Except that the manufacturer surely knows what he intends when he makes them, and when he sells them. Why would we not take his word on it? We're not talking about proof in any legal or philosophical case -- we both agree that there is no legal onus upon the manufacturer to prove (or even claim) to have good intentions. But why do you seek to deny him the right to state that he does?
Re:Can We Callanmge the SEC and FAASB?
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Then why does industry have to be dragged kicking and screaming every time a new environmental law is proposed?
This is certainly an oversimplification. Much environmental legislation is poorly thought out (look at the restrictions on fuel additives which have swamped California's water table with the new legally-mandated (and highly toxic) additives in order to `fix' a problem which no one is sure existed). Also, it is hardly universally the case that companies fight regulation. Enron, to pick one company in the news, spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying for the US to ratify the Kyoto accords, a move which would have been economic suicide for the nation, but would have helped several of Enron's divisions quite nicely.
Why isn't every new vehicle sold a SULEV?
Why would we assume that it is okay to suddenly require all consumers to foot the bill for cars which are currently less safe to operate and more expensive to buy or own? When the manufacturers address these issues, people will buy these vehicles without being forced to...
1.65 pounds of toxic release inventory pollutants per barrel per day... 6.17 pounds per barrel per day
Is 6 pounds per barrel high? Is it low? Is it higher or lower than it was last year? Are the methods required in these two locales the same? Are they producing the same product? From the same input? Don't we need the answers to these questions before those numbers mean anything?
I'll grant you that some environmentalists ignore the facts in favor of a preconceived agenda, and that some environmental law is dreadfully inefficient at achieving its goals. But claiming that industry should receive most of the credit for environmental clean-up is specious.
Again, as many environmental laws have done more harm than good, and as most of the encouraging trends in pollution levels predate even the earliest environmental regulations, why should these laws get the credit?
Re:Can We Callanmge the SEC and FAASB?
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Actually, for which we can thank the fact that more advanced production techniques tend to pollute less -- the trend goes back much farther than environmental legislation does.
Remember -- pollution is by definition a sign of a wasteful production process. If the process were more efficient, it would produce less byproduct. And there are plenty of economic incentives to develop more efficient production technologies.
Re:Can We Callanmge the SEC and FAASB?
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Which is all very well, but the fact remains that even the data coming from the green groups acknowledges that the amount of pollution produced by the US has been dropping for decades, and the amount of pollution per production even moreso...
What it does do is destroy any incentive anyone else might have to spend the large investment in time and money needed to start producing vehicles, thus making everyone lose.
This is why we have copyright law in the first place -- to protect an incentive which would otherwise disappear...
Chomsky has a long history of calling people liars when they point out things he would rather he had not said -- for evidence of this, one need only check out his recent debate with Chrisopher Hitchens in the letters section of The Nation.
As for the quote in question, it is from a letter Chomsky wrote to Bill Rubinstein, which is published in Mr. Rubinstein's ``Chomsky and the Neo-Nazis'', which can be found in the October 1981 issue of the journal Quadrant.
The things that John Wayne Gacey and Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer did were illegal too.
Sometimes breaking the law is the more just act, but it is not the lawbreaking which makes the act good. This is why your comparison (`people who rip off copyrighted material are just like abolitionists, man!') doesn't hold water.
You'd better leave it to law enforcement. If you are not a cop or a soldier, for whom the gun is a tool, you'd just better stay away from them
Which is fine if we're talking about going out looking for criminals. But when you're home in the middle of the night, and someone comes through your window, the choice isn't between defending yourself and not defending yourself, the choice is defending yourself with a gun or without one.
At least where I live, time between when you call 9-1-1 and a police car arrives averages between 25 and 45 minutes. Maybe you're cool with the idea of spending that much time with a burglar in the house with you, your wife, and your kids, but I for one am not.
As for how to really get rid of crime, well, we seem to be doing a pretty good job at this -- crime rates here in New York are a fraction of what they were a decade ago...
Unfortunately, your information is about a decade and a half out of date. Both France and England now have violent-crime rates significantly above that in the US -- indeed that in Paris is now 50% higher than in New York City, and in particular, England as a whole has seen a skyrocketing rate of gun crime since finalizing the ban on all handguns in 1996.
For more on this, see here or here. And remember -- criminals will get guns. The only question is whether they will be alone in having them...
OK, but then we have to carry this analogy through:
Soon, the humvee makers go out of business, as they can't sell any humvees. While my humvee copier keeps working, no new models of humvees ever come out, and everyone loses.
The end.
For more thoughts on this, pick up an economics textbook, flip to the index, and find `commons, tragedy of the'.
Re:Can We Callanmge the SEC and FAASB?
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For more on the nearly-constant improvements in emissions amounts in the US in the last couple of decades, check out
this piece.
Because Daschle has already used every excuse, reasonable or not, to play partisan attack-dog, so it is clear a Daschle-headed investigation would be a witch hunt?
Again, Bush and Cheney both have called for investigations of the intelligence failures which made 9/11 possible. And both have objected to mechanisms (special prosecutor or `independent' Senate committee) which would be partisan witch-hunts.
What do you find strange in this? And what part of this do you feel justifies your original claim that Cheney opposes any investigation?
And before you say `no', keep in mind that `Faurisson's work', which Mr. Chomsky `see[s] no hint of anti-Semitic implications in' repeatedly claims that belief in the holocaust is a fabrication being pushed by an organized conspiracy of all the world's Jews...
I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the holocaust.... I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work...
you do not see this as a defense of Mr. Faurisson's statements?
I don't think we're that far from agreement here. Neither of us is arguing that the manufacturers have any legal burden to demonstrate (or even claim) that the (perfectly legal, remember) items which they are manufacturing are intended for ethical uses.
That said, I continue to maintain that they are intended for ethical uses, and I will not cede that moral highground to anyone who comes along and claims otherwise without their providing any evidence.
As far as I can tell, the article suggests not that Bush or Cheney opposed an investigation -- remember, they've been calling for one from day one -- but rather that they oppose a Ken Starr -style special commission be used for this investigation, as that would result in a witch-hunt for political purposes rather than a useful analysis of what intelligence failures led to the attack. Makes sense to me...
Of course, being out to make a seperate point, which he doesn't back up very well, Mr. Alter (this is the same Mr. Alter who has written some of the nastiest smear articles the American political scene has ever seen) tries to make this sound very sinister.
Well, that's what the manufacturers themselves say, while you haven't provided any evidence in the other direction, so I'd say the ball's in your court...
Re:In past ages the philosphers...
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If the best defence of capitalism is that it's not the Soviet Union then clearly pro-capitalists are morally bankrupt.
No, the best defense of capitalism is that unlike every other system that has been tried, it has produced tremendous liberty and prosperity for all levels of the societies which have tried it.
On the other hand, it does appear looking at this thread that the only defense proponents of communism are coming here with is `we'll be different this time. we promise!'.
The cold war is over. Screaming "Commie" at those who disagree with you is no longer acceptible.
No one is `screaming' anything at anyone, but it's funny -- I would think that if anything could be described as the `lesson' of the cold war, it would be that Communism doesn't work, and causes misery and tyranny when it is tried...
You have military courts and Executive Orders that countermand the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of rights says nothing about non-citizen prisoners of war, who are the only people eligible for the measures you speak of. Heck, we've gone way out of our way on this one too -- a captured al Qaeda operative who lived here until he was two months old is recognized as a citizen and given a civil trial, and so is Moussaoui, who was never a citizen...
though China will likely be cast as the next great villian if they don't pony up the dough in the "open market".
Sure, that must be it. Concern about China couldn't possibly have anything to do with its arming of hostile regimes, its expansionist policies toward its neighbors, and its terrible human rights abuses, now could it?
By pampered, I mean people who have never struggled under real oppression,
This is a bad thing? ``Those darn Americans would be alright if'n they were a little more oppressed...''?
but only have benefited from it.
Care to back that up?
Native Americans.. Philippinos... Salvadoreans
Well, if you have to reach back to the turn of the last century to find two of the three things you complain about, I'd say our recent record is pretty good... As to the last, while it's tempting to see the hand of the CIA in everything that goes wrong anywhere in the world, I'd suggest you read up on the terrible violence on both sides in El Salvador -- there is such a thing as the lesser of two evils, after all.
Man at health club questions the legitimacy of the "war on terrorism". Two days later, gets visit by the FBI
Now, I heard that man interviewed on NPR, and that's not how he told the story -- he admits the FBI were responding to trumped up claims of what he had said from another patron of the health club, and makes clear that when he declined to speak with them, the agents politely left. But perhaps you would have the FBI never interview potential leads (voluntarily, I remind you). But rather than rely on either of our recollections, can you provide a cite?
this happened before their "get serious" approach to surveillance adopted a couple of days ago.
Um, yeah. A `get serious' approach which basically said `FBI agents will be allowed to use Google, and to read publically viewable web sites or listen to publicly given speeches as part of investigations. This is scary stuff?
You have people like McNeely saying "get over it" about privacy,
McNealy is a private citizen. If he's a butthead, that's his own business...
and a general disdain for individual liberties, all in the name of security.
I have to say that I haven't seen this. Heck, look -- all of the attackers of 9/11 came from a particular religion and a particular part of the world, and as far as we can tell, future attackers will meet the same profile. And yet we are explicitly not giving people who match that profile added scrutiny at airports, much less in daily life. That seems like a pretty strong endorsement of civil liberties to me...
You have Dan Rather weeping on TV as he serves his propaganda function.
Now I was a block from the WTC at the time of the attacks, and I have to say that your rejection of the possibility that Mr. Rather was actually upset by what he (and I) had seen is pretty offensive.
Again, can you provide any cite for the claim that Cheney called for their not to be an investigation of the intelligence failures which made the Spetember 11 attacks possible? AFAICT, the administration has been calling for such an investigation from day one (and it would be suicidal not to -- if the attacks happened before, they can happen again).
I mainly agree with this. Remember that my point was that the US was the country whose citizens enjoy the most freedom, democracy, and prosperity.
There will always be other factors people will look at when choosing where to live (climate, local wildlife, proximity to family, etc), which is why I steer away from judging either way as to `where you should want to live'.
That said, the number of people coming to the US each year certainly is much greater than the number leaving.:-)
Who cares about oil when you're living like Winston Smith?
And who cares about argument when we can use hyperbole!
If by `pampered' you mean `rich', as in `living in the most prosperous nation on earth', then I'm with you, but I'm not sure what your objection is. Likewise, I'm not sure where you get the idea that we're living in a `total surveillance environment', much more something which could be sanely compared to 1984.
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Except that the manufacturer surely knows what he intends when he makes them, and when he sells them. Why would we not take his word on it? We're not talking about proof in any legal or philosophical case -- we both agree that there is no legal onus upon the manufacturer to prove (or even claim) to have good intentions. But why do you seek to deny him the right to state that he does?
Then why does industry have to be dragged kicking and screaming every time a new environmental law is proposed?
This is certainly an oversimplification. Much environmental legislation is poorly thought out (look at the restrictions on fuel additives which have swamped California's water table with the new legally-mandated (and highly toxic) additives in order to `fix' a problem which no one is sure existed). Also, it is hardly universally the case that companies fight regulation. Enron, to pick one company in the news, spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying for the US to ratify the Kyoto accords, a move which would have been economic suicide for the nation, but would have helped several of Enron's divisions quite nicely.
Why isn't every new vehicle sold a SULEV?
Why would we assume that it is okay to suddenly require all consumers to foot the bill for cars which are currently less safe to operate and more expensive to buy or own? When the manufacturers address these issues, people will buy these vehicles without being forced to...
1.65 pounds of toxic release inventory pollutants per barrel per day ... 6.17 pounds per barrel per day
Is 6 pounds per barrel high? Is it low? Is it higher or lower than it was last year? Are the methods required in these two locales the same? Are they producing the same product? From the same input? Don't we need the answers to these questions before those numbers mean anything?
I'll grant you that some environmentalists ignore the facts in favor of a preconceived agenda, and that some environmental law is dreadfully inefficient at achieving its goals. But claiming that industry should receive most of the credit for environmental clean-up is specious.
Again, as many environmental laws have done more harm than good, and as most of the encouraging trends in pollution levels predate even the earliest environmental regulations, why should these laws get the credit?
Actually, for which we can thank the fact that more advanced production techniques tend to pollute less -- the trend goes back much farther than environmental legislation does.
Remember -- pollution is by definition a sign of a wasteful production process. If the process were more efficient, it would produce less byproduct. And there are plenty of economic incentives to develop more efficient production technologies.
Which is all very well, but the fact remains that even the data coming from the green groups acknowledges that the amount of pollution produced by the US has been dropping for decades, and the amount of pollution per production even moreso...
Check out the numbers in that Mark Steyn piece.
This is why we have copyright law in the first place -- to protect an incentive which would otherwise disappear...
As for the quote in question, it is from a letter Chomsky wrote to Bill Rubinstein, which is published in Mr. Rubinstein's ``Chomsky and the Neo-Nazis'', which can be found in the October 1981 issue of the journal Quadrant.
The things that John Wayne Gacey and Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer did were illegal too.
Sometimes breaking the law is the more just act, but it is not the lawbreaking which makes the act good. This is why your comparison (`people who rip off copyrighted material are just like abolitionists, man!') doesn't hold water.
You'd better leave it to law enforcement. If you are not a cop or a soldier, for whom the gun is a tool, you'd just better stay away from them
Which is fine if we're talking about going out looking for criminals. But when you're home in the middle of the night, and someone comes through your window, the choice isn't between defending yourself and not defending yourself, the choice is defending yourself with a gun or without one.
At least where I live, time between when you call 9-1-1 and a police car arrives averages between 25 and 45 minutes. Maybe you're cool with the idea of spending that much time with a burglar in the house with you, your wife, and your kids, but I for one am not.
As for how to really get rid of crime, well, we seem to be doing a pretty good job at this -- crime rates here in New York are a fraction of what they were a decade ago...
Unfortunately, your information is about a decade and a half out of date. Both France and England now have violent-crime rates significantly above that in the US -- indeed that in Paris is now 50% higher than in New York City, and in particular, England as a whole has seen a skyrocketing rate of gun crime since finalizing the ban on all handguns in 1996.
For more on this, see here or here. And remember -- criminals will get guns. The only question is whether they will be alone in having them...
OK, but then we have to carry this analogy through:
Soon, the humvee makers go out of business, as they can't sell any humvees. While my humvee copier keeps working, no new models of humvees ever come out, and everyone loses.
The end.
For more thoughts on this, pick up an economics textbook, flip to the index, and find `commons, tragedy of the'.
For more on the nearly-constant improvements in emissions amounts in the US in the last couple of decades, check out this piece.
Because Daschle has already used every excuse, reasonable or not, to play partisan attack-dog, so it is clear a Daschle-headed investigation would be a witch hunt?
That's my guess...
Again, Bush and Cheney both have called for investigations of the intelligence failures which made 9/11 possible. And both have objected to mechanisms (special prosecutor or `independent' Senate committee) which would be partisan witch-hunts.
What do you find strange in this? And what part of this do you feel justifies your original claim that Cheney opposes any investigation?
And before you say `no', keep in mind that `Faurisson's work', which Mr. Chomsky `see[s] no hint of anti-Semitic implications in' repeatedly claims that belief in the holocaust is a fabrication being pushed by an organized conspiracy of all the world's Jews...
I don't think we're that far from agreement here. Neither of us is arguing that the manufacturers have any legal burden to demonstrate (or even claim) that the (perfectly legal, remember) items which they are manufacturing are intended for ethical uses.
That said, I continue to maintain that they are intended for ethical uses, and I will not cede that moral highground to anyone who comes along and claims otherwise without their providing any evidence.
As far as I can tell, the article suggests not that Bush or Cheney opposed an investigation -- remember, they've been calling for one from day one -- but rather that they oppose a Ken Starr -style special commission be used for this investigation, as that would result in a witch-hunt for political purposes rather than a useful analysis of what intelligence failures led to the attack. Makes sense to me...
Of course, being out to make a seperate point, which he doesn't back up very well, Mr. Alter (this is the same Mr. Alter who has written some of the nastiest smear articles the American political scene has ever seen) tries to make this sound very sinister.
Well, that's what the manufacturers themselves say, while you haven't provided any evidence in the other direction, so I'd say the ball's in your court...
where those actions are not legal.
That should read illegal, of course.
If the best defence of capitalism is that it's not the Soviet Union then clearly pro-capitalists are morally bankrupt.
No, the best defense of capitalism is that unlike every other system that has been tried, it has produced tremendous liberty and prosperity for all levels of the societies which have tried it.
On the other hand, it does appear looking at this thread that the only defense proponents of communism are coming here with is `we'll be different this time. we promise!'.
The cold war is over. Screaming "Commie" at those who disagree with you is no longer acceptible.
No one is `screaming' anything at anyone, but it's funny -- I would think that if anything could be described as the `lesson' of the cold war, it would be that Communism doesn't work, and causes misery and tyranny when it is tried...
[sorry -- hit `submit' too soon :-)]
To continue:
You have military courts and Executive Orders that countermand the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of rights says nothing about non-citizen prisoners of war, who are the only people eligible for the measures you speak of. Heck, we've gone way out of our way on this one too -- a captured al Qaeda operative who lived here until he was two months old is recognized as a citizen and given a civil trial, and so is Moussaoui, who was never a citizen...
though China will likely be cast as the next great villian if they don't pony up the dough in the "open market".
Sure, that must be it. Concern about China couldn't possibly have anything to do with its arming of hostile regimes, its expansionist policies toward its neighbors, and its terrible human rights abuses, now could it?
By pampered, I mean people who have never struggled under real oppression,
This is a bad thing? ``Those darn Americans would be alright if'n they were a little more oppressed...''?
but only have benefited from it.
Care to back that up?
Native Americans .. Philippinos ... Salvadoreans
Well, if you have to reach back to the turn of the last century to find two of the three things you complain about, I'd say our recent record is pretty good... As to the last, while it's tempting to see the hand of the CIA in everything that goes wrong anywhere in the world, I'd suggest you read up on the terrible violence on both sides in El Salvador -- there is such a thing as the lesser of two evils, after all.Man at health club questions the legitimacy of the "war on terrorism". Two days later, gets visit by the FBI
Now, I heard that man interviewed on NPR, and that's not how he told the story -- he admits the FBI were responding to trumped up claims of what he had said from another patron of the health club, and makes clear that when he declined to speak with them, the agents politely left. But perhaps you would have the FBI never interview potential leads (voluntarily, I remind you). But rather than rely on either of our recollections, can you provide a cite?
this happened before their "get serious" approach to surveillance adopted a couple of days ago.
Um, yeah. A `get serious' approach which basically said `FBI agents will be allowed to use Google, and to read publically viewable web sites or listen to publicly given speeches as part of investigations. This is scary stuff?
You have people like McNeely saying "get over it" about privacy,
McNealy is a private citizen. If he's a butthead, that's his own business...
and a general disdain for individual liberties, all in the name of security.
I have to say that I haven't seen this. Heck, look -- all of the attackers of 9/11 came from a particular religion and a particular part of the world, and as far as we can tell, future attackers will meet the same profile. And yet we are explicitly not giving people who match that profile added scrutiny at airports, much less in daily life. That seems like a pretty strong endorsement of civil liberties to me...
You have Dan Rather weeping on TV as he serves his propaganda function.
Now I was a block from the WTC at the time of the attacks, and I have to say that your rejection of the possibility that Mr. Rather was actually upset by what he (and I) had seen is pretty offensive.
Again, can you provide any cite for the claim that Cheney called for their not to be an investigation of the intelligence failures which made the Spetember 11 attacks possible? AFAICT, the administration has been calling for such an investigation from day one (and it would be suicidal not to -- if the attacks happened before, they can happen again).
There will always be other factors people will look at when choosing where to live (climate, local wildlife, proximity to family, etc), which is why I steer away from judging either way as to `where you should want to live'.
That said, the number of people coming to the US each year certainly is much greater than the number leaving. :-)
Who cares about oil when you're living like Winston Smith?
And who cares about argument when we can use hyperbole!
If by `pampered' you mean `rich', as in `living in the most prosperous nation on earth', then I'm with you, but I'm not sure what your objection is. Likewise, I'm not sure where you get the idea that we're living in a `total surveillance environment', much more something which could be sanely compared to 1984.
Explain?