You keep referring to "still breathing", as if state sanctioned murder of citizens for petty criticism is obligatory in the absence of the Constitution.
He's publicly challenging authority. That's pretty open and shut. And dictatorships pretty much need to make examples of those who publicly challenge their rule or they cease to be the ones in charge.
No, they're basing it on an arbitrary volume unit that was made to be 10^120 larger than Planck length cubed. It still doesn't make any sense in that regard.
Another approach is to suppose that relative to a single point of space we try to nail down the position of everything we can see to as accurately as we can. We're going to have more trouble nailing down the position of distant locations because it's harder to build out a sensory network to triangulate positions or launch retroreflectors to everything we can see. That sort of thing.
When was the last time anyone in government went to jail for violating the constitution?
Again, you miss the point. You're still breathing. That means there remains some obstruction to government or whoever is in power doing what they want. I think this is the current process:
1) Government representatives violate the Constitution.
2) Someone gets fed up enough with the behavior to bring it to court.
3) The court rules mostly in the favor of the defendant.
4) The government representatives finally stop doing the activity which has been ruled unconstitutional because at this point, they will go to jail if they continue the activity in direct violation of the court order.
So were you suggesting rising taxes to pay off the national debt, thus giving you less disposable cash? Or perhaps you meant cutting military budget, thus sacrificing world power? No. You specifically mentioned "social safety net" as what you want cut. Which means you're sacrificing weaker members of society for this "better future" for yourself - in other words, human sacrifice.
I don't mind the first two though there really isn't a need to raise taxes once you've dealt with military spending and excessive entitlement spending IMHO. For the US, military spending and entitlement spending make up two thirds of the US budget, including "off budget" stuff like Social Security.
At the very least honor your would-be victims enough to admit what you're trying to do.
I think this is fundamentally dishonest. Everyone should have to cut back a little. Not just the wealthy. Not just the poor or disadvantaged.
Why do we give employers the choice of using slave labour in third-world shitholes while still doing business - or even residing - in the first world? Because the market demands it.
I think rather because it is better for everyone in the long run. This whole situation is driven by a vast disparity between the developed world and everyone else along with the ability to trade globally and allow the various parts of the world to use their advantages to best improve themselves.
The current economic system is quickly making the rest of the world as wealthy as the developed world. I think within a human lifetime, we'll have eliminated almost all poverty globally.
Why do we have anything at all to do with dictatorships like China? Because market demands it. Why do we not simply rise toll barriers to remove the price advantage of slave labour? Because the market forbids it. Why are the unemployed made to live in poverty? Because the market has determined them as worthless. Why do people say things like "My net worth is $100,000"? Because the market values everything in dollars. Why do the worst fanatics try to reword even fundamental human rights in terms of (self-)ownership? Because that is the most important - and often the only important - concept to them.
And why do you bring up this rather than the obvious observation that global trade makes the few problems you note better? Don't like "slave" labor, third world shitholes, dictatorships, unemployed, or poverty? The current economic system is fixing those problems. I don't consider the rest of what you think of as problems, worth discussing.
The false god will fall, and then we can put the market into work as the useful tool it is, rather than a force that determines human fate we're treating it as. Assuming, of course, our civilization can take the associated forced readjustment of its mythological structure that's already underway.
We already do that now. It's already solved, assuming it's even worth the bother of promoting this to the status of a problem.
Then why are you still breathing? Your labor is not valuable enough to justify the seditious words you speak of. Sure, there is substantial encroachment on the framework that is described by the US Constitution, but it'd be a very different world, if it weren't working at all rather than working poorly.
they'll probably start trying to harness the sun in about 800 years time.
The obvious counter is that agriculture is primarily solar powered and even if we ignore that, we still have a large amount of solar power generation out there. It's happening now, not 800 years from now.
Unless of course, it doesn't happen that way. I thought maybe someone had spouted the "we can exponentially grow forever" myth, but I don't see that in the thread. So I don't see the point of your observation.
Unless we're seriously going to up our game on planetary terraforming we have some pretty specific requirements for gravity, temperature and magnetic field so the atmosphere and surface water isn't stripped away by the local star and bombarded with radiation if we want another "normal" earth where we can eventually walk around outside.
Or human adaptation. Any serious interstellar travel will probably involve humans who live much longer than current ones anyway.
You can want to keep something that someone else can make non-existant.
The obvious point here was that not that Obama was promising that we could want something we wanted. But rather that we could keep something we already had.
Making choices or deferring a want isn't human sacrifice.
No. It still is a sacrifice and since we're speaking of humans, it automatically becomes a human sacrifice though not a kill someone on an altar human sacrifice. I get your point about sacrificing third parties interests for our own, but don't redefine the English language just to argue a point.
If one states that they believe self harm in any fashion is a sin and they find them self in a situation where they can either certainly die of starvation, dehydration or exposure OR they can cut their own arm off and have a chance of survival, that person commits self harm either way and is thus a hypocrite.
What makes them a hypocrite? Most people with such a belief would also believe that it is impossible to not sin.
Voting is a similar situation in regard to hypocrisy. The question is what is the greater hypocrisy when there is no option that conforms to ones political beliefs. Sometimes, there is no right choice. Sometimes there are only wrong choices and really wrong choices.
Obama is a really wrong choice. I could tell from partway through the 2008 Democrat presidential nomination process that he was going to be a mess and I turned out to be right. Just pointing that out.
Besides, voting is an action when one IS SUPPOSED TO ACT IN THEIR OWN, SELFISH, BEST INTERESTS. When tallied up, the best interests of the majority should prevail. If this is done, the tragedy of the commons is avoided and over-all, the majority gets what they want. Hopefully, what the majority wants is best for the majority but that requires an informed, intelligent electorate - I digress.
Two things. First, it's not. For example, accepting twenty dollars for my vote may be my selfish, best interests, but such activities are illegal. Second, tragedy of commons is not at all avoided since what a majority wants is not the same as what the majority gets.
An example "make it so" mis-step Obama made was when a speech writer told him to say "if you want to keep your insurance plan, you can" and he did exactly that.
Conveniently dying out is the best thing humans can do for the sake of the rest of life on this planet.
How is the rest of life going to get off the planet when the Sun turns into a red giant. And I can't help but notice that conveniently dying out is not the best thing humanity can do for itself.
Human sacrifice, in common parlance, is when you make decisions for other people, sacrificing them as opposed to yourself.
When everyone can't have everything, then why isn't every possible outcome of an economy a "human sacrifice"? Everyone has to give up something for everyone else.
No, markets are not the same way, because markets are not a tool. Markets is an idea. Ideas share some characteristics as tools, but ideas are much more than that.
So it's a tool that happens to be more than a tool. I'm ok with that especially since it doesn't change my argument.
For example, we don't need to have an entire field of study with people dedicating their entire careers researching on whether or not a hammer exists, or what conditions are best to allow screwdrivers to form.
Markets are easy to observe, there's no question about their existence. And there are enough people who figure out the best conditions for screwdrivers to form, we call them manufacturers.
That's another difference there. With tools, there's no preference to one certain tool. And no moral implications of using certain tools. People don't tend to argue that we "should" be using hammers, and those who don't want to use screwdrivers as evil commies looking to enslave others.
But if it were advantageous to their ideology or interests to portray screwdrivers as evil, a lot of people would do so. That's just human nature.
Human sacrifice has never once in history saved whoever practiced it.
You do it all the time, such as making choices or deferring a want now for something you want more later. I don't know whether it's "saved" you or not. But it's what you do all the time.
But this time is different, because the Invisible Hand is a greater god than Tlaloc or Baal.
Do we say a hammer is a greater god than Tlaloc or a screwdriver a greater god than Baal just because they're real and actually work? No. We just use them as tools. Markets are the same way, just considerably more valuable a tool.
It's pathetic how obvious it is once you see modern economy as it really is: just another religion hiding behind claims of rationality. And one currently going through typical end-of-line panic with associated frenzy of sacrifices and penances.
I consider your post part of that panic. As I see it, the developed world started engaging in a bunch of economic shenanigans after experiencing greatly increased labor competition from the rest of the world. Some of these were failed attempts to preserve the price of developed world labor while others were just parasites feeding opportunistically in the environment.
But why should we expect good things when we dump so many costs and burdens on the employers? Especially when they have the choice of employing people in far cheaper countries or automating the work?
Here's a link to Economics in One Lesson. And read chapter 7, "The Curse of Machinery". As to those who claim, completely without evidence, that this time it's different, well a 70 year old argument is more up to date than you are.
Return to the land. Farm. Raise up your own food and some extra. Harvest your own local fuel. Build your own house. All of these things are doable and it brings your cost of living to nearly nil. No need for 'jobs'. Be.
But not for everyone. We're not going to get seven billion people to stay alive that way.
It appears that the software revolution will do what technology usually doesâ"create wealth but destroy jobs.
And create jobs too. If technology "usually" destroyed jobs without creating other jobs, then almost none of us would be employed.
It's also worth noting that globally jobs are being created just fine and wages are going up just fine. How can one comment on this while missing the biggest, most important labor trends of the past 500 years?
His/her other gov't-trimming suggestions risk health and safety problems. I don't want the US to become a dump to compete with the 3rd world. Maybe more would have jobs, but more would also be sick or injured. It's closer to a Mad Max dystopia than an improvement.
And what's the trend here in the US? It's to declining employment and declining quality of employment in a world which is going the opposite way. It's not working. You say you don't want a dump now? Well, I don't want a dump in fifty years.
My view on the matter is that most of the social safety net and most of the regulations we implemented to make our lives better are now rebounding on us and dragging us down relative to the rest of the world. It's time to make some sacrifices, to make the present a bit more dumpy in order to have a better future.
No, it's quite relevant that there are protections in place for private property. For example, some examples of recent capitalist dictatorships would be Chile under Pinochet, current day Singapore and China, Japan up to around the First World War, and Taiwan under the Kuomintang,
One could also ask how many communist dictatorships there are left in the world.
There aren't many left. Cuba, North Korea, and Burma come to mind.
And I'm not quite sure what you mean by private ownership of capital. In most dictatorships there's a small fraction of the population with close ties to the government who are very rich and who manage to hang on to their wealth/capital just fine.
The definition of capitalism is an economic or political system in which there is substantial ownership of capital by private, non government entities. If you have to be a crony in order to own capital, then you're not in a capitalist society.
And it's not purely capitalism versus communism - there are plenty of examples all around the world and throughout history of populations being trapped in poverty by capitalist dictatorships of one form or another.
Not really. Capitalism is not just private parties owning capital, but also effective laws that protect private ownership of capital. That's a relatively new thing. Most dictatorships don't have the rule of law that protects private ownership of capital. IMHO capitalist dictatorships are quite rare even in today's world. Thus as a result, I don't think there are plenty of examples of capitalist dictatorships.
Slashdot Mirror
You keep referring to "still breathing", as if state sanctioned murder of citizens for petty criticism is obligatory in the absence of the Constitution.
He's publicly challenging authority. That's pretty open and shut. And dictatorships pretty much need to make examples of those who publicly challenge their rule or they cease to be the ones in charge.
No, they're basing it on an arbitrary volume unit that was made to be 10^120 larger than Planck length cubed. It still doesn't make any sense in that regard.
Another approach is to suppose that relative to a single point of space we try to nail down the position of everything we can see to as accurately as we can. We're going to have more trouble nailing down the position of distant locations because it's harder to build out a sensory network to triangulate positions or launch retroreflectors to everything we can see. That sort of thing.
When was the last time anyone in government went to jail for violating the constitution?
Again, you miss the point. You're still breathing. That means there remains some obstruction to government or whoever is in power doing what they want. I think this is the current process:
1) Government representatives violate the Constitution.
2) Someone gets fed up enough with the behavior to bring it to court.
3) The court rules mostly in the favor of the defendant.
4) The government representatives finally stop doing the activity which has been ruled unconstitutional because at this point, they will go to jail if they continue the activity in direct violation of the court order.
So were you suggesting rising taxes to pay off the national debt, thus giving you less disposable cash? Or perhaps you meant cutting military budget, thus sacrificing world power? No. You specifically mentioned "social safety net" as what you want cut. Which means you're sacrificing weaker members of society for this "better future" for yourself - in other words, human sacrifice.
I don't mind the first two though there really isn't a need to raise taxes once you've dealt with military spending and excessive entitlement spending IMHO. For the US, military spending and entitlement spending make up two thirds of the US budget, including "off budget" stuff like Social Security.
At the very least honor your would-be victims enough to admit what you're trying to do.
I think this is fundamentally dishonest. Everyone should have to cut back a little. Not just the wealthy. Not just the poor or disadvantaged.
Why do we give employers the choice of using slave labour in third-world shitholes while still doing business - or even residing - in the first world? Because the market demands it.
I think rather because it is better for everyone in the long run. This whole situation is driven by a vast disparity between the developed world and everyone else along with the ability to trade globally and allow the various parts of the world to use their advantages to best improve themselves.
The current economic system is quickly making the rest of the world as wealthy as the developed world. I think within a human lifetime, we'll have eliminated almost all poverty globally.
Why do we have anything at all to do with dictatorships like China? Because market demands it. Why do we not simply rise toll barriers to remove the price advantage of slave labour? Because the market forbids it. Why are the unemployed made to live in poverty? Because the market has determined them as worthless. Why do people say things like "My net worth is $100,000"? Because the market values everything in dollars. Why do the worst fanatics try to reword even fundamental human rights in terms of (self-)ownership? Because that is the most important - and often the only important - concept to them.
And why do you bring up this rather than the obvious observation that global trade makes the few problems you note better? Don't like "slave" labor, third world shitholes, dictatorships, unemployed, or poverty? The current economic system is fixing those problems. I don't consider the rest of what you think of as problems, worth discussing.
The false god will fall, and then we can put the market into work as the useful tool it is, rather than a force that determines human fate we're treating it as. Assuming, of course, our civilization can take the associated forced readjustment of its mythological structure that's already underway.
We already do that now. It's already solved, assuming it's even worth the bother of promoting this to the status of a problem.
We can also see that because it has no teeth
Then why are you still breathing? Your labor is not valuable enough to justify the seditious words you speak of. Sure, there is substantial encroachment on the framework that is described by the US Constitution, but it'd be a very different world, if it weren't working at all rather than working poorly.
they'll probably start trying to harness the sun in about 800 years time.
The obvious counter is that agriculture is primarily solar powered and even if we ignore that, we still have a large amount of solar power generation out there. It's happening now, not 800 years from now.
Unless of course, it doesn't happen that way. I thought maybe someone had spouted the "we can exponentially grow forever" myth, but I don't see that in the thread. So I don't see the point of your observation.
Unless we're seriously going to up our game on planetary terraforming we have some pretty specific requirements for gravity, temperature and magnetic field so the atmosphere and surface water isn't stripped away by the local star and bombarded with radiation if we want another "normal" earth where we can eventually walk around outside.
Or human adaptation. Any serious interstellar travel will probably involve humans who live much longer than current ones anyway.
You can want to keep something that someone else can make non-existant.
The obvious point here was that not that Obama was promising that we could want something we wanted. But rather that we could keep something we already had.
Making choices or deferring a want isn't human sacrifice.
No. It still is a sacrifice and since we're speaking of humans, it automatically becomes a human sacrifice though not a kill someone on an altar human sacrifice. I get your point about sacrificing third parties interests for our own, but don't redefine the English language just to argue a point.
If one states that they believe self harm in any fashion is a sin and they find them self in a situation where they can either certainly die of starvation, dehydration or exposure OR they can cut their own arm off and have a chance of survival, that person commits self harm either way and is thus a hypocrite.
What makes them a hypocrite? Most people with such a belief would also believe that it is impossible to not sin.
Voting is a similar situation in regard to hypocrisy. The question is what is the greater hypocrisy when there is no option that conforms to ones political beliefs. Sometimes, there is no right choice. Sometimes there are only wrong choices and really wrong choices.
Obama is a really wrong choice. I could tell from partway through the 2008 Democrat presidential nomination process that he was going to be a mess and I turned out to be right. Just pointing that out.
Besides, voting is an action when one IS SUPPOSED TO ACT IN THEIR OWN, SELFISH, BEST INTERESTS. When tallied up, the best interests of the majority should prevail. If this is done, the tragedy of the commons is avoided and over-all, the majority gets what they want. Hopefully, what the majority wants is best for the majority but that requires an informed, intelligent electorate - I digress.
Two things. First, it's not. For example, accepting twenty dollars for my vote may be my selfish, best interests, but such activities are illegal. Second, tragedy of commons is not at all avoided since what a majority wants is not the same as what the majority gets.
An example "make it so" mis-step Obama made was when a speech writer told him to say "if you want to keep your insurance plan, you can" and he did exactly that.
A "misstep" made 37 times.
Conveniently dying out is the best thing humans can do for the sake of the rest of life on this planet.
How is the rest of life going to get off the planet when the Sun turns into a red giant. And I can't help but notice that conveniently dying out is not the best thing humanity can do for itself.
Human sacrifice, in common parlance, is when you make decisions for other people, sacrificing them as opposed to yourself.
When everyone can't have everything, then why isn't every possible outcome of an economy a "human sacrifice"? Everyone has to give up something for everyone else.
No, markets are not the same way, because markets are not a tool. Markets is an idea. Ideas share some characteristics as tools, but ideas are much more than that.
So it's a tool that happens to be more than a tool. I'm ok with that especially since it doesn't change my argument.
For example, we don't need to have an entire field of study with people dedicating their entire careers researching on whether or not a hammer exists, or what conditions are best to allow screwdrivers to form.
Markets are easy to observe, there's no question about their existence. And there are enough people who figure out the best conditions for screwdrivers to form, we call them manufacturers.
That's another difference there. With tools, there's no preference to one certain tool. And no moral implications of using certain tools. People don't tend to argue that we "should" be using hammers, and those who don't want to use screwdrivers as evil commies looking to enslave others.
But if it were advantageous to their ideology or interests to portray screwdrivers as evil, a lot of people would do so. That's just human nature.
Human sacrifice has never once in history saved whoever practiced it.
You do it all the time, such as making choices or deferring a want now for something you want more later. I don't know whether it's "saved" you or not. But it's what you do all the time.
But this time is different, because the Invisible Hand is a greater god than Tlaloc or Baal.
Do we say a hammer is a greater god than Tlaloc or a screwdriver a greater god than Baal just because they're real and actually work? No. We just use them as tools. Markets are the same way, just considerably more valuable a tool.
It's pathetic how obvious it is once you see modern economy as it really is: just another religion hiding behind claims of rationality. And one currently going through typical end-of-line panic with associated frenzy of sacrifices and penances.
I consider your post part of that panic. As I see it, the developed world started engaging in a bunch of economic shenanigans after experiencing greatly increased labor competition from the rest of the world. Some of these were failed attempts to preserve the price of developed world labor while others were just parasites feeding opportunistically in the environment.
But why should we expect good things when we dump so many costs and burdens on the employers? Especially when they have the choice of employing people in far cheaper countries or automating the work?
Rather, let's hope it's quick.
Here's a link to Economics in One Lesson. And read chapter 7, "The Curse of Machinery". As to those who claim, completely without evidence, that this time it's different, well a 70 year old argument is more up to date than you are.
Return to the land. Farm. Raise up your own food and some extra. Harvest your own local fuel. Build your own house. All of these things are doable and it brings your cost of living to nearly nil. No need for 'jobs'. Be.
But not for everyone. We're not going to get seven billion people to stay alive that way.
It appears that the software revolution will do what technology usually doesâ"create wealth but destroy jobs.
And create jobs too. If technology "usually" destroyed jobs without creating other jobs, then almost none of us would be employed.
It's also worth noting that globally jobs are being created just fine and wages are going up just fine. How can one comment on this while missing the biggest, most important labor trends of the past 500 years?
Don't give these oxygen thieves the time of day.
His/her other gov't-trimming suggestions risk health and safety problems. I don't want the US to become a dump to compete with the 3rd world. Maybe more would have jobs, but more would also be sick or injured. It's closer to a Mad Max dystopia than an improvement.
And what's the trend here in the US? It's to declining employment and declining quality of employment in a world which is going the opposite way. It's not working. You say you don't want a dump now? Well, I don't want a dump in fifty years.
My view on the matter is that most of the social safety net and most of the regulations we implemented to make our lives better are now rebounding on us and dragging us down relative to the rest of the world. It's time to make some sacrifices, to make the present a bit more dumpy in order to have a better future.
Sure, no true Scottsman.
No, it's quite relevant that there are protections in place for private property. For example, some examples of recent capitalist dictatorships would be Chile under Pinochet, current day Singapore and China, Japan up to around the First World War, and Taiwan under the Kuomintang,
One could also ask how many communist dictatorships there are left in the world.
There aren't many left. Cuba, North Korea, and Burma come to mind.
And I'm not quite sure what you mean by private ownership of capital. In most dictatorships there's a small fraction of the population with close ties to the government who are very rich and who manage to hang on to their wealth/capital just fine.
The definition of capitalism is an economic or political system in which there is substantial ownership of capital by private, non government entities. If you have to be a crony in order to own capital, then you're not in a capitalist society.
The same schools that encourage cruel tribal groupings, base human behavior like bullying, and mass cheating? That will end well.
I am curious that you say fuel tanker efficiency is 80%
I took it to mean the "last mile" road transportation of fuel to gas stations. That's going to be less efficient than supertankers on the high seas.
And it's not purely capitalism versus communism - there are plenty of examples all around the world and throughout history of populations being trapped in poverty by capitalist dictatorships of one form or another.
Not really. Capitalism is not just private parties owning capital, but also effective laws that protect private ownership of capital. That's a relatively new thing. Most dictatorships don't have the rule of law that protects private ownership of capital. IMHO capitalist dictatorships are quite rare even in today's world. Thus as a result, I don't think there are plenty of examples of capitalist dictatorships.
OTOH, if you're a one trick pony, then the computer is probably as good a single trick as there is out there.