So if something comes along and prevents an inevitable "worse" situation, you're still happy to call it "bad" and "evil"?
Yup. Afterall, if someone came along and rescued me from death row and enslaved me, I'd still feel that was "bad". Not that I'm not comparing government to either slavery or death row, just providing an example of a situation where the cure, while better than the disease, isn't that great itself.
I'm also pretty sure you can name a few things off the top of your head that you appreciate from the government -- not just "necessary evil", but actually beneficial.
Plenty. If I couldn't, I'd have left out the "necessary" and gone straight to evil. It's not what the government does that makes it bad. It's the manner in which it's funded.
Foreign aid is (generally) good. We should give money to help those worse off than us. There are plenty of charities that have that aim. However, for those charities to demand we fund them, with the threat of imprisonment if we don't, would be immoral.
Yet that's exactly the model the government uses. It provides certain *necessary* services (defence, courts, etc). In order to fund those activities, it *must* have money. So we allow it to forcibly extract money from citizens (i.e. taxation) in order to fulfill those functions.
We also give the government the power to violate the rights of its citizens. The government is the only organisation that is allowed to imprison people, confiscate their property and put them to death. They're allowed to do so because they have a mandate to enforce law and punishment.
Really, these are bad things. We don't let anyone else do them. We suffer under the government doing them for the sake of certain necessities, but if it weren't for them, we wouldn't stand for it. That's pretty much the definition of "necessary evil".
I'm not arguing for the abolishment of government (necessary, remember). I'm arguing that because the government has so many very dangerous privileges, it needs to be closely monitored and restricted. If a function can be provided by a private entity, it should be - simply because the government has too many powers that are too ripe for abuse. It should be kept restricted so that those powers are limited to the area in which they are intended to allow the government to operate.
Who the fuck doesnt want or need health insurance?
People who live in countries whose medical system hasn't been in bed with insurance agencies, such that the costs of even common medical procedures skyrocket to the point where they can't be paid out of pocket?
Seriously. I have private health insurance. The claims I've made against it (glasses, a trip to the chiro) don't come anywhere near to what I've paid for it. I could generally get by paying my medical expenses as they come - unless something goes wrong. Health insurance is for dealing with the calamitous exception, not the rule.
My surprise comes from posters like the GGP who endorse that stupidity.
Also from people like you, who apparently can't read context unless it is explicitly pointed out to them, and think that calling someone a child constitutes a witty rebuttal.
See, my opposition to abortion isn't political. It's philosophical. I agree that, if a foetus isn't human, abortion is fine. I posit that, if a foetus is human, abortion is murder, and thus not fine. The crux of that particular matter is the philosophical question of "what is human?" rather than the political question of "to what degree should governments limit the freedom of the individual".
It's the problem you get when you try to determine political position by enumerating policies. Someone could disagree with a policy, no not because of their position on government. They could, for instance, not believe the policy is likely to work, even though the stated aim of the policy is in line with their political thoughts. You could imagine a Libertarian who was for the Iraq war, if they truly believed that Iraq presented a threat to the security of the US, and the government was legitimately exercising its responsibility to defend the nation.
I'd probably agree with you about FOX news (probably - I'm not American and have limited exposure to it, and what exposure I do have tends to be heavily biased) - I was just disagreeing with your methodology of "testing libertarian-ness".
Our society will not countenance a system of "if you can't afford to pay for treatment or get insurance, you just die."
Charities are an option, but they can only do so much. Unlike the government, they can't compel donations.
So basically "society" will not tolerate it, but they also don't want to pay for it. They'd rather compel others to pay for their wants. If "society" truly wouldn't tolerate it, then they would supply charities to ensure it doesn't happen. If charities are underfunded, it's because "society" is tolerating it.
This is a large proportion of what's wrong with our society: they want it, but they don't want to pay for it. Therefore, they demand the government make everyone else pay for it.
You haven't disproved "Government == Bad". You've just demonstrated that "No Government == Worse". I consider government a necessary evil. In discussion with some people. I find I need to emphasize the evil part. In discussion with others, the necessary.
Uh-huh. No true Scotsman would think such a thing!
I consider myself libertarian, and my political views match most definitions I've seen of the term (economically conservative, socially liberal as they relate to the power of the state), but I wouldn't agree with all the specific policies you outlined (for the record: abortion).
Uh-huh. "Sitting pretty" is having your assets frozen, being imprisoned, and defending yourself against extradition.
And as you have clearly failed to answer the question despite your three paragraphs of ranting, I have to conclude that your accomplishments amount to nothing more than whining pathetically on Slashdot against those who've accomplished more for freedom and democracy than you ever will.
What's more, since in your other reply to my post you, stated that you found painful death for the crime of extra-marital sex to be perfectly moral behaviour, I can now dismiss you as an unethical, amoral zealot, presumably only posting in a desperate and futile attempt at self-aggrandizement and validation.
Uh-huh. Until they rock the boat, and are likewise destroyed. That's the point I was making. Letting Assange be destroyed for political expediency will, at the least, have a chilling effect on other leakers. It will also set a precedent, that the people will look the other way while governments destroy such people. The spotlight needs to be kept firmly on Assange.
We also need to vigorously report and investigate the cables demonstrating criminal activity of course, but the media is quite large. It can do both.
but it would involve transparent synchronization between all your devices
Not really. I achieve this by buying a NAS appliance, hooking it up to my network, and storing everything there. Bing, access to all my stuff, from anywhere (with a network signal), and yet it's all under my control. I guess if you wanted to spin it into buzzwords you could say I'm "hosting my own cloud", but really it's nothing different from what computer networks have been doing since the 60s. I prefer the term "black box computing", which is what cloud computing really is. You're trusting your data to a process you don't control, don't understand - you just know that you put data in, and it comes back out again. And have you to hope it will continue to do so.
It seems to me that the intense public and media following of Assange is the only thing keeping him from being disappeared. We should keep the focus on Assange, and follow his trial closely and loudly - if we want the light he's shone on to illicit activities to continue to shine, or if we want anyone else to take up that torch. If we ignore him, he's jailed, wikileaks disbands, and we get no more of the truly important things that WIkileaks has released.
Really? I see nobody here mentioning conspiracy theories (certainly nobody modded up) except you. The thing is, we don't care why HP did it. What we care is that they did. And regardless of what they were going to use it for, what it can be used for is compromising the security of a user's system. It may not have been malevolent, but it was certainly condescending (users are to stupid to manage their own system) and it definitely compromises security.
Uh-huh. People like Assange have no need for valor. Which is why he put himself front-and-centre for his organization, deliberately exposed things that people needed to know, while knowing that he was going to cop all the flack himself. Tell me, name one thing you've done that's been half so valorous as what Assange has accomplished over the last few years?
You know who else isn't above the law? The managers at DynCorp who hire underage prostitutes to woo their clients. And pharmaceutical companies who perform illegal testing regimes on ill-informed, impoverished foreigners. But wait, they're not being charged. The people who brought their actions to light are. Meanwhile, Julian Assange asked, and was told, that he could leave Sweden, and as soon as he does, is slapped with an interpol warrant, and extradition orders. This after his case was already dropped, then reactivated. Given the level of corruption already exposed, you don't need to be particularly cynical to see that these actions weren't motivated by a sense of justice, or a desire to see the law upheld.
So you're saying that if you go to Iran, and have sex with your girlfriend while you're there, it is right and just for you (or more likely, just her) to be stoned to death, because the law of the land you're in is the absolute arbiter of morality. That something is morally right and ethical if you're on one side of the border, but take a step to the left, and you deserve whatever you get.
As far as I can see, the US government has done a fine job of violating the security of your nation, by interfering in foreign nations and missing off people to the extent they're willing to suicide to hurt you. Oh, and then miring your security apparatus down in such information overload that they couldn't prevent it when they tried.
And for C, they're preventing by the simple expedient of granting themselves a monopoly on it.
I guess they're performing satisfactorily enough on B.
Yup. And what happens then is that the words lose all meaning. "Broadband" is an absolutely meaningless term now. It connotes nothing, unless you provide an additional definition of what *you* mean by broadband. Once it lose it's true, technical, meaning, it simply became another word for "fast". And it's now impossible to talk about "broadband" in the technical sense because the word that's used to describe it has been hijacked.
That's why grammar nazis continually crop up to defend stuff like "begging the question" - once that term is hijacked, there becomes no way to invoke the meaning that term once had. Our language loses accuracy and flexibility, and accretes simply another synonym. Like we didn't have enough already.
These days there's a very clearly defined producer/consumer relationship. It isn't just a matter of bandwidth or anything... I simply cannot host a website on my home connection. I am barred from doing that.
Only in the US. And really, only because you resisted paying as-used, rather than a flat rate for bandwidth. As bandwidth use grew, ISPs couldn't deliver on their flat-rate plans, and they couldn't start charging for data used without causing an uproar. So they looked for other methods to restrict the amount of bandwidth used, and they were generally more disruptive than simple scaling pricing. It's a natural outcome of trying to have your cake and eat it to. I'm in Australia, and the only port that's blocked by default is outgoing 25, and that can be opted-out of by logging into your ISP preferences - it's purely a malware control mechanism.
This is actually a good thing. The problem with jurors investigating off their own bat is that the other parties in the courtroom are unaware that this material has now been considered. It means that, say, while there might be a rational explanation for something, the defence will never advance it because it doesn't know the jury is considering it.
Slashdot Mirror
So if something comes along and prevents an inevitable "worse" situation, you're still happy to call it "bad" and "evil"?
Yup. Afterall, if someone came along and rescued me from death row and enslaved me, I'd still feel that was "bad". Not that I'm not comparing government to either slavery or death row, just providing an example of a situation where the cure, while better than the disease, isn't that great itself.
I'm also pretty sure you can name a few things off the top of your head that you appreciate from the government -- not just "necessary evil", but actually beneficial.
Plenty. If I couldn't, I'd have left out the "necessary" and gone straight to evil. It's not what the government does that makes it bad. It's the manner in which it's funded.
Foreign aid is (generally) good. We should give money to help those worse off than us. There are plenty of charities that have that aim. However, for those charities to demand we fund them, with the threat of imprisonment if we don't, would be immoral.
Yet that's exactly the model the government uses. It provides certain *necessary* services (defence, courts, etc). In order to fund those activities, it *must* have money. So we allow it to forcibly extract money from citizens (i.e. taxation) in order to fulfill those functions.
We also give the government the power to violate the rights of its citizens. The government is the only organisation that is allowed to imprison people, confiscate their property and put them to death. They're allowed to do so because they have a mandate to enforce law and punishment.
Really, these are bad things. We don't let anyone else do them. We suffer under the government doing them for the sake of certain necessities, but if it weren't for them, we wouldn't stand for it. That's pretty much the definition of "necessary evil".
I'm not arguing for the abolishment of government (necessary, remember). I'm arguing that because the government has so many very dangerous privileges, it needs to be closely monitored and restricted. If a function can be provided by a private entity, it should be - simply because the government has too many powers that are too ripe for abuse. It should be kept restricted so that those powers are limited to the area in which they are intended to allow the government to operate.
Who the fuck doesnt want or need health insurance?
People who live in countries whose medical system hasn't been in bed with insurance agencies, such that the costs of even common medical procedures skyrocket to the point where they can't be paid out of pocket?
Seriously. I have private health insurance. The claims I've made against it (glasses, a trip to the chiro) don't come anywhere near to what I've paid for it. I could generally get by paying my medical expenses as they come - unless something goes wrong. Health insurance is for dealing with the calamitous exception, not the rule.
My surprise comes from posters like the GGP who endorse that stupidity.
Also from people like you, who apparently can't read context unless it is explicitly pointed out to them, and think that calling someone a child constitutes a witty rebuttal.
But how do you determine that?
See, my opposition to abortion isn't political. It's philosophical. I agree that, if a foetus isn't human, abortion is fine. I posit that, if a foetus is human, abortion is murder, and thus not fine. The crux of that particular matter is the philosophical question of "what is human?" rather than the political question of "to what degree should governments limit the freedom of the individual".
It's the problem you get when you try to determine political position by enumerating policies. Someone could disagree with a policy, no not because of their position on government. They could, for instance, not believe the policy is likely to work, even though the stated aim of the policy is in line with their political thoughts. You could imagine a Libertarian who was for the Iraq war, if they truly believed that Iraq presented a threat to the security of the US, and the government was legitimately exercising its responsibility to defend the nation.
I'd probably agree with you about FOX news (probably - I'm not American and have limited exposure to it, and what exposure I do have tends to be heavily biased) - I was just disagreeing with your methodology of "testing libertarian-ness".
Our society will not countenance a system of "if you can't afford to pay for treatment or get insurance, you just die."
Charities are an option, but they can only do so much. Unlike the government, they can't compel donations.
So basically "society" will not tolerate it, but they also don't want to pay for it. They'd rather compel others to pay for their wants. If "society" truly wouldn't tolerate it, then they would supply charities to ensure it doesn't happen. If charities are underfunded, it's because "society" is tolerating it.
This is a large proportion of what's wrong with our society: they want it, but they don't want to pay for it. Therefore, they demand the government make everyone else pay for it.
You haven't disproved "Government == Bad". You've just demonstrated that "No Government == Worse". I consider government a necessary evil. In discussion with some people. I find I need to emphasize the evil part. In discussion with others, the necessary.
Uh-huh. No true Scotsman would think such a thing!
I consider myself libertarian, and my political views match most definitions I've seen of the term (economically conservative, socially liberal as they relate to the power of the state), but I wouldn't agree with all the specific policies you outlined (for the record: abortion).
No, actually, there are anti-cartel laws to break those apart if they're colluding to. Problem is, they're not enforced.
Uh-huh. "Sitting pretty" is having your assets frozen, being imprisoned, and defending yourself against extradition.
And as you have clearly failed to answer the question despite your three paragraphs of ranting, I have to conclude that your accomplishments amount to nothing more than whining pathetically on Slashdot against those who've accomplished more for freedom and democracy than you ever will.
What's more, since in your other reply to my post you, stated that you found painful death for the crime of extra-marital sex to be perfectly moral behaviour, I can now dismiss you as an unethical, amoral zealot, presumably only posting in a desperate and futile attempt at self-aggrandizement and validation.
Uh-huh. Until they rock the boat, and are likewise destroyed. That's the point I was making. Letting Assange be destroyed for political expediency will, at the least, have a chilling effect on other leakers. It will also set a precedent, that the people will look the other way while governments destroy such people. The spotlight needs to be kept firmly on Assange.
We also need to vigorously report and investigate the cables demonstrating criminal activity of course, but the media is quite large. It can do both.
but it would involve transparent synchronization between all your devices
Not really. I achieve this by buying a NAS appliance, hooking it up to my network, and storing everything there. Bing, access to all my stuff, from anywhere (with a network signal), and yet it's all under my control. I guess if you wanted to spin it into buzzwords you could say I'm "hosting my own cloud", but really it's nothing different from what computer networks have been doing since the 60s. I prefer the term "black box computing", which is what cloud computing really is. You're trusting your data to a process you don't control, don't understand - you just know that you put data in, and it comes back out again. And have you to hope it will continue to do so.
It seems to me that the intense public and media following of Assange is the only thing keeping him from being disappeared. We should keep the focus on Assange, and follow his trial closely and loudly - if we want the light he's shone on to illicit activities to continue to shine, or if we want anyone else to take up that torch. If we ignore him, he's jailed, wikileaks disbands, and we get no more of the truly important things that WIkileaks has released.
Really? I see nobody here mentioning conspiracy theories (certainly nobody modded up) except you. The thing is, we don't care why HP did it. What we care is that they did. And regardless of what they were going to use it for, what it can be used for is compromising the security of a user's system. It may not have been malevolent, but it was certainly condescending (users are to stupid to manage their own system) and it definitely compromises security.
Uh-huh. People like Assange have no need for valor. Which is why he put himself front-and-centre for his organization, deliberately exposed things that people needed to know, while knowing that he was going to cop all the flack himself. Tell me, name one thing you've done that's been half so valorous as what Assange has accomplished over the last few years?
You know who else isn't above the law? The managers at DynCorp who hire underage prostitutes to woo their clients. And pharmaceutical companies who perform illegal testing regimes on ill-informed, impoverished foreigners. But wait, they're not being charged. The people who brought their actions to light are. Meanwhile, Julian Assange asked, and was told, that he could leave Sweden, and as soon as he does, is slapped with an interpol warrant, and extradition orders. This after his case was already dropped, then reactivated. Given the level of corruption already exposed, you don't need to be particularly cynical to see that these actions weren't motivated by a sense of justice, or a desire to see the law upheld.
So you're saying that if you go to Iran, and have sex with your girlfriend while you're there, it is right and just for you (or more likely, just her) to be stoned to death, because the law of the land you're in is the absolute arbiter of morality. That something is morally right and ethical if you're on one side of the border, but take a step to the left, and you deserve whatever you get.
Law != Morality
As far as I can see, the US government has done a fine job of violating the security of your nation, by interfering in foreign nations and missing off people to the extent they're willing to suicide to hurt you. Oh, and then miring your security apparatus down in such information overload that they couldn't prevent it when they tried.
And for C, they're preventing by the simple expedient of granting themselves a monopoly on it.
I guess they're performing satisfactorily enough on B.
Yup. And what happens then is that the words lose all meaning. "Broadband" is an absolutely meaningless term now. It connotes nothing, unless you provide an additional definition of what *you* mean by broadband. Once it lose it's true, technical, meaning, it simply became another word for "fast". And it's now impossible to talk about "broadband" in the technical sense because the word that's used to describe it has been hijacked.
That's why grammar nazis continually crop up to defend stuff like "begging the question" - once that term is hijacked, there becomes no way to invoke the meaning that term once had. Our language loses accuracy and flexibility, and accretes simply another synonym. Like we didn't have enough already.
These days there's a very clearly defined producer/consumer relationship. It isn't just a matter of bandwidth or anything... I simply cannot host a website on my home connection. I am barred from doing that.
Only in the US. And really, only because you resisted paying as-used, rather than a flat rate for bandwidth. As bandwidth use grew, ISPs couldn't deliver on their flat-rate plans, and they couldn't start charging for data used without causing an uproar. So they looked for other methods to restrict the amount of bandwidth used, and they were generally more disruptive than simple scaling pricing. It's a natural outcome of trying to have your cake and eat it to. I'm in Australia, and the only port that's blocked by default is outgoing 25, and that can be opted-out of by logging into your ISP preferences - it's purely a malware control mechanism.
Planets with two hemispheres? I know snowboarders who chase winter around the world for half of the year.
So what makes someone part of "the media"? Do they have to pass a certain threshold of political contributions?
Wikileaks is just as much a part of the media as the New York Times.
This is actually a good thing. The problem with jurors investigating off their own bat is that the other parties in the courtroom are unaware that this material has now been considered. It means that, say, while there might be a rational explanation for something, the defence will never advance it because it doesn't know the jury is considering it.
TL;DR: The ends justifies the means.
Just continue supporting US protection of companies providing underage male prostitutes to their allies due to expediency.
libertarianism != anarchy
Since Assange isn't a journalist and wikileaks isn't a media organization
-1 Just Wrong
Because genetically engineering your population to gather solar energy is cheaper than feeding them.
Because what we need in the Western world is a greater energy intake into our bodies...