of course, the absurdity of trying to ban blunt objects, because there is no shortage of such weapons. That however, is not a point in favor for gun bans.
If you're going to give up banning a type of weapon because it's hard ("not a problem", in your words), just how easy do you think banning guns is?
Eliminating objects who's entire purpose is killing people rapidly is not equivalent to ridding the world of objects that could be used to kill people slowly.
The extent to which gun-nuts will come up with stupid arguments never ceases to amaze.
Your attempt to differentiate between guns and other types of weapons is nonsensical. Guns are tools, and guns accomplish their purpose in legal manners all the time. Ex: being used for practice at gun ranges or sitting unused in the homes of law abiding citizens.
The purpose of guns is not "killing people", but to be a weapon. Weapons aren't always used to kill people, they are tool capable of inflicting harm whose mere existence can be used to send a statement.
Unless you are in favor of disarming the police of guns as well, you are capable of recognizing the difference.
Restricting the comparison to only "rifle murders" is appropriate if arguing against a "assault weapon" or "rifle" ban.
Uh, no. I think an assault rifle and a pistol have a lot more in common than an ashtray and a hammer do. So why is it fair to lump an ashtray and a hammer together and then say we only compare it to the rifle and not the pistol, too?
It just seems obvious to me, but perhaps it isn't apparent to you that pistols are not affected by "assault weapon" and "rifle" bans.
By definition, unless you'd like to legally classify pistols as "rifles", or if you think there's such a thing as an "assault pistol".
That limits the maximum possible benefit of such a ban to only eliminate rifle related deaths. In practice, it won't even eliminate rifle deaths because criminals don't follow gun control laws, and no ban is enforced perfectly. (See drug laws and drug use)
You also argue that some asshole can be just as lethal with a machete. You forget that on the same day as the Newtown shooting, some asshole with a knife walked into a school in China and stabbed two dozen or so children. None of the children died. Furthermore, the asshole was subdued by teachers using chairs. Try to do that against a guy with an assault rifle; two teachers at Newtown tried, and they were both shot in the head.
Is it acceptable for there to be a school stabbing?
Do we need knife control, and is knife control going to work?
Because a new law restricting gun magazines is as likely to prevent another school shooting, as a new Chinese law restricting knives will prevent a school stabbing.
Laws restricting murder do not prevent murder from still happening; but in gun control fantasy land, laws can make it impossible for mass gun murder to happen.
Slight tangential question: What made the gun used an "assault rifle"?
So if you want to make a real case, forget the anecdotes and cite some real numbers.
The anecdotes are important if we are to apply principles.
Not every question is solved by the numbers; unless you think it is acceptable to use prisoners as live human test subjects. It would almost certainly save lives to perform that research; but the cruelty involved and the potential for abuse makes it both horrifying and unacceptable.
When you can tell every person who successfully used a gun in self-defense, "I want you to be stripped of your ability to defend yourself, and society would be better off if you had been murdered or raped" - only then would you be justified to act on "numbers" that show gun control saves lives.
28 gun deaths per day is a steep price for our society's inability to distinguish between anecdotes and statistics.
Your statistic completely ignores the woman who used a gun to defend herself from harm without inflicting fatal injury. Your stat cannot measure lives saved, and never attempts to. Yet lives saved vs. lives lost is the most important comparison if we were to honestly judge guns based on their net gain or harm to society.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics - the existence of a stat that you can cite does not make your position the most reasoned or best course of action.
2) Every single type of murder involving any type of blunt object when added together comes to slightly more than the number of homicides by rifle. Of course add in all the other varieties of gun, and you're up to about 35 times the numebr of blunt object murders.
Restricting the comparison to only "rifle murders" is appropriate if arguing against a "assault weapon" or "rifle" ban.
If someone wants to ban all rifles to "save lives", why not restrict blunt objects (including hammers)? Same magnitude problem. It may take more work, but I thought saving lives was the end goal?
I have watched this cycle with every MMORPG I have played so far. The people who scream the most about the game endlessly on the forums are NOT the ones to listen to. The average gameplayer is not qualified to do game design, even though they think they are. Almost every one of those raging complaints I have read is about 1 aspect of a game design and is often far too personal and coming from far too narrow a perspective.
I used to argue for the status quo on a class forum for a certain MMO for precisely those reasons. People would argue about how the class needed to be changed to be "competitive", and I'd point out how those changes made other classes obsolete or broke other aspects of the game's design.
Then the next expac came and the game incorporated many of the suggestions I argued against, and I realized there was no more point to holding to the status quo. (Which to be fair, should be shaken up by an expac).
I enjoyed the game the most in its 1.x incarnation, and I stopped caring about the game halfway into its 3rd expac. Somewhere along the way, the sum total of changes based on player feedback just sucked out the fun for me. (Though not everyone else, it's still the MMO to emulate)
The 10th amendment is not a block to firearm regulation, since the constitution grants the various article 1 section 8 powers, which are sufficient for firearm regulation.
Let's recall what the 2nd amendment says:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.[8]
Recall your history - the 2nd Amendment was added *after* Article I Section 8, and whereever the two may conflict in wording, the amendment takes precedence. Do you really think that Article I Section 8 powers allow the US Gov't to bypass the 2nd amendment? That's giving the gov't a blank check to bypass ALL the amendments. (As well as failing reading comprehension)
Hasan purchased the weapon off-base. Had the same rules existed off-base as on, his victims would be alive today.
There's a law against murder. Why didn't that law work? There's laws against drunk driving, recreationally enjoying certain classes of drugs, and so on - but yet those crimes happen all the same.
Faced with the failure of a law to prevent an atrocity, your solution is a new law. Does anything sound wrong with that line of reasoning?
Why should the 12-year-old not have had a firearm? Yes, she might have been harmed or killed. But 20 other children would be alive today if an effective firearm ban had been in place.
I find it funny that you only suspect that the 12 year old might come to harm if gun bans were in effect, but you are absolutely certain that no children would be harmed by this madman if gun bans were in effect.
Why is that? Do you actually have supporting statistics to show that gun bans save more children than they hurt?
Chances are that you don't, because you didn't bother supporting the claim that military gun control saved live, either. You are arguing from emotion, not evidence.
Judging from our discussion, you're not that interested in saving the lives of children, you are more interested in using their tragedy to promote your own political agenda to subvert the 2nd Amendment (using a method that subverts ALL OF THEM).
Be proud of what you are and just be straightforward - you want to repeal the Bill of Rights, For The Children.
And because of how laws are passed and the difficulty of restructuring society, even if you had gotten your desired gun ban last year, it wouldn't take effect fast enough to prevent this particular murderer from committing this atrocity. (Unless you are willing to give police broad powers to search and seize all guns from all homes; having also negated the 4th amendment "for the children")
No. It is the second amendment that is written to justify its purpose as its benefit to the state. Nowhere else in the constitution is there any mention of an inalienable right to carry firearms, and any such thing would be in contravention of the civil rights of the potential victims.
It's like you've never heard of the 10th amendment. The Bill of Rights is not meant to be a complete declaration of what rights US citizens are "allowed" to have. It's a set of restrictions on gov't power to protect some of the important natural rights that US citizens have.
Yes, the US takes casualties, mainly from IEDs. But the U.S. military is limiting gun access to its own troops outside of combat situations because they are much too prone to inflict violence upon each other. Most military bases already prohibit anyone but MPs from routinely carrying weapons.
So how did it prevent the Ft. Hood shooting? It didn't. Gun control doesn't work the way you think it will. You should show evidence that military gun control saves lives - because the existence of a rationale isn't proof that the rationale is correct.
Your rights, yes, are the mutual agreement of the society you live in. There is a libertarian notion of living independently from society and enforcing your rights with your own firearm. But this is a romantic notion far from reality. Murder rates per locality back then were close to those of today, but with 1/100 the population. The net effect of firearms where there was no effective civil justice was that more innocent people were killed.
Yes, society is an agreement on how we'll exercise our rights. (Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins) In this case, you are using a dishonest emotion based argument to attempt to unilaterally rewrite that agreement. You and your ilk are not acting in good faith.
Gun owners have a right to use guns for leisure and self-defense. You have failed to make a case that restricting their rights make society safer. You've cited no statistics on how gun control reduces crime, only made faulty arguments rooted in your fear of law-abiding citizens. (The only ones who will give up their guns if it were law)
You haven't answered my earlier question. Why is that 12 year old girl better off at the mercy of a home invader? She sucessfully defended herself from a criminal with a gun, and you need to explain why society is better off if she were helpless instead.