Was that rather pointless and incompetent theater supposed to impress someone? I doubt the Guardian has been cowed by destruction of at most a few thousand dollars of equipment. And it shows that the UK is in bed with the US with this sort of spying.
So, in government, "building relationship" is manifested in what's called "taxes."
Another way to see how absurd your suggest is, is to consider a previous statement you made.
Nothing beats actual human interaction.
Telecommuting is such a failure.
Nobody wants their human interaction cheapened. If you ever want to build any kind of relationship (sales, groups, fucking, etc..), you actually have to meet people in real life.
So what sort of person would rather have "human interaction" with their favorite tax collection agency rather than the far less baneful choice of sending them a payment every now and then. You have to be missing that survival instinct.
And of course, there's the distant and remote interaction of Slashdot. I'm not particularly interested in having "human interaction" with you. And since you're posting on Slashdot, it seems to me that you reciprocate. So why are you baiting libertarians rather than having those meaningful human interactions you seem to want?
All of your morals are horribly outdated, everything you thought you knew about the world is at best laughably incomplete or more likely completely wrong, and the world has changed in every meaningful way. Good luck getting a job, finding a mate, or even crossing the street!
And? So what's the difficulty supposed to be here? If you look at who was around then (or for that matter now), they could either crawl in a hole while wailing about the demons around them or they could embrace this change and thrive. I bet the people who would make such gambles are of the latter sort. And no offense to people of this era, but modern society is not hard to figure out.
Your fantasies are the sort of thing a young child would entertain.
But not the sort that a young child can attain.
The reality is going to be a lot less pleasant, because those
in power ( and you might not be one of them, chum )
will make sure this is true, as they always have since the dawn
of mankind.
There are things more powerful than the shadowy people holding you back. Ideas such as this are some of those things.
Freedom is a complicated issue... there is a constant back and forth between 'right to' and 'right from', and of course balancing the more systemic issues where individual actions, spread out across a large population, have population level effects.
Freedom is only "complicated" in this regard when you are trying to force others to give or do things you want.
I would say that self-drug-abuse then requiring public health care counts as harming others.
So what? Society could have opted not to give that public health care. As I see it, society waived any such right by providing the health care in the first place.
, I think society has a little right to frown upon people removing themselves from it, unless they made up for the effort society made in bringing them up.
I suggest giving everyone a high quality dildo at their birth, replaceable whenever it wears out, is lost or stolen, so that when they have this feeling to act on non-existent "little rights", they can go fuck themselves without those other peoples' assistance or presence which supposedly is so needed.
The thing you don't get is that there is no obligation to return something which has been freely given. If you don't like that, then don't give it.
Suicide is the ultimate opt-out of society. If you claim to have any sort of free society, you allow suicide whether you like it or not.
If Bitcoin mining were more profitable than selling Bitcoin miners, then BFL wouldn't be selling the equipment. I wouldn't actually touch Bitcoin mining, but it is possible for it to make a profit and yet still be less attractive than selling the tools.
Now, I'm not going to touch Bitcoin mining (though the marginal increase in moderate electricity usage is free for me), but my point is that it can be a profitable activity and yet BFL could still be making rational and honest decisions (note: can be != is).
What was the important point in that? If solar power was such a significant advantage, then we could just build it without attaching a transportation system to it. Sometimes there is synergy between otherwise uneconomical systems merged together, but usually it goes the other way with an aggregate system that is worse off than either system taken separately.
Frankly, I think he's better off just dropping the solar power angle and tying to the grid for his power needs.
If you don't believe me then look at China. Much less regulation, lower taxes, and yet we still have jobs and a high standard of living in western Europe.
For now. It's worth noting that around 1975, there was a vast gap between what the China could do and make and what Europe could do and make. Both got a lot better over the decades, but China definitely is catching up.
In the last decade, it's PPP GDP per capita has doubled compared to 10-20% gains over the same period for most European countries. In twenty years at the current rate, they'll be past a good portion of the poorer European countries. And they'll have overcome those Eurozone trade barriers (like the various ISO standards). Now, obviously, they could hit the same economic walls that Japan and Europe has hit.
I see your bravado as whistling past the graveyard. There's no special reason to employ Europeans or North Americans. They aren't that well educated and the physical infrastructure of those regions just isn't that good, especially for the premium you have to pay. What makes those places special is their legal infrastructure which still makes it relatively easy to live freely, create businesses, and employ people. Throw that away, and you've lost the fundamental advantage of those regions over places like China.
Ignoring the fact that you are extending his analogy is a ridiculous level just to mock it
I wasn't the one comparing a government to a Costco store. Remember what I said about the parody?
The simple fact is that most people do get far more out of the government than they put in. That's how taxes work for most people.
If I get cancer the government will treat me for free, even though the cost is likely to be far more than I have ever paid in to the healthcare system by taxation.
That is never for "free" - even you reverse yourself in the next sentence fragment. Why even say that word? Even if we consider the remote possibility that you never have to pay net positive taxes due to circumstance, someone has to pay for that service.
Even if I don't get cancer I'm still better off because I didn't have to buy expensive cancer insurance that would probably have stiffed me anyway.
How if you had to buy cheaper health insurance instead? It's amazing how so many thinks the current, ridiculously priced US system is the only way to do health insurance. The US also had a health insurance system right after the Second World War, but it took a far smaller part of the economy back then.
This is possible because taxation is somewhat proportional to income, and because companies that wish to operate in and benefit from our society also pay taxes.
This is possible because someone makes a lot more than you do and they employ a bunch of people. If that changes, say because your government drives out enough businesses with regulation and high operating costs (such as via taxes), then you don't get that nice health care any more.
I'm just pointing out the obvious way that the majority get more out than they put in.
And I'll point out the obvious. That what you claim is not obvious. For example, in the US, I get to pay for corruption, NSA spying, onerous regulations, and a political class that is fairly hostile to just about everything I care about. Those things have negative value for me.
And the same government that does all that, wants to do my health care too? I'm not falling for it.
Bottom line is the same government which you trust to hold your hand and wipe your ass, you wouldn't trust with business regulation, starting wars, or tapping phone lines. You're more of a problem to yourself than libertarians ever could be.
I read this and it just sounds like a parody of human thought. Paying taxes is a "relationship"? That's a mockery of the word. Though I must admit that I wouldn't mind enjoying the same relationship with your bank account that your favorite tax collection agency has. But maybe you should put a bag on your head first.
And all these straw men libertarians? Can't say that I really care what you think there. One can study actual libertarian philosophy, discussion and such. What you claim just isn't true.
For example, let's consider your second to last sentence.
Libertarianism is for people that doesn't know that it's ok to sacrifice a pawn (their taxes) to save the king (their health care), for example. They don't know that government is a giant Costco that actually benefits them in the long-run, because they see the incremental failure that is them losing tax dollars. Libertarianism really is about the "me first, then others" philosophy. It is intrinsic to their failure.
So here, there's some naive notion that government is a giant store where you get more out than you put in. Ignoring that this analogy is so broken as to be unrecognizable, where's the demonstration that you will get more out than you put in?
Last I checked the US government together with the assistance of about every developed world government has the capability to spy on every phone or internet connection in a vast part of the world. I don't want that in my shopping cart. That's what your Costco delivers. You may not have noticed, but libertarians tend to be very paranoid about this sort of thing. And I think there's great reason to be fearful of what the governments of the world will do with this power.
Then there's the problem of governments not following the rules. A lot of people get that it's bad when businesses don't follow the laws and aren't punished for it. But who's supposed to be enforcing those laws? It's not the libertarians screwing this one up, but the same government providing all those Costco benefits.
Only libertarian losers that believe in "freedom" think life shouldn't be about building relationships and think of life as for themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. You have to kiss ass to those in power if you want power back.
Ah, yes, the instinctive urge to bash so-called
"libertarians" brings out the inner cockroach. Libertarianism has nothing to do with "building relationships," but is merely a philosophy about governance. In a libertarian society, there would be an even greater need to build relationships because you couldn't use the force of the state to insure compliance or seize resources. The mugger doesn't need to build a relationship. While much is made of self-reliance, less is discussed of the new opportunities for building relationships that would exist in a libertarian society.
There's a portion of the population that is for lack of a better word, "introspective". They don't interact well with people or easily build relationships. They aren't naturally libertarians any more than anyone else. So labeling this group as "libertarian losers" just indicates ignorance on your part.
Because they're returning to Huntsville. The DC natives have no reason to go to Huntsville, but the supplicants from Huntsville have a reason to go to Huntsville.
Elon Musk thinks California should kill its $68 billion high-speed rail project and build his $7.5 billion Hyperloop instead. It's a false choice. We should pursue all promising new options for efficient mass transit, and let the chips fall where they may; if it turns out after a few years that Musk's system is truly faster and cheaper, there will still be time to pull the plug on high-speed rail.
I would have pulled the plug on California's HSR project some time ago. It has already demonstrated sufficient failure and cost ballooning for me. But let's drag this out and spend more money.
Just remember that you probably could have funded Musk's project completely on what they'll squander on the HSR project before it is canceled. He might be a bit off on the $7.5 billion figure and he does have a tendency to promise more than he can deliver, but he's done a good job in the past of controlling R&D cost growth in his engineering projects.
Depends how they did the accounting. When I hear numbers like that, I don't assume that they've accounted for inflation. It's routine to just add up the spending each year and report that number. In which case, the latter number is probably a doubling of the former number.
Being promised perfect, unfaultering health and purpetual youth would spoil that.
I'd have no problem with that state of affairs. After all, I think living in "perfect, unfaltering health and perpetual youth" but at oh, a portion of your capacity to "live life to the fullest" is still a lot more living than living optimally a few years of life in deep sickness.
Why would we change our views based on that? Instead, why haven't you changed your views? Would you rather that billions of women suffer as your mother suffered rather than have us eventually come up with solutions that bypass that suffering altogether?
I find it interesting that you compare a human life to a blade of grass. If blades of grass were sentient like humans, I'd advocate for eternal lawns as well or at least lawns where the mind of the blade of grass could be passed on to a new blade of grass.
Slashdot Mirror
Was that rather pointless and incompetent theater supposed to impress someone? I doubt the Guardian has been cowed by destruction of at most a few thousand dollars of equipment. And it shows that the UK is in bed with the US with this sort of spying.
So, in government, "building relationship" is manifested in what's called "taxes."
Another way to see how absurd your suggest is, is to consider a previous statement you made.
Nothing beats actual human interaction.
Telecommuting is such a failure.
Nobody wants their human interaction cheapened. If you ever want to build any kind of relationship (sales, groups, fucking, etc..), you actually have to meet people in real life.
So what sort of person would rather have "human interaction" with their favorite tax collection agency rather than the far less baneful choice of sending them a payment every now and then. You have to be missing that survival instinct.
And of course, there's the distant and remote interaction of Slashdot. I'm not particularly interested in having "human interaction" with you. And since you're posting on Slashdot, it seems to me that you reciprocate. So why are you baiting libertarians rather than having those meaningful human interactions you seem to want?
Second, why would anybody want to revive some corpses at huge expense when making a few children more is so much easier?
Because otherwise they don't get paid for reviving those corpses?
And third, why would anybody reasonably want to be unfrozen, when the world is massively changed and everybody they knew and cared about is gone?
I don't get what the problem is supposed to be here. It's not like you've completely lost the ability to make new friends and know new people.
Yea, you might not like it like. Always a good reason not to do anything.
All of your morals are horribly outdated, everything you thought you knew about the world is at best laughably incomplete or more likely completely wrong, and the world has changed in every meaningful way. Good luck getting a job, finding a mate, or even crossing the street!
And? So what's the difficulty supposed to be here? If you look at who was around then (or for that matter now), they could either crawl in a hole while wailing about the demons around them or they could embrace this change and thrive. I bet the people who would make such gambles are of the latter sort. And no offense to people of this era, but modern society is not hard to figure out.
Your fantasies are the sort of thing a young child would entertain.
But not the sort that a young child can attain.
The reality is going to be a lot less pleasant, because those in power ( and you might not be one of them, chum ) will make sure this is true, as they always have since the dawn of mankind.
There are things more powerful than the shadowy people holding you back. Ideas such as this are some of those things.
Freedom is a complicated issue... there is a constant back and forth between 'right to' and 'right from', and of course balancing the more systemic issues where individual actions, spread out across a large population, have population level effects.
Freedom is only "complicated" in this regard when you are trying to force others to give or do things you want.
I would say that self-drug-abuse then requiring public health care counts as harming others.
So what? Society could have opted not to give that public health care. As I see it, society waived any such right by providing the health care in the first place.
, I think society has a little right to frown upon people removing themselves from it, unless they made up for the effort society made in bringing them up.
I suggest giving everyone a high quality dildo at their birth, replaceable whenever it wears out, is lost or stolen, so that when they have this feeling to act on non-existent "little rights", they can go fuck themselves without those other peoples' assistance or presence which supposedly is so needed.
The thing you don't get is that there is no obligation to return something which has been freely given. If you don't like that, then don't give it.
Suicide is the ultimate opt-out of society. If you claim to have any sort of free society, you allow suicide whether you like it or not.
Apple's would just be some kind of hybrid prison/sandpit.
But do you get an official Hutt sendoff?
I wonder which is more likely?
I'd say fallacy of the false dilemma. Plus, you still have yet to acknowledge the huge cost differential here.
If Bitcoin mining were more profitable than selling Bitcoin miners, then BFL wouldn't be selling the equipment. I wouldn't actually touch Bitcoin mining, but it is possible for it to make a profit and yet still be less attractive than selling the tools.
Now, I'm not going to touch Bitcoin mining (though the marginal increase in moderate electricity usage is free for me), but my point is that it can be a profitable activity and yet BFL could still be making rational and honest decisions (note: can be != is).
What was the important point in that? If solar power was such a significant advantage, then we could just build it without attaching a transportation system to it. Sometimes there is synergy between otherwise uneconomical systems merged together, but usually it goes the other way with an aggregate system that is worse off than either system taken separately.
Frankly, I think he's better off just dropping the solar power angle and tying to the grid for his power needs.
If you don't believe me then look at China. Much less regulation, lower taxes, and yet we still have jobs and a high standard of living in western Europe.
For now. It's worth noting that around 1975, there was a vast gap between what the China could do and make and what Europe could do and make. Both got a lot better over the decades, but China definitely is catching up.
In the last decade, it's PPP GDP per capita has doubled compared to 10-20% gains over the same period for most European countries. In twenty years at the current rate, they'll be past a good portion of the poorer European countries. And they'll have overcome those Eurozone trade barriers (like the various ISO standards). Now, obviously, they could hit the same economic walls that Japan and Europe has hit.
I see your bravado as whistling past the graveyard. There's no special reason to employ Europeans or North Americans. They aren't that well educated and the physical infrastructure of those regions just isn't that good, especially for the premium you have to pay. What makes those places special is their legal infrastructure which still makes it relatively easy to live freely, create businesses, and employ people. Throw that away, and you've lost the fundamental advantage of those regions over places like China.
Good point. It may well be that Musk would run into the same cost ballooning just because he's trying to do it in California.
Ignoring the fact that you are extending his analogy is a ridiculous level just to mock it
I wasn't the one comparing a government to a Costco store. Remember what I said about the parody?
The simple fact is that most people do get far more out of the government than they put in. That's how taxes work for most people.
If I get cancer the government will treat me for free, even though the cost is likely to be far more than I have ever paid in to the healthcare system by taxation.
That is never for "free" - even you reverse yourself in the next sentence fragment. Why even say that word? Even if we consider the remote possibility that you never have to pay net positive taxes due to circumstance, someone has to pay for that service.
Even if I don't get cancer I'm still better off because I didn't have to buy expensive cancer insurance that would probably have stiffed me anyway.
How if you had to buy cheaper health insurance instead? It's amazing how so many thinks the current, ridiculously priced US system is the only way to do health insurance. The US also had a health insurance system right after the Second World War, but it took a far smaller part of the economy back then.
This is possible because taxation is somewhat proportional to income, and because companies that wish to operate in and benefit from our society also pay taxes.
This is possible because someone makes a lot more than you do and they employ a bunch of people. If that changes, say because your government drives out enough businesses with regulation and high operating costs (such as via taxes), then you don't get that nice health care any more.
I'm just pointing out the obvious way that the majority get more out than they put in.
And I'll point out the obvious. That what you claim is not obvious. For example, in the US, I get to pay for corruption, NSA spying, onerous regulations, and a political class that is fairly hostile to just about everything I care about. Those things have negative value for me.
And the same government that does all that, wants to do my health care too? I'm not falling for it.
Bottom line is the same government which you trust to hold your hand and wipe your ass, you wouldn't trust with business regulation, starting wars, or tapping phone lines. You're more of a problem to yourself than libertarians ever could be.
And all these straw men libertarians? Can't say that I really care what you think there. One can study actual libertarian philosophy, discussion and such. What you claim just isn't true.
For example, let's consider your second to last sentence.
Libertarianism is for people that doesn't know that it's ok to sacrifice a pawn (their taxes) to save the king (their health care), for example. They don't know that government is a giant Costco that actually benefits them in the long-run, because they see the incremental failure that is them losing tax dollars. Libertarianism really is about the "me first, then others" philosophy. It is intrinsic to their failure.
So here, there's some naive notion that government is a giant store where you get more out than you put in. Ignoring that this analogy is so broken as to be unrecognizable, where's the demonstration that you will get more out than you put in?
Last I checked the US government together with the assistance of about every developed world government has the capability to spy on every phone or internet connection in a vast part of the world. I don't want that in my shopping cart. That's what your Costco delivers. You may not have noticed, but libertarians tend to be very paranoid about this sort of thing. And I think there's great reason to be fearful of what the governments of the world will do with this power.
Then there's the problem of governments not following the rules. A lot of people get that it's bad when businesses don't follow the laws and aren't punished for it. But who's supposed to be enforcing those laws? It's not the libertarians screwing this one up, but the same government providing all those Costco benefits.
Only libertarian losers that believe in "freedom" think life shouldn't be about building relationships and think of life as for themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. You have to kiss ass to those in power if you want power back.
Ah, yes, the instinctive urge to bash so-called "libertarians" brings out the inner cockroach. Libertarianism has nothing to do with "building relationships," but is merely a philosophy about governance. In a libertarian society, there would be an even greater need to build relationships because you couldn't use the force of the state to insure compliance or seize resources. The mugger doesn't need to build a relationship. While much is made of self-reliance, less is discussed of the new opportunities for building relationships that would exist in a libertarian society.
There's a portion of the population that is for lack of a better word, "introspective". They don't interact well with people or easily build relationships. They aren't naturally libertarians any more than anyone else. So labeling this group as "libertarian losers" just indicates ignorance on your part.
Because they're returning to Huntsville. The DC natives have no reason to go to Huntsville, but the supplicants from Huntsville have a reason to go to Huntsville.
Elon Musk thinks California should kill its $68 billion high-speed rail project and build his $7.5 billion Hyperloop instead. It's a false choice. We should pursue all promising new options for efficient mass transit, and let the chips fall where they may; if it turns out after a few years that Musk's system is truly faster and cheaper, there will still be time to pull the plug on high-speed rail.
I would have pulled the plug on California's HSR project some time ago. It has already demonstrated sufficient failure and cost ballooning for me. But let's drag this out and spend more money.
Just remember that you probably could have funded Musk's project completely on what they'll squander on the HSR project before it is canceled. He might be a bit off on the $7.5 billion figure and he does have a tendency to promise more than he can deliver, but he's done a good job in the past of controlling R&D cost growth in his engineering projects.
Depends how they did the accounting. When I hear numbers like that, I don't assume that they've accounted for inflation. It's routine to just add up the spending each year and report that number. In which case, the latter number is probably a doubling of the former number.
Being promised perfect, unfaultering health and purpetual youth would spoil that.
I'd have no problem with that state of affairs. After all, I think living in "perfect, unfaltering health and perpetual youth" but at oh, a portion of your capacity to "live life to the fullest" is still a lot more living than living optimally a few years of life in deep sickness.
Why would we change our views based on that? Instead, why haven't you changed your views? Would you rather that billions of women suffer as your mother suffered rather than have us eventually come up with solutions that bypass that suffering altogether?
I find it interesting that you compare a human life to a blade of grass. If blades of grass were sentient like humans, I'd advocate for eternal lawns as well or at least lawns where the mind of the blade of grass could be passed on to a new blade of grass.